The Tradition of the Chicago School of Sociology

by Tomasi,Luigi

• ISBN13: 9781840144642
• ISBN10: 1840144645
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 1998-08-28
• Publisher: Routledge

Summary

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.

Table of Contents

Introduction	1	(12)
Luigi Tomasi
PART I: THEORETICAL PROBLEMATIC	13	(62)
1 The Gothic foundation of Robert E. Park's conception of race and culture	13	(12)
Stanford M. Lyman
1. Capitalism, imperialism, and Gothic sociology	13	(1)
2. Robert Park's Congo. A Gothic analysis of capitalist imperialism	14	(6)
3. Capitalism and Gothicism: Small and Park	20	(5)
2 The contribution of Georg Simmel to the foundation of theory at the Chicago School of Sociology	25	(12)
Luigi Tomasi
Introduction	25	(12)
1. Albion W. Small and Georg Simmel: the `common intent' to found sociology as an independent science	27	(4)
2. Robert E. Park: sociology as `an approach to substantive problems'	31	(2)
3. The search for `subject matter' in sociology by the Chicago sociologists	33	(4)
3 The neighbourhood and deviance in the Chicago School. A relationistic interpretation	37	(14)
Filippo Barbano
1. The concept of deviance between the systematics and history of sociology	37	(3)
2. The concept of `neighbourhood': disorganization and the relational nature in the natural area	40	(3)
3. Robert E. Park and Ernest W. Burgess: at the sources of relationism in the early Chicago School	43	(2)
4. `Ethnographic' relationism in the early Chicago School and metropolitan differences in current urban deviance	45	(6)
4 The place of the Chicago School of Sociology in the study of nationality and ethnicity	51	(24)
Steven Grosby
PART II: METHODOLOGICAL APPROACH	75	(74)
5 Chicago sociology and the empirical impulse: its implications for sociological theorizing	75	(14)
Martin Bulmer
6 Chicago methods: reputations and realities	89	(16)
Jennifer Platt
Introduction	89	(1)
1. Prewar Chicago methods	90	(5)
2. Postwar Chicago methods	95	(6)
3. The construction of disciplinary memory	101	(4)
7 Seventy years of fieldwork in sociology. From Nels Anderson's The Hobo to Elijah Anderson's Streetwise	105	(24)
Jean-Michel Chapoulie
Introduction	105	(1)
1. The Hobo or Hobohemia?	106	(11)
2. Fieldwork in The Hobo	117	(3)
3. Elijah Anderson's Streetwise	120	(4)
4. Fieldwork and the way information is analyzed in Streetwise	124	(3)
Conclusion	127	(2)
8 One hundred years of methodological research. The example of Chicago	129	(20)
Lawrence A. Young
Lynn J. England
Introduction	129	(1)
1. The institutional importance of Chicago sociology	129	(4)
2. Early influences on sociological methods at Chicago	133	(7)
3. The inappropriate reduction of Chicago sociology to qualitative sociology	140	(2)
4. The legacy of Chicago sociology's research methodologies	142	(7)
PART III: IMPORTANT SOCIOLOGISTS FROM CHICAGO AND THE ACTUALITY OF THE CHICAGO APPROACH	149	(132)
9 George Herbert Mead's transformation of his intellectual context	149	(30)
Anthony J. Blasi
Introduction	149	(1)
1. Mead's interlocutors	150	(2)
2. Adam Smith	152	(4)
3. Josiah Royce	156	(2)
4. William James	158	(2)
5. Wilhelm Max Wundt	160	(5)
6. John Dewey	165	(4)
7. Francis Herbert Bradley	169	(1)
8. Conway Lloyd Morgan, James Mark Baldwin, and James Rowland Angell	170	(5)
9. Charles Horton Cooley	175	(4)
10 Erving Goffman: a symbolic interactionist?	179	(12)
Horst J. Helle
1. The theoretical approach of Erving Goffman	179	(6)
2. Is Erving Goffman a symbolic interactionist?	185	(6)
11 Persistence and change: fundamental elements in Herbert Blumer's metatheoretical perspective	191	(26)
Thomas J. Morrione
Introduction	191	(7)
1. Situated	198	(1)
2. Dual character	199	(3)
3. Indeterminate	202	(15)
12 The sociology of `going concerns'. Everett Hughes' interpretive institutional ecology	217	(34)
Richard C. Helmes-Hayes
Introduction	217	(3)
1. Hughes as a theorist	220	(7)
2. Interpretive institutional ecology: Choosing the label	227	(3)
3. Institutions, going concerns, careers, social interaction	230	(3)
4. The structuralist side of the frame of reference: ecological competition and social functions	233	(8)
5. The interpretive side of the frame of reference: interaction, process, interpretation, agency, and careers	241	(5)
6. Brief assessment	246	(3)
Conclusion	249	(2)
13 The Chicago School of Sociology's heritage in Polish sociology	251	(30)
Krzysztof Czekaj
Introduction	251	(2)
1. The Chicago School, Znaniecki, and institutionalization of Polish sociology before 1939	253	(12)
2. The Chicago School in Polish sociology, 1945-1989	265	(2)
2.1. From negation to ideologization: 1945-1956	265	(2)
2.2. The influence of the Chicago School upon the development of Polish sociology in the years 1957-1976	267	(1)
3. The sociological trend of Polish social ecology	267	(12)
3.1. In the footsteps of Florian Znaniecki's sociology: towards the Polish edition of `The Polish Peasant': 1957-1976	269	(3)
3.2. From The Polish Peasant to The Young Generation of Peasants: 1976-1984	272	(2)
3.3. From qualitative sociology to the renaissance of interest in the Chicago School: 1984-1990	274	(2)
3.4. The tradition of the Chicago thought in the investigation of transformation processes in Poland: 1991-?	276	(3)
Conclusion	279	(2)
Index	281	(6)
Contributors	287