An ecological view
If you ask most people what they think ‘ecology’ is, you’ll probably get a response that it has something to do with the plants and animals in the environment. While this definition is not wrong, it doesn’t quite assess the broad scope of environments that ecology can be applied to. The phrase ‘the environment’ has a certain connotation implying that it must be a natural space. Fields of industrial ecology and sustainable automobility prove that the space of the environment can be more than a natural setting. An ecological view can be applied to any system.
Think of ecology like a lens to view the world through; it assesses the connectedness of many aspects of our world. For example, in a natural ecosystem energy is flowing between organisms so one way to view ecology is through the way that one plant in the environment and it’s energy consumption/production effects the other organisms in its environment (think food web). The ecological mindset can be broken down into a few simple pieces:
- A subject
- This is any thing that interacts with other things, e.g. a worker in a large corporation
- The environment you’re choosing to look at
- Just like in photography, framing the subject is key. To learn more about the subject, we must choose the realm where they are interacting, e.g. the office building of that worker
- The other organisms and entities being interacted with
- This is the species, non-living things, and resources within that environment, e.g. in the case of the office worker, this could be coworkers, the patrons of the company, the water in the water cooler, or a stapler
We can take these simple concepts and break down most any environment to try to find more information about the place and the organisms/things within that place. The most important things to look for would be influences and interactions. For example, we might be looking at the office building and trying to figure out why a floor of the building uses 300 sheets of paper per week. We must look at what the paper is used for, which workers are printing what, if there is a suggested cap of paper, how the office manager distributes supplies, what the customers are demanding be sent on paper, etc. Containing all these connecting aspects within the frame of an environment is the basis of the ecological lens.
This way of thinking can help us find out new information in ways that integrate multiple factors. The possibilities for applications are endless; our class alone has proposed using it to assess disease outbreaks, the impact of ecotourism, political systems, and Smartphone dating apps. Looking beyond the individual in a connective systems approach can help us better understand the complex world that we live in and with that knowledge do things to improve it. — SaraJane Harrington