Chicago school (sociology)

In sociology and later criminology, the Chicago School (sometimes described as the Ecological School) was the first major body of works emerging during the 1920s and 1930s specializing in urban sociology, and the research into the urban environment by combining theory and ethnographic fieldwork in Chicago, now applied elsewhere. While involving scholars at several Chicago area universities, the term is often used interchangeably to refer to the University of Chicago's sociology department—one of the oldest and one of the most prestigious. Following World War II, a "Second Chicago School" arose whose members used symbolic interactionism combined with methods of field research, to create a new body of work. This was one of the first institutions to use quantitative methods in criminology.