Los Angeles and the Chicago School:
Invitation to a Debate
Michael Dear
Southern California Studies Center, University of Southern California
City & Community 1:1 March 2002 - PP 5-32:
C American Sociological Association, 1307 New York Avenue, NW, Washington, DC 20005-4701
INTRODUCTION
The state of theory, now and from now on, isn’t it California? And even Southern California?
— Jacques Derrida (quoted in Carrol, 1990, p. 63)
More than 75 years ago, the University of Chicago Press published a book of essays entitled The City: Suggestions for Investigation of Human Behavior in the Urban Environment. The book is still in print. Six of its 10 essays are by Robert E. Park, then Chair of the University’s Sociology Department. There are also two essays by Ernest W. Burgess, and one each from Roderick D. McKenzie and Louis Wirth. In essence, the book announced the arrival of the “Chicago School” of urban sociology, defining an agenda for urban studies that persists to this day. Shrugging off challenges from competing visions, the School has maintained a remarkable longevity that is a tribute to its model’s beguiling simplicity, to the tenacity of its adherents who subsequently constructed a formidable literature, and to the fact that the model “worked” in its application to so many different cities over such a long period of time.