158.2
The Theoretical Metaphors of Chicagoan Human Ecology
The reception of the Chicago sociology in the Russian sociological discourse traditionally was concerned with the "Chicagoan style" in empirical research. Recent re-evaluation of the Chicago heritage put ahead its theoretical peculiarity, namely – Human ecology of Robert Park as the post-Simmelian sociology of space.
The outline of the main metaphors driven from the Human ecology and used to represent the reassessed significance of the Chicago theoretical perspective includes the following ones:
1) The ontological metaphor: Society as a "Process" (VS "System/Structure"in the post-Chicago sociology). "CCAA" as the structure of the social process. "CCAA" and "AGIL" – the homology of the contraries. The "Cycle" as a way of functional metaphor for the social process and the recurrent form of the "immortal ordinary society".
2) The methodological metaphor : "Dynamic disequilibrium" -- interactionism, atomism and "sympathetic identification" on the micro-level (spatial dimension) and evolutionism (from biotic to social/moral) on the macro-level (temporal dimension).
3) The epistemological metaphor -- "laboratory" (Racial relations , or The City). "Empirical bias" rendered as a tutorial problem and as the way of institutionalization rather than a prospective for the discipline development.
4) "Marginalization" and "in-betweenness" as the core of the sociology of Space. The ideal social type of the "marginal man" as the embodiment of the "intelligent creativity".
5) "Social order" and "freedom" as heterogeneous multileveled and interweaved phenomena.