Louis Wirth

Louis Wirth (August 28, 1897 – May 3, 1952) was a German born, Jewish-American sociologist, member of the Chicago school of sociology. He made significant contribution to sociology through his studies of urban life.

Life

Louis Wirth was born in the small village of Gemünden im Hunsrück, in Germany. He was one of seven children of Rosalie Lorig and Joseph Wirth. Gemünden was a pastoral community, and Joseph Wirth earned a living as a cattle dealer. At the time Gemünden had 900 inhabitants of which 20 percent were Jewish. Because of that and because its synagogue the town was called “Little-Jerusalem” in the local community. Both of his parents were active in their religious community.

In 1911, Louis left Gemünden to live with his older sister at his uncle’s home in Omaha, Nebraska, and his parents joined them in 1936. After completing high school in Omaha, Wirth attended the University of Chicago where he obtained his Ph.B. degree in 1919. He became interested in sociology through the influence of Ernest W. Burgess, William I. Thomas and Albion W. Small, who were teaching at the university at the time.

In 1919, Wirth started to work as a social worker, serving as director of the delinquent boys' division of the Bureau of Personal Service, from 1919 to 1922.

Wirth earned his M.A. degree in 1925, and the Ph.D. degree in 1926. He became a staff member of the department of sociology at the University of Chicago in 1926, assistant professor in 1931, associate professor in 1932, and full professor in 1940. He was also a associate professor in Tulane University, 1928-30, and research fellow in Europe for the Social Science Research Council in 1930-31.

Wirth was associate editor of the American Journal of Sociology from 1926 to 1928, and again from 1931 until his death in 1952.

Wirth served as a secretary of the American Sociological Society in 1932 and a president in 1947. His Presidential Address, "Consensus and Mass Communication", was delivered in New York City in December 1947.

During his career Wirth occupied numerous posts. He was: regional chairman of the National Resources Planning Board; director of planning, Illinois Post War Planning Commission; president, American Council on Race Relations; editor, “Sociology Series” of the Macmillan Company; and president, International Association of Sociologists.

In the spring of 1952, Wirth came to Buffalo, New York, to speak at a conference on community relations. Following his presentation he suddenly collapsed and died shortly afterwards. He was 55 years old.

Work

Louis Wirth became a leading figure in Chicago School of Sociology. His interests included urban life, minority groups’ behavior, housing, social organization, human ecology, race relations, and the sociology of knowledge.

In 1928, Wirth published his renowned The Ghetto, which described Jewish immigrant community in Chicago. Wirth analyzed how Jewish immigrants adjusted to life in urban America, as well as the distinct social processes of city life. Wirth was a strong supporter of applied sociology, taking the knowledge offered by his discipline and using it to solve real social problems. He rejected Marxism, but has built on its theories of alienation.

Wirth's major contribution to social theory of urban life was a classic essay Urbanism as a Way of Life, published first in the American Journal of Sociology in 1938. In it Wirth dealt with the question of alienation, and described how city life produced its own dynamics of human relations.

Wirth believed that urbanism was a form of social organization that is harmful to social relations. He criticized the city for

“[s]ubstitution of secondary for primary contacts, the weakening of bonds of kinship, the declining social significance of the family, the disappearance of neighborhood and the undermining of traditional basis of social solidarity” (Wirth, 1938).

Wirth was concerned with the effects of the city upon family unity, and he believed urbanization leaded to a

"low and declining urban reproduction rates … families are smaller and more frequently without children than in the country".

Wirth also argued that in the city marriage tended to be postponed, and the proportion of single people growing was leading to isolation and less interaction.

However, Wirth also stressed the positive effects of city life - “the beginning of what is distinctively modern in our civilization is best signalized by the growth of great cities“ (Wirth, 1938). He believed that metropolitan civilization was among the best civilization that human beings have ever created. He said:

“the city everywhere has been the center of freedom and toleration, the home of progress, of invention, of science, of rationality” (Wirth, 1956),

or:

“the history of civilization can be written in terms of the history of cities“ (Wirth, 1940).

Wirth was also interested in the role of mass media. He believed that because urban life produced higher level of alienation and loneliness, people in the cities were more prone to the appeal of mass movements than their rural counterparts. He thus considered it rather important for sociologist to study this type of phenomena. In Consensus and Mass Communication (1948), Wirth wrote:

"Because the mark of any society is the capacity of its members to understand one another and to act in concert toward common objectives and under common norms, the analysis of consensus rightly constitutes the focus of sociological investigations."

Legacy

Although he never developed any comprehensive social theory, Louis Wirth made a significant contribution to sociology through his studies of urban life. His work had great influence on later work in urban studies.

The profound social understanding of minority groups that Wirth obtained first-hand as an immigrant Jew in America, can equally be applied to understanding the problems of other minority groups in society, such as ethnic minorities, the disabled, homosexuals, women and the elderly, all of whom have also suffered, and/or continue to suffer prejudice, discrimination and disenfranchisement from the more numerically dominant members of a host society. It is in this respect that Wirth's path-breaking and insightful work still amply rewards detailed study even today, some seventy years after his original investigations.

Publications

• Wirth, Louis. 1936. Types of Nationalism. American Journal of Sociology, 41(6), 723-737
• Wirth, Louis. 1939. Social Interaction: The Problem of the Individual and the Group. American Journal of Sociology, 44, 965-979
• Wirth, Louis. 1941. The Present Position of Minorities in the United States. In Shi Hu and Newton Edwards (eds.), Studies in Political Science and Sociology (p. 137-156). Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press
• Wirth, Louis. 1944. Race and Public Policy. Scientific Monthly, 58, 302-312
• Wirth, Louis. 1945. Human Ecology. American Journal of Sociology, 50(6), 483-488
• Wirth, Louis. 1946. Community Planning for Peacetime Living: Report of the 1945 Stanford Workshop on Community Leadership. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press
• Wirth, Louis. 1947. American Sociology 1915 - 1947. American Journal of Sociology, Index to Volumes 1-52, (1895-1947), p. 273-281
• Wirth, Louis. 1948. Consensus and Mass Communication. American Sociological Review 13(1), 1-15
• Wirth, Louis. 1951. The Significance of Sociology. International Social Science Bulletin (UNESCO), 3(2), 197-202
• Wirth, Louis. 1956. Community Life and Social Policy. Chicago: University of Chicago Press
• Wirth, Louis (ed.). 1974 (original published 1940). Eleven Twenty Six: A Decade of Social Science Research. Ayer Co Pub. ISBN 0405055315
• Wirth, Louis. 1991 (original published 1938). Urbanism as a Way of Life. Irvington Pub. ISBN 0829026398
• Wirth, Louis. 1998 (original published 1928). The Ghetto. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction. ISBN 1560009837
• Wirth, Louis and Reiss, A. J. (ed.). 1982 (original published 1964). On Cities and Social Life. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. ISBN 0226902420

References

ISBN links support NWE through referral fees

• Gillis, A. R. 1979. The urban environment and individual unease: An empirical look at Wirthian logic. Toronto: Centre for Urban and Community Studies, University of Toronto. ISBN 0772712697
• Miller, Zane L. 1992. Pluralism, Chicago school style: Louis Wirth, the ghetto, the city, and "integration". Journal of Urban History. 18(3), 251-279.
• Salerno, Roger A. 1987. Louis Wirth: A Bio-Bibliography. New York: Greenwood Press. ISBN 0313254737
• Wirth, Louis 1897-1952. E-Notes, on <http://www.enotes.com>. Retrieved on September 13, 2007 from <http://www.enotes.com/twentieth-century-criticism/wirth-louis>

External links

• American Sociology: Louis Wirth – Article by Howard W. Odum
• Guide to the Louis Wirth Papers in the University of Chicago Library
• Louis Wirth – Biography on American Sociological Association website
• Urbanism as a way of life – Work by Wirth
• Wirth, Louis 1897-1952 – On Wirth’s life and work

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