Whyte and Cornerville, Part III: Getting Out
White left Cornerville in 1940 and then returned in 1980 to discover that Doc had
lost interest (p. 348) and Chick was somewhat concerned that Bill had "caught people
wiith their hair down" (p. 352).
Bill had left Cornerville and Harvard and had gone to Chicago to publish his book
and earn his Ph.D. As he tells the story (pp. 354-60) he had difficulty on both fronts. It
might be helpful to recognize that Whyte was moving from relatively conservative
structural and scientific sociology at Harvard to the more liberal, progressive and
process-oriented sociology of Chicago, just as the center of gravity for American
sociology was moving in the opposite direction: from Chicago to Harvard in the 1940s.
This, together with Whyte's strong advocacy for reorienting sociology, which he
continues to support in late career—see his presidential address in 1980, makes him a
particularly interesting character in the history of American sociology. When he died in
2000 some of his colleagues offered the following tribute:
Aside from his contribution to methods, including his book, Participant
Observation: An Autobiography (IRL Books, 1994), Whyte made a number of
contributions to sociological theory.
First, and perhaps most obvious, he argues against the social disorganization,
"death of community" perspective on the urban slum. He argues that the peer groups are
organized but are very different in content. For corner boys there is a group orientation.
For college boys there is a success orientation that is often seen as selfish within the
corner boy group. This theme was further developed by Herbert Gans (see Whyte1 for
reference).
Methodologically, he argues (along with the second generation of the Chicago
School) that sociology needs to move from the objective analysis of facts (including
attitude surveys) toward the subjective, sympathetic understanding of groups and the
mean the group attributes to social action. At the same time, however, Whyte moves
beyond the group-orientation of what comes to be known as Symbolic Interactionism into
the study of organizational structure. This is most apparent in contrasting Whyte's
organizational explanation of how Cornerville obtained a park fence (pp. 249-52) with
Gans explanation of the peer group orientation of the Westenders limited their political
influence.
Whyte is an organizational theorist and a structuralist (certainly when compared
to Herbert Blumer, an early anti-structuralist Symbolic Interactionist). He builds the
world of corner boys and college boys in the North End of Boston within the context of
Harvard and the world of academia, politics, and the racquets, which represent the three
paths out of the slum. As he notes, "the racquets took the place of legitimate business in
relation to politics." (p. 200). The same could be said with regard to social mobility,
more generally. In the Northend, gangs were more important than family for men, but
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