Palen Chapter 2

ecosystem

a natural unit in which there is an interaction of an environmental and a biotic system (a community together with its habitat.)

ecological complex

identifies the relationship between four concepts or classes of variables

POET

population, organization, environment, technology

population

growth of number of people + growth or contraction through either migration or natural increase

population

also refers to the composition of the population by variables such as age, sex, and race. 

organization

the way urban populations are organized according to social stratification, the political system, and the economic system.

also referred to as social structure

environment

natural environment + built environment (streets, parks, bldgs)

technology

tools, inventions, and techniques that directly impact on urban growth and form

organization

In sociological research, _____ is commonly viewed as the dependent variable to be influenced by the other three independent variables;

A more sophisticated view of it however is as reciprocally related to the other elements of the ecological complex

simplicity

A major advantage of the ecological complex as a conceptual scheme is its ______, since economy of explanation is a basic scientific goal.

ecological complex

A problem with the _________ _______ is that the categories themselves are somewhat arbitrary, and so the boundaries between them are not always precise.

It is simply a tool to help us better understand the interaction patterns within urban systems, not intended to be a fully developed theory of urbanization

cultural

The greatest limitation of the original ecological complex is that it subsumes ______ values under the variable of organization, when a very strong case can be made that this should be a separate reference variable in its own right.

variables

Another limitation is that the ecological complex does not explain how, when, to what degree, and under what circumstances the categories of _______ interact.

theoretical object

The ecological complex has been criticized for its lack of _________ _______. It doesn’t explain why the variables interact in the particular fashion they do.

agricultural revolution

It is generally believed that before the urban revolution could take place, an _______ _______ was necessary. Before the invention of the city, nomadic hunting-and-gathering bands could not accumulate, store, and transport more goods than could be carried with them.

surplus

Only when the agricultural system became capable of producing a _______ was it possible to withdraw labor from food production and apply it to the production of other goods.

efficiency

The size of the urban population was directly related to the ________ of agricultural workers, and agriculture remained primitive for millennia.

food

While a ____ surplus was essential to the emergence of towns, it was not essential that the surplus come from agriculture. During the Mesolithic period, there were hamlets from India to the Baltic area that based their culture on the use of shellfish and fish.

Jericho

Some argue that _______ was the first "city," with some 600 people around 8000 B.C. and had a a fairly complex architectural construction. The inhabitants had sufficient civic organization and division of labor to build massive defensive walls and towers in a period when they had barely begun to domesticate grains.

(Note: Lowkey only Zionists say this, historians widely agree that the first city in the world is Uruk, located in modern day Iraq)

labor; order

The absence of settled agriculture did not necessarily mean the absence of rudimentary division of ______ and hierarchical social _____(re: Jericho)

Neolithic

Some groups gained enough knowledge of the relationship between the seasons and the cycle of growth to forsake constant nomadism in favor of permanent settlement in one location. The ________ period is characterized by this change from gathering food to producing it; a transformation from a specialized food collecting culture to a culture where grains were cultivated.

Herd animals like oxen, sheep, donkeys, and horses were also first used during this period

cuttings

Mumford suggests that the practice of reproducing food plants (like the date pal, olive, fig, and grape) was done through plant _______

first

The _____ population expansion encouraged fixed settlements by increasing a tribe to the point where hunting and gathering could no longer provide adequate food.

• Archaeologists suggest that population growth in fact forced the invention of agriculture

fertile

Population expansion was most likely to occur in ______ locations where land, water, and climate favored intensive cultivation of food

slash-and-burn

A type of agriculture that meant cutting down what you could and burning off the rest before planting. Eventually, the first horticulturalists discovered that this quickly depleted the soil and people were forced to migrate.