Critical Human Ecology Historical Materialism

Critical Human Ecology: Historical Materialism and Natural Laws*
RICHARD YORK AND PHILIP MANCUS

University of Oregon
We lay the foundations for a critical human ecology (CHE) that combines the
strengths of the biophysical human ecology tradition in environmental sociology
with those of historical materialism. We show the strengths of a critically informed
human ecology by addressing four key meta-theoretical issues: materialist versus
idealist approaches in the social sciences, dialectical versus reductionist analyses,
the respective importance of historical and ahistorical causal explanations, and the
difference between structural and functional interpretations of phenomena. CHE
breaks with the idealism of Western Marxism, which dominated academic neo-
Marxist thought in the latter half of the 20th century, and advocates instead the
pursuit of a materialist, scientific methodology in dialectical perspective for the
explanation of social and ecological change. In turn, this project also involves a
critique of the ahistorical and functionalist tendencies of traditional human ecology,
while sharing human ecology’s basic starting point: the ecological embeddedness of
human societies.
Human ecology is a venerable research tradition in the environmental social sciences,

providing an important theoretical basis for understanding human interactions with
the natural environment. Although its formulation in the Chicago School in the early
20th century neglected the natural environment, a truly ecological human ecology
began to emerge mid-century in the works of Duncan (1959, 1961, 1964), Harris
(1968, 1971, 1979), Lenski (1970), Rappaport (1968), and others. Despite its early
prominence, human ecology has historically been mired in controversy due to its sci-
entific and materialist commitments—criticized from its beginnings and marginalized
within sociology because of the discipline’s tendency to equate naturalistic explana-
tions of social phenomena with biological or geographic determinism. Such criticisms
were sometimes leveled by those associated with the Marxist critical tradition, which
over the 20th century moved increasingly away from materialism. Still, human ecol-
ogy and some variants of the critical tradition hold much in common, and each
tradition provides clear strengths for helping us to understand human societies and
their relationship to the natural world. Therefore, an explicit integration of these two
perspectives—and, thus, the development of a critical human ecology—could benefit
the discipline of sociology, environmental sociology in particular, and the quest to
understand human interactions with the natural environment.
Our purpose here is to examine the relationship between human ecology and
critical traditions and lay the foundations for a critical human ecology that combines
the strengths of biophysical human ecology with those of historical materialism. We
develop our case for the importance of refining human ecology by reviewing its
development and comparing its similarities and differences with critical theoretical
∗ Address correspondence to: Richard York, Department of Sociology, University of Oregon, Eugene,
OR 97403-1291. Tel.: 541-346-5064. Fax: 541-346-5026. E-mail: rfyork@uoregon.edu.
Sociological Theory 27:2 June 2009

C American Sociological Association. 1430 K Street NW, Washington, DC 20005
CRITICAL HUMAN ECOLOGY 123
work. We do this by examining the position of human ecology and critical theories
with respect to four key meta-theoretical issues: (1) the divide between materialism
and idealism in the social sciences, (2) dialectical versus reductionist analyses, (3) the
importance of both historical and ahistorical (i.e., spatiotemporally invariant) causal
explanations, and (4) the difference between structural and functional interpretations
of social and biological phenomena.
Environmental sociology is the subdiscipline that most explicitly grapples with
the human relationship to the natural environment, but the issues we examine here
have implications well beyond this specialty area. The forces that influence social
evolution have long been a broad concern in sociology, as have epistemological
questions about the appropriate way to study social life in a rigorous manner. Since
both human ecology and Marxism are well established and continue to flourish in
environmental sociology, we focus much of our attention on debates in this field.
However, this should not be taken to mean that the issues we address are not of
substantial importance to the larger discipline.
While environmental sociology to date has been to a large extent materialist in ap-
proach, we hope to extend and refine its theoretical legacy. For instance, the founda-
tional work in environmental sociology of William Catton and Riley Dunlap (Catton
1980; Catton and Dunlap 1978; Dunlap and Catton 1979, 1983) demonstrated a clear
commitment to realism and materialism, criticizing the larger discipline of sociology
for neglecting the role that the biophysical environment plays in shaping human so-
cieties and the impact that societies have on ecosystems. These foundational scholars,
although not hostile to the critical tradition, did not unambiguously embrace it, and
included the Marxist tradition along with more mainstream strands of sociology
in their overall critique of the discipline (Catton and Dunlap 1978). Despite these
early objections, the neo-Marxist tradition has been well represented in environmen-
tal sociology, as is demonstrated in the Treadmill of Production program (Gould,
Pellow, and Schnaiberg 2004; Schnaiberg 1980; Schnaiberg and Gould 1994), in the
work surrounding James O’Connor’s theory of the second contradiction of capitalism
(O’Connor 1988, 1991, 1994; see also the journal Capitalism, Nature, Socialism), in
John Bellamy Foster’s work on Marx’s theory of metabolic rift (Foster 1999, 2000),
and in the works of Joel Kovel (1995, 2002), Peter Dickens (2001, 2002, 2005), and
Ted Benton (1989, 2002), among other scholars. The early human ecologists in envi-
ronmental sociology and their neo-Marxist counterparts both rejected the dominant
cultural (and mid-century sociological) narrative of modernization, but the Treadmill
and Second Contradiction theories focused almost exclusively on industrial capitalist
societies and tended to lack macrohistorical generality, whereas human ecologists
did not provide nuanced theoretical conceptualizations of the processes generating
environmental crises in different eras. Critical scholarship in environmental sociology
has typically been more concerned with the social causes of environmental impacts
and has given only secondary importance to the role of the environment in shaping
societies and spurring social change.
We argue that the strength of critical human ecology (CHE), as we will outline
it here, is its scientific and dialectical approach, combining the fundamental insights
of historical materialism with those of biophysical human ecology. We emphasize
historical materialism because of the dynamic conditions that form the basis for the
development, sustainability, and transformation of societies. Critical human ecology
has the potential for generating an analytical strategy with both an ecological and
historical focus, which can aid in the construction of a rational understanding of the
various ways human cultures meet the biophysical needs of their populations. Our
124 SOCIOLOGICAL THEORY
scope is broad, including but not limited to the analysis of subsistence strategies,
social relations of production, anthropogenic impacts on the environment, environ-
mental constraints on social processes, the requirements for ecological and social
sustainability, and socioecological crisis.
The classical Marxian tradition is particularly appropriate for infusing human
ecology with critical insights because human ecology and historical materialism are
both interested in the full sweep of human history and share a fundamental com-
mitment to materialism. Historical materialism tempers the programmatic search for
causal forces operating across eras with a directive toward examining the chain of
relations specific to particular contexts. Hence, the revitalization of Marxian histor-
ical ecology provides the intellectual vanguard for our work (Burkett 1999; Burkett
and Foster 2006; Foster 1994, 1999, 2000; Foster and Burkett 2000; Moore 2000,
2002, 2003; O’Connor 1998). Historical materialists have made serious efforts to link
up with human ecology (although not always explicitly), as can be seen most clearly
in the works of Burkett (1999), Browswimmer (2002), Chase-Dunn and Hall (1997),
Chew (2001), Dickens (2005), Foster (1999, 2000), Moore (2003), and O’Connor
(1998, 1999). We, then, are attempting to complete this link from the human ecology
side, emphasizing the strengths particular to an ecological approach to sociological
analyses. CHE can be broadly conceived of as a materialist approach to social science
that seeks to understand divergence and convergence across and within societies as
well as throughout human history, to identify and analyze the impacts that human
beings have on the ecosystems that sustain them, and to integrate environmental fac-
tors (e.g., climate, geography, and resource availability) into the analyses of human
societies.
HUMAN ECOLOGY AND THE CRITICAL TRADITION—MATERIALISM

VERSUS IDEALISM
It is ironic that much of the environmental movement and many academic analyses
of ecological crises have taken a philosophical position that is explicitly at odds
with materialism. Prominent ecologically focused perspectives, such as deep ecology
(Devall and Sessions 1985), what O’Connor (1998:21–22) identifies as Romantic ecol-
ogy, and what Foster (2000) refers to as “green theory,” are founded on philosophical
idealism, spiritualism, or postmodernism. These perspectives share a common theme
in identifying the scientific worldview and materialism as responsible for the mod-
ern environmental crisis (e.g., Griffin 1988). Similarly, critical social theorists, while
concerned with issues pertaining to nature that could be construed as materialist,
share a view of society that is focused predominantly on cultural factors, a tendency
apparent in the works of scholars such as Luke (1997, 1999), Merchant (1980, 1992,
1994), and Mies and Shiva (1993; Shiva 1989). In these and similar works, one can
find the thesis that Western culture, the Enlightenment, and scientific epistemology
constitute the dominant forces behind ecological destruction. This line of criticism
tends to downplay the universality of material constraints on societies, idealize “pre-
modern” cultures and societies, and insist on the cultural “reenchantment” of nature
and science (Griffin 1988). Such a view is at odds with the materialist orientation of
human ecology, which insists that changing material conditions of societies are the
basis for their interaction with the environment, and that all societies are constrained
and shaped by their concrete ecological contexts.
Using a human ecology framework typically involves analysis of the material
exchanges between societies and their environments, as material production and
reproduction form the foundation of all societies. This materialist focus is not unique
to human ecology, having been the core of Marx’s work—although Marx showed a
greater understanding of the historical variation in concrete productive relations than
is typical of most human ecologists (Foster 2000; Hughes 2000). After giving a brief
explanation of the development of the human ecology tradition and the Marxian
tradition over the 20th century, we develop the potential connection between Marx’s
historical materialism and human ecology.
The Human Ecology Tradition

Since at least the publication of Darwin’s Origin of Species, various attempts have
been made to engage the implications of evolutionary and ecological theory for the
human sciences. While the human ecology tradition within U.S. sociology was one of
the first to explicitly take up evolutionary and ecological thought, it suffered initially
from some major conceptual difficulties, including a tendency toward organicism
and social Darwinism (Allihan 1938; Buttel 1986; Gross 2004; Haines 1985). Other
disciplines, anthropology and geography for example, also struggled early on to
develop an ecological approach to social life, with similar challenges (Harris 1968).
Although the term “human ecology” and early disciplinary formulations of it
emerged from a dialogue among biology, geography, and sociology, McKenzie (1924)
and Park and Burgess (1921; Park 1936) are often credited with the origins of a so-
ciological human ecology (Buttel 1986; Quinn 1939). In an introductory text to soci-
ology, Park and Burgess (1921) explicitly drew on the ecology of plant communities
to compare the distribution of organisms in their habitat and the distribution and
coordination of production and consumption in industrial societies (Gettys 1940).
However, these conceptual foundations were intended simply as an analogy, not as
an explanation of social phenomena by reference to biophysical processes (Gross
2004).
Eventually, human ecology became subsumed into urban ecology specializing in
the analysis of urban industrial production and demographics with little resemblance
to the cross-disciplinary dialogue with biology and ecology that had influenced earlier
conceptions (Catton 1994). Exemplifying this bifurcation, the ecological concept of
succession—that is, that species can transform their environments in a manner that
changes which species can inhabit them—morphed into a conception of succession
that naturalized struggle between firms over market share (Catton 1994).
Human ecology’s ambiguous relationship with the biological sciences was further
qualified with the adoption of Durkheim’s (1933) social morphology by Hawley
(1950). Durkheim’s influence on human ecology’s legacy is complex. In The Division
of Labor in Society, Durkheim posited population density and the attendant com-
petition for scarce resources as a major determinative factor in the development of
complex industrial societies (Buttel 1986). On the one hand, his focus on the division
of labor—theorized as a functional adaptation for social integration—spurred human
ecologists to examine the relationships among economic, political, and social organi-
zation, and hence directed analyses toward substantive issues in labor, energy usage,
and material flows (Catton 1994; Duncan 1959). On the other hand, by demarcat-
ing as sociological the explanation of social facts by other social facts, Durkheim
reinforced the tendency in sociology to generally ignore biophysical factors (Dunlap
2002).
However, from about the mid 20th century, notably with Duncan’s (1959, 1961,
1964) work, human ecology developed into a study of human societies in their
natural environments, taking as a basic fact that societies exist as part of, and
because of, the ecological processes that contribute to the dynamic stability of food
webs and biogeochemical cycles (Catton 1994; Duncan 1964; Hawley 1950, 1986).
Catton and Dunlap’s (1978) presentation of a new ecological paradigm confronted
the mainstream field of sociology with a call for research that would bring the
insights of biological ecology back into the study of society. Challenging Durkheim’s
directive on sui generis explanation, environmental sociology launched the integrated
study of biophysical and social facts in one field of study (Dunlap and Catton
1979). This revitalization of human ecology was noted in Buttel’s (1986) review of
environmental sociology, where he referred to this work as the “new human ecology”
(1986:338).
One of the key aspects of early environmental sociology (the new human ecology)
came from Catton and Dunlap’s (1978) critical reaction to what they saw as an
anthropocentric bias in sociology. This bias, they argued, tended to view culture—
the human propensity for social learning and problem solving, the capacity for
language, and the epigenetic transmission of knowledge—as a feature that established
human beings as distinct and separate from all of the earth’s other inhabitants.
This anthropocentric bias involved the expectation that human cultures can outpace
or transcend altogether the ecological consequences of their activities. Central to
such optimism is the assumption that since socially learned behavior develops more
rapidly than environmental change, accumulation of cultural knowledge ensures the
perpetuity of technological mastery over nature, making humans exempt from the
biophysical constraints that limit other animals (Catton and Dunlap 1978).
While acknowledging the obvious uniqueness of human beings, Catton and Dunlap
contrasted this dominant worldview of mid-century “exuberant” sociology, what they
called the Human Exemptionalist (originally Human Exceptionalist) Paradigm, with
what was termed the New Ecological (originally New Environmental) Paradigm (this
became well known among environmental sociologists as the HEP/NEP distinction).
The NEP highlighted functional similarities between humans and other organisms,
emphasizing that humans are dependent on ecosystems and other species, are not
exempt from biophysical constraints, and must exert energy-requiring effort to re-
produce their populations. Even as human populations transform the natural world,
features of the environment irreducible to culture influence these populations. Natural
limits cannot be overcome by the mere accumulation of cultural knowledge. Ulti-
mately, since human beings are biological entities, human societies are constrained
by many of the same ecological and thermodynamic principles that moderate the
growth and reproduction of populations of other species (Catton and Dunlap 1978:
43–45).
The return of sociological human ecology had already been anticipated in
ecological-evolutionary theory (EET) (Lenski 1970, 2005). Lenski’s work represented
an attempt to establish a macrosociological, comprehensive system for categoriz-
ing and explaining variations in human societies. EET focuses on the relationships
among different components of societies and on the interaction between societies
and their environments. Accordingly, human societies are to be understood first
and foremost in their environmental contexts (ultimately, the biosphere itself), where
social organization and culture allow human populations to maintain their social in-
tegrity while tracking environmental change. The environment does not act alone in
Lenski’s view. Sociocultural history and genetic heritage interact with biophysical and
social environments, and all are seen as basic determinants of extant sociocultural
characteristics (Lenski, Nolan, and Lenski 1995).
It is due to its early and continued focus on subsistence strategies that the dis-
cipline of anthropology has often led the social sciences in developing an ecolog-
ical human science (Lavenda and Schultz 2000). Ecological anthropologists (e.g.,
Rappaport 1968; Steward 1969) focused on how small groups respond to variations
in resource base, offering a microlevel complement to macrosociology. Although they
rejected biological determinism, as well as linear theories of development, ecological
anthropologists nevertheless included the environment, in addition to the symbolic
domain of culture, in order to understand ultimate causation of long-term patterns
and variation within and between human societies (Harris 1979). Later trends within
anthropology, as well as geography, have been toward a synthesis of ecological and
evolutionary approaches. Boyd and Richerson (1985), Harrison (1992), Diamond
(1991, 1997, 2005), and Fagan (2004) all exemplify this research perspective, illus-
trating in their works ways in which the environment influences culture and, in turn,
how culture affects the environment.
The Critical Tradition

The term critical, when applied to sociological theory, encompasses many different
streams of thought and types of work. In its broadest sense, it may be used to refer
to approaches associated with or derived from the work of Marx and Engels, the
Frankfurt School (the Institute for Social Research) in particular, or even to leftist
sociology in general, including feminism and postmodernism (Agger 1992; Simmons
2004). Within philosophy the critical tradition can be traced back to Hegel and Kant
(Held 1980). Although we acknowledge this broad set of meanings when using the
term critical, in our development of CHE we draw specifically on a stream of scien-
tific, dialectical, and materialist research that over the 20th century was conducted
mainly within the ecological and biological sciences and that is grounded in Marx’s
historical materialism. Common to this work is an emphasis on conducting scientific
inquiry within a broad, historically minded framework (Lewontin and Levins 2007).
However, because the idealist approach of critical theory has had a lasting effect
within the social sciences on what it means to do critical work, and we find it nec-
essary to overcome this idealism, 1 we briefly address the Frankfurt School, one of
the most influential theoretical projects to redefine (Western) Marxism (Agger 1979;
Vogel 1996). Formed in dialogue with early 20th-century Marxist theory, psycho-
analysis, Weberian and Nietzschean social theory, and the antipositivist writings of
the Lebensphilosophen, the Institute for Social Research represented within critical
work a shift in analytical focus from labor to ideology. This was contemporaneous
with a methodological and philosophical shift in Western Marxism from materialism
to idealism, exemplified by the transition from the class-based analysis of productive
relations central to Marx and Engels’s method to a discursive analysis that focused
on the ethos of capitalism, especially as it played out in mass ideology and the
culture industry (Bronner 2002:27; Held 1980; Simmons 2004). This transition was
driven in large part by an attempt to counter the influence of mechanism, naı̈ve
1 It is important to note, however, that we recognize there were clearly valid reasons why critical scholars
took an idealist turn, and in so doing, they were not necessarily rejecting a materialist approach to the
natural world, but rather the application of mechanistic and reductionistic methods to analysis of social
relationships. Thus, they were not necessarily denying the importance of understanding human impacts on
the natural environment. Nonetheless, developments subsequent to the work of Frankfurt School theorists,
particularly the rise of postmodernism, led to a more wide-ranging rejection of scientific principles, even
as applied to natural phenomena.
empiricism, and logical positivism within the social sciences. Although a full dis-
cussion of these developments is beyond the scope of this article, we nevertheless
briefly address the tendency in critical work, even within environmental sociology,
to associate scientific procedures, particularly those involving quantification—an im-
portant part of macrosociological human ecology—with mechanistic determinism
and crude positivism. We then outline a materialist approach to critical work in the
environmental social sciences that draws from historical materialism.
Positioned in explicit opposition to the naı̈ve methodological (positivistic) assump-
tions common to mid-century U.S. sociology, Frankfurt theorists criticized “atheo-
retical” sociology for claiming that facts speak for themselves and for conflating
historically specific social relations under capitalism with universal laws of human
behavior (Bronner 2002). Naı̈ve empiricism failed to recognize history and structure
in the formation of social attributes and behaviors. For instance, under capitalism
“the prevalence of the law of exchange and the regimentation of opinion by the
mass media etc.” made sure that “nearly everyone’s behaviour became regularized
and compulsive” such that “if individuals wish to survive they must adapt their lives
to these processes and become agents and bearers of commodity exchange. Under
these conditions social interaction does appear to be governed by ‘rigid’ laws” (Held
1980:168). Hence, the error of the naı̈ve empiricists could be found in the way their
methods hypostatized the regularities of human interaction under capitalism, failing
to recognize that “the laws of history cannot simply be equated with the laws of
nature” because historical laws are tied to “specific modes of human organization”
(Held 1980:168).
Logical positivism suggested that methods concerned with meaning and purpose
were irrelevant to science and, thence, outside the domain of authoritative objective
knowledge (Held 1980). The influence of such a view could be seen in behaviorism,
where only observable events were considered in the formulation of a “scientific”
psychology. However, critical theorists, drawing on the long-standing distinction in
German sociology between natural and human sciences, rejected this view. While
res naturans has no internal, interpretive dimension to it, human social action does,
indicating that the positivist method distorts the domain characteristics of social
life through the operational demand to define social qualities in terms of measured
variation. 2 Since natural science developed from the desire to dominate nature, so it
was claimed, its application to social life facilitated the control of human beings by
other human beings (Harding 1991; Kovel 2002; Merchant 1980, 1992, 1994).
For critical theorists, as for the German idealist tradition from which they drew,
this control is in part ideological, as the ascendancy of formal rationality in West-
ern science signified a foreclosure on ways of knowing other than how to exploit
something or someone. Modern science, according to this view:
abstracts from the infinite world a form of knowledge capable of technical ex-
ploitation. It conceives its object domain in terms of geometric shapes and cal-
culates the relationships between objects in mathematical formulae which allow
precise measurement of motion and causality. . . . [T]he concern with exactness,
2 An exclusive focus on the world of meaning was not in and of itself the major impetus of critical
theory. Marxist criticism understands the social production of meaning in light of the totality of productive
relations (Agger 1992; Rush 2004). Critical theory was therefore more than another strand of interpretive
sociology, raising deeper issues in terms of how naı̈ve methods can ignore the ways in which social action
can be configured by social structure.
calculability and foresight predisposes science to seek knowledge of a particular

type and form, namely knowledge suitable for prediction and, therefore, tech-
nical control. Legitimated by a positivist philosophy, it constitutes the world
solely from this standpoint. (Held 1980:166–67)
Regarding this instrumental rationality and its relation to scientific epistemology,

Horkheimer and Adorno (1972), in Dialectic of Enlightenment, identify rationality
with Cartesian ratio and measure, declaring that:
Formal logic was the major school of unified science. It provided the enlight-
enment thinkers with the schema of the calculability of the world. . . . To the
Enlightenment, that which does not reduce to numbers, and ultimately to the
one, becomes illusion; modern positivism writes it off as literature. (1972:5)
From this critique of subjective reason, critical theorists concluded that the techno-
logical worldview involves a particular, socially constructed attitude toward nature:
“scientific, calculated and calculating mastery” (Wehling 2002:151). The result was
that “the orthodox Marxist notion of the neutrality of technology or even of technol-
ogy as a vehicle of emancipation . . . [was] radically called into question” (Wehling
2002:151). “Rationality thus appears as a cultural, societal project of technology,
as a social construction” begging the question of whether or not a new science
and technology could be emancipatory and sustainable at the same time (Wehling
2002:151).
In the latter part of the 20th century, as Soviet-style “scientific” socialism be-
came increasingly dogmatic, eliciting Marxist humanism in response, the influence
of critical theory disseminated into various strands of social theory. Humanistic
Marxism’s enduring influence can be seen in feminist and postmodernist theory,
both of which represent challenges to, as well as integration of, Frankfurt School
ideas (Vogel 1996). The initial impetus for theorizing science as a form of domination
evolved there into a general critique of modernity, turning upon the notion that sci-
entific methodology—with its explicit ideal of impartial, universal, and authoritative
knowledge—veils a means by which social domination is legitimated through the pro-
duction of power/knowledge regimes privileging particular (hegemonic) conceptions
of society and nature (Escobar 1999; Goldman and Schurman 2000; Harding 1991;
Kovel 2002; Rogers 1998). Human ecology has been associated with such unreflexive
maneuvers, gaining the reputation of being naı̈vely empiricist. However, as should be
clear by now, our point in elaborating CHE is to make room for a historical social
science that recognizes the impossibility of a God’s eye view while at the same time
allowing for the credibility of methods that aim to achieve a realist understanding of
the world. In order to show that a human ecological approach to social organization
and life can be both reflexive and realist, we briefly outline a Marxian materialist
theory of knowledge. 3
The Roots of Historical Materialism

Whereas positivism rejected from the domain of valid knowledge anything that could
not be verified via observation, the materialist approach of Marx and Engels, which
3 Critical realism in the tradition of Roy Bhaskar’s earlier work is certainly an important influence that
other environmental sociologists have been right to take up (Carolan 2005a). While Bhaskar’s objective
is to philosophically establish that science is possible, we are more interested in the methodological
orientation of environmental social science and therefore the efficacy of a materialist approach. We briefly
discuss critical realism in a later section below.
drew on but inverted, Hegel, emphasized that not all processes are directly available
to naı̈ve impression (Amato 2001). However, rather than embracing the alienated
subject of Hegel’s phenomenology—where knowledge is produced in the successive
movement from denotative utterance to universal signification to idea, and therefore
alienation is inherently a problem of consciousness, a movement away from the
body, and representations become the main object of analytical concern—Marx and
Engels’s materialism can be seen as an attempt to come to terms with the human
propensity to transform the world through social labor, an activity in dialectical
motion with thinking and representation (Fracchia 1991). Mediation, in this view,
is not primarily a relation by representations (Hegel’s alienation), but through social
labor (Timpanaro 1975). Emphasizing the bodily relations of labor highlights how
embodiment prefigures the (anticipatory) aspect of consciousness, which in turn is
an emergent property of the species-specific cognitive structure of historical human
kind (Foster 2008).
Unlike idealist epistemology, in which the problem of knowledge is its representa-
tional character, materialist epistemology involves the recognition of the potential for
the development of the apprehension of objects with respect to particular social ends
(Leiss 1974). Concerning the material relation between subject and object, Marx put
forth that:
To be objective, natural and sensuous, and at the same time to have object,
nature and sense outside oneself, or oneself to be object, nature and sense for
a third party, is one and the same thing. Hunger is a natural need; it therefore
needs a nature outside itself, an object outside itself, in order to satisfy itself, to
be stilled. Hunger is an acknowledged need of my body for an object existing
outside it, indispensable to its integration and to the expression of its essential
being. (1978:115–16)
Marx’s later expressions of a materialist and ecological science of this mediation

were more nuanced in terms of how he conceived human labor: as one force in the
biotic network of relations between humans and the rest of the natural world.
Labor became for Marx not simply the extension of human powers over in-
organic nature but rather a process of the transformation of energy in which
human beings were dependent on larger material and/or ecological conditions.
This took his analysis even further away from purely instrumentalist perspectives
in which nature’s role was merely passive. (Foster and Burkett 2000:419)
Thus, critical reflexivity, recognizing human agency, and an ecological, material-

ist, scientific worldview, emphasizing the objective character of social labor in co-
evolution with the changing dynamics of corporeal existence, lay at the heart of
Marx and Engel’s method.
From this perspective, quantification and formalization do not inherently involve
an imposition upon the world or a departure from the world so much as they require
abstraction in the world. Mathematical formulae that seek to describe variation are
possible because a patterned, transient form emerges from interaction and can be
observed and analyzed, even if its apprehension is a gestalt phenomenon (Grene 1990;
Levins and Lewontin 1985). We express this point in our rephrasing of Korzybski’s
(1933) maxim; the map is not the territory, but neither is a good map simply arbitrary.
Rather than science being the product of reason alone, or the senses alone, it is the
result of the dialectical interplay between the two. Therefore, whereas Horkheimer
argued that “what in each case is given depends not solely upon nature but also
upon what men wish to make of it” (quoted in Frisby 1972:107), we stress that
when it comes to sensuous activity, and therefore the material reproduction of social
structure, what is given cannot be solely dependent upon what we wish to make of
it.
From this understanding, to reject empirical measurement, operational definitions,
and quantitative analysis would perpetuate an extremely narrow view of what it
means to do critical work, since these activities can all be guided by theoretical
insight. Privileging narrative interpretation over causal analyses of material factors
undermines the dialectical approach to science and to society. While qualitative
understanding of the ways in which facts exist in their social totality is of vital
importance, quantitative analysis of that very patterning is also a useful tool in a
critical human ecology, since one crucial question for any science is how to select
appropriate material for the adjudication of claims, not simply the method chosen
to do so. The development of science, which entails an ongoing struggle for intel-
lectual emancipation and understanding, should not lightly be abandoned under the
influence of relativism.
With that said, it is also equally important to recognize the historical context of
the emergence of critical theory in that it came about in response to systematic ef-
forts to purge from the domain of valid knowledge anything that was not subject to
direct empirical verification. We acknowledge the important role critical theory has
played in correcting the biases of capitalist science. However, in seeking to correct
the idealist bias in Western Marxism we point not only to dynamics endogenous
to historically produced social structure but also those dynamics exogenous to such
structure as found in the basic resource, climate, population, and technological fac-
tors that form the material conditions for co-evolution. To overcome this idealist bias
requires drawing on what Marx and Engels called the “first fact” of historical mate-
rialism, the “corporeal organization” of the labor process, specifically with regard to
the various social-ecological metabolic requirements in various ecohistorical periods
and regional contexts (Foster 2000; Fracchia 2005; Haila and Levins 1992; O’Connor
1998). Critical work, in this alternate formulation, is not limited to textual and dis-
cursive analysis, but centers on the investigation of how human beings produce and
reproduce their material lives and the constraints and possibilities these productive
relations generate. Combined with human ecological methods (broadly construed),
which include the investigation of the effects of dynamic natural conditions (cli-
mate, biogeography, hydrogeology, etc.) on human societies, CHE can establish a
sound meta-theoretical basis for the ongoing project of environmental sociology by
combining the strengths of two of its most powerful theoretical traditions.
Critical Materialism in the Ecological Sciences

Although the mainstream of academic Marxism shifted from materialist to cultural
analysis as the 20th century unfolded, a solidly materialist Marxism was maintained
and advanced by a variety of scholars, many of whom were practicing scientists
(Foster 2000). Works by prominent evolutionary theorists Richard Levins and
Richard Lewontin (1985; Lewontin and Levins 2007), Yrjö Haila (Haila and Levins
1992), and Stephen Jay Gould (1977, 1989, 2002, 2003) are the best recent repre-
sentatives of this perspective in the natural sciences, where materialist, dialectical,
and historical analyses take center stage. Foster (1999, 2000) builds on this tradition
by highlighting Marx’s own ecological insights in order to illustrate the theoretical

power of materialist analysis. Clark and York (2005a, 2005b), following Foster, draw
on the dialectical biology tradition (Gould 1977, 2002; Levins and Lewontin 1985;
Lewontin and Levins 2007) to articulate a materialist ecology that maintains an eco-
centric focus without straying into idealism or spiritualism. It is this approach that
provides a bridge between historical materialism and human ecology. CHE, there-
fore, relies on this tradition as well as the related work of other historical materialists
(e.g., Dickens 2005; Moore 2003; O’Connor 1998, 1999) who have shown the abil-
ity of historical materialism to advance our understanding of human-environment
interactions.
Central to a materialist ecology is the observation that all living organisms change
the very conditions for living. Hence, the human propensity to do the same suggests
social continuity with the natural world. Seen from a co-evolutionary view, the
dynamic interactions between human societies, their built environments, and the
biophysical processes of the earth require theory and method with which one can
engage in analysis of material practice. We explore in slightly more detail the sources
of this ecological materialism in the next section
REDUCTIONISM, HUMANISM, AND DIALECTICAL ANALYSIS

It is ironic that over 100 years ago, Engels, who has often been labeled a mechanist
and positivist by critical theorists, foreshadowed critical theory’s critique of capitalist
science, making a distinction between reductionism as a sometimes useful method-
ological approach and its inflated status as the exclusive road to truth. In doing so
he recognized and accepted the historical development of science as a potentially
liberating process, but one that nevertheless can be limited by social constructs. In
Anti-Dühring, Engels wrote:
The analysis of nature into its individual parts, the grouping of the different
natural processes and natural objects into definite classes, the investigation of
the internal anatomy of organic bodies, in their manifold anatomical forms, was
the basic condition for the gigantic progress in the knowledge of nature, made
during the last four hundred years. But it has likewise bequeathed the habit of
regarding natural objects and natural processes in their isolation, detached from
their connection with the vast whole; therefore, not in their movements, but
in their state of rest; not as essentially changeable but as fixed and constant;
not in their life, but in their death. And when this way of looking at things
was transmitted from natural science to philosophy, as was done by Bacon and
Locke, it produced the specific narrow-mindedness of the last centuries, the
metaphysical mode of thought. (Engels 1935:18)
Engels is insightful in his recognition that the reductionist project as a method

of investigation has its strengths but as a “metaphysical” view of the world erringly
posits nature and society as static and unchanging, “in which the world is a collection
of things, isolated from one another” (Foster 2008:21; see also Hughes 2000:75).
Engels emphasized the totality of social relations and natural processes, connected
in a complex of historical production that cannot be understood fully by the analysis
of isolated static units.
Like Engels, critical theorists have emphasized the relationship between the prop-
erties of the whole (of social relations) and the elements of everyday activity. Held
(1980) grasps the essential features of this approach:
Every facet of social reality can only be understood as an outcome of the con-
tinual interplay between “moment” (phase of, aspect of, totality) and “totality.”
The structure of the social process conditions and determines both the place
and function of every particular “thing” and the form in which it appears as
an object of experience. Any given object can only be understood in the con-
text (and in the light) of its conditions and relations. These do not appear in
immediate experience but are important in the understanding and explanation
of “things.” (Held 1980:164–65)
Thus, criticism involves tracing the relations between things rather than viewing them
in their isolation, and understanding these relations in terms of social structure, an
intrinsically historical activity.
Clearly, a central feature of critical theories is a critique of reductionism and an
emphasis on dialectics. 4 Yet, like the term positivism, reductionism is a complex
term with various meanings (Hughes 2000). One can refer to reductionism in terms
of a deterministic explanation of dynamics occurring at one level of organization
(e.g., the social) by dynamics at another more “basic” level (e.g., the biological).
Another meaning of reduction can refer to the explanation of complex wholes (e.g.,
the economy) by reference to simpler parts (e.g., individuals maximizing utility) while
working within the same level (the social). In this latter instance, reductionism is not
simply a determination between levels but also a specification of the relationship
between individual and structure.
Crude reductionism is no doubt a flawed approach to analysis of the world. Gould
(2003) clearly identifies the limitations of reductionism:
I believe that reductionism—a powerful method that should be used whenever

appropriate, and that has been employed triumphantly throughout the history
of modern science—must fail as a generality (both logically and empirically) . . . .
I do not believe that reductionism can come even close to full success as a style
of explanation for levels of complexity (including several aspects of evolutionary
biology, and then proceeding “upward” in intricacy toward cognitive and social
systems of even greater integration and interaction) for two basic reasons . . . .
First, emergence, or the entry of novel explanatory rules in complex systems,
laws arising from “nonlinear” or “nonadditive” interactions among constituent
parts that therefore, in principle, cannot be discovered from properties of parts
considered separately . . . . Second, contingency, or the growing importance of
unique historical “accidents” that cannot, in principle, be predicted, but that
remain fully accessible to factual explanation after their occurrence. The role of
contingency as a component of explanation increases in the same sciences of
complexity that also become more and more inaccessible to reductionism for
the first reason of emergent principles. (2003:201–02)
4 Kovel’s (2002) discussion of dialectics is informative. He describes dialectics as:

the bringing together of different points of view for the purposes of argument, and in the interests of
arriving at truth. Dialectic was not a mere pluralism but a consciousness of the radical unfulfillment
of the merely individual mind or ego, and of the hidden relationships of differing points of view.
Dialectics recognizes both the limits and powers of the mind: that we are limited in our knowing,
owing to the unfathomable reaches of nature which can be grasped intuitively at best, and owing,
also, to the peculiarities of human selfhood, with its “dialectic” of separation and attachment . . .
but that we are also powerful because of the capacity of the imagination to become visionary, seeing
beyond the given and transforming the real. Hence dialectics as practice is the bringing together of
minds in a dialogical spirit of open discourse . . . . (2002:139–40)
A narrow focus on reductionism, as critical theorists rightly assert, will impoverish

the social sciences and leave us unable to comprehend the world. However, the
stark limitations inherent in reductionism do not mean that reductionist approaches
have not yielded considerable insights into society and nature, as Gould (2003)
notes while emphasizing the importance of contingency (discussed more below) and
emergence as concepts. The key to furthering our understanding of the world lies in
appreciating the knowledge gained through reductionist science, without succumbing
to the intellectual blinders that come with reductionism.
It is an error to reject science because one rejects reductionism. Although Western
science has had a deep commitment to reductionism, the two are not inextricably
linked. Dialectical traditions are established in the sciences, particularly in biol-
ogy (Gould 1977, 2002, 2003; Haila and Levins 1992; Levins and Lewontin 1985;
Lewontin and Levins 2007), that transcend the divide between science and critical
analysis. In developing a dialectical science, we must steer a cautious path between
the Scylla of reductionism and the Charybdis of holism. As reductionism fails be-
cause of its focus on parts, holism without dialectics fails because of its inability
to recognize divisions, tensions, and internal contradictions, and its tendency toward
functionalism (a topic we address below).
Because the social sciences often tried to emulate the 19th-century physical sci-
ences in a crude manner, it has been assumed by many critical scholars that attempts
to integrate the natural environment into sociological theory must essentially forfeit
what is unique about the social domain and as a result give in to determinism. This
assumption is based in part on the misconception that to do science is to focus
singularly on the discovery of eternal and universal natural laws and on the related
idea that the emphasis on objective behavior precludes the inclusion of intentional
action into analyses (Rogers 1998). In fact, the development of scientific knowl-
edge requires examining contingency and necessity, historical processes, and complex
emergent phenomena (York and Clark 2006a, 2006b, 2007). Moreover, analyzing
the contradictions between agency and constraint, individual freedom and social
structure, involves examining objectively changing relations. In this vein, ecological
science must often use historical and comparative methods to assess divergence and
convergence in the histories of organisms as the subjects and objects of evolution
(Levins and Lewontin 1985).
The philosophical debates swirling around the concept of emergence attest to the
difficulty of determining when explanation by reference to parts is sufficient and
when explanation by reference to wholes is necessary (Clayton 2006). Methodologi-
cal reductionism has been a useful tool in the history of the natural sciences. It is the
unreflexive application of Bacon and Newton’s method to every last aspect of the
social that becomes a problem (Dickens 2005). Carolan (2005a, 2005b), drawing on
the work of Roy Bhaskar, has elaborated a critical realist approach to environmen-
tal sociology. Bhaskar’s concept of a rooted and emergent (irreducible) stratification
of the world suggests the possibility for causation that is “multidirectional, going
both ‘upward’ and ‘downward’” (Carolan 2005b:2). Although the social is rooted
in and emergent from the biological, the social also has causal efficacy upon the
biological. Hence, trying to establish unidirectional causal relations between ele-
ments at one level and another level can miss the reciprocal influences between
the two.
Our position, drawing from the dialectical biology tradition, is that when it comes
to social behavior and human development, there can be substantial variation, both
individually and culturally, with greater possibilities than sociobiologists and many
traditional human ecologists would allow, including the possibility of the self-making
of both human culture and human nature. Rather than emphasizing inherent traits—
a veritable black box of causation—we hold that greater sociological relevance and
explanatory power can be found in the dialectical interaction between nature and
culture. For example, we contend that recognizing how landscape, technology, and
resource base on the one hand, and structures of ownership, rights of use and
access, and customs of inheritance on the other, provides insights into how structural
limitations empower some social actors and disempower others. However, we do not
deny the insights that have been gained by some reductionist analyses. Thus, we
propose a middle way between a humanistic holism that lacks analytic rigor and does
not seek to understand causality and the reductionism characteristic of sociobiology
and some work in human ecology that fails to recognize emergence across scales. A
dialectical approach allows for a scientific program of social analysis, without giving
in to the ultimately flawed philosophy of reductionism.
HISTORICAL AND AHISTORICAL CAUSAL FORCES

While recognizing the importance of history, human ecology has often focused on
ahistorical explanations of the characteristics of human societies, such as geographic
factors and cultural universals stemming from genes (Boyd and Richerson 1985;
Lenski 2005). Much of the controversy about human ecology has centered on this
issue. Dunlap and Catton (1983) note that often when biological or geographic
factors are invoked to explain social facts, an accusation of biological or geographic
determinism is soon to follow. They argue that this is frequently inappropriate, since
asserting that biological or geographical factors influence society is not the same
as claiming these factors determine social outcomes. Dunlap and Catton (1983),
in their call for a more pluralistic view of factors influencing societies, go on to
argue that by rejecting biological and geographic explanations of social phenomena
and admitting only social explanations, many in the social sciences have become
sociocultural determinists.
Clearly, from a materialist perspective, all material forces need to be considered in
understanding the human condition and the natural world. Transcending the divide
over biological and geographic explanations of social facts versus sociocultural ex-
planations, CHE does not deny the effects of spatiotemporally invariant (ahistorical)
causal forces stemming from natural laws and conditions in the biophysical environ-
ment but seeks to contextualize these forces in historically specific conditions. We
hold that historical materialism, with its emphasis on contingency, dialectics, and
emergence, helps point the way to an environmental sociology that does not reject
the importance of the effects of biology, geography, and physical processes on society,
but at the same time recognizes the potential mutability of many features of natural
and social systems.
Understanding the nature of historical contingency is necessary for appreciating
how particularistic events can lead to large-scale changes in the social or natural
world despite the operation of spatiotemporally invariant laws. Gould’s (1989) pre-
sentation of how the history of metazoan (multicellular animal) life on Earth has
been dominated by contingency in addition to necessity is particularly well artic-
ulated and illustrates the nature of historical processes. Gould (1989, 2002) notes
that while natural selection is the most fundamental force in the biological world,
it does not lead to deterministic outcomes. Natural selection, as a purely materi-
alist force, is of course “blind,” having no higher purpose and no foresight. Thus,
selection adapts species to their immediate environments, but does not generate a
larger trajectory toward a “greater” goal, such as complexity or intelligence. How
species adapt to their environments is a piecemeal process, where natural selection
tinkers with existing features of organisms to construct workable solutions to external
pressures.
Emphasizing the role of contingency in history, Gould (1989) argues that there
are no obvious adaptive features that distinguish the animal lineages present in the
Cambrian Period—the geologic period that lasted from approximately 540 million
years ago to 490 million years ago in which a wide variety of animal species first
appeared in the fossil record—that would go on to evolutionary success from those
that would ultimately become extinct. The representative of our own phylum (the
taxonomic rank just below kingdom), cordata, in the Cambrian seas was a small,
uncommon worm-like creature that was in no way marked for success, although it
went on to leave many descendants, while other animals that were common and
apparently dominant in the Cambrian seas became extinct over the geological long
haul. More recently, the dinosaurs coexisted with, and generally out-competed, mam-
mals for almost 100 million years before an asteroid or comet collided with the earth
65 million years ago—a cosmic accident—wiping out the dinosaurs and opening the
way for the subsequent expansion of mammals. Gould (1989, 2002) argues, based
on the history of life on earth, that natural selection is the dominant force sculpt-
ing organisms to fit their environments, but contingent events, such as the impact
of an extraterrestrial object on earth, can radically alter patterns, making history
ultimately unpredictable, despite the operation of spatiotemporally invariant laws.
Unique events can change the course of history, setting life on a different path.
This insight about the nature of historical processes, particularly the interaction
of spatiotemporally invariant laws and contingency, informs the perspective of CHE.
CHE is grounded in the dialectical biology tradition of Gould, and the extension of
this tradition to sociology (York and Clark 2006a, 2006b, 2007), where natural laws
are recognized as fundamental forces shaping human societies, while contingency
is similarly recognized as, to some degree at least, liberating societies from simple
deterministic outcomes.
A key example of how human ecology can benefit from historical materialism
concerns questions of population and carrying capacity. It is a common practice
for uncritical (Mol and Spaargaren 2005) and critical scholars (Mies and Shiva
1993) alike to pejoratively apply the Malthusian label to human ecological argu-
ments because human ecology admits population pressures and other demographic
considerations into its analyses. However, CHE, while recognizing the important role
population growth plays in generating environmental problems, has the advantage of
holding a more nuanced view of population-environment connections than what is
received from Malthus.
The debate about Malthus has in many ways inhibited, rather than facilitated,
the development of a sophisticated understanding of population-environment con-
nections. The Malthusian argument and the arguments of so-called neo-Malthusians
have been attacked from both the political Left and Right, and the subsequent con-
troversy has too often generated more heat than light. We believe that the focus on
Malthus is misdirected. Foster (2002), in an assessment of Malthus’s argument, notes
several problems with his assumptions about population growth and food produc-
tion. Malthus’s model was based on the assumption that fertility rates could not be
substantially reduced, food supply could not be geometrically expanded, and, thus,
that population, which if unfettered tended to grow geometrically, would always
press on food supply, ensuring that misery would be the lot of humanity. In this
formulation, there is a perpetual moving equilibrium between population and the
environment, because negative checks, such as starvation (due to the lack of food),
would always restrain population and prevent it from realizing its potential to grow
geometrically.
It is obviously the case that population growth cannot continue unabated on a
finite planet, and Malthus dimly glimpsed this verity. However, there were substantial
flaws in his argument. One of the main flaws was his assumption that mortality would
always and necessarily be the factor limiting population growth. Since his time we
have seen the development of safe and effective birth control methods and the decline
of population growth rates in a vast majority of nations, typically not due to rising
mortality but, rather, largely due to voluntary fertility reductions. Improvements in
women’s rights, rising education, and declining infant mortality played key roles in
fertility declines around the world, obviating Malthus’s assumption that population
growth could only by limited by rising human misery. Thus, changing historical
conditions (e.g., the development of effective and widely available birth control and
altered social conditions that made low fertility desirable to many people) made it
so that mortality was not the factor that constrained population growth. A second
flaw of Malthus’s argument stemmed from his inaccurate assumptions about the
potential to rapidly expand food production. The exponential growth of agricultural
production over the 20th century belies Malthus’s claim that food production can
only grow in an arithmetic (i.e., linear) fashion. Historical changes in food production
methods made it possible, at least for a limited time, to expand food production more
rapidly than the rate at which the human population grew.
In recognizing the flaws of Malthus’s argument, we must not, however, fail to rec-
ognize the reality of natural limits and the important role population growth plays
in expanding anthropogenic environmental impacts. The exponential growth in agri-
cultural production over the past two centuries occurred at the expense of natural
ecosystems and the species that depend on them, as more land was put under the
plow. Since the area and the productivity of the biosphere obviously did not grow ex-
ponentially, as domestic (agricultural) species consumed a larger share of the Earth’s
surface and solar input, wild species were displaced. Thus, although humans did,
counter to what Malthus assumed possible, dramatically expand food production,
this came with extraordinary ecological costs. In recognizing this, CHE emphasizes
the complexity of the human-environment interaction. Counter to Malthus’s views,
food production in some contexts can grow exponentially (although not indefinitely).
However, consistent with the arguments of so-called neo-Malthusians (e.g., Catton
1980), this typically comes at the expense of alteration of natural ecosystems and
loss of biodiversity. There is, thus, a dance here between the ahistorical constraints
of nature (e.g., solar input and its connection to net primary productivity) and the
historically dynamic nature of social change.
From the CHE perspective, addressing population growth is a necessary, yet insuf-
ficient, condition for achieving sustainability. The existence of ahistorical forces, such
as the laws of thermodynamics and the reality of finite land area and solar input,
means that human societies cannot grow indefinitely and are therefore constrained
by the conditions of the natural environment. Humans, like all other organisms,
depend on available nutrients and the integrity of ecosystems for their survival and
are not exempt from the consequences of undermining the biotic network, either
by overharvesting biomass or by disrupting the metabolic activity of the web of life
through flooding atmospheric, terrestrial, and aquatic reservoirs with extra-metabolic
toxins or excess nutrients (Catton and Dunlap 1978; Clark and York 2005a; Dunlap
and Catton 1979; Mancus 2007). Yet, even given these ahistorical constraints, the
institutions that structure social mediation of ecological factors can exist in various
formations. Since societies vary widely in their levels of resource consumption and
the distribution among their populations of resources, it is not possible to assign a
single specific limit to the number of people a particular region can support (Cohen
1995). The human-carrying capacity of a region, therefore, depends on the histor-
ically particular modes of production used in the region and the social processes
through which food and other resources are distributed.
Marx (1973) recognized the interplay of historical and ahistorical forces in human
societies, writing in the Grundrisse:
All epochs of production have certain common traits, common characteristics.

Production in general is an abstraction, but a rational abstraction in so far as
it really brings out and fixes the common element and thus saves us repetition.
Still, this general category, this common element sifted out by comparison,
is itself segmented many times over and splits into different determinations.
Some determinations belong to all epochs, others only to a few. (Marx 1973:85,
emphases in the original)
By using dialectical and materialist science engaged in rational abstraction, we can

see the coexistence of historical and ahistorical forces in the course of changes
in food production. For example, the condition of the biophysical environment no
doubt is the fundamental feature underlying food production, yet the technologies
used in production and the system of distribution of food are features of historically
specific social relations (Moore 2003). The material and energetic requirements for
an agrarian society do not entail, by necessity, class divisions. Therefore, the existence
of inequality, social stratification, and human misery is not necessarily the result of
absolute scarcity, or task specialization, but emerges in the historical struggle over
the allocation of labor and resources, and the social priorities (e.g., privileging certain
groups) reflected in this struggle.
In its focus on both historical and ahistorical forces, CHE emphasizes that envi-
ronmental challenges are not unique to modernity or to capitalism, but rather are
fundamental issues that all societies have faced in varying ways throughout human
history. A substantial body of research has shown that many premodern and indige-
nous societies, from Native Americans to Polynesians to Australian Aborigines, have
had severe impacts on their environments, often undermining the sustainability of
their populations (Browswimmer 2002; Chew 2001; Diamond 2005; Flannery 1994;
Krech 1999; Ponting 1993; Turner et al. 1991). Thus, although modern capitalist
societies have their own particular dynamics that have led to a global environmental
crisis, they are not alone in generating environmental problems. Critical scholars have
mainly focused their ecological criticism on capitalist industrial societies (O’Connor
1994; Schnaiberg 1980), which is not inappropriate given that this is the context in
which we presently struggle. However, a singular focus on the critique of capitalism
has often obscured the fact that environmental problems are not simply the product
of the dominant system of the present and, thus, political-economic change is a
necessary but not a sufficient criterion for sustainability.
Human ecologists have generally been more willing than critical theorists to rec-
ognize the breadth of challenges societies face, rather than focusing narrowly on
political economy alone. Duncan (1959, 1961, 1964) has exemplified this pluralistic
approach in his recognition that all societies must address the dynamic interaction
of population, social organization, technology, and the natural environment. The
modern ecological crisis is surely generated by various forces, some unique to cap-
italism, some to industrialism, some to agriculture, and some common across all
types of societies. It is, thus, important to examine both the social-ecological interac-
tions particular to each type of society (Moore 2000, 2002, 2003) and the ecological
challenges common across societies (Diamond 1997; Lenski 2005). The importance
of combining a recognition of the equal importance of human ecology and political
economy for explaining environmental degradation has proven powerful in explain-
ing national-level environmental impacts (York, Rosa, and Dietz 2003) and likely
holds promise for furthering our understanding of human-environment interactions.
Critical human ecology, by drawing on both critical and human ecological traditions,
need not succumb to monocausal explanations, but rather can recognize the multi-
plicity of ecological challenges human societies face and the potential to radically
change many features of the human-environment relationship.
STRUCTURALISM AND FUNCTIONALISM

The intellectual tension between structuralism and functionalism has existed in many
disciplines over an extended period of time. As well as in the social sciences, it has
been a particularly prominent tension in the biological sciences since well before
Darwin, and is a key issue in contemporary debates in evolutionary theory (Gould
2002). Thus, the work of dialectical biologists aimed at understanding the limita-
tions of ultra-Darwinian functionalism (although not aimed at critiquing Darwinism
in general) and the merits of structuralism can inform CHE. We, therefore, high-
light some important conceptualizations from structural biology that allow us to
understand the limitations of functionalist analyses.
Gould and Lewontin (1979) presented a widely recognized critique of what they
called the “Panglossian Paradigm,” the ultra-Darwinian view in the biological sci-
ences that virtually every feature of all organisms exists to serve a function. The
Panglossian Paradigm takes its name from the fictional Doctor Pangloss (a satirical
representation of the philosopher Gottfried Leibniz), from Voltaire’s novel Candide.
Pangloss took the hyperfunctionalist view that everything existed for the purpose
to which it was put—for example, shoulders exist to hold up suspenders and the
bridge of the nose for eyeglasses to rest on. Gould and Lewontin made the case that
ultra-Darwinians in Panglossian fashion all too frequently rely on “just so” stories
for explaining characteristics of organisms, weaving tales of how any particular trait
serves a function, regardless of whether there is reliable evidence supporting such
claims.
Gould and Lewontin, while firmly supporting Darwinism, argued that not all char-
acteristics of organisms are adaptations, rather some are merely side consequences
of structural forces, such as those stemming from the nature of the growth process.
They referred to these structural features as spandrels—the architectural term for
spaces left between structural elements of a building, typically between a curved
feature and a rectangular boundary. They explained that, for example, the construc-
tion of a dome on rounded arches necessitates the construction of four triangular
spandrels where the arches meet the dome (Gould and Lewontin 1979:147–48). The
spandrels are an incidental consequence of the structural demand for a dome on
rounded arches; they are not constructed for a purpose of their own—that is, they
do not exist for functional reasons.
Analogously, the structural nature of ontogenetic development (growth through the

life course) of organisms typically produces nonadaptive structural elements (span-
drels) in virtually all creatures. Gould (2002) presents a particularly clear illustration
of this. He explains that “snails that grow by coiling a tube around an axis must gen-
erate a cylindrical space, called an umbilicus, along the axis” (2002:1259). Although
a “few species use the open umbilicus as a brooding chamber to protect their eggs”
(2002:1259), most do not. Historical evidence indicates that “umbilical brooders
occupy only a few tips on distinct and late-arising twigs of the [snail] cladogram
[evolutionary tree], not a central position near the root of the tree” (2002:1260). It,
therefore, is clear that the umbilicus is not produced for adaptive reasons, although
it has been made use of in some lineages. Rather, the umbilicus is a spandrel—a
nonadaptive structural side effect of a process of growth where a tube is coiled
around an axis. One of Gould and Lewontin’s key points is that structural features
exist for clear material reasons, and in some cases may be of utility, but their origins
are not necessarily explained by functional demands.
Gould and Lewontin’s conceptualization of structural forces and their contrast
with functionalism can help enrich human ecological analyses. As we will discuss
more specifically below, the human ecology tradition has often inappropriately fo-
cused on functionalist explanations of social phenomena, where features of societies
are assumed to be adaptations to the environment. Structural conceptualizations
allow us to see that many of the social phenomena explained by functionalists as
adaptations may be better understood as nonadaptive consequences of structural
forces, stemming either from the environment or from internal social characteristics,
such as demographics.
The assumption that societies are functionally adapted to their environments is
central to the thinking of many renowned social scientists. In sociology, Talcott
Parsons (1967) explicitly took a functionalist stance in explaining a wide sweep of
social characteristics. Similarly, anthropologist and cultural materialist Marvin Harris
(1979) clearly accepted functionalism in his assertion that cultural inventions arise
to ensure survival of the group in its particular historical and ecological context.
Both Harris’s and Parsons’s approaches to explaining cultural diversity assumed that
cultural patterns, norms, customs, and so forth exist because they confer reproductive
success to the group.
The functionalist view has often distorted our understanding of both the social and
natural worlds. CHE agrees with Harris and other human ecologists that societies
are clearly affected by their environments, but it rejects the notion that most social
features can be understood as adaptations to the environment. Cultural practices
and institutions can just as well be maladaptive. Functionalist explanations tend to
be imposed ad hoc on social phenomena and frequently do not reflect the complex
historical routes that led up to social practices. Social structures can come into
existence and be perpetuated for nonfunctional reasons.
Functionalism is not just a problem for human ecology. Ironically, it is also found
in supposedly critical theories that idealize indigenous people and ancient societies.
For instance, Devall and Sessions (1985) and Mies and Shiva (1993) appear to op-
erate on the assumption that prior to the emergence of the “modern” scientific
worldview in the 16th century, for the most part there existed cultural constraints
on overexploiting the environment—that is, functionalist cultural mechanisms for
ensuring sustainability. Accordingly, because they viewed the earth as a living being,
“premodern” societies were supposedly less inclined to commit ecocide. This line of
argument suggests that the replacement of the premodern organic worldview with
the materialist scientific paradigm undermined these normative constraints, paving

the way for colonialism, capitalism, and the destruction of the earth. Thus, idealist
ecologists, while recognizing dysfunction in modern societies, often assume (some-
times only implicitly) that premodern societies are generally functional and adapted
to their environments.
However, as discussed above, empirical evidence suggests that societies existing
prior to the development of mechanistic philosophy and reductionist science had
substantial impacts on the natural environment, undermining the assumption that
societies free of the modern worldview live in harmony with nature. Furthermore,
even if such normative taboos existed, their success in guiding a group’s long-term
subsistence activities is an issue to be answered via historical evidence. The general
problem with cultural functionalism is that it ignores the fact that ecological crises
have cut across virtually all cultures, both contemporary and historical. It would be
difficult to identify a culture that held nature in esteem and yet did not, at least
occasionally, have a substantial impact on its natural resource base. Thus, it is not
the case that indigenous communities would “naturally” live in harmony with their
environments if left alone by modern societies (Botkin 1990).
Nevertheless, to argue that social organization has nothing to do with solving at
least some problems that stem from the struggle for existence is clearly problematic.
Obviously, some minimal level of functional restructuring is required in a society
for it to survive. Furthermore, since humans are thinking agents, they are obviously
capable of recognizing the challenges of survival posed by their environmental con-
texts and of adjusting their behavior accordingly. Thus, societies no doubt have some
features that help them survive in their environmental context, but this should not
be taken to mean that they are free of other features that are nonadaptive or even
maladaptive. What is needed is a perspective that recognizes that human societies
are embedded in the natural environment, affect it, and are affected by it, but that
does not take the crude functionalist view that social features are simply adaptations
to the biophysical context. In providing such a perspective, CHE takes the struc-
tural view that internal and external aspects of societies shape and constrain their
evolution, but that this dynamic does not necessarily lead to adaptation.
To illustrate this point, we highlight Jared Diamond’s (1991, 1997, 2005) approach
to biogeographical history. We focus on Diamond because he has constructed a
perspective with powerful explanatory potential, which incorporates fundamental
human ecological insights. However, in focusing on Diamond we do not wish to
suggest that his perspective is without limitations or shortcomings. Diamond’s work,
although generally well reasoned, is still often constrained by functionalist and ahis-
torical thinking (Davis 1997; Laibman 2003; York and Mancus 2007). Nonetheless,
Diamond has key structural insights. We examine the strengths of his arguments and
show their value for informing CHE, but also point to where CHE departs from Di-
amond. We first outline his basic arguments about the rise of complex societies, and
then note that, although he often presents these arguments in functionalist terms,
they can be more convincingly interpreted in structuralist terms.
Diamond’s (1991, 1997, 2005) focus is on how features of the biophysical envi-
ronment influence social development. Ecology, climate, and geography contribute
to the formation of different modes of social, political, and economic organization
(Diamond 1997). In the specific instance of the rise of agriculture, the features of
the natural environment go a long way to explaining why different societies took
different trajectories. Some regions, like the Fertile Crescent, had a diversity of wild
plants and animals amenable to domestication, while other regions, like Australia,
did not. The development of agriculture created new potentials for population size,
and hence density of interaction, and contributed to changes in social relations and
the development and diffusion of writing, metallurgy, mass epidemics, state political
organization, and large-scale conquest. Agriculture facilitates complex social orga-
nization because it can allow for surplus production and because seasonal pulses
of labor leave time available for work not dedicated entirely to direct subsistence.
The production of an economic surplus facilitates the feeding of craft specialists,
settlements, the accumulation of possessions, and an increase in population.
In discussing these developments, Diamond’s point is that the biophysical environ-
ment presents societies with opportunities and constraints. However, he is careful to
avoid a deterministic view. Diamond’s work includes contingency as well as necessity
in its explanations of macrohistorical change, although his focus is typically on the
latter. In trying to explain the nearly universal phenomenon of complex specializa-
tion and the replacement of tribal organization with centralized monarchies in the
history of civilizations, Diamond (1997) writes:
[F]ood production, which increases population size, also acts in many ways to
make features of complex societies possible. But that doesn’t prove that food
production and large populations make complex societies inevitable. (Diamond
1997:286, emphases in original)
Then, he poses an important corollary question:
How can we account for the empirical observation that band or tribal organi-
zation just does not work for societies of hundreds of thousands of people, and
that all existing large societies have complex centralized organization? (Diamond
1997:286)
To answer this question, Diamond argues that the mathematics of conflict and
exchange—in the context of population density—influences the structure of political
organization. He argues that unrelated strangers are more likely to settle conflicts
with violence than are related and/or acquainted individuals. Hence, as the popula-
tion of a society grows, there is a greater tendency toward violence—because there
are an increasing number of interactions between unrelated individuals—unless some
novel form of conflict mediation is produced. Some way other than face-to-face
interaction may emerge that serves to mediate not only conflict, but also to reach
decisions that affect entire groups.
“The same mathematics that makes direct pairwise conflict resolution inefficient in
large societies makes direct pairwise economic transfers also inefficient” (Diamond
1997:287). Whereas bands and even tribes can operate on the principle of reciprocity
(mutually beneficial direct trade between parties),
[l]arge societies can function economically only if they have a redistributive

economy in addition to a reciprocal economy. Goods in excess of an individual’s
needs must be transferred from the individual to a centralized authority, which
then redistributes the goods to individuals with deficits. (Diamond 1997:287)
However, the concentration of political power “opens the door” for those in the role
of central authority—holding and wielding power, with access to exclusive informa-
tion, making decisions for the group, and responsible for redistribution—to exploit
the system and reward themselves and their relatives, or others sharing in-group
status (Diamond 1997:288).
In his explanation of the rise of complex societies with centralized authority,
as outlined above, Diamond mixes together functionalist and structuralist interpreta-
tions. However, his interpretations are to a certain degree ad hoc, and the phenomena
explained by them can be better understood in structural terms. For example, the
growth of populations has structural consequences for social organization, necessi-
tating change, but this change does not necessarily lead to functional social forms.
Diamond is indeed correct when he argues that as the population in an area grows,
it makes it more difficult for individuals to have face-to-face relationships with all
other people in that area. Thus, social structures based on all people in a soci-
ety knowing each other are undermined, while other forms of organization become
possible. This argument is similar to Durkheim’s (1933) position that population
growth is a key force leading to labor market diversification and specialized social
roles. The error of Durkheim, and more ambiguously of Diamond, is interpreting
changes in the labor market as functional. It is perhaps more appropriate to note
that in societies with small populations—for example, several hundred or only a
few thousand people—it is simply not possible to have an extraordinary diversity of
social positions. In large societies, of say millions, the possibility of highly specialized
social roles emerges, although such specialization is not inevitable. Thus, changes in
social structure as populations grow can be seen as structural consequences of this
growth, where growth undermines some social forms— for example, by making im-
possible face-to-face interaction among all members of a society with a population
in the millions—and opening up a variety of different potential pathways for social
evolution. However, it is an error to see the new forms of social organization that
become possible with larger societies as improving the function of the society, and
particularly to see them as emerging because of a functional need. Many features of
societies may, therefore, be better understood as spandrels rather than adaptations.
Diamond certainly recognizes the limits of relying on functionalism, although he
uses its terminology on occasions. In fact, he characterizes many of the hierarchical
societies that emerged following the development of agriculture as kleptocracies,
where the availability of surplus makes the emergence of an elite class possible and
provides the elite with something to steal and opportunities for exploiting others.
Thus, Diamond does recognize the existence of internal conflict in societies and does
not necessarily assume that hierarchy emerges for the greater social good, in contrast
to Parsons (1967).
Yet, some critical commentary on Diamond’s views is warranted. Thinking in terms
of populations as entities has its advantages, for example, in understanding the scale
of energetic and material throughputs that societies use. Similarly, delineations based
on differences in technology and political organization help us to understand large-
scale macrohistorical change. CHE, however, must also burrow beneath this unitary
analysis because of important contradictions within these units that can be masked
by looking at the whole of the population.
Political units often are the result of active decisions made by particular groups
with common interests. Thus, the institutional frameworks that constrain and direct
the production of goods and services may meet basic subsistence needs, but never-
theless have serious internal contradictions. These contradictions include inequality
in the distribution of costs and benefits of economic production, both in terms of
economic value and environmental risk, including the degradation of nature’s contri-
bution to the production of use-values and hence long-term sustainability of peoples
who depend on direct subsistence mediation in proximate land-based production.

Thus, an ever-expanding sphere of production cannot accurately be called a func-
tional adaptation, as it is not clearly functional for those whose labor is appropriated
for the enjoyment of elites or those who are displaced by its predations. Aggregate
increases in productivity will not necessarily benefit the direct producers and can even
decrease the standard of living of many, due to inequality and exploitation. Focusing
on total population at various levels of analysis can mask these contradictions.
CHE does not assume population dynamics as a driving force in isolation, nor
does it assume some collection of typical psychological human tendencies in the
competition for scarce resources, nor does it accept society as the object of study as
if it is an undifferentiated whole, just as it rejects the reduction to parts as the only
valid method of enquiry. The historical materialist approach to the question of the
effects of social structure on social metabolism can be summed up by the statement
that material conditions set the stage for subsequent material conditions, but not in
a teleological or functionalist fashion.
CONCLUSION
Human ecology is a venerable tradition in sociology that claimed as its domain
the analysis of structural relationships among various aspects of societies. A revised
version of human ecology was at the core of foundational work in environmental
sociology, helping to focus social scientific attention on environmental crises and the
ecological sustainability of societies. Environmental sociology was also infused early
on with neo-Marxian theory that, while accepting human dependence on the natural
environment, focused nearly exclusively on modern capitalist societies and tended
to reject naturalistic explanations of society-environment interactions. In the social
sciences more generally, critical theoretical traditions have been influential, but these
approaches have often taken an antimaterialist stance, focusing analysis on ideology
and culture to the exclusion of material factors other than human productive capac-
ities. The dominance of idealist views in contemporary environmentalism illustrates
the need for a reorientation of ecological analyses.
Although concerns about the interaction between societies and the environment
have been central to environmental sociology from its inception, the larger discipline
of sociology, like the social sciences in general, has yet to incorporate ecology as a
core concern. This has been due in part to concerns among many scholars about
naturalizing social inequalities and capitalist dynamics by emphasizing geographic
and biological explanations of social phenomena. We, thus, develop CHE both to
revitalize environmental sociology by integrating two of its most prominent tradi-
tions, human ecology and neo-Marxian historical materialism, which often have been
at odds with one another, and to help expand the appreciation of environmental is-
sues in the larger discipline by integrating ecological insights into the conceptual
structure of the critical tradition without moving away from the critical tradition’s
concern with human liberation. By recognizing not only the tensions between critical
and ecological traditions, but also connections and synergies, CHE provides a way
to refine socioecological and socioevolutionary theory, without jettisoning founda-
tional concepts of human ecology or ignoring the insights of Marxian scholarship.
Thus, two of the great traditions in sociology that stretch back to the origin of the
discipline can help us to understand anthropogenic environmental transformations,
demonstrating the importance of sociology to the environmental sciences and the
importance of environmental science to sociology. Additionally, the integration of
critical theory and ecology becomes increasingly important as we face the challenges
of addressing global environmental crises such as anthropogenic climate change that
pose severe threats to both ecosystems and societies, particularly their least pow-
erful members. The fact that environmental degradation raises many social justice
concerns points to the need for a human ecology that is informed by the critical
tradition.
For these reasons, we have attempted to refocus attention on the key virtues of
the human ecology perspective, while critically analyzing and refining it with in-
sights from the Marxian tradition. Through this assessment, we developed CHE,
which combines the strengths of traditional human ecology with those of historical
materialism. We examined four meta-theoretical distinctions: between (1) material-
ist and idealist philosophical orientations, (2) dialectical and reductionist analyses,
(3) historical and ahistorical explanations, and (4) structuralist and functionalist
interpretations.
First, CHE stays grounded in the materialism of biophysical human ecology,
counter to the antimaterialist turn in Western Marxism, but resonant with classi-
cal Marxism’s historical materialism. In this, CHE maintains a scientific worldview
consistent with the epistemology of critical and embodied realism, simultaneously
recognizing the socially embedded nature of knowledge. Second, CHE embraces the
dialectical perspective of the Marxian tradition, recognizing that humans and the
natural environment are continually in a process of co-evolution, where societies
both influence environmental conditions and are influenced by the environment.
This dialectical orientation overcomes the limitations of crude reductionism, without
rejecting scientific epistemology. Third, CHE recognizes the plurality of forces that
influence societies and nature, admitting both historically specific forces, such as the
structures of modern capitalism, and ahistorical (spatiotemporally invariant) ones,
such as basic biophysical laws and processes, into its analyses. Thus, counter to criti-
cal theory, CHE does not assume that ideological transformation and the overthrow
of capitalism will be sufficient to assure ecological sustainability, since all societies
must live within the constraints of natural laws and ecological conditions. However,
CHE also does not assume that one framework can explain all environmental inter-
actions throughout human history, recognizing that there are specific forces emergent
in each type of society. In this, CHE overcomes much of the fruitless conflict in the
Malthusian/anti-Malthusian debate. Fourth, and finally, CHE rejects the function-
alism common in classical human ecology in favor of a structural orientation. In
this, CHE recognizes that societies are influenced by the environment and must
come to terms with ecological forces, but that all, or even most, features of soci-
eties are not necessarily functional in the sense of adapting them to environmental
conditions.
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Critical Human Ecology Historical Materialism

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Critical Human Ecology: Historical Materialism and Natural Laws*

RICHARD YORK AND PHILIP MANCUS

Human ecology is a venerable research tradition in the environmental social sciences,

Sociological Theory 27:2 June 2009

HUMAN ECOLOGY AND THE CRITICAL TRADITION—MATERIALISM

The Human Ecology Tradition

The Critical Tradition

calculability and foresight predisposes science to seek knowledge of a particular

Regarding this instrumental rationality and its relation to scientific epistemology,

The Roots of Historical Materialism

Marx’s later expressions of a materialist and ecological science of this mediation

Thus, critical reflexivity, recognizing human agency, and an ecological, material-

Critical Materialism in the Ecological Sciences

by highlighting Marx’s own ecological insights in order to illustrate the theoretical

REDUCTIONISM, HUMANISM, AND DIALECTICAL ANALYSIS

Engels is insightful in his recognition that the reductionist project as a method

I believe that reductionism—a powerful method that should be used whenever

4 Kovel’s (2002) discussion of dialectics is informative. He describes dialectics as:

A narrow focus on reductionism, as critical theorists rightly assert, will impoverish

HISTORICAL AND AHISTORICAL CAUSAL FORCES

All epochs of production have certain common traits, common characteristics.

By using dialectical and materialist science engaged in rational abstraction, we can

STRUCTURALISM AND FUNCTIONALISM

Analogously, the structural nature of ontogenetic development (growth through the

the materialist scientific paradigm undermined these normative constraints, paving

Then, he poses an important corollary question:

[l]arge societies can function economically only if they have a redistributive

who depend on direct subsistence mediation in proximate land-based production.

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