Society: Cultural Ecological Perspective
Cultural ecology studies the relationship between a given society and its natural environment as well as the life-forms and ecosystems that support its life ways. This may be carried out diachronically (examining entities that existed in different epochs),or synchronically (examining a present system and its components). The central argument is that the natural environment, in small scale or subsistence societies dependent in part upon it - is a major contributor to social organization and other human institutions. In the academic realm, when combined with study of political economy, the study of economies as polities, it becomes political ecology, another academic subfield. It also helps interrogate historical events like the Easter Island Syndrome.