Man S Nature And Nature S Man The Ecology Of Human Communities Lee R Dice

Cover -- Half Title -- Title -- Copyright -- Contents -- Preface -- Acknowledgments -- ONE: Introduction -- TWO: An Overview of the Model -- THREE: Lessons and Legacies -- FOUR: The Ecosystem Concept in Biology -- FIVE: The Roots of Human Ecology -- SIX: Key Components and Variables for Analyzing Human Ecosystems -- SEVEN: Goals, Strategies, and Tactics for Inquiry and Action -- EIGHT: Using the Model for Science during Crisis -- NINE: Revitalizing Human Communities and Reclaiming Biological Communities: The Baltimore Story -- TEN: Toward a More Perfect Civic Order: Lessons Learned from Research -- ELEVEN: Extending the Capability of the Model -- TWELVE: Leaning Forward: Future Challenges to Human Ecosystems -- THIRTEEN: Conclusion -- Notes -- Index -- A -- B -- C -- D -- E -- F -- G -- H -- I -- J -- K -- L -- M -- N -- O -- P -- Q -- R -- S -- T -- U -- V -- W -- Y -- Z

Our day-to-day experiences over the past decade have taught us that there must be limits to our tremendous appetite for energy, natural resources, and consumer goods. Even utility and oil companies now promote conservation in the face of demands for dwindling energy reserves. And for years some biologists have warned us of the direct correlation between scarcity and population growth. These scientists see an appalling future riding the tidal wave of a worldwide growth of population and technology. A calm but unflinching realist, Catton suggests that we cannot stop this wave - for we have already overshot the Earth's capacity to support so huge a load. He contradicts those scientists, engineers, and technocrats who continue to write optimistically about energy alternatives. Catton asserts that the technological panaceas proposed by those who would harvest from the seas, harness the winds, and farm the deserts are ignoring the fundamental premise that "the principals of ecology apply to all living things." These principles tell us that, within a finite system, economic expansion is not irreversible and population growth cannot continue indefinitely. If we disregard these facts, our sagging American Dream will soon shatter completely.

Globalization is often discussed in terms of its ecological ramifications. Yet, while ecological imbalance is today one of the greatest threats to mankind, globalization is also a reality that is here to stay. The volume, therefore, seeks to address how globalizing and environmental interests can be reconciled. The essays in this volume state that globalization can work both in favour of and against the environment. The major issues discussed in this topical volume are, how globalization can be used to promote environmental reforms; the role of individuals, private organizations and governments in keeping environmental degradation in check and in promoting environmental reform; globalization and ecological inequality; women, the environment and globalization; changing nature of environmental movements; overpopulation and the ecology; the relation between the ecology and the economy; and the effects of global climate changes.

Human ecology is ultimately part of a general theory of society. This is the argument developed here by Roy Ellen, whose exploration of the interplay between social organization and ecology in small-scale subsistence systems has direct bearings both on the investigation of human environmental relations in general and on contemporary social theory. He argues that while ecological study of non-industrial societies cannot be elevated to the status of theory, domain or discipline, it can be represented as a single 'problematic' that historically has acquired some degree of autonomy and which continues to make a significant contribution to a wider anthropology. Dr Ellen introduces his subject matter through an extended and systematic discussion of some major frameworks developed within the last hundred years to examine and explain facets of the relationship between culture, social organization and the environment: determinism, possibilism, cultural ecology, systems theory and ideas derived from modern biology. He follows this with a detailed review and appraisal of important recent research involving the use of ecological models, methods and data. This original and innovative study of the pre-eminently social character of human ecological relations will be of considerable interest to all students and researchers concerned with understanding the nature of the relationship between human beings and their environments.

During the 1920s, the Chicago school of sociology developed an ecological orientation toward the study of the city. At the same time, other Chicago scholars developed the social psychological approach that was to be named symbolic interactionism. Over fifty years later, Gordon Ericksen examines the best of these two schools to present a revisionist human ecology. In The Territorial Experience, he gives us a fresh perspective on human ecology by reconstructing the discipline in a way that genuinely reflects the realities of our territorial life. Ericksen's symbolic interactionist approach to the spatial world is based on the appreciation of humans as the creative artists they are, as designers and builders of their environment. Exploring the symbolic meanings attached to space and territory, he challenges the orthodox in human ecology by introducing hypotheses and conceptual tools of analysis which link spatial facts to human motivations and meanings. With people living in a habitat which they have largely shaped for themselves—a world of airports, shopping malls, retirement villages, where human spaces convey human messages—Ericksen demands that we examine what we have done with our environment in order to survive and prosper. This major contribution to human ecology will be of importance to specialists and lay readers in the fields of sociology, social psychology, geography, city and regional planning, urban affairs, and economics. Showing how humankind speaks in and through its physical setting, The Territorial Experience is a bench mark in communications theory.

Includes section: "Some Michigan books."

A Systems View of Planning: Towards a Theory of the Urban and Regional Planning Process, Second Edition covers theories of the process of town and regional planning. The book discusses physical change and human ecology; the theory of planning; the variety and entropy of systems; and planning as a conceptual system. The text also describes space and spatial planning; goal formulation in planning; exploratory and normative techniques and intuitive methods in projecting the system; and operational models and their underlying theories. Using linear programming and entropy methods; major aspects of evaluation, program budgeting, cost benefit analysis, and matrix methods; and the spatial method for regional planning are also covered. The book tackles the mixed-programming strategy as well. Engineers, architects, farmers, and foresters will find the book invaluable.