Di quale eredità parliamo? La sociologia di Chicago e il suo lascito

How did a complex and methodologically plural research programme come to be remembered in such a selective way? This essay examines the tension between the internal heterogeneity of the Chicago programme and its predominantly qualitative reception in Europe. It argues that defining Chicago sociology solely through ethnographic and interpretive approaches obscures a research programme that combined qualitative inquiry, spatial analysis, and sustained quantitative work. While reconstructing the quantitative strand associated with Ogburn, where measurement and statistical series were central to the analysis of social change, the essay also accounts for its marginalization in European appropriations. It shows that this reception resulted not from ignorance but from a selective process shaped by disciplinary boundaries and intellectual transfers, through which certain elements of the Chicago programme were foregrounded while others were filtered out.