Chicago school (sociology)

In sociology and later criminology, the Chicago School (sometimes described as the Ecological School) was the first major body of works emerging during the 1920s and 1930s specializing in urban sociology, and the research into the urban environment by combining theory and ethnographic fieldwork in Chicago, now applied elsewhere. While involving scholars at several Chicago area universities, the term is often used interchangeably to refer to the University of Chicago's sociology department. Following World War II, a "Second Chicago School" arose whose members used symbolic interactionism combined with methods of field research (today often referred to as ethnography), to create a new body of work.

The major researchers in the first Chicago School included Nels Anderson, Ernest Burgess, Ruth Shonle Cavan, Edward Franklin Frazier, Everett Hughes, Roderick D. McKenzie, George Herbert Mead, Robert E. Park, Walter C. Reckless, Edwin Sutherland, W. I. Thomas [1], Frederic Thrasher, Louis Wirth, Florian Znaniecki. Activist, social scientist and Nobel Peace Prize winner Jane Addams also forged and maintained close ties with some of the members of the Chicago School of Sociology.

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