Assimilation to the Ecological and Social Systems of a Community

Abstract

T~j~HE DISSONANCE between classical ecological theory and empirical investigation has led, during the past decade, to the development of a school of ecological thought known as ecology.l As is well known, the classical ecologists assumed human society to be organized around two basic processes, competition and communication. Each of these processes gives rise to different orders in society: competition to the biotic or ecological, and communication to the moral or social.2 Since subsocial factors determine the ecological structure of human communities, quite as they do the distribution of plants and animals, their analysis and measurement was thought to be the special task of the ecologist. Such a view, however, virtually ignored the factor of culture, which differentiates human from animal societies. Because of this, the ecologists now seriously question the importance which was attached to biotic, subsocial, impersonal, natural, and strictly economic factors. They insist that ecological theory must be modified to take cognizance of the fact than human activities are organized within a sociocultural framework, and that competition operates within, rather than without, this system.3 Determination of the relative validity of either the classical or the theory must be made by empirical research. findings of a research project reported in this paper are offered as a contribution toward the resolution of this problem, and in anticipation they may be said to support the latter theory.4 project concerns the residential movement and distribution of New Haven Italians from i890 to 1940, and the relationship of this movement to their incorporation into the social system of the city. New Haven is a predominantly industrial city with a population of i60,605 in 1940, of which approximately three-fifths were immigrants and their children. Italians were the largest of the immigrant groups, with the first and second generations comprising nearly 27 per cent of the city's population. first year in which a sizable number of Italians resided in the city was i890, when they totalled 2,330, or nearly three per cent of the population. New Haven has been divided ecologically by Davie into twenty-five areas based upon social and physical criteria.5 Three of these are the central business, the industrial, and the university (Yale) sections of the city. In addition to these, there are twenty-two natural areas which are primarily residential. These have, in turn, been classified into six major class areas which possess varying degrees of status-value. Area I has the highest status-value, and the other * Paper read at the annual meeting of the American Sociological Society held in New York, December 28-30, I949. ' See the following for expressions of the point of view: Warner E. Gettys, Human Ecology and Social Theory, Social Forces, i8 (May, 1940), 469-476; August B. Hollingshead, A Reexamination of Ecological Theory, Sociology and Social Research, 31 (Jan.-Feb., 1947), 194-204; Walter Firey, Land Use in Central Boston, Cambridge, '947. 2 R. E. Park, Human Ecology, American Journal of Sociology, XLII (July, 1936), I-15; R. E. Park, Reflections on Communication and Culture, American Journal of Sociology, XLIV (Sept., 1938), 187-205. 'Hollingshead, op. cit. 4 See Christen T. Jonassen, Cultural Variables in the Ecology of an Ethnic Group, American Sociological Review, 14 (Feb., I949), 32-4I, for further empirical evidence supporting the theory. 'Maurice R. Davie, The Pattern of Urban Growth, in G. P. Murdock (ed.), Studies in the Science of Society, New Haven, I937, pp. 133-i62.