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Lesson 8
Early Women Sociologists and
Classical Sociological Theory
Robert Wonser
SOC 368 – Classical Sociological Theory
Spring 2014
Redefining History
 The traditional telling of sociological theories
(the canonization) has been shaped by politics
of gender that tends to emphasize male
achievement and erase female contributions.
 Modifies conventional history:
1)Harriet Martineau to sociology’s first midnineteenth century of founders, perhaps even
sociology’s original founder
2)The interconnected community of women during
sociology’s emergence 1890-1930
Lesson 8: Early Women Sociologists, Classical
Sociological Theory
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Who Gets Included?
“a sociology is a systematically developed
consciousness of society and of social
relations.” (Dorothy E. Smith)
Essential parts include:
1)Fundamental organization of society
2)Nature of the human being
3)Relation between ideas and materiality
Lesson 8: Early Women Sociologists, Classical
Sociological Theory
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Essential Parts Include
4) Purpose and methods appropriate to
social science study
5) Definition of the social role of the
sociologist
6) Articulation of a position to judge the
essential fairness of society in place.
Lesson 8: Early Women Sociologists, Classical
Sociological Theory
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Theories as Feminist
Certain themes and concerns:
1) Theorists awareness of her gender and
her stance in that gender identity as she
develops her sociological theory.
2) An awareness of the situatedness of her
analysis and the situatedness of the
vantage point of others.
Lesson 8: Early Women Sociologists, Classical
Sociological Theory
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Theories as Feminist
3) Focus on the lives and work of women
4) Critical concern for the practices of social
inequality
5) Commitment to the practice of sociology
in pursuit of social amelioration.
Lesson 8: Early Women Sociologists, Classical
Sociological Theory
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Harriet Martineau (1802 – 1876)
Same generation as Comte,
Spencer and Marx, thinkers
who undertook the ambitious
task of delineating an
intellectual undertaking that
would systematically and
scientifically study human
society.
Lesson 8: Early Women Sociologists, Classical
Sociological Theory
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The Social Role of the Sociologist
Published 25 novels, Illustrations of
Political Economy, intended to teach
sociology to general middle and working
class audience.
Lesson 8: Early Women Sociologists, Classical
Sociological Theory
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The Organization of Society
Sociology’s subject matter is social life in
society—it’s patterns, causes,
consequences and problems.
Most important law of social life: “the great
ends of human association” aim above all
“to the grand one,--the only general one-…human happiness.”
This is the principle by which she judges
the essential fairness of society.
Lesson 8: Early Women Sociologists, Classical
Sociological Theory
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Morals and Manners
Sociology’s project is to assess the extent
to which people develop “morals and
manners” that produce or subvert the end
of human happiness.
“morals” – society’s collective ideas of
proscribed and prescribed behaviors
“Manners” – patterns and associations
Human association should lead to
happiness
Lesson 8: Early Women Sociologists, Classical
Sociological Theory
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Similar focus as Marx, though while Marx
was focused on class injustice and
militant, hers was woman-centered and
reformist.
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Anomaly
The well being of a society is judged by its
alignment with between moral codes and
actual behaviors or manners.
Misalignment = anomaly. She identifies 4
in America:
Slavery
Unequal status of women
Pursuit of wealth
Fear of public opinion
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Methods
Develops first guidelines for the practice of
interpretive sociology.
The sociologist must try to develop a
sympathetic understanding as a strategy
for discovering the meanings of an activity
for the actors.
To overcome the problems of sampling the
sociologist must loom for “things” that
represent the collectivity.
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Feminism
 Martineau’s feminist sociology is grounded in
empirical research and theoretical.
 The domination of women closely parallels the
domination of slaves.
 She brings together the double oppression of
class and gender as well.
 Her experiences as a woman informed her
sociology but she goes beyond that to a general
sociology of all social life.
 She was well aware of her gender and how
others saw her and her work as a result of her
gender.
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Charlotte Perkins Gilman (1860 – 1935)
Similar to contemporary
male theorists in tone and
intention.
Her method of doing
sociology was theory
building.
Though her audience was
general.
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The Sexuo-Economic Relation
 “.. But beyond these forces, we come under the
effect of a third set of conditions peculiar to our
human status; namely social conditions...
 We are the only animal species in which the
female depends on the male for food, the only
animal species in which the sex-relation is also
an economic relation. With us an entre sex lives
in a relation of economic dependence upon the
other sex, and the economic relation is
combined with the sex-relation.” (Gilman,
1898/1966:1-5)
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Economy and family are gender stratified
leading to gender inequality.
“excessive sex distinction” = gender
Gender stratification produces two sexes:
Men as a “master class” and women as
subordinated and disempowered social
beings, this is the sexuo-economic
relation
Mirrors Marx’s analysis of economic class.
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For Gilman as for Marx, the economy is
the basic institution, produces individual
and social life and moves society forward.
Through work, species-being, we realize
human potential.
Hence, the diagnosis in “The Yellow
Wallpaper”
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Origins of Gender Stratification
 Man’s domination of women springs from his
need for sociability with or recognition by an
other.
 Psychologically bonding with her while
appropriating all the economic agency and
relational control.
 Gender is her only instrument of countervailing
power, the wiles of femininity, sexuality; because
of her economic helplessness
 Reproduced through gender roles in an
androcentric culture
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Feminism
 The solution to the wasteful sexuo-economic
arrangement is to break up the arrangement of
the sex classes.
 First step? Economic emancipation of women.
 Closest approximation of her utopia is the Hull
House.
 For some reason, Gilman was systematically
written out of sociology’s history…
She was a woman, an activist (as opposed to ‘value
neutral).
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Jane Addams (1860-1935) and the
Chicago Women’s School
Addams’ sociology grew out of her
activism.
Until recently, only remembered for her activism
Women of Chicago defined their role as
sociologists and sociology’s purpose as
the reform and improvement of society.
They sought to reign in the negatives only
discussed by the male theorists of the
time.
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The Basic Thesis
 Create society based on a “democratic social
ethics” to achieve the democratic transformation
of all parts of the society through the inculcation
of social ethics.
 Social ethics – the practice of rules of right
relationship that produce and sustain in the
individual an orientation to action based on
“concern for the welfare of the community” or
“identification with the common lot”
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Methods
“bifurcated consciousness” the awareness
of a division between formal textual
descriptions of life and one’s own lived
experience (Dorothy Smith, 1987)
Philosophical pragmatist epistemology –
truth emerges through living
She values her own experience over
textual authority
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Methods
 She didn’t craft sociological generalizations so
much as through the presentation of
paradigmatic case studies from participant
observations and key informants at the Hull
House and the city of Chicago.
 Goes beyond verstehen and seeks an authentic
caring relationship between the researcher and
the subject of the research  “the neighborly
relation” experienced at Hull House.
 Utilized a “vantage point”, rendering social
reality from the perspective of the individuals
involved.
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The Organization of Society and Human
Nature and Ethics
 Society is the coming together of individuals to
realize both material interests and ethical ideals.
 Concerned with social democracy.
 Democracy cannot be built by people who
expect other people to “see the light,” such
demands are grounded in people’s inability to
understand the vantage point of others (they
lack empathy).
 Humans desire sociality, as embodied people
who seek ethical relations with others
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The Social Ethic
 A democratic social ethic would be based on
the facts, revealed through one’s own
experience that:
1) No one set of people are more important than
others
2) All people may be active agents
3) As active agents, all people seek opportunities
to enact kindliness
4) Others’ personal safety is our personal safety.
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The Social Ethic
 Her theory is devoted to analyzing how
to transform democracy from a political
creed into a social creed informing all
human interactions. Can be learned:
1) Through formal education
2) Through working together
3) “memory” and reflections shared and
retold with others.
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The Chicago Women’s School’s Approach
to the Organization of Society and the
Sociologist’s Role
1) Modern society is interdependence of human
beings and the structures in which they come
together.
2) Turn an understanding of the human being into
a agentic moral agent shaping society’s path
for better.
3) The group’s most affected by change are the
socially disenfranchised
4) Social scientist’s role is to give people the tools
for understanding and action by presenting
facts about social conditions, plans for
associations, and proposals for state policies.
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Methods
 Inventors of “social problems” in that they took
situations most took for granted as inevitable
(e.g. poverty) and redefined them as subject of
social control, social improvement and social
elimination.
 Did this through personal and historic
documents, statistical tables, maps of
demographic traits, interviews, key informants,
participant observations and photographs.
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Essential Principles of Sociology of
Chicago Women
 Social science must act for change
 All citizens are morally responsible for the
welfare of the country
 Every action ties a person to other people
 Effective personal virtue must be done through
associations  through associations we gain
knowledge and the power to make individual
action truly “righteous”, that is, democratic and
effective.
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Anna Julia Cooper (1859 – 1964) and Ida
Wells-Barnett (1862-1931)
 African American women of the same
generation as Gilman, Addams.
 Not self described sociologists but
worked with a sociological orientation.
 Both drew on lived experiences as
African American women to develop a
“systematic consciousness of society
and social relations”
 Laid foundation of feminist
sociological theory based on interests
of women of color.
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Methods
 Wells-Barnett more of a researcher who
pioneered an adaptation of secondary data
analysis that uses the oppressor’s own reports
as the main source (e.g. lynchings)
 Cooper was much more theoretical and
described patterns of social life and situated
herself in that work of theoretical creation.
Also used oppressor’s own texts—stats, popular
literature and historical records.
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Lens of Race Relations: Groups and
Power and Intersections between Race,
Class and Gender
 Race was at the center of both women’s
theories.
 Power relations between whites and blacks in
history and American society give them their
paradigm of domination and stratification.
 Cooper analyzes gender inequality: “The colored
woman today occupies…a unique position…
She is confronted by both a woman questions
and a race problem, and is yet an unknown or
unacknowledged factor in both.”
(1892/1969:134)
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Organization of Society
Cooper’s criterion for a critical evaluation
of society is whether or not it is
characterized by equilibrium or
domination, not that it is free of conflict.
Vantage Point: she inserted herself into
her sociological analysis by speaking from
her distinct vantage point as a black
woman.
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Marianne Schnitger Weber (1870-1954)
Known in American sociology
solely through her biography of
her husband, Max Weber: A
Biography
She wants to know, how well do
social structures make such self
fulfillment possible for men and
women?
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Creating a Sociology from the standpoint
of Women
 Develops 3 themes:
1) Need for women’s equal autonomy with
men (a debate with Max)
2) Significance of women’s work in the
production of culture (debate with
Simmel)
3) Situated differences of standpoint among
women (a debate partially with Gilman).
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Gender and Power: Authority is
Autonomy
Brings woman centered focus to Max’s
typology of power.
Since the distinction is not between
legitimate (authority) power and
illegitimate power (coercion) between men
and women because it’s all legitimate from
the law, the struggle is on autonomy and
that men get more in marriage and
relationships.
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 Talking back to Simmel: male world is “objective”
and concerned with public achievement and the
“personal” world of inner self development is
female (says Simmel)  “middle ground of
immediate daily life” in which the individual is
constructed and reproduced as a social being
capable of intelligent responses to others.
 Concludes: more useful to think of a common
nature and of typical maleness and femaleness
as circles intersecting within the common space.
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Differences Among Women
Women’s standpoints are different
because of social class stratification.
She argues it is absurd to speak of
reforms needed for all women from a
privileged standpoint (looking your way
American sister in struggle Gilman…)
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Social Change
Only hope is to escape sites of
oppression.
Capitalism can lead to some emancipation
in its acceleration of individualism and
eroding of older systems like patriarchy.
Acutely aware of vantage points…
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Beatrice Potter Webb (1858-1943)
 Amalgam of contradictions, born to
extreme wealth
 She chose to be a female brain worker
 Intellectual curiosity came from
debates about whether the misery of
the many was necessary condition for
the wealth of the few and whether the
poor are responsible for their fate or is
it social forces.
 Studied under and friends with Herbert
Spencer
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 Webb’s vision of society is the working out of
processes between the structures in which
people are contained—structures such as state,
class, trade unions, and sweatshops.
 Sociologist’s role is to provide the info on which
a reformist state can be established and make
policy.
 Probably didn’t see herself as a member of a
subordinate class (and why would she? She was
rich) though worked to help the subordinated her
whole life.
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Summary
Sexism!
All shared in common:
Awareness of the fact that they spoke from
the particular vantage point of women
An analysis and ethical concern with
society’s power arrangements
A commitment to sound research as a
necessary means to social amelioration
and change.
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