Social Sciences

The City of Chicago, with all its urban challenges: its ethnic and racial diversity, its raucous politics, its great poverty and wealth, may be one of most studied cities in America, if not in the world.

It should be no surprise, then, that the first social sciences department was founded at the University of Chicago in 1982 by Albion Small, who served as its head professor. Small played a central role in creating sociology as an academic discipline. He founded the American Journal of Sociology and edited it for thirty years. At the same time he helped found and manage the American Sociological Association.

He, and many others who followed in his footsteps created Chicago “schools of sociology” that helped shape the discipline with new research methodologies, influential textbooks, and empirical eclecticism, an emphasis that continues today. With the growing eclecticism came new emphases in education, race studies, community studies, urban studies, the family, the workplace, poverty,and immigrants. The school also became connected with progressive reform programs such as Jane Addams’s Hull House.

Websites

• Chicago Matters – Chicago Matters is an annual exploration-via television, radio, print and community dialogue — of an issue of broad concern to the Chicago region. Online resources include examinations of the environment, immigration, money, housing, and youth.
• Chicago School of Sociology

Community Development

• Bennet, Larry, et al., eds. Where Are Poor People to Live?: Transforming Public Housing Communities
• Gilfoyle, Timothy J.: Millennium Park: Creating a Chicago Landmark
• Slayton, Robert A. Back of the Yards: The Making of a Local Democracy

Education

• Chicago Public Schools
• Consortium on Chicago School Research
• Catalyst Chicago – Independent Reporting on Chicago School Reform
• District 299: The Chicago Schools Blog – “The highly unofficial inside scoop on Chicago Schools
• Coleman, James S. The Adolescent Society: The Social Life of the Teenager and Its Impact on Education
• Kozol, Jonathan. Savage Inequalities
• Neckerman, Kathryn M. Schools Betrayed: Roots of Failure in Inner-City Education

Healthcare

• Kaplan, Laura. The Story of Jane: The Legendary Underground Feminist Abortion Service
• Klinenberg, Eric. Heat Wave: A Social Autopsy of Disaster in Chicago
• Lewis, Sydney. Hospital: An Oral History of Cook County Hospital
• Abraham, Laurie Kaye. Mama Might Be Better Off Dead: The Failure of Health Care in Urban America

Race, Ethnicity, and Class

• Jones, LeAlan and Lloyd Newman. Our America: Life and Death on the South Side of Chicago
• Pattillo-McCoy, Mary. Black Picket Fences: Privilege and Peril among the Black Middle Class
• Suttles, Gerald D. The Social Order of the Slum: Ethnicity and Territory in the Inner City