The Development of Sociology in America

The Development of Sociology in America

 

A. The first department of sociology was established in 1893 at the University of Chicago. Most of the earlier American sociologists shared with their European forerunners an interest in social problems and social reform.

B. The University of Chicago was the leading sociological training and research center in the US. The city itself provided a living laboratory for the study of many early social problems.

1. One leading figure, Robert E. Park (1874–1944), authored several important books, as well as one of the early textbooks in sociology. He established a multidisciplinary approach to the study of urban communities that became known as social ecology.

2. After World War I, a group of scholars known as the Chicago School developed an approach to social psychology that emphasized
the importance of social interaction in the development of human thought and action. Cooley, Mead and Thomas were all instrumental in this development.

3. In the midst of the societal crisis of the 1930s, sociology developed its service relationship to national public policy with its theoretical focus on macro-level systems and its methods of large-scale quantification.

C. In the 1940s, the center of sociological research shifted from Chicago to Harvard and Columbia in the East.

   

   1. Talcott Parsons (1902–1979) became the leading social theorist in the US with his broad general theory of action.

   


   2. Robert K. Merton (1910-2003) was concerned with linking general theory to empirical testing, an approach that came to be known as the MIDDLE-RANGE THEORY.