From its very beginnings, the field of ecology has wrestled with how to understand Homo sapiens. Though ostensibly just one more species contributing to ecological processes, humans necessarily play special roles in environmental dynamics. Not only are anthropogenic forces the largest drivers of contemporary environmental change but people themselves are highly self-aware, communicating in abstract symbolic systems and organizing themselves into complex societies. Because of this, humans represent both the causes of, and the solutions to, contemporary environmental problems.
Results/Conclusions
The science of ecology has faced multiple decision points over how to draw boundaries around human ecology, urban ecology and other subfields and questions. This presentation tracks how ecological science has attempted to integrate—or avoided integrating—human dimensions into its research and practice over the course of the 20th century. How are humans and their activities conceptualized? How are these related to ecological processes more generally? In examining these questions, contemporary debates over the aims and scope of ecology are contextualized in a broader conversation, offering some lessons from the past for an Anthropocene future.