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Barry Commoner, a biologist, counters that the primary cause of
environmental ills is the increasing use
of technological innovations that are destructive to the worlds
environment plastics, detergents,synthetic fibers, pesticides,
herbicides, and chemical fertilizers.
Human Ecology
Earlier, we noted that human ecology is concerned with
interrelationships between people and their
environment. As Barry Commoner has stated, Everything is
connected to everything else.
In an application of the human ecological perspective,
sociologists Riley Dunlap suggests that the natural
environment serves three basic functions for humans, as it does
for many animal species.
1. The environment provides the resources essential for life.
These include air, water, andmaterials used to create shelter,
transportation and other necessities.
2. The environment serves as a waste repository. More so than
other living species,humans produce a huge quantity and variety of
waste products bottles, boxes, papers,
sewage, and garbage, to name just a few.
3. The environment houses our species. It is our home, our
living space, the place wherewe reside, work, and play.
Dunlap (1993) points out that these three functions of the
environment actually compete with one
another.
This tension between the three essential functions of the
environment brings us back to the human
ecologists view that everything is connected to everything
else.
A Conflict view of environmental Issues
This process only intensifies the destruction of natural
resources in poorer regions of the world. From a
conflict perspective, less affluent nations are being to meet
their mineral deposits, forests, and fisheries
in order to meet their debt obligations to industrialized
nations.
Conflict theorists are well aware of the environmental
implications of land use policies in the Third
World, but they contend that focusing on the developing
countries is ethnocentric.
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Allan Schnaiberg (1994) refines this analysis by criticizing the
focus on affluent consumers as the cause
of environmental troubles. The capitalist systems Treadmill of
Production is the real culprit.
Environmental Justice
Environmental Justice a legal strategy based on claims that
racial minorities and the lower classes are
subjected disproportionately to environmental hazards.
In 1994, President Bill Clinton issued an executive order that
requires all federal agencies to ensure that
low-income and minority communities have access to better
information about their environment as
well as an opportunity to participate in shaping government
policies that affect their communities
health.
Summary
The size, composition, and distribution of the worlds population
have an important influence on our
communities, our health, and our environment.
Demography
the scientific study of population.
1. Thomas Robert Malthus suggested that the worlds population
was growing more rapidly thanthe available food supply and the gap
between two would increase over time. But Karl Marx saw
capitalism, rather than rising population, as the main cause of
the worlds social ills.
2. For obtaining vital statistics on the population of the
United States and most other countries isCensus.
3. Stable communities first developed when humans became
farmers, and their surplus productionallowed others to live in
preindustrial cities. Industrial city, a large population center
dominated
by factories. In the 20th
century, gave rise to the postindustrial city.
4. Urban Ecology is a functionalist view of urbanization that
focuses on the interrelationshipsbetween city dwellers and their
environment. Two theories of urban growth, the concentric-
zone theory and the multiple-nuclei theory.5. New urban
sociology, a conflict view of urbanization, focus on the interplay
of local, national,
and global economic forces and their effect on cities throughout
the world according to
Immanuel Wallersteins world-systems analysis.
6. Functionalists, conflict theorists, and labeling theorists
all see medicine as an institution of socialdefinition and
control.
7. Social epidemiology is the study of the distribution of
disease, disability, and health across apopulation. Lower class
people have higher rates ofmortality and disability than
upper-class
people. Racial and ethnic minorities have high rates ofmorbidity
and mortality than Whites.
8. Human Ecology, the natural environment serves three basic
functions:a. Essential Resourcesb. Waste Repositoryc. Houses our
Species
