Germain (1973) introduced an ecological metaphor as a perspective for
practice in social casework more than 20 years ago. Despite social work's
historical commitment to the person-in-environment, most direct practice
had not gone beyond the individual's internal processes and the family's
interpersonal processes. Attention to physical and social environments
and culture, and to their reciprocal relationships with people, was rare.
This inattention was due mainly to the lack of available concepts about
environments and culture and how they affect and are affected by human
development and functioning.
Most if not all work with the environment had been limited to securing
information about clients from family members, landlords, former employers,
friends, and neighbors and to providing financial aid and services such
as foster care. As important as social provision is, physical and social
environments also must be understood and worked with as people interact
with them. (Stein and Cloward, 1959, made a notable early effort to fill
the environment gap.) Earth Day 1965 highlighted the environment as more
than a static setting in which people's lives are played out, and concepts
from ecology gradually came to the fore, supplementing the related work
of Bartlett (1970) and Gordon (1969).
Ecology, the biological science that studies organism–environment relations, offered concepts of these relations that were less abstract than those offered by systems theories and closer to common human experience. Used metaphorically, the concepts could enable a practitioner and a client to keep a simultaneous focus on person and environment and on their reciprocal relationship. Hence, certain concepts have been singled out as appropriate for social work and congruent with its purpose. They hold the promise of extending social workers' understanding of the interacting personal, environmental, and cultural factors involved in complicated troubled situations and of increasing the quality of help offered to clients to modify their situations. Practice principles derived from the concepts are aimed at promoting individual and family health, growth, and satisfying social functioning.
The conceptual framework of the ecological perspective (Germain, 1979) was later elaborated and refined (Germain & Gitterman, 1987). As time passed, it became clear that the capacity of ecological concepts to implement social work's commitment to the person and the environment was helpful not only in practice with individuals, families, groups, and organizations but also with communities and in political advocacy (Germain & Gitterman, in press). The first part of this entry reviews the original concepts and their further refinement and describes in detail newly added concepts of coercive power, exploitative power, and “life courses.” The second part briefly describes the Life Model practice approach that is derived from the ecological concepts.
THEORETICAL FOUNDATIONS
The ecological perspective makes clear the need to view people and environments as a unitary system within a particular cultural and historic context. Both person and environment can be fully understood only in terms of their relationship, in which each continually influences the other within a particular context. Hence, all concepts derived from the ecological metaphor refer not to environment alone or person alone; rather, each concept expresses a particular person:environment relationship, whether it is positive, negative, or neutral. (In accord with the unitary view, person:environment relationships are designated by a colon, replacing the traditional hyphen, which visually fractures their connection.)
Another aspect of the ecological perspective is “ecological thinking,” a mode of thought that differs markedly from linear thinking. The latter can explain some simple phenomena (for example, John drops a glass on a tile floor, causing it to break, while he remains unchanged). Ecological thinking can explain complex human phenomena, such as those that enter the social work domain. Ecological thinking examines exchanges between A and B, for example, that shape, influence, or change both over time. A acts, which leads to a change in B, whereupon the change in B elicits a change in A that in turn changes B, which then changes or otherwise influences A, and so on. The process is further complicated by the fact that other variables are usually operating at the same time.
In contrast, linear thinking emphasizes that A causes an effect that changes B at a certain point in time, while A remains unchanged. Ecological thinking is less concerned with cause and more concerned with the consequences of exchanges between A and B and how to help modify maladaptive exchanges. Instead of valuing prediction based on simplistic cause and effect, ecological thinking embraces indeterminacy in complex human phenomena. The original ecological concepts, now refined, include the following.
Person:environment fit
Person:environment fit is the actual fit between an individual's or
a collective group's needs, rights, goals, and capacities and the qualities
and operations of their physical and social environments within particular
cultural and historical contexts. Hence, for the person and environment,
the fit might be favorable, minimally adequate, or unfavorable. When it
is favorable or even minimally adequate, it represents a state of relative
“adaptedness” (Dubos, 1978), which promotes continued development and satisfying
social functioning and sustains or enhances the environment. Adaptedness
reflects generally positive person:environment exchanges over time. It
is never fixed but shifts in accord with shifts in reciprocal exchanges.
When exchanges over time are generally negative, development, health, and
social functioning might be impaired and the environment could be damaged.
Adaptations
Adaptations are continuous, change-oriented, cognitive, sensory–perceptual,
and behavioral processes people use to sustain or raise the level of fit
between themselves and their environment. Adaptations include actions to
change the environment (including moving to new environments), or people
themselves, or both, and then adapting to those changes and changes made
by the environment (such as natural disasters or new social expectations)
in a never-ending process.
Life stressors
Life stressors are generated by critical life issues that people perceive
as exceeding their personal and environmental resources for managing them.
Life stressors include difficult social or developmental transitions, traumatic
life events, and any other life issues that disturb the existing fit. Poverty
and oppression are among critical life issues that not only make other
life stressors difficult to manage but often create more stressors than
are suffered by other groups.
Life stressors and challenges differ in meaning and emotional tone. A stressor represents serious harm or loss and is associated with a sense of being in jeopardy. A challenge is experienced as an opportunity for growth and is associated with positive feelings of anticipated mastery and zestful struggle (Lazarus, 1980; Lazarus & Folkman, 1984). Depending on personal, environmental, and cultural differences, some people might experience a disruptive life issue as a stressor, whereas others experience the same issue as a challenge. This latter group is not likely to seek social work services unless anticipated mastery fails to materialize.
Stress
Stress is the internal response to a life stressor and is characterized
by troubled emotional or physiological states, or both. Associated negative
feelings may include anxiety, guilt, anger, fear, depression, helplessness,
or despair and are usually accompanied by lowered levels of relatedness,
sense of competence, self-esteem, and self-direction. On the one hand,
prolonged stress, together with ineffective coping and personal vulnerability,
can lead to physiological, emotional, or social dysfunction. On the other
hand, challenge may stir up periodic anxiety, but the person continues
to feel hopeful and confident and maintains relatedness, a sense of competence,
self-esteem, and self-direction.
Coping measures
Coping measures are special behaviors, often novel, that are devised
to handle the demands posed by the life stressor. They include efforts
to regulate immobilizing, negative feelings and to engage in effective
problem solving as required by the particular life stressor. Successful
coping depends on various environmental and personal resources. It frequently
raises the level of fit by improving the quality of person:environment
exchanges and attaining higher levels of relatedness, competence, self-esteem,
and self-direction.
The last four attributes are outcomes of adaptive exchanges between the person and past and current environments. They are relatively free of cultural bias, although each may be expressed differently in different cultures.
Relatedness
Relatedness refers to attachments, friendships, positive kin relationships,
and a sense of belonging to a supportive social network. The concept of
relatedness is based in part on Bowlby's (1973) attachment theory, which
states that attachment is an innate capacity of human beings. It was built
into the genetic structure of humans because of its survival value in the
evolutionary environment. Relatedness is also based on ideas about emotional
and social loneliness and isolation (Weiss, 1973, 1982), social network
theory (for example, Gottleib, 1986), mutual aid groups (Gitterman &
Shulman, 1993), and ideas about relatedness to the natural world (for example,
Searles, 1960), including responsible stewardship and the use of pets,
gardening, camping, and wilderness experiences (for example, Germain, 1991).
Competence
Competence assumes that all organisms are innately motivated to affect
their environment in order to survive (White, 1959). This motivation, most
highly developed in human beings, is termed “effectance.” Opportunities
for effective action must be available in the environment from infancy
to old age for the development and sustainment of a sense of one's efficacy.
Accumulated experiences of efficacy lead to a sense of competence. This
is an important hypothesis for social workers, because it suggests that
motivation to be effective in the environment can be mobilized even if
life circumstances have dampened this motivation. Although we do not yet
have the knowledge and skills to help all individuals in all situations
to mobilize their competence motivation, it is nevertheless possible in
many situations for social workers and clients to devise opportunities
for purposive and effective action to improve elements of environments
or the person's exchanges with them, however modest.
Self-esteem
Self-esteem is the most important part of self-concept; it represents
the extent to which one feels competent, respected, and worthy. Hence,
it significantly influences human thinking and behavior. A high level of
self-esteem is intrinsically satisfying and pleasurable. It is particularly
important in childhood and adolescence but continues to develop and even
to change in adulthood. Low self-esteem reflects a lack of respect for
oneself and feelings that one is inadequate, inferior, unlovable, and unworthy.
It is often associated with depression.
Self-direction
Self-direction is the capacity to take some degree of control over
one's life and to accept responsibility for one's decisions and actions
while simultaneously respecting the rights and needs of others. This capacity
must be supported from infancy to old age through opportunities from the
environment that enable a person to make age- and health-appropriate decisions
and take purposive action. Issues of power and powerlessness are critical
to self-direction. People's life circumstances may be such that few options
exist in their environment, so personal choice and decisions are meaningless.
If people have no control over undesirable life events or financial security
(this is most common among poor and oppressed people), then self-direction
is threatened. Powerlessness is a cruel and inhumane life condition, because
people who are powerless are apt to suffer many more disruptive life stressors
with long-term consequences than the rest of the population.
Habitat and niche
Habitat and niche further delineate the nature of physical and social
environments and are particularly helpful ideas in work with communities
(Germain, 1985). In ecology, habitat refers to places where the organism
can be found, such as nesting places, home ranges, and territories. Metaphorically,
people's habitats include dwelling places; physical layouts of urban and
rural communities; physical settings of schools, workplaces, hospitals,
social agencies, shopping areas, and religious structures; and parks and
other amenities. Human habitats evoke spatial and temporal behaviors (Germain,
1976, 1978) that help shape and color social environments, and are also
patterned by personality, culture, age, gender, socioeconomic status, and
experience. Such behaviors serve to regulate social distance, intimacy,
privacy, and other interpersonal processes in family, group, community,
and organizational life.
In ecology, niche refers to the position occupied by a species within a biotic community—the species's place in the web of life. Used metaphorically, niche refers to the status occupied by an individual or family in the social structure of a community. In the United States alone, millions of children and adults are forced to occupy community niches that do not support human rights, needs, and aspirations—often because of color, ethnicity, gender, age, poverty, sexual orientation, or physical or mental states. Many communities are studded with marginal, stigmatized, and destructive niches that denigrate human beings, such as “homeless,” “old woman,” “gay” or “lesbian,” “project tenant,” “school dropout,” “person with AIDS,” “migrant worker,” “welfare mother,” “hard-core unemployed,” “addict” or “ex-addict,” “mentally retarded,” “mentally ill,” “physically disabled,” and so on. The existence of oppressive niches is related to issues of power.
In addition to social workers in the areas cited in the 1987 Encyclopedia of Social Work (Minahan, 1987), the following social workers are among those who have applied an ecological perspective in certain areas: social work research (Carlson, 1991; Coulton, 1981; Patterson, Memmott, Brennan, & Germain, 1992), social work education (Libassi & Maluccio, 1982), human development (Germain, 1991), and practice issues (Allen-Meares, Washington, & Welsh, 1986; Coulton, 1981; Cox, 1992; Early, 1992; Freeman, 1984; Gitterman, 1991; Guterman & Blythe, 1986; Howard & Johnson, 1985; James & Studs, 1988; Kelley, McKay, & Nelson, 1985; Lee, 1989, 1994; Milner, 1987; Rothman, 1994; Simon, 1994; Wells, Singer, & Polgar, 1986).
NEWLY ADDED ECOLOGICAL CONCEPTS
Exploitative power
Exploitative power of dominant groups leads to technological pollution
of our air, food, water, soils, and oceans and the increasing presence
of toxic chemicals and hazardous wastes in dwellings, schools, workplaces,
and communities. Exploitative and coercive power and technological and
social pollutions are major stressors that afflict the entire U.S. population,
but their burden rests most heavily on vulnerable and powerless groups.
Abuses of power express negative person: environment relationships in which
the social order permits some people to inflict grave injustices and suffering
on others.
Life course
Life course conceives biopsychosocial development as consisting of
nonuniform, indeterminate pathways of development from birth to old age
within diverse environments, cultures, and historical eras. It supplants
traditional life cycle models in which so-called life stages are assumed
to be universal, fixed, sequential, and predictable. However, stage models
ignore the fact that the stages and their tasks originated in the social
norms of a particular society at a particular time and therefore are culture-bound
and time-bound. Longitudinal studies of children's development (for example,
Offer, Ostrov, Howard, & Atkinson, 1988; Rutter, 1979; Thomas, 1975,
1981) reveal the flexibility of development and the potential for change,
even in children faced with severe physical challenges (for example, Chess,
Fernandez, & Korn, 1980). These researchers and others believe that
stage models overlook the complex interplay of maturation, individual potential
and resilience, changing environmental constraints and opportunities, and
cultural differences. Hence, the models do not incorporate differences
related to new family forms; multicultural aspects of American society;
gender roles in family and work life; issues of power, oppression, and
poverty; and the limitless diversity of individual life experience. The
life course conception incorporates difference because it conceives of
individual lifelong development as varying with social change—not only
with the changing nature of the family, school, workplace, and community,
but also with changing ideas, values, and beliefs (Riley, 1978). Development
is also considered in terms of individual, historical, and social time
(Hareven, 1982).
Individual time
Individual time refers to the continuity and meaning of individual
life experience over the life course. Both are reflected in life stories
that we all construct and tell to ourselves and others. Life stories are
apparently a part of all societies and cultures and people of all ages.
They are our human way of finding meaning and continuity in life events
across individual time. “One's identity, then, is built upon the sense
one can make of one's own life story” (Laird, 1989, pp. 430–431). The “truth”
of life stories lies in their ability to bring out the connections among
life events and to lend a sense of coherence to individual and family life
(Spence, 1982). Despite their subjectivity, life stories nonetheless exhibit
integrity throughout individual time and lend coherence to a life course
that is inherently unpredictable (Cohler, 1982). With the empathic, active
listening of the social worker, a life story gains increased intelligibility,
consistency, and continuity. The teller of the story reinterprets and reconstructs
the narrative, which ultimately will contain new conceptions of the self
and of one's relationships with others (Stern, 1985).
Overlapping with life stories and related to individual time and perhaps
to social and historical time are oral history (for example, Coles, 1967–1977);
reminiscence in old age (Butler, 1963); family genealogy (Pinderhughes,
1982); and illness narratives (for example, Kleinman, 1988), including
AIDS stories (for example, Monette, 1988).
Historical time
Historical time refers to the impact of historical and social change
on the developmental pathways of a birth cohort (all people born in the
same time period, such as a particular decade). Cohort members are exposed
to the same sequences of social and historical changes over their life
course. Hence, one cohort's experience of growing up and growing older
is different from that of another cohort's (Elder, 1984; Riley, 1978, 1985).
Several cohorts may experience the same forces, but at different ages,
and therefore may experience different effects. The collective lives of
a cohort's members press for further social change, which then influences
the developmental context of cohorts that follow. For example, issues raised
by recent cohorts of women (for example, Van Den Bergh & Cooper, 1986;
Weick & Vandiver, 1982) and men (for example, O'Neil, 1982; Pleck,
1981) led to pressure for and achievement of social change that affects
all existing cohorts, although differently in terms of cohort age. Although
individual and cultural differences are more forceful influences on development
than are cohort effects, the cohort concept adds important social and historical
dimensions to individual phenomena.
Social time
Social time refers to the timing of individual and family transitions
and life events as influenced by changing biological, economic, social,
demographic, and cultural factors. The term age crossovers refers to the
changing timetables of many life transitions through which they become
independent of age (Neugarten, 1979). For example, no longer is there a
fixed, age-connected time for learning, selecting sexual partners, marrying
or remarrying, first-time parenting, changing one's career, retiring, becoming
an elected official or a college president, or moving into other new statuses
and roles. The term gender crossovers refers to the transcendence of traditional
gender roles—formerly considered unchangeable (Giele, 1980). Such crossovers
are reflected in the exchange of traditional gender roles in some families,
solo parenting by fathers, and the entry of women into previously male-dominated
occupations and of some men into previously female-dominated occupations.
Expanded options provided by age and gender crossovers are reshaping the
developmental pathways of children and adults.
Individual developmental, behavioral, and narrative processes also merge over social time into collective processes (Hareven, 1982) through which families, groups, and communities are transformed. Family transformation, for example, refers to the development of the family over its life course in response to critical life issues and the changes these issues may impose rather than develop through traditional, universal stages (Reiss, 1981). To cope with a grave life stressor, the family may need to modify its structure of roles, tasks, rules, and members' worldview (their shared, often implicit beliefs about themselves and their environment). At first, the family may try to cope using its usual methods. When these fail, the family may experience confusion, upsets in relationships, negative feelings and irritation, and contradictory communications. Increasingly rigid controls may be applied. At that point, the family is likely to be suffering acute stress. In response, it works on restructuring its worldview; reshaping its roles, rules, and routines; and integrating the life issue into the new reality. If the family fails to achieve a new structure, it might break down.
Terkelsen (1980) made a useful distinction between first-order and second-order life issues. A first-order issue may simply require deleting some behaviors and inserting new ones in order to cope effectively with the issue's demands—for example, a status transition, such as school entry—but the family's structure and worldview do not require change. By such “a spontaneous evolutionary leap to a new integration ... a set of new patterns appears that could not have been predicted from past functioning and that deal better with the new conditions” (Hoffman, 1980, p. 56). First-order life issues such as transitions occur frequently over the life course, leading a family to experience itself as living in a state of flux.
Second-order life issues, such as wrenching harms and losses, require a family to become something new because of the altered reality that affects the family's relationships, communication, roles, exchanges with the environment, and worldview. While needed changes are going on, family members also must manage the attendant pain, anxiety, ambiguity, and disruption that often accompanies change. Second-order life issues occur infrequently, so that the family experiences itself as living in a state of constancy. Reiss's (1981) concept of transformation is similar to the desired outcome of second-order change, and Hoffman's (1980) evolutionary leap is similar to first-order change. Terkelsen (1980) concluded that flux and constancy proceed together—a family continually evolves through first-order changes and episodically restructures itself through second-order changes, thereby transforming itself over its life course.
Most first-order life events, such as developmental and some status transitions, are expect- able and predictable. Most second-order events, such as a sudden job loss, death of a loved one, or severe permanent injury, are neither expectable nor predictable. Their effects on family life are different from the effects of expectable and predictable life events, requiring as they do a changed worldview to integrate a new and different reality.
Terkelsen (1980) also declared, “Developmental particulars of each family member are shaped by, and in turn shape, the particulars of each other member's development. Each member's growth is a stimulus in present time for growth in each other member” (p. 42). Life course theorists “take into account the merging of individual pathways into collective configurations—be they families, age groups, or occupational groups” (Hareven, 1982, p.xiii). Hence, it seems that the process of transformation also applies to groups and communities.
The life course conception, with its capacity for incorporating all ecological concepts and the foregoing factors, offers an integrated segment of theory for an ethical and empowering practice with individuals and collectivities that is sensitive not only to ethnicity but to all differences.
LIFE MODEL OF SOCIAL WORK PRACTICE
Two issues raised concern among many sectors of the profession in the 1970s: (1) resistance in direct services to the historical commitment of social work to needed social change and (2) the spread of generalist practice (developed to meet increasingly complex practice situations but thought by some to be superficial because it added together bits from casework, group work, and community modalities). In response to the two concerns, Germain and Gitterman (1980) proposed a practice derived from ecological concepts. The proposed practice offered a reconceived, integrated modality of practice with individuals, families, groups, and organizations. It was later expanded to include community practice and participation in political advocacy (Germain & Gitterman, in press).
The “life model” of social work practice departs from approaches based on clinical processes that are directed to the remedial treatment of personal deficits. Instead, it is patterned on life processes, directed to (1) people's strengths, their innate push toward health, continued growth, and release of potential; (2) modification of environments, as needed, so that they sustain and promote well-being to the maximum degree possible; and (3) raising of the level of person:environment fit for individuals, families, groups, and communities. Although called the life model, it was not intended as a model in the technical sense. Rather, it was a practice modeled on life processes. Hence, the older term is now interchangeable with a more accurate term, “life-modeled practice” (Germain & Gitterman, in press).
Earlier concepts of life space and problems in living are supplanted by the more encompassing paradigm of life stressors–stress–coping within a particular cultural context (recognizing that few people present their predicaments in terms of stressors and stress). All of the concepts presented in this entry express particular person:environment relations and are embodied in life-modeled practice. For example, continuous attention to the level of fit, including personal biopsychosocial features and environmental properties, ecological thinking, and the stressors–stress–coping paradigm are all basic to assessment and intervention. Restored or enhanced relatedness, competence, self-esteem, and self-direction (which apply to collectivities as well as to individuals) are desired outcomes in all practice situations, in addition to agreed-on goals specific to each situation. Life-modeled practice uses practice principles such as empowerment (for example, Lee, 1994; Simon, 1994; Solomon, 1976, 1982) and sensitivity to ethnicity, race, gender, sexual orientation, physical and mental states, and other differences between clients and practitioners. In addition, current portraits of life-modeled practice, ethical concepts, and dilemmas are made explicit, and unethical behaviors are noted (for example, Germain & Gitterman, in press; Reamer, 1992). Life-modeled practice calls on general and differentiated social work knowledge and skills in practice with individuals, families, groups, and communities; in planning and carrying out growth-promoting and preventive services; and in political advocacy.
Empowering aspects of life-modeled practice include a client–social worker relationship conceived as a partnership in which the client and the social worker bring important but differing knowledge and experience to their joint work. Clients are the experts on their own lives. Power differences between social worker and client arising from the social worker's professional status, agency affiliation, race, and educational level are purposively reduced except in certain fields of practice. For example, social work authority is often called on in child welfare and criminal justice issues. From time to time, the client must test the social worker's power and authority, and the social worker in turn must reach for client concern about power and authority vested in the social worker (Gitterman, 1989).
Empowerment results from successful social action carried out jointly by clients and social workers (or by clients alone, when they are ready and interested) and is emphasized in life-modeled practice. Efforts to build or enhance personal power in people who are powerless also is a part of empowerment. These efforts can take the form of
Carel B. Germain, DSW, ACSW, is emerita professor of social work, University of Connecticut, School of Social Work, 1798 Asylum Avenue, West Hartford, CT 06117. Alex Gitterman, EdD, is professor, Columbia University, School of Social Work, 622 W. 113th Street, New York, NY 10025.
For further information see
Assessment Process; Clinical Social Work; Cognitive and Social Theory;
Direct Practice Overview; Families Overview; Human Development; Natural
Helping Networks; Person-in-Environment; Psychosocial Approach; Social
Work Practice: Theoretical Base.
Key Words
ecological approach
environmental stress
life changes
person-in-environment
person–situation configuration