the social order of the slum

ISBN: 9780226781914

定价: 36.00

内容简介

Preface
By the end of the 1950 s??? it would have appeared to the intellectual historian
that the Chicago school of urban sociology had exhausted itself. Even at
the University of Chicago??? the intensive and humanistically oriented study
of the social worlds of the metropolis had come to an end. The older figures
had disappeared one by one??? and a new generation of sociologists were
interested in quantitative methodology and systematic theory. A few
disciples of the traditional approach carried on in the shadows of the
university or were scattered through the country.
But intellectual traditions are transmitted and transformed as much by
the intrinsic vitality of their content as by the institutions of academic life.
A mere decade later the themes of a reconstructed urban sociology are
once again at the center of social science thinking. The complexity of
social behavior in the urban setting and the rise of concern with policy
issues has meant that urban sociologists have come to focus on a particular
social grouping or on a specific social institution??? such as the family??? the
juvenile gang??? the slum school??? or newly emerging community organiza-
tions. Nevertheless??? in the reconstruction of urban sociology??? the com-
munity study remains a basic vehicle for holistic and comprehensive
understanding of the metropolitan condition.
Gerald Suttles study of the Addams area on the Near West Side of
Chicago is a powerful expression of the contemporary effort to maintain a
continuity in the tradition of the urban community study and to contribute
to an urban sociology based on a more precise methodological base and a
sounder theoretical frame of reference. His work is grounded on the notion
that intensive observation of microunits--that is??? of the family and of age-
graded groups--is the initial step in the analysis of community structure.
He proceeds with an empirical orientation reflective of earlier periods of
the Chicago school when social anthropology had not yet separated from
sociology. At the same time??? he is fully committed to the view that the
intensive study of a few families or a single street corner gang is not an