You do not currently have permission to view the full text for this document. Please sign in to an account with an active subscription or contact support.
In the field of social studies, the ecological school is at present one of the most active. Miss Alihan's book is devoted to a critical presentation of the relations and meanings of the theories which this school has formulated. She considers in particular the books of three of the outstanding investigators in the field, Park, Burgess, and McKenzie, from which she quotes at length.
One finds oneself in the familiar situation of writing a review of a review; or more accurately, of giving an abstract of a critical condensation.
This is found in the last three chapters of the book which are quite satisfactory, while in the first hundred pages one has the impression frequently that the ecological school is too dependent in its terminology and concepts upon other fields of research as, for example, botany, zoölogy, physiology and psychology. There are even passages reminiscent of Freud's Civilization and its Discontents, although in a purely descriptive manner. These borrowings from other fields that do not really belong to ecological concepts are criticized later in the book.
How is human ecology defined? 'It is the study of the spatial and temporal relations of human beings as affected by the selective, distributive and accommodative forces of the environment.' The distinction between community and society is an important one; community is defined as 'a distribution of individuals over an