ABSTRACT
In 1968, A. P. Vayda and Roy Rappaport articulated a new approach for the study of human-environment interaction, representing a marked departure from previous anthropological approaches. A number of human ecologists have attempted to formulate generalizations with respect to human adaptations to hazards and other environmental events, drawn largely from theories formulated by L. Slobodkin, A. Rappaport, C. S. Holling, and G. Bateson. Major geopolitical events of the 1970’s fostered an atmosphere in which ecological models developed a decade earlier, emphasizing stability in closed systems, were found wanting. As a consequence of their involvement in these issues, human ecologists have come to view environmental change as common, often inevitable, and interesting for its own sake. An important theoretical use of ecology is to shed light on evolutionary processes. Basic to evolutionary theory is the observation that members of populations are not uniform in their behavior but rather diverse in their means of coping with environmental exigencies.
