ABSTRACT
The invitation to engage in a dialogue between 'urban sociologists in the Chicago School tradition and Marxian challengers to that tradition' sounds, at first blush, like an invitation to the sheep to come sit down and parley with the wolves. It certainly suggests a reduction of the level of combat from a grand gladiatorial contest of words and ideologies to a much quieter, and perhaps more subtle, level of polemical jousting. What is interesting about the idea is that an analysis of the pitfalls which pockmark the approach to the conference room can tell us a great deal about the real differences which arise as 'scientists' from radically different traditions seek to understand the same material phenomena.
