Ernest W. Burgess

The Growth of the City: An Introduction to a Research Project

The aggregation of urban population has been described by Bucher and Weber. A sociological study of the growth of the city, however, is concerned with the definition and description of processes, as those of (a) expansion, (b) metabolism, and (c) mobility. The typical tendency of urban growth is the expansion radially from its central business district by a series of concentric circles, as (a) the central business district, (b) a zone of deterioration, (c) a zone of workingmen’s homes, (d) a residential area, and (e) a commuters’ zone. Urban growth may be even more fundamentally stated as the resultant of processes of organization and disorganization, like the anabolic and katabolic processes of metabolism in the human body. The distribution of population into the natural areas of the city, the division of labor, the differentiation into social and cultural groupings, represent the normal manifestations of urban metabolism, as statistics of disease, crime, disorder, vice, insanity, and suicide are rough indexes of its abnormal expression. The state of metabolism of the city may, it is suggested, be measured by mobility, defined as a change of movement in response to a new stimulus or situation. Areas in the city of the greatest mobility are found to be also regions of juvenile delinquency, boys’ gangs, crime, poverty, wife desertion, divorce, abandoned infants, etc. Suggested indexes of mobility are statistics of changes of movement and increase of contacts of city population, as in the increase per capita in the total annual rides on surface and elevated lines, number of automobiles, letters received, telephones, and land values. A cross-section of the city has been selected for the intensive study of urban growth in terms of expansion, metabolism, and mobility.

Homogamy in Social Characteristics

Previous studies of homagamy show that married couples tend more to resemble than to differ from each other in physical and psychological traits. Data secured from one thousand engaged couples living in the Chicago metropolitan area make it possible to present the evidence on homagamy for social characteristics. In all but six of the fifty-one social characteristics studied, the excess of the actual over the expected percentage of resemblance between members of the couple is statistically significant. The tendency for homogamy, however, varies by different social characteristics, as may be indicated by the mean value of C for groups of items as follows: religious affiliation and behavior, .54; family backgrounds, .38; courtship behavior, .33; conceptions of marriage, .31; social participation, .24; and family relationships, .12.

The Study of the Delinquent as a Person

The general theories of criminality, both the different unitary explanation of Lombroso, Tarde, and Bonger, and the pluralistic interpretation of Ferri proved to be of little or no value in the control of behavior. The Study of the Delinquent as an Individual: Healy substituted for the methods of general observation, speculation, and statistics the all-round study of the individual delinquent. Trained in psychiatry and psychology, he emphasized physical examination and mental tests without ignoring social factors. However, he relied upon the experience of the social worker instead of calling into service the technique of the sociologist. The person as the Individual with Status: The study of individual behavior falls in the fields of psychiatry and psychology. The study of the person, as the product of social interaction, lies, primarily, in sociology. In the explanation and control of delinquency, it is significant to determine the nature of the participation of the person in the social organization, as in the insecurity or degradation of status, the type of personal behavior pettern, the degree of mobility, the change of the social environment and the collapse of the social world of the person. In the study of delinquency, the psychiatric, psychological, and sociological methods of investigation are not in conflict with each other, but rather complementary and interdependent.

Social Relations, Activities, and Personal Adjustment

The sixty-four residents of two dwelling halls in Moosehaven, a community of retired members of a fraternal order, were classified as isolates by bilateral exclusion, isolates by unilateral exclusion, intimates with one person, intimates with two or more persons, and leaders. Participation in recreational activities was largest in those defined as solitary, followed in order by those classified as group, spectator, and audience. Leaders had the highest score on recreational activities and in personal adjustment, and isolates by bilateral exclusion the lowest. Men with the highest happiness scores take part nine times as much in group recreation as do those with the lowest.

The Influence of Sigmund Freud Upon Sociology in the United States

The failure of psychoanalysis to make headway with sociologists in the United States during the first decade after its introduction into this country may be explained partly on the basis of the lag between the time of publication and actual consideration of Freudian theories, but more basically because of an aversion toward the explanation of human behavior in terms of sexual motivation,its particularistic emphasis, the simpler and apparently adequate cultural interpretations of behavior, a predisposition against absolute explanations as opposed to the relative, its apparently questionalble technique, the rise of rival schools of psychoanalysis, its lack of integration with previous studies of instinct, existing sociological conceptual schemes of motivation, a trend away from the theory of insticts, and a preoccupation on the part of sociologists with their own problems. The further working-out and integrating of methods for investigating the subjective life of their phenomena are viewed as the basic methodological problems of the psychological and social sciences. To Freud must go credit for the creation of psychoanalysis as an intellectual discipline, and particularly for the perfection of the method of free association, the utilization and analysis of dream material, and the organization of a unified conceptual system. It was the mutual need in psychoanalysis and socianalysis that both aspects of conduct, psychogenic and cultural, be understood that led students in each field to seek what the other had to offer. The levels of influence of psychoanalysis upon sociologists since 1920 may be summarized as (1) indirect influence upon those who reject it; (2) uncritical acceptance; (3) attempts at testing its theories; (4) utilization of its concepts in terms of social processes; and (5) attempts at integration of viewpoints, concepts, and ,in a few cases, research methods of psychoanalysis and sociology. A final stage in the combination of psychoanalytic and sociological methods remains to be taken, that of co-operative research. In the writers Opinion Freuds most valuable contributions to sociology are (1) establishing of the role of unconscious factors in human behavior, (2) emphasis on the role of wish fulfilment, and (3) analysis of the formation of dynamic traits and patterns in personality development independent of cultural influence.

Predicting Adjustment in Marriage from Adjustment in Engagement

Previous studies have demonstrated of predicting success or failure in marriage fro background and personality factors. The present study reports an attempt to predict marital adjustment from adjustment of the couple during engagement. An engagement adjustment scale was devised, similar to the standard marriage adjustment scale and validated by sucuring statistically significant differences in mean adjustment scores between broken and nonbroken engagements for men of 146.4 and 153.1 and for women of 144.2 and 153.2, respectively. The reliability of the scale is indicated by a correlation of responses from a retest seven months later of .75 \pm .05 for the men and .71 \pm .06 for the women. The correlation between the engagement adjustment scores of the members of the 505 couples was .53 \pm .03. The feasibility of predicting marital adjustment was shown by a correlation of .43 \pm .04 for the men and .41 \pm .04 for the women between the engagement adjustment scores and marital adjustment scores secured three years after marriage. Improvement of the engagement adjustment score should increase its value as a predictive instrument. Combining the engagement adjustment score with the background score and the personality score should improve the efficiency of predicting before marriage the marital adjustment of engaged couples.

The Prediction of Adjustment in Marriage

THE PROBLEM. We do not feel it necessary to justify an effort J to increase skill in guessing right about the future. Particularly is this true of fields of experience wherein correct guesses are relevant to immediate acts of personal adjustment. Hence without apology we submit a brief outline of an exploratory effort at predicting adjustment in marriage. Briefly stated, the problem in this study was to discover what prediction as to adjustments in marriage could be made from a knowledge of certain items in the background of prospective husbands and wives. The background items selected were those which would not require the subtle powers of the psychologist or psychiatrist to detect, but were chosen purposely on the basis of the ease with which the information could be elicited from persons willing to co-operate in the study. Such a choice of items should in no sense be taken to imply that we discount the importance of more elusive psychological and physiological factors in marital adjustment. Indeed, in the work of collecting schedule data we accumulated information on personality factors in marital adjustment that appeared more basic than any of the items on our schedules. We wish to reiterate, however, that we were after background material which would be easily obtainable and which could be used for predicting the probabilities of successful adjustment in marriage. A precise description of the relationships obtaining between

The Effect of War on the American Family

War, like any other crisis, has its obvious, although more superficial, and its subtler, but more profund, effects upon the family. Among the more observable effects of war on the family are the withdrawal of Young men from civilian, and their entrance into military, life, with a consequent increase in socially disapproved forms of behavior; the entrance of women into industry to replace the men drawn into the armed forces, with an accompanying neglect of small children and an increase in juvenile delinquency; and changes in marriage, divorce, and birth rates. The more profound effects of the war upon the family include intensification of the trend roward the companionship type of family; a further rise in the status of women; further losses of family function, with the increasing use of nursery schools for the rearing of preschool-age children and the extension of governmental provision for family security; further liberalization of the code of sexual morality; and an increase in family instability as an accompaniment of the transition from the institutional to the companionship type of family.

Sociological Research Methods

The fifty years of the American Journal of Sociology record the development of sociological research in the United States. Its early issues show that sociologists at first were preoccupied with the formulation of the basic ideology of sociology and with the development of a system of concepts oriented to empirical research. Later, the main effort of sociologists turned to the devising and application of techniques appropriate to the study of society, including statistics, personal document and case study, typology, sociometry, and interviewing. At present there is a growing interest in integrating these techniques and in utilizing methods developed from neighboring disciplines. The maturing of sociology as a natural science of human behavior is also evidenced by the rise of self-criticism from two widely different viewpoints, those of operational sociology and of the sociology of knowledge. The chief handicaps now retarding the growth of sociological research are inadequancies in research training, cultist adherence to a favored technique, absorption of sociologists in teaching, and the limitations of personnel and funds in comparison with research opportunities.

Topical Summaries of Current Literature: The Family

The principle determining the selection of books and articles for this resume is their significance, at least to the writer, for the sociological study of the family. The period under review is the last twelve years, from the publication, in 1914, of Howards classified bibliography (3I)., The study of the family has become sufficiently specialized so that the literature discloses certain well-defined points of view or methods of research. There are, first of all, the studies of family life among preliterate peoples made by the anthropologists, or from their materials. Then there are the studies in the psychology of sex in relation to marriage and the family, presented by biologists, psychologists, and psychoanalysts. An even more specialized field is that of the economics of the family, where contributions have been made by social economists and household economists. Descriptions and analyses of family organization have come chiefly from social philosophers and historical sociologists. The study of family disorganization and reorganization has been, on the whole, the response of social workers and sociologists to the problems of family life in modern society.