The Tradition of the Chicago School of Sociology

The value of the book lies in its reassessment of the distinctive features of the Chicago School, of its contributions in the theoretical and methodological fields and of its influence on the growth of sociology throughout the world and in America in particular. The book pays particularly close attention to the eclectic nature of the research methods used by the Chicago sociologists as they sought to integrate subjective and objective aspects of human life. It demonstrates that this eclecticism formed an integral part of their theories but also emphasises that empirical observation, too, was important, although not as an end in itself. While, for example, they were working on the concepts of organization, marginality and interaction, they did not consider these as ends in themselves but as additions to the development of a more general theoretical approach. Often in the past, and wrongly, Chicago’s theoretical contribution has been restricted to the urban sector. The book clearly and unequivocally reveals how the tendency to see the Chicago School as a 'theoretical' is the result of misinterpretation and of a failure to realize that, for the sociologists of the period, understanding the social dynamics of the city of Chicago was tantamount to interpreting the central tendencies of modern society itself. The book analyzes how empirical observation was important but not an end in itself. The Chicago School developed a profusion of sociological theories in many areas of inquiry and never opted for any one particular approach. The various essays in the book also make it clear that the School decisively contributed to the development of qualitative and quantitative techniques. Cover 1 Half Title 2 Dedication 3 Title 4 Copyright 5 Contents 6 Introduction 10 PART I: THEORETICAL PROBLEMATIC 20 1 The Gothic foundation of Robert E. Park’s conception of race and culture 22 1. Capitalism, imperialism, and Gothic sociology 22 2. Robert Park’s Congo. A Gothic analysis of capitalist imperialism 23 3. Capitalism and Gothicism: Small and Park 29 2 The contribution of Georg Simmel to the foundation of theory at the Chicago School of Sociology 34 Introduction 34 1. Albion W. Small and Georg Simmel: the ‘common intent’ to found sociology as an independent science 36 2. Robert E. Park: sociology as ‘an approach to substantive problems’ 40 3. The search for ‘subject matter’ in sociology by the Chicago sociologists 42 3 The neighbourhood and deviance in the Chicago School. A relationistic interpretation 46 1. The concept of deviance between the systematics and history of sociology 46 2. The concept of ‘neighbourhood’ : disorganization and the relational nature in the natural area 49 3. Robert E. Park and Ernest W. Burgess: at the sources of relationism in the early Chicago School 52 4. ‘Ethnographic’ relationism in the early Chicago School and metropolitan differences in current urban deviance 54 4 The place of the Chicago School of Sociology in the study of nationality and ethnicity 60 PART II: METHODOLOGICAL APPROACH 82 5 Chicago sociology and the empirical impulse: its implications for sociological theorizing 84 6 Chicago methods: reputations and realities 98 Introduction 98 1. Prewar Chicago methods 99 2. Postwar Chicago methods 104 3. The construction of disciplinary memory 110 7 Seventy years of fieldwork in sociology. From Nels Anderson’s The Hobo to Elijah Anderson’s Streetwise 114 Introduction 114 1. The Hobo or Hobohemia? 115 2. Fieldwork in The Hobo 126 3. Elijah Anderson’s Streetwise 129 4. Fieldwork and the way information is analyzed in Streetwise 133 Conclusion 136 8 One hundred years of methodological research. The example of Chicago 138 Introduction 138 1. The institutional importance of Chicago sociology 138 2. Early influences on sociological methods at Chicago 142 3. The inappropriate reduction of Chicago sociology to qualitative sociology 149 4. The legacy of Chicago sociology’s research methodologies 151 PART III: IMPORTANT SOCIOLOGISTS FROM CHICAGO AND THE ACTUALITY OF THE CHICAGO APPROACH 156 9 George Herbert Mead’s transformation of his intellectual context 158 Introduction 158 1. Mead’s interlocutors 159 2. Adam Smith 161 3. Josiah Royce 165 4. William James 167 5. Wilhelm Max Wundt 169 6. John Dewey 174 7. Francis Herbert Bradley 178 8. Conway Lloyd Morgan, James Mark Baldwin, and James Rowland Angell 179 9. Charles Horton Cooley 184 10 Erving Goffman: a symbolic interactionist? 188 1. The theoretical approach of Erving Goffman 188 2. Is Erving Goffman a symbolic interactionist? 194 11 Persistence and change: fundamental elements in Herbert Blumer’s metatheoretical perspective 200 Introduction 200 1. Situated 207 2. Dual character 208 3. Indeterminate 211 12 The sociology of ‘going concerns’. Everett Hughes’ interpretive institutional ecology 226 Introduction 226 1. Hughes as a theorist 229 2. Interpretive institutional ecology: Choosing the label 236 3. Institutions, going concerns, careers, social interaction 239 4. The structuralist side of the frame of reference: ecological competition and social functions 242 5. The interpretive side of the frame of reference: interaction, process, interpretation, agency, and careers 250 6. Brief assessment 255 Conclusion 258 13 The Chicago School of Sociology’s heritage in Polish sociology 260 Introduction 260 1. The Chicago School, Znaniecki, and institutionalization of Polish sociology before 1939 262 2. The Chicago School in Polish sociology, 1945-1989 274 2.1. From negation to ideologization: 1945-1956 274 2.2. The influence of the Chicago School upon the development of Polish sociology in the years 1957-1976 276 3. The sociological trend of Polish social ecology 276 3.1. In the footsteps of Florian Znaniecki’s sociology: towards the Polish edition of 'The Polish Peasant': 1957-1976 278 3.2. From The Polish Peasant to The Young Generation of Peasants: 1976-1984 281 3.3. From qualitative sociology to the renaissance of interest in the Chicago School: 1984-1990 283 3.4. The tradition of the Chicago thought in the investigation of transformation processes in Poland: 1991-? 285 Conclusion 288 Index 290 Contributors 296 A reassessment of the distinctive features of the Chicago School, its contributions in the theoretical and methodological fields, and its influence on the growth of sociology throughout the world, and in American in particular. The text pays particular attention to the eclectic nature of the research methods used by Chicago sociologists as they sought to integrate subjective and objective aspects of human life. It demonstrates that this eclecticism formed an integral part of their theories, but also emphasizes that empirical observation, too, was important, although not as an end in itself. The Chicago School developed a profusion of scoiological theories in many areas of inquiry, and never opted for one particular approach. The various essays in this work seek to make it clear that the school made a decisive contribution to the development of qualitative and quantitative techniques