Population Health as a Fundamental Criterion of Social Ecology
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Population Health as a Fundamental Criterion of Social Ecology Frank W. Young
Accepted: 21 August 2012 Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2012
Abstract This essay elaborates the common insight that ‘‘strong’’ communities respond more successfully to serious threats than ‘‘weak’’ communities and it claims that the successful communities will have better population health rates. It nominates an appropriate measure of population health as the criterion of success, and advances a universally applicable concept of strength, conceptualized as institutionalized problem-solving capacity, based on three components: the application of specialized knowledge, open debate on policy alternatives and mobilization behind reformers and reform movements. The relationship may be compressed into a threat-capacity ratio interaction formula: ph = C/t where ph is a measure of population health, C is problem-solving capacity and t is one or more existential threats. The community is the locus of causality and it is assumed that communities attempt to adapt to threats by problem-solving. The Threat-Capacity dynamic is explained by a combination of neo-Darwinian and neo-Durkheimian theory. Three kinds of applications support its plausibility. Keywords
Population health Communities Threats Problem-solving capacity
1 Introduction A recent research report by Wilson and Taub (2006) echoes the still relevant ‘‘Chicago school’’ of social ecology in describing the frequent ethnic competition in four Chicago neighborhoods. Wilson and Taub draw on Hirschman’s (1970) conceptualization of ‘‘exit, voice and loyalty’’ to describe the individual reactions to threats from encroaching ethnic groups. It is somewhat surprising, then, that in their last chapter the authors look back on all the neighborhoods and suggest a structural formulation: ‘‘In general, when residents perceive that in-migration presents a threat to their neighborhood, they will react either by exiting or by joining forces with other neighbors to resist the change. The stronger the social organization of the neighborhood, the more likely it is that local residents will select F. W. Young (&) Cornell University, 318 Sunnyview Lane, Ithaca, NY 14850, USA e-mail: [email protected]
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the voice (i.e. defensive organization) option and take steps to keep the area stable. Residents are more likely to choose the exit option when they feel that a neighborhood’s resources, including the social organization of the community, are insufficient to stem the tide of ethnic change’’ (2006:177–178). It is probable that many versions of this same insight are scattered through the literature. The problem is how to conceptualize this social ecological proposition. Although borrowed concepts like the ‘‘web of life,’’ ‘‘invasive species,’’ ‘‘succession,’’ ‘‘accommodation’’ and the like are helpful, they are misleading in the social context. Even so, the common insight of threat-capacity interaction can lead to a more precise and general statement: the members of strong communities
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