Urban Sociological Theories

7/27/2019 Urban Sociological Theories

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EMILE DURKHEIM:

THE CITY, THE DIVISION OF LABOUR AND THE MORAL

BASIS OF COMMUNITY

His method provides a direct contrast to the approaches of both KarlMarx and Max Weber

Durkheim assumes that reality is given in observation

He asserts the ability of sociology to penetrate the essence of socialphenomena

His is a positivist sociology His endorsement of a purely experimental basis for knowledge, his

equation of the logic of explanation between the natural and socialsciences.

Reality cannot be known through ideas about it.

Social phenomena in themselves as distinct from the consciously formedrepresentations of them in the mind

We must study them objectively as external things. Science thus beginswith a complete freedom of mind.


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Social facts

Types of social solidarity

- sociology therefore relies on observable phenomena as indicators ofthe essence of social facts

Social facts

the collective phenomena of social life

Moral authority of laws and determinacy of socialization and collective life


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Products of group life, it is the nature of the group

Durkheimssociology begins by identifying socialfacts

Two types of social solidarity 1. organic

2. mechanic

the growth of the division of labour

transition from one to the other

the analysis of the city becomes important


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two factors give rise to an increased division of labour in society:

(a) material density(density of population increased

in a given area )(b) moral density ( increased density of interaction

and social relationship within a

population)

The division of labour (1933)

an increase in moral density


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The increase in moral density of a society is expressed through

urbanization: Cities always result from the need of an individualsto put themselves in very intimate contact with others.

Urbanization together with the associated development of new

means of transportation and communication, is the cause of the

division of labour.

A concentrated human population can survive only through

differentiation of functions


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An increase in population, necessarily determines advances in the

division of labour.

Increased moral density increased division of labour (the

collapse of the society or to the elimination of weaker competitors

within it)

Moral density is a necessary but not a sufficient condition.

The city as a force for change presents


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The city undermines traditional controls that the collectivitycannot possibly impose a single code of moral conduct over the

diverse spheres of action in which the urbanite becomes involved,

The city extends its influence over the surrounding countryside

and thus urbanizes the society as a whole.


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Division of labour social solidarity

a new organic solidarity of interdependence, but in a state of

moral basis of social life.

Role of the city as the primary force for change

It provided the organizational expression for functionaleconomic interests.

Rome was essentially an agricultural and military society basis

of association was familial rather than urban


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As Marx and Weber deny the theoretical significance of the

modern city.

no longer no longer

express expressClass relation human association


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He sees the city as an historically significant condition for the

development of particular social forces the division of labour

development by breaking down the bonds of traditional

morality.

He sees the modern city the expression of the current (abnormal)

development of these forces pathological disorganizationreflecting the anomic state of modern society


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SOCIAL THEORY CAPITALISM AND THE

URBAN QUESTION

Most areas of sociology today are characterized by a certaindegree of theoretical and methodological pluralism and urban

sociology is no exception,

there are distinctive Marxist urban sociologies, Weberian urban

sociologies, each differing according to the questions they pose.Contemporary Marxist urban theories the method of

dialectical materialism, the theory of class struggle and

capitalist state

The central concern of all of these writers was with the social,economic and political implications of the development of

capitalism in the west at the time when they were writing


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the rapid growth of cities was among the most obvious and potentially

disruptive of all social changes at that time.

In England and Wales, e.g., the urbanpopulation,nearly trebled in the

second half of the nineteenth century with the result that over 25 million

people ( 77% of the total population ) lived in urban areas at the turn of

the century.

The growth of urbanproblems the spread of slums and disease, thebreakdown of law and order, the increase in infant mortality rates and a

plethora of other phenomena.


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the disintegration of moral cohesion Durkheim

the growth of calculative rationality Weber

the destructive forces unrealized by

the development of capitalist production - Marx

Durkheim's works on the social effects of the division of labour

came to be incorporated into ecological theories of city growth and

differentiation in the 1920s.

webers writings on political domination and social stratificationformed the basis for a conceptualization of the city as a system of

resource allocation in the 1960s.


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In the 1970sMarxs analysis of social reproduction and class

struggle was developed as the foundation for a new political

economy of urbanism.

the paths followed by their ( weber, Durkheim, and Marx)

respective analyses are divergent, yet the end-point is the same.


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MARX AND ENGELS: THE TOWN, THE COUNTRY

AND THE CAPITALIST MODE OF PRODUCTION

the discovery of the forces which shaped the development ofthe social world.

- as for ex: Darwins work had led to the discovery of the

forces shaping the evolution of the natural.

the principle of the dialectic is essentially that any wholeis

comprised of a unity of contradictory parts, such that it is

impossible to understand any one aspect of reality without

first relating it to its context.

capital and wage labour are tied together in an inescapable

yet absently antagonistic relation of mutual interdependence


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a method of analysis which is dialectical no single aspect of

reality can be analyzed independently of the totality of social

relations.the term materialism in this context is generally used in

contra-distinction to idealism.

material world exists prior to our conceptions or ideas about

it.according to Marx, the first real class society was that of the

ancient city ( notably Rome).

roman society was based on a slave mode of production in

which the wealth of the ruling class was founded on

agricultural land ownership.


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ownership of the means of production became increasing

concentrated into great estates.

ancient classical history is the history of cities but cities based onlandownership and agriculture.

the growth of a merchant class in the established towns during the

middle ages had the important effect of extending trading linksbetween different areas, thereby facilitating a division of labour

between different towns and stimulating the growth of new

industries.

the new system of capitalist manufacture facilitated by merchants

capital in the medieval towns, thus tools root in the countryside

and the great cities of the industrial revolution grew up around it.


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the new social relations of capitalism thus became established asthe anti-thesis to the old social relations of feudalism.

the contradictions the class antagonism between industrialbourgeoisie and feudal landowners came to be represented directlyand vividly in the conflict between town and country.

in the feudal period the division between town and country notonly reflected the growing division of labour between manufactureand agriculture but was also the phenomenal depression of the anti-thesis between conflicting modes of production.

struggle between proletariat and bourgeoisie extends across urban-rural boundaries as workers in town and countryside areincreasingly drawn into the capital relation.


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the role of the city in capitalist societies

- the city express most vividly the evils of capitalism

- within the city that the progressive forces of socialism aremost fully developed.

not the city that is held responsible for the poverty and

squalor of the urban proletariat, but the capitalist mode of

production.

the city is portrayed as the hot house of capitalist

contradictions.

the housing shortage from which the workers and part of thepetty bourgeoisie suffer in our modern big cities is one of the

innumerable smaller secondary evils, which result from the

present day capitalist mode of production


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pattern of urban deprivation in that city

the city is not only a reflection of the logic of capitalism but

the necessary condition for the transition to socialism.

it is in the city that the revolutionary class created by

capitalism, the proletariat achieves its fullest classic perfection

capitalism are most fully developed in the great cities.common deprivation of the proletariat is most likely to result

in the growth of class consciousness and revolutionary

organization.

the city represents a concentration of the evils of capitalism, italso constitutes the necessary conditions for the development

of the workers movement that will overthrow it.


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Marx and Engels communist manifesto to the effect that the

bourgeoisie has rendered a service to the workersmovement

by creating large cities which have rescued a considerable

part of the population from the idiocy of rural life.

the city may illustrate the manifestations of essential

tendencies within capitalism.


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MAX WEBER: THE CITY AND THE GROWTH OF

RATIONALITY

webers approach to sociological explanation represents

almost a total reversal of Marxsmethod.

Marx emphasized totality, the need to relate everything toeverything else,

weber argues that only partial and one-sided accounts are ever

possible. the basic concept in webers sociology is that of the human

subject endowed with free will who, in interacting with others,attempts to realized certain values or objectives.

Ideal types: these are mental constructs which serve to specifythe theoretically most significant aspects of different classes ofsocial phenomena.


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he suggests that cities are defined by the existence of an

established market system: economically defined, the city is a

settlement the inhabitants of which live primarily off trade and

commerce rather than agriculture.

the city is a market place

he then distinguishes between consumes, producer andcommercial cities on the basis of this economic criterion.

political dimension, he suggests that partial political

autonomy is a key criterion: The city must be considered to bea partially autonomous association, a community with

special political and administrative arrangements.


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City 1. patriciancity,run by an assembly of notables.

2. plebeiancity,run by an elected assembly of citizen.

the political autonomy of the cities in northern Europe wasachieved on the basis of economic rather than military power.

taking these two dimensions together, weber then constructshis ideal type city.

To constitute a full Urban Community a settlement mustdisplay a relative predominance of trade commercial relationswith the settlement as a whole displaying the following

features.1. a fortification a tower, wall, gun position it built to

defend a place against attack .

2 k


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2. a market

3. a court of its own and at least partially autonomous law

4. a related form of association

5. at least partial autonomy and autocephaly, thus also an

administration by authorities, in the election of whom

the burglars participated.

the medieval cities in western Europe sustained afundamental challenge to the feudal system which surrounded

them paved the way for the subsequent development of a

rational, legal, capitalistic social order.

this challenge partly from the erosion of traditional valuesand the development of new forms of individuals.

medieval cities as places of revolution as centres.

FERDINAND TONNIES


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FERDINAND TONNIES

GEMEINSCHAFT AND GESELLSCHAFT

In the late 19thcentury, the German sociologist Ferdinand Tonnies

(1855-1937) studied how life in the new industrial metropolis

differed from life in rural villages.

Tonnies (1887) used the German word Gemeinschaft- (meaning

roughly community) to refer to a type of social organization by

which people are closely tied by kinship and tradition.

the Gemeinschaft of the rural village joins people in what amounts

to a single primary group.

on the contrary, Urbanization fosters Gesellschaft( a German word

meaning roughly association), a type of social organization bywhich people come together only on the basis of individual self-

interests.


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In the Gesellschaft way of life, individuals are motivated by

their own needs rather than a drive to enhance the well-beingof everyone.

city dwellers display little sense of community or common

identity and look to others mostly as a means of advancingtheir individual goals.

Tonnies saw in Urbanization the erosion of close, enduring

social relations in favor of the fleeting and impersonal ties

typical of business.


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THE URBAN AS A CULTURAL FORM

Tonnies classic study of Gemeinschaft and Gesellschaft

originally published in 1890 and republished with a newintroduction in 1931.

his purpose to study the sentiments and motives which draw

people to each other, keep them together and induce them to

joint action. 1. natural willthe sensations, feelings and instincts which

derive from physiological and psychological process in

born and inherited.

2. rational willthe deliberate, goal-oriented andcalculation product of the use of intellects.


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social relationships were governed mainly by natural will

Gemeinschaft.

social relationships were governed mainly by rational will

Gesellschaft.

human societies had changed over time from form of

association based on Gemeinschaft to those based onGesellschaft.

extension of trade and the development of capitalism.

Gesellschaft as bourgeoisie society.

the unit of sentiment (in Gemeinschaft), flows from the

naturalbonds of blood, neighborhood and religious belief is

disrupted by the growth of industrial capitalism.


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the possibility of a relation in the Gesellschaft assumes no

more than a multitude of mere persons who are capable of

delivering something and consequently of promisingsomething.

Gesellschaft = modern day capitalism

as the urban centers grow, so the Gemeinschaft of the ruralhinterland is eclipsed and undermined.

family life and village communalism are replaced by urban

individualism and state power, which itself carries the seeds of

a future development of socialist union.Tonnies work as regards the later development of Urban

Sociology.

ROBERT PARK THE URBAN AS AN ECOLOGICAL


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ROBERT PARK : THE URBAN AS AN ECOLOGICAL

COMMUNITY

The ecological perspective advanced between the wars by

Robert Park and his colleagues at the University of Chicago.

Human ecology was the first comprehensive urban socialtheory and in the US it has some claim to have been the first

comprehensive sociological theory.

It developed at a time when America sociology was gaininginstitutional recognition as a discipline but lacked anindigenous body of theory.

human ecology could be seen as a sub-discipline withinsociology


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Human ecology was concerned with the specific theoretical

problem of how human populations adapted to theirenvironment

Parksstudents Human ecology, as Park conceived it, wasnot a brand of sociology but rather a perspective a method

and a body of knowledge essential for the scientific study ofsocial life and hence, like social psychology, a generaldiscipline basic to all the social sciences.

From Emile Durkheim that Park derived his methodologicalframework and from Charles Darwin that he derived histheory.


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Durkheims influence can be found first Parksontological assumptions regarding human nature andthe relationship between the individual and society.

- Ontology a branch of Philosophy that deals withontological(the nature of existence).

In 1916, Park wrote, thefact seems to be that men arebrought into the world with all the passions, instincts andappetites uncontrolled and undisciplined.

Park takes as his starting point the tension betweenindividual freedom and social control.


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Like Durkheim, Park explains personal and socialdisorganization in terms of the erosion of moral constraints,

for homo ecologic in an inherently egoistical and unsocialcreatures who needs to be kept in check by society for his orher own good and for the good of others

Durkheim noted that social disorganization was the

necessary price to be paid for human progress.

Too much moral constraints was as bad as too little since itresulted in individual fatal and social stagnation.

So, Park found in the break-down of traditional moral controlsa cause for both concern and celebration.


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He saw that the growth of the cities had undermined the socialcohesion once maintained by the family, the church and the villageand he pointed to the threat of the mob sweptby every new windof doctrine, subject to constant alarms.

He saw the potential for individual freedom and self-expressionthat the city represented.

Disorganization new level of human organization involving newmodes of social control

Human nature and moral constraints any form of human

organization was necessarily an expression of both.the structure of the city = 1) its physical structure and 2) its moral

order.


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Human society involves a double aspect

community and society

as the biotic as its cultural level

of social life proved highly problematic

Ecology is concerned with communities rather than societies.

The ecological approach to social relations, therefore, wascharacterized by an emphasis on the biotic as opposed to thecultural aspect of human interaction.

Web of life through which all organisms were related to allothers in ties of interdependence or symbiosis.

Competition for the basic resources of life thus resulted in theadaptation of different species to each other and to theirenvironment.


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The evolution of a relatively balanced ecological system basedupon competitive co-operation among differentiated and

specialized organisms.

His analysis in other words, is both functional and spatial: the mainpoint is that the community so conceived is at once a territorial anda functional unit.

His idea of the development of functional differentiation andinterdependence in the human community draw heavily onDurkheimsanalysis of the origins of the Division of Labor.

Park suggests that an increase in population size within a givenarea, together with an extension of transport and communicationnetworks, results in greater specialization of functions.

ERNEST WATSON BURGESS (1886-1966)


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ERNEST WATSON BURGESS (1886 1966)

24thpresident of the American Sociological Society

University of Chicago Asst.Professor in Sociology

Born in Tilburg, Ontario, Canada.

Kingfisher College in Oklahoma and received B.A., in

1908.

university of Chicago Ph.D., in 1913.

He has been called the first young sociologist.

His career spanned for five decades (1916-1957).

In his 1951 book, American Sociology: The Story ofsociology in the US through 1950.


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Processes of competition, dominance, succession and

invasion that provide the basis for the well-known modelof community expansion proposed by Burgess (1967)

City could be conceptualized ideally as consisting of

five zones arranged in a pattern of concentric circles.

The expansion of the city occurred as a result of the

invasion by each zone of the next outer zone.


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The Central business district tended to expand into

the surrounding inner-city, zone of transition which inturn tended to expand into the zone of working-class

housing around it.

This physical process of succession therefore results

in the segregation of different social groups in

different parts of the city according to their suitability;


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In the expansion of the City, a process of distribution

takes place which sifts and sorts and relocateindividuals and groups by residence and occupation.

Segregation offers the group and thereby the individual

who compose the group, a place and a role in the total

organization of city life.

Thi t t f h d dj t t


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This constant process of change and adjustments,

invasion and succession, disorganization and

reorganization is especially marked in the inner-city zone

of transition.

Burgess recognized that mobility is therefore most

pronounced in the inner-city areas that are in an almost

constant state of flux, and he sees this as the explanation

for the social disorganization that tends to characterized

these area.


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Mobility, in other words, is a source of change and of

personal and social disorganization.

where mobility is greatest, so too is the lack of social

cohesion and the demoralization of the human spirit.

These processes are natural and spontaneous response of

human population to changes in the environment in which

they live.

H b i j d f bilit hi h l t did t


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Human beings enjoyed scope for mobility which plants did not

possess. They had a capacity for consciously changing their

environment.

Mckenzie observes, the Human community different from the

plant community in the two characteristics of mobility and

purpose,

that is, in the power to select a habitat and in ability to control or

modify the conditions of the habitat.

Human beings, in other words, shared a culture.

ROBERT McKENZIE


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ROBERT McKENZIE

One of Parkscolleagues at the University of Chicago.

The Ecological Approach to the Study of the HumanCommunity.

It is a method of analysis; plants & animals

Biology

Society is made up of individuals spatially separated,

territorially distributed and capable of independent

locomotion.

These spatial relationships of human beings are the

products of competition and selection.


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competition selection

spatial relationships

of human beings

process of changeThese spatial relationships change

the physical basis of social relations is altered

producing social and political problems


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Natural process of Human

ecology = competition & = ecology

accommodation

Sociologist has failed to recognize the above and it

determining the size and ecological organization of the

human community.The human community differs fro the plant community in

the two dominant characteristics of mobility and purpose.

Man is a gregarious animal; he can not live alone; he is

relatively week and need not only the company of otherhuman associated both shelter and protection from the

elements as well.


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McKenzie (1967): the size of any human community is

limited by what it can produce and by the efficiency of its

mode of distribution.

a primary service community (based on agriculture)

cannot grow beyond a population of around 5000.

an industrial town can grow to many times that size

provided its industries are serviced by an efficient

system of market distribution.


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Any particular type of community tended to increase

in size until it reached its climax point at which the

size of population was almost perfectly adjusted to

the capacity of the economic base to support it.

The community would then remain in this state of

equilibrium until some new element (e.g., a new

mode of communication or a technological

innovation) distributed the balance.


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Competition = would again sift and sort the population

functionally and spatially until a new climax stage wasreached.

Drawing again on Darwinswork, the human ecologists

referred to this process of structured community changeas succession that orderly sequence of changes

through which a biotic community passes in the course of

its development from a primary and relatively unstable to

a relatively permanent or climax stage

so too in the human community the pattern of land use


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so, too in the human community the pattern of land use

changes as areas are invaded by new competitors which

are better adapted to the changed environmental

conditions than the existing users.

such a process of invasion and succession is reflected in

the human community in changes in land values with theresult that competition for desirable sites forces out the

economically weaker existing users (e.g., residents) who

make way for economically stronger competitors (e.g.,

business).


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following a successful invasion a new equilibrium is then

established and the successional sequence comes to an

end.

The human community differs from the plant communityin two dominant characteristics of mobility and purpose,

that is, in the power to select a habitat and in the ability to

control or modify the conditions of the habitat.


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Human beings, in other words, shared a culture.

McKenzie argues that the biotic forces of competitionalways tend to produce a natural equilibrium at the point

where the population is optimally adjusted to its

environment.

At this climax stage, the community is functionally and

spatially differentiated such that different functional

groups are located in different areas according to their

relative suitability.


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As this unstable biotic equilibrium develops, so too do

distinctive cultural forms corresponding to the different

areas: The general effect of the continuous processes of

invasions and accommodations is to give to the

developed community well-defined areas, each having its

own peculiar selective and cultural characteristics.

McKen ies major orks


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McKenziesmajor works:

1. The neighborhood: A study of local life in Columbus,Ohio.(1921)

2. The ecological approach to the study of the humancommunity, chapter-3 (1925)

3. The Metropolitan community, New York, McGrawHill(1933).

4. The Ecology of institution (1936)

5. On human ecology selection writings (edit) by

Amos Henry Hawley, University of Chicago press(1968).

GEORGE SIMMEL (1858-1918)


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German sociologist and Philosopher, born in Jewish family in Berlin.

He studied history and philosophy at University of Berlin

His Ph.D., in1881.

He published over 200 articles over a dozen books.

He offered a micro-analysis of cities, studying how Urban life shapes individual

experience

According to Simmel, individuals perceive the city as a crush of people, objects

and events.

His writings on the sociology of space are a case study of Simmelscontributionsto social sciences concepts.

Simmelswriting on space appears in two articles


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1. 1903- The sociology of space

2. on the spatial projections of social forms

In 1908 three essays on (a) The social Boundary, (b) The

sociology of the senses, (c) The Strangers

The chaptersspatial themes including:

a) the socially relevant aspect of space

b) the effect of spatial conditions upon social interaction and

c) upon forms of social, physical and psychological distance

he did not present an organized theory of space

Simmel's approach to spatial analysis


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* The sociology of space a contribution of his uncompleted project

to express the preconditions of human sociation by formed categories oftime, mass and number which he called socialgeometry.

The Metropolis and Mental Life: Simmelssociology is highly personal,

willfully eclectic and internally incoherent.

concern with the questions of individuality and freedom, modernity and

the division of labour, and intellectual rationality and the money

economy.

All of these concerns are expressed in his essay on the metropolis and

mental life.

sociology, therefore is the science of the forms of human

association as abstracted from real world interaction


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association as abstracted from real-world interaction.

interaction among its members

the personal and emotional commitments of members ofsmall groups are replaced by formal means of control ( asagencies of the law).

custom is characteristics of small groups, law ischaracteristic of large ones.

An increase in the size of a social group

the scope of individual freedom & but also for the degree ofindividual distinctiveness

As a group expands, so it threatens to immerse the individualwith the mass: It pulls the individual down to a level with all


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with the mass: It pulls the individual down to a level with alland sundry

The intellect of the individual is eroded by the emotion of themasses, and social interaction is debased as social life becomesgrounded in the lowest common denominations.

The larger the group, the more impersonal group interactionbecomes and the less concerned members become with theunique personal qualities of others.

people in the metropolis come to emphasize their ownsubjectivity both to others and to themselves.

In the large group, the individual stands alone isolated

yet rejoicing in the privacy which the metropolis affords


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yet rejoicing in the privacy which the metropolis affords.

The social effects of size thus leads to the conclusionthat in a large group:

1. custom is replaced by formal social control

mechanisms

2. the individualscommitments become extended across

a number of different social circles.

3. the scope of individual freedom is increased

4. the character of social relations is highly impersonal5. the individualsconsciousness of self is ----


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development of an advanced division of labor in society

1. the growth of the division of labor in modern societies

forms of human associations.

2. the division of labor reinforces the self-consciousness

engendered by an increase in size

3. the division of labor therefore encourages egoism andindividualism

these characteristics of modernity

the development of a money economy

Money is totally depersonalized for its exchange leaves

no trace of the personality of its previous owner.

It reduces all qualitative values to a common quantitative


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It reduces all qualitative values to a common quantitative

base.

It is a source of individual freedom and independencecash economy social expansion individual freedom of

choice.

the finest expression of the rationality of the modern world.

Money is both the source and the expression of metropolitanrationality and intellectualism

Metropolises are guided by their heads rather than their

hearts by calculation and intellect not affection and emotion.

Money expresses all qualitative differences of things interms of howmuch?.


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Money, with all its colorlessness and indifferencebecomes the common denominator of all values.

his unique emphasis on sociology of number.

the metropolis is above all a large human agglomeration

city in other than merely geographical or numericalterms.

LOUIS WIRTH (1897-1952)


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Major figure in the Chicago school of Urban sociology.

Wirth (1938) is best known for blending the ideas of Tonnies,Durkheim, Simmel and Park into a comprehensive theory ofurban life.

City as a setting with a large dense and socially diverse

population

these traits result in an impersonal, superficial and transitoryway of life.

living among millions of others, urbanites come into contact

with many more people than rural residents.

when city people notice other at all they usually know them not in


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when city people notice other at all, they usually know them not interms of Who they are! but what they do ?- as, for instance the busdriver, florist or grocery store clerk.

specialized urban relationships can be pleasant enough for allconcerned.

limited social involvement coupled with great social diversitymakes city dwellers more tolerant than rural villagers.

Rural communities often jealously enforce their narrow traditions

but the heterogeneous population of a city rarely shares any singlecode of moral conducts.

Tonnies and Wirth saw personal ties and traditional morality

lost in the anonymous rush of the city.


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lost in the anonymous rush of the city.

Wirth (1945) explained it, the basic physical and natural forces

at work in human society establish the framework and thecontext within which people act and human ecology is

therefore basic and complementary to the analysis of social

organization and social psychology.

Human ecology is not a substitute for but a supplement to, the

other frames of reference and methods of social investigation.

Wirths essay can be seen as an extension, modification and

development of Simmel's paper on the Metropolis

Wirthsarticle on the city from the sociological standpoint

Simmelsidentifies size Wirthspaper by an

as a key explanatory variable analysis of heterogeneity


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as a key explanatory variable analysis of heterogeneity

and analysis of the while the effects of a

division of labour is money economy are

Replaced by dropped from the

analysis

altogether.

He also drew upon some of the insights developed by

the Chicago Human ecologists as regards the effects of

density on human organization and the dominanceachieved by the city over its hinterland.

Three significant perspective on the city

H l


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-Human ecology

-Organizational City

-socio-psychological

To develop a theory of the city that could account for the ecological,

organizational and socio-psychological characteristics of Urbanism

Variations in patterns of human association may be explained as the effects of

three factors size, density and heterogeneity.

The task for urban sociology is then to analyze the extent to which each of these

three variable gives risk to definite forms of social relationships.

Wirths emphasizes that folkways of life may still be found incities, for previously dominant patterns of human association are notcompletely obliterated by urban growth


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completely obliterated by urban growth.

Urbanways of life are likely to spread beyondthe boundaries ofthe city, given the ecological dominance of the city over itshinterland.

Wirthsanalysis of the social effects of size closely reflects that of

Simmel.large size -----------> greater variation

the spatial segregation of differentgroups

acc.to ethnicity, race, status,occupation and so on

Simmel increase in size reduces the changes of any

two individuals knowing each other


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t o d dua s o g eac ot e

personally,

segmentalism in social relationships

secondary rather than primary contacts

His earlier study of a Jewish Ghetto in Chicago for ex.,

he concluded that it formed a cultural community with a

communal way of life.

The individual gains a certain degree of emancipation orfreedom from the personal and emotional controls of

intimate groups.

The effects of density on social relationships are a

function of the growth of differentiation.


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g

Density thus reinforces the effect of numbers indiversifying men and their activities and in increasing the

complexity of the social structure.

People relate to each other on the basis of their specific

roles rather than their personal qualities.

the analysis of social heterogeneity is concluded largelyin terms of Simmels

ROBERT REDFIELD

born 4th December 1897, died on 16th October 1958.


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born 4 December 1897, died on 16 October 1958.

U.S. pioneer of Urban sociology and anthropology

From his studies of Mexican communities Redfield developed a

theory (1956) of a folk-urban continuum to account for the difference

between folk society and urban society.

A folk society was small in size, isolated, homogeneous, preliterate

with a social and cultural life linked to kinship and sacred beliefs.

Urban society had opposite of all these features

He believed that any community had a place on this continuum

from folk to urban.

this scale implied that simpler or folk forms of society

would evolve to complex social forms with time.


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Anthropologists new consider the way folk and urbansocieties are part of a larger social, political and

economic environment, rather than considered as

separate poles on a continuum.

Robert Redfield was a student of Robert Park.

Redfield (1941) studied four communities in the Yucatan

Peninsula of Mexico, ranging from the small,

homogeneous and very isolated settlement at Tusik to

the largest town in the region, Merida.

on the basis of this study, he argued that the less isolated and more


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heterogeneous the settlement, the more it became characterized by

cultural disorganization, secularization and the growth of

individualism.

Redfield (1947), proceeded to develop an ideal type of the folk

society which complemented wirths analysis by identifying the

characteristics of communities at the other end of the rural-urbancontinuum.

Folk societies have certain features in common which enable us to

think of them as a type a type which contrasts with the society of themodern city.

Society folk society > small, isolated, illiterate

and homogeneous with a strong


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sense of group solidarity

Modern city -> vast, complicated andrapidly changing world

The ideal type folk society

small, isolated, non-literate, intimate, immobile,

homogeneous and cohesive.

a rudimentary division of labor based mainly on a rigid

differentiation of sex roles;

the means of production were stared;

economic activity was contained within the community

culture strongly traditional and uncritical

it was grounded in social bonds based upon kinship andli i


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religion.

its internal coherence derived from custom rather thanformal law.

patterns of interaction were based on ascribed statusand social relationships were personal and diffuse.

there is no place for the motive of commercial gain.

the work of wirth and Redfield exhibits two main themes.

- the first is that patterns of human relationships can beconceptualized in terms of a pair of logically opposite idealtypes.

Redfieldswork : variations in patterns of human

relationships between different communities are to


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p

be explained in terms of differences in their size

and density their degree of internal homogeneityand the extent of their isolation from other centres

of population.

the value judgment that folk societies are good

and urban societies bad.

folksocieties are integrated while urban societiesare the great disorganizing force.

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Urban Sociological Theories

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