Urban Sociological Theories

EMILE DURKHEIM: THE CITY, CITY, THE DIVISION DI VISION OF O F LABOUR AND THE MORAL M ORAL BASIS OF COMMUNITY • His method provides a direct contrast to the approaches of both Karl Marx and Max Weber • Durkheim assumes that reality is given in i n observation • He asserts the ability of sociology to penetrate the essence of social phenomena • His is a positivist sociology • His endorsement of a purely experimental basis for knowledge, his equation of the logic of explanation between the natural and social sciences. • Reality cannot be known through ideas about it. • Social phenomena in themselves as distinct from the consciously formed representations of them in the mind • We must study them objectively as external things. Science thus begins with a complete freedom of mind.

• Social facts • Types of social solidarity • - sociology therefore relies on observable phenomena as indicators of the essence of social facts

•

Social facts

the collective phenomena of social life

Moral authority of laws and determinacy of socialization socialization and collective collective life

•

Products of group life, it is the nature of the group

•

Durk Durkhe heim im‟‟s sociology begins by identifying „social facts‟

•

Two types of social solidarity  – 1.  – 1. organic 2. mechanic

the growth of the division of labour

transition from one to the other

the analysis of the city becomes important

• two factors give rise to an increased division of labour in society: (a) material density(density of population increased in a given area ) (b) moral density ( increased density of interaction and social relationship within a  population)

• The division of labour (1933)

an increase in moral density

• The increase in moral density of a society is expressed through urbanization: Cities always result from the need of an individuals to put themselves in very intimate contact with others. • Urbanization together with the associated development of new means of transportation and communication, is the cause of the division of labour. • A concentrated human population can survive only through differentiation of functions

• An increase in population, necessarily determines advances in the division of labour. increased division of labour (the • Increased moral density collapse of the society or to the elimination of weaker competitors within it)

• Moral density is a necessary but not a sufficient condition. • The city as a force for change presents

• The city undermines traditional controls that the collectivity cannot possibly impose a single code of moral conduct over the diverse spheres of action in which the urbanite becomes involved, • The city extends its influence over the surrounding countryside and thus „urbanizes the society as a whole‟.

• Division of labour

social solidarity

a new organic solidarity of interdependence, but in a state of moral basis of social life.

• Role of the city as the primary force for change • It provided the organizational expression for functional economic interests. • Rome was essentially an agricultural and military society –  basis of association was familial rather than urban

• As Marx and Weber deny the theoretical significance of the modern city.

no longer

no longer

express

express

Class relation

human association

• He sees the city as an historically significant condition for the development of particular social forces   the division of labour   development by breaking down the bonds of traditional morality. • He sees the modern city the expression of the current (abnormal) development of these forces pathological disorganization reflecting the anomic state of modern society

SOCIAL THEORY CAPITALISM AND THE URBAN QUESTION  Most

areas of sociology today are characterized by a certain degree of theoretical and methodological pluralism and urban sociology is no exception,

 there

are distinctive Marxist urban sociologies, Weberian urban sociologies, each differing according to the questions they pose.

 Contemporary

Marxist urban theories  –   the method of dialectical materialism, the theory of class struggle and capitalist state

 The

central concern of all of these writers was with the social, economic and political implications of the development of capitalism in the west at the time when they were writing



the rapid growth of cities was among the most obvious and potentially disruptive of all social changes at that time.



In England and Wales, e.g., the „urban  population‟, nearly trebled in the second half of the nineteenth century with the result that over 25 million

 people ( 77% of the total population ) lived in urban areas at the turn of the century.



The growth of „urban‟  problems  –   the spread of slums and disease, the

 breakdown of law and order, the increase in infant mortality rates and a  plethora of other phenomena.

  the

disintegration of moral cohesion –  Durkheim

  the

growth of calculative rationality –  Weber

  the

destructive forces unrealized by

the development of capitalist production - Marx 

Durkheim's works on the social effects of the division of labour came to be incorporated into ecological theories of city growth and differentiation in the 1920‟s.



weber‟s  writings on political domination and social stratification formed the basis for a conceptualization of the city as a system of resource allocation in the 1960‟s.

 In

the 1970‟s Marx‟s  analysis of social reproduction and class struggle was developed as the foundation for a new political economy of urbanism.



the paths followed by their ( weber, Durkheim, and Marx) respective analyses are divergent, yet the end-point is the same.

MARX AND ENGELS: THE TOWN, THE COUNTRY AND THE CAPITALIST MODE OF PRODUCTION 

 the discovery of the forces which shaped the development of the social world.

- as for ex: Darwin‟s  work had led to the discovery of the forces shaping the evolution of the natural. 

 the principle of the dialectic is essentially that any „whole‟ is comprised of a unity of contradictory parts, such that it is impossible to understand any one aspect of reality without first relating it to its context.



 capital and wage labour are tied together in an inescapable yet absently antagonistic relation of mutual interdependence



a method of analysis which is dialectical no single aspect of reality can be analyzed independently of the totality of social relations.



the term materialism in this context is generally used in contra-distinction to idealism.

  material

world exists prior to our conceptions or ideas about

it.   according

to Marx, the first real class society was that of the ancient city ( notably Rome).

   roman

society was based on a slave mode of production in which the wealth of the ruling class was founded on agricultural land ownership.



ownership of the means of production became increasing concentrated into great estates.

  ancient

classical history is the history of cities but cities based on landownership and agriculture.

  the

growth of a merchant class in the established towns during the middle ages had the important effect of extending trading links  between different areas, thereby facilitating a division of labour  between different towns and stimulating the growth of new industries.

  the

new system of capitalist manufacture facilitated by merchants‟ capital in the medieval towns, thus tools root in the countryside and the great cities of the industrial revolution grew up around it.

  the

new social relations of capitalism thus became established as the anti-thesis to the old social relations of feudalism.



the contradictions  –   the class antagonism between industrial  bourgeoisie and feudal landowners came to be represented directly and vividly in the conflict between town and country.

  in

the feudal period  –   the division between town and country not only reflected the growing division of labour between manufacture and agriculture but was also the phenomenal depression of the antithesis between conflicting modes of production.

  struggle

between proletariat and bourgeoisie extends across urbanrural boundaries as workers in town and countryside are increasingly drawn into the capital relation.



 the role of the city in capitalist societies - the city express most vividly the evils of capitalism - within the city that the progressive forces of socialism are most fully developed.



not the city that is held responsible for the poverty and squalor of the urban proletariat, but the capitalist mode of  production.



the city is portrayed as the hot house of capitalist contradictions.



 the housing shortage from which the workers and part of the  petty bourgeoisie suffer in our modern big cities is one of the innumerable smaller secondary evils, which result from the  present day capitalist mode of production

 pattern

of urban deprivation in that city

 the

city is not only a reflection of the logic of capitalism but the necessary condition for the transition to socialism.



it is in the city that the revolutionary class created by capitalism, the proletariat achieves its fullest classic perfection

 capitalism

are most fully developed in the great cities.

 common

deprivation of the proletariat is most likely to result in the growth of class consciousness and revolutionary organization.

 the

city represents a concentration of the evils of capitalism, it also constitutes the necessary conditions for the development of the workers movement that will overthrow it.

 Marx

and Engels –  communist manifesto to the effect that the  bourgeoisie has rendered a service to the workers‟ movement  by creating large cities which have rescued a considerable  part of the population from the idiocy of rural life.



the city may illustrate the manifestations of essential tendencies within capitalism.

MAX WEBER: THE CITY AND THE GROWTH OF RATIONALITY 

weber‟s  approach to sociological explanation represents almost a total reversal of Marx‟s method.  Marx emphasized totality, the need to relate everything to everything else,   weber argues that only partial and one-sided accounts are ever  possible.  the basic concept in weber‟s  sociology is that of the human subject endowed with free will who, in interacting with others, attempts to realized certain values or objectives.   Ideal types: these are mental constructs which serve to specify the theoretically most significant aspects of different classes of social phenomena.



he suggests that cities are defined by the existence of an established market system: economically defined, the city is a settlement the inhabitants of which live primarily off trade and commerce rather than agriculture.

 the

city is a market place



he then distinguishes between consumes, producer and commercial cities on the basis of this economic criterion.



political dimension, he suggests that partial political autonomy is a key criterion: The city must be considered to be a partially autonomous association, a “community”  with special political and administrative arrangements.

 City –  1.

„patrician city‟, run by an assembly of notables. 2. „plebeian city‟, run by an elected assembly of citizen.

  the

political autonomy of the cities in northern Europe was achieved on the basis of economic rather than military power.   taking these two dimensions together, weber then constructs his ideal type city. 

To constitute a full Urban Community a settlement must display a relative predominance of trade –  commercial relations with the settlement as a whole displaying the following features. 1. a fortification –  a tower, wall, gun position it built to defend a place against attack .

2. a market 3. a court of its own and at least partially autonomous law 4. a related form of association 5. at least partial autonomy and autocephaly, thus also an administration by authorities, in the election of whom the burglars participated. 

the medieval cities in western Europe sustained a fundamental challenge to the feudal system which surrounded them paved the way for the subsequent development of a rational, legal, capitalistic social order.

  this

challenge partly from the erosion of traditional values and the development of new forms of individuals.

 medieval

cities as places of revolution as centres.

FERDINAND TONNIES GEMEINSCHAFT AND GESELLSCHAFT

the late 19th century, the German sociologist Ferdinand Tonnies (1855-1937) studied how life in the new industrial metropolis differed from life in rural villages.

  In

  Tonnies

(1887) used the German word “Gemeinschaft”- (meaning roughly „community‟)  to refer to a type of social organization by which people are closely tied by kinship and tradition.

  the

Gemeinschaft of the rural village joins people in what amounts to a single primary group.

  on

the contrary, Urbanization fosters Gesellschaft( a German word meaning roughly “association”),  a type of social organization by which people come together only on the basis of individual selfinterests.

  In

the Gesellschaft way of life, individuals are motivated by their own needs rather than a drive to enhance the well-being of everyone.



city dwellers display little sense of community or common identity and look to others mostly as a means of advancing their individual goals.



Tonnies saw in Urbanization the erosion of close, enduring social relations in favor of the fleeting and impersonal ties typical of business.

THE URBAN AS A CULTURAL FORM 

Tonnies‟  classic study of Gemeinschaft and Gesellschaft originally published in 1890 and republished with a new introduction in 1931.

 his

purpose „to  study the sentiments and motives which draw  people to each other, keep them together and induce them to  joint action‟.



1. natural will  the sensations, feelings and instincts which derive from physiological and psychological process  –  in  born and inherited. 2. rational will  the deliberate, goal-oriented and calculation product of the use of intellects.



 social relationships were governed mainly by natural will Gemeinschaft.





 social relationships were governed mainly by rational will Gesellschaft.





human societies had changed over time from form of association based on Gemeinschaft to those based on Gesellschaft.



 extension of trade and the development of capitalism.



 Gesellschaft as „ bourgeoisie society‟.



the unit of sentiment (in Gemeinschaft), flows from the „natural‟ bonds of blood, neighborhood and religious belief is disrupted by the growth of industrial capitalism.

  the

possibility of a relation in the Gesellschaft assumes no more than a multitude of mere persons who are capable of delivering something and consequently of promising something.

 Gesellschaft

= modern day capitalism

  as

the urban centers grow, so the Gemeinschaft of the rural hinterland is eclipsed and undermined.

  family

life and village communalism are replaced by urban individualism and state power, which itself carries the seeds of a future development of socialist union.



Tonnies‟  work as regards the later development of Urban Sociology.

ROBERT PARK : THE URBAN AS AN ECOLOGICAL COMMUNITY    The

ecological perspective advanced between the wars by Robert Park and his colleagues at the University of Chicago.



Human ecology was the first comprehensive urban social theory and in the US it has some claim to have been the first comprehensive sociological theory.

  It

developed at a time when America sociology was gaining institutional recognition as a discipline but lacked an indigenous body of theory.



human ecology could be seen as a sub-discipline within sociology

   Human

ecology was concerned with the specific theoretical problem of how human populations adapted to their environment



Park‟s students  Human ecology, as Park conceived it, was not a brand of sociology but rather a perspective a method and a body of knowledge essential for the scientific study of social life and hence, like social psychology, a general discipline basic to all the social sciences.

   From

Emile Durkheim that Park derived his methodological framework and from Charles Darwin that he derived his theory.

Durkheim‟s  influence can be found first Park‟s ontological assumptions regarding „human nature‟  and the relationship between the individual and society.



- Ontology   a branch of Philosophy that deals with ontological(the nature of existence).  In

1916, Park wrote, „the fact seems to be that men are brought into the world with all the passions, instincts and appetites uncontrolled and undisciplined. Park takes as his starting point the tension between individual freedom and social control.





Like Durkheim, Park explains personal and social disorganization in terms of the erosion of moral constraints, for homo ecologic in an inherently egoistical and unsocial creatures who needs to be kept in check by society for his or her own good and for the good of others



Durkheim noted that social disorganization necessary price to be paid for human progress.

   Too

was

the

much moral constraints was as bad as too little since it resulted in individual fatal and social stagnation.   So, Park found in the break-down of traditional moral controls a cause for both concern and celebration.

 He

saw that the growth of the cities had undermined the social cohesion once maintained by the family, the church and the village and he pointed to the threat of the mob ‘swept’ by every new wind of doctrine, subject to constant alarms.

 He

saw the potential for individual freedom and self-expression that the city represented.

 Disorganization  new

level of human organization involving new

modes of social control  Human

nature and moral constraints  –  any form of human organization was necessarily an expression of both.

  the

structure of the city = 1) its physical structure and 2) its moral order.

• Human society involves a double aspect • „community‟  and „society‟

• •

• •

as the biotic as its cultural level of social life proved highly problematic Ecology is concerned with communities rather than societies. The ecological approach to social relations, therefore, was characterized by an emphasis on the biotic as opposed to the cultural aspect of human interaction. „Web of life‟  through which all organisms were related to all others in ties of interdependence or symbiosis. Competition for the basic resources of life thus resulted in the adaptation of different species to each other and to their environment.

 The

evolution of a relatively balanced ecological system based upon competitive co-operation among differentiated and specialized organisms.

 His

analysis in other words, is both functional and spatial: the main point is that the community so conceived is at once a territorial and a functional unit.

 His

idea of the development of functional differentiation and interdependence in the human community draw heavily on Durkheim’s analysis of the origins of the Division of Labor.

 Park

suggests that an increase in population size within a given area, together with an extension of transport and communication networks, results in greater specialization of functions.

ERNEST WATSON BURGESS (1886-1966)  24th president  University  Born

of the American Sociological Society

of Chicago  – Asst.Professor in Sociology

in Tilburg, Ontario, Canada.

  Kingfisher

College in Oklahoma and received B.A., in

1908.  university

of Chicago  – Ph.D., in 1913.

 He

has been called the first „ young sociologist‟.

 His

career spanned for five decades (1916-1957).

In his 1951 book, American Sociology: The Story of sociology in the US through 1950.



Processes

of competition, dominance, succession and

invasion that provide the basis for the well-known model of community expansion proposed by Burgess (1967)



City could be conceptualized ideally as consisting of

five zones arranged in a pattern of concentric circles.

  The

expansion of the city occurred as a result of the

invasion by each zone of the next outer zone.

The

Central business district tended to expand into

the surrounding inner-city, zone of transition which in turn tended to expand into the zone of working-class housing around it.

 This

physical process of succession therefore results

in the segregation of different social groups in different parts of the city according to their suitability;

In

the expansion of the City, a process of distribution

takes

place

which

sifts

and

sorts

and

relocate

individuals and groups by residence and occupation.

 Segregation

offers the group and thereby the individual

who compose the group, a place and a role in the total organization of city life.

 This

constant process of change and adjustments,

invasion

and

succession,

disorganization

and

reorganization is especially marked in the inner-city zone of transition.



Burgess recognized that mobility is therefore most pronounced in the inner-city areas that are in an almost constant state of flux, and he sees this as the explanation for the social disorganization that tends to characterized these area.

 Mobility,

in other words, is a source of change and of

personal and social disorganization.



where mobility is greatest, so too is the lack of social cohesion and the demoralization of the human spirit.

  These

processes are natural and spontaneous response of

human population to changes in the environment in which they live.

 Human

beings enjoyed scope for mobility which plants did not

possess. They had a capacity for consciously changing their environment.  Mckenzie

observes, the Human community different from the

plant community in the two characteristics of mobility and purpose,  that

is, in the power to select a habitat and in ability to control or

modify the conditions of the habitat.   Human

beings, in other words, shared a culture.

ROBERT McKENZIE   One 

of Park‟s colleagues at the University of Chicago.

The Ecological Approach to the Study of the Human Community.

  It

is a method of analysis; plants & animals Biology



“Society  is made up of individuals spatially separated, territorially distributed and capable of independent locomotion”.



These spatial relationships of human beings are the products of competition and selection.

competition

selection

spatial relationships of human beings process of change   These spatial relationships change the physical basis of social relations is altered producing social and political problems

Natural ecology

process of =

competition & =

Human ecology

accommodation Sociologist has failed to recognize the above and it determining the size and ecological organization of the human community.



 The

human community differs fro the plant community in the two dominant characteristics of mobility and purpose.

 Man

is a gregarious animal; he can not live alone; he is relatively week and need not only the company of other human associated both shelter and protection from the elements as well.

  McKenzie

(1967): the size of any human community is limited by what it can produce and by the efficiency of its mode of distribution.

   a

primary service community (based on agriculture) cannot grow beyond a population of around 5000.

   an

industrial town can grow to many times that size provided its industries are serviced by an efficient system of market distribution.

•  Any particular type of community tended to increase in size until it reached its climax point at which the size of population was almost perfectly adjusted to the capacity of the economic base to support it.

• The community would then remain in this state of equilibrium until some new element (e.g., a new mode

of

communication

or

innovation) distributed the balance.

a

technological

  Competition

= would again sift and sort the population functionally and spatially until a new climax stage was reached.

 Drawing

again on Darwin‟s  work, the human ecologists referred to this process of structured community change as succession  –  that orderly sequence of changes through which a biotic community passes in the course of its development from a primary and relatively unstable to a relatively permanent or climax stage‟

 so,

too in the human community the pattern of land use changes as areas are invaded by new competitors which are better adapted to the changed environmental conditions than the existing users.

such

a process of invasion and succession is reflected in the human community in changes in land values with the result that competition for desirable sites forces out the economically weaker existing users (e.g., residents) who make way for economically stronger competitors (e.g., business).

• following a successful invasion a new equilibrium is then established and the successional sequence comes to an end.

• The human community differs from the plant community in two dominant characteristics of mobility and purpose, that is, in the power to select a habitat and in the ability to control or modify the conditions of the habitat.

Human

beings, in other words, shared a culture.

McKenzie argues that the biotic forces of competition always tend to produce a natural equilibrium at the point where the population is optimally adjusted to its environment.



At this climax stage, the community is functionally and spatially differentiated such that different functional groups are located in different areas according to their relative suitability.





As this unstable biotic equilibrium develops, so too do

distinctive cultural forms corresponding to the different areas: The general effect of the continuous processes of invasions and accommodations is to give to the developed community well-defined areas, each having its own peculiar selective and cultural characteristics.

McKenzie‟s major

works:

1. The neighborhood: A study of local life in Columbus, Ohio.(1921) 2. The ecological approach to the study of the human community, chapter-3 (1925) 3. The Metropolitan community, New York, McGraw Hill(1933). 4. The Ecology of institution (1936) 5. On human ecology  –  selection writings (edit) by  Amos Henry Hawley, University of Chicago press (1968).

GEORGE SIMMEL (1858-1918) 

German sociologist and Philosopher, born in Jewish family in Berlin.



 He studied history and philosophy at University of Berlin



 His Ph.D., in1881.



He published over 200 articles over a dozen books.



He offered a micro-analysis of cities, studying how Urban life shapes individual experience

  According

to Simmel, individuals perceive the city as a crush of people, objects and events.



His writings on the sociology of space are a case study of Simmel‟s contributions to social sciences concepts.



Simmel‟s writing on space appears in two articles 1. 1903- The sociology of space 2. on the spatial projections of social forms

 In

1908  –   three essays on (a) The social Boundary, (b) The sociology of the senses, (c) The Strangers

 The

chapter‟s spatial themes including:

a) the socially relevant aspect of space  b) the effect of spatial conditions upon social interaction and c) upon forms of social, physical and psychological distance  he

did not present an organized theory of space

 Simmel's approach to spatial analysis

* The sociology of space  –  a contribution of his uncompleted project to express the preconditions of human sociation by formed categories of time, mass and number which he called „social geometry‟.   The

Metropolis and Mental Life: Simmel‟s sociology is highly personal, willfully eclectic and internally incoherent.

  concern

with the questions of individuality and freedom, modernity and the division of labour, and intellectual rationality and the money economy.

   All

of these concerns are expressed in his essay on the metropolis and mental life.

  sociology, 

therefore is the science of the forms of human association as abstracted from real-world interaction. interaction among its members

the personal and emotional commitments of members of small groups are replaced by formal means of control ( as agencies of the law). custom is characteristics of small characteristic of large ones.  An increase in the size of a social group 

groups,

law

is

the scope of individual freedom & but also for the degree of individual distinctiveness

 As

a group expands, so it threatens to immerse the individual with the mass: It pulls the individual down to a level with all and sundry

 The

intellect of the individual is eroded by the emotion of the masses, and social interaction is debased as social life becomes grounded in the lowest common denominations.

  The

larger the group, the more impersonal group interaction  becomes and the less concerned members become with the unique personal qualities of others.



people in the metropolis come to emphasize their own subjectivity both to others and to themselves.

 In

the large group, the individual stands alone  – isolated yet rejoicing in the privacy which the metropolis affords.

  The

social effects of size thus leads to the conclusion that in a large group:

1. custom is mechanisms

replaced

by

formal

social

control

2. the individual‟s commitments become extended across a number of different social circles. 3. the scope of individual freedom is increased 4. the character of social relations is highly impersonal 5. the individual‟s consciousness of self is ----

 development

of an advanced division of labor in society

1. the growth of the division of labor in modern societies forms of human associations.



2. the division of labor reinforces the self-consciousness engendered by an increase in size 3. the division of labor therefore encourages egoism and individualism  these

characteristics of modernity

the development of a money economy   Money

is totally depersonalized for its exchange leaves no trace of the personality of its previous owner.



It reduces all qualitative values to a common quantitative base.

  It 

is a source of individual freedom and independence

cash economy choice.

  the

 

social expansion individual freedom of

finest expression of the rationality of the modern world.

  Money

is both the source and the expression of metropolitan rationality and intellectualism



Metropolises are guided by their heads rather than their hearts by calculation and intellect not affection and emotion.



Money expresses all qualitative differences of things in terms of “how much”?.

Money, with all its colorlessness and indifference becomes the common denominator of all values.



 his

unique emphasis on sociology of number.  the metropolis is above all a large human agglomeration city in other than merely geographical or numerical terms.



LOUIS WIRTH (1897-1952) 

Major figure in the Chicago school of Urban sociology.  Wirth (1938) is best known for blending the ideas of Tonnies, Durkheim, Simmel and Park into a comprehensive theory of urban life. 

City as a setting with a large dense and socially diverse  population   these traits result in an impersonal, superficial and transitory way of life.   living among millions of others, urbanites come into contact with many more people than rural residents.

 when

city people notice other at all, they usually know them not in terms of –  Who they are! but what they do ?- as, for instance the bus driver, florist or grocery store clerk.

 specialized

urban relationships can be pleasant enough for all

concerned.  limited

social involvement coupled with great social diversity makes city dwellers more tolerant than rural villagers.

 Rural

communities often jealously enforce their narrow traditions  but the heterogeneous population of a city rarely shares any single code of moral conducts.

Tonnies

and Wirth saw personal ties and traditional morality lost in the anonymous rush of the city.

 Wirth

(1945) explained it, the basic physical and natural forces at work in human society establish the framework and the context within which people act and human ecology is therefore basic and complementary to the analysis of social organization and social psychology.

 Human

ecology is not a substitute for but a supplement to, the other frames of reference and methods of social investigation.



Wirth‟s  essay can be seen as an extension, modification and development of Simmel's paper on the Metropolis



Wirth‟s article on the city from the sociological standpoint



Simmel‟s identifies size

Wirth‟s paper by an

as a key explanatory variable

analysis of heterogeneity

and analysis of the

while the effects of a

division of labour is

money economy are

Replaced

dropped from the analysis altogether.

He

 by

also drew upon some of the insights developed by the Chicago Human ecologists as regards the effects of density on human organization and the dominance achieved by the city over its hinterland.



Three significant perspective on the city -Human ecology -Organizational

City

-socio-psychological  To

develop a theory of the city that could account for the ecological, organizational and socio-psychological characteristics of Urbanism

   Variations

in patterns of human association may be explained as the effects of three factors  –  size, density and heterogeneity.

  The

task for urban sociology is then to analyze the extent to which each of these three variable gives risk to definite forms of social relationships.



Wirth‟s  emphasizes that „folkways‟  of life may still be found in cities, for previously dominant patterns of human association are not completely obliterated by urban growth.



„Urban‟ ways of life are likely to spread beyond –  the boundaries of the city, given the ecological dominance of the city over its hinterland.



Wirth‟s analysis of the social effects of size closely reflects that of Simmel.   large size -----------> greater variation the spatial segregation of different groups acc.to ethnicity, race, status, occupation and so on

 Simmel

 –  increase in size reduces the changes of any two individuals knowing each other personally, segmentalism in social relationships secondary rather than primary contacts

  His

earlier study of a Jewish Ghetto in Chicago for ex., he concluded that it formed a cultural community with a communal way of life.

 The

individual gains a certain degree of emancipation or freedom from the personal and emotional controls of intimate groups.

The effects of density on social relationships are a function of the growth of differentiation.



Density thus reinforces the effect of numbers in diversifying men and their activities and in increasing the complexity of the social structure.



 People

relate to each other on the basis of their specific roles rather than their personal qualities.

  the

analysis of social heterogeneity is concluded largely in terms of Simmel‟s

ROBERT REDFIELD 

born 4th December 1897, died on 16 th October 1958.

  U.S.



pioneer of Urban sociology and anthropology

From his studies of Mexican communities com munities Redfield developed d eveloped a theory (1956) of a folk-urban continuum to account for the difference between folk society and urban society.

  A

folk society was small in size, isolated, homogeneous, preliterate with a social and cultural life linked to kinship and sacred beliefs.

  Urban    He

society had opposite of all these features

believed that any community had a place on this continuum from folk to urban.

  this

scale implied that simpler or folk forms of society would evolve to complex social forms with time.

 Anthropologists

new consider cons ider the way folk and urban societies are part of a larger social, political and economic environment, rather than considered as separate poles on a continuum.

Robert

Redfield was a student of Robert Park.

Redfield

(1941) studied four communities in the Yucatan Peninsula of Mexico, ranging from the small, homogeneous and very isolated settlement at Tusik to the largest town in the region, Merida.

 on

the basis of this study, he argued that the less isolated and more heterogeneous the settlement, the more it became characterized by cultural disorganization, secularization and the growth of individualism.

 Redfield

(1947), proceeded to develop an ideal type of the „folk  society‟  society‟  which complemented wirth‟s  wirth‟s  analysis by identifying the characteristics of communities at the other end of the rural-urban continuum.

 „Folk   societies

have certain features in common which enable us to think of them as a type –  type  –  a   a type which contrasts with the society of the modern city.



Society

folk society  –> small, isolated, illiterate and homogeneous with a strong sense of group solidarity Modern city -> vast, complicated and rapidly changing world

 The

ideal type folk society



small, isolated, non-literate, homogeneous and cohesive.

intimate,

immobile,



a rudimentary division of labor based mainly on a rigid differentiation of sex roles;



the means of production were stared;



economic activity was contained within the community

  

 

culture  – strongly traditional and uncritical it was grounded in social bonds based upon kinship and religion. its internal coherence derived from custom rather than formal law. patterns of interaction were based on ascribed status and social relationships were personal and diffuse.  there is no place for the motive of commercial gain.

 the

work of wirth and Redfield exhibits two main themes. - the first is that patterns of human relationships can be conceptualized in terms of a pair of logically opposite ideal types.