Chicago School Essay ⋆ Sociology Essay Examples ⋆ EssayEmpire

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The Chicago School of Urban Sociology refers to work of faculty and graduate students at the University of Chicago during the period 1915 to 1935. This small group of scholars (the full-time faculty in the department of sociology never numbered more than 6 persons) developed a new sociological theory and research methodology in a conscious effort to create a science of society using the city of Chicago as a social laboratory. The Chicago School is represented by three generations of faculty. The first included Albion Small (founder of the department), W. I. Thomas, Charles R. Henderson, Graham Taylor, and George E. Vincent. The second generation included Small, Thomas, Ernest Burgess, Ellsworth Faris, and Robert Park. It was this group that trained the graduate students responsible for the classic studies of the Chicago School. The third generation included Park, Burgess, Louis Wirth, and William Ogburn. This group of faculty would remain intact until the time Park retired from the university in 1934. The Chicago School continues to define the contours of urban sociology, most clearly in the contributions of urban ecology and applied research.

The sociology faculty pioneered empirical research using qualitative and quantitative methods to develop a ”science of sociology.” Park formulated a new theoretical model based upon his observation that the city was more than a geographic phenomenon; the basic concepts of human ecology were borrowed from the natural sciences. Competition and segregation led to formation of natural areas, each with a separate and distinct moral order. The city was ”a mosaic of little worlds that touch but do not interpenetrate. Burgess s model for the growth of the city showed a central business district surrounded by the zone in transition, the zone of working men’s homes, the residential zone, and the commuter zone. Roderick McKenzie expanded the basic model of human ecology in his later study of the metropolitan community.

The research and publication program of the Chicago School was carried out under the auspices of a Local Community Research Committee, an interdisciplinary group comprised of faculty and graduate students from sociology, political science (Charles Merriam), and anthropology (Robert Redfield). Support came from the Laura Spellman Rockefeller Memorial (more than $600,000 from 1924 to 1934). Graduate students under the guidance of Park and Burgess mapped local community areas and studied the spatial organization of juvenile delinquency, family disorganization, and cultural life in the city. The research program produced a diverse array of studies broadly organized around the themes of urban institutions (the hotel, taxi, dance hall), social disorganization (juvenile delinquency, the homeless man), and natural areas themselves. Among the notable Chicago School studies are Frederick Thrasher, The Gang (1926); Louis Wirth, The Ghetto (1928); and Harvey W. Zorbaugh, The Gold Coast and the Slum (1929).

The Chicago School dominated urban sociology and sociology more generally in the first half of the twentieth century. By 1950 some 200 students had completed graduate study at Chicago, and more than half of the presidents of the American Sociological Association were faculty or students at Chicago. The American Journal of Sociology, started by Small in 1895, served as the official journal of the American Sociological Association from 1906 to 1935.

There were early critiques of the Chicago School, including Missa Alihan s 1938 critique of the determinism inherent in Park s human ecology (Park wrote that ”on the whole the criticisms were correct). Burgess s concentric zones were soon replaced by a variety of models showing multiple nuclei and eventually the decentralized, poly-centered city. Recent attention has focused on the role of women in the development of the Chicago School. Burgess would later note that systematic urban research at Chicago started with the Hull-House studies begun by Edith Abbot and Sophonsia Breckenridge in 1908. The influence of the early work of the Chicago School may be seen in some later studies, notably St. Clair Drake and Horace Cayton’s Black Metropolis (1945), community studies directed by Morris Janowitz in the 1970s, and William Julius Wilson s work on poverty neighborhoods in 1980—95.

In addition to urban sociology, there are claims to various other Chicago Schools in ethnic studies, crime and delinquency, symbolic interaction, and other fields. Park felt that Thomas s work formed the foundation for the department, but wrote that he was not aware that he was creating a ”school or a ”doctrine. The Chicago School label developed in large measure from critiques by scholars from other universities. Urban geographers have claimed that while Chicago was the model for urban theory of the twentieth century, Los Angeles is the model for urban theory of the future. It should be noted that the Los Angeles School (a title coined by the authors themselves, in contrast to the Chicago School) is more appropriately urban studies, rather than urban sociology.

Bibliography:

Abbott, A. (1999) Department and Discipline: Chicago Sociology at One Hundred. University of Chicago Press, Chicago.
Deegan, M. J. (1986) Jane Addams and the Men of the Chicago School, 1892—1918. Transaction Books, New Brunswick, NJ.
Matthews, F. H. (1977) Quest for an American Sociology: Robert E. Park and the Chicago School. McGill-Queen’s University Press, Montreal.