Settlement Sociology in the Progressive Years

Settlement Sociology in the Progressive Years claims for sociology a lost history and paradigm only recently acknowledged for shaping the American sociological tradition. Williams and MacLean trace the key works of early scholar activists through the leading settlement houses in Chicago, New York and Boston. The roots of sociology as a public enterprise for social reform are restored to the canon through early research, teaching and social advocacy. The settlement paradigm of “neighborly relations” combining the visions of social gospelers and first-wave feminists will resonate for a renewed public sociology today. Key to this paradigm was the movement to "settle" in neighborhoods and become active in the struggle for social change in a period of rapid industrialization, immigration, and urbanization.

Joyce E. Williams, Ph.D. (1971, Washington University) is professor of Sociology Emerita, Texas Woman’s University and has taught as adjunct faculty in several schools. She has authored three books and numerous articles on race relations, social inequality, and the history of sociology including In Search of the Kingdom.

Vicky M. MacLean, Ph.D. (1992, Duke University) is professor of Sociology at Middle Tennessee State University. She has published articles and chapters in books in the areas of gender studies, the sociology of work, health, death and dying, and the history of sociology including Ghosts of Sociologies Past.

"This volume does a remarkable job establishing the facts about sociology in the progressive era. In fact, it provides a 17-page appendix listing publications of just the Chicago women’s network of settlement sociologists. The volume belongs in every university library."
- Anthony J. Blasi (University of Texas at San Antonio), Critical Research on Religion (DOI: 10.1177/2050303216630072)

"Recommended. Upper-division undergraduates and above."
- N. B. Rosenthal (Stonybrook University), Choice, January 2016, Vol. 53, No. 5.