Transcript From the Chicago School Qualitative Methodology to the New

Ognjen Čaldarović, professor, Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences,
University of Zagreb
Jana Šarinić, doctoral student, Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences,
University of Zagreb
From the Chicago School
Qualitative Methodology to
the New Developments in
Urban Studies
International Conference on „Qualitative Transitions: Issues of Methodology in Central and
South-East European Sociologies“, Croatian Sociological Association
Rijeka, November 19-21 2010
1. Introduction
• early days of the Chicago School of urban
sociology
• qualitative methods - investigation of
different issues within urban milieus
• key ideas and concepts:
• „The city as a social laboratory“ (R.
Park); experiments in „natural
conditions“
• city as a “natural place” to do
research
• topics that were studied within the city:
• gangs
• „the hobo“
• thieves
• unadjusted girl, etc.
• methodology used - interviews,
observation, participant's
observation, life histories, very
rarely surveys
• change - what represents a modern
urban scene?
2. Modern urban scene
• urban arena is much more dispersed,
complex and exposed to different
influences that arrange urban patterns
and places
• new grounds for sociological research
• global and local angles intermingle:
• people are globally
connected/disconnected; “Global cities”
and “real places” where actual people
live
• “Dual city”, gated communities,
gentrification, public space, urban
• M. Castells - „space of flows” and/or
„space of places“- urban space is seen as
the arena to do qualitative researches
• urban population - dispersed according to
their claims towards urbanity levels
• Chicago school – analysis of strange
characters or habits in the city
• today – analysis of urban processes,
formation of urban space with an
emphasis on power relation, institutional
arrangements and power of different
actors and agents
• how to define urban situation in a
3. Transitional society and its
context
• a society with no vision, no goal?
• new actors? new stakeholders? weak
state?
• new rules or no rules? anomie? “wild
capitalism”?
• corporative capital intrusion – helpless
citizens?
• disappearance of a unifying ideological
framework
• individualization and increasing battles for
“someone’s space/place” within urban
• fragmentation of urban population different visions of urban development
• key issue: “the disappearance” of urban
planning
• “project planning” or location planning
instead - with or without a vision
• earlier studies of urban population:
• how to satisfy the needs of urban
population?
• public interest was implicit and selfunderstanding
• today: partial studies, for the developers
and their interests
planning institution today compared with 5-8
persons employed in earlier period in
different institutions
• key issues:
• how to define, accept and operationalize
public interest in urban planning?
• “living together” in post-social(ist) urban
environment (social housing & free
market)
• today - “public interest” is superimposed,
defined by private developers mostly, and
then, later “proclaimed” by the decision
makers as “public interest”
• “space of places” - new experiences of
4. Advantages of qualitative
methodology in a transitional
urban context
• instead of survey analysis, more and more
ethnographic and sociological studies
based on qualitative methodology – back to
the Chicago school, but more elaborated?
• new technologies - computers, simulation
modeling, new mathematics of complexity...
• social analysis of smaller units, settlements
(Travno, Trešnjevka for example in Zagreb)
• social analysis of the construction of
identities in urban space
local public interests (“space of places”),
public space and the meaning of public
life in urban settings
• topics: appropriation of a neighborhood,
integration with “Others”, attachment to a
certain setting, habits, ways of living and
communicating
• social construction of (open) urban public
places
• the study of construction of “public
interest”
• what could be the future of qualitative
methodology in a transitional urban
5. Conclusions
• new topics to study: social differentiation,
new forms of territorialization
• increasing needs for new ways and types
of qualitative methodology?
• new ethnicities and process of their
localization in certain urban spaces
• the role of private investors in urban
milieus-procedural aspects
• role of urban government in the definition
of “public interest”
• analysis of the process of construction of
public interest
• role of civil society in the definition of
urban politics
• Castells: “What urban sociologists of the
21. century really need are new tool
boxes (including conceptual tools) to take
on the hard work necessary to research
and understand the new relationships
between space and society”
• Thank you for the attention!