Robert Ezra Park

Robert Ezra Park (born February 14, 1864 in Harveyville , Luzerne County , Pennsylvania , † February 7, 1944 in Nashville , Tennessee ) was an American sociologist . He is the founder of the Chicago School of Sociology and was the 15th president of the American Sociological Society .

Career

Park was born into a wealthy family. He was the son of a grain merchant and a teacher and grew up in Red Wing ( Minnesota on).

After high school, he studied engineering at the State University of Minnesota in Minneapolis from 1883 to 1887 . In 1887 he studied philology , history and philosophy at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor (degree: Ph.B.). He studied there with John Dewey (1859-1952) and through him got to know the financial journalist and newspaper editor Franklin Ford (1848-1918). With Ford he developed the idea of ​​a new newspaper: " Thought News ". It was supposed to be “sociological”, to be more accurate in reporting the news and to give public opinion a greater role, but it never appeared.

From 1887 to 1898 Park worked as a journalist and editor for various daily newspapers in Minneapolis, Detroit , Denver , New York, and Chicago . In 1894 he married the lawyer’s daughter Clara Cahill , with whom he had four children.

From 1898 to 1899, Park resumed his studies, first in psychology and philosophy at Harvard University in Cambridge ( Massachusetts ), where he earned his MA (Philosophy) in 1899. He then went to Germany, where he studied philosophy and sociology at the Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität zu Berlin from 1899 to 1900 . One of his professors there was Georg Simmel . He then went on to study for another semester, this time at the University of Strasbourg . Until 1903 he studied philosophy and psychology at the University of Heidelberg , where he received his doctorate in 1903. phil. PhD ( crowd and audience. A methodological and sociological study ). In 1904 Park went back to Harvard, where he was Hugo Münsterberg's assistant until 1905 .

In 1905 he turned away from the university and turned to politics. He was secretary and press agent of the Congo Reform Association , which dealt with Belgian crimes in the Congo . There he met the African-American civil rights activist Booker T. Washington know. Park accepted Washington's invitation and lived in Tuskegee from 1905 , where he was press agent and ghostwriter for Booker T. Washington (1856-1915) until 1914. Washington was president of Tuskagee University . Park also accompanied Washington on his research trip to Europe. Washington then published a book about the European " underclass " entitled " The Man Farthest Down ". Experts agree that Park wrote most of the book. During this time (1912) he also organized the international conference " On the Negro ", where he met William Isaac Thomas (1863-1947).

Chicago sociology

Thomas initially gave him a guest lecture at the University of Chicago . So in 1914 Park made another U-turn in his life and turned to an academic career. He became a member of Chicago University. Through the Chicago School that began with him , he had a strong influence on generations of American sociologists. He lived and worked in Chicago, initially as a lecturer in sociology, then from 1923 as full professor of sociology until his retirement in 1933.

During these years other activities also fell, such as the task of the director of the Race Relations Survey of the Pacific Coast (1923–1925), the President of the American Sociological Society (1925) or in 1933 a study trip on race problems that took him to India, South Africa and Brazil led. In 1933 Park was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences . From 1935 he lived mostly in Harbor Springs in Michigan in the summer and in Nashville in the winter, where he was visiting professor in 1935 and lecturer in Sociology at Fisk University from 1936 onwards. Robert E. Park died in Nashville on February 7, 1944.

Park's importance lies primarily in the shaping of the Sociology Department at the University of Chicago , which, not least through him, became the center of the Chicago School of Sociology. The school was u. a. inspired by Max Weber and Georg Simmel and carried out pioneering work in microsociology , urban sociology and minority and poverty studies. Park's own contribution consisted primarily of studies of urban subcultures and ethnic minorities . He also dealt with methodological issues relevant to these topics. Park formulated the so-called melting pot theory of multi-ethnic integration based on his experiences of the ethnic mosaic in Chicago.

The relevance and topicality of Park also lies in the fact that he would like to replace a sociology that is far too strongly fixated on human action with a social theory that focuses on a network of interdependencies in which human relationships are only a special form. For him, the subject area of ​​sociology includes organic forms such as viruses and bacteria, which can be understood as an integral part of society. Park sees the field of sociology not only in the social, but above all in the symbiotic, which defines "the coexistence of different and unequal species".

bibliography

• 1903: crowd and audience. A methodological and sociological investigation (Phil. Diss.), Berlin: Lack & Grunau, 1904
• 1912: The Man Farthest Down: A Record of Observation and Study in Europe , with Booker T Washington, New York: Doubleday
• 1915: The City: Suggestions for the Study of Human Nature in the Urban Environment , In: The American Journal of Sociology, Vol. 20, No. 5 (March 1915), pp. 577-612
• 1921: Introduction to the Science of Sociology (with Ernest Burgess ) Chicago: University of Chicago Press
• 1921: Old World Traits Transplanted: the Early Sociology of Culture with Herbert A Miller, & Kenneth Thompson, New York: Harper & Brothers
• 1922: The Immigrant Press and Its Control , New York: Harper & Brothers
• 1928: "Human Migration and the Marginal Man", in: American Journal of Sociology 33, pp. 881-893
• 1932: The University and the Community of Races , Hawaii: University of Hawaii Press
• 1932: "Introduction" to: Pauline V. Young , The Pilgrims of Russian-Town The Community of Spiritual Christian Jumpers in America , Chicago: University of Chicago Press
• 1937: “Introduction” to: Everett V. Stonequist , “Cultural Conflict and the Marginal Man”, in: The Marginal Man , New York: Charles Scribner's Sons
• 1939: Race relations and the Race Problem; A Definition and an Analysis , with Edgar Tristram Thompson, Durham, NC: Duke University Press
• 1940: Essays in Sociology , with CWM Hart, Talcott Parsons et al., Toronto: University of Toronto Press
• 1946: An Outline of the Principles of Sociology , with Samuel Smith, New York: Barnes & Noble, Inc
• 1950: Race and Culture , Glencoe Ill: The Free Press, ISBN 0-02-923780-7
• 1952: Human Communities: the City and Human Ecology , Glencoe, Ill: The Free Press
• 1955: Societies , Glencoe Ill: The Free Press
• 1967: On Social Control and Collective Behavior, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, ISBN 1-135-54381-X
• 1969: "Human Migration and the Marginal Man", in: Richard Sennett (Ed.): The Classic Essays on the Culture of Cities , New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts, 1969, pp. 131–142
• 1975: The Crowd and the Public and Other Essays, Heritage of Society

Secondary literature

• Gabriela B. Christmann: Robert Ezra Park , Konstanz: UVK, 2007, ISBN 978-3-89669-559-8
• Robert V. Kemper: "Robert Ezra Park", in: Encyclopedia of Anthropology , ed. H. James Birx (2006, SAGE Publications; ISBN 0-7619-3029-9 )
• Barbara Ballis Lal: The Romance of Culture in an Urban Civilization: Robert E. Park on Race and Ethnic Relations in Cities , London & New York: Routledge, 1990
• Rolf Lindner : The discovery of urban culture - sociology from the experience of reportage , Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, ​​1990
• Rolf Lindner: Walks on the Wild Side: A History of Urban Research , Frankfurt am Main [u. a.]: Campus, 2004
• Winifred Rauschenbush: Robert E. Park , Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1979
• Ralph H. Turner : Robert E. Park: On Social Control and Collective Behavior , Chicago: University of Chicago Press (a selection from Park's writings).

Web links

• Literature by and about Robert Ezra Park in the catalog of the German National Library
• Biography Robert E. Park, 50 classics in sociology (University of Graz)