A New Ecosystems Ecology for Anthropology

Abstract

"Conversation between anthropology and ecosystems ecology was interrupted in the early 1980s, due to several well-reasoned critiques of then-popular applications of ecosystems theory in anthropology and due, especially perhaps, to the appearance of promising alternative ecological and evolutionary paradigms and programs. Since then, ecosystems ecology has been both refined and transformed by the study of complex systems, with its radical critique of science. The resulting 'new ecology' answers most of the early criticisms of ecosystems, and proposes theory and methods to address the dynamics of ecosystems as complex systems."