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112 JUDIT FARKAS
This is still an open-ended guestion, owing to the contradictory use of the
terminological apparatus (see ecology, environment, nature) and to methodological
dilemmas. Moreover, the term ecological anthropology has also occasioned heated
debate." Nevertheless, Borsos thinks that the term ecology, used in the biological
sense, is suitable — with due caution and absorption — for use in the social sciences.
If we accept that ecological investigations must have an object (diverse organisms,
plants, animals) and that the above-mentioned actors are bound by the conditions
of the external world (soil, climate, etc.), then
“.. the definition of ecology is sufficiently broad to have any given organizational
level of organisms as its object, with external conditions shaped by the external world.
The object under examination, as a complex level of organization, may be a human
community with a specific culture, while the external world, the shaper of coercive
conditions, may include natural, social and cultural environments alike” (Borsos
2004: 17).
It is therefore the task of ecological anthropology to investigate the impact of the
natural environment on the given culture and society; the ecological relation of
culture and society to the natural elements (light, temperature, water, plant cover,
etc.) (Borsos 2004: 26); and humans’ response to the natural environment.
Adaptation, resilience, and the ecosystem have become organic parts of the
terminology of ecological anthropology.’
ECOLOGY, ENVIRONMENT, NATURE — AS DEFINED BY ENVIRONMENTAL
SCIENCE
Ecology. The term is associated with the German biologist Ernst Haeckel (1866). “It
is a discipline belonging to synthetic biology; it deals with the laws of the relationship
among multitudes of living beings (the levels of organization above that of individuals).
The scope of ecology includes the study of interactions that determine the distribution
and frequency of living beings. In other words, it studies the populations of living
beings and the conditions that influence them, as well as the impacts they exert. This
word of Greek origin means the study of the environment. More recently, due to the
issue’s significance, a new discipline called environmental science has evolved that
studies the relationship between humanity and the environment, also called human
ecology” (E. Mészdros 2010: 17).
“Global ecology examines the relations between Earth and the human being and
concerns itself with the general questions of their interaction. These deal with the basic
relations of humanity and the environment: What changes do humans cause to the
Earth? This is primarily a question for the natural sciences. — What are the social
consequences of these changes? Examining this issue belongs to the social sciences. —
What are the social causes of the changes effected by humans? Global ecology attempts
For more detail in Hungarian, see the summary of Baläzs Borsos (Borsos 2004: 13-26) and the
section titled Dispute: Ecology in the social sciences in Borsos’ book (Borsos 2004), as well as
Mészáros 2019. To the debate see also: Descola 2013, Moran — Lees 1985, Vayda — McCay 1975.
More recent Hungarian ecological anthropological studies are reviewed in Acta Ethnographica
62.1 (Babai — Borsos 2017).