ABSTRACT
Every sociological theory generates its own methodology. The significance that Robert E. Park attributed to the concepts of culture, communication, and social control led him to develop a research methodology that relied upon field-work and the collection of 'human documents' as its mainstays. He fostered a vision of sociology as a kind of urban anthropology. 'Sociological ethnography' refers to the systematic description of the experience of a social group as this unfolds in its natural setting. Field-work and the analysis of human documents were intended to capture the subjective point of view of the actor and the variety of social realities generated by the processes of social interaction. The methods of urban ethnography, the analysis of human documents, and the case-study approach represent a set of constraints upon generalization and the construction of very abstract models, typologies, and 'laws' in sociology.
