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Street Corner Society

 

The Chicago School was materialist in philosophical foundations, that is to say that materialism is the tendency to be more concerned with material rather then spiritual or intellectual. This foundation is included, for example, in Karl Marx means of production model (see model 1). The Chicago School more closely follows the conflict theory of society, which will be explained with the Street Corner comparison, as opposed to the consensus. .
             Researchers from this school developed empirical sociology that is, studying humans in their natural environment rather than an armchair look at the social environment (as did Whyte). Chicago theorists combined data, such as individual cases with population statistics which constructed an important foundation that has since been the basis for many criminological theories of today. Members of this school focused upon the city of Chicago (hence the name) as a source for many answers to its probing questions. Many scholars of this time believed that urbanization and mobility into the city was a cause for many of the problems experienced at the time. .
             The school contributed two methods of study. The first was the usage of official data, such as census reports, housing/welfare records and crime figures. High areas of crime, truancy and poverty were applied to different geographical areas of the city. The second method was the life history, as first studied by early Chicago school theorist, (W.I. Thomas). This contributed a shift away from theoretical abstracts to more concrete approaches of the real world and real world related phenomena. The process of becoming deviant or criminal was explained by psycho-social phenomena. They wanted to present human behavior in its natural environment, and this is why the Chicago School is often referred to as the Ecological School i.e.; Chicago School assumes that ecology leads to economy, which leads to politics, and finally culture (see model 2).


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