1156 - Sociology’s Roots in Social Justice - Part One: Locations

Session Submission Type: Invited Session

Description

This panel presents “a back to the future” moment: for behind a session seeking the roots of sociology in a social justice tradition is the long and continuing struggle to reconcile what the earliest American sociologists at first saw as two complementary projects—developing scientific knowledge about society and solving social problems of disorder and injustice. The intent of this panel is to trace that struggle as it occurred in the period when American sociology was taking shape, the period between 1865 and 1935, with a particular emphasis on examples of works, thinkers, and practical accomplishments that used sociology to promote social justice. To appreciate that, to uncover these roots, it is necessary to understand that sociology in its beginnings was practiced in several distinct though overlapping locations--voluntary citizen organizations, settlement houses, colleges and universities. Sociology arose in these locations in response to social justice concerns identified by a variety of social movements—The Social Science Movement, Progressivism, First Wave Feminism, the African American civil rights movement, the labor movement, and socialism.

Responses to these concerns were threefold. One response was to develop both disciplinary associations—like the American Social Science Association which in turn would spin off nearly all the social science learned societies of today (AEA, AHA, APSA, ASS) and problem-solving associations (like Charities and Corrections, the Immigrants Protection League, the Consumers’ League and, the perhaps crowning achievement, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People). A second response was the production of major empirical studies, like Hull-House Maps and Papers (1895), The Philadelphia Negro (1899), and Work-Accidents and the Law (1910) and major theoretical statements like A Voice from the South (1892), Women and Economics (1898), Democracy and Social Ethics (1902) The Souls of Black Folk (1903). A third response was the achievement of social amelioration through legislative action in victories such as the Ten-Hour Day bill in Illinois, the establishment of the Cook County Juvenile Court (1898), the establishment of the federal Children’s Bureau (1909), the Workmen’s Compensation Law (1902-1916), the enactment of Social Security legislation in 1935, that used a science-based sociology to conceive of solutions to social problems. It is hoped the panel might conclude with a meditation on the cost to sociology of marginalizing the social justice tradition as over time academic sociology moved toward a stance of value neutrality and objectivity and came to define the social justice tradition as not sociology but social activism. This split had significant consequences for sociology; in the 1920s, it led to a loss in the employment sector outside the academy, ceding it to social work (Lengermann and Niebrugge 2005) and when confronting The Great Depression, it found itself with nothing to offer but statistical method, ceding the high ground of social analysis to economics (Camic 2005).

Sub Unit

• Presidential Panel

Session Organizers

• Patricia Madoo Lengermann, George Washington University

• Gillian "Jill" Niebrugge-Brantley, George Washington University

Presider

• Gillian "Jill" Niebrugge-Brantley, George Washington University

Individual Presentations

• American Social Science Association and the Social Science Movement - Craig Calhoun, Arizona State University

• The Social Settlements - Joyce E. Williams, Texas Woman's University; Vicky MacLean, Middle Tennessee State University

• Black Sociology: Roots in Scientific Social Justice at HBCUs - Kalasia S. Daniels, University of Cincinnati

• Feminism and Social Research Methods - Shulamit Reinharz, Brandeis University