Ecology-Sociological Viewpoint and Community Theory An exchange between urban sociology and regionalism

• Published in: Japanese Sociological Review Vol. 32; no. 1; pp. 47 - 63
• Main Author: Sonobe, Masahisa
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English; Japanese
• Published: The Japan Sociological Society 30.06.1981
• ISSN: 0021-5414; 1884-2755
• DOI: 10.4057/jsr.32.47

Some economic approaches to environmental and resource problems have been radically tried by means of the “Broad Sense Economics” or “Regionalism” in response to the present situation that such problems are becoming more serious. However, little positive efforts in tackling such problems has been seen in the field of sociology. In this article, the propositions of “Broad Sense Economics” or “Regionalism” are divided into the following two aspects. (1) The conversion of the social scientific viewpoint ; (2) Practical social organization. The main purpose of this paper is to examine and develop the former from an urban community study standpoint and try to construct an ecology-sociological approach. By this ecology-sociological approach we focus our analysis of sociological phenomena on the interaction between human action and ecosystem. By means of this approach, we are able to build the theory from community life which is subject to limited resources for human life and propose a new concept of community, that is, “ecology-sociological community” which is different from traditional urban community. This new concept is made up of the following four requisites ; (1) common control on the resources for human life, (2) self-sustaining social relationship, (3) fixed appropriate technology, and (4) inclusiveness of membership.