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This article discusses the meaning of humanistic sociology. Humanistic sociology is not a difficult idea to define. For the humanistic sociologist, sociology is the study of how to make a better world. The key commitment is that people matter. Humanistic sociology is not only an academic discipline, it is the merging of personal and professional identities. It is a methodology/theoretical perspective that is inter-disciplinary in its delivery. Ernest Becker's The Structure of Evil: An Essay on the Unification of the Science of Man provides a ready summary of the ground on which to trace the history of humanistic sociology. In the volume, Becker talks of two sociologies. Humanism in sociology is not new. Sociology has a history of do-gooders. Many early U.S. sociologists were actually ministers who came to sociology to perfect the art of implementing a Social Gospel. Social amelioration was the goal of most sociologists in the late 1880s. To the layperson, the term humanistic sociology would seem redundant. It would seem obvious that sociology is concerned with the person and human needs. But sociology drifted from its original intent and purpose and it became necessary to specify a specially humanistic sociology.

This article reports on a presidential address at the Midwest Sociological Society by R. Dean Wright, professor at department of sociology at Drake University. According to Wright, for decades, sociologists have struggled to explain to others what they do, how they go about doing their work, and how to know its value. Wright has tried to bring into focus the ways in which teaching, scholarship, and the community as the laboratory for the sociologist and student have intersected in his work and his life. Wright narrated his experiences from 1988 when he received a grant to count Iowa's homeless. Lowa Department of Education personnel who administered the funds were interested in getting some handle on the population of homeless children in rural Lowa.