From 1915 to 1935 the inventive community of social scientists at the University of Chicago pioneered empirical research and a variety of qualitative and quantitative methods, shaping the future of twentieth-century American sociology and related fields as well. Martin Bulmer's history of the Chicago school of sociology describes the university's role in creating research-based and publication-oriented graduate schools of social science. "This is an important piece of work on the history of sociology, but it is more than merely historical: Martin Bulmer's undertaking is also to explain why historical events occurred as they did, using potentially general theoretical ideas. He has studied what he sees as the period, from 1915 to 1935, when the 'Chicago School' most flourished, and defines the nature of its achievements and what made them possible . . . It is likely to become the indispensible historical source for its topic."—Jennifer Platt, Sociology

Based on a comparative study of the theories of such sociologists as Ward, Sumner, Keller, Giddings, Ross, Small and Cooley, this is a systematic and rigorous analysis of the main features of earlier sociological theory in the USA. The author identifies and characterizes the basic assumptions of early American sociological thought in terms of an abstract analytical scheme. He shows that early theory focused on social ontological interests, the pervasive ontological stance being evolutionary naturalism, within which the problems of social origins and social change tended to be paramount. He also points out that some sociologists preferred a social process theory. In his final chapter the author suggests the degree of similarity and dissimilarity, of continuity and discontinuity, between earlier and later theory in American sociology, and provides a basis for explaining and interpreting the character of the prevalent assumptions of one period in American theory in relation to other periods.

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