The POET model

This is a model of social change, developed by Otis Dudley Duncan, in which society is basically put into four categories. Population should be easy enough to grasp. Numbers can go up, go down, mortality and fertility rates can change, people can migrate, move to different areas, the age structure can change over time, etc. Organization would include some of the organizational structures of a society--here in the U.S., the government would be important, large corporations, communities, families, churches, etc. The economic organization of a society is important as well. Ours is mostly a capitalist economy. Environment should be fairly self-explanatory. We did talk about the three general functions of the environment--living space, a place to put our waste, and as a repository for resources. In other words, everything around you came from the environment--desks, chairs, computers, your clothes, shoes, pens, etc. They came from a stock of natural resources at some point in their history (although may have experienced a good deal of processing and transformation). We also have to live somewhere, and we have to dump our waste somewhere. Usually we try to keep these functions spatially separate--that is, we don't want to live near where we dump our waste, or where we're doing our mining, or cutting down trees. Technology we won't get into subtle nuances of definition. Technology can include actual artifacts, such as a toaster, or a nuclear warhead, or a tractor, or even a short-handled hoe, or a stone axe, an arrowhead--in other words, technology doesn't have to be sophisticated. If it helps think of technology as tools that are used to achieve some end, but keep in mind that there are few tools that exist in isolation (e.g., Ford's assembly line required an entire technological system to make work. It could be that making arrowheads requires considerably less in the way of support, but you might need certain kinds of rocks for knapping flint (did I say this right, Luke?), there might be different techniques, different grades of mineral, division of labor as to who did what, etc.

The POET model should help you better grasp some of the ways the earth and humans' relationship with it have changed over the time our species has been here (maybe 150,000 years, at the most).

So in this class, we're pretty interested in the environment component. What causes the environment to change? How might the natural environment affect technology, population, organization? Harris' article suggests the importance of material constraints in the development of state forms of government. Harrison's article talks about the role of the environment in shaping human societies and activities, and in creating the conditions for life on earth. Harrison and Kates et al. also discuss the impacts that humans have had on their environments. This is your introduction to the topic, and I want you thinking about how humans have historically interacted with their environments, how they interact with their environments now, what impacts this interaction has for natural environments and for the human species.

For instance, how might an introduction of technology have affected population (total numbers, birth rates, death rates, migration, etc.)? How might population affect technology (pressure on hunter-gatherer societies and the resource base, for instance)? How might turning to sedentary agriculture, as a result of population density increases and resource pressure, affect the environment? As you can see, this can get quite complicated, and the double-sided arrows are necessary for understanding the complexity. Use the POET model as sort of a guide for understanding how humans can interact with the natural environment. Unless you think that humans are somehow exempt from natural laws, after all, we are part of the environment. At the same time, human ecologists would look at us as just another species on the face of the earth. But it should be pretty clear that Homo sapiens has had an impact on the earth's landscapes, water, and atmosphere, that is unmatched by any other animal or plant species, over such a relatively short period of time--the last 300 years or so.

How did we do it? How did we get from 1 billion over 150,000 years to another 5 billion in the last 300 years? How have we managed to alter climate patterns and influence average global temperatures? Who are 'we' anyway? Are the changes caused by sheer numbers, by resource consumption, by the use of certain forms of energy?

Lots to discuss in here ... the POET model should help you get a better picture of how change has taken place, why, and how the environment has played a role.