Abstract

The local community can be usefully conceptualized as an ecology of games. In the territorial system a variety of games goes on: banking, newspaper publishing, contracting, manufacturing, etc. The games give structures, goals, roles, strategies, tactics, and publics to the players. Players in each game make use of players in the others for their particular purposes. A banker uses the politician, the newspaperman, or the contractor in his game and is, in turn, used by them in theirs. The interaction of the games produces unintended but systemically functional results for the ecology. An over-all top leadership and social game provide a vague set of commonly shared values that promotes co-operation in the system though it does not provide a government.

Keywords

Set (abstract data type)NewspaperVariety (cybernetics)Unintended consequencesGovernment (linguistics)EcologyPublishingSociologyPublic relationsPolitical scienceComputer scienceMedia studiesBiology

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Publication Info

Year
1958
Type
article
Volume
64
Issue
3
Pages
251-261
Citations
457
Access
Closed

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Norton E. Long (1958). The Local Community as an Ecology of Games. American Journal of Sociology , 64 (3) , 251-261. https://doi.org/10.1086/222468

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DOI
10.1086/222468