Chicago School and Sociological Deviance - Essay Example

Introduction Chicago school refers to the work that was done at the University of Chicago beginning in the 1890s. The school started during the period of rapid changes in the social area in Chicago. This was caused by population upsurge due to a lot of migration. These socialchanges resulted in social problems like housing, pressure on institutions and poverty. Ethnography work was carried out by researchers who came up with a number of theories under the social disorganization theory. However those that are notable for ``making significant contributions to the topic of the relationship of ethnography and deviance are professors William Thomas, Robert Park and Ernest Burgess, all of the Chicago School Cortese (1995). Both Park and Burges worked in the same office and are credited to have taken the organic approach to the highest level in sociology. They came up with the concentric zone theory in which they explained the five zones that can be found in a Chicago city and how these zones affect the ones adjacent to them.Park and Burgess looked at cities as having five zones which are the “Central Business District,” transition, followed by working man, then residential and finally on the outermost commuter. They said that each of these zones invades the one on its outside and dominates it. Just like a strange plant species invades, dominates and succeeds an ecosystem then cities behave the same. The two professors’ zonal hypothesis holds that the zone of transition is the one with the highest levels of delinquency. They both explained social disorganization to be "the inability of a group to engage in self-regulation" Park (1925). Thomas on his side came up with the Four wishes theory in which he talks about the different environments that people find themselves in and the wishes that come from the values they have. The four wishes theory by William Thomas is founded on the notion that wishes normally come from the values within any given environment. The wishes can be equated to instincts or drives in sociology. The wishes are new experience, security, response and recognition. According to Thomas social disorganization is the "the inability of a neighborhood to solve its problems together" All the three contributed in their researches to the general work produced by Chicago school on ethnography and its contribution to the sociology of deviance Cortese (1995). Negative criticism Communities can be found existing in separate zones where organized communities appear in one zone while the other zone can be found having disorganized communities. According to Park and Burges the disorganized communities are found in zone two which is the transition. This is the area with highest deviance and crime. They tend to suggest that crime is found in this zone because of its geophysical location and not the social structures found in that area. Emphasizing on the physical environment makes one see as if the social factors are being either ignored or given a secondary position. What could be more acceptable and common is that both the geophysical location and the socia-cultural factors prevailing in a place have a role to play in determining the level of or existence of deviance in that place Downes and Rock (2003). The two professors Burgess and Park have borrowed ecological terms such as succession, competition and invasion and tried to use them to explain deviance and zonal relationships in their theory. As much as these terms were appropriate in this comparison they look somehow outdated. Again the ecological illustration they use is no longer available today. They talk of plant communities arranged in concentric circles. This was a phenomenon that vanished long ago and therefore the illustration is irrelevant to the present day. The model of centric zones is also specific on its context and historical timing. It is hard to use this theory to study the organization and the social set up of cities that are different from Chicago. It was developed in the 1920s and 30s and it specifically applied to those times. In modern times high class houses are not found on the outskirts of the city but very near the Central Business District. Burges and Park possibly made use of official data in their work. Unfortunately they lacked information about the configuration of this data in cases where the data suffered from bias or if labelling of individuals occurred Cortese (1995). In the development of the theory they also ignored the fact that that there exists white collar crime. This means that crime is also committed by the people of high social organization. This negates the fact that deviance should be highest in the transition zone and not other zones. Normally crime was associated with the transition zone where there exists social disorganization. In modern times socially organized areas have a kind of high class crime of their own such as fraud, business scams and identity theft. We are also not given reasons in this theory why there should be high incidences of crime in the transition zone compared to the other zones. The theory was inadequate in its explanations since there is also no information about those involved in the crimes and the reasons as to why they do that. Probably these reasons could be other things a part from their being residents of the transition zone Downes and Rock (2003). The behavior of human beings can be dictated by very many factors which should all be weighed in a balanced manner to determine which ones carry more weight. The theory was developed as a result of the accute social problems that plagued Chicago city at that time. These problems were caused by high population. This kind of a situation may not be ideal in certain areas since the social problems encountered in Chicago at that time may not be the same as those experienced in other places. Cities may have common problems such as poverty and population increase but this may vary slightly from one city to the other. Their emphasis on social disorganization as a result of expansion of the zones could have born in mind that expansion of the zones may not take place uniformly all around towards the outside as they supposed Becker (1999). It could work in the opposite direction as well. Since the social issues they studied in Chicago resulted from migration and high population growth they failed to capture the other side of the same situation. They looked at only one side of the coin. Supposing the city was growing negatively in that there was no increase in the population and people were migrating from the city because of various reasons. Could the situation remain the same? Could the transition zone have a problem of deviance? They did not look at a situation where the Central Business District was not expanding at the same rate with the other zones. If the transition zone was expanding and the CBD was stagnant what could have been the pattern of social organization. Could it still be socially disorganized? Thomas on his side does not specify which kind of environment will have which kinds of values and hence which wishes or drives. We therefore cannot tell which people are bound to behave is a certain way and how their wishes will influence their behavior. He does not also clarify why a certain type of environment should have different values and wishes from the other Deegan (2007). Positive criticism Studies in the relationship between the cultural set up of regions and their contribution to crime helped a lot in understanding the reasons for the behavior of people from various zones. Crime rates are low in socially organized communities because they have integration, solidarity and cohesion. Park and Burgess explained that when zones expand they exert pressure on the adjacent zones. Their theory served as a basis on which many other studies on social life in the city were done by people such as McKay and Shaw. This theory had strong points in that it attempted to provide explanations to the problems being experienced in Chicago at the time. It also served as basic knowledge for city planning and societal organization. The zone of transition could benefit from added attention from other researchers to try and find solutions to the problems of deviance and crime Braude (1970). Nevertheless Park and Burgess could have looked at the issues widely and in a broader context. Even though their theory was focussed on a specific problem at a specified time period digging into the future was possible. It was possible for them to think of what could happen many years to come as they developed their theory. They seemed to have narrowed their focus to Chicago alone. It could have been better if they made studies on one or two more cities and have a comparison of all of them to see if the pattern was the same. Probably they would have been encouraged to review their theory. This is so because the pattern of concentric circles does not apply to all the cities. Supposing they thought differently they would have seen where the error occured. Park and Burgess could have expanded more on the social disorganization idea and its relationship with deviance. This is an interesting area of sociology that needed more information for the theory to hold much water. It could have worked well if they went into the detail of studying the behavior of communities in the transition zone Braude (1970). This study could have unravelled the true reasons for deviance in the transition zone. Mentioning about deviance occuring in the second zone was good but not enough. It is unclear about the circumstances that contribute to deviance in this zone alone and not the other zones since all the zones are affected by the expanding inner zone. Probably they could have extended their study to the other zones to find out if there are any reasons for the lower levels of deviance as compared to the the transition zone apart from the issue of mere expansion Lindner (1996) To make their theory all inclusive, Park and Burges could have looked at the possibility of obstructed expansion in the outermost zone as the inner zones expand. There can be limited expansion due to anumber of factors which may bring cause people to wonder if the pressure of expansion will now be exerted on the second outermost layer. On the side of Thomas he could have given us more information on his theory explaining which kind of environments will have people with which values and which values cause which types of wishes. He could have gone a head to expalain the how the values influence human behavior Becker (1999). Conclusion In this paper the importance of the Chicago School in ethnographic studies on sociology of deviance has been examined with the works of William, Burgess and Park being critized both positively and negatively. Their theories on social disorganization and the concentric circle model were suitable for the times they were developed. However with time things have changed and their theories are proving to be either irrelevant or out dated. Modern patterns of city growth do not ape the pattern outlined by these theorists. These theories have been found to have emany other weaknesses given that those who developed themhad only Chicago city in mind with its specific social problems. Otherwise the works of these three researchers served as the foundation for many other studies that opened up many important lessons in the relationship between crime and social disorganization. References Deegan, M-J 2007 The Chicago School of ethnography’ in P. Atkinson et al (eds.): The Handbook of Ethnography, Sage Downes, D. and Rock, P. 2003 Understanding Deviance, Oxford University Press Bulmer, M. 1984, The Chicago School of Sociology University of Chicago Press Cortese, A. 1995 The rise, hegemony and decline of the Chicago School of Sociology,The Social Science Journal Vol. 32 No. 3: 235-254 Becker, H. (1999) The Chicago School: so called’ Qualitative Sociology Vol. 22 No. 1: 3-12 Braude, L. (1970) ”Park and Burgess”: an appreciation’ The American J. of Sociology Vol. 76 No. 1: 1-10 Levine, D., Carter, E. & Gorman, E. 1976 Simmel’s influence on American sociology’ The American J. of Sociology Vol. 81 No. 4: 813-845 Lindner, R. 1996 The Reportage of Urban Culture: Robert Park and the Chicago School Cambridge University Press Park, R. 1925 The City, University of Chicago Press Read More