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Book part
Publication date: 22 October 2019

Gabriele Manella

The aim of this chapter is to consider the importance of the Chicago School in urban sociology today, both theoretically and methodologically. I will start by showing some…

Abstract

The aim of this chapter is to consider the importance of the Chicago School in urban sociology today, both theoretically and methodologically. I will start by showing some indicators and reflections on its importance in American urban sociology. I will then focus on how this heritage has been used and adapted in Italy. In particular, I will present some theoretical and empirical studies implemented in the Bologna metropolitan area by a group of sociologists who, in the Italian context are probably using the Chicago School tools to study urban change and urban problems most explicitly. My contribution is based on bibliographic research carried out both in Italy and in the United States, as well as on some interviews conducted with American urban sociologists. The main findings show the persistent importance of several key elements of the Chicago School, both in Italy and in the United States: the general theoretical approach (space and place affect people), some specific concepts (community, neighborhood, and natural area), and methodology (combination of qualitative and quantitative tools).

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Urban Ethnography
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-1-78769-033-2

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Book part
Publication date: 22 December 2008

Ruth Buchanan and Rebecca Johnson

Law and Film both enjoy the power to mediate the social imaginary. Here, we explore the resonance of this insight in the register of affect and intensity, movement, and change…

Abstract

Law and Film both enjoy the power to mediate the social imaginary. Here, we explore the resonance of this insight in the register of affect and intensity, movement, and change. This demands a different approach to doing theory. As Andrew (1976, pp. 66–67) argues, ‘film is not a product but an organically unfolding creative process in which the audience participates both emotionally and intellectually.’ Seeing a film is not just an exercise in imagining alternatives; it is an unfolding experience in time. It is an event shaded with particular embodied dimensions: one's heart races, pupils contract, skin shivers, muscles tense. Involuntary sensations of nausea or vertigo combine with cognitive responses to produce the lived experience of viewing a particular film that is incorporated into one's sensibility, sometimes very powerfully. It is not just that the mind has spent time in a darkened theatre. The body has also had an affect-laden auditory, visual, and tactile encounter. The affect-rooted experience of the film is a piece of the subject's past, its history, its self. This is another way to understand how film not only represents the world, but participates in its making.

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Studies in Law, Politics and Society
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-1-84855-378-1

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