Chicago School Of Sociology Research Articles

The Chicago School of Sociology and the origins of career studies

The Chicago School of Sociology and the origins of career studies

Expanding Pragmatism with Symbolic Interactionism: Recounting the Story of Two Frameworks

Abstract This article describes the story of pragmatism and its transformation into symbolic interactionism at Carnegie Mellon University and Aalto University. In both universities, design researchers were interested in user experience in interactive systems. John Dewey's pragmatism taught them to study how experience sometimes transforms into an experience and occasionally into stories. Herbert Blumer's interactionism had its roots in Chicago School sociology, and it developed in association with pragmatism. His interactionism gave these researchers tools to study Dewey's concepts empirically. We show in the article how this theoretical connection came about after 2000 and how it has shaped research programs in these two communities since then. We also discuss the relevance of pragmatism and interactionism in our current technological landscape, dominated by social media and artificial intelligence.

Import and export of ideas: Georg Simmel in Chicago, George M. Beard in Berlin

The influence of Georg Simmel on American sociology has been repeatedly pointed out. Robert E. Park and the Chicago School of Sociology in particular owe important impulses to Simmel. It is sometimes overlooked, however, that Simmel himself drew on imported knowledge in his famous essay ‘Die Großstädte und das Geistesleben’ when focusing on the nervousness of the city dweller. This article will therefore tell the brief story of a reciprocal transatlantic knowledge transfer between Berlin and Chicago. It looks at the mutual fascinations and influences, examining both the Americanisation of knowledge and the Europeanisation of experience.

Migration Strategies of Ukrainian Youth in the Context of Russian Armed Aggression

The purpose of the article is to study the migration strategies of Ukrainian youth in the context of russian armed aggression. The article analyses the problem of young Ukrainians actively going abroad and the formation of the preconditions for a large-scale demographic crisis provoked by military actions. Particular attention is paid to a number of empirical studies by the Chicago School of Sociology, which framed the scientific paradigm of migration within the framework of the theory of assimilation. The authors made an attempt to analyse in detail the possible threats and risks that the loss of labour and intellectual capital due to the outflow of young people outside the country will cause, resulting in a slowdown in economic development and intensification of the nation's ageing processes, which is extremely important in the context of armed conflict.
 The authors also describe the key results of a sociological survey that identified the main criteria that attract young people and make them migrate to the EU. The authors make a comparative analysis of the respondents' aspirations to go abroad and the real opportunities and actions aimed at implementing the emigration strategy.

Climatic Media: Transpacific Experiments in Atmospheric Control

Climatic Media: Transpacific Experiments in Atmospheric Control

‘Almost None’: Women Sociologists and the Study of Women’s Crime in Early 20th-Century China and the U.S.

AbstractThe question of how and why women committed crimes was a topic of hot debate in 1930s Republican China. Although men sociologists during this period largely framed the origins of both men’s and women’s crime as a social issue, they nonetheless still seriously considered biological and physiological factors in women’s motivation for crime. At the same time, women sociologists who authored the two most comprehensive 1930s studies on women’s crime – Zhou Shuzhao and research team Liu Qingyu and Xu Huifang – pushed back on the connections between biology and physiology in relation to crime for both women and men. Instead, they argued unconditionally for the social causes of all crime and particular social challenges for Chinese women. Their methodologies and frameworks were especially influenced by work from the Chicago school of sociology, a department which itself produced a number of prominent women social scientists. This article traces the transnational conversation on women’s crime in Republican China through the work of U.S. sociologists who were cited by Zhou, Liu, and Xu; research by Chinese men sociologists, especially prominent sociologist Yan Jingyue; and finally, Zhou, Liu, and Xu’s own rebuttals, conclusions, and contributions in developing a theory of Chinese women’s crime. By also comparing the work of Chinese and U.S. women social scientists, this article argues that both groups pushed back, with varying strategies, on their men colleagues’ inordinate focus on criminalized women’s biology and physiology. In this way, both Chinese and U.S. women social scientists spoke into a largely male-dominated conversation and provided novel theories of women’s crime as women themselves.

The Relationship Between Saul Bellow’s Creations and the Chicago School of Sociology

Saul Bellow was determined to be engaged in literary creation at the age of ten but he majored in sociology and anthropology in university. When he was a postgraduate student, his mentor told him that he lacked suitability to be engaged in social science research because his essays were easily turned into fictional works, and his intellect was suitable for some areas full of creativity and imagination. Surely enough, he was the first novelist who won the Nobel Prize in Literature among Jewish American writers in 1976, hence he became worldly famous as his mentor expected. Researchers had paid much attention to his literary achievement, but few studies tried to contact his accomplishment with his sociological background. In this paper, I will analyze the influence of Social Science in Chicago on his literary creations and the tendency of sociology in his works, on the basis of his academic background of sociological studies.

The Relationship Between Saul Bellow’s Creations and the Chicago School of Sociology

Saul Bellow was determined to be engaged in literary creation at the age of ten but he majored in sociology and anthropology in university. When he was a postgraduate student, his mentor told him that he lacked suitability to be engaged in social science research because his essays were easily turned into fictional works, and his intellect was suitable for some areas full of creativity and imagination. Surely enough, he was the first novelist who won the Nobel Prize in Literature among Jewish American writers in 1976, hence he became worldly famous as his mentor expected. Researchers had paid much attention to his literary achievement, but few studies tried to contact his accomplishment with his sociological background. In this paper, I will analyze the influence of Social Science in Chicago on his literary creations and the tendency of sociology in his works, on the basis of his academic background of sociological studies.

Ethnographic Case-Study Design for Discovering Identities in Russian Post-Industrial Neighbourhoods

In the 20th century of industrialization, case-study research design was related to organizations, however in the 21st century of deindustrialization the post-industrial neighborhoods could serves as an indicator of neo-liberal policies and as a reference space for identity studies. However, the instruments of these studies are still poorly described, which limits this type of research design and the comparative analysis of similar neighborhoods in the global context. This paper describes the methodology and insights from three ethnographic case-studies of neighbourhoods—a type of field research focused on detailed inquiry with multiple methods of data collection. This paper follows the Chicago School of Sociology (Park, 1967), understanding a neighbourhood as a field laboratory where social and transformational processes occur, and the social nature of these changes is exposed. The identities were elaborated by secondary data, different types of interviews, observations, and visual data. The paper demonstrates the importance of visual data and the contextualization of the groups studied in the space of the neighborhood, other residents, and changes in the material and social landscapes (the historical, material, and spatial contexts). Data from photographs and videos revealed the material context of transformation, exposing the rigidity of changes in the capital case, and the actualization of inequalities in the regional case. The analysis of the mental maps of the regional neighborhood demonstrates that the workers still perceived this area as an industrial place and the factory is still the core of the workers' identity. Thus, the visual materials expose the multiple layers of identities and new aspects of inequalities. The visual data formed the basis for a research exhibition and a film that shows the ambivalence of post-industrial processes and the multivoicedness of neighborhood residents to different publics.

Urban History: between History and Social Sciences

The article analyzes the formation and development of Urban History as a branch of historical science before and immediately after the era of the Urban Crisis of the 1950s and 1960s. The concept of the article suggests that urban history was formed in a constant dialogue with the social sciences. At the beginning, academic urban historians appeared in the 1930s as opponents of American “agrarian” and frontier histories. Drawing their ideas from the Chicago School of sociology, they reproduced the national history of civic local communities that expressed the achievements of Western civilization. However, in the context of the impending Urban Crisis, social sciences, together with urban historians, have declared the importance of generalizing social phenomena. A group of rebels soon formed among historians. They called their movement ‘New Urban History’ and advocated the return of historical context to urban studies, and were against social theory. However, in an effort to reconstruct history “from the bottom up” through a quantitative study of social mobility, new urban historians have lost the city as an important variable of their analysis. They had to abandon the popular name and recognize themselves as representatives of social history and interested in the problems of class, culture, consciousness, and conflicts. In this situation, some social scientists have tried to try on the elusive brand ‘New Urban History’, but their attempt also failed. As a result, only those who remained faithful to the national narrative or interdisciplinary approach remained urban historians, but continued to remain in the bosom of historical science, rushing around conventional urban sociology and its denial.

The Chicago School of Sociology and Youth Research: The Legacy of W. I. Thomas. From the Polish Peasant in Europe and America to the Child in America

During his career, William I. Thomas richly contributed to the development of youth research, both within the University of Chicago and outside the academy, in contact with social agencies. Moving from a broad focus on the studies carried out by the Chicago School of Sociology, the paper aims at tracing Thomas’ contribution and legacy to the advancement of youth research, in order to recognise his influence on the definition of the fields of investigation, the theories, and the research methods employed. The paper first considers the analysis of the women reformers affiliated with the Hull House . The core of the analysis aims at re-evaluating Thomas’ contribution, taking into specific consideration three of his works . On this basis, in the last section, the paper attempts to recover his legacy through the studies carried out by the young scholars who worked at the Department of Sociology and in its affiliated institutes and projects. Paying specific attention to the suggestions he offered, with specific reference to the analysis of the lives of young people with migrants background, young women and the programs for the treatment of delinquency, helps to identify the main strengths and challenges of the first comprehensive study of ‘urban youth’, that – over time – have inspired fruitful perspectives of analysis and important research experiences.

Representation and Idealization: Diagrammatic Models in the Early Studies of the Spatial Structure of Periodic Markets in Rural China

This article explores how diagrams are performed in actual scientific practice by examining two studies of the structure of periodic markets in rural China before and during the World War II. These are Ching-Kun Yang’s pioneering study of systematic field observations of Chinese periodic markets in the 1930s, and the US anthropologist William G. Skinner’s model, which accounts for the social and economic structure of rural China. In both cases, the empirical studies involved in uncovering the Chinese market structure are closely connected to Western theories of geographical research: Yang’s research is influenced by the Chicago School of Sociology, led by Robert E. Park and Ernest Burgess; Skinner’s theoretical research applies the central place theory of Walter Christaller and August Lösch of the German Location School. The author argues that the social scientists’ practices demonstrate how diagrams have a specific epistemic virtue for guiding the idealization and representation, both as a process and end product, in formulating explanations for the distribution of locations. Moreover, whereas the diagrams are represented as pure geometrical shapes, they not only are the outcome of idealization but also play an important role in guiding the process of evidentiation.

Residential Concentrations of Migrants in Russian Cities: Is There a Pattern?

This article is based on research of international ethnic-migrants’ residential concentrations in Russian cities. The research is based on the uncertainty as to whether such concentrations exist in Russia; there is scholarship which both supports and refutes this thesis. Stemming from the social-ecology approach of the Chicago School of Sociology, the authors concentrate on locations in three Russian cities where the residential concentration of migrants is the highest. These places are the town of Kotelniki in Moscow Region, Sortirovka in Yekaterinburg, and KrasTEC in Krasnoyarsk. Utilizing both field and theoretical methods, the authors describe how these places appeared and what processes occur there. Based on a comparative analysis, the authors hypothesize a pattern which lies behind these cases and distinguishes these cases from other-country cases. According to the hypothesis, migrants form residential concentrations around those large markets which started appearing on the peripheries of Russian cities after the collapse of the Soviet Union. In the following decades, the succession of the migrant population also settled there, and now a substantial share of these neighborhoods’ population are migrants, both those who work at the market and their relatives and friends who work in other parts of cities. Additionally, the migrant infrastructure evolved, and the neighborhoods started to be considered as ethnic and migrant.

Revitalising rural Scotland: Loch Fyne, branding and belonging

Purpose The purpose of this paper is twofold. It seeks to explore the relationship between place branding in rural areas and community building. Furthermore, the paper advances the growing body of work, that examines the role of events in destination revitalisation and competitiveness. Design/methodology/approach The methodological approach stems from the Chicago School of Sociology, and visual methodologies. The ethnographic fieldwork consisted of purposeful conversations with event organisers, social interactions with members of the local community and other event attendees, field notes and photographs. Findings The Loch Fyne Food Fair in Argyll and Bute highlights a manifold disjuncture between place marketing and place branding, which, in turn, reflects the different approaches to how cities and rural areas seek to remain competitive. The authenticity of the brand, as signalled through image and language, is a key feature of the event’s success, as is the creation of a welcoming and inclusive “third place” environment. The interdependence between the aesthetic, escapist, educational and entertainment realms of the Fair experience have helped to secure the loyalty of visitors and locals, alike. Originality/value The paper offers practical insights into the ways in which place branding can be deployed to sustain a successful rural event and extends knowledge of the status of events and festivals as third places. The case study demonstrates how paying careful attention to the elements of the experience economy can enrich the distinctiveness of a rural event.

Edward Orozco Flores, “Jesus Saved an Ex-Con”: Political Activism and Redemption after Incarceration

American Religion 1, no. 2 (Spring 2020), pp. 139–141 Copyright © 2020, The Trustees of Indiana University • doi: 10.2979/amerreli.1.2.15 Book Review Edward Orozco Flores, “Jesus Saved an Ex-Con”: Political Activism and Redemption after Incarceration (New York: New York University Press, 2018) Brad Stoddard McDaniel College, Westminster, USA In “Jesus Saved an Ex-Con”, sociologist Edward Orozco Flores joins a growing chorus of scholars, activists, and theologians who argue that religious responses to mass incarceration and criminal justice reform more broadly help the formerly incarcerated not only regain their dignity and repair the damage caused by mass incarceration, but also, according to Orozco, “expand the boundaries of democratic inclusion to facilitate social integration” (2). To demonstrate this, Flores conducted qualitative, ethnographic research on two faith-based organizations (FBOs)—Community Renewal Society (CRS) from Chicago and LA Voice from Los Angeles—to document how these groups work with formerly incarcerated gang members both to inspire and nurture personal religiosity and to lobby for structural changes through criminal justice reform. Based on this research, Flores argues that faith-based community organizing fosters progressive prophetic activism or prophetic redemption for people furthest on the margins of American society and American democracy. Prophetic redemption, Flores argues, finds its roots in the Black Social Gospel and the work of sociologist and activist W. E. B. Du Bois, who argued that institutional factors like racism and racial segregation perpetuate poverty and impede socioeconomic mobility. Du Bois’s insights are particularly relevant today, where the formerly American Religion 1:2 140 incarcerated face legalized forms of discrimination that prevent them from voting , that prevent them from obtaining public assistance, and that make it difficult for them to find jobs. Du Bois’s arguments later influenced sociologists and criminologists, particularly the Chicago School of sociology, which provided intellectual support for the Age of Roosevelt crime control efforts that “shifted power to the elites, without regard for power building among the marginalized” (10). This shift enabled the rise of the surveillance state (as it relates to incarceration) and to punitive criminal justice policies. The Chicago School continues to study criminology, ignoring important work in the sociology of religion, which argues that civil religion continues to inspire both personal and political reform. Faith-based groups like CRS and LA Voice embrace this notion of civil religion as they fight for criminal justice reform, providing spaces for formerly incarcerated gang members to find meaning post-incarceration, to participate in democratic reforms, and to foster prophetic redemption. Flores begins the book by outlining the history of political and criminal justice reform that created a space for FBOs and community-based organizations (CBOs) to become more involved in criminal justice reform. This history includes Age of Reagan neoliberalism, the privatization of probation, and the emphasis on reentry. These changes gave FBOs and CBOs a seat at the proverbial table, where they advocated for insurgent grassroots resistance instead of topdown criminal justice reform. In the process, members of FBOs participated in religious and civic practices that helped give meaning to their incarceration and their lives more broadly, that fostered social acceptance, and that inspired them “to expand the boundaries of democratic inclusion” (66). In chapters four and five, Flores returns to the theme of prophetic redemption , first, where he argues that FBOs engaged in insurgent prophetic redemption that allowed them to draw from their experiences on the street, in gangs, and in recovery programs. These experiences provided rhetorics and strategies for community engagement and personal transformation that affected their organizational efforts. FBOs also engage in pastoral prophetic redemption as they foster a diverse and inclusive movement to engage the community in substantive reform. Flores also argues that FBOs’ efforts to engage their communities and their democracies created opportunities for “collective subjectivity and empowerment ” (161) by redefining their notions of manhood, masculinity, parenthood, and engaged citizenship. Flores concludes by summarizing his argument where he contends that scholars interested in criminal justice reform should concern themselves not only with personal claims or displays of religiosity, but with civil religion, where religious people organize for personal, communal, and political transformations. Brad Stoddard 141 “Jesus Saved an Ex-Con” is a well-researched...

Modernus miestas kaip socioekologinė struktūra: 1870–1914 metų Kauno miesto struktūros ir plėtros analizės bandymas

The article analyzes the socioecological structure of Kaunas city (one the centers of the Russian Empire’s provinces) in 1870–1914 based on the ideas for the analysis of the structure and development of modern cities proposed by the Chicago School of Sociology. The first part introduces Burgess’s “Concentric City Model”, which is considered to be the most representative theoretical tool for modern urban structure and development analysis. In the second part, this model is applied to the analysis of the Kaunas socioecological structure in 1870–1914. The conclusions give an answer in which stage of the modern urban structure and development Kaunas city was during the period under investigation. The novelty and relevance of the researchcan be seen: 1) in the first attempt to present the analysis of the structure and development of Kaunas city in 1870–1914 with the help of socio-ecological concepts; 2) in the contribution to the development of interdisciplinary dialogue between history and social sciences (namely, urban ecology theories); 3) in the continuation of the research on the socioecological structure of the major cities of Lithuania during the period of the Russian Empire. Keywords: modern city, Chicago School of Sociology, Burgess’s Ring-Theory of City Development, Kaunas city history. Summary The article analyzes the socioecological structure of Kaunas city (one of the centers of the Russian Empire’s provinces) in 1870–1914 based on the ideas for the analysis of the structure and development of modern cities proposed by the Chicago School of Sociology. The application of Burgess’s “Concentric City Model” made it possible to analyze the Kaunas socioecological structure in 1870–1914 and to answer the question: In what stage of modern urban structure and development was the Kaunas city during the period under investigation? The findings suggest a different arrangement of concentration zones in Kaunas in the period 1870–1914 compared to the Burgess model. The functions of Kaunas districts and the quality of their residential buildings, the contingent of the residents concentrating in them and the occupational layout ofthe population, income and the resulting differences allow us to state that the origin of concentric zones (or their segments) visible in Kaunas during the period in question is not a unique feature of Kaunas development/expansion. Instead, it shows that the process of the colonization of emerging social groups in the cities of the late industrialization in Lithuanian provinces was not completed, and modernization was late in Kaunas, as well as in Vilnius, compared to modern cities in the Western world (especially in the USA) in the period from the 2nd half of the 19th to the beginning of the 20th century.

The Story of An Intersection, or How Early Chicago Became an Urban Laboratory

This essay unravels the history of Chicago as an urban laboratory and the way crisis was utilised and even staged in order to project alternative scenarios. It centres on a single photograph of an intersection from 1909, which shows the location saturated with a shocking amount of traffic brought to a standstill. To make visible what commonly remained hidden (the flows and intensities of urban movement), city officials had administered an urban experiment that suspended police presence and regulation in an effort to test if the metropolis could still self-regulate. Using the city as a stage for experimentation that at times pushed it to the brink of collapse, Chicago’s officials perceived their town as an urban test-bed. Injecting this reading into our established historiography reconfigures some of its most prominent narratives: from Sullivan’s Kindergarten Chats, and Burnham and Bennett’s Plan for the city, to the Chicago school of sociology.

On the Origin of “Labeling” Theory in Criminology: Frank Tannenbaum and the Chicago School of Sociology

ABSTRACTAccording to the criminological literature, Frank Tannenbaum’s theory of “The Dramatization of Evil” was the first formulation of an approach to deviance that in the 1960s became known as the “labeling” theory. This paper makes three arguments about Tannenbaum’s theory. Firstly, it explains professional criminality. Secondly, the conceptual foundation for the theory is provided by John Dewey, William I. Thomas, Ernest W. Burgess, Clifford R. Shaw, and Charles H. Cooley. Thirdly, it is in fact prefigured in the work of Thomas, Shaw, and Burgess. The first argument is an answer to an enduring question related to “labeling” theory: does it explain professional criminality or any form of social deviance? The second argument negates a long-standing belief held by criminologists, i.e., that George H. Mead was the conceptual progenitor of Tannenbaum’s theory. The third argument refutes the persistent belief that Tannenbaum’s theory was the first formulation of labeling theory.

Spatial Context and Health Inequity: Reconfiguring Race, Place, and Poverty.

Intimate connections among race, place, and poverty are increasingly featured in the health disparities literature. However, few models exist that can guide our understanding of these interconnections. We build on the Chicago School of Sociology's contributions in urban research and one of its contemporary elaborations, often described as the "neighborhood effects approach," to propose a three-axis model of health inequity. This model, in alignment with Chicago School theory, postulates a dynamic and adaptive relationship between spatial context and health inequity. Compositional axes of race and poverty form the foundation of the model. These compositional axes then intersect with a third axis of place to compose the built and social environment planes. We develop this model to provide conceptual guidance for clinical, policy, and public health researchers who aim to examine how these three features, taken together, have important implications for urban health.

The Ecology of Organizational Growth: Chinese Law Firms in the Age of Globalization

In the global legal services market, China has some of the youngest law firms but also some of the largest. In the early 21st century, several Chinese law firms have grown into mega law firms, with thousands of lawyers in a large number of domestic and overseas offices. This study uses the case of Chinese law firms to develop an ecological theory of organizational growth following the Chicago school of sociology. The authors argue that firms coexist and interact in an ecology consisting of other firms in the same industry. These firms occupy different ecological positions and generate various processes of interaction with one another. In their organizational growth, four species of Chinese law firms (global generalists, elite boutiques, local coalitions, and space rentals) have engaged in a variety of ecological processes, including competition, symbiosis, accommodation, assimilation, purification, and proletarianization. By locating firms in a social space and investigating the spatial and processual pat...