Week 5: Chicago School

Intellectual Beginnings from Europe to America

Hitler's persecution and invasion of European Countries transferred European roots of communication theories to U.S.

  • U.S. Communication studies were a direct outgrowth of Europe origins
  • U.S. Social scientists attended German scientific universities and formed an intellectual bridge with European Scholars
  • used to be a requirement for reading ability to be in French and German

Hitler's Crystal Night 1938

  • Jews migrated to U.S. too avoid persecution
  • Europeans who migrated to America were awarded the Nobel Prize (19 scientists--not exactly 'pure' Americans but a nationalistic perception)

Direct Sources of American Social Science:

  • Who were the main European theorists that transferred thinking to North America?

Auguste Comte & Positivism

  • Kurt Lewin
  • Paul Lazarsfeld
  • Entire Frankfurt School at Columbia University
  • New School of Social Research for exiled European Scholars

Emile Durkheim

George Simmel and Chicago School

Gabriel Tarde

Max Weber

Wilhelm Wundt & Psychology

  • argued in 1839 for recognition of sociology as a scientific study
  • scientific method can be applied to the study of human behaviour to solve problems in society
  • coined positivism, in which knowledge or objective reality can be derived from experiences and empirical/observable occurences
  • often uses triangulation
  • Suicide (1897) empirical study on suicide rates
  • cofounder of modern sociology & methodology with george simmel
  • lived through transformation of france from agriculture to capitalist industrialization
  • relied on statistical data obtained by empirical research
  • Capitalism, industrialization and society driving people to suicide in rich countries
  • level of unhappiness in modern society forced upon individuals
  • five factors that modern society breeds unhappiness: 1. Individualism, 2. Excessive Hopes, 3. We Have Too Much Freedom, 4. Atheism, 5. Weakening of the Nation and the Family
  • co-founder of modern sociology
  • wrote about social evolution and was influenced by Darwin & Herbert Spencer
  • study of social networks and urban ecology and the concept of social distance and the marginal man
  • influenced Robert Park: newspaper in public opinion & network analysis (from Simmel's theories on group-affiliations and triads)
  • speculative rather than empirical or statistical
  • socialization carried forward into symbolic interactionism by Charles Horton Cooley, George Herbert Mead, John Dewey
  • criminology and based observations about imitation from the courtroom.
  • Two Research Traditions: 1. Diffusion and 2. Social Learning Theory

Diffusion: the rate of adoption of a new idea follows an S-shaped curve overtime.

  • the process which an innovation is communicated through certain channels over time among members
  • higher-status individuals adopted an innovation earlier.
  • an individual is influenced to adopt an innovation by mimicking the behaviour of another individual who has already adopted the new idea.
  • Everett Rogers then adapted this idea to diffusion of innovation

Social Learning Theory: Observation of the overt behaviour of another individual often serves as a guide for the observer's behaviour

  • Albert Bandura pioneered the study of how individuals learn from interpersonal models and from models observed from mass/social media (eg. effects of television violence on children aggressiveness
  • Verstehen: understanding empathically one's object of study by putting oneself in their lives
  • Bureaucracy
  • Charisma
  • notion of gesture
  • influenced John Dewey and George Herbert Mead's theory on reflex
  • Wundt launched the use of scientific method of experimentation in psychology

The Chicago School

Significance of the Chicago School

  1. Rise of social science in U.S--intellectual beachhead for important european theories
  1. gave strong empirical dimension to social science study--improve the world by studying social problems
  1. formed a theoretical conception of personality socialization centering on human communication
  • to be social and to be human was to communicate
  1. carved the future in mass communication research on media effects

Symbolic Interactionism

Modelled after John Hopkin's University: the first true university that revolutionized education in U.S.

  • devoted to conducting research and providing graduate education
  • funded by a rich robber baron

Liberal Arts College vs. The Research University

  • The 4 Research Universities became the alternative model to the hundreds of liberal arts colleges in 1890
    Roots of LA college & Research
  • Liberal Arts: University of Paris, Oxford University, Cambridge
  • Research: University of Berlin, University of Gottingen

Chautaqua movement for adult education--noted speakers gave lectures to the public

Harper's vision of Chicago is an urban university:

  • adapting itself to urban influence,
  • serve as an expression of urban civilization and
  • meet the demands of urban environments

Chicago University founded in 1892 with William Rainey Harper

  • Harper had a keen eye for academic talent, hired top scholars to teach
  • Rockefeller funds the university's deficit

Chicago University was funded by Rockefeller and later, by his foundation

  • managed by Frederick Gates
  • represented the idea of hiring professionals to give away money too deserving causes.
  • Rockefeller Foundation sponsored Lazarsfeld, Carl Hovland, Kurt Lewin, Wilbur Schramm
  • supported research that produced books, monographs, articles -- Chicago school became extremely productive due to Rockefeller monies in social research by Laura Spelman

Robert E. Park: formed a coordinated series of empirical studies as a full research programme

Harper recruited Albion Small who founded the first sociology department in U.S

  • did not want to just repeat and popularize german sociology but to EXTEND and APPLY them in U.S. social problems
  • wanted pluralistic, free marketplace of ideas and flexibility
  • moved away from theology to social sciences

Simmel's theoretical perspective about Communication:
1) Society consists of communication among individuals
2) All human communication represents some kind of exchange that has reciprocal effects on the individuals involved
3) Communication occurs among individuals who stand at varying degrees of social distance from each other
4) Human communication satisfies certain basic needs (companionship, etc)
5) Certain types of communication become stable or fixed with time and thus represent culture and social structure

Cooley, Dewey, Mead and Park

The Social Scholar Characteristics:

  • ameliorative: interested in attacking social problems by understanding them more accurately.
  • optimists and felt that social progress was needed
  • linked in an intellectual personal network of influence and intersecting careers
  • stressed subjectivism of human communication
  • empirical but not quantitative until 1930s

Cooley & Mead: interactionist social psychology

  • attacked instincts as forming the basis for human personality

Charles Horton Cooley

  • armchair sociologist that observed human behaviour from introspection.

Key Ideas:

  • mass media of communication could restore a sense of community
  • Primary Groups (parents, siblings, peers and teachers) are important in forming a person social nature--face-to-face, intimate
  • Looking Glass self--human interaction reflects the immediate environment to the individual, serving as a mirror for the mind
  • "I am what I think you think I am

Key Works

  • Human Nature & the Social Order (1902) childhood personality socialization,
  • Social Organization (1909) on society tied together by the mass media and the primary group
  • Social Process (1918) about the role of communication in society

Influenced by:

  • Herbert Spencer
  • John Dewey
  • August Comte
  • Gabriel Tarde
  • Darwin
  • William James' nature of psychology and perspective of pragmatism where ideas can be tested with hypothesis

Key Figures in the Chicago School

Albion Small: founder of Department of Sociology, building foundations for the greatness of Chicago school

W.I. Thomas: perceptions and individual's "definition of the situation and its real consequences";

  • Polish Peasant in Europe & America (1918) is the most important work establishing sociology as a discipline in America
  • stressed the concept of social disorganization
  • from humanitarian interest to analysis of sociological processes of disorganization
  • which is the freeing of the individual from social control of a group--loss of solidarity and breakdown of primary group relationships

Ernest Burgess: family sociologist and human ecologist--concerned with individual's relationship with their environment

  • proposed the concentric circle theory of urban structure
  • a downtown business center with successive circles of lower-class, middle-class and upper-class residential zones surrounding it

John Dewey: Pragmatism philosophy where interpretation of beliefs should be made in terms of practical effects

George Herbert Mead: individual's personality is formed through communication with other people, as self-images develop by means of interaction with others

  • Mind, Self and Society (1927)

Robert E. Park: best exemplified the Chicago School & first mass communication student

Characteristics of Chicago Sociology

  • mentor-apprentice relationships to teach/conduct research
  • urban ethnography is the main driving force of sociological field work
  • studied deviant subcultures (i.e slums, gangs, suicides, ghettos)
  • away from 'do-goodism' and to scientific study of social problems, 'intellectual voyeurism'
  • dense network of scholars carrying out research in one city about its social problems

Progressivism: belief that social problems can be solved by scientific study

  • chicago school was marked by progressivism, positivism and reform
  • away from macro-level evolution and towards a fine-grained micro-level social psychology

John Dewey

Key Ideas:

  • individuals can find self-realization only in the company of others; community is essential to democracy
  • communication was the means for getting people to be full participating members of society
  • not recognized by most communication scholars--only an indirect ancestor to forefathers of comms study

Magnum Opus: Pragmatism

  • Hegelian perspective: mind and nature have an essential unity. In studying nature, one is studying the underlying reality of nature.
  • scientific experimentation could provide a practical basis for knowing the world

In Psychology

  • drew on William Wundt's theory of gesture
  • expanded psychology from individualistic to individual's social relationships
  • Stimulus response (knee-jerk reflex) model was incomplete, too instinctive and oversimplifies the individual's interpretation of the stimulus
  • transformed S-R model to Stimulus-Intepretation-Response Model with interaction derived from others
  • rejected mind-body dualism sentiments in S-R model, external stimulant vs internal response