The Chicago School

I. Also known as the “ecological school”

A. Viewed social environment as a living organism of which individuals are a
part
II. Social Context
A. Early 1900s
B. Rapid Industrialization and Urbanization
C. Rapid population growth and increased mobility
D. Rapid immigration
E. Culture Clashes
F. Technological advances that made migrant workers obsolete
III. Intellectual Heritage
A. Move from biological to social/cultural explanations
B. Shift towards German/French thinkers
C. Attempt to establish American sociology as a “legitimate science”
D. Introduction of new methods
1. Official data
2. Life history/case study
3. Linked individual to environment/society
IV. Theories
A. Concentric Zone Theory
1. An approach developed to study Chicago, but thought to be applicable
to other cities
2. Concentric zones are best represented by
a) a target one uses in archery
b) when one tosses a rock into a calm lake and ripples emanate
outward in circles from where the rock entered the water
3. Theory divides the city into five (5) zones
a) Zone 1 – central business district
(1) Are characterized by light manufacturing, retail trade, and
commercialization
b) Zone 2 – zone of transition
(1) Surrounds the central business district
(2) Zone is populated primarily by low-income people
(3) Home to recent immigrant groups
(4) Characterized by deteriorated housing, factories, and
abandoned buildings
(5) Typically it has an area of high-cost luxury housing
(6) Portrayed as being in transition from residential to business
uses
c) Zone 3 – zone of working-class homes
(1) Less deteriorated than zone of transition
(2) Populated largely by “workers whose economic status enables
them to have many of the comforts and even some of the luxuries
the city has to offer”
 d) Zone 4 – area of middle-class dwellers
(1) Populated largely by
(2) Professional people
(3) Clerical forces
(4) Owners of small businesses
(5) The managerial class
(6) Single family homes each with its own yard and garage
e) Zone 5 – commuters’ zone
(1) Consists largely of suburbs
(2) Includes satellite towns
(3) Many of the occupants vacate the area during the day and
commute to the city for their employment
(4) Residents of inner-city zones tended to migrate to outer zones
as their economic positions improved
B. Social Disorganization Theory
1. The idea of the community as a functional whole that directly
determines the quality of life for its members was developed and explored
at the beginning of the 20th century by sociologists like:
2. Social ecology developed a “disease” model built around the concept of
social pathology
3. Social pathology
a) “those human actions which run contrary to the ideals of
residential stability, property ownership, sobriety, thrift, habituation
to work, small business enterprise, sexual discretion, family solidarity,
neighborliness, and discipline of will”
b) Over time, the concept of social pathology changed and it came to
represent the idea that aspects of society may be somehow
pathological, or “sick” and may produce deviant behavior among
individuals and groups who live under or are exposed to such social
conditions
4. Includes
a) Low economic status
b) Mixture of different ethnic groups
c) Residential mobility
d) Disrupted families/broken homes
5. Examined the roles that breakdowns in social institutions (family,
school, etc.) play in antisocial/deviant behavior
6. It is not something unique about a person that creates criminality, it is
the environment, both physical and (especially) social, in which they live
C. Cultural Transmission Theory
1. An idea which held that traditions of delinquency were transmitted
through successive generations of the same zone in the same way that
language, roles, and attitudes were communicated
2. Most likely to occur in socially disorganized areas
D. Symbolic Interaction
 1. We are all a product of social symbols being communicated between
individuals within particular social/cultural contexts
2. Our identity changes with the social context and is a reflection of the
“generalized other”
3. All behavior is relative to the social context and our interpretation
thereof
E. Culture Conflict
1. Suggests that the root cause of criminality can be found in a clash of
values between differently socialized groups over what is acceptable or
proper behavior
2. Thorsten Sellin (1896 – 1994
3. Born in Sweden and emigrated to Fort William, Ontario, Canada with
his mother to join his father who had emigrated a few years earlier
4. Sellin maintained that the root cause of crime could be found in
different values about what is acceptable or proper behavior
5. Conduct norms
a) Rules that govern behavior and are acquired in early life through
childhood socialization
b) The clash of norms between variously socialized groups that result
in crime
c) Because crime is a violation of laws established by legislative
decree, the criminal event itself is nothing other than a disagreement
over what should be acceptable
d) For some social groups what we tend to call “crime” is simply part
of the landscape – something that can be expected to happen to you
unless you take steps to protect yourself
e) Those to whom crime happens are not so much victimized as they
are simply ill prepared
6. Primary conflict
a) Arises when a fundamental clash of cultures occurs
b) An immigrant father who kills his daughter’s lover following an
old-world tradition that demands that a family’s honor be kept intact
c) The conflict is external and occurs between cultural codes or
norms
d) Where such conflicts occur, norms of one cultural group or area
migrate to another and such conflict will continue so long as the
acculturation process has not been completed
7. Secondary conflict
a) Arises when smaller cultures within the primary one clashed
b) Middle-class values, upon which most of the criminal laws are
based, may find fault with inner-city or lower-class norms, resulting
in the social phenomenon we call “crime”
c) Examples
(1) Prostitution
(2) Gambling
 (3) Many lower-class inner-city groups accepted gambling and
prostitution as a way of life – if not for individual members of
those groups, then at least as forms of behavior that were rarely
condemned for those choosing to participate in them
V. Classification
A. Positivist
1. Use of scientific method
2. Curing of social ills
B. Process and Structure
1. Process
a) Concentrate on individual behavior or the ways people come to act
in response to other people
2. Structure
a) In the sense that it deals with the ways groups are organized
b) Social disorganization has structural elements
C. Consensus and Conflict
1. Consensus
a) Based on within-culture aspects
2. Conflict
a) Based on between-culture aspects
D. Micro and Macro
1. Similar to process and structure issues