Concept
social laboratory
Seeing the city as the place where social processes can be observed enlarged and visible (Park, 1915); it does not mean a controlled experimental room.
The social laboratory is the Chicago School’s way of describing the city. At the end of his 1915 article “The City”, Robert Park writes that a great city lays bare in a massive way the traits that stay hidden in small communities and shows the good and the evil in human nature in excess. That, he says, justifies the view that treats the city as a “laboratory or clinic” in which human nature and social processes can be studied most conveniently and profitably.
The laboratory here is not a controlled experimental room but a place where observation is easy; researchers in Chicago observed on the street, in the neighbourhood, in newspapers and letters, and drew maps. In the same article Park gives the researcher lists of questions, for example what counts as news in a neighbourhood and where attention goes. The limit of the concept is that a city is not a “natural” laboratory but a chosen place. In Turkish sources it appears as “sosyal laboratuvar” or “toplumsal laboratuvar”.
Example
One of Park’s suggested neighbourhood questions: “What is news?” Mapping a neighbourhood’s notice boards, shopkeepers and messaging groups is an exercise in that question.