1 The concept of social ecology

2 Socio-ecological interaction

3 Socio-ecological education

4 Environmental aspects in Hughes sociology

Conclusion

List of used literature

Introduction

Social ecology is the science of harmonizing relations between society and nature.

Social ecology analyzes the attitude of a person in its inherent humanistic horizon from the point of view of its compliance with the historical needs of human development, from the perspective of cultural justification and perspective, through the theoretical comprehension of the world in its general definitions, which express the measure of the historical unity of man and nature. Any scientist thinks over the main concepts of the problem of interaction between society and nature through the prism of his science. The conceptual and categorical apparatus of socioecology is being formed, developed and improved. This process is diverse and covers all aspects of socioecology, not only objectively, but also subjectively, in a peculiar way reflecting scientific creativity and influencing the evolution of scientific interests and searches of both individual scientists and entire groups.

The social ecology approach to society and nature may seem more intellectually demanding, but it avoids the oversimplification of dualism and the immaturity of reductionism. Social ecology tries to show how nature slowly, in phases, transformed into society, without ignoring the differences between them, on the one hand, and the degree of their interpenetration, on the other. The everyday socialization of young people by the family is no less based on biology than the constant care of medicine for the elderly - on established social factors. We will never stop being mammals with our primary instincts, but we have institutionalized them and followed them through various social forms. So, the social and the natural constantly penetrate each other, without losing their particularity in this process of interaction.

The purpose of the test is to consider the environmental aspect in social work.

To achieve this goal, you need to solve a number of the following tasks:

Give a definition of social ecology;

Study social and environmental interactions;

Designate social and environmental education;

Consider environmental aspects in Hughes' sociology.

1 The concept of social ecology

One of the most important challenges facing researchers at the present stage the formation of social ecology, is the development unified approach to an understanding of its subject. Despite the obvious progress achieved in the study of various aspects of the relationship between man, society and nature, as well as a significant number of publications on social and environmental issues that have appeared in the last two to three decades in our country and abroad, on the issue of what exactly is this industry studying scientific knowledge there are still different opinions. In the school reference book "Ecology" A.P. Oshmarin and V.I. Oshmarina gives two options for defining social ecology: in the narrow sense, it is understood as the science "of the interaction of human society with the natural environment", and in the broad sense of the science "of the interaction of an individual and human society with natural, social and cultural environments." It is quite obvious that in each of the presented cases of interpretation we are talking about different sciences, claiming the right to be called "social ecology". No less indicative is the comparison between the definitions of social ecology and human ecology. According to the same source, the latter is defined as: “1) the science of the interaction of human society with nature; 2) the ecology of the human person; 3) the ecology of human populations, including the doctrine of ethnic groups. " The almost complete identity of the definition of social ecology, understood "in the narrow sense", and the first version of the interpretation of human ecology is clearly visible. The striving for the actual identification of these two branches of scientific knowledge, indeed, is still characteristic of foreign science, but it is quite often subjected to well-reasoned criticism by domestic scientists. SN Solomina, in particular, pointing out the feasibility of breeding social ecology and human ecology, limits the subject to the latter consideration of the socio-hygienic and medico-genetic aspects of the relationship between man, society and nature. With a similar interpretation of the subject of human ecology, V.A. Bukhvalov, L.V. Bogdanova and some other researchers, but strongly disagree with N.A. Aghajanyan, V.P. Kaznacheev and N.F. Reimers, in their opinion, this discipline covers a much wider range of issues of interaction of the anthroposystem (considered at all levels of its organization from the individual to humanity as a whole) with the biosphere, as well as with the internal biosocial organization of human society. It is easy to see that such an interpretation of the subject of human ecology actually equates it with social ecology, understood in a broad sense. This situation is largely due to the fact that at present there has been a steady tendency for these two disciplines to converge, when there is an interpenetration of the subjects of the two sciences and their mutual enrichment due to the joint use of the empirical material accumulated in each of them, as well as methods and technologies of socio-ecological and anthropoecological research.

Today, an increasing number of researchers are inclined towards an expanded interpretation of the subject of social ecology. So, according to D.Zh. Markovich, the subject of study of modern social ecology, understood by him as a private sociology, is the specific connections between a person and his environment. Based on this, the main tasks of social ecology can be defined as follows: the study of the influence of the habitat as a combination of natural and social factors on humans, as well as the influence of humans on the environment, perceived as the framework of human life.

A somewhat different, but not contradicting the previous, interpretation of the subject of social ecology is given by T.A. Akimov and V.V. Haskin. From their point of view, social ecology as a part of human ecology is a complex of scientific branches that study the relationship of social structures (starting with the family and other small social groups), as well as the relationship of a person with the natural and social environment of their habitat. This approach seems to us to be more correct, because it does not limit the subject of social ecology to the framework of sociology or any other separate humanitarian discipline, but especially emphasizes its interdisciplinary nature.

When defining the subject of social ecology, some researchers tend to emphasize the role that this young science is called upon to play in harmonizing the relationship of mankind with its environment. According to E.V. Girusov, social ecology should study, first of all, the laws of society and nature, by which he understands the laws of self-regulation of the biosphere, implemented by man in his life.

2 Socio-ecological interaction

L.V. Maksimova identifies two main aspects in the study of a person's relationship with environment... First, the whole set of influences exerted on a person by the environment and various environmental factors is studied.

In modern anthropoecology and social ecology, environmental factors, to which a person is forced to adapt, are usually denoted by the term adaptive factors. These factors are usually classified into three large groups-biotic, abiotic and anthropogenic environmental factors. Biotic factors are direct or indirect influences from other organisms that inhabit the human environment (animals, plants, microorganisms). Abiotic factors - factors of inorganic nature (light, temperature, humidity, pressure, physical fields - gravitational, electromagnetic, ionizing and penetrating radiation, etc.). A special group is made up of anthropogenic factors generated by the activities of the person himself, the human community (pollution of the atmosphere and hydrosphere, plowing of fields, deforestation, replacement of natural complexes with artificial structures, etc.).

The second aspect of the study of the relationship between man and the environment is the study of the problem of human adaptation to the environment and its changes.

The concept of human adaptation is one of the fundamental concepts of modern social ecology, reflecting the process of human connection with the environment and its changes. Originally appearing within the framework of physiology, the term "adaptation" soon penetrated into other areas of knowledge and began to be used to describe a wide range of phenomena and processes in the natural, technical and humanitarian sciences, initiating the formation of an extensive group of concepts and terms reflecting various aspects and properties of adaptation processes a person to the conditions of his environment and its result.

The term "human adaptation" is used not only to denote the process of adaptation, but also to comprehend the property acquired by a person as a result of this process - adaptation to the conditions of existence. L.V. Maksimova believes, however, that in this case it is more appropriate to talk about adaptation.

However, even under the condition of an unambiguous interpretation of the concept of adaptation, it is felt that it is insufficient to describe the process it denotes. This is reflected in the emergence of such clarifying concepts as deadaptation and readaptation, which characterize the direction of the process (deadaptation is a gradual loss of adaptive properties and, as a result, a decrease in fitness; readaptation is a reverse process), and the term disadaptation (disorder of the body's adaptation to changing conditions of existence) , reflecting the nature (quality) of this process.

SOCIAL ECOLOGY IN THE GLOBAL WORLD

“The childhood of mankind is over, when Mother Nature went and cleaned after us. The period of maturity has come. Now we need to clean up ourselves, or rather learn to live so as not to litter. From now on, the entire responsibility for the preservation of life on Earth falls on us ”(Oldak, 1979).

Currently, humanity is experiencing perhaps the most critical moment in the entire history of its existence. Modern society is in a deep crisis, although this cannot be said, if we limit ourselves to some external manifestations. We see that the economies of developed countries continue to grow, even if not at such a rapid pace as it was quite recently. Accordingly, the volume of mining continues to increase, which is stimulated by the growth of consumer demand. This is most noticeable, again, in developed countries. At the same time, social contrasts in the modern world between economically developed and developing countries are becoming more pronounced and in some cases reach a 60-fold gap in the size of the incomes of the population of these countries.

Rapid industrialization and urbanization, a sharp increase in the world's population, intensive chemicalization of agriculture, other types of anthropogenic pressure on nature are significant disrupted the circulation of substances and natural energy processes in the biosphere damaged the mechanisms of her self-healing ... This endangered the health and life of modern and future generations of people and, in general, the further existence of civilization.

Analyzing the current situation, many experts come to the conclusion that currently humanity is threatened two deadly dangers:

1) comparatively fast death in the fire of a global nuclear missile war and

2) slow extinction due to deterioration in the quality of the living environment, which is caused by the destruction of the biosphere due to irrational economic activities.

The second danger, apparently, is more real and more formidable, since diplomatic efforts alone are not enough to prevent it. It is necessary to revise all the traditional principles of nature management and radically restructure the entire economic mechanism in most countries of the world.

Therefore, speaking about the current situation, everyone should understand that the current crisis has engulfed not only the economy and nature. First of all, the person himself is in crisis with his centuries-old way of thinking, needs, habits, way of life and behavior. The critical situation of a person is that his whole way of life opposes nature. It is possible to get out of this crisis only if a person is transformed into a creature friendly with nature who understands her and knows how to be in agreement with her. But for this, people must learn to live in harmony with each other and take care of future generations. All this should be learned by every person, wherever he has to work and whatever tasks he has to solve.

So, in the conditions of the progressive destruction of the Earth's biosphere, in order to resolve the contradictions between society and nature, it is necessary to transform human activity on new principles. These principles provide reaching a reasonable compromise between the social and economic needs of society and the capabilities of the biosphere to satisfy them without threatening its normal functioning. Thus, the time has come for a critical revision of all areas of human activity, as well as areas of knowledge and spiritual culture that shape a person's worldview.

Humanity is now taking an exam for a genuine rationality ... It will be able to pass this exam only if it fulfills the requirements set by the biosphere. These requirements are:

1) biosphere compatibility based on knowledge and use of the laws of conservation of the biosphere;

2) moderation in the consumption of natural resources, overcoming the wastefulness of the consumer structure of society;

3) mutual tolerance and peacefulness of the peoples of the planet in relations with each other;

4) adherence to universally significant, environmentally thought-out and consciously set global goals of social development.

All these requirements imply the movement of humanity towards a single global integrity based on the joint formation and maintenance of a new planetary shell, which Vladimir Ivanovich Vernadsky called noosphere .

The scientific basis for such activity should be a new branch of knowledge - social ecology .

Prehistory of social ecology. The reasons for the emergence of social ecology as an independent scientific discipline

The problems associated with the interaction of society and its environment are called ecological problems... Ecology was originally a branch of biology (the term was coined by Ernst Haeckel in 1866). Environmental biologists study the relationship of animals, plants and entire communities with their habitat. An ecological view of the world- such a ranking of values ​​and priorities of human activity, when the most important is the preservation of a human-friendly environment.

The prehistory of social ecology begins with the appearance of man on Earth. The herald of the new science is considered the English theologian Thomas Malthus. He was one of the first to point out that there are natural boundaries of economic growth, and demanded to limit the growth of the population: food "(Malthus, 1868, p. 96); "... to improve the situation of the poor, it is necessary to reduce the relative number of births" (Malthus, 1868, p. 378). This idea is not new. In Plato's "ideal republic" the number of families must be regulated by the government. Aristotle went further and proposed to determine the number of children for each family.

Another precursor to social ecology is School of Geography in Sociology: adherents of this scientific school pointed out that the mental characteristics of people, their way of life are directly dependent on the natural conditions of a given area. Let us remember that even C. Montesquieu argued that "the power of the climate is the world's first power." Our compatriot L.I. Mechnikov pointed out that world civilizations developed in the basins of great rivers, on the shores of seas and oceans. K. Marx believed that a temperate climate is most suitable for the development of capitalism. K. Marx and F. Engels developed the concept of the unity of man and nature, the main idea of ​​which was: to cognize the laws of nature and to apply them correctly.

The emergence and subsequent development of social ecology was a natural consequence of the growing interest of representatives of various humanitarian disciplines (such as sociology, economics, political science, psychology, etc.) to the problem of harmonizing the relationship between society and nature, man and the environment. And this is possible only when the basis of the socio-economic development of society becomes rational nature management .

Originally scientific principles rational nature management tried to develop many existing sciences - biology, geography, medicine, economics. V Lately ecology began to deal with these issues more and more. The medico-biological and medico-demographic aspects of the relationship between society and nature were considered in medical geography, environmental hygiene and later in a new field of ecology - human ecology. On the whole, many new branches of the traditional sciences have arisen. For example, engineering geology began to deal with the protection and rational use of the geological environment. Socioecological law began to take shape in jurisprudence. In economic science, there is such a section as the economics of environmental management.

Representatives of various scientific disciplines began to assert that the problem of rational nature management was only their domain. But it turned out that each science, when studying the problem of rational nature management, focused its attention on those moments that are closer to it. Chemists, for example, did not care about studying a problem from a social or economic point of view, and vice versa.

It became obvious that an isolated study of all aspects of this problem - medical, biological, social, economic, etc., does not allow creating general theory balanced interaction between society and nature and effectively solve practical problems of rational nature management. This required a new interdisciplinary science .

This science began to form almost simultaneously in many countries of the world. In our country, different names were used to designate it - natursociology, sozology, environmentalology, applied ecology, global ecology, socio-economic ecology, modern ecology, big ecology, etc. However, these terms are not widely used.

1.2. Development stages of social ecology.
Social ecology subject

The very term "social ecology" appeared thanks to social psychologists - American researchers R. Park and E. Burgess. They first used this term in 1921 in their work on the theory of population behavior in the urban environment. Using the concept of "social ecology", they wanted to emphasize that in this context we are talking not about a biological, but about a social phenomenon, which, however, also has biological characteristics. Thus, in America, social ecology was originally a sociology of the city or urban sociology.

In 1922 g. H. Burroughs approached the American Association of Geographers with a presidential address called "Geography as human ecology » ... The main idea of ​​this appeal: to bring ecology closer to man. The Chicago School of Human Ecology has gained worldwide fame: the study of the mutual relations of a person as an integral organism with its integral environment. It was then that ecology and sociology first came into close interaction. Environmental techniques began to be used to analyze the social system.

One of the first definitions of social ecology was given in his work in 1927. R. McKenzil, who characterized it as the science of territorial and temporal relations of people, which are influenced by selective (selective), distributive (distributive) and accommodative (adaptive) forces of the environment. This definition of the subject of social ecology was intended to become the basis for the study of the territorial division of the population within urban agglomerations.

It should be noted, however, that the term "social ecology", apparently best suited to designate a specific line of research into the relationship of man as a social being with the environment of his existence, did not take root in Western science, in which the preference from the very beginning began to give in to the concept of "human ecology" (human ecology). This created certain difficulties for the formation of social ecology as an independent, humanitarian in its main focus, discipline. The fact is that in parallel with the development of the actual socio-ecological problems within the framework of human ecology, bioecological aspects of human life were developed in it. The long period of formation that has passed by this time and due to this having greater weight in science, having a more developed categorical and methodological apparatus, human biological ecology for a long time "overshadowed" humanitarian social ecology from the eyes of the advanced scientific community. And yet, social ecology existed for some time and developed relatively independently as the ecology (sociology) of the city.

Despite the obvious desire of representatives of the humanitarian branches of knowledge to free social ecology from the "oppression" of bioecology, it continued for many decades to experience a significant influence from the latter. As a result, social ecology borrowed most of its concepts, its categorical apparatus from the ecology of plants and animals, as well as from general ecology. At the same time, as D. Zh. Markovich notes, social ecology has gradually improved its methodological apparatus with the development of the space-time approach of social geography, the economic theory of distribution, etc.

Significant progress in the development of social ecology and the process of its isolation from bioecology took place in the 60s of the current century. The 1966 World Congress of Sociologists played a special role in this. The rapid development of social ecology in subsequent years led to the fact that at the next congress of sociologists, held in Varna in 1970, it was decided to create a Research Committee of the World Association of Sociologists on Social Ecology. Thus, as D. Zh. Markovich notes, the existence of social ecology as an independent scientific branch was, in fact, recognized and an impetus was given to its faster development and more precise definition her subject.

During the period under review, the list of tasks that this branch of scientific knowledge, gradually gaining independence, was called upon to solve, expanded significantly. If at the dawn of the formation of social ecology, the efforts of researchers were mainly reduced to searching in the behavior of a geographically localized human population for analogues of laws and ecological relations characteristic of biological communities, then from the second half of the 60s the range of issues under consideration was supplemented by the problems of determining the place and role of man in the biosphere. , developing ways to determine optimal conditions his life and development, harmonization of relationships with other components of the biosphere. The process of its humanization that has swept social ecology over the past two decades has led to the fact that, in addition to the above-mentioned tasks, the range of issues developed by it included the problems of identifying general laws of the functioning and development of social systems, studying the influence of natural factors on the processes of socio-economic development and finding ways to control action. these factors.

In our country, by the end of the 70s, conditions also developed for the separation of socio-ecological problems into an independent direction of interdisciplinary research. A significant contribution to the development of domestic social ecology was made by E.V. Girusov, A.N. Kochergin, Yu.G. Markov, N.F. Reimers, S.N. Solomina and others.

One of the most important problems facing researchers at the present stage of the formation of social ecology is the development of a unified approach to understanding its subject. Despite the obvious progress achieved in the study of various aspects of the relationship between man, society and nature, as well as a significant number of publications on social and environmental issues that have appeared in the last two to three decades in our country and abroad, on the issue of what exactly is studying this branch of scientific knowledge, there are still different opinions. In the school reference book "Ecology" by A. P. Oshmarina and V. I. Oshmarina, two variants of the definition of social ecology are given: in the narrow sense, it is understood as the science "of the interaction of human society with the natural environment", and in the broad sense - the science of "interaction the individual and human society with natural, social and cultural environments ”. It is quite obvious that in each of the presented cases of interpretation we are talking about different sciences, claiming the right to be called "social ecology". No less indicative is the comparison between the definitions of social ecology and human ecology. According to the same source, the latter is defined as: “I) the science of the interaction of human society with nature; 2) the ecology of the human person; 3) the ecology of human populations, including the doctrine of ethnic groups. " The almost complete identity of the definition of social ecology, understood "in the narrow sense", and the first version of the interpretation of human ecology is clearly visible. The striving for the actual identification of these two branches of scientific knowledge, indeed, is still characteristic of foreign science, but it is quite often subjected to well-reasoned criticism by domestic scientists. SN Solomina, in particular, pointing out the advisability of breeding social ecology and human ecology, limits the subject to the latter by considering the socio-hygienic and medico-genetic aspects of the relationship between man, society and nature. V.A.Bukhvalov, L.V. Bogdanova and some other researchers agree with a similar interpretation of the subject of human ecology, but N.A. Agadzhanyan, V.P. Kaznacheev and N.F. Reimers strongly disagree, according to whom this the discipline covers a much wider range of issues of interaction of the anthroposystem (considered at all levels of its organization - from the individual to humanity as a whole) with the biosphere, as well as with the internal biosocial organization of human society. It is easy to see that such an interpretation of the subject of human ecology actually equates it with social ecology, understood in a broad sense. This situation is largely due to the fact that at present there has been a steady tendency for the convergence of these two disciplines, when there is an interpenetration of the subjects of the two sciences and their mutual enrichment due to the joint use of the empirical material accumulated in each of them, as well as methods and technologies of socio-ecological and anthropoecological research.

Today, an increasing number of researchers are inclined towards an expanded interpretation of the subject of social ecology. So, according to D.Zh. Markovich, the subject of study of modern social ecology, understood by him as a private sociology, are specific connections between man and his environment. Based on this, the main tasks of social ecology can be defined as follows: the study of the influence of the habitat as a combination of natural and social factors on humans, as well as the influence of humans on the environment, perceived as the framework of human life.

A somewhat different, but not contradicting the previous, interpretation of the subject of social ecology is given by T.A. Akimova and V.V. Khaskin. From their point of view, social ecology as a part of human ecology is a complex of scientific fields that study the connection of social structures (starting with the family and other small social groups), as well as the connection of a person with the natural and social environment of their habitat. This approach seems to us to be more correct, because it does not limit the subject of social ecology to the framework of sociology or any other separate humanitarian discipline, but especially emphasizes its interdisciplinary nature.

When defining the subject of social ecology, some researchers tend to emphasize the role that this young science is called upon to play in harmonizing the relationship of mankind with its environment. In the opinion E.V. Girusova, social ecology should study, first of all, the laws of society and nature, by which he understands the laws of self-regulation of the biosphere, implemented by man in his life.

Like any other scientific discipline, social ecology developed gradually. There are three main stages in the development of this science.

The initial stage is empirical, associated with the accumulation of various data on the negative environmental consequences of the scientific and technological revolution. The result of this direction of environmental research was the formation of a network of global environmental monitoring of all components of the biosphere.

The second stage is "model". In 1972 a book by D. Meadows et al. "The Limits to Growth" was published. She was a huge success. For the first time, data on different aspects of human activity were included in a mathematical model and investigated using a computer. For the first time at the global level, a complex dynamic model of interaction between society and nature was investigated.

The criticism of The Limits to Growth was comprehensive and thorough. The results of criticism can be summarized in two positions:

1) modeling on a computer of socio-economic systems at the global and regional levels prospectively;

2) "Models of the world" Meadows is still far from adequate to reality.

Currently, there is a significant variety of global models: Meadows's model - lace from loops of forward and backward links, Mesarovich and Pestel's model is a pyramid dissected into many relatively independent parts, J. Tinbergen's model is a "tree" of organic growth, V. Leontiev's model - also a "tree".

The beginning of the third - global-political - stage of social ecology is considered to be 1992, when the International Conference on Environment and Development was held in Rio de Janeiro. Heads of 179 states adopted an agreed strategy based on the concept of sustainable development.

1.3. The place of social ecology in the system of sciences.
Social ecology is a complex scientific discipline

Social ecology arose at the junction of sociology, ecology, philosophy and other branches of science, with each of which it closely interacts. In order to determine the position of social ecology in the system of sciences, it is necessary to bear in mind that the word "ecology" means in some cases one of the ecological scientific disciplines, in others - all scientific ecological disciplines. Environmental sciences should be approached in a differentiated manner (Fig. 1).

Social ecology is the link between technical sciences (hydraulic engineering, etc.) and social sciences (history, jurisprudence, etc.).

The following reasoning is presented in favor of the proposed system. There is an urgent need to replace the concept of the hierarchy of sciences with the concept of the circle of sciences. The classification of sciences is usually built on the principle of hierarchy (subordination of some sciences to others) and sequential fragmentation (division, not combination of sciences). It is better to build the classification according to the type of circle (Fig. 1).

Rice. 1. The place of environmental disciplines in the integral system of sciences (Gorelov, 2002)

This scheme does not claim to be complete. Transitional sciences (geochemistry, geophysics, biophysics, biochemistry, etc.), the role of which is extremely important for solving an ecological problem, are not marked on it. These sciences contribute to the differentiation of knowledge, cement the entire system, embodying the inconsistency of the processes of "differentiation - integration" of knowledge. The diagram shows the importance of "connecting" sciences, including social ecology. Unlike centrifugal sciences (physics, etc.), they can be called centripetal. These sciences have not yet reached the proper level of development, because in the past, not enough attention was paid to the links between the sciences, and it is very difficult to study them.

When a knowledge system is built according to the principle of hierarchy, there is a danger that some sciences will hinder the development of others, and this is dangerous from an environmental point of view. It is important that the prestige of environmental sciences is no less than the prestige of the sciences of the physical, chemical and technical cycle. Biologists and ecologists have accumulated a lot of data that indicate the need for a much more careful, careful attitude to the biosphere than is the case at present. But such an argument is valid only from the standpoint of a separate consideration of the branches of knowledge. Science is a related mechanism, the use of data from some sciences depends on others. If the data of sciences are in conflict with each other, preference is given to sciences that enjoy great prestige, i.e. currently the sciences of the physical and chemical cycle.

Science must approach the degree of a harmonious system. Such science will help to create a harmonious system of relationships between man and nature and ensure the harmonious development of man himself. Science contributes to the progress of society not in isolation, but together with other branches of culture. This synthesis is no less important than the greening of science. Value reorientation is an integral part of the reorientation of the entire society. The attitude to the natural environment as an integrity presupposes the integrity of culture, a harmonious connection between science and art, philosophy, etc. Moving in this direction, science will move away from focusing exclusively on technical progress, responding to the deepest needs of society - ethical, aesthetic, as well as those that affect the definition of the meaning of life and the goals of development of society (Gorelov, 2000).

The place of social ecology among the sciences of the ecological cycle is shown in Fig. 2.

Rice. 2. The relationship of social ecology with other sciences (Gorelov, 2002)

Social Ecology Study Subject

The subject of the study of social ecology is to identify the patterns of development of this system, value-worldview, socio-cultural, legal and other prerequisites and conditions for its sustainable development. That is, the subject of social ecology is a relation in the system “society-man-technology-natural environment”.

In this system, all elements and subsystems are homogeneous, and the connections between them determine its invariability and structure. The object of social ecology is the "society-nature" system.

The problem of developing a unified approach to understanding the subject of social ecology

One of the most important problems facing researchers at the present stage of the formation of social ecology is the development of a unified approach to understanding its subject. Despite the obvious progress achieved in the study of various aspects of the relationship between man, society and nature, as well as a significant number of publications on social and environmental issues that have appeared in the last two to three decades in our country and abroad, on the issue of what exactly is studying this branch of scientific knowledge, there are still different opinions.

In the school reference book "Ecology" A.P. Oshmarin and V.I. Oshmarina gives two options for defining social ecology: in the narrow sense, it is understood as the science "of the interaction of human society with the natural environment", and in the broad sense of the science "of the interaction of an individual and human society with natural, social and cultural environments." It is quite obvious that in each of the presented cases of interpretation we are talking about different sciences, claiming the right to be called "social ecology". No less indicative is the comparison between the definitions of social ecology and human ecology. According to the same source, the latter is defined as: “1) the science of the interaction of human society with nature; 2) the ecology of the human person; 3) the ecology of human populations, including the doctrine of ethnic groups. " The almost complete identity of the definition of social ecology, understood "in the narrow sense", and the first version of the interpretation of human ecology is clearly visible.

The striving for the actual identification of these two branches of scientific knowledge, indeed, is still characteristic of foreign science, but it is quite often subjected to well-reasoned criticism by domestic scientists. SN Solomina, in particular, pointing out the feasibility of breeding social ecology and human ecology, limits the subject to the latter consideration of the socio-hygienic and medico-genetic aspects of the relationship between man, society and nature. With a similar interpretation of the subject of human ecology, V.A. Bukhvalov, L.V. Bogdanova and some other researchers, but strongly disagree with N.A. Aghajanyan, V.P. Kaznacheev and N.F. Reimers, in their opinion, this discipline covers a much wider range of issues of interaction of the anthroposystem (considered at all levels of its organization from the individual to humanity as a whole) with the biosphere, as well as with the internal biosocial organization of human society. It is easy to see that such an interpretation of the subject of human ecology actually equates it with social ecology, understood in a broad sense. This situation is largely due to the fact that at present there has been a steady tendency for the convergence of these two disciplines, when there is an interpenetration of the subjects of the two sciences and their mutual enrichment due to the joint use of the empirical material accumulated in each of them, as well as methods and technologies of socio-ecological and anthropoecological research.

Today, an increasing number of researchers are inclined towards an expanded interpretation of the subject of social ecology. So, according to D.Zh. Markovich, the subject of study of modern social ecology, understood by him as a private sociology, is the specific connections between a person and his environment. Based on this, the main tasks of social ecology can be defined as follows: the study of the influence of the habitat as a combination of natural and social factors on humans, as well as the influence of humans on the environment, perceived as the framework of human life.

A somewhat different, but not contradicting the previous, interpretation of the subject of social ecology is given by T.A. Akimov and V.V. Haskin. From their point of view, social ecology as a part of human ecology is a complex of scientific branches that study the relationship of social structures (starting with the family and other small social groups), as well as the relationship of a person with the natural and social environment of their habitat. This approach seems to us to be more correct, because it does not limit the subject of social ecology to the framework of sociology or any other separate humanitarian discipline, but especially emphasizes its interdisciplinary nature.

When defining the subject of social ecology, some researchers tend to emphasize the role that this young science is called upon to play in harmonizing the relationship of mankind with its environment. According to E.V. Girusov, social ecology should study, first of all, the laws of society and nature, by which he understands the laws of self-regulation of the biosphere, implemented by man in his life.

Principles of social ecology

• · Humanity, like any population, cannot grow indefinitely.
• · Society in its development should take into account the measure of biospheric phenomena.
• · Sustainable development of society depends on the timeliness of the transition to alternative resources and technologies.
• Any transformative activity of society should be based on an environmental forecast
• · The development of nature should not reduce the diversity of the biosphere and worsen the quality of life of people.
• · Sustainable development of civilization depends on the moral qualities of people.
• · Everyone is responsible for their actions to the future.
• · We need to think globally, act locally.
• · The unity of nature obliges humanity to cooperate.

Social ecology - a scientific discipline that considers relationships in the "society-nature" system, studying the interaction and relationship of human society with the natural environment (Nikolai Reimers).

But such a definition does not reflect the specifics of this science. Social ecology is currently being formed as a private independent science with a specific subject of research, namely:

The composition and characteristics of the interests of social strata and groups that exploit natural resources;

Perception by different social strata and groups of environmental problems and measures to regulate natural resource use;

Consideration and use in the practice of environmental protection measures of the characteristics and interests of social strata and groups

Thus, social ecology is the science of the interests of social groups in the field of environmental management.

Types of social ecology.

Social ecology is divided into the following types:

Economic

Demographic

Urban

Futurological

Legal

Main tasks and problems

The main task social ecology is the study of the mechanisms of human impact on the environment and those transformations in it that are the result of human activity.

Problems social ecology is mainly reduced to three main groups:

on a planetary scale - a global forecast for the population and resources in the context of intensive industrial development (global ecology) and determination of ways for the further development of civilization;

regional scale - study of the state of individual ecosystems at the level of regions and districts (regional ecology);

microscale - the study of the main characteristics and parameters of urban living conditions (city ecology or city sociology).

The environment surrounding a person, its specificity and state.

Under the habitat usually understand natural bodies and phenomena with which the organism (organisms) are in direct or indirect relationship. Individual elements of the environment to which organisms react with adaptive reactions (adaptations) are called factors.

Along with the term "habitat", the concepts of "ecological environment", "habitat", "environment", "natural environment", "natural environment", etc. are also used. There are no clear differences between these terms, but some of them follow stay. In particular, the recently popular term "environment" is understood, as a rule, an environment, in one way or another (in most cases to a large extent) changed by man. Close to it in terms of the meaning of "man-made environment", "built environment", "industrial environment".

The natural environment, the surrounding nature, is an environment that has not been changed by man or changed to a small extent. The term "habitat" is usually associated with that environment of life of an organism or species, in which the entire cycle of its development is carried out. General Ecology usually refers to the natural environment, the surrounding nature, habitats; in Applied and Social Ecology - about the environment. This term is often considered an unfortunate translation from English environment, since there is no indication of the object that surrounds the environment.

The influence of the environment on organisms is usually assessed through individual factors (lat. Doing, producing). Environmental factors are understood as any element or condition of the environment to which organisms respond with adaptive responses, or adaptations. Beyond the limits of adaptive reactions are the lethal (fatal for organisms) values ​​of the factors.

The specificity of the action of anthropogenic factors on organisms.

Several specific features of the action of anthropogenic factors can be distinguished. The most important of them are as follows:

1) irregularity of action and, therefore, unpredictability for organisms, as well as a high intensity of changes, incommensurate with the adaptive capabilities of organisms;

2) practically unlimited possibilities of action on organisms, up to complete destruction, which is characteristic of natural factors and processes only in rare cases (natural disasters, cataclysms). Human impacts can be both purposeful, such as competing against organisms called pests and weeds, and unintentional fishing, pollution, destruction of habitats, etc .;

3) as a result of the activity of living organisms (humans), anthropogenic factors act not as biotic (regulating), but as specific (modifying). This specificity is manifested either through a change natural environment in the direction unfavorable for organisms (temperature, moisture, light, climate, etc.), or by introducing agents alien to organisms into the environment, united by the term "xenobiotics";

4) no species commits any actions to the detriment of itself. This feature is inherent only in a person endowed with reason. It is a person who has to fully receive negative results from a polluted and destructible environment. Biological species simultaneously change and condition the environment; a person, as a rule, changes the environment in a direction that is unfavorable for himself and other creatures;

5) a person has created a group of social factors that are the environment for the person himself. The effect of these factors on humans is, as a rule, no less significant than natural ones. An integral manifestation of the action of anthropogenic factors is a specific environment created by the influence of these factors.

Man, and to a large extent other creatures, currently live in an environment that is the result of anthropogenic factors. It differs from the classical environment that was considered in general ecology in the range of action of natural abiotic and biotic factors. Man's noticeable change in the environment began when he moved from gathering to more active activities such as hunting, and then the domestication of animals and the cultivation of plants. Since that time, the principle of "ecological boomerang" began to work: any impact on nature, which the latter could not assimilate, returned to man as a negative factor. Man more and more separated himself from nature and enclosed it in a shell of the environment he himself created. Human contact with the natural environment was increasingly diminished.

SEMINAR 1 QUESTION 1

The Constitution provides that land and other natural resources are used and protected in Russian Federation as the basis for the life and activities of the peoples living in the corresponding territory. This provision is the foundation of the rights and obligations of the state, society and landowners. In addition, it, contrary to the norms of federal laws, gave rise to a number of subjects of the Russian Federation to declare land and other natural resources as their property, having appropriated some of the functions of the Russian Federation in the field of land use and protection.

The Constitutional Court of the Russian Federation in the Decree of 06/07/2000 No. 10-P "In the case of checking the constitutionality of certain provisions of the Constitution of the Altai Republic and Federal law"About general principles organizations of legislative (representative) and executive bodies of state power of the constituent entities of the Russian Federation "" considered, in particular, the issue of declaring the property (property) of the Altai Republic of all natural resources located on its territory. It was recognized that the constituent entity of the Russian Federation has the right to declare its property ( property) natural resources on its territory and to carry out such regulation that restricts their use in the interests of all peoples of the Russian Federation, since this violates its sovereignty, as well as the delimitation of jurisdictions and powers established by the Constitution.

The protection of lands as the basis for the life and activities of peoples was provided for in the LC of the RSFSR, the structure of this norm has not lost its significance at the present time. The Land Code provides for the environmental component of land protection, since they are the basis of the life and activities of peoples. The goals of land protection are achieved through the implementation of a system of legal, organizational, economic and other measures aimed at their rational use, prevention of unjustified withdrawals of land from agricultural use, protection from harmful effects, as well as for the restoration of land productivity, including the lands of the forest fund, and for the reproduction and increase of soil fertility.

The Law on Environmental Protection provides for a number of environmental requirements for landowners, in particular:

- during land reclamation, placement, design, construction, reconstruction, commissioning and operation of reclamation systems and separately located hydraulic structures (Art. 43);

- production, handling and disposal of potentially hazardous chemicals, including radioactive, other substances and microorganisms (Art. 47);

- the use of radioactive substances and nuclear materials (Art. 48);

- the use of chemicals in agriculture and forestry (art. 49);

- handling production and consumption waste (Art. 51).

QUESTION 2 THE CONCEPT OF SOCIAL ECOLOGY AS A SCIENTIFIC AND METHODOLOGICAL BASIS

Social ecology is a scientific discipline that considers relationships in the "society-nature" system, studies the interaction and interrelationships of human society with the natural environment (Nikolai Reimers).

But such a definition does not reflect the specifics of this science. Social ecology is currently being formed as a private independent science with a specific subject of research, namely:

the composition and characteristics of the interests of social strata and groups that exploit natural resources;

perception by different social strata and groups of environmental problems and measures to regulate nature management;

taking into account and using in the practice of nature conservation measures the characteristics and interests of social strata and groups

Thus, social ecology is the science of the interests of social groups in the field of environmental management.

Social ecology tasks

The goal of social ecology is to create a theory of the evolution of the relationship between man and nature, the logic and methodology of transforming the natural environment. Social ecology is designed to understand and help bridge the gap between man and nature, between humanitarian and natural science knowledge.

Social ecology as a science should establish scientific laws, evidence of objectively existing necessary and essential connections between phenomena, the signs of which are the general nature, constancy and the possibility of their prediction, it is necessary to formulate the basic laws of interaction of elements in the system "society - nature" in this way, so that this allowed to establish a model of the optimal interaction of elements in this system.

Establishing the laws of social ecology, one should first of all point out those of them that proceeded from the understanding of society as an ecological subsystem. First of all, these are laws that were formulated in the thirties by Bauer and Vernadsky.

The first law says that the geochemical energy of living matter in the biosphere (including humanity as the highest manifestation of living matter, endowed with reason) tends to maximum expression.

The second law contains a statement that in the course of evolution there remain those species of living beings, which by their vital activity maximize the biogenic geochemical energy.

Social ecology reveals the laws of the relationship between nature and society, which are as fundamental as physical laws. But the complexity of the subject of research itself, which includes three qualitatively different subsystems - inanimate and living nature and human society, and the short time of existence of this discipline lead to the fact that social ecology, at least at the present time, is mainly an empirical science, and the patterns are extremely general aphoristic statements (as, for example, the "laws" of the Commoner).

Law 1. Everything is connected with everything. This law postulates the unity of the World, it tells us about the need to look for and study the natural sources of events and phenomena, the emergence of chains connecting them, the stability and variability of these connections, the appearance of breaks and new links in them, stimulates the study of these breaks to heal, as well as to predict the course of events ...

Law 2. Everything must go somewhere. It is easy to see that this is, in essence, just a paraphrase of the well-known conservation laws. In its most primitive form, this formula can be interpreted as follows: matter does not disappear. The law should be extended to both information and spirituality. This law aims us at studying the ecological trajectories of movement of elements of nature.

Law 3. Nature knows best. Any major human intervention in natural systems is harmful to her. This law, as it were, separates man from nature. Its essence lies in the fact that everything that was created before man and without man is the product of long trial and error, the result of a complex process based on factors such as abundance, ingenuity, indifference to individuals with an all-encompassing desire for unity. In its formation and development, nature has developed a principle: what is collected, then it is understood. In nature, the essence of this principle is that no substance can be synthesized naturally if there is no means to destroy it. The whole cyclic mechanism is based on this. A person does not always provide for this in his activities.

Law 4. Nothing is given for free. In other words, you have to pay for everything. In essence, this is the second law of thermodynamics, which speaks of the presence of fundamental asymmetry in nature, that is, the unidirectionality of all spontaneous processes occurring in it. When thermodynamic systems interact with the environment, there are only two ways to transfer energy: heat release and work. The law says that in order to increase their internal energy, natural systems create the most favorable conditions - they do not take "duties". All the work done without any losses can pass into heat and replenish the reserves of the internal energy of the system. But, if we do the opposite, that is, we want to perform work at the expense of the reserves of the internal energy of the system, that is, to do the work through heat, we must pay. All the warmth cannot be turned into work. Every heat engine (technical device or natural mechanism) has a refrigerator, which, like a tax inspector, collects a duty. Thus, the law states that you cannot live for free. Even the most general analysis of this truth shows that we live in debt, because we pay less than the real value of the goods. But, as you know, the growth of debt leads to bankruptcy.

The concept of law is interpreted by most methodologists in the sense of an unambiguous causal relationship. Cybernetics gives a broader interpretation of the concept of law as a limitation of diversity, and it is more suitable for social ecology, which reveals the fundamental limitations of human activity. It would be absurd to put forward as a gravitational imperative that a person should not jump from a great height, since death in this case is inevitable. But the adaptive capabilities of the biosphere, which make it possible to compensate for violations of ecological laws before reaching a certain threshold, make ecological imperatives necessary. The main one can be formulated as follows: the transformation of nature must correspond to its possibilities of adaptation.

One of the ways to formulate socio-ecological laws is to transfer them from sociology and ecology. For example, the law of conformity of productive forces and production relations to the state of the natural environment is proposed as the basic law of social ecology, which is a modification of one of the laws of political economy. The patterns of social ecology, proposed based on the study of ecosystems, we will consider after getting acquainted with ecology.