ABSTRACT
This chapter expresses that civilization, which is governed by secular and universalistic principles of social organization, lacks the moral authority to regulate behaviour inherent in tradition and culture. Civilization releases individuals from traditional mechanisms of social control. Civilization sweeps away the shared heritage and taken-for-granted style of life characteristic of parochial groups. A related reason for the modernity of the theme of the romance of culture in an urban civilization, has to do with current comment upon the role of the intellectual in discovering and honouring social bonds between people of the same origin and, in so doing, successfully heightening self-consciousness among members of different groups. The chapter presents an individual biography of Robert E. Park. Park adopted an ethnographic style of social research which he subsequently set out as the rules of sociological method.
