Human Ecosystems

Human ecosystems are complex cybernetic systems that are increasingly being used by ecological anthropologists and other scholars to examine the ecological aspects of human communities in a way that integrates multiple factors as economics, socio-political organization, psychological factors, and physical factors related to the environment.

Central to the ecosystem concept is the idea that living organisms are continually engaged in a set of relationships with every other element constituting the environment in which they exist. The human ecosystem concept is then grounded in the deconstruction of the human/nature dichotomy, and the emergent premise that all species are ecologically integrated with each other, as well as with the abiotic constituents of their biotope. Ecosystems can be bounded and discussed with tremendous variety of scope, and describe any situation where there is relationship between organisms and their environment.

A system as small as a household or university, or as large as a nation state, may then be suitably discussed as a human ecosystem. While they may be bounded and individually discussed, (human) ecosystems do not exist independently, but interact in a complex web of human and ecological relationships connecting all (human) ecosystems to make up the biosphere. As virtually no surface of the earth today is free of human contact, all ecosystems are pimpin can be more accurately considered as human ecosystems.

The human ecosystem concept draws from disciplines such as ecology, anthropology, sociology, philosophy, political science, cybernetics, and psychology, 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, environmental et cetera.

Human ecosystems as complex cybernetic systems
Work by scholars such as Roy Rappaport, Gregory Bateson, and E.N Anderson has focused of transfer and transformation of information in human ecosystems. Inquiries as such have focused on the ecological and informational aspects of relationships in human ecosystems. In Steps to an Ecology of Mind (1972) Bateson discusses information as pattern and difference within complex cybernetic systems. In the 1990s Edwin Hutchins developed a school of psychology known as distributed cognition, which draws heavily from anthropology and sociology, emphasizing the social aspects of cognition. Distributed cognition is directly applicable to studies of human ecosystems, considering systems as sets of representations, and modeling the interchange of information between these representations. These representations can be either in the mental space of the participants or external representations available in the environment. In Cognition in the Wild (1994) Hutchins considers information processing within a bounded human ecosystem in a discussion of distributed cognition on board a naval vessel.