2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. The author distinguishes human ecology from ecology and focuses on sociological human ecology as elaborated by Amos Hawley. The author outlines the ecological orientation and introduces several examples of applications of human ecological theory to empirical investigations of the demographic processes. Human ecology is concerned with the organizational aspects of human populations that arise from their sustenance-producing activities. The author also outlines the theoretical and conceptual bases of the four referential constructs of human ecology, namely, organization, population, technology, and environment, reviews some of the empirical and theoretical literature spanning more than five decades, and shows in particular that demographic models benefit from using the ecological perspective.
