Sociological Film, Reform Publicity, and the Secular Spectator

2017 ◽  
Vol 3 (4) ◽  
pp. 10-45 ◽  
Author(s):  
Constance Balides

This essay analyzes how “sociological films,” an early iteration of social problem films during the 1910s, participated in a wider historical formation of social reform, one that was heavily influenced by women. It investigates the category of sociological film as it was discussed in Moving Picture World; the connection between practical Progressive Era reform initiatives and the emerging field of sociology, especially through the figure of Jane Addams and the social settlement movement; and reform publicity methods, which included sociological moving pictures along with photographs, living displays, and interactive exhibits on child labor and civic welfare. Reform exhibits were frequently organized through women's volunteer organizations and relied on women's voluntary labor. Female participant observer sociologists talked about the importance of social imagination. Addams's sympathetic understanding was implicated in a gendered construction of knowledge of the social. The essay develops the notion of a “secular spectator” as a way of characterizing an address in sociological films both to a social subject who was part of a social formation of reform, and to a civic subject who was enjoined to do something about social problems based on knowledge of social facts and social sympathy.

Author(s):  
Sandra E. Bonura

In addition to her educational duties, she moved into roles that maximized the natural born leader she was. This chapter covers Pope’s conception and creation of a social settlement in the downtrodden Palama neighborhood of Honolulu. Pope collaborated with Chicago social worker Jane Addams and clearly saw how the settlement model could be replicated as a solution to the dire health conditions of Palama. A mission-centered community complex named Palama Chapel was created under the auspices of Central Union Church. Pope worked tirelessly to organize a library, Bible studies, medical care, childcare, kindergarten and social clubs for the community. The social center became a “laboratory” for her pupils to learn both teaching and nursing skills. In 1906, Palama Settlement became a chartered, independent, nonsectarian organization.


2019 ◽  
pp. 365-401
Author(s):  
Vincent DiGirolamo

New laws call for new stories, and in the early 1900s those stories were increasingly told by muckraking journalists, documentary photographers, and social reformers. Upton Sinclair, Lewis Hine, Jane Addams, and many others focused on the evils of street work, including sexual bartering. But circulation managers professionalized and stepped up their newsboy welfare work. The proliferation of precociously cute newsboy images in advertisements and comic strips further neutralized reform efforts and legitimized newspapers’ use of child labor. Ethnic newspapers multiplied during this period and developed their own sales and distribution forces. Also propelling newspapers into the new century were automobiles, which presented newsboys with a new occupational hazard. Pushed and pulled by the commercial interests of publishers, and the social agendas of reformers, and the economic needs of their families, this generation of newsies rose up to assert their own vision of progress.


1970 ◽  
Vol 32 (4) ◽  
pp. 503-521 ◽  
Author(s):  
Vincent P. Lannie

It has become commonplace in the 1960's to talk about the alienated American, the disinherited American, the culturally different American. Most people talk in general terms but they almost always mean the Negro American. For the Negro is an alienated American of the largest minority group in the United States. In its historical quest for a unified society, the nation has called upon the public schools to live up to their traditional socializing responsibilities. At the present time, however, the focus is not upon the European immigrant coming from foreign shores but rather upon the segregated black man living in the most alienated ghettos of America. Martin Luther King spoke about educating the minds and hearts of white Americans in a concerted attempt to usher in the true kingdom of an integrated and just society. And what better place to begin this process than in the schools! Yet many Negroes have begun to lose faith in the schools as they have come to view them as an unreconstructed part of a basically racist society. A few are calling for the total rejection of the white man's society including his inflexible school structure. Others are demanding community — and this often means black — control of the schools in order to make them more responsive to the total needs of their youngsters. They want schools that will nurture the self-identity of the Negro child, deepen his pride in his color and heritage, and develop his capabilities to help create a truly democratic society which is “worthy, lovely, and harmonious.” That grand old lady of the social settlement movement in America, Jane Addams, once stated these desires in another way — indeed quite a contemporary way — when she concluded “that unless all men and all classes contribute to a good, we cannot even be sure that it is worth having.”


1913 ◽  
Vol 6 (5) ◽  
pp. 345-348
Author(s):  
Graham Taylor
Keyword(s):  

2017 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. 306
Author(s):  
Silvana Panza

The focus of this study concerns a deep analysis on the innovative educational method utilized by Jane Addams (1860-1935) at Hull House. She was a philosopher, but first of all we can consider this woman as a sociologist, because of her careful survey on society, Addams’s activities also implied a new educational project based on the social care of poor workers and their families. She chose for her extraordinary experience one of the most slummy suburbs in Chicago, where with her friend Ellen Gates Starr founded in 1889 this settlement. The main intention of the sociologist was to give immigrants lots of opportunities to understand Chicago’s social and political context. It was important to create a place where immigrant families could socialize, learning more about their rights and possibilities. For this reason Addams suggested that it needed to start from education, taking a particular care of children who lived in that area. It was necessary to promote a reform on the different culture learning to support immigrants in their integration, people who came there hoping to find a job into factories. In 1889 when the settlement was founded, there were about four hundred social houses around the States. Addams’ s important social and political idea was to develop a democratic society, where each person could recognize himself/herself as a part of it, avoiding marginalization and segregation. The sociologist was a central figure at Hull House for about twenty years.


Author(s):  
Christel Lane

This largely descriptive chapter introduces the reader to the specific features and functions of each type of hostelry and provides a broad-brush picture of their historical development, activities, ways they influenced each other, and importance in their role in out-of-home consumption of food, drink, and sociality. It outlines their social, economic, and political functions, and places them in their societal context. The pub was always the lowest in the social hierarchy among the three. Yet, it has been the longest survivor and has gradually taken over some of the functions formerly performed by inns and taverns. Inns and taverns, however, persist in the British social imagination and, where their buildings have survived, they lend distinction to a village or part of town. Both continuities and changes over time, as well as some overlap between the three hostelries, are described using examples of places and personalities.


Journalism ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 146488492095858
Author(s):  
Leena Ripatti-Torniainen

This article provides an alternative contribution to journalism studies on a foundational concept by analysing texts of Jane Addams, a public intellectual contemporary with the seminal scholars Walter Lippmann and John Dewey. The author uses methods of intellectual history to construct the concept of the public from Addams’s books: Democracy and Social Ethics and The Newer Ideals of Peace, showing that all three authors, Lippmann, Dewey and Addams, discuss the same topic of individuals’ changed engagement with public political life. Addams departs from Lippmann and Dewey in setting out from the standpoints of exclusion and cosmopolitanism. Her argument regarding the public, as constructed by the author, consists of two premises. First, public engagement is a method of democratic inclusion as well as social and political inquiry for Addams. She sees the extension of relationality across social divisions as a necessary method to understand society and materialise democracy. Second, Addams emphasises cooperative and reflexive involvement especially in the characteristic developments of a time. She considers industrialisation and cosmopolitanism as characteristic developments of her own era. Addams suggests an in-principle cosmopolitan concept of the public that includes marginalised persons and groups. Compared to Lippmann’s and Dewey’s accounts of the public, Jane Addams’s argument is more radical and far more sensitive to the social inequality and plurality of a drastically morphing society.


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