ABSTRACT
Chicago School sociology analyzes society as a fluid interactive process rather than a static institutional system. This processual approach examines 'organization and disorganization, conflict and accommodation, social movements and cultural change'. The Chicago School had three broad foci: social psychology, social organization, and social ecology. Pragmatism helped avoid the trap of reification by emphasizing how concepts were simply convenient labels for dynamic, ongoing social processes that must remain the focus of study. Ralph Turner and Lewis Killian distance themselves from a 'pathological view' of crowd behavior exemplified by Everett Martin's early characterization of the crowd as 'people going crazy together'. Joseph Gusfield interprets temperance as a form of status politics that is more prevalent among middle classes, in which material comfort often combines with status anxiety. The chapter concludes with brief comments that dispense with mass movements in fewer than two pages and bundle together 'fashion, reform and revolution' in an equally brief treatment.
