Sources ecosociology. Series: «Ecosociology». I. P. Kulyasov
which form social institutes and structures, and which in turn, specify restrictions for individuals and society. However, this restriction is taken for granted as it is based on consensus16.
Communication (interaction) capacity is inborn and makes a newly born baby a human. He is striving to communicate and this striving compels him to agree to curb his instincts, desires and aspirations. After that, social institutes and structures are reproduced as a result of collective action and consensus on a daily basis. Interactionism boils down to the postulate that individuals use communication to socialize and integrate. His process allows consecutive and coordinated action leading to a consensus-based or authoritative interaction, suppression of the minority by the majority, or majority of citizens by the elite representing a minority.
However, the anticipated interaction may not necessarily occur. Then interaction occurs in another situation in another form. This means that interaction is determined by the human nature. Interaction is based on movement, which characterizes the ecological level. This particular level is the subject examined by ecosociology, while the hierarchically structured superstructure – economic, political and cultural orders – are studied by economy, political science and anthropology.
Despite the attractiveness of studying the cultural level, the Chicago school ecosociologists, together with students, researched the urban environment fully using the structure suggested by Park. Naturally, they paid a lot of attention to the ecological level, which could be used for studying migration processes. Researchers acted on the assumption that a social organism consists of individuals capable of migration. Migration is a collective action and interaction typical specifically for the biotic (ecological) level. It is a basic freedom for all people irrespectively of the race and nationality.
Availability of higher-level freedoms (of conscience, political and economic freedom) is the subject matter of a new scientific discipline – cultural-anthropological ecology. The central concept of this science is “liberty” as a feature of modern society. The degree of freedom may increase or decrease on a case-by-case basis. For a human, the greatest external freedom is possible at the ecological level (in contrast with plants, humans have a freedom of movement), and inner freedom – at the cultural level (unlike animals, humans consciously choose their behavior).
On the one hand, all American reforms are supposed to be aimed at securing freedom for individuals and society and building a free American society. On the other hand, nobody ever plans or builds a free society; it emerges of its own accord where it does not oppress itself. And it emerges due to the biotic nature of humans – their ecological level. Therefore, the 19th-century wave of migration to the United States from China, Asia, India and Middle East indicates the switching of an in-depth mechanism that would change the existing institutes to build a qualitatively new society of free cooperation.
In the 1920s, the Chicago school ecosociologists received a few seats on the Committee for local community studies. Participants of this inter-disciplinary research organization also included economists, philosophers, anthropologists, political experts and psychologists. They elaborated a common conceptual framework, conducted joint empirical research and theorized, developed recommendations for business and municipal authorities. However, socio-economic crises and the subsequent Great American Depression of the 1930s formulated other national priorities. As a result, the socio-ecological concept of the Chicago school of sociology was used as a method without being developed into an independent discipline.
Attempts to rethink the socio-ecological theory made by Park’s followers were aiming to overcome the biosocial dualism of Park’s concept and make social-ecological theory more sociology sounding. Louis Wirth (1897—1952), having constructed a purely sociological theory of urban life, proposed to get rid of eclectics that allowed various interpretations of urban processes by scientists representing different disciplines. Interaction / communication continue to be the main characteristic of social processes and a driving force behind the development of local community.
To overcome the excessively broad theoretical orientation of the socio-ecological concept, he proposed a thesis that interaction becomes intensive with a large congestion of people on a constrained territory. He suggested a method for distinguishing between urban and rural communities:
– The first characteristic of urban population relates to its high density (the ratio of the territorial size to the number of residents).
– The second characteristic is the diversity of population (a large number of different social groups).
– The third is to prevailing social relationships (communal in a rural and social / mixed – in an urban community)17.
Therefore, the space-temporal aspect remained a characteristic of society, while ecosociology came to be perceived as a science that measures and describes the social environment.
To define the main ecosociological categories, McKenzie pointed out an ecological organization as a spatial body of the population in a local or the global community. He argued that ecological things dominate all other characteristics because they all are a result of space-temporal relationships. Accordingly, he gave priority to studying and theorizing on the phenomenon of the ecological community18.
The followers of the socio-ecological concept maintained and continue to maintain that all social processes are in fact ecological. This understanding was to be the foundation for all social sciences, as the social institutes and structures are built on a space-temporal foundation, emerge and exist in accordance with the changing natural conditions, and nothing exists beyond these conditions.
This approach was enhanced by the fact that such socio-ecological methods as zoning and social mapping were successfully used for identifying and verifying the correlation between various social variables, which at first glance were not interrelated. Moreover, the use of these methods and conceptual approaches made possible generalized descriptions of various multi-variable cases, giving at least an understanding of functional, if not causal dependence.
An effective use of the socio-ecological method can be also explained by the level-based approach, which is similar to the principle used in system analysis when the phenomenon of a local community (social organism) being examined is analyzed in its interrelation with its higher (macro) and lower (micro) level. The lower level is the individual and the higher level is represented by social “compositions” consisting of various communities united into municipalities.
However, causal links of social organisms with their habitat and issues relating to optimal life support were not yet studied by ecosociology. Therefore, beginning with the mid-1930s, the abstract character of the ecosociology’s space-temporal functionalism came under criticism from representatives of the socio-cultural school, who emphasized the dependence of natural resource use on cultural traditions, values, symbols and norms.
Milla Aissa Alihan proposed a new vision of society and started working on a methodology for analyzing the social sphere within the framework of the already existing discipline – urban sociology. Three main variables – social standing (status), urbanization level (population density) and degree of segregation (multiplicity of social groups) – were identified. A city was described as a subsystem comprising greater territories and larger communities. In doing so, researchers were using data obtained from a census of urban population. On the one hand, this allowed analysis of cities rather than urban communities. On the other hand, this made possible, based on the statistical data received, a classification of subsystems (local communities). The result obtained could be rechecked some time later (sociological monitoring) to see social dynamics. This also enabled researchers to reasonably theorize on social organization as the main result of evolution19.
Amos Henry Hawley (1910—2009), further developing the socio-ecological
Park R.E. Society: Collective behavior, news and opinion, sociology and modern society. Glencoe: Free. 1955.
Wirth L. Social interaction: The problem of the individual and the group. 1939. Vol. 44. p. 965—979.; Human ecology. 1945. Vol. 50. №6. p. 483—488.; Community life and the social policy. Chicago. 1956.
McKenzie R.D. Social ecology // Encyclopedia of Social Sciences. New York: Macmillan, Collier. 1937. Vol. 5. p. 314—315.
Alihan M.A. Social ecology: A critical analysis. New York: Columbia University Press. 1935.