Social ecology (social research)

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Social ecology describes the social science investigation of the geographical distribution of factors and their constellations. It examines how social and environmental factors determine people's social behavior. Inherent in social ecology is an anthropocentric view of the environment and nature . In some methods and basic assumptions, social ecology is closely related to human ecology , but historically developed out of applied sociology and treats ecology in the scientific sense only as a feedback factor on the subject of social research.

Urban research

Social ecology was developed by the Chicago School as an urban sociological theory of inner-city structural research. It emphasizes the phenomena of social segregation and is relevant for the socio-spatial structural analysis of cities. The spatial organization and the resulting (sometimes very different) development of different areas of a (large) city are examined:

  • On the one hand, as a distribution of social activities and functions (e.g. city center, residential areas, commercial areas), from which typical patterns and developments in urban land use are determined.
  • On the other hand, as a distribution of a population differentiated according to social class , family structure , ethnic group and culture over the residential areas. The resulting socially and spatially segregated distribution of subcultures and social milieus is seen as characteristic, used for further analyzes and also forms the starting point for district-related social work . Fundamental here is the method of social space analysis , which makes it possible to differentiate between living situations and ways of life in individual residential areas.

This social ecology was developed by Robert Ezra Park and his students in the USA in the 1920s and worked out in the form of a space-related sociology. A characteristic of field research in this tradition is the consideration that a society is not a single entity, but that its different locations and ecological niches are each specifically occupied. Relationships between urban space, neighborhoods and the people living there are established.

Social ecology has established itself, especially in the USA, and plays a role in interdisciplinary research into complex social problems. Jürgen Friedrichs , Bernd Hamm and Ulfert Herlyn have incorporated them into German-speaking urban research .

Political Ecology

The sociologist Rudolf Heberle applied the socio-ecological method to research into the voting behavior of parties and movements . He is referring to the first significant study of this kind, the “political choice” Tableau politique de la France de l'Ouest sous la Troisième République by André Siegfried .

Heberle is an "ecological studies of political behavior" ( ecological studies of political behavior ) interested and puts it in relation to the social ecology, "the Entire range of social phenomena in a given area" also examine how "their interdependence and conflicts". He differentiates from purely statistical electoral research "the method of electoral geography (named as Géographie électoral or Géographie de l'opinion politique by André Siegfried)", which he himself sometimes calls "Political Ecology", in his article for René König's handbook of empirical social research but "choice ecology". He sees an essential merit of this research direction in "seeing the factors of political decision-making in their spatial togetherness ... the entire political" climate "of a landscape is examined , so to speak ." Heberle uses the - today, however, differently documented - Term ›political ecology‹ , “to indicate that it is a matter of describing› coexisting ‹phenomena and revealing relationships between them.”

literature

  • Robert Ezra Park, RD McKenzie & Ernest Burgess, The City: Suggestions for the Study of Human Nature in the Urban Environment . Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1925
  • Bernd Hamm (ed.), Urban Living Space: Contribution to the Social Ecology of German Cities . Frankfurt a. M.:Campus, 1979. ISBN 3-593-32474-1
  • Rudolf Heberle, Main Problems of Political Sociology Stuttgart: Ferdinand Enke, 1967
  • Rudolf Heberle, Social Movements. An Introduction to Political Sociology New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts, 1951
  • Peter Wehling, Ecological Orientation in Sociology. Social-ecological working papers 26 (1987)

See also

Remarks

  1. ^ Andrew Abbott: Department and Discipline: Chicago Sociology at One Hundred. Chicago University Press, Chicago 1999.
  2. ↑ Th. Jahn. Social ecology . In: Fachlexikon der Sozialarbeit . Nomos, Baden-Baden 2011
  3. ↑ KP Strohmeier: Social Ecology - The socio-spatial dimension of life situations. Neue Praxis 11, special issue 6, pp. 67–82
  4. ↑ See, for example, Conceptual Social Ecology for the activities of the School of Social Ecology at the University of California, Irvine, founded in 1970
  5. ↑ Jiří Musil Status der Sozialökologie in: J. Friedrichs Soziologische Stadtforschung Opladen 1988 (= special issue Kölner Zeitschrift für Soziologie und Sozialpsychologie), 18–34; Martin Lenz On the way to a social city: Dismantling disadvantageous housing conditions as an instrument for combating poverty Deutscher Universitätsverlag 2007; Pp. 14-16
  6. ^ Rudolf Heberle: Social Movements. An Introduction to Political Sociology. Appleton-Century-Crofts, Inc.: 1951. Part IV: Ecology, and Methods of Quantitative Analysis.
  7. ↑ cf. also Thomas Kupferschmitt: André Siegfried's choice of geography ( memento of the original from July 13, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (PDF; 767 kB) @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.politik.uni-mainz.de
  8. ^ Reprint of the ed. Published by Librairie A. Colin, Paris. 1975.
  9. ^ Heberle Social Movements. An Introduction to Political Sociology , p. 212
  10. ↑ Heberle, Hauptprobleme der Politik Sociology, German 1967, p. 214
  11. ↑ in detail there, pp. 224–250
  12. ↑ Handb. D. emp. Sozialforschung Vol. 12 (2nd ed.), Pp. 73–88; this term also appears incidentally in his main problems of political sociology , cf. there p. 247, 250
  13. ^ Heberle, Hauptprobleme der Politik Sociologie, p. 228