A Proposed Model for Measuring the Ecological Process of Dominance

Abstract

T HE concept of dominance as it has developed and been used within the field of ecology has culminated in the formulation of the metropolitan region. The basis of the metropolitan region hinges on two concepts. The first is the center, the metropolitan community, and the second is the hinterland which is necessary for the metropolitan center to serve and by which it is in turn served.1 The proponents of this position emphasised one aspect of this principle of dominance-the function of the center-and have ignored the secondthe hinterland. They have taken Gras's statement of the relationship of the two and have failed to consider the broader implications of his writings.2 Gras points out the necessity of a hinterland for the existence of a metropolitan center, but at the same time he insists that you cannot reify one at the expense of the other. Indeed, implied in the writing is the injunction that extent and degree of functional integration imposed on the hinterland by the metropolitan center is an empirical question waiting to be demonstrated rather than an ad hoc assumption to be treated as a reality. Thus, the ecologist finds himself in the position of stating dominance exists because metropolitan centers exist ipso facto; and the concept of the hinterland is dragged along behind, not because they exist, but because it is obvious that each metropolitan center must have a hinterland. Following this reasoning, it is not difficult to take the next step and allocate the entire land area of the United States to one of the n number of metropolitan centers. As Lewis W. Jones points out, the concept of hinterland is left lacking in the development of the concept of dominance and he calls attention to an obvious deficiency and suggests three types of hinterlands with a characterization of each.3 The purpose of this paper is not to deny the principle of dominance as developed in the literature, but rather to question the pervasiveness of its influence in the United States. Rather than use the principle of dominance as an explanatory concept, let us use it as an analytical variable to test the relative importance of dominance on a part or the entire land area of the United States. In this context, the principle of dominance can be a heuristic device to analyze the relative influence of the metropolitan center on the surrounding hinterland. Paralleling the development of the concept of dominance have been the many studies oriented around the concept of the homogeneous region, the rural region, and rural society, which have stressed either social characteristics or have stressed a composite region including social and economic indices. One of the most extensive studies into the composite homogeneous region has been done by the late Howard W. Odum4 and his associates at the University of North Carolina. Just as the accusation of reification of the concept of dominance can be raised for the present proponents of the metropolitan concept, the accusation of environment-cultural determinist has been leveled at the studies of homogeneous regions. In comparing the two positions, there are two points in common. First, they both encompass the idea of spatial orientation. Second, they both stress the non-random distribution of certain attributes in space. The homogeneous region stresses the non-random distribution as represented by the clustering of attributes into compact contiguous subregions. The metropolitan community stresses the non-random distribution of attributes along a continuum of distance from the central city. By using these two common features, it is possible to use the definition given by Bogue and at the same time propose a statistical model which can be used to test the relative importance of these two concepts in space as well as through time.