Foretelling a New Chicago Sociology? The work of Jonesville in the Committee on Human Development, 1940-1950

• In Event: 41054 - Urban Sociology and the Legacy of Chicago

Abstract

Jonesville, a collective ethnography with 11 authors, was one of a series of works coming out of the first community study led by W. Lloyd Warner and a few eminent scholars working around the Committee on Human Development in 1940s. The research was conducted in Morris, a mid-western town, and laid out the class structure of the community and their life organization. This paper argues that Jonesville, being a long-forgotten book, is a remarkable contribution to the transition of Chicago sociology. This transition was impelled by the gathering of a group of scholars in CHD, whose interdisciplinary structure and closeness to President Robert Hutchins gave it space to develop a mode of collective ethnography that was not accomplishable in the Sociology department. We analyze the institutional basis of CHD and its leadership, the composition of the Morris project and its financial structure, and the role of individuals in the collective enterprise. We show how a Chicago style of work highly appraised by Howard Becker came into being, which greatly shaped the direction of Chicago sociology in 1950s and 60s.

Author

• Liping Wang, Peking University