From the Chicago School Qualitative Methodology to the New Developments in Urban Studies

From the Chicago School Qualitative Methodology

to the New Developments in Urban

Studies

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

International Conference on „Qualitative Transitions: Issues of Methodology in Central and South-East European Sociologies“, Croatian Sociological AssociationRijeka, 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 surveillance,...

•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 transitional society?

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 space

•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 self-understanding

•today: partial studies, for the developers and their interests

•no urban sociologist is employed in the 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 urban life

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

•definition of global (“space of flows”) and 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 context?

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!