Joyce E. Williams

Discourses on Death: Obituaries and the Management of Spoiled Identity

What do obituaries disclose about the death of persons who die of AIDS or where AIDS-related death is indicated? Obituaries meeting pre-established criteria were collected from a major metropolitan newspaper for a sixteen-month period in 1992 and 1993. A total of 184 obituaries were collected, content analyzed, and broken into three disclosure categories based on: 1) AIDS-related complications as published cause of death, 2) same-sex partner named as survivor, and 3) association with the AIDS cause or with the gay community. All three categories are stigmatized in the context of todays social norms. Discourse analysis revealed similarities and differences in topical and in subtextual themes and in varying degrees of identity management for the three categories. Descriptive findings suggest areas for further research and reveal much about the public management of death to counter the social stigma of “spoiled identity.”

Shifting Paradigms: Sociological Presentations of Race

Paradigms allow people to understand the world from various viewpoints, target specific audiences, define problems of study and methodological directives, and imply solutions in the real world. This article provides a brief history of theories of race and race relations, noting that racial paradigms in mainstream sociology have rarely been displaced by radically different ones. Until the 1960s, “new” paradigms appeared as repackaged perspectives with the same background assumptions. In this work, the authors juxtapose the viewpoints of social theorists writing from within the accepted (White “malestream”) canon against the writings of some who until recently have been excluded from the traditional canon. Reading theories from margin to center allows one to rethink the important features of a Black race paradigm that challenges prevailing theories and their background assumptions. This paradigm is characterized by democratic rhetoric, systematic research, and a call for social reform.

Chicago Commons: Settlement and Social Gospel in Action

The good will to understand one another, to interpret misunderstood attitudes and situations, to reconcile and be reconciled to differences of taste and temperament, race and religion, heritage and aspiration, and through service and sacrifice to promote the unity of spirit in the bond of peace, this is the way toward the peace of God that passeth all understanding. Such is the meaning of our forty years experience here. Is it not now the hope for the best that it is yet to be everywhere? graham taylor, 1851–1938

Settlement Sociology in the Progressive Years

The Progressive Era roots of sociology as a public enterprise for reform are restored to the canon and given recognition by tracing key works of early sociological practitioners in the leading settlement houses of Chicago, New York and Boston.

Hull House: Feminist Pragmatism and the Chicago Women’s School of Sociology

Chicago’s winning bid for the Columbian Exposition of 1893, in celebration of the 400th anniversary of the discovery of America, won international recognition for the city as attendance averaged over 150,000 people per day during the 179 day run. Indeed, the Exposition announced that despite the great fire of 1871, Chicago had risen from the ashes to become the model of a progressive city. Determined that the Exposition would not gloss over Chicago’s problems, settlement workers such as Jane Addams took advantage of the event to educate the public about urban problems. They used speeches, lectures, and exhibits to contrast the ideal “white city”1 with the “real Chicago of slums, disease, and corrupt politics” (Davis 1984:187). And Ida B. Wells staged a protest when the city announced a “Colored People’s Day” promising 2000 free watermelons (Chicago Tribune May 1, 1893). In many ways Jane Addams, Hull House, and Chicago became synonymous with reform and during the Progressive Era the settlement served as a community-based school for the study of social problems and the practice of sociology. Hull House, founded in 1889, developed a distinctive school of women social scientists who practiced sociology with the leadership of Jane Addams. Fundamental to Addams’ sociological work was the belief that the privileged classes had a responsibility to the less fortunate. The Hull House legacy is one of programmatic developments, sociological investigations, and reform activities, particularly during the peak period of sociological practice in the settlement movement from 1890 to World War I. By 1920, with the establishment of the graduate School of Social Service Administration at the University of Chicago, sociology was formalized as an academic discipline, essentially sex-segregating sociology and social work and rendering “public sociology” as practiced by the social settlements obsolete (Deegan 1990, Lengermann and Niebrugge 2007, MacLean and Williams 2012). Prior to ww I, a strong pacifist stance emanating from the feminist pragmatism of many in the settlement community, most notably Jane Addams,