ABSTRACT
Today, environmentally motivated geographers have started to look at regions in an integrated way which, in the sense of the human ecological triangle (cf. Steiner, this volume), attempts to relate persons, society and environment to each other. A decentring of geography away from the old exclusive fixation on the spatial aspects of regional phenomena may be the beginning of a tradition of human ecology without a very clearly defined disciplinary orientation. Such a human ecology, if alimented by contributions from other traditional disciplines such as psychology, sociology and economics, can become a model for a flexibilization of structures (the topic of this present contribution, albeit in the realm of social practice) in the domain of science, allowing for a linking of disciplinary paradigms, theories and methodologies and for an interdisciplinary conversation. However, a geographical viewpoint in the traditional sense should survive for a good reason: regions organized in a way that provides for a sufficient degree of self-determination, which in turn enables the developments of social networks and individual identities, are becoming the focus of interest in a world which otherwise tends to globalization and anonymity.
