ABSTRACT
The villages of principal interest at century’s end are located in large cities. Chicago’s neighborhoods, the cases for Sampson’s study, qualify as the archetype, thanks to the efforts of the scholars affiliated with the Chicago School and their intellectual descendants. Ironically, the group of specialists whose lineage can be traced most directly to the Chicago School-urban sociologists-have not been major contributors to the latest round of work on community effects. As a cardcarrying member of that group, I confess to being a bit embarrassed by this. Perhaps we are too wedded to aggregate units, or perhaps the problems involved are so thorny as to require the sort of multidisciplinary approach that has emerged. Whatever the reason, the primary professional identities of investigators at the forefront of community context research typically fall outside urban sociology and the other urban specialties.
