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Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781783086566 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Anthem Press |
| Publication date: | 06/01/2017 |
| Series: | Anthem Companions to Sociology |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 258 |
| File size: | 1 MB |
About the Author
Peter Kivisto is the Richard A. Swanson Professor of Social Thought at Augustana College, USA, and co-director of the Research Laboratory on Transnationalism and Migration Processes at St. Petersburg State University, Russia. The author of several books, articles and chapters, his recent works include National Identity in an Age of Migration (2016); Solidarity, Justice, and Incorporation: Thinking through the Civil Sphere (coeditor, 2015); and Religion and Immigration: Migrant Faiths in North America and Western Europe (2014).
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The Anthem Companion To Robert Park
By Peter Kivisto
Wimbledon Publishing Company
Copyright © 2017 Peter KivistoAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-78308-656-6
CHAPTER 1
A TWISTED PATH: PARK, GENDER AND PRAXIS
Mary Jo Deegan
Robert E. Park played a central part in defining sociology as a natural science. He imagined sociologists as unbiased and unaffected by the human behavior they studied: "their role was to be 'the calm, detached scientist who investigates race relations with the same objectivity and detachment with which the zoologist dissects the potato bug'" (Ernest W. Burgess, cited by Matthews 1977, 116). This metaphor attacked the earlier intention of many founders of sociology who envisioned sociology as a moral science. These founders studied society to learn how to alleviate poverty, create social justice and enhance human freedom (Becker 1971; Deegan 1988; Feagin, Vera and Ducey 2015).
Park's assault on sociology as a moral science included his aversion to what he called "do-goodism." He particularly criticized the work of female sociologists who appliedtheir sociological knowledge with the help of urban neighbors of social settlements and hundreds of thousands of clubwomen. These female sociologists, often led by Jane Addams, changed American society and instituted a plethora of laws and government programs concerning the rights of workers, immigrants, the poor, the disabled, children and mothers. These sociologists were fundamental to the creation of the welfare state in the United States (Goodwin 1994; Deegan 1987, 1991, 1995, 1997; Lengermann and Niebrugge-Brantley 1998; Skocpol 1992). An example of Park's view of the relation between women, politics and sociology is found in an account recorded by a former student, Theodore K. Noss. Here, Noss notes a particularly extreme exchange between Park and a female student who engaged in social reform and was, apparently, a Quaker – as were many female sociologists; for example, Edith Abbott, Jane Addams, Emily Greene Balch and Florence Kelley (Deegan 1987, 1991). After castigating Quakers' "self-righteous meddling in the abolition movement," Park allegedly claimed "the greatest damage done to the city of Chicago was not the product of corrupt politicians or criminals but of women reformers" (Noss, cited by Raushenbush 1979, 97).
I always found this statement by Park to be absurd, a serious misperception of reality and the accomplishments of sociology as an applied science (e.g., Deegan 1985). This view is particularly ridiculous for the city of Chicago, where he was employed – a city world famous for its venal politicians, the rapacious gangster Al Capone and the applied sociologist and Nobel Laureate Jane Addams. Imagine my deep astonishment when I discovered that Park's wife, Clara Cahill Park(C. C. Park), was a social reformer. She was not only what Park referred to as a meddling woman, but she was also a national leader in "social reconstruction" (Mead 1999; Campbell 1992), a noted author on social problems, a significant figure in the creation of federal programs to financially support widows and their children, and an active supporter of Addams and her sociological allies, whom Park opposed. In this chapter I analyze Park's attack on applied sociology and its practice as "women's work" in a gendered division of labor in the discipline. Although many white male sociologists engaged in applied sociology before Park, some important European sociologists such as Max Weber and Emil Durkheim argued against it. Park aligned his work with the natural science, "objective" or "value free" definition of the discipline.
Men's and Women's Work in Sociology, 1892–1920
Two central sociological institutions flourished in Chicago between 1892 and 1920: Hull House, the famous social settlement founded and led by Jane Addamsand the Center of Applied Sociology, and the Department of Sociology at the University of Chicago, the worldwide academic leader of the discipline and men's work in it. They established two distinct ways of doing sociology, the Hull House school of sociology and the Chicago school of sociology (Deegan 2002, 2014), with a large number of sociologists adopting the two types of theories and practices. These two schools were gendered, with women gravitating to the social settlement and men gravitating to the academy. This division corresponded to the popular Doctrine of the Separate Spheres (Deegan 1988a, 198–99). In sociology, this meant that (white) men's work was more abstract, rational, formal and academic (Deegan 1978, 1988) while women's work was more applied, more passionate, more centered on values of the home and the roles of women, children and the family, and also on nonviolence. Because women were assumed to have more emotional and cultural sensitivity than men, they were deemed ideal professionals to improve society and make it more humane.
The Doctrine of the Separate Spheres also affected those women in the community who wanted to have greater public participation, often using the knowledge gained by applied sociologists (e.g., Rynbrandt 1999). Middle-class married women in particular were expected to labor outside the home in unpaid volunteer work. This structure for women's work corresponded to "clubwomen's work" or "civic housekeeping" as Addams (1907) called it. This public work became the foundation for the maternal welfare statute in the United States (Goodwin 1997; Siegfried 1998; Skocpol 1992).
Because of the discipline's initial openness to women and the belief in a special sphere for women's work in sociology, women flocked to the academy for training between 1892 and 1920. During this "golden era of women in sociology" (Deegan 1991, 1997), a fruitful, applied sociology emerged with a sophisticated theory of society: feminist pragmatism. This American theory unites liberal values and belief in a rational public with a cooperative, nurturing and liberating model of the self, the other and the community. Feminist pragmatism emphasizes education and democracy as significant mechanisms to organize and improve society (see Campbell 1992; Deegan 1988, 1991,1995, 1996; Siegfried 1998). It emerged in Chicago where sociologists observed rapid urbanization, immigration, industrialization, migration and social change that took place before their eyes. The Great Migration of African Americans from the South to the North after World War I was part of this massive movement of people in search of more freedom and prosperity. The University of Chicago towered over the intellectual and professional landscape of sociology from 1892, when the department was founded, until 1934 when Park retired (Faris 1967; Fine 1995). By 1930, it reputedly had trained over half of all sociologists in the world. This large group of scholars fundamentally shaped the discipline through its faculty and their doctorally trained students, who produced thousands of books and articles (Kurtz 1984).
The names of Park and his colleague Ernest W. Burgess became synonymous with Chicago sociology after 1920. They are the perceived leaders of a powerful school that signaled the beginning of modern sociology. This so-called new approach was notable in one respect: It loudly and defiantly separated itself from social reform and women's work in the profession, especially that based at Hull House. Identifying themselves as "urban ecologists," Park and Burgess (1921) saw society as socially created and maintained through conflict similar to that found in the natural world of plants and animals. They viewed the city as both a human product and a territorial settlement. They studied populations such as immigrants, minorities and juveniles — which their earlier colleagues had studied, too, but Park's and Burgess's efforts to link sociological knowledge with application were truncated, at least in theory.
Because Park and Burgess were intrinsically social reformers, they wanted to engage in social reform while asserting that their work was unbiased. As a result, they derogated their predecessors' work while initiating a new form of social policy studies that were more politically conservative and acceptable to businessmen and to administrators in the academy. This approach was much less powerful and effective in improving the everyday life of all the needy living in America. The men gained more academic respectability but their efforts lost vitality and political effectiveness. In many ways, Addams, Clara Cahill Park and their female allies in sociology fundamentally changed the American state and politics, while Park and his male colleagues did not.
For Park, Addams was a public person who was personally admirable but not a professional colleague and an equal (Deegan 1988, 158–59). The role of social amelioration in sociology, then, became a pivotal concept in understanding the work of Addams and other female sociologists in relation to the Chicago school of the 1920s and 1930s. In contrast to her husband, C. C. Park viewed Addams and other women who applied sociology as mentors and role models. Thus C. C. Park wrote: "If we could have always with us the great people of the earth, like Miss Addams, Miss [Julia] Lathrop, [Juvenile Court] Judge [Julian] Mack, and others, there would be no such proverbs [accepting poverty as normal] as those the poor now murmur among themselves" (1913b, 669).
Park and his colleagues, ushered in an age that elsewhere I call the "dark era of patriarchal ascendancy" in which the study of women was eclipsed (Deegan 1991). The critique of sexist ideas and practices in this school (summarized in Lengermann and Niebrugge-Brantley, 1998) has resulted in little internal analysis or reflexive critique. Some scholars vehemently deny that this pattern ever existed. They stress that Park was a natural, unbiased scientist (e.g., Bulmer 1984; Lindner 1996; Lyman 1992). The complex story of Park's views on gender and praxis in sociology is a backstage drama behind the public presentation of sociology as apolitical, objective and rational, and as unaffected by human behavior as a potato bug is (Goffman 1959).
Park and His Public Antipathy to "Do Goodism"
As noted above, Park mocked clubwomen as early as the 1890s, two decades before he became a sociologist (Matthews 1977; Raushenbush 1979). During this period Park was not defending the discipline's scientific integrity but merely expressing his patriarchal opinion as a journalist. He carried this bias into the profession of sociology, where he had the institutional power to claim that his position was objective and unbiased.
Park assiduously labored to appear to be an opponent of applied sociology, and a few more quotations illustrate this stance. For example, a frequently repeated anecdote regarding his effort to separate sociology from the amelioration of social problems is the following exchange: "His answer to a student's question, [']What did he do for people?['] was a gruff 'Not a damn thing!'" (Everett C. Hughes, cited by Matthews 1977, 116). Similarly, Martin Bulmer also perpetuates Park's self-portrait of being distinct from earlier, applied Chicago sociologists when he (1984, 39) claims: "Whereas [Charles R.] Henderson and [Charles] Zueblin were reform-oriented, Robert Park was not." This uncritical acceptance of an image that is without substance is echoed in the writings of Rolf Lindner (1996), Edward Shils (1992) and Hughes (1964). In contrast to this pattern of ignoring Park's problems in analyzing gender, Linder (1990, 53n224), Lyman (1992, 143n73) and Ross (1991, 357–71) examine Park's difficulties with analyzing class and race.
Park also repeated these views in his writings. Thus, in 1924 he scathingly dismissed all social investigations done by applied sociologists – whom he subsumed under the category of "social workers" – when he wrote: "Generally speaking, we have had nothing that could be called social research, bearing on the tasks of social workers. The most important contributions of [the] sciences to social research and social work have come from medicine and particularly from psychiatry" (Park, 1924c, 263). With these and similar statements on the work of his early sociological colleagues – whether they were white male academicians, political activists, white women or people of color – Park swept away the decades of work done by applied sociologists, particularly at the University of Chicago and Hull House, and their allies in the community (Deegan1988; Rynbrandt 1999; Skocpol 1992).
Park's deep antipathy to applied sociology, especially as conducted by women, had a profound and deleterious effect on the discipline of sociology. As I document elsewhere, his concepts erased women and denigrated their social contributions (Deegan2006); he did not adopt collegial roles toward great women in sociology who were associated with Hull House, notably Jane Addams, Edith Abbott and Sophonisba Breckinridge (Deegan 1988); and he often admired and engaged in applied sociology despite his strenuous protestations against it, as we see later in this chapter. All of this established evidence does not compare, however, to the fact that when Park opposed women's work in the applied sphere, and when he opposed clubwomen who engaged in it, he was attacking the life work, commitments and contributions of his talented and remarkable wife, C. C. Park. He was expressing a complex, personal problem that became a public issue through his institutionalization of disinterested natural science as the model for doing sociology (Mills 1959).
As with most human dramas, Park's world was one filled with contradictions and ambivalence. I demonstrate here that, unlike the potato bug, humans behave in ways that call for tools to explain intellectual and emotional complexity, moral choices and self-reflection (Addams 1910, 1922; Mead 1934). As Anthony Blasi (2002) noted: "Robert Park was the most influential American sociologist from the 1920s into the 1940s" (1), and this authority included the power to publicly legitimate his patriarchal behavior and values. We begin to examine his relationship to women's work in sociology by analyzing his relationship with Addams.
Robert E. Park and Jane Addams
The distance between the pre-war (1892–1918) and postwar (1919–34) Chicago school is remarkable, and Park epitomized the greatest distance between the eras. Although he did credit Addams and Hull-House Maps and Papers (Residents 1895) as significant in his coursework and noted it briefly in one article, Park thought of himself as a professional distinctly different from Addams: he admired Addams within a restricted vision of female professionals. Winifred Raushenbush, Park's late biographer and assistant, wrote the present author to say that "Park's daughter, Margaret Park Redfield, told me that Park admired Jane Addams very much. He admired anyone who accomplished anything real" (Raushenbush to Deegan, September 19, 1979). Thus, Addams was held in high personal regard, but this was not blended with public "professional" respect.
When Ethel Sturgess Dummer, the first head of the family section in the American Sociological Society (ASS), wanted to have Addams as the major speaker for the 1922 meetings, Park responded: "It would be fine if Miss Addams could be induced to preside at the meeting when your program is presented. I[t] would certainly add distinction to the program, and anything she had to say would be listened to by the whole country with interest and respect" (cited in Deegan 1988, 166n52). Again, this appears to be a situation in which it is hard to interpret what Park meant. Did he really mean that he would add distinction to Addams's presentation? Or, more likely, is this yet further evidence of a typographical error when he intended to write that Addams's presence and not his would lend distinction to the session? It must be added that his correspondence does not appear to be replete with such Freudian slips. Park distinctly wrote in another passage of the letter that he and a Mr. Eliot, a Northwestern University professor of sociology, should be associated with the program. This was needed to make the session "conform to the program of the other sections." Clearly, he wanted a more male and "sociological" influence to appear in conjunction with Addams's work. He did not want to actively work with Addams, however, so he added that his connection would be purely formal and not an active one (cited in Deegan 1988, 166n53).
No evidence of a close relationship between Park and Addams has been found by this researcher. Those few indications of his contacts with her reveal only a peripheral involvement. Given their shared interest in African Americans, urban life and social settlements, they may have crossed paths on occasions that have yet to be documented. Nonetheless, Park's animosity to Addams's sociological praxis would have been a barrier to their establishing a relationship. Park's strong rhetoric against "do-goodism" would have been yet another hurdle. Finally, Addams, the feminist pragmatist, stood for a number of ideas and ideals that Park vehemently opposed. Whatever additional evidence may be garnered concerning their mutual influence and regard, it is safe to say that Park did not, in his writings or professional life, advance an understanding of Addams as a sociologist. This statement also applies to his wife's work in applied sociology.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from The Anthem Companion To Robert Park by Peter Kivisto. Copyright © 2017 Peter Kivisto. Excerpted by permission of Wimbledon Publishing Company.
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Table of Contents
Contents
Introduction. The Legacy of Robert Ezra Park Peter Kivisto,Chapter 1. A Twisted Path: Park, Gender and Praxis Mary Jo Deegan,
Chapter 2. Robert Park's Journey into Sociology Martin Bulmer,
Chapter 3. Beyond "Get the Seat of Your Pants Dirty in Real Research": Park on Methods Raymond M. Lee,
Chapter 4. The Basic Components of Social Action: Mead versus Park Lonnie Athens,
Chapter 5. Robert E. Park: Neglected Social Psychologist Donald C. Reitzes,
Chapter 6. Robert E. Park's Theory of Assimilation and Beyond Peter Kivisto,
Chapter 7. Robert Park's Marginal Man: The Career of a Concept in American Sociology Chad Alan Goldberg,
Chapter 8. Marginality, Racial Politics and the Sociology of Knowledge: Robert Park and Critical Race Theory Vince Marotta,
Chapter 9. The Cities of Robert Ezra Park: Toward a Periodization of His Conception of the Metropolis (1915–39) Coline Ruwet,
Chapter 10. The Impact of Robert E. Park on American Sociology of Religion Anthony J. Blasi,
Chronology,
Contributors,
Index,