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Book review: Robert J Sampson, Great American City: Chicago and the Enduring Neighborhood Effect

Document Cited in Related
Vincent
DOI10.1177/1362480613490015
Date01 August 2013
Published date01 August 2013
AuthorRobert J Bursik
Subject MatterBook reviews
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Theoretical Criminology 17(3)
Robert J Sampson, Great American City: Chicago and the Enduring Neighborhood Effect,
University of Chicago Press: Chicago, 2012; xviii + 534 pp.: 9780226734569, US$27.50
(cloth), US$20.00 (pbk)
Reviewed by: Robert J Bursik, Jr, University of Missouri-St Louis, USA
Roughly 30 years have elapsed since the ‘rediscovery’ of the relevance of neighborhood
characteristics for the study of spatial variation in the distribution of crime and victimization.
Although the early ‘second generation’ work reconceptualized the traditional social disorga-
nization model in terms of the capacity of a community’s relational networks to exercise
formal and informal control, subsequent studies have called some aspects of that reformula-
tion into question and have led to important refinements of others. Unfortunately, despite
several superb summaries of these developments (such as Kubrin and Weitzer, 2003), we
have been missing a contemporary equivalent of Shaw and McKay’s (1942) classic Juvenile
Delinquency and Urban Areas that not only parsimoniously integrates relevant criminologi-
cal and social science research, but also substantially extends our understanding of the gene-
sis of these relationships in a manner that can serve as an inspiration for decades to come. Our
wait has ended with the appearance of Robert Sampson’s Great American City.
The basic goals of Great American City are straightforward: (1) the development of a
‘general theoretical approach to the study of neighborhood effects and the contemporary
American city’ (Parts I and II, especially Chapter 3) and (2) the use of that contextual meth-
odology to demonstrate that, contrary to the arguments of many scholars of urban life,
neighborhood effects are real, enduring, and cannot be simply reduced to the individual
choices of the ‘types of people’ who live in those communities (Parts III, IV, and V). As
such, Great American City is a response to two 21st-century variants of...

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