Competition theory and human ecology
Competition theory and human ecology explore the dynamics of racial and ethnic conflicts, emphasizing that competition for scarce resources rather than inequality or segregation is often at the heart of these tensions. Originating from the work of sociologist Robert Ezra Park, the theory uses ecological metaphors to analyze how diverse groups interact within urban environments. Park posited that as isolated human groups converge in cities, competition can arise, particularly during periods of migration and social change, as seen in historical contexts like the migration of African Americans from the rural South to Northern cities.
The theory highlights that competition is exacerbated when groups sense a shift in their social status, leading to conflict as they vie for jobs and resources. This approach challenges the conventional wisdom that poverty and inequality are primary drivers of conflict, showing instead that desegregation and increased opportunities often intensify competition between groups. Additionally, the theory explains why modern conflicts are frequently organized around racial and ethnic identities, as these identities are reinforced by state policies and societal changes, prompting mobilization along these lines. Researchers employing this framework aim to analyze these relations through a dynamic lens, considering historical changes and their implications for understanding contemporary issues of race and ethnicity.
Competition theory and human ecology
SIGNIFICANCE: The competition theory attempts to explain why and when racial and ethnic conflicts emerge. Competition and changes in status, rather than inequality or segregation, are said to be behind most racial and ethnic conflicts. In addition to offering a model for intergroup relations, these insights have been fruitfully used to explain various specific trends in North American and world history.
The competition and ecology tradition owes its formation to the work of early American sociologist Robert Ezra Park, who described race relations in ecological terms. Plants and animals may thrive in close symbiotic relationships, they may develop and evolve on their own in isolated niches, or they may engage in violent conflict over scarce resources. For Park, modern race relations were largely the result of a process by which human races that had evolved in isolated areas of the world came together, meeting in the urban areas of the modern world economy.
In the ecological theory, different groups compete for relatively scarce resources. However, racial and ethnic conflict also requires a collective sense of racial or ethnic boundaries and definitions that serve to organize competition along racial or ethnic lines. For example, a major migration of a new group into the territory occupied by another can lead to the development of definite ethnic identities on both sides. If sudden competition for scarce resources results, an ethnic conflict is likely.
Migration and Human Ecology
For Park, the city was a human ecological environment where the market brought together different racial or ethnic groups, each determined to satisfy their own needs, sometimes at the expense of others. If the city was a primary location of human ecological struggles, migration and modernization were the engines that drove the process forward.
Park’s particular focus was on African Americans, particularly the process of their migration from the rural South to the urban areas of the North. The brutal waves of lynchings in the South in the late nineteenth century and the explosive race riots in the North in the early twentieth century led to the observation that some of the bitterest conflicts occurred not when slavery was most entrenched but when it was coming apart, and not when inequality between races was most pronounced but when barriers to opportunity for Black people appeared to be weakening.
Park reasoned that prejudice between racial groups is a given, a natural outcome of human psychology. What causes prejudice to turn into pronounced racial and ethnic conflict, he argued, is change in the relative status of groups. According to Park, societies that are relatively static may have severe inequality but still relatively peaceful relations between racial groups. The breakdown of the established social order—for example, the end of American slavery and the erosion of the racial caste system—releases previously latent animosities.
Labor Market Competition
According to sociologist Susan Olzak, the conventional wisdom—that poverty and inequality cause racial and ethnic conflict, while equality of opportunity and desegregation lead to reduced conflict—is not consistent with the historical evidence. The worst inequality has not always produced the most conflict, and the most marginalized groups have often not suffered the most vicious attacks. Instead, Olzak argues, it is the reduction of inequality and segregation that precipitates conflict and protest. This is because desegregation and the expansion of opportunity increase rather than decrease direct economic competition between racial and ethnic groups.
Reduced segregation and expanded opportunities for disadvantaged minorities throw different groups into competition for the same resources in the same way that the immigration of a competing labor force does. In the new urban ecology, for example, African Americans competed with other racial and ethnic groups for jobs and secure niches. This led to what was widely perceived as a zero-sum game in which the improving fortunes of one racial or ethnic group were identified as the cause of declining fortunes for another.
Racial and Ethnic Identities
An interesting question is why modern conflicts are organized primarily around race and ethnicity instead of economic class or other political affiliations. Many theorists of modernization, from the Marxist to the neoclassical tradition, had assumed that ethnic or racial solidarity was a premodern phenomenon that would be replaced by the rise of class identities or other political interest groups. Class-based movements and political parties have emerged in the modern era, but they have not eclipsed ethnic solidarities, movements, and conflicts. As modern societies have seen increased competition for key resources, the resulting conflicts have often demarcated along ethnic or racial lines.
According to sociologist Joane Nagel, the development of the modern state and its attempt to mediate racial or ethnic conflicts have established a political terrain that leads to mobilization along racial and ethnic lines. For example, US civil rights laws encourage people to identify employment discrimination against them as race-based if they want recourse from the government. Thus, laws intended to help minorities serve to strengthen racial and ethnic mobilization through the recognition and formalization of these identities.
Researchers dealing with the competition or human ecology theory have brought methodological advances to the study of racial and ethnic relations. First, they describe racial and ethnic relations in relatively universal terms instead of narrowly concentrating on the unique qualities of American race relations. Second, because of their emphasis on change as the prerequisite for conflict, they insist that theories be tested using data over time. Examining society at a fixed point in time prevents consideration of the dynamics of change and their role in determining the nature of racial and ethnic relations.
Bibliography
Bookman, Milica Z. Ethnic Groups in Motion: Economic Competition and Migration in Multiethnic States. Cass, 2002.
Kirst-Ashman, Karen K. Human Behavior in the Macro Social Environment: An Empowerment Approach to Understanding Communities, Organizations, and Groups. 4th ed., Brooks, 2014.
Kleniewski, Nancy, and Alex Thomas. Cities, Change, and Conflict: A Political Economy of Urban Life. 6th ed., Wadsworth, 2024.
Olzak, Susan. The Dynamics of Ethnic Competition and Conflict. Stanford UP, 1992.
Olzak, Susan, and Joane Nagel, editors. Competitive Ethnic Relations. Academic, 1986.
Park, Robert Ezra. Race and Culture. Free, 1950.
Rohmawati, Irma, and Fitria Maria Ulfha. “Competition Theory in Ecology by Peter A. Abrams, Oxford: Oxford University Press. 2022. Pp. 336. $45.00 (Paperback).” American Journal of Human Biology, vol. 35, no. 10, 2023, doi.org/10.1002/ajhb.23919. Accessed 2 Nov. 2024.