ECOLOGY AND SPATIAL ANALYSIS

ABSTRACT

Placing an ecological approach in the general framework of American geographic thought indicates the usefulness of distinguishing two trends in the development of this thought—the one ecological, the other spatial. American geography tended to reject the ecological approach because it was identified at an early period with environmental determinism. A spatial, non-functional, approach became dominant. Although the two approaches are two ends of a continuum, and thus connected, they arise from and lead to different sets of questions which involve different approaches and different bodies of theory. The ecological approach may be divided into four imprecise types—biological, human, cultural, and urban-political. The cultural-ecological approach is particularly useful in analyzing obstacles to innovation acceptance in agricultural development because it emphasizes the analysis of existent systems from different viewpoints. Four sets of reality, or viewpoints, can be distinguished in this context—that of the scientist-observer, that of the change-agent, that of the cultivator, and that of the ideal-set of the cultivator. Only when the overlaps and conflicts of these sets are recognized can a realistic appraisal be made. This is only a single instance of the potential of an ecological approach. Spatial theory and ecological theory have not yet been joined. The evident usefulness of both indicates the importance of attempting such a joining, and the futility of arguing for the ascendance of one over the other.