Knowra Chicago School (sociology) Chicago School (sociology) The Chicago School was a group of sociologists at the University of Chicago who developed empirical approaches to studying urban life, migration, and social change, especially from the 1910s through the 1930s.
Human ecology : An approach that studies how populations and institutions relate to their environments and compete for space and resources. It supplied the school's influential model for explaining how urban groups occupied and transformed city space.
Robert E. Park : An American sociologist who helped establish urban sociology and human ecology at the University of Chicago. Park shaped the school's emphasis on cities as settings for direct social investigation.
The Polish Peasant in Europe and America : A multivolume study by W. I. Thomas and Florian Znaniecki, published from 1918 to 1920, on Polish migration and social change. It demonstrated how letters and life histories could illuminate migration and changing institutions.
Marxist sociology : A sociological tradition that analyzes society through class relations, material production, and conflict. Marxist accounts foregrounded capitalism and power where ecological accounts often emphasized competition and spatial change.
Concentric zone model : A model describing city growth through rings of land use and settlement around a central business district. Ernest Burgess used this model to represent urban expansion and neighborhood succession.
Ernest Burgess : An American sociologist known for research on urban growth, family life, and social problems. Burgess formalized the concentric-zone account of Chicago's expansion.
The Hobo : Nels Anderson's 1923 sociological study of itinerant workers and life in Chicago's transient community. Anderson used close observation to map a mobile population often absent from conventional records.
Political economy of urbanization : An approach that explains urban form through investment, state action, property, and economic power. It redirected explanations of neighborhood change from natural competition toward institutions and capital.
Participant observation : A research method in which investigators take part in a setting while observing its social life. Fieldwork let sociologists document everyday life in neighborhoods rather than rely solely on official records.
W. I. Thomas : An American sociologist whose work examined migration, social change, and how people define situations. His research on Polish immigrants helped establish the school's use of documents and life histories.
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