Human Ecology

Category: Theoretical approaches

The sociological approach to human ecology was developed in the intellectual milieu of the Chicago School approach. Human ecology used theory and field research to understand the behavior of humans and organizations in the urban environment.

Robert Park and Edward Burgess

Robert Park was one of the founders of the human ecology approach. His theoretical approach was influenced by the evolutionism of Herbert Spencer, the formal sociology of Simmel and Tönnies, the theoretical approach of Thomas W. Thomas and Znaniecki, the interactionist social psychology of Herbert Mead, and John Dewey's pragmatism. In his works, Park studied problems of urban sociology and racial and ethnic relations. He and Burgess jointly published two books that are fundamental for the formation of the Human Ecology approach - Introduction to the Science of Sociology (1921) and The City (1925). These two books laid the theoretical and methodological foundations for the study of urban social phenomena.

Park viewed sociology as a "natural science" that should study the relationships and processes that take place between different communities in society. Influenced by Simmel's teaching, Park adopted the view that social interaction should be viewed as a key sociological category. Social interaction has four main forms: contact, conflict, accommodation, and assimilation. There are always relations of "dominance" in society, that is, there are always one or more communities in society that are dominant. The relations of dominance and cooperation follow the rules of "succession", the most important of which are those that exist between different urban zones, each of which has a different function and demographic composition. Simmel's sociology also influenced Park's concept of social distance. Park saw a Jew, an immigrant, a homeless man, and a "marginal man" as examples of what Simmel defined through the concept of "foreigner".

Park's human ecology saw the city as a product of human nature, a state of mind (attitudes and feelings) that is maintained through customs and traditions. Human ecology is a science that studies the action of forces that, within the natural area of human habitation in the city, lead to the creation of typical groups of individuals and institutions. The city represents the unity of moral, natural, and ecological order. A city is a place of the creation of a new moral order. The city shattered the traditional moral order and led to the creation of a new order based on individual freedom and solidarity and based on common interests. The main natural factors that affect human ecology are: the physical and administrative division of the city into urban areas, traffic and communication technologies, and the economy based on the division of labor.

Due to the social and technical division of labor city is going through changes: specialization and rationalization of activities, creation of professions and professional organizations, and the growing predominance of secondary over primary relations between individuals. The physical and moral organization of the city act on each other and shape and change each other. "The organization of the city, the character of the urban environment and the discipline which it imposes is finally determined by the size of the population, its concentration and distribution within the city are" (Park, 1925). The city leads to the breakdown of the traditional way of life, close neighborly relations are lost, and people live in anonymity. The anonymity and intensity of city life, and especially the focus on work, earning money, and economic relations, have a devastating effect on the form and function of the church, school, and family institutions. Traditional forms of social control are losing their significance, especially in the communities of newly arrived immigrants. Changes in the economic, moral, and interpersonal relations in the city have led to the emergence of many social, moral, and mental disorders. The most significant negative consequences of the urban environment are: crime, alcoholism, homelessness, juvenile delinquency, etc.

Park wanted to study the "natural history" of individuals, groups, and institutions, and that history takes place within complex socio-ecological trajectories. Park considered qualitative methods to be the best methodological tool for the empirical study of such histories. These methods are: life histories obtained through long interviews, participatory observation, investigative journalism, and the like.

Park and Burgess together wrote the book The City (1925), which is one of the first and most famous works in the field of sociology of the city. As an analytical tool for processing this data, Park and Burgess used ecological maps, the most famous of which is the one on concentric ecological circles in Chicago. Burgess and Park presented the American city as an ecological structure - a set of localized and isolated zones, each with its category of the population. These zones often have the shape of concentric circles, so this model of urban development is known as the theory of concentric zones. There is a business zone in the center; outside the center is a transition zone characterized by ghettos, slums, and crime; the next is the working-class residential area –populated by second-generation immigrants. Outside of these is the residential zone, and the last is the suburban zone. Urban zones are going through their evolution, and the main driving force of that evolution is competition. People are fighting for land and other urban resources within the city.

City districts and neighborhood relations in them operate relatively independently of the wider physical and social urban environment. A big problem for many cities is the class and/or racially isolated neighborhoods, known as ghettos. Within such ghettos, a specific moral order is often formed. Park believed that racial relations always go through the following cycle: contact, conflict, accommodation, and eventually assimilation. Park defines accommodation as a process of reducing the level of conflicts to establish social order and stability. Assimilation, on the other hand, is a cultural fusion of different people and groups, because the attitudes and sentiments of other people and groups are adopted, which ultimately leads to a common cultural life. Prerequisites for assimilation are contacts within primary groups and a common language. Assimilation is not a cultural sameness, but a shared experience and sharing of mental patterns that enable the creation of a community with a unique view of collective goals. Park considered racial assimilation to be, not only a necessary but also a desirable product of racial relations. He viewed African-American communities in cities in the northern United States as internal immigrants, as many of them moved from the southern USA, where there were completely different economic, socio-environmental, and moral circumstances.

Louis Wirth

American sociologist Louis Wirth (1897-1952) used the human ecology approach in his studies of urbanism, immigrant communities, mass media, and group psychology that was developing in cities. The first book for which he became famous, Ghetto (1928), studies the life of Jewish immigrants who lived in two city districts of Chicago. Wirth called one city district a "ghetto", comparing it to the real ghetto in which Jews lived in medieval Frankfurt. He believed that the experience of living in medieval ghettos, in which Jews were forced to live in isolation, imprinted the "ghetto experience" on the Jewish mind, which in the United States also, now voluntarily, began to live in isolated neighborhoods. Wirth believed that, with the increase in the assimilation of immigrants, their residential mobility also increased. Wirth continued to study minorities and is known for his definition of a minority: “A group of people who, because of their physical or cultural characteristics, are singled out from the others in the society in which they live for differential and unequal treatment, and who therefore regard themselves as objects of collective discrimination” (Wirth, 1945).

Wirth's greatest contribution to the sociology of the city is his article "Urbanism as a Way of Life" (1938). In that article, he expounds on his theory of urbanism. Wirth partially deviates from the classical ecological approach to the sociology of the city of Park and Burgess and introduces a synthetic approach, combining the ecological approach with Simmel's sociological approach. Wirth, at first, wants to introduce a sociological definition of the city. He recognizes that cities are often the centers of the economic, political, intellectual, and cultural life of a society. However, he believes that the sociological definition of the city must start from the specific characteristics of the city, and that is a special way of human association that takes place in the city. He calls this specific way of human association in the city urbanism, while under urbanization he denotes the process during which urbanism spreads to other settlements and areas. The sociological definition of a city should include a way to study the variations that exist between different cities. Variations in the size, density, and function of cities are great, and it is especially harmful to equate urbanism with the development of capitalism and industrialization. Thus Wirth comes to the definition of the city: "For sociological purposes a city may be defined as a relatively large, dense, and permanent settlement of socially heterogeneous individuals" (Wirth, 1938).

For Wirth's definition of the city, the most important is the great and specific heterogeneity of the individuals who live in it, and in that sense, he notes that the city has always been a place where different cultures and races merge. With the increase in the population and the population density of the city, there are increasing individual variations in the inhabitants. At the same time, the importance of family and neighborly ties is diminishing, while competition and formal control mechanisms are becoming more important than solidarity relations. Human relations, in a big city, are primarily secondary, and interdependence is limited to fragmentary activities. This leads to the fact that the relations of the people in the city are, above all, utilitarian, impersonal and transient, restrained and indifferent. Individuals in the city have a greater degree of individual freedom, but they lose the sense of common moral connection, so they can easily enter a state of anomie.

There is a growing division of labor and specialization in cities, while economic relations are becoming exclusively monetary. The patterns of consumption of goods, services, and cultural products of the inhabitants of the city are very different than that of the inhabitants of the village. Although the income of urban residents is, on average, higher than the income of rural residents, their costs are higher, and housing and communal costs are especially high. Big cities also tend to be spatially separated, because people of homogeneous status tend to live in the same parts of the city. A special type of spatial segregation is one on ethnic and racial grounds. Spatial segregation, great social differences, competitive spirit, segmental personal relationships, the fast pace of life, and high population density contribute to the creation of nervous tension and frustration among the city's residents. This leads to an increase in social pathology in cities - crime, delinquency, divorce, etc. That is why it is very important to introduce official mechanisms of social control in the city. Educational institutions, cultural institutions, mass media, civil and voluntary organizations, and political propaganda contribute to equalizing individual differences between the inhabitants of the city.

In the article "Human Ecology" (1945), Wirth states that human ecology should be viewed as an adjunct, not a substitute, to other sociological approaches, because the "cultural order" crucially influences the modification of the "ecological order".

Amos Hawley

American sociologist Amos Hawley (1910-2009) is known for his special approach to human ecology, which is macro-sociological. He believes that the adaptation of people to their social and physical environment always takes place through social organization. Relationships between individuals are structures that adapt to changes in the social, technical, and physical environment. These structures are independent of individual people and are much more durable than them. Organizations can grow in size, and they can evolve to adapt to changes in the environment as new technology develops. His theory is based on several theoretical postulates: adaptation takes place by creating interdependence between individuals, to increase the chances of survival of the entire population; the system will continue to grow until it reaches the upper maximum that is sustainable with the use of some communication and transport technology.

When new technologies are adopted, the processes of adaptation and growth of the system continue until the system returns to equilibrium. The environment, although it can be changed, always creates restrictions on the possible development of society. The ability of social groups to organize and spread is the basic process of human ecology. As people fight for limited resources, there is a struggle for survival. To avoid the struggle for survival, symbiotic relations are developed in society, and to maintain this symbiotic relationship, moral norms, and social stratification are established. Hawley believes that the changes that are taking place - adaptation, growth, struggle, cooperation - are probabilistic and not deterministically determined by the environment. It focuses on long-term and comprehensive change. According to his theory, individuals do not play a big role in these changes.

Authors: Burgess, Watson Ernest; Hawley, H. Amos; Park, E. Robert; Turner, H. Jonathan; Wirth, Louis. Bronfenbrenner, Urie; McKenzie, Roderick.

Books:

Bronfenbrenner, Urie. The Ecology of Human Development: Experiments by Nature and Design (1979);

Burgess. The Function of Socialization in Social Evolution (1916);

- Predicting Success or Failure in Marriage (1939);

- Aging in Western Societies (1960);

Hawley. Human Ecology: A Theory of Community Structure (1950);

- Urban Society: An Ecological Approach (1971);

- Nonmetropolitan America in Transition (1982);

- Human Ecology: A Theoretical Essay (1986);

Marten, Gerald G. Human Ecology: Basic Concepts for Sustainable Development (2001);

Micklin, Michael, and Harvey M. Choldin, eds. Sociological Human Ecology: Contemporary Issues and Applications (1984);

Park. The Man Farthest Down: A Record of Observation and Study in Europe (1912);