The Chicago School

Question 1

What did the Chicago School believe?

Answer 1

• Humans are social creatures and their behaviour is a product of their social environment
• Deviant or criminal behaviour generally occurs when one behaves according to definitions that conflict with those of the dominant culture.

Question 2

What is the classification of the school?

Answer 2

• helped create what may be the best criminological examples of using theory to develop reform and treatment programs
• theorists at heart were consensus theorists
• produced mostly micro theories

Question 3

What is Empirical sociology?

Answer 3

• researchers moved beyond social philosophy and armchair theory and began to study individuals in their social environment.

Question 4

What did the method of life history explain?

Answer 4

• provided a method of reaching deeply into the cumulative factors and events shaping the lives of individuals

Question 5

What is the technique of ecological study?

Answer 5

• allowed them to transcend individuality and, through the collection of social data, gain a sense of the characteristics of large groups of people

Question 6

What was the social heritage of the school?

Answer 6

• Those who worked in the social sciences during the early twentieth century dealt with the development of the big cities, rapid industrialization, mass immigration, the effects of World War I, Prohibition, the Great Depression, and more.
• The urbanization of the nation led scholars to believe the city was responsible for a majority of the problems in society

Question 7

What is the intellectual heritage of the school?

Answer 7

• German influence began to take hold
• Sociologists gathered facts about urban life, watching and recording the growth and structure of the developing city

Question 8

What are the 2 major methods of study employed by the Chicago School

Answer 8

1. The use of official data (
2. The life of history

Question 9

How was the use of official data used?

Answer 9

• The information was applied to geographical layouts of the city to indicate areas of high crime, truancy and poverty
• The figures displayed a stability that led to a revolutionary thought in crime causation: certain areas of the city remained crime prone even though various ethnic populations came and went

Question 10

How was the method of the life of history used?

Answer 10

• The life of history or case study approach presented the social-psychological process of becoming a criminal or delinquent
• Sociologists began to meet, eat, talk with and virtually live with their subjects

Question 11

Why was the Chicago school referred to as the “Ecological School”?

Answer 11

• Robert Park and Ernest Burgess borrowed the idea of studying plants and animals in their natural habitat to interpret people in time and space as they naturally appear

Question 12

What are the 5 zones of the concentric zones?

Answer 12

Zone 1 = Central Business District

Zone 2 = Transition zone

Zone 3 = Workingmen’s houses

Zone 4 = Better residences

Zone 5 = Commuter’s residences

Question 13

What is the central business zone?

Answer 13

• First Zone
• It consisted of businesses, factories and few residences
• The most problems were found in this zone

Question 14

What is the zone of transition?

Answer 14

• Second Zone
• Businesses and factories intrude this area
• Not a desirable place to live but the cheapest
• Immigrants settled here (inexpensive and near factories where they worked)

Question 15

What is the zone of working-mens homes?

Answer 15

• Third Zone
• People who could not afford the zone of transition moved here

Question 16

What is the zones of better residences?

Answer 16

• Fourth zone
• Single family homes

Question 17

What is the commuter zone?

Answer 17

• The fifth zone
• Suburbs

Question 18

What is the Social Disorganization Theory?

Answer 18

• Park and Ernest Burgess produced a conception of the city as a series of distinctive concentric circles radiating from the central business district
• Social disorganization became the primary explanation for the emergence of crime

Question 19

What is the cultural transmission theory?

Answer 19

• delinquency is transmitted from generation to generation
• social disorganization affects juveniles and leads to delinquency
• Juveniles who live in socially disorganized areas have a greater opportunities for exposure to those who espouse delinquent and criminal values

Question 20

Who is Monroe Work?

Answer 20

• First African American graduate of the University of Chicagos Sociology master’s program

Question 21

What was Monroe Work work?

Answer 21

• Focused on changing social conditions during emancipation and reconstruction which resulted in disorganization

Question 22

Who is E.Franklin Frazier?

Answer 22

• One of the most noted African American sociologists

Question 23

What did E.Franklin Frazier believe?

Answer 23

• black adolescent boys learn criminality from older peers or family members and begin patterns of delinquent behaviour around 11 or 12 years of age

Question 24

Who is Earl R. Moses?

Answer 24

• African American theorist
• Obtained his master’s in sociology at the University of Chicago

Question 25

What did Earl R. Moses believe?

Answer 25

• Delinquency appeared to be related not only to race but to mobility (the frequent movement of delinquency-prone families within dilapidated housing areas that were more deteriorated and disorganized than those of surrounding zones)
• Researched family and community factors that influenced what he called “indigenous” and “transplanted” criminal behaviours

Question 26

What is the Symbolic Interactionism theory?

Answer 26

• A social-psychological theory
• the mind and the self are not natural but are products of the social environment.
• developed from a belief that human behavior is the product of purely social symbols communicated between individuals
• It is in the process of communicating, or symbolizing, that humans come to define both themselves and others.

Question 27

What did W.I Thomas say about Symbolic Interactionism?

Answer 27

• we can have many identities, or self-concepts, depending on the setting in which we find ourselves

Question 28

What is culture conflict?

Answer 28

• Contact between people of different values and lifestyles will almost always lead to some type of conflict

Question 29

Who is Thorsten Sellin?

Answer 29

• Not a member of the Chicago school
• A Swedish American Sociologist

Question 30

What did Thorsten Sellin believe about culture conflict theory?

Answer 30

• His theory revolves around the idea of conduct norms, or rules that govern behaviour
• Groups with social and political power could use their conduct norms to control the definition of crime

Question 31

What are Thorsten Sellin’s 2 main forms of culture conduct?

Answer 31

1. Primary Conflict
2. Secondary Conflict

Question 32

What is Primary Conflict (culture conduct)?

Answer 32

• when two different cultures govern behaviour

For example: when one country conquers another and imposes its laws on the conquered people

Question 33

What is Secondary Conflict (culture conflict)?

Answer 33

• Smaller cultures existing within a larger culture, for ex subculture
• People who live in a geographic area begin, over a period of time, to create their own set of values