Summary
Contents
Subject index
This unique addition to reference literature provides an introduction to the major concepts and contemporary issues that are essential for students of environmental science and environmental studies to know. With over 200 entries authored by world-class names like Anthony Brazel, John Day and Edward Keller, this text is divided into six sections: Environmental Science, Environments, Paradigms & Concepts, Processes & Dynamics, Scales & Techniques, and Environmental Issues.
Human Ecology
Human Ecology
The first instances of the use of this term were in sociology in the 1920s and 1950s when they were indicative of a school of thought that wanted to explain social facts by a variety of causes, not simply with other social facts. Thus environmental factors might be brought into the sociological domain, though some at least of the environment was man-made (e.g., housing types) rather than ‘natural’. Hence areas of cities which had poor communities, run-down housing and were prone to flood, constituted an ecological zone rather akin to an ecosystem in ‘pure’ ecology. In the natural science community the term has been used by various groups who wished to highlight reciprocal human-environment relations in the way A.G. Tansley (1871–1955) suggested for ...
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