TY - JOUR
AU1 - Fischer, Claude S.
AB -  Claude S. Fischer Department of Sociology, University of California, Berkeley, California 94720 Urban sociology is a troubled field, its doleful state epitomized by the common use of its name to cloak the study of multifarious social problems. This symbolic diffusion of identity is but a manifestation of more fundamental difficulties in defini­ tion and direction. It is the purpose of this essay to address those difficulties. I deal here with basic theoretical, conceptual, and methodological issues in the study of urban community and personality (see also Fischer 1972, 1974, 1975c). ISSUES The social problems burden of the field is partly a heritage of its early years. To the classical sociologists, the city was particularly intriguing because it was bold relief representation of modern society and that society's emerging ways of life. Simmel wrote: "An inquiry into the inner meaning of specifically modern life . . . must seek to solve the equation which structures like the metropolis set up between the individ­ ual and superindividual contexts of life" (1905:47, italics added). Thus, Park sug­ gested making "of the city a laboratory or clinic in which human nature and social processes may be conveniently and profitably studied" (1916:130). One 
TI - The Study of Urban Community and Personality
JF - Annual Review of Sociology
DO - 10.1146/annurev.so.01.080175.000435
DA - 1975-08-01
UR - https://www.deepdyve.com/lp/annual-reviews/the-study-of-urban-community-and-personality-iz9iV8L4AK
SP - 67
EP - 89
VL - 1
IS - 1
DP - DeepDyve
ER -