SOCIAL ECOLOGY AND LIVING SYSTEMS-THEORY

Social ecology studies the manner in which human societies adapt to th eir environment. This includes not only the impact of the society on t he environment, but also the impact of the environment on the society. In fact, as societies adapt to their environment, they alter it, and this altered environment subsequently impacts back upon the society. L iving Systems Theory (LST) discusses twenty critical subsystems which process either matter/energy or information in living systems, includi ng social systems. This paper first presents a general model of social ecology. It then concentrates upon the ten subsystems of LST which pr ocess matter/energy, and analyzes how knowledge of these subsystem pro cesses can be applied to our model of social ecology. These ten subsys tems - the reproducer, boundary, ingestor, distributor, converter, pro ducer, matter-energy storage, extruder, motor, and supporter - are all shown to occupy key roles in ecological adaptation, and the role of e ach is explicated. (C) 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.