Rise of Academic Sociology in Relation to Social Thought and Public Policy in America

FAIN: FB-10514-70

Robert C. Bannister
Swarthmore College (Swarthmore, PA 19081-1390)

Origins of academic sociology in its formative years (1800-1915) and the analyses on contemporary sociologists of the problems of the period. ABSTRACT: History of the origins of academic sociology in a social-political context. Examines problems of America's urban industrial revolution in the period 1880-1915 and the analyses of these problems offered by observers trained in European and American sociological traditions. Study of the profession in its formative years; factors that fostered and impede the spread of sociology in colleges and universities; relation between high-level theory and actual programs of sociologists of the period. Development of sociology as an academic discipline touches on almost every important social issue in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Research useful in exploring the background to the current situation in which the social scientist is both trusted and distrusted as problem solver and expert.