Louis Wirth

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Louis Wirth (August 28, 1897 - May 10, 1952) was born in the small village of Gemuden, Germany. He was one of seven children born to Rosalie Lorig and Joseph Wirth. Gemuden was a pastoral community, and Joseph Wirth earned a living as a cattle dealer. The Wirths were one of only a few Jewish families in the village. Both of his parents were active in their religious community.

He was born in Germany, but studied in the United States and became a leading figure in Chicago School Sociology. His interests included city life, minority group behaviour and mass media and he is recognised as one of the leading urban sociologists. Wirth's major contribution to social theory of urban space was a classic essay Urbanism as a Way of Life, published in the American Journal of Sociology in 1938.

His research was concerned with 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.

Wirth writes that urbanism is a form of social organisation that is harmful to culture, Wirth details the city as a “Substitution of secondary for primary contacts, the weakening of bonds of kinship, the declining social significance of the family, the disappearance of neighbourhood and the undermining of traditional basis of social solidarity”.<ref>Wirth (1938) Urbanism as a way of life</ref> Wirth was concerned with the effects of the city upon family unity, and he believed urbanisation leads to a ‘low and declining urban reproduction rates … families are smaller and more frequently without children than in the country’. Wirth continues, marriage tends to be postponed, and the proportion of single people is growing leading to isolation and less interaction.

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.

A good example of Wirth's work, which includes a comprehensive bibliography, is On Cities and Social Life, published in 1964.

[edit] Publications

1938: The Ghetto, Chicago: University of Chicago Press
1945: The Problem of Minority Groups, in Ralph Linton, The Science of Man in the World Crisis, New York: Columbia University Press
1956: Community Life and Social Policy, with E Wirth Marvick & Albert J Reiss Jr, Chicago: University of Chicago Press