The concept of "cultural ecology" appears first within anthropology, coined by Julian Steward in his book, Theory of Culture Change: The Methodology of Multilinear Evolution (1955), followed by others, such as Gregory Bateson in Steps to an Ecology of Mind (1973), with the concept taking on a broader interdisciplinary dimension over time. Hubert Zapf highlighted the literary, aspects of this concept as a dimension of Ecocriticism in Literature as Cultural Ecology (2016) and in environmental communication, explored in The Routledge Handbook of Ecocultural Identity (2020), edited by Milstein and Sotomayer. The latter argue that the separation between the human and nature reflects a core premise and paradigm of Western(ised), whereby "contemporary social injustices around the world are inherently entangled with these hierarchical environmental orientations," as "manifested in societies of overconsumption, alienation and out-of-balance extraction." How are these concepts useful in studying popular culture?