Urban Ethnography

Legacies and Challenges

Richard E. Ocejo, Richard E. Ocejo

• Publisher: Emerald Publishing Limited
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9781787690356
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Sociology
• Index: Social Sciences

Urban ethnography has produced some of the most influential and memorable studies in sociology since the discipline's founding. Showcasing the ideas, analysis, and perspectives of experts in the method conducting research on a wide array of social phenomena in a variety of city contexts, this volume provides a look at the legacies of urban ethnography's methodological traditions and some of the challenges its practitioners face today.
This volume considers the ongoing influence of esteemed scholars in the famed 'Chicago School' in teaching ethnography and mentoring young ethnographers. In doing this it addresses the numerous definitions of space and place that ethnographers grapple with, considers the social and spatial locations in which research is conducted, and examines the intertwined forms of social identity that shape the relationships that scholars form in the field, as well as the data they produce. In addition to these themes, the authors in this volume also consider the importance of taking a global perspective when conducting local fieldwork, and of taking an intersectional approach to reflexivity and analysis.
Mixing self-reflection, practical guidance, theoretical engagement, empirical analysis, and even humor, the chapter authors offer a large slice of what ethnography has to offer for understanding the global urban world.

PART I
THE LEGACY OF THE CHICAGO SCHOOL

FROM CHICAGO TO BOLOGNA: THE PERSISTENT IMPORTANCE OF THE CHICAGO SCHOOL IN AMERICAN AND ITALIAN URBAN SOCIOLOGY

Gabriele Manella

ABSTRACT

The aim of this chapter is to consider the importance of the Chicago School in urban sociology today, both theoretically and methodologically. I will start by showing some indicators and reflections on its importance in American urban sociology. I will then focus on how this heritage has been used and adapted in Italy. In particular, I will present some theoretical and empirical studies implemented in the Bologna metropolitan area by a group of sociologists who, in the Italian context are probably using the Chicago School tools to study urban change and urban problems most explicitly. My contribution is based on bibliographic research carried out both in Italy and in the United States, as well as on some interviews conducted with American urban sociologists. The main findings show the persistent importance of several key elements of the Chicago School, both in Italy and in the United States: the general theoretical approach (space and place affect people), some specific concepts (community, neighborhood, and natural area), and methodology (combination of qualitative and quantitative tools).

Keywords: Chicago School; city; ethnography; Italy; ecological approach; Bologna

A CHICAGO SCHOOL OVERVIEW: COMMUNITY AND NEIGHBORHOOD

Ferdinand Tönnies (1957) talked about Gemeinschaft and Gesellschaft almost 120 years ago, to highlight that community was something residual in the modernization process while society was constantly advancing. Many other “classical” authors of sociology agreed with him and further elaborated on the dichotomy between community and society: Emile Durkheim (1997) mentioned the transition from mechanical solidarity to organic solidarity, Henry Maine (1972), the one from status and contract, Howard Becker (1950), the distinction between the sacred and the secular.

One element that emerges very often in these reflections is the prominent role of the modern metropolis in affecting the eclipse of community. If urban social relations at a distance become easier and more frequent, they also become more and more superficial and ephemeral (Simmel, 1950).

Many authors of the Chicago School also stressed this dramatic change as well as its effect on the city’s social structure and population. Robert Park (1967) considered transport and communication as prominent elements of urban modernity: they both contribute to make people more mobile and weaken the influence of primary groups. Louis Wirth (1938) similarly pointed out this impact of urbanization: the growth in volume and density of a city’s population negatively affects the community ties as well as the local level of social participation. City inhabitants inevitably meet each other in very limited roles and depend on more and more people to meet their everyday needs. Consequently, the modern city is characterized by a strong prevalence of secondary ties as opposed to primary ones.

However, Chicago scholars also paid attention to the persistence of community ties, even in a frenetic and constantly changing context like that city in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries (Kasarda & Janowitz, 1957). Robert Park saw the city as “a mosaic of little words” that occupy portions of land; Park called these portions natural areas to stress that they were not planned and their social organization was not the result of a project. He considered the city as a product of the inhabitants’ struggles and efforts to live and work every day, but also the result of their customs, traditions, social rituals, laws, opinions, and the “moral order” connected to a place (Park, 1952). Neighborhood became a key concept. To Park (1967), it had no formal organization; it was a spontaneous body for the containment of local issues. Many neighborhoods became the smallest and simplest unit of urban organization as well as a “protection force” for community relations in a complicated context as the one of the modern metropolis. As we will see, this part of Chicago School has inspired several Italian urban sociologists.

THE CHICAGO SCHOOL TODAY: COMBINING QUANTITATIVE AND QUALITATIVE METHODS

Edward Shils (1948) stressed how, since William Thomas and Florian Znaniecki’s studies (1918–1920), the Chicagoans dedicated a lot of effort to large-scale research in their city, together with a strong social and political involvement in the topics they studied. Morris Janowitz (1967) agrees with the importance of these aspects: he sees the core of the Chicago School approach precisely in empirical vocation extended to the whole society, inspired by the pragmatist principle that science should be applied to problem solving (Kurtz, 1984).

If the empirical vocation of the School is evident, finding the favorite research techniques or even the most frequent ones is much more complicated. History often emphasizes the qualitative part of the Chicago School, such as the use of personal documents, life histories, and participant observation (Bulmer, 1984). Ulf Hannerz (1980) used the expression “walking my walk and talking my talk” to underline the empathy effort in many Chicago studies. Robert Park’s recommendations to his students were very clear and have since become enshrined in sociological history (Rauty, 1999, p. 15):

You have been told to go grubbing in the library, thereby accumulating a mass of notes and liberal coating of grime. You have been told to choose problems wherever you can find musty stacks of routine records based on trivial schedules prepared by tired bureaucrats and filled out by reluctant applicants for fussy do-gooders or indifferent clerks. This is called “getting your hands dirty in real research.” Those who counsel you are wise and honorable; the reasons they offer are of great value. But one more thing is needful: first hand observation. Go and sit in the lounges of the luxury hotels and on the doorsteps of flophouses; sit on the Gold Coast settees and the slum shakedowns; sit in Orchestra Hall and in the Star and Garter burlesque. In short, gentlemen, go get the seat of your pants dirty in real research.

Many scholars, however, also stress the importance of the quantitative aspect of Chicago School studies, as well as their combination with qualitative tools (Bulmer, 1984; Hutchison, 2007; Tucker, 2006). The use of neighborhood mapping (Burgess & Bogue, 1967; Wright, 1954) and the analysis of statistical data (Lazarsfeld, 1962; Lundberg, 1960) are examples of this approach. Along the same line, Gary Allan Fine (1995) highlights how the core of the School was interactionist, interpretative, and qualitative.

What seems to characterize the School, then, is the coexistence of different techniques rather than the “dominance” of one over the other (Abbott, 1997). In some cases, we can glimpse the approach that would later be called mixed method studies (Small, 2009). This is clear even in an ethnographic study like the one by Nels Anderson on hoboes (1923), in which he also made use of quantitative data from the archives of institutions and social agencies (Bulmer, 1984).

The importance of the quantitative part is not a historical observation; it was a clear point of discussion among the members of the Chicago School. Louis Wirth, for example, highlighted the use he made of data on income, rent, and land value. The extensive use of mapping, a tradition already started by Henderson and his students (Deegan, 2001; Faris, 1967; Snell, 2010), also presupposes the distribution of frequencies represented geographically rather than in graphs or tables. Ernest Burgess (1929) also talked about quantitative approaches to social research, underlining the importance of data analysis to compare, where possible, the social forces in action in urban communities.

The approach of the Chicago School, however, whether qualitative or quantitative, must be seen as contextual and based on people, in opposition to the “variables paradigm”: In a single sentence, the Chicago school thought – and thinks – that one cannot understand social life without understanding the arrangements of particular social actors in particular social times and places […] no social fact makes any sense abstracted from its contexts […] social facts are located […] nothing that ever occurs in the social world occursnet of other variables (Abbott, 1997, p. 1152).

THE CHICAGO LESSON: SOME INTERVIEWS

How is the Chicago School considered today? What is its relevance? Here I draw on interviews with urban sociologists, geographers, and historians who are experts in the School as well as the American city (see also Manella, 2008, 2013). I conducted 22 interviews during some visits at the following US universities: University of California at Berkeley (Interviewee 1), Brown University (Interviewees 2–4), University of Chicago (Interviewees 5–9), Northwestern University (Interviewees 10–11), University of Denver (Interviewees 12–13), Harvard University (Interviewees 14–15), New York University (Interviewees 16–18), State University of New York – Albany (Interviewees 19–20), Columbia University (Interviewee 21), and University of Wisconsin – Green Bay (Interviewee 22).

Obviously different opinions exist, but everyone acknowledges the historical importance of the School in the United States. Scholars have to deal with it in any case, whether supportively or critically. In this sense, the Chicago School is truly a classic of sociology:

I think it is still used as the touchstone against which, whatever argument is being made, people still genuflect in the direction of the Chicago School; even if only to say how wrong it was. (Interviewee 10)

The School is seen as a “good mother” of urban sociology, because of its use of an innovative approach that was appropriate to understand new urban problems. The attention to space is one of the most important intuitions of the Chicagoans:

The concentration of poverty and crime and bad housing, etc. The Chicago School understood urban problems, they came out of a settlement house mentality, where social workers thought in fixed people problems. And they were interested in where the problems were located. (Interviewee 2)

At the same time, history underlines the School’s collaboration with city institutions and other local actors in order to carry out a sociology applied to local problems. Most of the Chicagoans also combined scientific research and social commitment through participation in local institutions and associations. The metaphor of the ivory tower, or the image of scholars closed in a library with no contact to the world outside, has never characterized the Chicago School members who were more “men of action” than “men of thought”:

There is no question that this city was transformed by the work of the Chicago School, and it was transformed in so many ways. First of all, just the amount of data that they collected about the city […] Not only the collection of data, but also the definition of community areas and the drawing of boundaries and the use of those neighborhood names by non-sociologists! Some Chicago sociologists were very involved in the neighborhood activities. Louis Wirth was a school doctor in Kenwood, Clair Drake also worked a lot in the Parkway Community House, which is a community center for the South Side and the university. There are a lot of connections between the sociologists and real life, organizing, social work, and so on. (Interviewee 11)

Opinions are more differentiated about the usability of the Chicago School approach today. Despite criticism, we can find several positive judgments. For example, while not considering himself and not being considered an heir of the Chicago tradition, someone believes that some aspects of the School are now “internalized” by all urban sociologists:

I do not think you can find many urban sociologists today that would say they implement the Chicago approach in their study about the city. On the other hand, I think it is reasonable to say that there are certain features of the Chicago approach that have become very general […] The identification of social problems with territory, for example, is very common. (Interviewee 19)

Many authors take up specific aspects of the Chicago School and combine them with others. For instance, John Logan and Harvey Molotch’s theory of the city as a growth machine may seem quite the opposite of the ecological approach of the School. They focus on the political and economic elites and the related coalitions and countercoalitions that play roles in the growth of cities. These aspects received little or no attention from the Chicagoans. Nevertheless, Logan and Molotch stress the points in common with that approach (Manella, 2008). When they talk about cities as a mosaic of interests linked to the use of land, for example, the reference to Park’s idea is clear. The interests and behaviors of urban actors are deeply linked to the place where they are located; we have to move from those places and take them into consideration in each local policy:

My opinion is “yes”: the Chicago School can still be useful today. I think cities have become more global, and we have to take a more global perspective, but on the other hand daily life happens in neighborhoods and in various places so that the neighborhood is a unit of analysis, is one unit of analysis. (Interviewee 17)

Of course, appreciating the Chicago School is very different from passively accepting it. Criticisms are common. First, it has been a very long time since the School’s classic years. The urban context has dramatically changed and it requires new theoretical approaches and research tools:

Robert Park wrote his essay on the city in 1915, [more than] a hundred years ago, and could not anticipate today’s issues. The city has ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Introduction: Building Bridges in Urban Ethnography
• Part I The Legacy of the Chicago School
• Part II How to Train Ethnographers
• Part III Thinking about Space and Place
• Part IV Layered Identities