Robert E. Park

Work

Human ecology

Park coined the term human ecology, the study of the relationship between humans and their natural, social, and built environments. The term has been described as an attempt to apply the interrelations of human beings a type of analysis previously applied to the interrelations of plants and animals. Park himself explains human ecology as, "fundamentally an attempt to investigate the processes by which the biotic balance and social equilibrium are disturbed, the transition is made from one relatively stable order to other". Bogardus acknowledges that Park is the father of human ecology, proclaiming, "Not only did he coin the name but he laid out the patterns, offered the earliest exhibit of ecological concepts, defined the major ecological processes and stimulated more advanced students to cultivate the fields of research in ecology than most other sociologists combined."

Park found that a key underpinning of his human ecology is the concept of competition. He believed that it is the primary feature of the biotic level of life. He maintained that human beings restricted in some areas when it comes to competition, while in the plant and animal kingdom it is uninhibited. He maintained that human restriction of competition is what allows our modern concept of society to exist. The essential characteristics of competition are 1) a territorially organized population 2) that is more or less completely rooted in the soil it occupies 3) the individual units living in a relationship are living in a mutually dependent relationship, not a symbiotic one. According to Park's papers regarding this topic, "Dominance" and "Succession: An Ecological Concept", ecological competition can be manifest itself through dominance and succession.

Urban ecology

While at the University of Chicago, Park continued to strengthen his theory of human ecology. Along with Ernest W. Burgess developed a program of urban research in the sociology department. They also developed a theory of urban ecology, which first appeared in their book Introduction to the Science of Sociology (1922). Using the city of Chicago as their model they proposed that cities were environments like those found in nature. Park and Burgess suggested that cities were governed by many of the same forces of Darwinian evolution that happens in ecosystems. They felt the most significant force was competition. Competition was created by groups fighting for urban resources, like land, which led to a division of urban space into ecological niches. Within these niches people shared similar social characteristics because they were subject to the same ecological pressure.

Competition for land and resources within cities eventually leads to separation of urban space into zones with the more desirable zones imposing higher rent. As residents of a city become more affluent, they move outward from the city center. Park and Burgess refer to this a succession, a term also used in plant ecology. They predicted that cities would form into five concentric rings with areas of social and physical deterioration concentrated in the center and prosperous areas near the city's edge. This model is known as concentric zone theory, it was first published in The City (1925).

Race relations

Park spent a great deal of time studying race relations with Booker T. Washington while at the University of Chicago. Park contributed significantly to the study of race relations, with Everrett Hughes stating that, "Park probably contributed more ideas for analysis of racial relations and cultural contracts than any other modern social scientist."

Park worked closely with Booker T. Washington and the Tuskegee Institute from 1907 to 1914. While working under Washington, Park's primary interest was the system that had evolved to define Black-White relations in the South. Park said that he learned more about human nature and society while in the South. He says that, "These seven years were for me a sort of prolonged internship during which I gained a clinical and first hand knowledge of a first class social problem . . .[It was from Washington that] I gained some adequate notion of how deep-rooted in human history and human nature social institutions were, and how difficult, if not impossible it was, to make fundamental changes in them by mere legislation or by legal artifice of any sort".

After leaving the Tuskegee Institute, Park joined the University of Chicago where he developed a theory of assimilation, as it pertained to immigrants in the United States, known as the "race relation cycle". The cycle has four stages: contact, conflict, accommodation, and assimilation. The first step is contact followed by competition. Then, after some time, a hierarchical arrangement can prevail – one of accommodation – in which one race was dominant and others dominated. In the end assimilation occurred. Park declared that it is "a cycle of events which tends everywhere to repeat itself" and that it can also be seen in other social processes." He was instrumental in founding the race relations course at Chicago.

Critiques

Park's theory of conflict has been discredited for a number of reasons, and his theories and contributions in sociology have largely been neglected and forgotten over time.

In the years following the heyday of the Chicago school, Park's reputation took a downfall, and his idea of "symbolic interactionism" was subsequently pushed aside. Park was frequently called a conservative when it came to his theory of the race relations cycle. Critics of Park misinterpreted his theory of race relations, believing that Park meant to assert that progression through the four stages was inevitable; current discourse debates whether Park meant anything of the sort. Within Park's theory of conflict, race relations exists merely as a specific case of this greater theory. Racial groups, or any other kind of group can remain in the conflict stage indefinitely.

Park was further criticized for perceived racist tendencies. Already in his work as an editorial secretary of the Congo Reform Association, Park defended the idea of a noble white civilizing mission to elevate an allegedly savage African population. During his years at the Tuskegee Institute, this nostalgia for European imperialism was complemented by a stereotypical depiction of black peasants in the South as a primitive counterpart of the negative tendencies Park identified in modern city life. These early views on imperialism and race have been called a form of "romantic racism" that strongly influenced his later more elaborated sociological perspectives on the same issues. As already the black Marxist Oliver C. Cox, a student of Park, has warned, this racial essentialism eventually led Park to a mystification of race relations in the Jim Crow era as a natural solution to racial conflict.

In his essay Education in its relation to the conflict and fusion of cultures, Park can be quoted:

The Negro is, by natural disposition, neither an intel-lectual nor an idealist, like the Jew; nor a brooding introspective, like the East African; nor a pioneer and frontiersman, like the Anglo-Saxon. He is primarily an artist, loving of life for its sake. His métier is expression rather than action. He is, so to speak the lady among the races.

Park's belief in inherited racial temperaments, though racist, was somewhat offset by his belief in "social inheritance" working in tandem with "biological inheritance". Put simply, he thought that while some races are more predisposed to certain temperaments, a whole person is also made up of their social qualities. Park also supported Franz Boas' conclusion that there was no scientific evidence to indicate that "Blacks were as a group intellectually inferior to Whites".

The works of sociologists Louis Wirth and Rose Hum Lee illustrate the downfalls of Park's thinking, specifically in relation to adhering to his views on ethnic groups in America. Park's conclusions that the complete assimilation of Jews, Christians, and Chinese folks have occurred was shown within Wirth and Hum Lee's work to be untrue.

Major works

• The Man Farthest Down: A Record of Observation and Study in Europe (with Booker T. Washington), 1912
• Introduction to the Science of Sociology (with E.W. Burgess), 1921
• Old World Traits Transplanted: The Early Sociology of Culture, 1921
• The Immigrant Press and Its Control, 1922
• The City: Suggestions for the Study of Human Nature in the Urban Environment, 1925
• Proceedings: The Concept of Position in Sociology Proceedings, 1925
• The University and the Community of Races, 1932
• Cultural Conflict and the Marginal Man, 1937
• An Outline of the Principles of Sociology, 1939
• American Sociology: The Story of Sociology in the United States through 1950, 1951
• Human Communities: The City and Human Ecology, 1952
• Societies, 1955

Impact

Park's impact on the field of sociology is palpable yet often goes unrecognized. The majority of the sociologists born in the nineteenth century borrowed and concentrated in other fields and their work was considered sociological after the fact. Park was one such sociologist, with much of his interests originating in philosophy and then evolving into what we consider to be modern sociology when he began to focus on studying Chicago. His work led to the development of the Chicago school in sociology. Park along with fellow Chicago School sociologists Ernest Burgess, William I. Thomas, George Herbert Mead, and Louis Wirth created a theoretical basis for sociology which emphasized the more methodological approach which we recognize today. The school produced many studies on city life, including ones on Polish immigrants, gangs, and Jewish ghetto life. It has been noted that Park and his students employed a 'moving camera' approach to their studies of urban life, attempting to capture city dwellers in their natural modes of life. The Chicago school of thought regarding urban ecology still guides much of the work conducted in this field today. Additionally, Erving Goffman, who is considered to be the most influential sociologist of the twenty-first century, embraced the legacy of Park by adopting more qualitative methods when constructing predictive empirical science in contrast to positivist sociological trends.