Chicago Sociology Research Articles

Goffman, Chicago sociology, and the classical canon

The present study starts with the premise that corpus classicus is a font of ideas irreducible to a neat formula and marked by the ambivalence toward reigning theories. The founder’s disciples and adherents often lose this perspective, fighting to suppress alternative readings and undermining the theoretical synthesis attempted by a classic thinker. To flesh out this thesis, the paper examines the place of Erving Goffman in Chicago sociology and the ingenious way he blended various strands comprising this tradition. The discussion starts with the debate on what constitutes the Chicago school, after which it moves to the knotty relationship between Goffman and symbolic interactionism and his determined effort to accommodate structuralist premises within process-oriented sociology. An argument is made that Goffman followed the lead of his mentor, Everett Hughes, in casting social institutions as “going concerns” that run the gamut from large scale formal organizations to taken-for-granted collective enterprises which are honored in the breach. Several empirical studies developing Goffman’s theory of total institutions are reviewed to flesh out his brand of structural interactionism. The paper concludes with reflections on the retroactive nature of reconstructing a school’s origins, problematic practice of assigning sociologists to a specific paradigm, and the affinity of Goffman’s sociology with the classical inquiry into a dialectical relationship between agency and structure. The case is made that Goffman’s research on the institutional moorings of human subjectivity places him firmly in the classic sociological canon and forms the core of his intellectual legacy.

Memory, Folk Narratives, and Social Critique: Notes on Jane Addams and the “Devil Baby” Legend

Abstract The article focuses on the link between memory, folk narratives, and critical thinking. I suggest in particular that there are instances in which the transmission of a folkloric story, such as a legend or a tale, can intersect with a person’s life experiences and facilitate the articulation of critical perspectives on society that might otherwise go unexpressed. The opportunity for discussing this idea is offered by the work of early twentieth-century Chicago sociologist Jane Addams. In her book The Long Road of Woman’s Memory (1916) Addams dealt with the modern revival of an ancient legend and investigated its interplay with the recollections, grievances, and aspirations of working-class women.

'The Machine Takes Our Jobs Away': The problem of technological unemployment in the work of Chicago sociologist William F. Ogburn.

This paper examines the Chicago sociologist William F. Ogburn's (1886-1959) views about technological unemployment, which were intimately connected to his analysis of the social impacts of technological developments and resulting social problems due to cultural lag. We trace the development of his views as seen through his well-known 1922 book, Social Change with Respect to Culture and Original Nature, his important contributions to the President's Research Committee on Social Trends (1933), and his lesser-known pamphlets designed for a broader audience-Living with Machines (1933), You and Machines (1934), and Machines and Tomorrow's World (1938). He used these pamphlets to educate the public about the dangers of new machines and technological unemployment. In doing so, he drew upon sociological analysis in his professional scholarly writings and his long-standing personal interests in social betterment and social reform. Our analysis also calls into question the adequacy of existing scholarship on Ogburn that has emphasized his commitment to a statistical, dispassionate, and "objectivist" approach to social science research. We call for a revised, richer, and more complex view of Ogburn's work and legacy as one of the nation's leading social scientists during the first half of the 20th century.

Race, nation and empire; the forgotten sociology of Herbert Adolphus Miller

Herbert Adolphus Miller (1875–1951) is a neglected figure within North American sociology, yet he made a distinctive contribution to the sociology and politics of race relations. He was one of the first sociological critics of eugenics and developed a distinctive approach to race relations and the position of subject minorities derived from a critical analysis of European empires. His approach was complementary to that of Du Bois with whom he had a close relationship. In this article, we trace Miller’s critique of eugenics and the idea of ‘Americanisation’ as a policy of immigrant assimilation, showing the distinctiveness of his approach within North American sociology, including the milieu of Chicago sociology with which he was associated. We also examine the connection between his sociology of race and Park’s position on race relations as being a process of gradual assimilation. We conclude with discussion of the Chicago school influence over Gunnar Myrdal’s The American Dilemma and the alternative approach to race relations that both Du Bois and Miller had already outlined in the 1920s.

The Ongoing (Hi)Story of Chicago Sociology

The Ongoing (Hi)Story of Chicago Sociology

Quantitative science studies should be framed with middle-range theories and concepts from the social sciences

This paper argues that quantitative science studies should frame their data and analyses with middle-range sociological theories and concepts. We illustrate this argument with reference to the “sociology of professions,” a middle-range theoretical framework developed by Chicago sociologist Andrew Abbott. Using this framework, we counter the claim that the use of bibliometric indicators in research assessment is pervasive in all advanced economies. Rather, our comparison between the Netherlands and Italy reveals major differences in the national design of bibliometric research assessment: The Netherlands follows a model of bibliometric professionalism, whereas Italy follows a centralized bureaucratic model that co-opts academic elites. We conclude that applying the sociology of professions framework to a broader set of countries would be worthwhile, allowing the emerging bibliometric profession to be charted in a comprehensive, and preferably quantitative, fashion. We also briefly discuss other sociological middle-range concepts that could potentially guide empirical analyses in quantitative science studies.

„Nocni włóczędzy”, czyli „miejskość jako styl życia”. Malarstwo Edwarda Hoppera a koncepcja Louisa Wirtha

The author juxtaposes the ideas contained in the classic essay “Urbanism as a Way of Life” (1938) by the Chicago sociologist Louis Wirth with the Americanism of the New York painter Edward Hopper (active approximately 1900–1967). She seeks parallels between the sociological description of urban conditions and the paintings of an artist who was called the illustrator of the American lifestyle. At the beginning, she discusses American spatial philosophy and the premises of urban researchers connected with the Chicago School. Then she compares a portion of Wirth’s essay and Hopper’s work in terms of their portrayal of the metropolitan lifestyle. She describes the sociologist’s and artist’s pessimistic visions of urbanism, in which urbanization produces the depersonalization of interpersonal relations, isolation, anomie, and the consequent loneliness of individuals.

The Public Life of Images: Towards a Social Ecology of the Urban Gaze. The example of Bologna’s Sacrario dei Partigiani

To investigate the active presence of images in urban public places, this article argues for the possibility of a social ecological perspective, revisiting the tradition of human ecology introduced by Chicago sociologists and social psychologists a century ago. Confronting this intellectual heritage to contributions of visual, cultural and memory studies, I propose to consider the ecological framing of urban experience as a method for investigating the public life of images. This approach consists in studying the perceptual environments, material devices and social activities that maintain a living relationship with public images in cities. To illustrate the proposal, the article examines a concrete example, the photographic portraits of the Sacrario dei Partigiani in Bologna (Italy), through personal observation and photographs. A third section of the text expands the scope of inquiry, in order to experiment with the social ecological approach: it addresses the contemporary flooding of advertising and mobile images in contemporary urban situations.

Interviewing, social work, and Chicago sociology in the 1920s

The paper examines the work of groups established by chapters of the American Association of Social Workers in the 1920s to develop a systematic and empirically based understanding of the interactional dynamics of the interview in social casework. Now largely forgotten, this work had influence beyond social work. The paper goes on to explore the call by the Chicago sociologist Ernest Burgess to use the ‘verbatim interview’ as a focus of common interest by sociologists and social workers.

Sociological social workers: a history of the present?

I argue that there is a submerged cluster of people who, at one or other stage of their careers, took positions in relation to social problems, social work practice, modes of understanding, and research practice that reflected and anticipated – knowingly or not – something we might call a Chicago-enriched sociological social work. They are Harriett Bartlett, Stuart Queen, Ada Sheffield, Erle Fisk Young and Pauline Young. Several of the themes that emerge from a review of their work are today, as then, as much sociology as social work. In closing, I consider three questions. How can we generally explain the presence of this distinctive strand of thinking and practice? Why did it drift into subterranean obscurity? Why should it matter to us? I communicate my sense that the work of these people was premised on a fruitful but never fully realised relationship between ‘sociology’ and ‘social work’. Conjunctions between the largely forgotten heritage of Chicago social work and sociology would allow a less ‘pre-tuned’ discussion of how the respective fields are constituted, and how practitioners of either might pursue their profession.

Samuel Stouffer and the GI Survey: Sociologists and Soldiers during the Second World War Joseph W.Ryan. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 2013.

Samuel Stouffer and the GI Survey: Sociologists and Soldiers during the Second World War Joseph W. Ryan. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 2013.In 1941, Army Chief of Staff George C. Marshall, concerned about the mass of newly drafted soldiers who had trouble adjusting to military life as manifested in the morale crisis of that summer, enlisted the services of social scientists to conduct interviews and surveys of American GIs to find out what they thought about the army. He did so over the objections of many military leaders whose resistance to the idea of polling was deeply entrenched and had to be overcome during the war. Samuel A. Stouffer, then a University of Chicago sociology professor, was selected to lead this effort. In his role as head of the Army Information and Education Division's Research Brand, he directed a team of sociologists, psychologists, and statisticians who sought to understand a range of problems that afflicted the US Army. Stouffer and his associates investigated such important issues as why men fought, what sustained them in battle, what they thought of their allies and enemies, and why a substantial number became psychiatric casualties. The focus was on soldier attitudes and organizational and small-group processes with an emphasis on policy applications at army level, based on the Research Branch's primary role as vehicle of social engineering.Stouffer and his team administered over two hundred different questionnaires, many of which contained over one hundred items, to more than one-half million American soldiers in all parts of the world. Anecdotal data from case studies were used to illustrate and provide a different check of the findings. They also pioneered focus groups as research method and demonstrated that this combination of sociological methods was highly effective in debunking myths about social life in military units. An eminent example is the discovery that enlisted combat groups were more motivated by a desire to finish the task, to end the war, than by any other factor, including buddy or idealist motivations like patriotism. In general, returning veterans were ethnocentrically and individualistically motivated - an understandable self-centered orientation given the often great personal sacrifices they made during the war. But this challenges the oversimplified view of the World War II veterans in the Greatest Generation mythology that prevails in American culture today.Stouffer and his associates published monthly reports entitled What the Soldier Thinks and made the most important research findings public after the war through the two-volume study The American Soldier, published in 1949. The topics included analytical descriptions of morale, social cohesion and performance, social mobility, motivation, job satisfaction, attitudes toward and behavior in combat, including issues concerning fear, hostility and aggression, organizational change, social problems in the field, blackwhite relations, and demographics of troops and veterans. Stouffer's wartime work influenced multiple facets of policy, including demobilization and the GI Bill. Already by 1930, his ideas on empirical survey research had become part of what was rapidly developing into the mainstream of sociology in America. …

Education through recreation

By this time of year, many specialty societies will have completed their annual meetings or winter symposia, where members obtain most of their annual continuing professional development credits. The initial reason for the timing was the opportunity to meet in a ski resort where the day could be split between winter recreation and continuing medical education. Ironically, just as the term for the latter activity was broadened to include other professional attributes, the opportunities for leisure were restricted by a seemingly endless wave of puritanical reform that reduced the acceptability of ski resorts as sites for academic meetings. While it is essential for surgeons to be free of even the appearance of being subject to influence, the reluctance to mix work with leisure runs counter to a century of progress. The pervasiveness of this reluctance became clear to me when I met with a group of Western University medical students to write a report regarding an after-hours surgical anatomy club. Club meetings are held in the anatomy laboratory, where a surgical team is invited to demonstrate an operation on a cadaver. Following the laboratory portion, the group retires to the university pub for free-ranging discussions among the students, residents and surgeons. Sessions are so popular that a booking system using social media sells out within 2 minutes. There was apprehension regarding the inclusion of the recreational component of the club in the report even though it was critical to its popularity and to its effectiveness. The challenge for the group was to describe how the pub session contributed to the success of the endeavour without compromising patient dignity or club purpose. We found our answer in the philosophy of education through recreation.1 The concept of education through recreation was first applied in the 19th century to childhood development.2 George H. Read, the Chicago sociologist who identified the developmental role of play in childhood, divided human activity into 3 general types: work, art and play.2 The principle was broadened to include young adults, but the emphasis was restricted to physical activities.3 It was the basis for the rise of organized sports and initiatives such as the Olympic Games. Another Chicago sociologist, Nels Anderson, who spent a considerable part of his career at the University of New Brunswick, developed the concept that the currency of life is time: time spent working earns time for leisure.4 In his book explaining this concept, Anderson referred to the English educationist Lawrence P. Jacks, who had been asked by the United States National Recreation Association to consider the matter for a booklet endorsing outdoor activities in the National Parks. Jacks’ wonderful summary has been appropriated by various authors and followers of Zen Buddhism since it was written in 1932: A master in the art of living draws no sharp distinction between his work and his play, his labour and his leisure, his mind and his body, his education and his recreation. He hardly knows which is which. He simply pursues his vision of excellence through whatever he is doing and leaves others to determine whether he is working or playing. To himself he always seems to be doing both. Enough for him that he does it well.5 Successful surgery requires total immersion, taking time from all 3 of life’s activities: work, art and play. Surgeons rob their families of their time to achieve success. Education through recreation is the opportunity to learn in a seamless fashion through all of life’s activities. The concept is as valid as its close relative, lifelong learning, which is considered to be the basis for continuing professional development.

Does Divorce Make People Happy?

“The marriage and divorce trends of the “modern” American family have been studied for decades. In an attempt to further understand the outcomes of divorce, a team of family scholars headed by University of Chicago sociologist Linda Waite studied whether unhappily married adults who divorced were any happier than unhappily married people who stayed married.” This 2-page fact sheet was written by Donna Davis and published by the UF Department of Family, Youth and Community Sciences, September 2012.

Naturalistic Values and Progressive Politics

The paper argues that Dewey’s ethics are based on a naturalistic theory of value. This unusual interpretation questions the anti-naturalist reading of Dewey in the wake of Richard Rorty and other neo-pragmatists. In order to defend this interpretation, I develop a genealogy of Dewey’s pragmatic naturalism: It has a ’father’ in the progressivist movement, and a ’sister’ in the Chicago Sociology. A closer look at Frank L. Ward, Albion Small, W. I. Thomas and Robert Park helps to reconstruct the political dynamics of the progressivist programme of naturalistic values. This contextualization may also correct some of the shortcomings of Dewey’s own version: Some pragmatic sociologists spelled out the noncomformist individualism more clearly than Dewey’s philosophy did. Finally I suggest that this approach is still relevant today.

RESEARCH FOR THE DEMAND OF HOUSING IN CHINESE CITIES BASED ON THE THEORY OF SCENES

The theory of scenes which comes from the Chicago Sociology School was used to investigate the change of culture and value.In the Chinese society of today,the influence of culture and value is enhanced in urban inhabitant day by day.Some new special phenomena, such as Mortgage Slave,Woju and Ant Tribe,have implied the rising trend.Thus,we apply the theory of scenes to Chinese urban research.We first review the correlative theories. Then we construct the scenes factors in 375 countries of China based on the scenes theory. After that we use the regression model to make the statistical analysis on different age groups' Chinese urban inhabitants.Finally,we prove our assumptions.And we propose some relevant policy suggestions to Chinese government.

The Sense of Belonging in New Urban Zones of Transition

In most modern sociological literature, it is a rarity to find analyses suggesting that social bonds and the sense of belonging can be strong in socially deprived areas. In the classic Chicago tradition of sociology, in the works of Park et al. and in Louis Wirth’s The Ghetto, residential areas are described both as places in which the social bonds are loose and places with strong bonds. However, a focal point in this article is that the sense of place and belonging are related to the type and the quality of local social bonds. The article discusses the sense of belonging in socially deprived areas by using and adapting classic concepts and insights of human ecology as formulated by the classical Chicago sociologists Robert E. Park and Ernest W. Burgess. Recent sociological contributions about belonging and the sense of place, including recent empirical studies on the topic, are also addressed. It is argued that two socially deprived neighbourhoods with identical social profiles measured by traditional sociological variables as average income, educational level, unemployment, ethnicity, welfare benefits, etc. can be very different when it comes to local community and local social networks.

Annie Marion MacLean, Feminist Pragmatist and Methodologist

Annie Marion MacLean was a major Chicago sociologist and methodologist. She was profoundly influenced by the gendered division of labor in sociology during her era. MacLean combined her work with the men and women of the early Chicago school of sociology and the women of Hull-House, an early social settlement. As a feminist pragmatist, MacLean was both a theorist and practitioner who used qualitative and quantitative methods. She set precedents in the Chicago school of ethnography, participant observation, and critical methodology. MacLean, however, was not the “mother” of ethnography. Harriet Martineau holds a far stronger claim to be a founding contributor to the origin and development of ethnographic methodologies in the social sciences.

Comment on Jean-Michel Chapoulie/3

Critical against conventional disciplinary history of social science, this essay presents an analytical framework stemming from historical research of the author on Chicago sociology and french sociology after 1945. The proposed point of departure for research in the history of social sciences is similar to the basic perspective of history (as proposed by Lucien Febvre) or sociology of work in Everett Hughes’ style: social sciences are to be considered as social practices whose primary ends are the production of texts, with historical and thus changing properties. Investigations must looks at every categories concerned directly or indirectly (or even in abstentia) with the production of social sciences: researcher, concurrent researcher of other specialties or disciplines, scolarly and learned institutions, those who finance research, general audiences, etc.). Heterogeneous elements must be taken into account: the documentary sources, the way of processing documentation, the rhetoric, the categories of analyses and questioning, the social contexts in which the research is carried out, the biographical experience of producers, the contexts of publication and reception. As an illustration of the possible extensions of this approach, a rapid presentation is given of the use made in research on the Chicago tradition of certain distinctions to analyze the diffusion of works and the relations between generations of researchers.

THE HISTORY OF A SURVIVING SPECIES

In 1925, University of Chicago sociologist Robert Park published a seminal essay on “The Natural History of the Newspaper.” That history, he wrote, “is the history of the surviving species. It is an account of the conditions under which the existing newspaper has grown up and taken form.” The reporting of foreign events in American news media has its own natural history. Commercialization and changing forms of ownership, the emergence of new media, developments in technology, evolving norms of professionalism, the shifting panorama of world affairs—these and other factors have forced continual changes in the collection and distribution of foreign news. In this essay, the authors consider these dynamic factors in identifying clearly defined periods in this evolution and demonstrating how this historical framework helps us understand the new and highly complex era of foreign newsgathering we are now in.

Crossing the immigration and race border: A critical race theory approach to immigration studies

In this essay I discuss the conceptual and practical benefits of employing critical race theory to the field of immigration studies. It is widely acknowledged, and regrettable, that sociological research on immigration has not departed much from its original conceptual beginnings established by the Chicago School of Sociology during the 1920s and 1930s. The Chicago sociologists distinguished between newly arrived ‘immigrants’ and their children, who were identified as ‘ethnic groups.’ Research questions are still being developed that rely on the Chicagoans' theoretical categories of race, ethnicity, and immigration – categories that are treated as being mutually exclusive. While researchers focusing on the globalization of immigration have now formulated new analyses of race, social exclusion, and social inequality, research on immigration to the United States remains confined to questions concerning assimilation, acculturation, generational conflict, and social mobility. It is unfortunate that mainstream sociological research has completely ignored the groundbreaking work of critical race theory (CRT), which addresses more relevant issues, such as racial profiling, anti‐immigration sentiment, the increased militarization of the US–Mexico border, and the high number of immigrant deaths on the border. As such, CRT has much to offer sociologists in their work on immigration.