Ernest Watson Burgess (May 16, 1886 – December 27, 1966) was a Canadian-American urban sociologist born in
Tilbury, Ontario
Tilbury (2016 population 4,768) is a community within the municipality of Chatham-Kent, Ontario, Canada. It is located southwest of Chatham-Kent and east of Windsor on Highway 401.
History
The nearby townships of Tilbury West and Tilbury East ...
. He was educated at
Kingfisher College in
Oklahoma
Oklahoma (; Choctaw language, Choctaw: ; chr, ᎣᎧᎳᎰᎹ, ''Okalahoma'' ) is a U.S. state, state in the South Central United States, South Central region of the United States, bordered by Texas on the south and west, Kansas on the nor ...
and continued graduate studies in
sociology
Sociology is a social science that focuses on society, human social behavior, patterns of Interpersonal ties, social relationships, social interaction, and aspects of culture associated with everyday life. It uses various methods of Empirical ...
at the University of Chicago. In 1916, he returned to the University of Chicago, as a
faculty member. Burgess was hired as an
urban sociologist at the
University of Chicago
The University of Chicago (UChicago, Chicago, U of C, or UChi) is a private research university in Chicago, Illinois. Its main campus is located in Chicago's Hyde Park neighborhood. The University of Chicago is consistently ranked among the b ...
. Burgess also served as the 24th President of the
American Sociological Association
The American Sociological Association (ASA) is a non-profit organization dedicated to advancing the discipline and profession of sociology. Founded in December 1905 as the American Sociological Society at Johns Hopkins University by a group of fif ...
(ASA).
Scholarly work
Burgess conducted influential work in a number of areas.
Introductory sociology textbook
Five years after his arrival as a professor at the University of a Chicago in 1921, Ernest Burgess would publish one of his most celebrated works. He collaborated with sociologist Robert Park to write a textbook called ''Introduction to the Science of Sociology'' (Park & Burgess, 1921). This was one of the most influential sociology texts ever written. Many people at the time referred to this book as the "Bible of Sociology". This book represented the observation and reflection of men who have seen life from very different points of view. The book discussed many topics such as the history of sociology, human nature, investigating problems, social interaction, competition, conflicts, assimilation and more.
Overturning the arguments of a still ascendant eugenics movement, Burgess and Park argued that social disorganization, not heredity, is the cause of disease, crime and other characteristics of slum life. As the passage of successive waves of immigrants through such districts demonstrated, it is the slum area itself, and not the particular group living there, with which social pathologies are associated.
Introduction to the Science of Sociology was so well organized and comprehensive that most graduate students taught by University of Chicago alumni were required to read it. This book was so informative that it was still being used decades after the death of Ernest Burgess.
Concentric zone model
![burgess model1](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/1a/Burgess_model1.svg)
Burgess' groundbreaking research, in conjunction with his colleague,
Robert E. Park
Robert Ezra Park (February 14, 1864 – February 7, 1944) was an American urban sociologist who is considered to be one of the most influential figures in early U.S. sociology. Park was a pioneer in the field of sociology, changing it from a pas ...
, provided the foundation for
The Chicago School. In ''The City'' (Park, Burgess, & McKenzie, 1925) they conceptualized the
city
A city is a human settlement of notable size.Goodall, B. (1987) ''The Penguin Dictionary of Human Geography''. London: Penguin.Kuper, A. and Kuper, J., eds (1996) ''The Social Science Encyclopedia''. 2nd edition. London: Routledge. It can be def ...
into the concentric zones (
Concentric zone model
The concentric zone model, also known as the Burgess model or the CCD model, is one of the earliest theoretical models to explain urban social structures. It was created by sociologist Ernest Burgess in 1925.
The model
Based on human ecology the ...
), including the
central business district
A central business district (CBD) is the commercial and business centre of a city. It contains commercial space and offices, and in larger cities will often be described as a financial district. Geographically, it often coincides with the "city ...
, transitional (industrial, deteriorating housing), working-class residential (
tenements
A tenement is a type of building shared by multiple dwellings, typically with flats or apartments on each floor and with shared entrance stairway access. They are common on the British Isles, particularly in Scotland. In the medieval Old Town, i ...
), residential, and commuter/
suburb
A suburb (more broadly suburban area) is an area within a metropolitan area, which may include commercial and mixed-use, that is primarily a residential area. A suburb can exist either as part of a larger city/urban area or as a separate ...
an zones.
They also viewed cities as something that experiences evolution and change, in the
Darwinian
Darwinism is a theory of biological evolution developed by the English naturalist Charles Darwin (1809–1882) and others, stating that all species of organisms arise and develop through the natural selection of small, inherited variations tha ...
sense.
Burgess method of
unit-weighted regression In statistics, unit-weighted regression is a simplified and robust version ( Wainer & Thissen, 1976) of multiple regression analysis where only the intercept term is estimated. That is, it fits a model
:\hat = \hat(\mathbf) = \hat + \sum_i x_i
wh ...
In the field of
criminology
Criminology (from Latin , "accusation", and Ancient Greek , ''-logia'', from λόγος ''logos'' meaning: "word, reason") is the study of crime and deviant behaviour. Criminology is an interdisciplinary field in both the behavioural and so ...
, Burgess conducted work on predicting the success or failure of inmates on parole. He identified 21 measures believed to be associated with success on parole, converting these measures to a score of zero or one, with a score of one associated with parole success. For example, a man lacking in job skills would have a score of zero, while a man with job skills would have a score of one. He then added the scores to obtain a scale in which higher scores predicted a greater chance of success on parole (Burgess, 1928). Burgess has been credited with the birth of actuarial dangerousness prediction (Harcourt, 2006)
The results showed that the scale worked well. To illustrate, for men with the highest scores from 14 to 21, the rate of parole success was 98%; for men with scores of 4 or less, the rate of parole success was only 24%. This method of combining scores has come to be called the Burgess method of
unit-weighted regression In statistics, unit-weighted regression is a simplified and robust version ( Wainer & Thissen, 1976) of multiple regression analysis where only the intercept term is estimated. That is, it fits a model
:\hat = \hat(\mathbf) = \hat + \sum_i x_i
wh ...
. Hakeem (1948) reported that the Burgess method had "remarkable accuracy in prediction". Though more advanced methods of analysis have become common in the social sciences (such as multiple regression), they have yet to show a clear advantage over unit-weighted methods, so the Burgess method is still used in criminology.
[(Gottfredson & Snyder, 2005)]
Family and marriage
Ernest Burgess also spent a considerable amount of time studying the institutions of family and marriage. He was interested in developing a scientific measure that would predict a success rate in marriage. In his book ''Predicting Success or Failure in Marriage'', which he wrote with Leonard Cottrell in 1939, he theorized that harmony in marriage requires a certain amount of adjustment in attitudes and social behavior by both the husband and the wife. Burgess and Cottrell developed a chart made for predicting marital success. In this chart they associated many different variables that they claimed affect stability in marriage. Burgess and Cottrell were however, often criticized for this work, since they attempted to measure marriage without actually including any component of love or affection. This is something that most people would say is the most important part of marriage. Notably, Ernest Burgess was never married.
Aging
Ernest Burgess also studied elderly people, especially the effects of retirement. This was something that was very neglected at that point in time. He collaborated with the government in researching the success of government programs for the elderly, the results of which were published in 1960 in the book Aging in Western Societies. Ernest Burgess served as the editor for this book. This book was the third volume in a three part series of handbooks written by the Inter-University Training Institute in Social Gerontology. Ernest Burgess was also involved with first and largest volume of the series. This volume dealt with comparative data and trends on subjects such as population structure, employment, retirement, income, housing and medical insurance. The second volume was made up of case studies from European countries and touched on such topics as housing, family relations, and senior centers. The third volume presented a statistical supplement of comparative data on conditions in different countries. The other five countries used are France, Italy, Netherlands, Sweden, and West Germany. These countries were selected because they were closest in social structure and culture to the United States. This was done so that the background experience of other societies could be used to better the understand aging in the United States. Although Burgess did not write much of this book he certainly left his mark serving as the editor and writing the introduction.
Accomplishments
* President of Behavior Research Foundation (1931)
* President of American Sociological Society (1934)
* President of Sociological Research Association (1942)
* President of National Conference On Family Relations (1942)
* Chair of Sociology Department/ University of Chicago (1946)
See also
*
Chicago school (sociology)
*
Louis Wirth
Louis Wirth (August 28, 1897 – May 3, 1952) was an American sociologist and member of the Chicago school of sociology. His interests included city life, minority group behavior, and mass media, and he is recognised as one of the leading urban ...
*
Everett Stonequist Everett Verner Stonequist (October 5, 1901 – March 26, 1979) was an American Sociologist perhaps best known for his 1937 book, ''The Marginal Man''
Life & Work
Stonequist was born in Worcester, Mass. and received his A.B. degree in History an ...
*
Frederic Thrasher Frederic Milton Thrasher (1892–1962) was a sociologist at the University of Chicago. He was a colleague of Robert E. Park and was one of the most prominent members of the Chicago School of Sociology in the 1920s.
Thrasher was born in Shelbyvi ...
*
Social disorganization theory
In sociology, the social disorganization theory is a theory developed by the Chicago School, related to ecological theories. The theory directly links crime rates to neighbourhood ecological characteristics; a core principle of social disorgani ...
References
*Burgess, E. W. (1928). Factors determining success or failure on parole. In A. A. Bruce (Ed.), ''The Workings of the Indeterminate Sentence Law and Parole in Illinois'' (pp. 205–249). Springfield, Illinois: Illinois State Parole Board.
*Gottfredson, D. M., & Snyder, H. N. (July 2005). ''The mathematics of risk classification: Changing data into valid instruments for juvenile courts''. Pittsburgh, Penn.: National Center for Juvenile Justice. NCJ 209158
eric.ed.gov pdf*
*Harcourt, Bernard E. (2006). ''Against prediction: Profiling, policing, and punishing in an actuarial age''. Chicago, Illinois: Univerlity of Chicago Press.
*Park, R. E., & Burgess, E. W. (1921). ''Introduction to the science of sociology''. Chicago, Illinois: University of Chicago Press
*Park, R. E., Burgess, E. W., & McKenzie, R. D. (1925). ''The city''. Chicago, Illinois: The University of Chicago Press
archived pdf
External links
*
*
- American Sociological Association
Classic Citation- Classic in Spatially Integrated Social Science
Guide to the Ernest Watson Burgess Papers 1886-1966at th
University of Chicago Special Collections Research Center*Burgess, E. W. (1936). "Protecting the public by parole and by parole prediction". ''American Institute of Criminal Law and Criminology'', volume 27(4), pages 491–502
archived pdf
{{DEFAULTSORT:Burgess, Ernest
Urban sociologists
Canadian sociologists
Canadian criminologists
People from Chatham-Kent
Kingfisher College alumni
University of Chicago faculty
University of Kansas faculty
Canadian expatriate academics in the United States
1886 births
1966 deaths
Presidents of the American Sociological Association
American sociologists
Human ecologists
Place of death missing
American Journal of Sociology editors