Social ecology has many definitions. It is used as a synonym for human ecology, especially in sociology; it is considered one form of ecological psychology; and it is the name chosen for the mix of approaches taught at the University of California, Irvine, as well as the radical revisionism of Murray Bookchin.

In her 1935 critique of the ecological approach in sociology, Milla Alihan clearly preferred the label "social ecology." In a book on urban society in the mid-forties, Gist and Halbert discussed the social ecology of the city, and Ruth Young examined the social ecology of a rural community in the journal Rural Sociology in the early 1970s. A bibliography for the Council for Planning Librarians went so far as to define social ecology as a "subfield of sociology that incorporates the influence of not only sociology but economics, biology, political science, and urban studies," and...