RELATED TERMS: Anthropocene – Capitalocene – Chthulucene; Plantationocene; Ecology and Economy
Systems as small as a household or as large as a nation state may be discussed as a human ecosystem. Human ecosystems interact in a complex web of human and ecological relationships, connecting human ecosystems to the biosphere. Human ecosystems have so thoroughly pervaded the biosphere that they are considered the major factor in a new geological era: the Anthropocene.
Designed artefacts, experiences and environments are the media through which the relationships among people and between people and their habitats and niches are realised.
The human ecosystem concept draws from disciplines such as ecology, anthropology, sociology, philosophy, political science, cybernetics and psychology in seeking to understand the complex system of relationships in which humans interact. These relationships exist within nested hierarchies of context with which individuals and human aggregates interact with differentially. Most analysis of human ecosystems focuses on particular contexts of relationship, such as biological, individual, socio-cultural or the environmental.
Machlis, Force and Burch (1997), for example, discuss the history of the human ecosystem idea from biological ecology to mainstream social theories.
References
Machlis, G. E., Force, J. E. and Burch, W. R. (1997) ‘The human ecosystem Part I: The human ecosystem as an organizing concept in ecosystem management’, Society & Natural Resources, 10 (4), pp. 347–367. doi: 10.1080/08941929709381034.
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