BiblioVault - Books about Sociological Study

The Background of Swedish Emigration to the United States

An Economic and Sociological Study in the Dynamics of Migration

John Lindberg

University of Minnesota Press, 1930

The Background of Swedish Emigration to the United States was first published in 1930. Minnesota Archive Editions uses digital technology to make long-unavailable books once again accessible, and are published unaltered from the original University of Minnesota Press editions.The author, for three years a fellow of the Laura Spelman Rockefeller Memorial, examines the movement that, about the middle of the nineteenth century, swept over Sweden like an epidemic and carried away a large portion of her youth to America. Some of the more important chapters discuss the character of group emigration, the pattern of mass emigration, the background of agricultural emigration, the selection of emigrants, the industrial emigration, the professional emigration, the return of the emigrants, and the cessation of emigration.

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The Forgotten Ones

A Sociological Study of Anglo and Chicano Retardates

By Anne-Marie Henshel

University of Texas Press, 1972

In The Forgotten Ones, originally published in 1972, Anne-Marie Henshel examines the lives of a group of persons living within the community who had been diagnosed at one time or another as mentally retarded. The analysis makes use of three sets of comparisons—Anglo and Chicano, married and single, male and female—and the subjects in each category are analyzed in terms of personal characteristics, employment situation, material possessions, living conditions, family background, social activities, and contacts with “officials”—including the police. In addition, Henshel gives a detailed presentation of the conjugal lives of the married subjects: mutual feelings, marital satisfaction, reproduction, parenthood.

All data were gathered through three in-depth interviews with each subject, at intervals of about three months. In the case of a married respondent, the spouse was interviewed simultaneously, whenever possible, but separately. Interviewer was matched with subject by sex and ethnicity. Although the respondent’s reports were complemented by the interviewer’s perception, emphasis was placed on the individual’s perception of his or her own situation, and the data were analyzed accordingly.

The predominant themes are cultural differences between the two ethnic groups, especially in marriage, the relative superiority of the married over the single, the advantages and disadvantages of the male and the female in view of sex-role norms, and some of the problems with which the respondents are besieged—on the whole, problems very similar to those of other poor people. All-pervasive are social isolation, loneliness, lack of money, deficient education, poor physical appearance, failure in birth-control efforts, the presence of handicapped children, and the need for humane guidance and training.

Suggestions for improving relations with individuals once labeled retardates are presented in the last chapter.

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The Gold Coast and the Slum

A Sociological Study of Chicago's Near North Side

Harvey Warren Zorbaugh

University of Chicago Press, 1983

"This is a book about Chicago. It is also, and for that very reason, a book about every other American city which has lived long enough and grown large enough to experience the transformation of neighborhoods and the contact of cultures and the tension between different types of individual and community behavior. . . . Here is a type of sociological investigation which is equally marked by human interest and scientific method."—Christian Century

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Schoolteacher

A Sociological Study

Dan C. Lortie

University of Chicago Press, 2002

Upon its initial publication, many reviewers dubbed Dan C. Lortie's Schoolteacher the best social portrait of the profession since Willard Waller's classic The Sociology of Teaching. This new printing of Lortie's classic—including a new preface bringing the author's observations up to date—is an essential view into the world and culture of a vitally important profession.

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The Taxi-Dance Hall

A Sociological Study in Commercialized Recreation and City Life

Paul Goalby Cressey

University of Chicago Press, 1932

First published in 1932, The Taxi-Dance Hall is Paul Goalby Cressey’s fascinating study of Chicago’s urban nightlife—as seen through the eyes of the patrons, owners, and dancers-for-hire who frequented the city’s notoriously seedy “taxi-dance” halls.

Taxi-dance halls, as the introduction notes, were social centers where men could come and pay to dance with “a bevy of pretty, vivacious, and often mercenary” women. Ten cents per dance was the usual fee, with half the proceeds going to the dancer and the other half to the owner of the taxi-hall. Cressey’s study includes detailed maps of the taxi-dance districts, illuminating interviews with dancers, patrons, and owners, and vivid analyses of local attempts to reform the taxi-dance hall and its attendees.

Cressey’s study reveals these halls to be the distinctive urban consequence of tensions between a young, diverse, and economically independent population at odds with the restrictive regulations of Prohibition America. Thick with sexual vice, ethnic clashes, and powerful undercurrents of class, The Taxi-Dance Hall is a landmark example of Chicago sociology, perfect for scholars and history buffs alike.

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