An Alternative Understanding of the Relationship Between the Ecosystem and the Social System - Implications for Land Management in Semi-Arid Australia.

The growing concerns of the wider community for bio-diversity, ecological maintenance and sustainable long term productivity of Australia's rangelands has focussed attention on land management practices in the semi-arid and arid areas. Where conventional farming paradigms concentrated on farming practices and methods, the paradigms of sustainability rest heavily on changes to farming philosophy for their success. The basic challenges have been well understood for years, and almost all the research has gone into the process of understanding the resource. There is little understanding of the relationship between the ecosystem and either society in general, or the local community. The basic relationship, that between society and the ecosystem, is being overlooked. The social system determines human objectives and the ecosystem presents a range of possibilities through which these objectives are to be realised. Using the work of Ingold, it is argued that technology, ideology and structure are the products of the relationship between society and the ecosystem. The interaction between the ecosystem and the social system then presents a set of possible outcomes that culture atteinpts to solve. There is a need to shift attention from technology and ideology to examining and understanding the relationship between the social system and the ecosystem if the desired changes, such as the maintenance of biodiversity or sustainability, are to be more than superficial.