Abstract
The concept of ecology has, over time, become increasingly important as a frame for conducting community interventions. While multiple ecological frameworks have been proposed both within and outside public health, most have drawn on Bronfenbrenner’s work and the concern with multiple levels of the ecological context. The present article presents an ecological metaphor for community intervention developed in community psychology over the past 50 years. This perspective was specifically developed to conduct community research and intervention in the spirit of community development. The article begins with a brief discussion of social problems as “wicked problems” defying preordained and prescribed solutions. It then organizes the presentation of the ecological metaphor around five Cs that, together, provide an overview of the main points of the perspective: contextualist philosophy of science, community as a multilevel concept, culture and diversity as critical community-defining concepts, collaboration as a fundamental part of the ecology of intervention, and commitment (to community over time). Each of these five Cs adds to an appreciation of the differing aspects of the community intervention process as an ecological enterprise. Embedded in the five Cs are four ecological processes drawn from field biology that are metaphorically useful in providing a cognitive map for understanding community and assessing community impact: interdependence, cycling of resources, adaptation, and succession. Together, this ecological perspective both reflects and differs from extant perspectives in public health and, as such, is intended to contribute to furthering ecological thinking and acting more generally in community interventions.
Over time, the development of frameworks used by social and behavioral science for defining and acting on social problems has been changing and becoming more complex. Oakley (2000) traces the history of methods and assumptions to uncover the “laws of nature” and their infusion into a social science directed toward uncovering “laws of society.” These origins included astronomy, natural philosophy, the logic of mathematics as a “tool for describing the ‘laws’ of nature” (Oakley, 2000, p. 102), and the experimental design as the “clincher” of causality (Cartwright & Hardie, 2012). In this history, no differentiation was made between the methods and philosophy of science for discovering the “law of nature” from the “laws of society” (see Oakley, 2000).
Community intervention efforts often reflect this experimental science tradition. For example, the movement toward “evidence-based everything” (Oakley, 2002) has sharpened the focus on conducting research that hopes to find “laws of society” with broad applicability. With respect to community intervention, this perspective has resulted in a rational-technological set of assumptions for dealing with social problems. This is manifested in the “pipeline” (Green, Ottoson, Garcia, & Hiatt, 2009) image from science to practice in which interventions are first developed under controlled conditions and, if deemed effective, are then transported to other contexts, groups, and countries, as in the drug industry (Beutler, 2009).
The more recent history of the social and behavioral sciences has seen the emergence of assumptions about human behavior that (1) differentiate the social and behavioral sciences from “laws of nature” perspective and (2) suggest a more complex appreciation of community intervention than the “pipeline” image. This differentiation is manifested in varied philosophies of science such as constructivism (Gergen, 1985) contextualism (Rosnow & Georgoudi, 1986), feminist theory (Riger, 1992), and critical theory (Nelson & Prilleltensky, 2010). Differences from the pipeline image of community intervention are found in the emergence of community-based participatory research (CBPR; Wallerstein, Duran, Oetzel, & Minkler, 2018) and PAR (Reason & Bradbury, 2005). All these efforts highlight the critical role of meaning, individual agency, and social context in shaping human behavior.
Ecology
One cross-cutting commonality of this larger movement is the emphasis on thinking and acting ecologically. Historically, ecology is “a branch of science concerned with the interrelationships of organisms and their environments” (Merriam-Webster Dictionary). With respect to human communities, ecology emphasizes that behavior is embedded in cultural, social, historical, and political contexts. While early emphasis on human ecology has been attributed to sociologist Robert Park (see Park, 1952), more recent work emerged from differing disciplinary traditions. Within psychology, social psychologist Kurt Lewin (1948, 1951), his student Roger Barker (1968), and developmental psychologist Urie Bronfenbrenner (1977, 1979) provided perspectives for assessing both the contexts of behavior and the individuals in those contexts. In particular, Bronfenbrenner’s description of the individual as embedded in nested systems of the ecological context has been enormously influential.
Within public health, movement toward ecological frameworks has been evident as well. Drawing on Bronfenbrenner, McLeroy, Bibeau, Steckler, and Glanz (1988) outlined five levels of the ecological context affecting behavior: intrapersonal, interpersonal, institutional, community, and policy. Examples are given of possible interventions at each level. Richard, Potvin, Kishchuk, Prlic, and Green (1996) contrast McLeroy’s perspective with two other ecologically based models: the PRECEDE-PROCEED model (Green & Kreuter, 1991) and MATCH (Multilevel Approaches Toward Community Health) (Simons-Morton, Simons-Morton, Parcel, & Bunker, 1988). Further multilevel ecological conceptions of community assessment and intervention are found in Stokols, Allen, and Bellingham (1996) and Hawe (Hawe & Riley, 2005; Hawe, Shiell, & Riley, 2009). In addition, the focus on creating community capacity and health supportive environments (Golden, McLeroy, Green, Earp, & Lieberman, 2015; Goodman, Wandersman, Chinman, Imm, & Morrisey, 1996; Hawe, Noort, King, & Jordens, 1997; Stokols, Grzywacz, McMahan, & Phillips, 2003) is likewise premised on ecological thinking and acting.
The purpose here is to outline an alternative ecological perspective on community intervention expressly developed in community psychology as a frame for working with local community groups and organizations on issues of community relevance. It shares a number of assumptions of public health perspectives, such as an emphasis on multiple levels of ecological influence on behavior and concern with developing community capacity as a central intervention goal. However, it also reflects assumptions about the difference between natural and social science phenomena, concepts for understanding the local community context, a focus on community development as the broad intervention goal, and a deep appreciation for the role of inclusive relational processes and structures in community intervention. While this perspective is mentioned in public health literature (e.g., Hawe & Riley, 2005; Richard, Gauvin, & Raine, 2011), the intent here is to provide an integrative overview of the perspective and, in so doing, contribute to the ongoing conversation about ecology as a frame for enacting community change.
We begin with a brief discussion of the assumed nature of the social problems addressed by an ecological perspective and the presumed difference from problems addressed in the natural sciences. We begin here because how problems are framed shapes how problems are addressed (Caplan & Nelson, 1973).
Social Problems as Wicked Problems
Forty-five years ago, writing from an urban planning perspective, Rittel and Webber (1973) differentiated the problems of social and natural sciences, suggesting that natural sciences are more likely to address “tame” problems that are definable, are separable, and may have findable solutions. Social sciences, however, often address “wicked problems” that are complex, intractable, unpredictable, and open-ended. Social problems differ in their degree of “wickedness” (Head & Alford, 2015), becoming increasingly “wicked” to the degree that neither the problem definition nor the solution is agreed upon. Indeed, having diverse groups arrive at a consensual definition of what constitutes the problem is itself the first problem to solve. While the “tame-wicked” distinction may be critiqued as overly simplistic, for purposes of the present article, a “wicked problems” perspective provides a useful heuristic for conceptualizing and implementing community interventions, The recent spate of vastly different ideas about how to make U.S. schools safer provides a current example of “wickedness,” with each single “solution” raising the possibility of different economic, political, and institutional ripple effects.
Rittel and Webber (1973) assert that one cannot understand a wicked problem without understanding its context and that each wicked problem is essentially unique in that it may contain contextual particulars not found in other potentially similar efforts to deal with a similar problem. Thus, “part of the art of dealing with wicked problems is the art of not knowing too early which type of solution to apply” (p. 164). Furthermore, the consequences of any specific solution to a “wicked problem” may ripple through the context over an indefinite period of time and have repercussions that outweigh benefits.
Finally, because the definition of and the proposed solution to many social problems rest on value issues, vested interests, and diverse perspectives, gathering more scientific data is by itself not sufficient. Rather, developing an agreed on understanding of the “wicked problem” rests on identifying, engaging, and incorporating local values, perspectives, and interests into an “argumentative process in the course of which an image of the problem and of the solution emerges gradually among the participants” (Rittel & Webber, 1973, p. 162).
In all these ways, a “wicked” framing of social problems promotes a multilevel understanding of contributors to local community problems, including how persistent structural contributions such as poverty, racism, sexism, and homophobia are reflected in and contribute to the “wicked problems” confronting communities. Most important, it underscores the importance of thinking collaboratively and systemically about social problems. How each of these is reflected in an ecological perspective is outlined below.
An Ecological Perspective in Community Psychology
At roughly the same historical moment when the “wicked problems” perspective was emerging, an ecological perspective was developing in community psychology congruent with many of the “wicked problems” assumptions and conclusions. The perspective was initially articulated by James Kelly (1966, 1968, 1970, 1971a, 1971b) and subsequently elaborated by Kelly and colleagues (Kelly, 2006; Kingry-Westergaard & Kelly, 1990; Trickett, 2005, 2009; Trickett & Birman, 1989; Trickett, Kelly, & Todd, 1972; Trickett, Kelly, & Vincent, 1985)
Key Concepts, Processes, and Goals of the Ecological Perspective
From its outset, the ecological perspective in community psychology intended to integrate research and action in the service of community-level impact. The community psychology goal was not to do better science per se but to develop scientific knowledge while simultaneously contributing to the local social good (Bennett et al., 1966). As such, scientific knowledge and local impact were not antithetical but mutually reinforcing. Ecology here developed over time as a “way of thinking,” a world view, rather than a specific theory of a particular phenomenon. Here, its key concepts, processes, and goals are organized around five Cs: Contextualism, Community, Culture, Collaboration, and Commitment.
Contextualist Philosophy of Science
The ecological perspective described here reflects a contextualist philosophy of science (Kingry-Westergaard & Kelly, 1990; Tebes, 2005) that provides a social science alternative to what Mosjet (2009) calls the “standard practical philosophy of science” flowing from the natural sciences.
Contextualism underscores the idea that human activity . . . is rigorously situated within a sociohistorical and cultural context of meanings and relationships. Like a message that makes sense only in terms of the total context in which it occurs, human actions are embedded in a context of time, space, culture, and the local tacit rules of conduct . . . To unlock the mysteries of what makes an event meaningful we must consider, via methodological and theoretical pluralism, the wider context that “allows” or “invites” the occurrence of that event and renders it socially intelligible. (Rosnow & Georgoudi, 1986, p. 4)
Several specific implications of a contextualist perspective contribute to an ecology of community intervention. Perhaps most obvious is the focus on understanding local context in order to understand behavior in that context. Here, community context is not a background within which an intervention occurs but is rather the focus of understanding. Furthermore, knowledge about the community context and the framing of both local issues and solutions is presumed to be perspectival, reflecting diverse identities, roles, interests, and hopes of those involved. Accessing such diverse perspectives deserves explicit acknowledgment.
A contextualist perspective also suggests caution about the presumed generalizability of “what we know” about particular phenomena across time, place, and groups of people. McGuire (1983), for example, suggests that from a contextualist perspective, all hypotheses are potentially true, even contradictory ones. The task is to uncover the range of contexts in which they hold. To heighten the contextual focus, the question of generalizability becomes, “Under what circumstances should these findings NOT be expected to generalize?”
With respect to method, Mjoset (2009) suggests that, rather than searching for broad-based “laws of society,” contextualist perspectives are more closely aligned with case study methodology manifested in the intense investigation of specific instances that differ in substance and context. As Cronbach (1986) stated, “each piece of research should be an effort to give an unimpeachable and reasonably full account of events in a time, place, and context, (and) “that to advocate pluralistic tolerance of alternative accounts is in no way to advocate tender-mindedness” (p. 104).
Kingry-Westergaard and Kelly (1990) discuss how contextualism underlies an ecological perspective. They argue for making explicit the philosophical assumptions underlying community research and intervention. Such an acknowledgement helps avoid a narrowly focused view of science that prioritizes method over the relevance of method to context and problem. They further emphasize the importance of understanding context in terms of its systemic properties.
Examining the integration and interconnection of the many functional parts of a given system can provide the researcher with a more robust and ecologically valid interpretation or representation of an individual and the system(s) within which the person is embedded. (p. 25)
Such a social construction of ecological knowledge is achieved through a collaborative work style that “focuses on a shared understanding of the operation of social structures, roles, and norms as they occur in given contexts” (p. 29). This, in turn, mandates an explicit recognition of sociopolitical parameters, agendas, and perspectival frames of references of participants. The contextualist world view is reflected in the following concepts, processes, and goals.
Community Development as a Superordinate Goal
Community Development: Increasing Community Resources
From an ecological perspective, the preferred goals of intervention involve changing local ecology by increasing community resources and capacity to deal with current problems and future issues. The question shifts from “how can we assess existing capacity to accept, conduct, and maintain a specific intervention?” to “what is the capacity of the intervention resource to contribute to indigenous community development?” (Van Willigen, 2005, cited in Schensul, 2009).
Indications of community development cut across levels and segments of the local ecological context. Such outcomes may be reflected in increased organizational capacity to cope with an identified health issue; they may be manifested in the development of local infrastructure, personal and organizational networks, local norms, or new power relations among community organizations. They may be seen in the empowerment of community participants to engage in new community betterment efforts or in policy changes resulting in new community control of local resources. “Creating resources for current and future problem-solving thus constitutes the ultimate definition of community readiness and the bedrock criterion for assessing intervention impact and sustainability” (Trickett, 2009, p. 260). Several foci support this community development goal.
The Context of Specific Community Issues: Developing a Multilevel Conception of Community Life
Most fundamental to an ecological perspective is the importance of developing a rich and nuanced conception of the community(ies) involved in the intervention(s). While community differences, researcher style, nature of issue involved, resources, and existing community partnerships all affect the specifics of “getting to know the community,” the ecological perspective provides a cognitive map or “way of thinking” about the community. This perspective has its origins in field biology, the study of biological communities, not individual plants (Kelly, 1968). Such origins emphasize the community as level of analysis, a naturalistic rather than experimental research tradition, and processes characterizing biological communities that can serve as heuristic metaphors for understanding human communities. Kelly (1968) articulated four such ecological processes: interdependence, cycling of resources, adaptation, and succession. Each process focuses on differing aspects of the community and individual life in community context.
Principle 1: Interdependence
The interdependence principle is the fundamental premise of ecosystems theory, that there is reciprocity between structures and functions of social systems and interconnectedness among their parts. This systems theory perspective has been elaborately described with respect to human development by Bronfenbrenner (1977, 1979, 2005). With respect to community intervention, the interdependence principle adopts an “events in systems” (Hawe et al., 2009, p. 267) perspective in which intervention activities disrupt existing system functioning and creates ripples across varied segments of the community (Trickett & Beehler, 2017). Such ripples can be anticipated or unanticipated, occur at multiple levels of analysis, and be evident in either/both the short or/and the long term. They may yield positive or negative effects in other parts of the system.
More specifically, the interdependence principle suggests the importance of developing intervention feedback loops that can both anticipate and track how any proposed set of intervention activities may affect various community systems (Hirsch, Levine, & Miller, 2007). This broadening of the search for community effects of intervention activities shifts the level of analysis of impact beyond individual-level outcomes of specific programs. As Sterman’s (2006) paper on complexity and systems thinking in community interventions reminds us, “There are no side effects (of community interventions)—just effects . . . ‘Side effects’ are not a feature of reality, but a sign that the boundaries of our mental models are too narrow, our time horizons too short” (p. 505).
Principle 2: Cycling of Resources
In field biology, this principle addresses how, within a defined ecosystem, resources related to survival, growth, and change of an ecosystem are defined, distributed, conserved, and depleted. Applied to intervention in human communities, it focuses on the strengths or resources of a community that can be brought to bear on local problem solving and how intervention activities affect local resources. The identification, and mobilization, of community resources is a primary task for the development of interventions striving for community-level impact.
Elsewhere (Trickett et al., 1985), we have suggested that the resource concept includes not only individuals with specific skills, knowledge, commitments, and networks but also social settings and community events (planned and unplanned). These resources, cutting across differing levels of community ecology, may be readily identifiable or may become evident only after the intervention process has generated some visibility and trust in the community. They may be found in formal roles in organizations or among “natural helpers” in the community or those respected for their traditional roles, such as Elders in Native American communities. Kretzmann, McKnight, and Puntenney’s (2005) work on participatory community asset mapping provides one template for assessing local resources and how they may change as a function of intervention activities.
Principle 3: Adaptation
An ecological perspective draws attention to the adaptive demands of communities for successfully negotiating community life, be it of individuals, groups, or organizations. Elsewhere (Trickettt & Birman, 1989), we suggest that these demands are expressed in social structures, social norms, attitudes of key opinion leaders, and policies influencing options and access to opportunities. Included here is an appreciation of how macro influences such as racism or homophobia may be manifested in local structures, norms, attitudes, and policies and how these influences shape adaptive behavior.
On the individual level, the adaptation principle suggests an “ecology of lives” perspective that focuses on individual meaning making of the local context, its issues, and its potential for improvement. “Adaptation” does not necessarily imply “adjustment” to or acceptance of current contextual conditions. Rather, it suggests an active coping process on the part of individuals, groups, and organizations in assessing and responding to an ever-changing local ecosystem. This distinction between “adaptation” and “adjustment” reflects Martin Luther King’s (1968) reminder of the importance of remaining “maladjusted” with respect to certain aspects of U.S. culture, such as racism. Thus, on the individual level, the adaptation principle reinforces the value of understanding behavior “from the inside out” and potentially as a form of resistance to “adjustment,” given available options.
Principle 4: Succession
In field biology, one area of inquiry is how biological communities evolve and replace themselves with more complex communities. Applied to human communities, the time dimension locates any historical moment in the context of both community history and hopes for the future. This history may range from macro influences such as the implicit colonizing role of prior research in communities of color to more local questions about how changing community composition presents new challenges for local institutions to provide relevant services. It may involve inquiry about what efforts community organizations or community organizers have previously made to deal with the current identified problem, what did and did not work, and what individuals and groups were involved. The overall concern is to understand how current efforts are framed by prior local history.
The future orientation of the succession principle instigates an effort to identify how any specific intervention coincides with long-range community goals and aspirations. Intervention processes and goals that reflect existing hopes for community betterment are more likely to generate local energy, be supported over time, and provide grist for commitment to future efforts. Hence, the succession principle underscores the time dimension of communities both in terms of historical factors that created or perpetuated current community issues and hopes for further change in the future.
These ecological processes have been elaborated elsewhere (Kelly, 1966, 1979, 2006; Trickett, 2005; Trickett & Birman, 1989) and have been applied to various social issues such as HIV/AIDS (Trickett, 2002; Trickett & Pequegnat, 2005), refugee adolescent adaptation (Birman & Simon, 2014), health promotion (Richard et al., 2011), the development of indigenous community leaders (Tandon, Kelly, & Mock, 2001), and prevention more generally (Kelly, 1986). The overall intent is to provide an ever-evolving cognitive map for understanding various aspects of the community where the intervention work occurs, how varied aspects of local ecology may contribute to the issue, where intervention leverage points may lie, and what resources are available and needed to improve the community situation.
Culture and Diversity Are Core to Ecological Thinking
Culture and Diversity
The concepts of culture and diversity are firmly rooted in ecological thinking about the community context (Kelly, 1971; Trickett, 2009; Trickett et al., 1985; Trickett, Watts, & Birman, 1993). While many differing definitions of culture exist, (Lonner & Malpass, 1994), culture is generally viewed as a collective concept arising from conditions, shared experiences, traditions, and lifeways that are common to a group of people. It is reflected in deep-seated epistemologies, values, and assumptions that shape how people understand phenomena, engage in social contexts, and go about daily activities (Kirmayer, 2012). Diversity likewise has multiple meanings, but it directs attention to how larger cultural contexts differentiate groups within the culture, often, though not always, in marginalizing and discriminatory ways on the basis of identity characteristics such as gender, race, LGBTQ, social class, and disability.
The ecological perspective views culture and diversity as reflecting deep, pervasive, and encompassing ways of being-in-the-world way rather than as an add-on or an adaptation of basic processes of presumed generalizability across people, time, and place. With regard to community intervention, diverse groups may bring differing world views to local problem-solving processes; they may be integrated into differing social and political networks of potentially relevant resources inside the community and out; and they may have distinct insider perspectives on how any proposed set of intervention activities may affect those they represent.
Science as Cultural Practice: Community Intervention as Intercultural Practice
The concept of culture is also useful for viewing scientific inquiry (Trickett, 2009). It is not uncommon, particularly among those operating from a CBPR, critical theory, or feminist perspective, to address how characteristics and positionality of the community interventionist may affect the community intervention process. However, we also have positionality as scientists that may place constraints on what we can and believe we should do (Kuhn, 1996; Wittgenstein, 1953) in the service of science. In this sense, community intervention may be viewed as an intercultural encounter between the culture(s) of science and the culture(s) of communities.
Collaboration: The Intervention Relationship Is Part of the Ecology Too!!
An ecological perspective explicitly includes the relationship between the intervention team and community groups in the ecology of the intervention. As such, it is seen as affecting both intervention processes and outcomes and theorizing the structures and functions of the collaborative process becomes a central ecological focus (Trickett & Espino, 2004). From an ecological perspective, there are many complementary rationales for working collaboratively (Kelly, 1986). The spirit of collaboration rests on an appreciation of the importance of local empowerment processes for community capacity development. It acknowledges the value of and respect for local knowledge and signals an awareness of the potential limitations of scientific knowledge. Conceptually, the inclusion of multiple perspectives in problem formulation and solution is likely to result in a richer and more comprehensive understanding of local ecology and where to direct change efforts. Scientifically, the development of trusting relationships may increase the range and validity of local knowledge provided by community participants (Argyris, 1970) and, pragmatically, collaboration may increase local commitment in sustaining ongoing community change efforts and initiating others.
With respect to the enactment of collaboration, however, the devil is in the details. Elsewhere, I have distinguished two differing meanings of collaboration in descriptions of CBPR research: one as a means to an end defined by outside researchers and the other as an aspirational world view where both means and ends are up for discussion, mutual learning, negotiation, and compromise (Trickett, 2012). Collaboration from an ecological perspective reflects the aspirational world view of CBPR.
While the potential benefits of collaboration are compelling, two contextual provisos are important. First, collaboration is fraught with difficulties. It is time and resource intensive for both interventionists and community members; it necessarily involves the surfacing and resolving of conflict among participating individuals and groups because of divergent interests, values, histories, roles, and scarce resources. Collaboration may also inadvertently increase interorganizational tensions (Neal, 2014) that, in turn, can undermine intervention processes and goals (Campbell, 2003).
Second, collaborations occur in culturally diverse contexts that affect the processes, goals and possibilities of collaboration. As such, there are no context-free “best ways” to collaborate. For example, in their health promotion work in a Hutterite community in the United States, Brunt, Lindsey, and Hopkinson (1997) suggest that viewing empowerment as a “grassroots, bottom up, emancipatory process” (p. 20) is antithetical to a Hutterite world view that “values (a) communalism, (b) respect for hierarchical decision-making, and (c) strict adherence to a traditional code of conduct, values, and beliefs” (p. 17). Contrasting their experience with Friere’s emancipatory approach, they suggest that Hutterite deference to hierarchy “rendered the grass-roots approach, which is ideally predicated on widespread community participation, largely ineffective” (p. 25).
In sum, an ecological perspective explicitly includes collaborative relationships as part of the ecology of community interventions that affect the processes and outcomes of interventions striving for community impact. Collaboration is not seen as a precondition for conducting the “real work” of the intervention, the “program” itself.
Commitment: “Intervention Readiness” to Be a Community Resource
The concept of “community readiness” has evolved to describe the degree to which communities have the requisite resources and commitment to engage in a specified community intervention process (Edwards, Jumper-Thurman, Plested, & Swanson, 2000). The ecological perspective advocated here adopts the complementary notion of “intervention readiness” to highlight the degree to which community intervention researchers demonstrate commitment, flexibility, and responsiveness to community ecology over time. The intervention question becomes, “How can the intervention and intervention team serve as a resource for indigenous community development over time?”
The fundamental response to this question is embedded in the specifics of the ecological perspective outlined above describing how any specific set of intervention activities are developed, implemented, and evaluated. This includes iterative activities such as community assessment, resource identification, the development of collaborative relationships, anticipating and tracking community ripples, and evaluating the indicants of community resource development. Embedded in the professional life style of an ecologically oriented intervention team is allocation of time, resources, and professional commitment necessary to carry out such tasks.
In addition, however, there are many ways in which the intervention team can serve as informal resources for local individuals and community settings outside their “formal project role.” Outside researchers often have information resources relevant to the concerns of community organizations; they know how to aid in grant writing; they may have connections to local academic settings where students may be recruited for service-learning opportunities and/or networks of other professionals who may be of help in particular situations. The potential of all such informal activities becomes clearer as the intervention team and community get to know each other better and project-related trust deepens and personalizes conversations about ongoing issues. Such activities imply an expanded role definition of outside professionals and a willingness to respond to local events and circumstances.
In addition, community commitment involves an effort to embed the quick fix (a specific program of activities) in the long haul (community development). Just as creating community ripples is embedded in any discrete intervention project, discrete projects/activities can both illuminate and contribute to subsequent work building on them. This building may be simulated by new knowledge about the community unearthed in conducting a specific project; it may involve an outgrowth of new network connections created by project participation; or it may involve a commitment to work further on additional projects over time (see Jagosh et al., 2015). But it involves some combination of individual and/or institutional commitment to the community that transcends specific projects. For example, the Institute for Community Research in Hartford, Connecticut (Singer & Weeks, 2005), and the Center for Alaska Native Health Research in Fairbanks, Alaska (Mohatt et al., 2004), have worked with the same communities for decades.
Summary
Over time, an ecological perspective on community research and intervention has developed in community psychology that embeds specific community intervention programs or projects in the longer range goal of community development. The ecological perspective can be summarized as prioritizing five Cs: Contextualism, Community, Culture, Collaboration, and Commitment. Together, they provide both concepts and values relevant to a community development goal. In addition, the four ecological processes of interdependence, cycling of resources, adaptation, and succession shape the development of the cognitive road map of the context and how intervention may affect it.
The ecological perspective outlined above was not developed as a theory with specific testable hypotheses and constructs that have a specified and testable relationship with one another. Rather, it evolved as a world view for what concepts to consider, what questions to ask, who to involve, and what goals to pursue in community intervention and change. Its intent is to inform how to think about the ways in which community interventions can contribute to ongoing community resources.
With this perspective come limitations in need of further elaboration. In responding to local exigencies, for example, it resists formulaic prescriptions in favor of improvisation and emerging understandings of where and how to proceed. Many issues, such as the development of collaborations, evolve differently in different social and cultural communities over time. While clearly not a “one size fits all” perspective, it does not pin down how many sizes there might be. In short, it presumes a different, complex, and less predictable world than one consistent with the extension of a natural sciences frame. Furthermore, going for the long haul necessitates significant time and energy resources and an expanded and time-consuming professional role. As Stokols et al. (1996) stated many years ago, the complexity and demands of ecological thinking may act as a constraint on its use.
Finally, in principle, the scientific preference for parsimony in explanations—“Occam’s razor”—remains persuasive; one should not assume a complex notion of the world when a simpler one will do. The ecological perspective reflected in this article emerged as a reaction to the perceived limitations of world views emphasizing individual-level theories of behavior to the neglect of contextual factors, including structural issues, that contribute to health and well-being. In this spirit, ecology represents an effort to approach community intervention mindful of Einstein’s observation (paraphrased) that “a theory should be as simple as possible but no simpler.”
Footnotes
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.