Beyond the Group: The Implications of Roderick D. McKenzie’s Human Ecology for Reconceptualizing Society and the Social

摘要

Among the many contributions of Roderick D. McKenzie to sociology aretwo ideas which continue to be useful in understanding modern society.First, as the main proponent and theorist of the human ecology of theChicago School, McKenzie offers suggestions for an alternative conceptionof society, one that emphasizes among other things the physical basis of socialrelations. Secondly, McKenzie’s works suggest in various ways that modernsociety is characterized by a growth in physical integration. The firstaspect of this argument is found in his discussion of the centrality of institutionsin the analysis of social relations. The second aspect is his detailed descriptionand analysis of the “great integrated unity” that he called the GreatSociety or World Society. Many decades before sociologists began to writeof “globalization,” McKenzie provides detailed description and extensiveanalysis of global society and many of the issues in the current globalization debate.