The Dictionary of Human Geography

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human ecology was used to describe the object

of geographical enquiry as well as in reference

to the adaptation of concepts from the science

ofecologyfor sociological analysis. Thus, in

his 1922 presidential address to the Associ-

ation of American Geographers, Harlan H.

Barrows defined geography simply as ‘the sci-

ence of human ecology’, ascienceconcerned

with ‘ ... the relationships existing between

natural environments and the distribution

and activities of man [sic]’ (Barrows, 1923,

p. 3). And yet at virtually the same time, the

chicago schoolof Sociology was placing its

influential stamp on human ecology, defined

by Robert E. Park (1936, p. 1) as ‘ ... an

attempt to apply to the interrelations of

human beings a type of analysis previously

applied to the interrelations of plants andani-

mals’. The Chicago School, of course, fea-

tured not only Park’s work on the influence

of racial difference in shaping the experience

of newcomers and immigrants to the city of

Chicago, but also Ernest Burgess and his de-

velopment of azonal model(Park, Burgess

and McKenzie, 1925).

What is perhaps critical to note here (par-

ticularly in light of the profound influence of

that the Chicago School would have on the

emergence ofurban geography) is that ‘en-

vironment’ for the likes of Park and Burgess

primarily meant the built physical as well as

the more general social and cultural environ-

ment of the city, including spatial configur-

ations. This is somewhat at odds with

contemporary connotations of human ecol-

ogy, which tend to emphasize relations be-

tween human and non-human nature (cf.

cultural ecology; political ecology).

And while the Chicago School’s influence on

urban geography is recognized (Harvey,

1973), Park understood at the time that his

version of human ecology overlapped with

geography. Yet, he attempted to relegate geog-

raphy to a particularistic, descriptive enter-

prise, leaving to sociologists the development

of a morenomothetichuman ecology com-

plete with generalizations and formal theory

(Entrikin, 1980).

All of this seemingly arcane intellectual his-

tory matters, because contemporary use of the

term ‘human ecology’ can carry a fuzzy impre-

cision. Moreover, the term has ‘baggage’, as-

sociated as it is with mechanistic,positivistic

conceptions of social and cultural relation-

ships to the environment (however conceived)

based on organicistmetaphorsof social forma-

tions borrowed from ecology. These are cri-

tiques (warranted or otherwise) long directed

at the Chicago School(s) (for an early example

of this critique, see, e.g., Gettys, 1940).

The term is still somewhat widely invoked

(particularly in environmental sociology) as a

synthetic, holistic approach to understanding

the interrelationships of differentsocial for-

mationsand their biophysical environments,

including the specific and often highly com-

plex and interactive relations governing the

mobilization of key material and energy

resources on the one hand, and cultural

(material and symbolic), institutional and

technological trajectories of social develop-

ment on the other. Considerable contempor-

ary impetus is given to this line of work by

attempts to understand the origins and impli-

cations of modern anthropogenic environmen-

tal problems by looking at how past societies

(or non-industrial, non-Western ones) have

precipitated, managed, responded to and

been affected by environmental changes (Dia-

mond, 1999; Harper, 2004). Yet fears of

mechanistic, if not deterministic, renderings

of the role of physical geographies in shaping

social outcomes dog this line of scholarship,

particularly when it comes time to formulate

causal inferences and historical generalizations

(Mazlish, 1999).

It also bears noting that human ecology is

recognized as something of a contemporary

field of holistic scholarly enquiry (complete

with eponymous journal and a handful of aca-

demic departments). In this context, it is de-

fined by Lawrence (2003, p. 31) as no less

than‘... thestudyofthedynamicinterrelation-

ships between human populations and thephys-

ical, biotic, cultural, and social characteristicsof

their environment and the biosphere’ (emphasis

added). All this points to the need for geograph-

ers and others to consider carefully the polyva-

lence of this term, and to invoke it reflexively,

and with some degree of caution. sp

human genome The complete set of genes

that make up the DNA of a human being. It is

one of a number of species genomes that consti-

tute a form of bio-information in which bio-

logicalmaterialistranslatedfromcorporeal

formats, such as an organic bank, to informa-

tional formats, such as a database. Creating

genomes relies on the DNA-sequencing tech-

nologies developed in the life sciences since the

1970s that make it possible to extract DNA

from whole organisms and to elucidate and an-

notate its structure in the form of coded infor-

mation. This is a laborious process, involving

various methods for separating out nucleotides

(the building blocks for the polymer molecules

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HUMAN GENOME