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Investigator publications listed on this site relate to research funded through the Investigator Awards program. References are provided for books and selected journal articles written by the investigators. Abstracts are available for some featured publications.
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Great American City: Chicago and the Enduring Neighborhood Effect
Sampson, R.J.
Published: 2012
U of Chicago Press
»Show summary
For over fifty years numerous public intellectuals and social theorists have insisted that community is dead. Some would have us believe that we act solely as individuals choosing our own fates regardless of our surroundings, while other theories place us at the mercy of global forces beyond our control. These two perspectives dominate contemporary views of society, but by rejecting the importance of place they are both deeply flawed. Based on one of the most ambitious studies in the history of social science, Great American City argues that communities still matter because life is decisively shaped by where you live.

To demonstrate the powerfully enduring impact of place, Robert J. Sampson presents here the fruits of over a decade’s research in Chicago combined with his own unique personal observations about life in the city, from Cabrini Green to Trump Tower and Millennium Park to the Robert Taylor Homes. He discovers that neighborhoods influence a remarkably wide variety of social phenomena, including crime, health, civic engagement, home foreclosures, teen births, altruism, leadership networks, and immigration. Even national crises cannot halt the impact of place, Sampson finds, as he analyzes the consequences of the Great Recession and its aftermath, bringing his magisterial study up to the fall of 2010.

Following in the influential tradition of the Chicago School of urban studies but updated for the twenty-first century, Great American City is at once a landmark research project, a commanding argument for a new theory of social life, and the story of an iconic city.

Linked Investigator Award(s):
Robert J. Sampson, Ph.D.The Community Context of Well Being: A Longitudinal Study of Social Mechanisms and Neighborhood Processes
Award Year: 2004

»Show Abstract
Medical care in the United States tends to focus on individuals, while our public health system (local, county, state, national) focuses on the health of various populations. After more than a decade of studying human development at the community level, Robert J. Sampson, Ph.D. turns his attention to the neighborhood foundations of well-being and the geographic concentration of compromised health. His Investigator Award project, The Community Context of Well-Being: A Longitudinal Study of Social Mechanisms and Neighborhood Processes, explores social aspects of neighborhood life that relate to health, such as cohesion, informal social controls, spatial diffusion of network ties, leadership connectivity, and moral cynicism, among others. The project links several sets of original data to study social mechanisms and institutional processes as they change over time across Chicago neighborhoods. By identifying these mechanisms, Dr. Sampson aims to better understand how and why communities matter for health and to develop advanced methods of monitoring community health and well-being that can be used to inform the design of more effective and localized interventions.
More Books by Author(s):
Tyler, T., Braga, A., Fagan, J., Sampson, R., Winship, C., Meares, T. editors, Legitimacy and Criminal Justice: A Comparative Perspective. New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 2007.
Wikstrom, P.O., Sampson, R.J editors, The Explanation of Crime: Context, Mechanisms, and Development. New York and Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006.