A Second Chicago School?: The Development of a Postwar American Sociology / Edition 2

by Gary Alan Fine

Overview

From 1945 to about 1960, the University of Chicago was home to a group of faculty and graduate students whose work has come to define what many call a second "Chicago School" of sociology.

Like its predecessor earlier in the century, the postwar department was again the center for qualitative social research—on everything from mapping the nuances of human behavior in small groups to seeking solutions to problems of race, crime, and poverty. Howard Becker, Joseph Gusfield, Herbert Blumer, David Riesman, Erving Goffman, and others created a large, enduring body of work.

In this book, leading sociologists critically confront this legacy. The eight original chapters survey the issues that defined the department's agenda: the focus on deviance, race and ethnic relations, urban life, and collective behavior; the renewal of participant observation as a method and the refinement of symbolic interaction as a guiding theory; and the professional and institutional factors that shaped this generation, including the leadership of Louis Wirth and Everett C. Hughes; the role of women; and the competition for national influence Chicago sociology faced from survey research at Columbia and grand theory at Harvard. The contributors also discuss the internal conflicts that call into question the very idea of a unified "school."

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780226249391
Publisher:	University of Chicago Press
Publication date:	09/01/1995
Edition description:	1
Pages:	436
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 8.90(h) x 0.90(d)

About the Author

Gary Alan Fine is the James E. Johnson Professor of Sociology at Northwestern University. He has written many books, including, most recently The Hinge: Civil Society, Group Cultures, and the Power of Local Commitments, also published by the University of Chicago Press.

Table of Contents

Preface
Joseph Gusfield
Introduction: A Second Chicago School? The Development of a Postwar American Sociology
Gary Alan Fine
1: Elaboration, Revision, Polemic, and Progress in the Second Chicago School
Paul Colomy, J. David Brown.
2: Research Methods and the Second Chicago School
Jennifer Platt
3: The Ethnographic Present: Images of Institutional Control in Second-School Research
Gary Alan Fine, Lori J. Ducharme.
4: The Sociology of Race and Ethnicity in the Second Chicago School
R. Fred Wacker
5: Chicago's Two Worlds of Deviance Research: Whose Side Are They on?
John F. Galliher
6: The Chicago Approach to Collective Behavior
David A. Snow, Phillip W. Davis.
7: Transition and Tradition: Departmental Faculty in the Era of the Second Chicago School
Andrew Abbott, Emanuel Gaziano.
8: The Chicago School of Sociology and the Founding of the Brandeis University Graduate Program in Sociology: A Case Study in Cultural Diffusion
Shulamit Reinharz
9: The Second Sex and the Chicago School: Women's Accounts, Knowledge, and Work, 1945-1960
Mary Jo Deegan
Postscript
Helena Znaniecka Lopata
Appendix One: Ph.D. Degrees in the Department of Sociology at the University of Chicago, 1946-1965
Appendix Two: Faculty in the Department of Sociology at the University of Chicago, 1946-1960
Contributors
Index

Editorial Reviews

In response to the title's question, 15 sociology scholars define the revisions, polemics, and methods of the Chicago school after World War II. The essays consider attitudes toward race and ethnicity, collective behavior, and gender, as the faculty juggled transition and tradition during the era. Though concentrating on the second Chicago school, the volume necessarily provides a comparative of sociological history during the 1940s and 1950s. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

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