The concept of a school includes having "a central figure around whom the group is located, who is an inspiring and effective leader, whose school it essentially is, and without whom the school eventually begins to break-up" (Harvey 1987, p. 3). Robert Ezra Park (1864-1944) was that essential figure during his tenure in the Sociology Department at the University of Chicago. Park had been a newspaper journalist prior to becoming a sociologist. He brought the practice of immersing oneself into a situation as a participant observant to his new field and taught his students to do the same (Harvey 1987). A great deal of Park’s work was undertaken in conjunction with Ernest W Burgess (1886-1966), Park’s colleague and friend. Park’s sociology, which includes his reliance upon field research as well as much of the novel theory that he and Burgess espoused coupled with Park’s ability to attract quality graduate students, is often referred to as the Park school of thought or the "Park School."
HUMAN ECOLOGY
One of Park and Burgess’s major contributions to sociology is the use of ecology in the study of human groups. Borrowing from animal ecology and economics, Park hypothesized that, much like plant and animal life, human groups carve out niches for themselves based on competition for space (Park 1950). For example, key tenets of Burgess and Park’s concentric zone theory are that businesses need a central location and that communities build around these business districts to form biotic or mutually interdependent relationships. Additionally, the zones are populated and repopulated via a cycle of invasion and succession much like that found in plant life (Coser 1971).
The social or moral order differentiates human and plant or animal negotiation of the ecological system. Human society is composed of both the biotic (interdependence) and the culture that encompasses the ability to communicate. Humans engage in collective action to create a society that is composed of a common will. Population, material culture, nonmaterial culture, and natural resources interact to create a social hierarchy or social order that maintains biotic balance and social equilibrium. Park’s race relations theory is a human ecology theory that exemplifies social order in transition or social change (Park 1950).
Park posits that there is a cycle of events that repeats itself in every initial encounter or contact between racial groups. The cycle includes four stages: contact/conflict, competition, accommodation, and assimilation. He identified contact as the first stage, while other researchers use contact and conflict interchangeably (Park 1950). Although Park assumed that each minority group would eventually fully assimilate into the dominate group, he theorized that each group could possibly go through a series of accommodations first.
Borrowing from Georg Simmel and preceding Emory Bogardus’s social distance scale, Park suggested that social distance is the level of intimacy experienced between diverse racial groups or the etiquette of knowing one’s group’s place in the social order (Coser 1971). Compromised social distance etiquette or conflict between groups for space and life’s rewards disturbs the moral order or ecological equilibrium. Social change readjusts the balance in three stages: dissatisfaction, social unrest and mass movements, and finally a new accommodation (Coser 1971). The new accommodation, which is often assimilation, is a social change (Park 1950).
Through his students, Park’s influence extends further than his individual contributions to the discipline. Eight of his students became president of the American Sociological Association. Many more of his students became leading sociologists and took Park’s work in many directions (Harvey 1987). Clifford Shaw’s work with concentric zone theory birthed theories of criminology of place as well as social disorganization theories; E. Franklin Frazier expounded on that line of research to develop subculture theory; and Louis Wirth’s research contributed to the foundation of twentieth-century urban sociology. Similarly, Park’s critics span the generations as well.
CRITICS AND THE DECLINE OF THE SCHOOL
In her 1988 book, Mary Jo Deegan suggests that human ecology theory is a pathological marriage between sociology and Darwinism. Others posit that human ecology theory ignores the influence of the social environment and does not consider the impact of human diversity (Brown 2006). Park’s contemporaries, including many University of Chicago sociology scholars, criticized his resistance to the use of quantitative methods (Harvey 1987). Although Chicago also always had quantifiers, Chicago never lived Park’s qualitative reputation down. Despite the criticism, Park’s retirement was a big factor in the decline of the department. No one else could inspire students like Park, nor was anyone else as devoted to their intellectual and research success as was Park (Harvey 1987). In addition, to outsiders, sociological research done at Chicago was the sociology of Chicago or the "Park School." Without Park, the research ethos was lost. Finally, while Chicago would never dominate sociology again, no other department ever held the dominance that the University of Chicago held during Park’s tenure (Harvey, 1987).
