HISTORICAL ANTECEDENTS OF THE RECIPROCAL MODEL
In sociology and social work, the reciprocal model is an ecological perspective of groups in which the central thesis is that groups are not only affected by the surrounding environment but they also affect it---with the surrounding environment consisting not only of "things" external to the group but also of people, most of whom are composed in group collectives themselves, e.g., families, organizations, companies, unions, congregations, clubs, agencies, institutions, and so forth (Jason, 1992). However, the primary historical antecedent of social ecological, reciprocal theory is not social or behavioral, it is biological.
According to Warshay (1981), the basic ecological approach postulating reciprocal interaction between organisms and their environment is derived from biological science. Specifically, it is derived from the field of ecology which consists of the study of relationships between organisms (plants, animals) to their physical and biological environment. The science of ecology, Warshay states, originally sought to explain these relationships using the concept of the ecosystem which was defined as the complex of a community of organisms and its environmental functioning as an ecological unit.
The functional units of an ecosystem are groups of interbreeding organisms living in the same region, known as populations. Groups of interdependent populations are know as communities.
The community provides the habitat and, within a habitat, an organism occupies a niche or a functional role in the community. In explaining how the ecosystem functions, biologists used a reciprocal model illustrating ways in which the organisms within the ecosystem are affected by the their environment and also affect their environment.
These illustrations were based on several constructs that are currently being applied to social ecological theory in general and to the reciprocal ...