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When Robert E. Park was (Re) writing “the city”: Biography, the social survey, and the science of sociology

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Abstract

Sociological production is a situated and embodied activity carried out by individuals inserted in actual social relations. Considering that this feature has an influence upon the content of scholarly literature and that it can be revealed in the scientific text itself, I propound a new interpretation of the writing process of Robert E. Park's “The City,” the famous paper he published initially in 1915. Customarily depicted as a manifesto for an autonomous urban sociology, I argue on the contrary that its general economy has to be linked to Park's biographical background. When he affiliated with the Sociology Department at the University of Chicago, Park was brought to teach a course on the social survey. “The City” was to be the academic expression of his point of view on the topic. Park's biographical encounters with some active promoters of the social survey approach are evidenced and their influence onhis 1915 essay is carefully analyzed, showing notably that curious intellectual omissions in “The City” can be traced back to these previous encounters. Park's latter texts, and the 1925 revised version of “The City” in particular, are shown to provide the interwar sociologists with a peculiar narrative about the history of sociology: Park's predecessors are deliberately confined in a pre-scientific stage of the discipline and Park's original essay is presented as a seminal research program destined to be later fulfilled by the newly established urban sociologists.

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    Pierre Lannoy (Chargé de Recherche)

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The author wishes to thank the anonymous reviewers for their insightful and helpful comments on the first draft of the paper, Lawrence T. Nichols for his kindly editorial guidence, and Jacques Marquet and Felice Dassetto for their marerial support.

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Lannoy, P. When Robert E. Park was (Re) writing “the city”: Biography, the social survey, and the science of sociology. Am Soc 35, 34–62 (2004). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12108-004-1002-9

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