This book of Radhakamal Mukerjee, with an introduction of Klaus Seeland, is an authoritative study on social ecology . Social ecology is different in scope from human ecology. Since there is whole gamut of confusion about the term social ecology and its relation with sociology, here is an attempt to detail the essential principles of social ecology and its scientific fruitfulness for sociology.

This volume is an endeavour to present the major ecological concepts and processes which may help in refashioning the framework of sociology. It is also an attempt to deal with a comparative social ecology on which rest the foundations of comparative economics and sociology. Social ecology studies the place, occupation and time relations of persons and groups in their processes of competition, co-operation, conflict, accommodation and succession. It is a vast and virgin field orienting social phenomena on the basis of the give-and-take between life, mind and region.

This book is so comprehensive that it should contribute to a scientific classification of social ecological concepts and to the development of a methodology according to which social economy may form the basis of a new functional and quantitative sociology. Therefore, it should be a referral book for sociology students, teachers and researchers.

Contents: Foreword. Preface. 1. Society and symbiosis. 2. Limits of competition and specialization. 3. Functions of dominance and distance. 4. Ecological and social pyramids. 5. The dynamics of human aggregation and circulation. 6. The ecological balance of population. 7. Status: ecological and social. 8. Man’s social and moral boundaries. 9. Mobility: ecological and social. 10. Time, technics and society. 11. Freedom of social mobility. 12. Ecological and cultural patterns of social organization. 13. The ecology behind economics. 14. The ecology behind politics. 15. Social equilibrium. Index.