SOC 2700 Chapter Notes -George L. Kelling, Social Capital, Social Disorganization Theory
Document Summary
University of chicago in the 1920s attempted to pinpoint the environmental factors as- sociated with crime and determine the relationship. Instead of focusing on rapid change in entire societies, they focused on rapid change in neighbourhoods. Procedure involved correlating the characteristics of each neighbourhood with the crime rates of that neighbourhood. Research was based on an image of human communities taken from plant ecology, so it became known as the chicago school of human ecology. Web of life in which each part depends on almost every other part there is a dynamic equilibrium in nature in which each individual must struggle to sur- vive. Robert park proposed a parallel between the distribution of plant life in nature and the organization of human life in societies. He derived 2 key concepts that formed the basis of the theory of human ecology:
