Topic: sociological theory- on covering Addams, Durkheim and Weber

Order Description THE CLASSICAL GENERATION COMMITMENT TO JUSTICE: JANE ADDAMS I. Overview and Background A. Generations, Commitments and Paradigms Comte 1798-1857­­­­­­­­­­­­ Martineau 1802-1876­­­­­­­­­­­­­­ Spencer 1820-1903­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­ Marx 1818-1883­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­ Engels 1820-1895­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­ Douglass 1817?-1895????????????????????????? ??Emile Durkheim 1858-1917??????????????????? Anna Julia Cooper 1858-1964????????????????????????????? Georg Simmel 1858-1918 ??????????????????? Jane Addams 1860-1935 ??????????????????????? Charlotte Perkins Gilman 1860-1935 ??????????????????????? Ida B. Wells-Barnett 1862-1931 ?????????????????????? George Herbert Mead 1863-1931 ????????????????????? Robert Ezra Park 1864-1944 ?????????????????????????? Max Weber 1864-1920 ?????????????????? W.E.B. Du Bois 1868-1963???????????????????? ????? Marianne Weber 1871-1954 ????????????????????????? Commitment to Justice Commitment to Science Marxist Founding >Marx (1818-1883) and Engels (1820-1895) Feminist Founding >Harriet Martineau (1802-1876) Africana Founding >Frederick D ouglass (1817?-1895) Positivist Founding >Comte (1798-1857) >Spencer (1820-1903) Interpretive Founding >Martineau (1802-1876) >Jane Addams 1860-1935 >Charlotte Perkins Gilman 1860-1935 >Marianne Weber 1870-1954 B. Central Problematic Of Classical Feminist Theory: The central problematic of classical feminist theory is the description, analysis and critique of socially produced inequities in people’s capacity for agency–that is, why are individuals in some sectors of society denied the possibility for setting and executing projects. 1. This problematic has its origins in the intersection of the individual biography of the women theorists and the North Atlantic societies in the last part of the nineteenth century. C. Addams in This Context Revolutionary Change The Classic Generation Addams’s Lived Experience 1.philosophic critique of religion by science 1. growth of social science as solution to society’s problems caused by industrialization 1. at heart of all this at Hull-House, social settlement she founded in Chicago and used as a way to do applied sociology 2. .political revolutions, uprisings, birth of democracy, liberationist movements, the women’s movement–1848 Seneca Falls 2.expansion of liberationist movements–women, U.S. Civil War, black mobilization, socialism, unions 2. major social activist—national vice president NAWSA, one of founders NAACP, union supporter, peace activist 3. flood of new technology 3. continued invention 3. pursued possibility of “social inventions” 4. Industrial Revolution—most advanced in UK 4. Industrial Revolution pro-ceeds in US, Germany 4. argues that new means of organizing production—“the power to combine”— requires new ethic; 5. rapid migration to urban centers 5. immigration from Europe to US 5. Hull-House neighborhood made up of many nations, ethnicities, races 6. classes of capitalism–new urban working classes; middle class entrepreneurs, factory owners, and intelligensia 6. women enter capitalist work force; rise of racial job segregation in US 6. workers, like industrialists, must use “power to combine”; all people must reach across class lines and embrace “social ethic” D. Major Works “On the Subjective Necessity of Social Settlements” 1892 Hull-House Maps and Papers 1895 collection by sociologists associated with the settlement Democracy and Social Ethics 1902 Newer Ideals of Peace 1907 The Spirit of Youth and the City Streets 1909 Twenty Years at Hull-House 1910 “A Modern Lear” 1912 The Long Road of Woman’s Memory 1916 II. Social Theory: What is to be observed and how is observation to be done? MAJOR IDEA #1 Society is produced by the interplay of two forces, the organization of material production and the development of a code of ethics. 1. Addams sees the fundamental process of the social world as the ongoing adjustment between the organization of production and the organization of ethical codes governing social interaction. a. History develops through interaction of organization of material production and ethics i. the idea of history–human events are not contained in abstract, universal omnipresent structures; they change over time and are affected by concrete happenings specific to particular times and places 2. Historically, in her time, Addams sees the organization of material production marked by “the discovery of the power to combine” which she calls . . . the distinguishing discovery of our time” a. “the power to combine” in the social organization of material production is reflected in i. factories which brought huge numbers of people together using assembly-line production and a high division of labor ii. complex distribution systems using advances in transportation and communication like the railroads, telegraph, telephone iii. changes in the ways businesses operate–company towns, monopolies and trusts b. Much of this was a change in the way economic elites operated; Addams feels that workers must do the same, that is, must combine and was a supporter of the labor union movement at a time when it was considered wildly radical and un- American. 3. Thus, the critical issue for her time is how ethics takes account of this discovery a. Ethics= rules of right relation among people b. Ethics have origins in human emotions i. Social actor as embodied subjectivity can experience and name a wide range of emotions--three primary: fear–the desire to avoid pain, mastery–the desire for personal control, and sociability–the desire to feel connected to others. ii. Addams traces origins of ethics to human impulses to sociability and kindness--“the evolutionists tell us that the instinct to pity, the impulse to aid his fellows, served man at a very early period, as a rude rule of right and wrong” (1902: 22). iii. She sees that impulse developing and continuing into modern city “In the midst of the modern city which, at moments, seems to stand only for the triumph of the strongest, the successful exploitation of the weak, . . . there come daily--at least to American cities--accretions of simple people, who carry in their hearts a desire for mere goodness. They regularly deplete their scanty livelihood in response to a primitive pity, and independent of the religions they have professed, of the wrongs they have suffered, and of the fixed morality they have been taught, have an unquenchable desire that charity and simple justice shall regulate men's relations. It seems sometimes . . . as if they continually [seek] an outlet for more kindliness, and that they are not only willing and eager to do a favor for a friend, but that their kindheartedness lies in ambush, as it were, for a chance to incorporate itself in our larger relations, that they persistently expect that it shall be given some form of governmental expression.” –Newer Ideals of Peace MAJOR IDEA #2 For sociologists properly to understand this interplay as it affects the lives of individuals, they need to work out of “the neighborly relation.” 1. The Neighborly Relation. Whether in doing social research, performing social analysis, or presenting her theory, Addams works and writes out of the neighborly relation. the neighborly relation= the condition in which the sociologist attempts to understand a social world not as an outside observer but as a participant living side by side with the people whose lives are her or his concern a. Morally questionable to use people as “guinea pigs” for ideas, to relate to them as researcher pursing interesting idea b. A key element here is Addams’s awareness of the importance of situated vantage point. That is, as a neighbor she realizes that she and others see the social world from and because of their locations in social space. 2. Because of this commitment to the neighborly relation, Addams’s social theory is written in a different voice from that typically associated with grand social theory. The most epistemologically significant fact about her theoretical style is her absence of what is sometimes called “the god eye” and her turning the arch of reflection on herself and her sociological practice. a. Grand social theory-- formal definitions and propositions and an absence of texture. b. Addams’s theoretical voice i. Narrative. Addams frequently tells stories as a way of developing her argument. [a] People in these stories–embodied beings capable of will, desire, interest, and ethics [b] Stories frequently revolve around differing vantage points. [c] Stories typically rich in texture that reveals people’s social locatedness texture= what literary scholars define as what is left once the paraphraseable content of a work has been removed. 3. The use of emotion–test of truth, appeal to reader 4. Absence of formal definitions and propositions–theory implied 5. Organization is not linear but organic, no clear beginning point but rather whole theory is present in almost any discussion. 6. Example—appeal to reader and to emotion as test of truth, point of story is universality of emotion of sociability You may remember the forlorn feeling which occasionally seizes you when you arrive early in the morning a stranger in a great city. The stream of laboring people goes past you as you gaze through the plate-glass window of your hotel. You see hard-working men lifting great burdens; you hear the driving and jostling of huge carts. Your heart sinks with a sudden sense of futility. The door opens behind you and you turn to the man who brings you in your breakfast with a quick sense of human fellowship. You find yourself praying that you may never lose your hold on it all. . . . You turn helplessly to the waiter. You feel that it would be almost grotesque to claim from him the sympathy you crave. (1893: 11-12) III. Social Theory: How does this theory lead Addams to respond to the conditions of modernity in her own day? MAJOR IDEA #3 The key feature of modern society was that the organization of production and the governing principle of ethics were out of alignment; for them to be realigned people needed to embrace a new ethic, “the social ethic.” 1. Ethics change over time–Addams cannot speak for all ages but addresses problem for her own time “It is well to remind ourselves, from time to time, that ‘Ethics’ is but another word for "righteousness," that for which many men and women of every generation have hungered and thirsted, and without which life becomes meaningless. “Certain forms of personal righteousness have become to a majority of the community almost automatic. It is as easy for most of us to keep from stealing our dinners as it is to digest them, and there is quite as much voluntary morality involved in one process as in the other. . . . In the same way we have been carefully reared to a sense of family obligation, to be kindly and considerate to the members of our own households, and to feel responsible for their well-being. As the rules of conduct have become established in regard to our self-development and our families, so they have been in regard to limited circles of friends . . . . “But we all know that each generation has its own test, the contemporaneous and current standard by which alone it can adequately judge of its own moral achievements, and that it may not legitimately use a previous and less vigorous test. The advanced test must indeed include that which has already been attained; but if it includes no more we fail to go forward, . . . .” –Democracy and Social Ethics 2. Question, then, is what is the right ethic for today? Answer–ethic must take account of way material production is organized–which is in combination; that is, that production has been “socialized.” Goods and services now produced by people working together. The complexity of relationships requires an ethic that takes account of that complexity. That ethic Addams calls a social ethic. Social ethics= orientation to right relationship with others in which each individual actor identifies with the large, heterogeneous, even anonymous community of which he or she is a part. a. Requires an expansion of circle of caring, circle for whom one feels responsible i. Basis Addams’s argument that women need to vote–“Municipal Housekeeping” b. Requires seeing ethical relation in action of formal organizations like the Board of Health c. Requires an emphasis on process i. Better to progress more slowly than to violate principle of group working together to arrive at decision making ii. Criticism of reformers and philanthropists based in sense that they may, despite good intentions, not be following social ethic MAJOR IDEA # 4 Social ethics must be learned through practice and they require people to move beyond current systems of belated ethics. 1. Here, at the problem of change, we approach the central problematic of Jane Addams’s social theory: the quest for ameliorative social change–this is the subject she returns to again and again. a. This problematic issues out of Addams’s engagement not only with modernity in her own time but with the ideas of Karl Marx, to whose idea of violent revolution as the means to a socialist economy she tries to offer an alternative of radical reform as a means to democratizing the economy and society. 2. Social ethics learned through practice “ We have met the obligations of our family life, not because we had made resolutions to that end, but spontaneously, because of a common fund of memories and affections, from which the obligation naturally develops, and we see no other way in which to prepare ourselves for the larger social duties. Such a demand is reasonable, for by our daily experience we have discovered that we cannot mechanically hold up a moral standard, then jump at it in rare moments of exhilaration when we have the strength for it, but that even as the ideal itself must be a rational development of life, so the strength to attain it must be secured from interest in life itself. . . .”–Democracy and Social Ethics a. Practice needs to involve relating across lines of difference as way of developing imagination “We have learned as common knowledge that much of the insensibility and hardness of the world is due to the lack of imagination which prevents a realization of the experiences of other people. . . . We know . . . that if we grow contemptuous of our fellows, and consciously limit our intercourse to certain kinds of people whom we have previously decided to respect, we not only tremendously circumscribe our range of life, but limit the scope of our ethics.”–Democracy and Social Ethics b. Hull-House experience allows for this kind of practice 3. Development of social ethics hindered by people’s clinging to what she calls belated ethics belated ethics= rules of right relation among people suited to an early mode of societal organization of material production and now out of harmony with the present organization She identifies three and suggests why each is belated a. Militaristic–rules that say one is ethical if one fights for one’s group, is loyal to group, is obedient to group authority i. As world becomes global society, loyalty to one’s group may prevent one looking to the good of the new whole ii. Has led governments to value defense over duties to provide welfare iii. Especially clung to by politicians b. Family claim– rules that say one is ethical if one takes care of one’s family i.. Overemphasis on family may lead one to ignore duties to community, to sacrifice the rights of other people (such as domestic servants) for the interests of one’s family, to fail to see that one’s family can be kept safe only if one’s community, state and nation are safe. ii. Especially restricts young women from developing their full capacities iii. Especially clung to by women c. Individual ethic– rules that say one is ethical if one takes care of one’s self and does what one feels is right without looking for consent or approval of others i. Denies fact that one is always connected; idea of “self-made man” distorts social reality "[A] large manufacturing concern has ceased to be a private matter; not only a number of workmen and stockholders are concerned in its management but the interests of the public are so involved that the officers of the company are in a real sense administering a public trust" –Democracy and Social Ethics ii. Especially clung to by Industrialists and philanthropists APPENDIX EXCERPT 1: PP. 3- 36 from Sister Carrie by Theodore Dreiser; NY: Rinehart Editions, 1962. CHAPTER I: The Magnet Attracting—A Waif Amid Forces When Caroline Meeber boarded the afternoon train for Chicago, her total outfit consisted of a small trunk, a cheap imitation alligator-skin satchel, a small lunch in a paper box, and a yellow leather snap purse, containing her ticket, a scrap of paper with her sister’s address in Van Buren Street, and four dollars in money. It was in August 1889. She was eighteen years of age, bright, timid, and full of the illusions of ignorance and youth. . . . CHAPTER II: What Poverty Threatened—Of Granite and Brass Minnie’s flat, as the one-floor resident apartments were then being called, was in a part of West Van Burn Street inhabited by families of labourers and clerks, men who had come, and were still coming, with the rush of population pouring in at the rate of 50,000 a year. It was on the third floor, the front windows looking down into the street, where, at night, the lights of grocery stores were shining and children were playing. To Carrie, the sound of the little bells upon the horse-cars, as they tinkled in and out of hearing, was a pleasing as it was novel. She gazed into the lighted street when Minnie brought into the front room, and wondered at the sounds, the movement, the murmur of the vast city which stretched for miles and miles in every direction. Mrs. Hanson [Minnie’s married title], after first greetings were over, gave Carrie the baby and proceeded to get supper. Her husband asked a few questions and sat down to read the evening paper. He was a silent man, American born, of a Swede father, and now employed as a cleaner of refrigerator cars at the stock-yards. To him the presence of absence of his wife’s sister was a matter of indifference. Her personal appearance did not affect him one way or the other. His own observation to the point was concerning the chances of work in Chicago. “It’s a big place,” he said. “You can get in somewhere in a few days. Everybody does.” It had been tacitly understood beforehand that she was to get work and pay her board. He was of a clean, saving disposition, and had already paid a number of monthly installments on two lots far out on the West Side. His ambition was some day to build a house on them. . . . When she [Carrie] awoke at eight the next morning, Hanson had gone. Her sister was busy in the dining-room, which was also the sitting-room, sewing. She worked, after dressing, to arrange a little breakfast for herself, and then advised with Minnie as to which way to look. The latter had changed considerably since Carrie had last seen her. She was now a thin, though rugged, woman of twenty-seven, with ideas of life coloured by her husband’s, and fast hardening into narrower conceptions of pleasure and duty than had ever been hers in a thoroughly circumscribed youth. She had invited Carrie, not because she longed for her presence, but because the latter was dissatisfied at home, and could probably get work and pay her board here. She was pleased to see her in a way but reflected her husband’s point of view in the matter of work. Anything was good enough so long as it paid—say, five dollars a week to begin with. A shop girl was the destiny prefigured for the newcomer. She would get in one of the great shops and do well enough until—well, until something happened. Neither of them knew exactly what. They did not figure on promotion. They did not exactly count on marriage. Things would go on, though, in a dim kind of way until the better thing would eventuate, and Carrie would be rewarded for coming and toiling in the city. . . . . . . In 1889 Chicago had the peculiar qualifications of growth which made such adventuresome pilgrimages even on the part of young girls plausible. Its many and growing commercial opportunities gave it widespread fame, which made of it a giant magnet, drawing to itself, from all quarters, the hopeful and the hopeless . . . . It was a city of over 500,000 with the ambition, the daring the activity of a metropolis of a million. Its streets and houses where already scattered over an area of seventy-five square miles. Its population was not so much thriving upon established commerce as upon the industries which prepared for the arrival of others. The sound of hammer engaged upon the erection of new structures was everywhere heard. Great industries were moving in. The huge railroad corporations which had long before recognized the prospects of the place had seized upon vast tracts of land for transfer and shipping purposes. Street-car lines had been extended far out into the open country in anticipation of rapid growth. There were regions open to the seeping winds and rain, which were yet lighted throughout the night with long, blinking line of gas-lamps, fluttering in the wind. Narrow board walks extended out, passing there a house and there a store, at far intervals, eventually ending on the open prairie. In the central portion was the vast wholesale and shopping district, to which the uninformed seeker for work usually drifted. It was a characteristic of Chicago then, and one not generally shared by other cities, that individual firms of any pretension occupied individual buildings. The presence of ample ground made this possible. It gave an imposing appearance to most of the wholesale houses, whose offices ere upon the ground floor and in plain view of the street. The large plates of window glass, now so common, were then rapidly coming into use, and gave to the ground floor offices a distinguished and prosperous look. The casual wandered could see as he passed a polished array of office fixtures, much frosted glass, clerks hard at work, and genteel businessmen in “nobby” suits and clean linen lounging about or sitting in groups. Polished brass or nickel signs at the square stone entrances announced the firm and the nature of the business in rather neat and reserved terms. The entire metropolitan centre possessed a high and mighty air calculated to overawe and abash the common applicant, and to make the gulf between poverty and success seem both wide and deep. . . . CHAPTER III: Wee Question of Fortune—Four-Fifty a Week ……………………………………………………………. At that time the department store was in its earliest form of successful operation, and there were not many. . . . The nature of these vast retail combinations, should they ever permanently disappear, will form an interesting chapter in the commercial history of our nation. Such a flowering out of a modest trade principle the world had never witnessed up to that time. They were along the line of the most effective retail organization, with hundreds of stores coordinated into one and laid out upon the most imposing and economic basis. They were handsome, bustling, successful affairs, with a host of clerks and a swarm of patrons. Carrie passed along the busy aisles, much affected by the remarkable displays of trinkets, dress goods, stationery, and jewelry. Each separate counter was a show place of dazzling interest and attraction. She could not help feeling the claim of each trinket and valuable upon her personally, and yet she did not stop. There was nothing there which she could not have used—nothing which she did not long to own. The dainty slippers and stockings, the delicately frilled skirts and petticoats, the laces, ribbons, hair-combs, purses, all touched her with individual desire, and she felt keenly the fact that not nay of these things were in the range of her purchase. She was a work-seeker, an outcast without employment, one whom the average employee could tell at a glance was poor and in need of a situation. CHAPTER IV: The Spendings of Fancy—Facts Answer with Sneers [Carrie is unable to get a job in a department store and finally ends up working in a shoe factory. This describes her first hours on the job.] “You,” he said, “show this girl how to do what you’re doing. When you get through come to me.” The girl so addressed rose promptly and gave Carrie her place. “It isn’t hard to do,” she said, bending over. “You just take this so, fasten it with this clamp, and start the machine.” She suited action to word, fastened the piece of leather, which was eventually to form the right half of the upper of a man’s shoe, by little adjustable clamps, and pushed a small steel rod at the side of the machine. The latter jumped to the task of punching, with sharp, snapping clicks, cutting circular bits of leather out of the side of the upper, leaving the holes which were to hold the laces. After observing a few times, the girl let her work it alone. Seeing that it was fairly well done, she went away. The pieces of leather came from the girl at the machine to her right, and were passed on to the girl at her left. Carrie saw at once that an average speed was necessary or the work would pile up on her and all those below would be delayed. She had no time to look about, and bent anxiously to her task. The girls at her left and right realized her predicament and feelings, and, in a way, tried, to aid, her, as much as they dared, by working slowly. At this task she laboured for some time, finding relief from her own nervous fears and imagining in the humdrum mechanical movement of the machine. She felt as the minutes passed, that the room was not very light. It had a thick odour of fresh leather, but that did not worry her. She felt the eyes of the other help upon her and troubled lest she was nor working fast enough. Once, where she was fumbling at the little clamp, having made a slight error in setting in the leather, a great hand appeared before her eyes and fastened the clamp for her. It was for foreman. Her heart thumped so that she could scarcely see to go on. “Start your machine,” he said, “start your machine. Don’t keep the line waiting.” This recovered her sufficiently and she went excitedly on, hardly breathing until the shadow moved away from behind her. Then she heaved a great breath. As the morning wore on the room became hotter. She felt the need of a breath of fresh air and a drink of water, but did not venture to stir. The stool she sat on was without a back or foot-rest, and she began to feel uncomfortable. She found, after a time that her back was beginning to ache. She twisted and turned from one position to another slightly different, but it did not ease her for long. She was beginning to weary. “Stand up, why don’t you?” said the girl at her right without any form of introduction. “They don’t care.” Carrie looked at her gratefully. “I guess I will,” she said. She stood up from her stool and worked that way for a while, but it was a more difficult position. Her neck and shoulders ached in bending over. {{BE SURE TO COMPARE THE ABOVE WITH ADDAMS’S ACCOUNTS IN “THE SETTLEMENT AS A FACTOR IN THE LABOR MOVEMENT” EXCERPT IN THE WOMEN FOUNDERS AND THE EXCERPT ABOUT THE BOX LADY FROM THE LONG ROAD OF WOMAN’S MEMORY –AGAIN IN THE WOMEN FOUNDERS.}} APPENDIX EXCERPT FROM Richard Schenierov, Shelton Stromquist, Nick Salvatore “INTRODUCTION” TO THE PULLMAN STRIKE AND THE CRISIS OF THE 1890S edited by Richard Schenierov, Shelton Stromquist, Nick Salvatore. Chicago: University of Illinois Press. 1999. PP. 1-9 The strike of Pullman carshop employees and the subsequent boycott that disrupted rail traffic throughout the territory west of Chicago in June-July 1894 marked the culmination of nearly two decades of the most sever and sustained labor conflict in American history. . . . . . . . In 1880 the pioneer manufacturer George M. Pullman constructed Pullman as a factory town south of Chicago. The town was not simply a site for manufacturing railroad sleeping cars; it was also an experiment in urban living and social reform. In contrast to Chicago’s unpaved, grimy streets, its paucity of public services, and its ubiquitous shacks and crowded tenements that served as wage workers’ homes, Pullman town boasted clean, paved streets; pure air; beautiful parks and playgrounds; an indoor arcade containing retail stores, a theater, a bank, and a library; neat homes with indoor plumbing; and no saloons. By removing his workers from the city, Pullman hoped to insulate them from crime, intemperance, poverty, labor riots, and trade union-inspired strikes that mugwump reformers of the Gilded Age so deeply deplored. Despite scattered labor unrest, Pullman’s experiment in planned living appeared to most observers a stunningly successful demonstration that philanthropy and reform could be a “paying proposition” and thus compatible with large-scaled corporate enterprise. Its living conditions appeared particularly ideal for wives. Only a few observers commented on the coercive paternalism in the service of moral uplift and social harmony that lay at the core of Pullman’s experiment. Pullman expected his residents to live and shop in the town, but they could not buy their own homes and had no democratic self-government. Nevertheless, Pullman’s shop employees engaged in a long battle over piece rates and through periodic strikes expressed resentment over arbitrary treatment from foremen. The 1893 panic glaringly exposed the underside of the Pullman experiment. The industrial depression that would last five years forced the company to produce cars at a loss. In response, Pullman reduced his work force, cut its wages on average by a third, and declined to reduce the prices in his company store or the rents on his homes. . . . Meanwhile, to the north, Chicago was inundated with “tramps” and unemployed and homeless men, many of them building workers thrown out of work by the completion of the World’s Columbian Exposition. Following a dreadful winter workers at Pullman, who had joined the ARU [American Railroad Union], decided to to turn to their union for support. Founded in 1893 by Eugene Victor Debs, an ex-official of the Brotherhood of Locomotive Firemen, and ARU had grown out of the persistent efforts of railroad workers as far back as the great strikes of 1877 to find an organizational vehicle to achieve unity across skill lines and protect their pay and working conditions against the encroachment of railroad management. [Railroad management was organized thusly: “The nation’s railroads established patterns of management cooperation in labor matters through the tightly disciplined General Managers’ Association (GMA), capable of directing the interest of the major transcontinental lines in a period of labor crisis.”] At [the] early stage of the dispute Pullman workers won wide public support in their pursuit of an arbitrated settlement [Addams in part of arbitration effort]. . . . Referring to Pullman, the national Republican party leader Marcus Hanna exploded with exasperation: “A man who won’t meet his men half-way is a God-damn fool.” But Pullman remained adamant. Just as important the GMA saw the opportunity to crush the fledgling ARU before it reached maturity. When the union’s first convention in June 1894 declared a boycott of all railroads using Pullman sleeping cars, the GMA appointed its own strike manager and resolved to discharge any railroad worker who participated in the boycott. Despite significant scabbing by members of the craft brotherhoods, which prevented the strike from spreading east, the ARU boycott soon brought the nation’s rail traffic to a virtual standstill from Chicago to the Pacific Coast. In response, the GMA worked assiduously to federalize the conflict. US Attorney Richard Olney, himself a railroad attorney, appointed Edwin Walker, a legal adviser to the GMA, as a special US attorney for Chicago. Meanwhile a series of minor riots and confrontations with the militia become the occasion for the press to decry a breakdown in law and order . . . . On July 1, six days after the start of the boycott, Walker applied for, and the following day received a federal court injunction declaring the strike a violation of the Sherman Anti-Trust Act. The next day, despite an absence of violence, Olney convinced President Grover Cleveland to dispatch federal troops to Chicago over the strenuous protests of John Peter Altgeld, the first prolabor governor of Illinois. The events of these few days represented a fateful turning point in the strike. The presence of federal troops, which permitted strikebreakers to be employed by the railroads, and the demoralizing effect of the injunction, which led to the arrest of Debs and other ARU leaders . . . , combined to facilitate the movement of trains by July 9. Class note Feminism and the commitment to justice - The feminist commitment to justice focuses on socially produce inequalities - Where Marxian analysis focuses on material inequalities - Feminist analysis focuses on inequalities in agency. Agency= the ability to set and execute projects. - why name both of these – set and execute? Jane Addams 1860-1935- context for her social theory - the US industrial revolution - urbanization - Immigration - Rise of a powerful middle class - Women’s education and women’s rights - The progressive movement Addams invents a life course - Addams is perhaps first “ community activist” - Before women could vote, she asserted woman’s, and individual citizen’s and immigrant’s, and poor person’s right “to participate in discourse where decisions are being made and have that participation matter” (Carolyn heilbrun’s definition of power) Hull House and the Chicago women’s school - the social settlement movement Overview social theory Key questions What is to be observed? - the interplay of (1) the organization of production in place in a society with (2) ethics the society offers for regulating human interactions. o Society made up people in interaction around the daily tasks of living; those interactions regulated by ethics as well as Basic terms - Organization of material production= the relationships people stand into each other and to the means of production - Ethics= systems articulating what constitutes being in right relation with other people. Basis for ethics - Addams asserts that ethical conduct has its origins in the human emotions of pity and sociability- the capacities for “fellow feeling” - This assertion means that ethics are hardwired into human character and are not some sentimental add- on by a middle- aged spinster. Compare Addams with Marx - Both concerned with material production - Where would Marx place “ethichs” - What does Addams do with ethics? Superstructure(ethics)?-- economic substructure How is observation to be done? - Key is “the neighborly relation” o Based ultimately in emotion of sociability o Involves participant observation o Allows the research subject to see and respond to the research - Reporting done through narrative as well as statistical summaries o Narratives make appeals to reader’s own emotional experience Modernity—2 - Great problem of modernity is that ethics has not kept pace Modernity—3 - Social ethics- orientation to right relationship with others in witch each individual actor identifies with the large, heterogeneous, even anonymous community of which he or she is a part. Modernity—4 1. an expansion of circle of caring, circle for whom one feels responsible a. Basis Addams’ argument that women need to vote “municipal housekeeping” 2. Macro social understanding of ethical experience a. Seeing ethical relation inaction of formal organizations like to the Board of health 3. An emphasis on process- working with group to solve problems a. Better to progress more slowly than to violate principal of group working together to arrive at decision, collective decision- making. b. Criticism of reformers and philanthropists based in sense that they may, despite good intentions, not be following social ethics. Modernity—5 - Current social problems due to society being mired in belated ethics - Militaristic ethic- orientation to right relation based in obedience and loyalty to group, shown by willingness to opposed other groups - Family claim- orientation to right relation based in caring for immediate family, kin, close friends - Individual ethic- orientation to right relation based in following one’s own conscience regardless of what other think.