ABSTRACT
MANY QUESTIONS ARE ASKED about communities—questions regarding size and location, shape and appearance, and differences in the work or life of communities in different world regions. To some of these questions the geographers try to find the answers. Perhaps the anthropologists and the economists are also interested. In this chapter we will be primarily interested in the efforts of a relatively new group of scholars, the human ecologists, to understand community life. We must begin, however, with a brief examination of the efforts of geographers to understand the nature of human communities.
