ECOLOGICAL MODELS: AN ANNOTATED BIBLIOGRAPHY
*Allman, W.F. (1994). Earth, wind and fire - and ice. U.S. News and World Report, 116(4), 6-7.
This article discusses how the Northridge earthquake of 1994 brought home to millions of people the fact that the earth was not always nurturing to human beings. It is pointed out that geologic instability can be considered an Earth constant if the planet is viewed form the perspective of its entire 4.5 billion year history.
The article concludes with the notion that surviving geologic catastrophes requires that people help one another with their physical and emotional pain. This point is illustrated by noting that one of the findings of an ancient ecological disaster were the bodies of two people who had died together trying to help one another avert an ecological disaster.
* Berry, J.U. (1995). Families and deinstitutionalization: An application of Bronfenbrenner's social ecology model. Journal of Counseling and Development, 73(4), 379-383.
This article illustrates how what is essentially a model explaining physical processes in the environment (the biologic ecology model) can be adroitly applied to explain psychosocial processes in the family and the individual. Specifically, the article utilizes a social ecology model (a model that focuses on how the environment interacts with a developing person to effect either healthy development or the lack thereof) to explicate the situation of families with a developmentally disabled member involved in the transition from the institution to the community.
Bongaarts, J. (1994). Can the growing human population feed itself. Scientific American, March, 36-42.
Noting that by 2050 the world population will have doubled, this article examines the effects of this doubling on the ability of the planet to feed such large numbers of humans. The views of both optimists and pessimists are presented and evaluated along with global wa...