Search

Given its renown, many psychologists and sociologists likely consider the publication of Gordon Allport's (1954/1979) seminal book The Nature of Prejudice as the inauguration of the psychological study of prejudice. However, we have uncovered rarely-cited, published papers (starting in 1830) that provide a wealth of speculation on prejudice even before psychologists/sociologists attempted to measure it (circa 1925). Thus, this paper intends to discuss early published work on prejudice in psychology and sociology by focusing on three key questions: a) when did psychologists/sociologists recognize prejudice as a psychological phenomenon, b) when did psychologists/sociologists recognize prejudice as a phenomenon in need of study, and c) what were the historical and personal conditions that gave rise to the interest in prejudice? In short, the seeds of prejudice research were maturing for some time before Allport's seminal book and the first attitudinal studies on prejudice, although these earlier works are seldom cited. © 2010 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reviews recent interpretive trends among historians of anthropology and sociology, examining both introductory texts and scholarly studies. It focuses on works published over the last ten years, and stresses that there has been no resolution of the long-standing conflict between “presentist” and “historicist” approaches to the history of the human sciences. © 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines one aspect of early twentieth century debates over the meaning of scientific methodology and epistemology within the social sciences: the tendency of sociologists to invoke 'laboratory' as a multivalent concept and in reference to diverse institutions and sites of exploration. The aspiration to designate or create laboratories as spaces of sociological knowledge production was broadly unifying in early American sociology (1890-1930), even though there was no general agreement about what 'laboratory' meant, nor any explicit acknowledgment of that lack of consensus. The persistence of laboratory talk in sociology over decades reflects the power of 'laboratory' as a productively ambiguous, legitimizing ideal for sociologists aspiring to make their discipline rigorously scientific. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Mind, Self, and Society, the posthumously published volume by which George Herbert Mead is primarily known, poses acute problems of interpretation so long as scholarship does not consider the actual process of its construction. This paper utilizes extensive archival correspondence and notes in order to analyze this process in depth. The analysis demonstrates that the published form of the book is the result of a consequential interpretive process in which social actors manipulated textual documents within given practical constraints over a course of time. The paper contributes to scholarship on Mead by indicating how this process made possible certain understandings of his social psychology and by relocating the materials that make up the single published text within the disparate contexts from which they were originally drawn. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Edward A. Ross, a key figure in the early history of American sociology, developed a conceptualization of natural and social changes of the material environment that is virtually forgotten today. In this paper, these topics are discussed and located vis-à-vis Ross's intellectual contemporaries and their general take on the nature/society relationship. It is argued that ecological and sociological ideas in the early twentieth century influenced one another and, in the case of Ross, produced a perspective of social change that tried to include the dynamics of nature. © 2002 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper examines the relationship between two seminal figures in American sociology, in terms of its contribution to the movement to establish the science within the academic world. Using archival data, the analysis shows how Edward A. Ross and Pitirim A. Sorokin became acquainted and subsequently collaborated to expand the intellectual horizons and institutional base of sociology. Their collaboration is understood as intergenerational solidarity, which the paper argues is fundamental to an understanding of both the past and the future of organized sciences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

British sociology was established as an academic discipline between 1945 and 1965, just as the British Empire was gearing up for a new phase of developmental colonialism backed by the social and other sciences. Many parts of the emerging sociological discipline became entangled with colonialism. Key themes and methods in sociology and the staff of sociology departments emerged from this colonial context. Historians have tended to place postwar British sociology in the context of expanding higher education and the welfare state, and have overlooked this colonial constellation. The article reconstructs this forgotten moment of disciplinary founding and explores three of the factors that promoted colonial sociology: the Colonial Social Science Research Council, the so-called Asquith universities, and the social research institutes in the colonies; and the involvement of sociologists from the London School of Economics in training colonial officials. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Herbert Blumer stated throughout his long career that his ideas regarding collective behavior originated with his introduction to pragmatist philosophy under the auspices of G. H. Mead at the University of Chicago. Blumer's biography, however, presents a different picture. Firsthand experiences with mob behavior, collective outrage, and the fallout associated with Blumer's public utterances early in his career may have had significant impact on the eventual corpus of collective behavior. © 2011 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Professional sociology in the U.S. began as a field area within economics, but gradually emerged as a separate discipline. Using new data on joint meetings and the separation of departments, I track interdisciplinary relations through three phases: sponsorship (1890–1905), collaboration (1905–1940), and disengagement (post-1940). In the early years, sociology was mostly a branch of economics departments. With the formation of the American Sociological Society, relations with economics began to be more characterized by professionally autonomous collaboration. The 1920s saw a large wave of sociology departments separating from economics. Still, joint annual meetings (including joint presidential addresses) remained the norm until 1940. Paradigmatic conflict between institutional and neoclassical economists was the major force that sustained the economics–sociology collaboration. As institutionalism faded from the scene in the late 1930s, so went interdisciplinary contact. © 2009 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Presents updates on behavioral sciences as of March 2005. Schedule of the 10th Annual Meeting of the International Society for the History of the Neurosciences; Details of the program of the Research Committee on the History of Sociology during the 16th World Congress of Sociology; Acceptance of the 100th document of The History & Theology of Psychology Eprint Archive.