In sociology and, later, criminology, the Chicago Sociological School (sometimes described as the Ecological School) refers to the first major body of work that emerged in the 1920s and 1930s specializing in urban sociology and research into the urban environment combining theory, and ethnographic field study in Chicago, now applied elsewhere. Although it included the work of academics from several Chicago universities, the term is frequently used to refer to the sociology department of the University of Chicago, one of the oldest and most prestigious, to which the magazine American Journal of Sociology, published since 1895, is attached.
Leading researchers in this school included Ernest Burgess"), Ruth Shonle Cavan, Edward Franklin Frazier, Everett Hughes"), Roderick D. McKenzie"), George Herbert Mead, Robert Ezra Park, Walter C. Reckless, Edwin Sutherland, W. I. Thomas"), Frederick M. Thrasher, Louis Wirth"), Florian Znaniecki, and Herbert Blumer.
After World War II, a "Second Chicago School" appeared, whose members, formed by the figures of the first, used symbolic interactionism combined with field research methods to create a new corpus of works. Among them, William Foote Whyte, Howard Becker, Erving Goffman and Anselm Strauss stand out among others.
Background
The main exponent of the Chicago school was Robert Ezra Park (1864-1944).
Studies
The most significant objects of study of this school are:
• Pioneer of urban sociology, created in 1892 "from a perspective of (...) contribution of science to the solution of society's problems (...) that is why the sociology of Chicago is practical and not theoretical. That is, capable of addressing social problems and thus penetrating places and capturing from within their meaning, challenges and dynamics (...) Chicago was a society in full expansion, this growth was due to the reputation of being a city of opportunities, thousands of immigrants arriving there looking for land and work, along with The great external migration is “placed in a conflictive and explosive situation. Accelerated economic development gives rise to gigantic urban growth that is difficult to control (...) for Chicago, the issue of social disintegration arises (...) generating adaptation disorders, integration, marginalization, manifested by delinquency, gangsterism, criminality" a situation that is rich for sociological analysis.
Urbanism as a laboratory
Introduction
In sociology and, later, criminology, the Chicago Sociological School (sometimes described as the Ecological School) refers to the first major body of work that emerged in the 1920s and 1930s specializing in urban sociology and research into the urban environment combining theory, and ethnographic field study in Chicago, now applied elsewhere. Although it included the work of academics from several Chicago universities, the term is frequently used to refer to the sociology department of the University of Chicago, one of the oldest and most prestigious, to which the magazine American Journal of Sociology, published since 1895, is attached.
Leading researchers in this school included Ernest Burgess"), Ruth Shonle Cavan, Edward Franklin Frazier, Everett Hughes"), Roderick D. McKenzie"), George Herbert Mead, Robert Ezra Park, Walter C. Reckless, Edwin Sutherland, W. I. Thomas"), Frederick M. Thrasher, Louis Wirth"), Florian Znaniecki, and Herbert Blumer.
After World War II, a "Second Chicago School" appeared, whose members, formed by the figures of the first, used symbolic interactionism combined with field research methods to create a new corpus of works. Among them, William Foote Whyte, Howard Becker, Erving Goffman and Anselm Strauss stand out among others.
Background
The main exponent of the Chicago school was Robert Ezra Park (1864-1944).
Studies
The most significant objects of study of this school are:
• Pioneer of urban sociology, created in 1892 "from a perspective of (...) contribution of science to the solution of society's problems (...) that is why the sociology of Chicago is practical and not theoretical. That is, capable of addressing social problems and thus penetrating places and capturing from within their meaning, challenges and dynamics (...) Chicago was a society in full expansion, this growth was due to the reputation of being a city of opportunities, thousands of immigrants arriving there looking for land and work, along with The great external migration is “placed in a conflictive and explosive situation. Accelerated economic development gives rise to gigantic urban growth that is difficult to control (...) for Chicago, the issue of social disintegration arises (...) generating adaptation disorders, integration, marginalization, manifested by delinquency, gangsterism, criminality" a situation that is rich for sociological analysis.
Regarding the topics of study, "the Chicago school reacts against mechanistic behaviorism that studied the individual and his reactions separated from the social environment", studying in this sense, how individuals are inserted or not in the community since, "culture and the symbolic universe are the basis of the interaction between individual and society (...) communication is expression, interpretation and response"
The Chicago school focuses its idea on “idealistic empiricism, because human beings construct (idealism) their own social reality (empiricism) (…) Robert E. Park conceives the city as a “social laboratory” where all human behaviors are expressed. The city allows us to observe social dynamics of interaction between races (…) where conflicts, adaptation, and group interaction necessarily occur” That is why the city is perceived as the opportunity for the appearance of various phenomena.
For the conceptual vocabulary of Robert E. Park, representative of the socio-ecology of the Chicago school, “man lives like vegetables in communities (…) because Park considers that the human community develops on the model of the plant community and not on the model of the animal horde”
• “Between the 1920s and 1940s, several authors related to the University of Chicago, especially Robert Park, Ernest Burgess and Louis Wirth, developed ideas that for many years constituted the main theoretical and research basis in urban sociology. Two concepts developed by the Chicago School are (…) of special attention. One is the use of the so-called ecological approach for urban analysis; the other, the characterization of urbanism as a way of life, developed by Wirth” (Park, 1952; Wirth, 1938)
• Regarding Urban Ecology, the Chicago School believed that the location of large urban populations and the distribution of different types of neighborhoods within them can be understood that "cities do not grow at random, but in response to the advantages offered by the environment (...) the patterns of location, movement and relocation in cities, according to the ecological conception, have a similar form (...) in the initial phases of growth of modern cities, industries concentrate in places suitable for the raw materials they need" Page 722
Within urbanism, as a form of social existence, “the city is not only becoming the place of residence and work of modern man, but it is also the center that initiates and controls economic, political, and cultural life”
Wirth's theory “(…) is not just a part of society, but expresses the nature of the general social system and influences it. Certain aspects of the urban way of life are characteristic of the whole of social life in modern societies.
• In the emergence of modern mass society, industrialization and urbanization, “the city seemed to offer itself as a model of typical social structures and tendencies” Page 150, and the first empirical investigations regarding the large city and its inhabitants were directed to them. "Then, as a special branch of sociology, the so-called human ecology was established, investigation of the relations between man and the environment from the point of view of the relations between human individuals, on the one hand, and the institutions and forms of social structure, on the other (...) at the same time an entire school was formed around Robert E. Park and his great research project on a metropolis, Chicago."
In this sense, the study of the big city was faced with the same difficulties that the empirical statement about society as a whole encounters. “Hence the idea of carrying out model research in medium-sized cities, where one could hope to study urbanization trends and their social consequences.”
Regarding the topics of study, "the Chicago school reacts against mechanistic behaviorism that studied the individual and his reactions separated from the social environment", studying in this sense, how individuals are inserted or not in the community since, "culture and the symbolic universe are the basis of the interaction between individual and society (...) communication is expression, interpretation and response"
The Chicago school focuses its idea on “idealistic empiricism, because human beings construct (idealism) their own social reality (empiricism) (…) Robert E. Park conceives the city as a “social laboratory” where all human behaviors are expressed. The city allows us to observe social dynamics of interaction between races (…) where conflicts, adaptation, and group interaction necessarily occur” That is why the city is perceived as the opportunity for the appearance of various phenomena.
For the conceptual vocabulary of Robert E. Park, representative of the socio-ecology of the Chicago school, “man lives like vegetables in communities (…) because Park considers that the human community develops on the model of the plant community and not on the model of the animal horde”
• “Between the 1920s and 1940s, several authors related to the University of Chicago, especially Robert Park, Ernest Burgess and Louis Wirth, developed ideas that for many years constituted the main theoretical and research basis in urban sociology. Two concepts developed by the Chicago School are (…) of special attention. One is the use of the so-called ecological approach for urban analysis; the other, the characterization of urbanism as a way of life, developed by Wirth” (Park, 1952; Wirth, 1938)
• Regarding Urban Ecology, the Chicago School believed that the location of large urban populations and the distribution of different types of neighborhoods within them can be understood that "cities do not grow at random, but in response to the advantages offered by the environment (...) the patterns of location, movement and relocation in cities, according to the ecological conception, have a similar form (...) in the initial phases of growth of modern cities, industries concentrate in places suitable for the raw materials they need" Page 722
Within urbanism, as a form of social existence, “the city is not only becoming the place of residence and work of modern man, but it is also the center that initiates and controls economic, political, and cultural life”
Wirth's theory “(…) is not just a part of society, but expresses the nature of the general social system and influences it. Certain aspects of the urban way of life are characteristic of the whole of social life in modern societies.
• In the emergence of modern mass society, industrialization and urbanization, “the city seemed to offer itself as a model of typical social structures and tendencies” Page 150, and the first empirical investigations regarding the large city and its inhabitants were directed to them. "Then, as a special branch of sociology, the so-called human ecology was established, investigation of the relations between man and the environment from the point of view of the relations between human individuals, on the one hand, and the institutions and forms of social structure, on the other (...) at the same time an entire school was formed around Robert E. Park and his great research project on a metropolis, Chicago."
In this sense, the study of the big city was faced with the same difficulties that the empirical statement about society as a whole encounters. “Hence the idea of carrying out model research in medium-sized cities, where one could hope to study urbanization trends and their social consequences.”