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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).
