ABSTRACT

This chapter explores some aspects of the history of one of the key metaphors in sociology, that of ecology, which identifies human societies with the processes of interaction between biological systems and their environment. It presents the origins of the metaphor and its introduction to sociology through the urban and community studies carried out in Chicago during the 1920s. The chapter examines the transfer of the metaphor to the study of work and occupations from the late 1930s onwards, particularly in the work of Everett Hughes and his students. M. Shore's focus on the intellectual environment at Chicago in the years after World War I and through the 1920s may obscure the extent to which the ecological metaphor was founded on social scientific thinking in the first place. The chapter concludes with an argument for the continuing relevance of ecological studies in addressing fundamental sociological questions about the social organization of occupations and the subset that are described as professions.