Since the publication of W. Thomas and F. Znaniecki, “Polish Peasant in Europe and America” in 1918, the arm chair philosophizing has given way to the application of strict scientific logics to sociology. American sociologist in the last half century have devoted increasing attentions to the empirical study of socio-cultural phenomena in the localized area.
Park's suggestive paper on “the City” was the point of departure for many inductive studies undertaken at the University of Chicago, which resulted in the development of human ecology as a new approach to the interpretation of the urban community.
This inductive method formulated many important hypotheses and concepts such as Burgess' together with devices of measurement of social phenomena.
The focus of attention of ecological studies was on localized, territorially delimited social structure and social phenomena. They gave to the distinction between society and community a central position in the conceptual framework of human ecology. Unfortunately this distinction, when used in scientific discourse, had the disadvantage of ambiguity.
Thus the period of burgeoning growth bas given way to a second phase in which sober criticism rather than feverish application is the prevailing note.
The theoretical discussion on human ecology have chiefly centered upon this distinction. Quinn ; Hollingshead, Firey, Gettys, Hawley and Wirth among others made efforts to reexamine the old theories.
Human ecology is unable to exhaust the whole of social life which is a complex interdependent whole. Human ecology provide us with one of the hitherto neglected aspect of the matrix within which social events take place.
It was Wirth's great contribution to the urban community study that he set up an ideal type of urban mode of life which is approached by three interrelated perspectives as an ecological order, as a system of social organization and as social psychological phenomena.
The empirical evidence concerning these studies of the urban way of life confirms the fruitfulness of this approach.
