Street Corner Society WILLIAM FOOTE WHYTE Field work is fascinating both to do and to read about, as it unites the researcher with the data in a way that no other sociological method al- lows. It is the closeness of the researcher to the people being studied, the first-hand observations and even participation in their lives, that allows the reader to gain a sense of "being there.” So it is with this selection from one of the most well-known books in sociology, In this classic work, Whyte lays bare some of the essentials of doing field work. Here you can see him struggling to find an accept- able role in an unfamiliar setting. He lets you look over his shoulder as he tries to discover a vantage point from which he can participate in this unfamiliar group, and yet remain somewhat aloof in order to be analytical. In remarkable candor, Whyte even lets you see some of the mistakes he made in this struggle. As you join him, you may sense the excitement of discovery that has hooked many’ of us on sociology. First Efforts WHEN I BEGAN MY WORK, I had had no training in sociology or anthropology. I thought of myself as an economist and naturally looked first to- ward the matters that we had taken up in economies course ies of slum housing, At the time T was sitting in on a course in slums and hous- ing in the Sociology Department at Harvard, As a term project | took on a siudy of one block in Cornerville. To legitimize this effort, I got in touch with a private agency that concemed itself in housing matters and offered to turn over to them the results of my survey. With that backing, I began knocking on doors, looking into flats, and talking to the tenants about the living conditions, This brought me into contact with Cornerville people, but it would be hard now to devise a more inappropriate way of beginning a study such as | was eventually to make. I felt ill at ease at this intrusion, and Iam sure so diel the people. T wound up the block study as rapidly as [ could and wrote it off as a total loss as far as gaining a real entry into the district. Shortly thereafter I made another false start—if so tentative an effort may even be called a start. At that time [ was completely baffled at the problem of finding my way into the district. Cornerville was right before me and yet so far away. T could walk freely up and down its streets, and I had even made my way Such as econom into some of the flats, and yet I was still a stranger in a world completely un- known to me.