The Oxford Handbook of Jane Addams (OXFORD HANDBOOKS SERIES) 9780197544518, 9780197544549, 9780197544532, 0197544517

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T h e Ox f o r d H a n d b o o k o f

JA N E A DDA M S

The Oxford Handbook of

JANE ADDAMS Edited by

PATRICIA M. SHIELDS, MAURICE HAMINGTON, and JOSEPH SOETERS

Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide. Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University Press in the UK and certain other countries. Published in the United States of America by Oxford University Press 198 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016, United States of America. © Oxford University Press 2023 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted by law, by license, or under terms agreed with the appropriate reproduction rights organization. Inquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the address above. You must not circulate this work in any other form and you must impose this same condition on any acquirer. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Shields, Patricia M., editor. | Hamington, Maurice, editor. | Soeters, J., editor. Title: The Oxford handbook of Jane Addams / edited by Patricia M. Shields, Maurice Hamington, and Joseph Soeters. Description: New York, NY : Oxford University Press, [2023] | Series: Oxford handbooks series | Includes bibliographical references and index. | Identifiers: LCCN 2022040654 (print) | LCCN 2022040655 (ebook) | ISBN 9780197544518 (hardback) | ISBN 9780197544549 | ISBN 9780197544532 (epub) Subjects: LCSH: Addams, Jane, 1860-1935. | Women political activists—United States—History. | Women social reformers—United States—History. | Women social workers—United States—History. | Women pacifists—United States—History. Classification: LCC HQ1236.5.U6 O936 2023 (print) | LCC HQ1236.5.U6 (ebook) | DDC 361.92—dc23/eng/20221222 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022040654 LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022040655 DOI: 10.1093/​oxfordhb/​9780197544518.001.0001 Printed by Marquis Book Printing, Canada

Dedications Patricia Shields dedicates this volume to future Addams scholars. Please find inspiration in your scholarly journey. Maurice Hamington dedicates this volume to the Jane Collective of the Society for the Advancement of American Philosophy, a community of scholars that since 2006 has encouraged research on issues in feminist thought as they occur in American philosophies, including their intersections with people of undervalued and oppressed identities. Joseph Soeters dedicates this volume to those who suffer(ed) immensely from the acts of dominating people and whose fate tends to be forgotten; a typical case, but surely not the only one, being the Indigenous people in the United States of America.

Contents

Acknowledgments  Foreword  Charlene Haddock Seigfried About the Editors  List of Contributors 

xiii xv xvii xix

I N T RODU C T ION 1. On the Maturation of Addams Studies: A Figure of Vital Intellectual and Practical Significance  Patricia M. Shields, Maurice Hamington, and Joseph Soeters

3

PA RT I .   A DDA M S , DE M O C R AC Y, A N D S O C IA L T H E ORY Edited by Patricia M. Shields

2. Jane Addams’s Democratic Vision  Carol Nackenoff

37

3. Vital Lies and the Fate of Democracy  Scott L. Pratt

55

4. Jane Addams: Care-​Centered Leadership and the Democratic Community  DeLysa Burnier

75

5. Jane Addams and Richard Rorty: The Philosophy and Practice of Pragmatist Social Ethics  Chris Voparil

93

6. Labor Unions as a Factor in a Caring Democracy  Maurice Hamington

111

viii   Contents

PA RT I I .   A DDA M S A N D H E R C ON T E M P OR A R I E S Edited by Joseph Soeters

7. The Complementary Theory and Practice of Jane Addams and George Herbert Mead: Bending Toward Justice  Barbara J. Lowe 8. Legacies of Jane Addams and W. E. B. Du Bois: Lessons for Scholarship on Diversity and Inclusion in Organizations  Obie Clayton Jr., June Gary Hopps, Chris Strickland, and Shena Brown

129

149

9. Jane Addams and John Dewey  Shane J. Ralston

169

10. Jane Addams and William James on Sport and Recreation  Erin C. Tarver and Shannon Sullivan

187

11. Jane Addams and Mary Parker Follett’s Search for Cooperation  Joseph Soeters

205

12. Hull House Social Change Methodology and New Deal Reforms  Judy D. Whipps

223

13. Intersections of Race, Gender, and Class in Jane Addams’s Political Friendships  Wynne Walker Moskop

241

PA RT I I I .   A DDA M S AC RO S S DI S C I P L I N E S Edited by Maurice Hamington

14. Inhabiting Reality: The Literary Art of Jane Addams  Katherine Joslin

261

15. A Biographer’s Angle on Jane Addams’s Feminism  Louise W. Knight

279

16. Jane Addams and Public Administration: Clarifying Industrial Citizenship  Patricia M. Shields 17. Jane Addams on Play, Education, and Ethical Teaching  Nuria Sara Miras Boronat

305 327

Contents   ix

18. Dialogue, Liminality, and a Spatial Ethic of Reciprocity in Difference: Jane Addams’s Social Ethics at the Confluence of Feminism and Pragmatism  345 Amrita Banerjee 19. Public Administration and Social Equity: Catching Up to Jane Addams  Nuri Heckler 20. Was Jane Addams a Sociologist?  Kaspar Villadsen

371 389

PA RT I V.   A DDA M S , P E AC E , A N D I N T E R NAT IONA L R E L AT ION S Edited by Joseph Soeters

21. Peace Pragmatism and the Women, Peace, and Security Agenda  Jacqui True 22. Jane Addams, Expansive Masculinity, and the Fragility of the War Virtues  Tadd Ruetenik 23. Jane Addams and the Noble Art of Peaceweaving  Patricia M. Shields and Joseph Soeters

413

427 441

24. Strange Encounters?: Contemporary Field Researchers and Six Lessons from Jane Addams  Chiara Ruffa and Chiara Tulp

459

25. Jane Addams and Twenty-​First Century Refugee Resettlement: Toward the Substitution of Nurture for Warfare  Tess Varner

479

PA RT V.   A DDA M S ON K N OW L E D G E A N D M E T HOD S Edited by Maurice Hamington

26. Addams’s Methodologies of Writing, Thinking, and Activism  Marilyn Fischer

501

x   Contents

27. Hull House Maps and Papers, 1895: A Feminist Research Approach to Urban Inequalities by Jane Addams and Florence Kelley  Núria Font-​Casaseca

525

28. Jane Addams, Social Design, and Wicked Problems: Designing In, With, and Across  Danielle Lake

545

29. Jane Addams’s Use of Narrative in Sociological Research: “As no one but a neighbor can see”  Patricia Madoo Lengermann and Gillian Niebrugge

567

30. Jane Addams and the Return to Settlement Sociology: Inspiration for How to Help Others in the Digital Age  Erik Schneiderhan and Kaitlyn Quinn

585

31. Jane Addams’s Pragmatist Feminist Thoughts and Actions for and with Ill and Disabled Women  Claudia Gillberg

603

32. Making the Jane Addams Papers Accessible to New Audiences  Cathy Moran Hajo

625

PA RT V I .   A DDA M S A N D S O C IA L P R AC T IC E Edited by Patricia M. Shields

33. Jane Addams and Settlement Sociology  Ann Oakley

645

34. Social Ethics for Ecological and Community Resilience: Jane Addams and the Environment  Heather E. Keith

663

35. Jane Addams’s Education, Hull House, and Current-​Day Civic-​Engagement Practices in Higher Education: Coming Full Circle  Belinda M. Wholeben and Mary Weaks-​Baxter

683

36. Jane Addams and Epistemic Agency in Contemporary Social Work  Heidi Muurinen and Aino Kääriäinen

705

Contents   xi

37. Affect and Emotion in Jane Addams’s Thought  Clara Fischer

723

38. Epilogue: Jane Addams’s Contemporary Relevance  737 Joseph Soeters, Patricia M. Shields, and Maurice Hamington Index

749

Acknowledgments

We would like to thank Cecily Berberat, Assistant Editor, and Anthony (Toby) Wahl, Senior Acquisitions Editor, at Oxford University Press. Both facilitated the process with good cheer and fabulous advice. They were patient with our endless questions and always responsive. We also appreciate the work and dedication of Afrose A, Project Manager of Newgen Knowledge Works, who supervised the critical task of copyediting this handbook. Marilyn Fischer was instrumental to the success of this project. Her encouragement and willingness to find authors came at a critical time. It helped set us on the road to success. Judy Whipps also provided invaluable support throughout the process. We appreciate that these two senior Addams scholars gave so generously of their time.

Foreword Charlene Haddock Seigfried

The casual attribution of Jane Addams as “a classical American philosopher,” in a recent talk marks a recognition inconceivable only a few decades ago. When I first encountered her life and work, she wasn’t even recognized as a philosopher, let alone as a member of the founding generation of pragmatists. Women’s absence from the standard narratives of pragmatist philosophy was pointed out some years earlier, but the revival of interest in Addams can be dated roughly to 2002, with the publication by the University of Illinois Press of the first volumes of a series dedicated to reissuing most of her books. With the exception of Twenty Years at Hull-​House, they were all out of print at the time. New introductions were commissioned to alert a new generation of readers to their continuing relevance. The Oxford Handbook of Jane Addams is a testament to how quickly her revival as a distinctive feminist voice in pragmatist philosophy has entered into the scholarship of multiple disciplines including a significant role in sociology. It is also a tribute to the cogency and challenge of her work. This volume exhibits Addams’s trajectory from a world-​renowned social activist and spokesperson for a community of women reformers central to the late nineteenth and early twentieth century progressive movement to her rediscovery in the twenty first century as an engaged pragmatist feminist philosopher who exemplified the interaction of theory and practice. Her participatory model of empowering those less well off in the immigrant community of Chicago stretched to include those devastated by war in Europe as she interpreted pacifism as an active transformation of the conditions inimical to it. The extent of such boundary-​crossing is illustrated in the disciplines that trace their origins to the work of the women at the Hull House settlement she headed. These include sociology, social work, education, public administration, and occupational science. Addams’s own boundaries, as well as those of the residents, were permeable, as she makes clear in Twenty Year at Hull House. She recounts the impact that the people they served had in challenging the residents’ middle-​class perceptions and values. Addams’s interactions with the other settlement women were not only mutually beneficial in developing a multi-​perspectival outlook, but multiplied their effectiveness immeasurably. Many of the disciplines influenced by Hull House are rediscovering and claiming their origins as they develop a more consensual, justice-​based, client-​centered, compassionate version of their guiding theories.

xvi   Foreword All of these trends and more are represented in the contributors to this volume. They include scholars who participated in the initial recovery of Addams’s writings and those who are just now discovering her. I was one of those who discovered Addams early on and have yet to run out of ideas she has inspired or to have found her lacking in useful insights into whatever issues I currently want to address. It is gratifying to find that so many of my initial insights and those of others who discovered Addams for themselves continue to take root and expand in new scholarly writings. Addams was a woman for her time just as this handbook is a book for our time. Her appeal endures because she approached the massive late nineteenth century social upheavals with a willingness to question her own biases, an unswerving confidence in persons of diverse backgrounds and aspirations, a willingness to work together in common causes, and an insatiable thirst for a just and fair society that would emerge from people’s lives and not be imposed on them. There have been voluminous articles and encyclopedias devoted to the nature and importance of feminist and pragmatist thought, but this volume on Addams’s theories and practices shows how much she influenced the development of both and how much she transformed the meaning and aims of both. Addams was acutely aware of the multiplicity of ways that persons interact in the world. Her goals didn’t include spreading the truth or the right values as she understood them, but instead she sought to facilitate their co-​constitution with others, especially those who were marginalized. It was an on-​going, never-​ending process, always open to revision as circumstances and understanding changed. The need to make democracy a vital way of life was a constant theme for Addams and one that challenges us yet again. Addams understood that democracy itself was under threat when prejudices against immigrants explode into violence, when employers exploit their workers, and when ethnicity or race determines a person’s worth. The seeds of its demise can be found when healthcare, food, and housing are withheld from those unable to afford them; when women are not allowed to choose their way of life; and when facts and interpretations are distorted for the purpose of privileging one faction over others. Democracy is also the antithesis of waging war because war ignores the underlying causes of disputes and peaceful means of resolving them. This volume testifies to the resourcefulness of Addams’s approach by concretely demonstrating the multifaceted ways that her insights are continuing to motivate new generations as they are revised, utilized, and expanded.

About the Editors

Patricia M. Shields is a Regents’ Professor in the Department of Political Science at Texas State University. Her scholarship includes works on peace, pragmatism and public administration, democracy, gender, military studies, and research methods. She has edited the journal Armed Forces & Society since 2001 and is a fellow of the National Academy of Public Administration. She began studying Jane Addams as part of an effort to link pragmatism and public administration. In the process, she found that Addams’s work could be applied to peace studies and peacekeeping in particular. Maurice Hamington is Professor of Philosophy, and Affiliate Faculty in Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at Portland State University. In addition to being an Addams scholar, he is a feminist care ethicist who publishes on both the theory and application of care. Bringing those two research arcs together, Hamington views Addams as a forerunner of today’s feminist care ethics. The author or editor of fifteen books, he serves as a Fulbright Specialist and enjoys giving invited lectures on his research areas. Hamington has been fortunate enough to receive university awards for teaching, advising, and scholarship. Joseph Soeters has been a Professor at the Netherlands Defense Academy, after which he accepted a position at Tilburg University, where he taught organizational sociology. Now he is an emeritus professor. He has published extensively on the military and peacekeeping, including issues of human resources management, diversity, and (international/​inter-​organizational) cooperation. His work has been published in ten languages. Today, he works on a voluntary basis with refugees and asylum seekers (including language training).

List of Contributors

Amrita Banerjee, Associate Professor of Philosophy, Indian Institute of Technology Bombay Shena Leverett Brown, Assistant Professor, Clark Atlanta University DeLysa Burnier, Professor, Ohio University Obie Clayton Jr., Professor and Director, Clark Atlanta University Clara Fischer, Vice Chancellor Illuminate Fellow, Queen’s University Belfast Marilyn Fischer, Professor Emerita, University of Dayton Núria Font-​Casaseca, Assistant Professor, University of Barcelona Claudia Gillberg, Senior Research Associate, Jönköping University Cathy Moran Hajo, Editor and Director of the Jane Addams Papers Project, Ramapo College of New Jersey Nuri Heckler, Assistant Professor, University of Nebraska Omaha June Gary Hopps, Professor of Family and Children Studies, University of Georgia Katherine Joslin, Professor Emerita, Western Michigan University Aino Kääriäinen, Senior University Lecturer, University of Helsinki Heather E. Keith, Executive Director of Faculty Development and Professor, Radford University Louise W. Knight, Visiting Scholar, Northwestern University Danielle Lake, Director of Design Thinking and Associate Professor, Elon University Patricia Madoo Lengermann, Research Professor of Sociology, The George Washington University Barbara J. Lowe, Associate Professor, St. John Fisher University Núria Sara Miras Boronat, Associate Professor Moral and Political Philosophy, University of Barcelona Wynne Walker Moskop, Professor of Political Science, Saint Louis University

xx   List of Contributors Heidi Muurinen, Senior Specialist, Finnish Institute for Health and Welfare Carol Nackenoff, Richter Professor Emerita of Political Science, Swarthmore College Gillian Niebrugge, Professorial Lecturer, The George Washington University Ann Oakley, Professor of Sociology and Social Policy, University College London Scott L. Pratt, Professor of Philosophy, University of Oregon Kaitlyn Quinn, Assistant Professor, University of Missouri-​St. Louis Shane J. Ralston, Dean, Woolf University Tadd Ruetenik, Professor, St. Ambrose University Chiara Ruffa, Professor, Centre for International Relations, Sciences Po Paris Erik Schneiderhan, Associate Professor, University of Toronto Mississauga Chris Strickland, Doctoral Candidate, University of Georgia Shannon Sullivan, Professor of Philosophy and Health Psychology, University of North Carolina Erin C. Tarver, Associate Professor of Philosophy and Humanities Division Chair, Oxford College of Emory University Jacqui True, Professor and Director, Monash University Chiara Tulp, Independent scholar Tess Varner, Assistant Professor, Concordia College Kaspar Villadsen, Professor, Copenhagen Business School Chris Voparil, Graduate Faculty, Union Institute & University Mary Weaks-​Baxter, Andrew Sherratt University Professor and Director of the Jane Addams Center for Civic Engagement, Rockford University Judy D. Whipps, Professor Emerita, Grand Valley State University Belinda M. Wholeben, Professor Emerita and Founding Director of the Jane Addams Center for Civic Engagement, Rockford University

I N T RODU C T ION

Chapter 1

On the M atu rat i on of Addams St u di e s A Figure of Vital Intellectual and Practical Significance Patricia M. Shields, Maurice Hamington, and Joseph Soeters

Introduction This handbook is a selective collection of original analyses offered by an international group of social and political theorists who have contributed to the burgeoning field of Addams studies. As late as the 1980s, academics in sociology, philosophy, and social work would be surprised at the prospect of a scholarly handbook devoted to Jane Addams as a prominent theorist and intellectual. However, much has changed over the last thirty years. Scholars in sociology, philosophy, political science, history, and rhetoric have recovered Addams as a critical intellectual force of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Furthermore, interest in Addams has emerged as a global phenomenon exemplified by the many international contributors to this volume. This introduction situates Addams as influential in scholarly disciplines and fields of practice. After a concise introduction to Addams’s life, an overview of her influence on sociology is followed by an overview of her place in philosophy. Then Addams’s role in public administration and social work is offered. The introduction concludes with a brief explanation of the volume’s organization. Jane Addams was born in 1860 in Cedarville, Illinois, to a prominent family. Her father, Illinois state senator John Huy Addams, owned the town mill and ran the bank. Jane Addams was the youngest of five living children. Her mother, Sarah Weber Addams, died during premature labor when Addams was two. As a result, she had a

4    Patricia M. Shields, Maurice Hamington, and Joseph Soeters very close relationship with her father. An average elementary school student, Addams thrived at Rockford Female Seminary (now Rockford University) as class president, valedictorian, and editor of her college’s newspaper. In 1881, she graduated from Rockford and her father died, leaving her a sizable inheritance. She spent several years traveling Europe, where she visited the British settlement house, Toynbee Hall. This experience inspired her (and friend Ellen Gates Starr) to found Hull House, a progressive-​era settlement community in an impoverished, immigrant Chicago neighborhood (1889). Hull House flourished, as did Addams. She became a prominent spokesperson and author, publishing influential books and articles in popular magazines. Along with the progressive community at Hull House, Addams led reform efforts addressing dangerous workplaces, child labor, unhealthy city streets, juvenile justice, and much more. She subsequently became active in the peace movement, leading the first women’s peace conference in The Hague (1915) and establishing the Women’s International League of Peace and Freedom. She was honored with the Nobel Peace Prize for this effort. She died in 1935 at the age of seventy-​five. See Table 1.1 for highlights of her critical life events and the books she authored. Table 1.1 Key events and works in the Life of Jane Addams Year

Events and key works

1860

Born to Sarah and John Huy Addams, Cedarville, Illinois

1863

Mother dies

1868

Father remarries (Anna Haldeman)

1877–​1881

Enrolled Rockford Female Seminary1880 “Bread Givers” Speech First Junior Exhibition 1881 “Cassandra” Valedictory Speech

1881

Father dies and leaves her a sizable inheritance

1883–​1888

Two extended trips to Europe—​visited Toynbee Hall and uses it as a model for Hull House

1889

Moves to Chicago with Ellen Gates Starr. Establishes Hull House

1889–​1920s

Hull House expansion (art gallery, coffee house, public bath, gymnasium, daycare, meeting rooms, variety of clubs, labor museum, cooperative boarding club for girls, playgrounds, speaker series)

1891

Florence Kelley moves to Hull House—​inspires Addams’s activist orientation

1894

Pullman Strike

1895

Hull House Maps and Papers (co-​authored with the Residents of Hull House) Garbage inspector

1896

First of five American Journal of Sociology articles. Meets with Tolstoy during trip to Europe

1901

Co-​founded Juvenile Court Committee

1902

Democracy and Social Ethics

1905–​1909

Served Chicago School Board

On the Maturation of Addams Studies     5 Table 1.1 Continued Year

Events and key works

1907

Newer Ideals of Peace

1909

The Spirit of Youth and the City Streets Founding member—​National Association for the Advancement of Colored People

1910

Twenty Years at Hull House

1912

Publishes “A Modern Lear”

1914

World War I begins

1915

Establishes Women’s Peace Party Presides International Congress of Women at the Hague Led peace delegation to capitals of warring countries Women at the Hague (edited with Balch and Hamilton)

1916

US enters WWI The Long Road of Women’s Memory

1917–​1919

Spokesperson—​Department of Agriculture Food Relief Program

1919

Founder –​Women’s International League of Peace and Freedom

1920

Founding member American Civil Liberties Union

1922

Peace and Bread in Time of War

1923

A New Conscience and an Ancient Evil

1930

The Second Twenty Years at Hull House

1931

Nobel Peace Prize (shared with N. M. Brown)

1932

The Excellent Becomes the Permanent

1935

My Friend Julia Lathrop Died in Chicago

Unlike her social theorist contemporaries such as Weber or Durkheim, Addams lacked university-​affiliated status and suffered from the intellectual sexism of the era. However, Addams’s influential scholarship stemmed from direct experience at Hull House (e.g., Schneiderhan, 2011). She engaged in social amelioration by living in proximal relations and being a good neighbor. She and the residents of Hull House were dedicated to aiding in “the solution of the social and industrial problems which are engendered by the modern conditions of life in a great city” (Addams 1910, 68). Settlement progressive methodology involved breaking down social barriers that separated individuals from appreciating the plight of others. Addams is remembered as a social reformer and peace activist. Accordingly, the intellectual legacy found in her books, essays, journal articles, and speeches has seldom received its scholarly due. Moreover, progressive ideals regarding social progress waned after World War I. Her peace advocacy in the face of rising United States jingoism and nationalism contributed to widespread suspicion and alienation of Addams and her progressive approach.

6    Patricia M. Shields, Maurice Hamington, and Joseph Soeters In the 1980s, her contributions to sociology, philosophy, and conceptions of democracy, feminism, care ethics, community engagement, social ethics, peace, municipal governance, social justice, and more, received traction in the scholarly literature. A common theme of this scholarship is the ongoing relevance of Addams’s ideas, particularly in an age when neoliberal responses to modern problems fail. In addition, the practicality of her approach has found significant purchase in practice-​oriented academic disciplines/​fields such as public administration, military studies, environmentalism, and qualitative methods. See Table 1.2 for a timeline of notable books of analysis and commentary in contemporary Addams studies.

Table 1.2 Timeline of Selected Significant Books and Commentary in Addams Studies 1965

The Social Thought of Jane Addams

Lasch (ed)

Influential sociologists address Addams’s social commentary.

1967

Beloved Lady: A History of Jane Addams’ Ideas on Reform and Peace

Farrell

Includes exhaustive bibliography of Addams’s works.

1973

American Heroine: the Life and Legend of Jane Addams

Davis

Historian gets past Addams popular legacy to focus on her thinking and activities.

1988

Deegan Jane Addams and the Men of the Chicago School, 1892–​1918

Argues for Addams’s foundational role in sociology.

1996

Pragmatism and Feminism: Reweaving the Social Fabric

Seigfried

First book to argue that Addams was an important American pragmatist philosopher.

2002

The Jane Addams Reader

Elshtain (ed)

Useful anthology of key Addams’s works.

2002

Jane Addams and the Dream of American Democracy

Elshtain

Political scientist commentary on Addams’s democracy.

2003

The Selected Papers of Jane Addams vol. 1: Preparing to Lead, 1860–​81

McCree, Bryan, Bair, and de Angury (eds.)

Made letters and other writings available to the public from Addams’s formative years.

2004

The Education of Jane Addams

Brown

Intellectual biography focusing on Addams education.

2004

Jane Addams: A Writers Life

Joslin

Literary analysis of Addams.

2004

On Addams

M. Fischer

First concise intellectual introduction to Addams.

2005

Citizen: Jane Addams and the Struggle for Democracy

Knight

Intellectual biography of the first part of her life.

2009

The Social Philosophy of Jane Addams

Hamington

Argues that Addams was a radical American pragmatist philosopher.

On the Maturation of Addams Studies     7 Table 1.2 Continued 2009

Jane Addams and the Practice of Democracy

M. Fischer, Nackenoff, and Chmielewski (eds.)

Essays on Addams social and political philosophy.

2009

The Selected Papers of Jane Addams vol. 2: Venturing into Usefulness, 1881–88

McCree Bryan, Bair, and de Angury (eds.)

Letters and other writings available as Addams prepares to form Hull House.

2010

Jane Addams: Spirit in Action

Knight

Intellectual biography addressing her public roles.

2010

Feminist Interpretations of Jane Addams

Hamington (ed)

Collection of feminist commentaries in highly regarded feminist philosophy series.

2017

Jane Addams: Progressive Pioneer of Peace, Philosophy, Sociology, Social Work and Public Administration

Shields

First work to place Addams in the field of public administration.

2019

The Selected Papers of Jane Addams vol. 3: Creating Hull-​House and an International Presence, 1889–​1900

Mary Lynn McCree Bryan, Maree de Angury, and Skerrett (eds.)

letters and other writings available from the first years of Hull House.

2019

Jane Addams’s Evolutionary Theorizing: Constructing “Democracy and Social Ethics”

Marilyn Fischer

Argues that understanding the context of evolutionary thinking in the early 20th century is crucial for understanding how Addams formulates her social and political philosophy.

The chapters of The Oxford Handbook of Jane Addams take the relevance of her ideas seriously. Our overview begins with sociology, a major impetus for this volume.

Jane Addams’s Place in Sociology During Addams’s time as a public figure, rigid barriers between social and scientific disciplines did not exist. For example, sociology has several possible genealogies. August Comte viewed sociology as the culmination of the sciences. Today’s sociology is often associated with founding figures such as Max Weber, Emile Durkheim, and Karl Marx. By the end of the 1900s, sociology had evolved into a major academic discipline. Many scholars associated with other disciplines such as philosophy and psychology participated in sociology’s formative years.

8    Patricia M. Shields, Maurice Hamington, and Joseph Soeters Addams’s intellectual maturity coincided with the rise of sociology. Although many settlement workers engaged in sociological work (Lengermann and Niebrugge-​Brantley 2002, 7–​8), Addams did not explicitly take an academic label for herself. She instead focused on social amelioration and improving people’s living and working conditions. Given the institutional and academic deficits described above, it is not so surprising that Addams’s position in sociology remained largely unrecognized for an extended period. Nevertheless, during her lifetime, she was well published in social affairs. Furthermore, she maintained intensive connections with scholars at the University of Chicago, including the men of the newly founded sociology department. She, however, refused to accept a formal position as a sociologist at the University. Accordingly, Lewis Coser’s authoritative Masters of Sociological Thought (1977) did not include Addams. Currently, however, scholars appreciate Addams as a formative theorist in sociology (Lengermann and Niebrugge-​Brantley 1998; Deegan 2007; Calhoun 2007). In particular, Addams plays a pivotal role in developing women’s studies and feminist pragmatism in sociology. Addams’s pioneering sociology advanced the discipline by contributing domestic analyses of racism, urban demographics, militarism, gender, labor diversity, and power dynamics, as well as contributing insights into international relations. In addition, she helped advance the development of sociology as an empirical science. Finally, she applied a pragmatist approach to deal with social issues and wicked problems, such as crime (e.g., Deegan 1988; Schneiderhan 2011). For Addams, sociology was a matter of activism—​the personal, practical, academic, and political were entangled spheres of life. From this perspective, sociology was a science that could render reform possible. This social reform approach made her position tenuous. She introduced normative points of view that sociologists gradually learned to regard as non-​objective, un-​academic, or even unprofessional. Nevertheless, Addams’s sociology connected local issues to macro-​social themes, bringing in a sociological view to everyday affairs. Her activist approach differed from acclaimed European sociologists such as Durkheim, Weber, and Simmel, who advocated the maturing and professionalization of sociology. Addams seldom referred to famous theoreticians, with one exception—​ Marx, with whom she shared concerns about growing poverty and inequality. However, she disagreed with Marx’s methods to achieve greater social fairness (Deegan 1988). Addams refused to accept the Marxist idea that conflict, let alone revolution and violence, were needed to resolve societal disparities. The rejection of antagonistic conflict to achieve goals became an ongoing theme in her analysis. European scholars did not often reference her work. However, on tour throughout the United States in 1904, Max Weber and his wife Marianne visited Chicago, which they thought was “the monstrous city which even more than New York was the crystallization of the American spirit” (Weber 2009 [1926], 285). Marianne Weber discusses Addams’s good works saying that the people in the city “looked, marveled, and believed in this ‘Angel of Chicago’ ” (Weber 2009 [1926], 288). The Webers visited Hull House, and Marianne later returned to meet with the Women’s Trade Union League (Scaff 2011, 43).

On the Maturation of Addams Studies     9 Max Weber demonstrated his familiarity with Hull House’s empirical research, deeming the findings on the ethnicity-​related wage structure in the neighborhoods remarkable and interesting (Scaff 2011, 41). In 1930, on Addams’s seventieth birthday, Marianne Weber devoted a lengthy article in the Frankfurter Zeitung to Hull House, its founder, and its activities (Scaff 2011, 44–​45). She described Hull House as realizing the “democratization of the spirit,” in the possibility of all “to lift themselves up” (Scaff 2011, 45). For Marianne, Hull House had been most admirable and enduring in the American experience (Scaff 2011, 45). Addams also interacted with British sociologists Beatrice and Sydney Webb, and Charles Booth. She had been initially inspired by the settlement and reform movement in the United Kingdom (Deegan 1988, 13). Unlike many intellectuals of her day, Addams’s ethical analysis and pragmatic action orientation focused on difficulties between and among people, not as individual failures, but as social and collective phenomena. This message resonated with other early feminist sociologists, such as Charlotte Perkins Gilman. Ethics, in their view, is always social ethics, not individual effort (Lengermann and Niebrugge 2014).

Sociology in Addams’s Life In a pioneering historical analysis, Mary Jo Deegan (1988) describes Addams’s position vis-​à-​vis the sociologists of her time in Jane Addams and the men of the Chicago School 1892–​1918. The University of Chicago’s sociology department specialized in urban sociology and symbolic interactionism and became a leader in the development of American sociology. Deegan (1988) traces Addams’s significant participation in the Chicago School of Sociology development. Albion Small, who founded the sociology department at the University of Chicago, stated that the program intended to marry “thought with action” (Shields 2017, 51). Addams’s work and writings embodied this approach. Remarkably, Deegan had to recover Addams as a sociologist. Addams lectured on sociological subjects throughout the country. She was a member of the American Sociological Association, authoring articles in sociological journals. Addams worked in a network of sociologists and participated in sociological events. Most significantly, other sociologists and the public regarded her as a sociologist (Deegan 1988, 9–​13). Addams had acquaintances and friendships with sociologists Mead, Thomas, and Du Bois. She spoke at the American Sociological Association and published five articles in the American Journal of Sociology. These articles analyzed various social problems ranging from paid domestic labor to trade unions to municipal administration (e.g., Addams, 1905a; 1912b). In an article on labor unions, Addams (1899) argued in favor of this relatively new institution because of their commitment to the public good and social progress. She recognized that the public often criticized unions too harshly because of their disruptive strikes. Nevertheless, Addams considered trade unions vital because they produce successful social reform, particularly in children’s labor (Shields 2017, 54).

10    Patricia M. Shields, Maurice Hamington, and Joseph Soeters She claimed trade unions demonstrate a duty to society that the “public had ignored” (Addams 1899, 462). Consistent with the scholarship of the time, these publications lacked extensive citations. Addams’s practical experiences drove her academic process, including interviews and working with her immigrant neighbors and critical reflection on the dynamics of the diverse, overcrowded, industrializing urban environment. Unfortunately, her diminutive use of citations masked how widely read Addams was in the field of sociology and diminished her stature as a sociologist. Addams and her cohort at Hull House often operated as a team. Their analyses of women and children’s life and work in the surrounding immigrant neighborhoods further spurred the development of sociology as an empirically driven science. Specifically, they engaged in the first urban sociological studies by mapping and chronicling the many social challenges in the area. A few years after founding Hull House, they created a landmark empirical work, Hull House Maps and Papers (1895). Their innovative mixed-​ methods approach included detailed observations. The study inspired Du Bois’s examination of African-​American living and working conditions in Philadelphia (Du Bois, 1899). Similarly, Maps and Papers set an example for Znaniecki and Thomas’s massive sociological study, The Polish Peasant (1918), interrogating the Polish immigrant experience in Chicago (350,000 polish immigrants lived in Chicago). Given her affinity for pragmatism, Addams distrusted theory estranged from the immediate realities of life (Lengermann and Niebrugge-​Brantley 1998, 74). Furthermore, her predilection for activism and social change made her position vis-​à-​vis the development of academic sociology somewhat ambiguous. Intellectual sexism also made her an outsider. Nevertheless, the relevance of her pragmatic views to various branches of sociology, including for instance organizational sociology (e.g., Farjoun et al. 2015), is significant.

On Gender and Diversity Addams relentlessly advocated for women’s voting rights. She also fought for immigrants’ and black citizens’ rights. She regularly protested in the streets, proposed legislation, lobbied, and helped found advocacy groups like the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) (Deegan 2010, 220). Along with this direct political activism, her writings argued that the neglect of women’s affairs should be a topic of political, policy, and academic attention. She relentlessly emphasized the need to study undervalued activities considered “women’s work.” For example, she discussed waged domestic work as “a belated industry” (Addams 1896) and compared the experience to the working conditions of factory women and girls. As a labor sociologist, she analyzed domestic workers’ isolated and powerless positions. The domestic worker was “dependent upon the protection and goodwill of her employer” (Addams 1896, 536). In comparison, factory women and girls had more opportunities to enjoy friends and family and to be able to organize themselves for better work conditions (Shields 2017, 54).

On the Maturation of Addams Studies     11 Addams’s gender analysis predates the feminist scholarship that would emerge decades later. For example, in the 1970s, British sociologist Ann Oakley (1974) published a book on the sociology of household work which took women’s living conditions as mothers and home managers seriously. Other feminist scholars would follow shortly thereafter. Addams is a founding mother of sociology and social theory (Lengermann and Niebrugge-​Brantley 1998). She highlighted women’s perspectives and initiated a gender standpoint in sociology. As an illustration, her writings and speeches brought the concept of “municipal housekeeping,” a feminine city governance model, to the public realm. In her view, women would sidestep male blind spots and pay attention to hygiene in city government (Deegan 2010, 225). Addams’s analysis of the devil baby phenomenon at Hull House reveals her application of sympathetic understanding. In the American Journal of Sociology, she recounts the arrival of three Italian women at Hull House who demanded to see the cursed infant. The devil baby tale spread in the neighborhood and led to a stream of visitors for six weeks. “No amount of denial convinced them that it was not there ( . . . )” (Addams 1914, 117). Addams interprets this event as a tool of social control: “The story was not only used to tame restless husbands, but mothers threatened their daughters that if they went to dance halls or out to walk with strange young men they would be eternally disgraced by devil-​babies” (Addams 1914, 118). Addams demonstrates her attentive skills, which allowed her to observe dynamics seldom noticed by mainstream social thinkers. On matters of diversity, the narrative surrounding Addams is somewhat complex. Race was understood differently in the first part of the twentieth century: whites were differentiated into distinct races (Fischer 2014, 3–​4). Furthermore, although Chicago witnessed a massive influx of migrants from Europe, African Americans made up a tiny percentage of the population (Fischer 2014, 1). Thus, Addams had little direct exposure to the travails of blacks (Deegan 2002; 2010, 223, 229). Addams, an admirer of Abraham Lincoln, felt that country could only achieve social democracy through inclusive participation. She maintained working relationships with African American icons W. E. B. Du Bois and Ida B. Wells. Addams invited Du Bois to speak at Hull House, and she wrote for the Crisis, his monthly magazine of the NAACP. Of the American sociologists at the time, Du Bois was the one most connected to Weber. They knew and admired each other’s work. Weber was interested in Du Bois’s analysis of race relations (Scaff 2011, 98–​ 108). Du Bois, Weber, and Addams form a unique triangle of early sociologists, given their shared interest in the position of women, immigrants, and African Americans. Addams is not without criticism on matters of race. However, embracing fallibilism, Addams admits to making numerous errors in her work on behalf of diverse others. One criticism of Addams was that she was an assimilationist: creating a unity of culture subsumed in whiteness (Lissak 1989). Shannon Sullivan (2003) points out that although Addams revealed an assimilationist narrative early in her public life, her experiences at Hull House resulted in Addams honoring racial differences in her vision of democracy later in her career. Addams may have been ahead of her time, but she was also a product of her time, and critical analysis of race was still in its early stages. In countering

12    Patricia M. Shields, Maurice Hamington, and Joseph Soeters the critics of Addams on race, Deegan (2010) advances the argument that Hull House was a “school of sociology” and a “school of race relations.” Accordingly, her work and thinking can be placed at the beginning of the sociology of diversity and inclusion.

A Sociologist on Peace, War, and the Military As indicated above, Addams disagreed with Marx that conflict was a means to solve disputes. She, instead, advocated bringing different positions and interests to the table and trying to solve disagreements through new practical solutions. She helped found and led the Women’s International Peace Conference in 1915 (Addams et al. 1915), bringing a gendered perspective to discussions about war and peace. This approach challenged the patriotic and belligerent atmosphere dominating domestic and international affairs. Her opposition to World War I severely damaged her reputation. Addams found herself isolated from intellectual colleagues, such as Dewey and Mead (Deegan 2012). Eventually, Addams’s position regarding World War I was vindicated as criticism emerged concerning the never-​ending preparation and engagement in war by the United States. In particular, Charles Wright Mills who was familiar with Addams’s pragmatism (1969 [1942]), underlined her criticism of militarism. At the peak of the Cold War, like Addams, Mills criticized the ongoing militarization on both sides of the spectrum, claiming that “the immediate cause of WW III is the preparation for it” (Mills 1958, 47). He referred to the US leaders as the “warlords of Washington” (Mills 1958, 53). Resonating with Addams’s thinking, Mills railed against the dominant militaristic outlook and huge outlays on armaments (also: Mills, 1960). Overall, the connection between sociology and international relations has waned, with the latter emerging as an independent academic discipline. Nevertheless, some prospects remain for renewed sociological interest in international affairs (e.g., Lawson and Shilliam 2010). One of Addams’s persistent gender-​related ideas, whether women could contribute more to peace resolution than men, remains understudied. What seems to have become more accepted over the years in military social studies is that positive peace, to be reached without violence, destruction, and the loss of people’s lives, is obtainable and more preferable than endless preparation and engagement in war; this Adamesque idea may be connected to ambitions and practices in UN peacekeeping (e.g., Shields and Soeters 2017). It is a compelling perspective.

Addams, Social Amelioration, and Public Sociology According to Lengermann and Niebrugge (2007, 72ff.), Addams’s work can be placed in the “social science movement,” which focuses on a perceived problem, having faith that people can correct this problem and, consequently, emerging ideas will mobilize resources and develop strategies for change. Social science, in this sense, provides

On the Maturation of Addams Studies     13 intellectual guidance. Therefore, sociologists have the responsibility to reform and improve society (Lengerman and Niebrugge-​Brantley 1998, 70–​7 1). This movement emerged and matured in the turbulent decades preceding and following the turn of the twentieth century. Addams exemplified this approach. Addams was sensitive to multiple points of view. She was particularly keen on finding neglected perspectives and interests such as those of the poor, women, children, exploited workers, people of color, and immigrant groups. Her work contributed to better analyses because it was based on experiments-​in-​vivo, a crucial element of pragmatism. These community-​based “cooperative experiments” were far removed from experiments in a “sociological laboratory,” a method stressing distant manipulation and observation rejected by Hull House collaborators (Gross 2009 86-​87; also Gross, 2007). Addams’s approach differed from sociology’s increasingly neutral, “value-​ free” analyses of societies and their dynamics. Yet, in most recent times, the need to make sociology a science that integrates people’s concerns and capabilities has developed again. For example, then-​president of the American Sociological Association, Michael Buroway (2005), argued for public sociology. Sociology contributes to public discourses and works in accordance with other societal parties to improve people’s lives. Buroway provides an impressive list of examples from sociology but surprisingly does not refer to Addams. Similarly, Addams’s work can be connected with the growing importance of applied, clinical, and service sociology. These uses of sociology aim to cater to and work together with clients in society (Treviño 2013).

Jane Addams’s Place in Philosophy Until the 1990s, the idea that Addams had a role in philosophy did not exist. Addams was excluded from the male-​dominated ranks of philosophers. Not until the advent of modern feminist scholarship would Addams obtain the mantel of philosopher—​ and even then grudgingly. Her early biographers were enamored with her myth and accomplishment but impoverished by gender narratives that limited who holds the status of philosopher. These biases did not allow commentators to fully acknowledge her critical and reflective scholarship (i.e., Levine 1971, x). However, her philosopher contemporaries recognized Addams’s brilliance. In September 17, 1902, letter to Addams, William James was effusive in praising Democracy and Social Ethics as “one of the great books of our time.” He claimed that Addams had produced a “contribution in a masterly manner. I have learned a lot from your pages” (1902). After reading Newer Ideals of Peace, James wrote to Addams on February 12, 1907: “Yours is a deeply original mind, and all so quiet and harmless! yet revolutionary in the extreme, and I should suspect that this very work would act as a ferment [through] long years to come. I read precious little sociological literature, and my opinions in that field are worth nothing—​but I am willing to bet on you” (1907).

14    Patricia M. Shields, Maurice Hamington, and Joseph Soeters James was not alone in his assessment of Addams’s social philosophy. Charlene Haddock Seigfried notes that Dewey credited Addams with shifting his understanding of democracy from a political system to thinking of it as a way of life (Seigfried 2002, xi; Pratt 2002, 282–​283). According to a student of Dewey, Jessie A. Chanters, “One of my pleasant recollections [of a 1901 philosophy course] is of Dr. Dewey inviting Jane Addams to his class, his tributes to her, and his having us students buy Jane Addams’ Democracy and Social Ethics’” (Williams 1982, 29). Dewey praised her thinking on several occasions. For example, after reading a draft of what would become “A Modern Lear” (1912a), Addams analysis of the Pullman strike of 1894, Dewey exclaimed, “It is one of the greatest things I ever read both as to its form & its ethical philosophy” (quoted in Fischer 2019, 88). Furthermore, Addams had a profound impact on Dewey’s moral thinking regarding pragmatist philosophy. Dewey spent a decade in Chicago beginning in 1894. During that time, he and Addams became friends and colleagues. Dewey lectured and dined at Hull House, ultimately serving as a trustee of the settlement. As Marilyn Fischer indicates, when Dewey arrived in Chicago, he was still working through Hegelian idealism and had not yet engaged pragmatism. However, by the time Dewey wrote the first version of the prominent volume Ethics in 1908, he had turned from idealist-​based ethics to one that was experiential and experimental. Fischer describes, “Through Dewey’s close association with Addams in the 1890s, he no doubt noticed the pattern of her reasoning and the power of her method. It may well be that Dewey, in large measure, designed his method in light of what he had learned from hers” (2019, 66). Classic origin stories of American pragmatism are male dominated. Figures such as John Dewey, William James, Charles Sanders Peirce, Josiah Royce, and others made enormous contributions to nascent pragmatist thought. However, new, more inclusive origin stories (Harris et al 2002; McKenna and Pratt 2015; Pappas 2011; Pratt 2002; Spencer 2020) recognize the intellectual participation of marginalized and oppressed identities, including indigenous, scholars of color, and women to form a more holistic framing of the beginnings of pragmatist thinking. Addams is in that mix.

The Emergence of Addams Studies in Philosophy A critical moment in the reassessment of Addams’s legacy in philosophy was the 1996 publication of Pragmatism and Feminism: Reweaving the Social Fabric by Seigfried. Although the book broadly addressed the relationship between feminist and pragmatist traditions, Addams plays a pivotal role in the narrative. Seigfried drew inspiration from Deegan’s reincarnation of Addams in sociology to claim, “In the patriarchal records philosophers relegate Addams to sociology, while sociologists relegate her to amateur reformism, at best to the status of a social worker. Her intellectual contributions are thereby erased from the histories and definitive works through which new members are inaugurated into the academic disciplines of philosophy and sociology” (1996, 45). Seigfried argues that Addams and Dewey influenced each other, thus paving the way for

On the Maturation of Addams Studies     15 other scholars to demonstrate when Addams persuaded Dewey and James. The disciplinary reclamation of previously excluded women is one of the objectives of feminist scholarship. Addams’s intellectual legacy of a dozen books and hundreds of published articles manifesting rich and insightful social commentary made her a leading feminist figure in classic pragmatist philosophy. Thus, Seigfried pioneered Addams studies in philosophy. Seigfried brought a feminist consciousness to her philosophical analysis. As she describes, “Pragmatism’s white, male pantheon needs to be expanded to include women’s contributions including those of people of color . . . ” (1991, 8). Her feminist lens led Seigfried to focus on Addams (Bella et al 2015). Seigfried authored articles and book chapters that positioned Addams as philosophically significant in epistemology, ethics, and aesthetics. Seigfried found Addams philosophically compelling because of her embedded proximal community knowledge (2013). Unlike other pragmatists committed to the primacy of experience, Addams lived among the community members for which she wrote and theorized. Seigfried describes, “Addams’s philosophical approach can be summed up as the belief in the educational and socially transformative value of the continuing reconstruction of experience. One of her major contributions to pragmatist theory is her recognition and demonstration of the concrete diversity of such experience, with all this implies” (2009, 49). This situated and experiential approach aligns with feminist standpoint theory (Hamington 2009, 52–​58; Hamington 2010, 6–​9), which resists making epistemological claims without recognizing and acknowledging the context of the claimant. Addams elevated and extended pragmatist understanding of social experience and positionality by giving voice to and writing about the lives of women, immigrants, the poor, and children. Seigfried may have pioneered Addams studies in philosophy. Still, soon after that, many American philosophers, including Judith M. Green, Maurice Hamington, Lisa Heldke, Heather Keith, L. Ryan Musgrave, Scott L. Pratt, and Judy D. Whipps, published works exploring Addams’s philosophical significance. The most prominent of the second wave of Addams philosophy scholars is Marilyn Fischer. As Fischer categorically declares, “If philosophy is defined as thinking deeply about questions that matter very much, then Addams is a philosopher of the first rank” (2004, i). Fischer employs a meticulous historical analysis to understand Addams’s writings in their nuanced context. For example, in her 2019 Jane Addams’s Evolutionary Theorizing: Constructing “Democracy and Social Ethics,” Fischer carefully traces Addams’s process in writing, revising, and compiling Democracy and Social Ethics, her earliest text but a cornerstone of her philosophical thinking. Fischer demonstrates that Democracy and Social Ethics is not a tidy and coherent theoretical narrative but rather demonstrative of Addams’s view of writing as ethical activism, which favored quicker publication for impact over refining concepts (176). However, Fischer finds that “allowing the book to be conceptually untidy, Addams produced a richer, more enduring text” (186). Fischer’s vigilant attention to context is consistent with the pragmatist commitment to the primacy of experience and mitigates the biases of contemporary assumptions. For

16    Patricia M. Shields, Maurice Hamington, and Joseph Soeters example, to understand Addams’s approach to social ethics, Fischer claims that it is essential to capture the intellectual streams of the turn of the nineteenth century. Fischer writes, Scholars today generally assume that “individual ethics” and “social ethics” are alternative ethical stances rather than an evolutionary sequence. They associate individual ethics with Enlightenment liberal traditions such as Lockean individualism or Kantian autonomy and position Addams’s social ethics as alternative theoretical framework. They are not aware that Addams, with many of her contemporary intellectuals, had rejected the abstract ideas of the Enlightenment as prerevolutionary and unscientific, and so would not define the evolutionary phase of “individual ethics” in terms of Enlightenment abstractions. (187–​188)

Fischer’s cautionary tale is vital in understanding Addams and any historical, philosophical figure. It is easy to get caught up in abstraction and contemporary application and forget the basis of her writing. As Fischer claims, “When Addams’s rhetoric soars, it touches us deeply because she lived within the particularities that kept her words tethered to the ground” (187). Feminist pragmatist philosophy may have started with Seigfried’s reclamation of Addams. Still, it has since found significant intellectual relevance for other figures such as Emily Greene Balche, Grace Lee Boggs, Ella Wyman Cabot, Anna Julia Cooper, Mary Parker Follett, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Zora Neal Hurston, and Ida B. Wells. Addams, a pioneering thinker in her time, also motivated a field of study, feminist pragmatism, in our time.

Addams’s Social Philosophy As a pragmatist, Addams’s philosophy falls under the category of social philosophy rather than abstract or analytic traditions. Much of Addams’s social philosophy draws from the same intellectual well that fed her sociology, as discussed above. Her work seeks social amelioration, but that does not mean she is afraid to thematize from contextual experience. Four aspects of her social philosophy are sympathetic knowledge, lateral progress, pluralism, and fallibilism. Beginning with Democracy and Social Ethics, and throughout her works addressing social issues, is the notion of sympathetic knowledge. Sympathetic knowledge is an epistemic approach that includes a moral disposition of concern. Addams explains, Sympathetic knowledge is the only way of approach to any human problem and the line of least resistance into the jungle of human wretchedness must always be through that region which is most thoroughly explored not only by the information of the statistician, but by sympathetic understanding. (2002a/​1902, 7)

Sympathetic knowledge entails humans learning about one another in terms that move beyond propositional knowledge. Rather than merely memorizing facts, knowledge is

On the Maturation of Addams Studies     17 gained through openness to disruptive knowledge (Seigfried 2002, xxii). Knowledge can be disruptive in the sense of an epiphany whereby new information transforms one’s perceived experience and understanding. The notion of disruptive knowledge motivated Addams and the residents of Hull House to undertake the first urban study of racial demographics, the aforementioned Hull-​House Maps and Papers (Residents of Hull House 1895). Addams integrated epistemological inquiry with ethical analysis. It was the responsibility of members of a society to know one another better, care for, and act on one another’s behalf. Sympathetic knowledge is Addams’ rationale behind social settlements. Social knowledge is built up by providing a physical location where people of different backgrounds could meet, reducing the abstraction of distant others and transforming them into concrete, known others. Accordingly, Addams suggests that the many social activities sponsored by Hull House—​clubs, dances, performances, athletics—​were not frivolous affairs but a means for reducing barriers between people, thus fostering sympathetic knowledge. In Twenty Years at Hull-​House and later in The Second Twenty Years at Hull-​House, Addams claims that social activities performed an educative function and that social settlements were thoroughly educative projects (1990, 197–​212). Like Dewey, Addams valued education as the foundation of a healthy democratic society. Like Mead, Addams viewed “play” as an essential aspect of education because of its ability to fire the imagination. Addams takes this notion so far as to argue that play is vital for a vibrant democracy because it creates the possibility of empathetic imagination (1905b). When one plays, one takes on the roles of others and, through fictitious inhabitation of these positions, begins to empathize with the plight of others. The basis of sympathetic knowledge is imaginative extrapolation by compassionately taking the view of the other. When Addams addresses prostitution in A New Conscience and an Ancient Evil (2002b) she employs anecdotes from the Hull House community so her audience can understand the struggles of young women in big cities. She is neither strictly deontological nor teleological in her moral approach. Rather than dealing with principles of sexuality, for example, or the consequences of prostitution on society, although both considerations are essential, Addams begins increasing the knowledge of marginalized women. Inherent in this approach to human ontology is a belief in people’s fundamental goodness and relationality. Addams believes that if her audience understands what is going on in the lives of others, even if those others are outcasts, then we may begin to care and possibly take positive action on their behalf. For Addams, the epistemology of sympathetic knowledge bridged rationality and sentiment. She eschewed antagonism, for example, because she was afraid it could devolve into a personal dispute. Initially, Dewey disagreed with Addams’s aversion to antagonism, given his Hegelian belief that an antagonism could lead to better knowledge and growth. However, upon reflection, Dewey found Addams’s position compelling (Fischer 2019, 88; Knight 2005, 224). Sympathetic knowledge is a non-​acrimonious form of moral inquiry that seeks to understand the other with compassion and

18    Patricia M. Shields, Maurice Hamington, and Joseph Soeters open-​mindedness. Her commitment to sympathetic knowledge has garnered claims that Addams was a forerunner of today’s feminist care ethics (Leffers 1993; Hamington 2009; Keith 2012). Another theme found in Addams’s social philosophy is lateral progress. Given her status as one of the leading figures of the progressive era, it is not surprising that Addams advocated social progress. Still, she distinguished the particular type of progress she supported. The industrial revolution witnessed people prosper in the name of economic and technological progress. Addams, however, viewed such progress to be more abstract than concrete. In the case of economic progress, it was experienced by an elite few, with some benefits trickling down to the middle class. From her perspective at Hull House, she witnessed the inability of immigrants to participate in the economy or the political process fully. Similarly, she recognized that although African Americans ostensibly had legal rights, they often were prevented from actualizing those rights through a combination of laws intended to circumvent equality and racism in social relations. Given these experiences, Addams advocated what she referred to as “lateral progress,” or the idea that for authentic progress to occur, it must be experienced in a widespread manner rather than by a privileged few. She explains that genuine progress “is not the result of his individual striving, as a solitary mountain climber beyond the sight of the valley multitude, but it is underpinned and upheld by the sentiments and aspirations of many others. Progress has been slower perpendicularly, but incomparably greater because lateral” (1912a, 137). Furthermore, Addams’s notion of lateral progress was not to be enforced hierarchically by authority structures. Instead, Addams envisioned progress that was derived from participatory democratic processes. Addams applied the concept of lateral progress to many social issues. For example, when it came to women’s suffrage, Addams did not base her arguments upon principles of equality or fairness. Instead, she argued that such a move represented lateral progress, and the inclusion of all—​including women—​would lead to the betterment of society. Similarly, her support of labor unions was tempered by the notion of lateral progress. Addams did not advocate that collective bargaining merely benefits members of unions; she viewed labor unions as working toward lateral progress by improving wages, hours, and working conditions for all workers. Pluralism is also a significant aspect of Addams’s social philosophy. In particular, Addams argued for the inclusion of all members of society in the institution, policies, and practices that led to social progress. In a 1930 article, “Widening the Circle of Enlightenment” Addams contends that pluralism has an energizing impact on society and should be embraced rather than feared. In this manner, Addams was an early American theorist who saw the value of diversity. Addams suggested that immigrants kept America from becoming static by bringing their cultural heritage to the United States. Reciprocally, immigrants benefited from engaging in the cultural heritage found in North America. For Addams, social progress demanded that all voices be heard, but she believed in the power of collective intelligence to find common cause from that diversity.

On the Maturation of Addams Studies     19 Addams’s valorization of cultural diversity was so thoroughgoing that she integrated it into her pacifist arguments. In Newer Ideals of Peace, Addams contends that cosmopolitan cities are a model for international peace. Although not romanticizing the conflicts between groups in the city, Addams draws on numerous experiences of people from different cultural heritages setting aside their differences to develop working relationships and help one another survive the challenges of urban life. She claims, “Because of their difference in all external matters, in all of the non-​essentials of life, the people in a cosmopolitan city are forced to found their community of interests upon the basic and essential likenesses of their common human nature” (2007, 12). Addams believed that if diverse people under the strain of Chicago’s urban blight could find a way to work together, then countries in the international community could also come to some equilibrium without violence. Addams applied her pluralistic commitment to intellectual understanding and avoiding exclusionary positions. Hull House welcomed speakers from various political standpoints, whether the residents agreed with those positions or not. Addams eschewed ideological ties for herself and the Hull House community to foster this openness. Although she was sympathetic to many of the arguments of socialists, anarchists, feminists, and various Christian leaders, she never entirely accepted any ideological position. Demonstrating her pragmatism, she avoided political labels but variously aligned herself when it meant advancing the cause of social progress. On many occasions, Addams and Hull House were criticized for not associating themselves with an ideological camp. Another aspect of her social philosophy was a robust sense of democracy. Addams maintained a definition of democracy beyond understanding it as a political structure. For Addams, democracy represented both a mode of living and social morality (2002, 7). Accordingly, the lives of citizens intertwine, and this relationship creates a duty to understand the struggles and circumstances of fellow citizens. Reciprocity of social relations is crucial for providing citizens with the empathetic foundation necessary to energize democracy. Social settlements were experiments in the kind of democracy that Addams endeavored to promote: one of active social engagement. Addams’ definition of democracy becomes most evident in Democracy and Social Ethics, where she makes two equivalencies clear. First, moral theory in the modern age must emphasize social ethics. Second, for Addams, democracy is social ethics (2002a/​1902, 9). Addams metaphorically described democracy as a dynamic organism that must grow with changing times to remain vital. In Newer Ideals of Peace, Addams suggests that the United States’ political institutions and morality should progress. She argued that America’s founders, whom she admired, developed the Bill of Rights based upon a personal sense of morality appropriate for their era (2007/​1906, 25–​26). However, Addams viewed social morality as the appropriate response to the recent rise of big cities and the improvements in technology and transportation that brought so many people together. The time had come to emphasize the social relations necessary for a vibrant democracy under the current historical circumstances. Addams advocated a “social democracy,” highlighting a way of being over the political structure. Addams’s valorization of

20    Patricia M. Shields, Maurice Hamington, and Joseph Soeters democracy did not entail a static object of affection. She wanted democracy to grow and flourish, which required ongoing conversation and change. In this manner, Addams never conflated her love of democracy with unabashed patriotism. Finally, Addams’s social philosophy is markedly comfortable with fallibilism in her social philosophy. One aspect of Addams’s work that differentiates it from traditional philosophic literature is its humility. Employing the experimental method of American pragmatists, Addams described numerous ventures undertaken by the Hull House community to foster sympathetic knowledge or lateral progress. However, Addams was not afraid to recount her errors (i.e., the Hull House Coffee House in Addams (1990/​1910, 79). For Addams, mistakes are growth opportunities and are worth the risk of active engagement. Mistakes are likely in crossing class and cultural boundaries—​ moving from the familiar to the unfamiliar. Still, if they are done in the spirit of care and with humility, then the errors are not insurmountable and have the potential to be great teachers. Often, the upper-​class, college-​educated, white women who predominated the Hull House community demonstrated their lack of cultural sensitivity only to provide Addams with an anecdote for further social analysis and an opportunity to learn from the errors. Mistakes were merely part of the pragmatist cycle of action and reflection. Addams leaves a rich legacy of American pragmatist social philosophy devoted to social amelioration through sympathetic understanding, lateral progress, pluralistic democratic practices, and a willingness to admit mistakes. However, in reading the themes in the above two sections, one can see that philosophy and sociology are not mutually exclusive realms in Addams’s thinking. Addams dwelled in the world of practice. Fields such as public administration and social work are actively applying her insights to their profession.

Addams’s Place in Public Administration The origin story of US Public Administration (PA) as an independent field begins with an 1887 essay written by political science professor and future president Woodrow Wilson. His article called for a “science of administration” as an antidote to “The poisonous atmosphere of city government, the crooked secrets of state administration, . . . and corruption . . . in the bureaux at Washington” (Wilson 1887/​ 1978, 5). He argued widespread corruption and mismanagement could be resolved by separating administration from politics and approaching the execution of laws through the lenses of science.1 Alongside the wisdom of Wilson, students of PA history point to the establishment of the New York Bureau of Municipal Research (1909) as a landmark event. This ground-​breaking, non-​profit institution pioneered research into efficient procedures for

On the Maturation of Addams Studies     21 governments and produced leaders in public administration for generations. According to George Hopkins (1912), a trustee of the Bureau, “Municipal research is a method, not a panacea. It aims not to make over either the man in office or the men who vote, but to give men as they are better methods of working for the public and to give the public as it is better methods of watching and judging what their public servants do” (204). This quote illustrates PA’s emphasis on process and its masculine worldview (e.g., “men in office,” “men who vote”) (Hopkins 1912, 204).2 There was no room for the contributions of Addams or the settlement women reformers.3 Since the 1960s, public administration scholars have worked to broaden PA’s scope to include an emphasis on social equity and social justice (Frederickson 1971, 1990; Hart 1974). In the last twenty years, this effort has included a readiness to re-​examine the field’s history and acknowledge the racist policies of founder Woodrow Wilson (Yellin 2013). This historical recovery includes adding diversity to the voices that influenced PA’s origin. Jane Addams has emerged as a prominent voice in this reimagined, useable, historical legacy.4 She enters the field as someone influential in practice, theory, and policy.

Influence on PA Practice The recognition of Addams’s influence on the practice of PA began with Camilla Stivers’s Bureau Men and Settlement Women: Reconstructing Public Administration in the Progressive Era (2000). Here, she contrasted the approach to municipal management by the New York Bureau men and the women of the settlement movement. She began to unearth an alternative model of city management developed by the women of the settlement movement. Unlike the bureau men’s innovation (running a city like an efficient business), the women proposed a “municipal household” approach. This model viewed the city as an extension of the home, with care for its residents at its core. Stivers did not single out Addams for any particular attention. Subsequently, PA scholars have shown how Jane Addams, a philosopher, non-​profit executive director, government official, and spokesperson for the settlement movement, articulated and practiced the Settlement model of public administration.5 Although Addams (1902, 2007/​1906) did not discover the municipal household model, books like Democracy and Social Ethics and Newer Ideals of Peace provide a philosophical foundation connecting it to women’s responsibility in running a household. Like a household, the city should be designed to care for its citizens, and women, who have long held responsibility for the household, are uniquely poised to aid in this venture while at the same time excluded from participating. Her social ethics’ bottoms-​up approach to management and concepts like democracy as a way of life, sympathetic understanding, positive peace, and lateral progress provided additional legitimacy for the settlement model. They also have contemporary relevance as PA scholars incorporate social equity and social justice into their theory and practice (Guy and McCandless 2020).

22    Patricia M. Shields, Maurice Hamington, and Joseph Soeters Hull House served as a training ground for women to break public administration leadership barriers. For example, Florence Kelley became the first woman to run a state agency regulating workplace safety, Julia Lathrop was the first woman to run a federal agency (Children’s Bureau), and Francis Perkins became the first woman US Cabinet member (secretary of labor). Hull House provided these and many other talented women with a springboard to administrative experiences previously unavailable and unexplored. Addams was the gardener who provided the environment for them to flourish. She also nurtured their innate abilities, championed them publicly, and campaigned behind the scenes to move them into positions of prominence (Burnier 2022). During PA’s formative years, its male leaders fought for professional recognition. The reforms they advocated were opposed by a political system that showered benefits on supporters through the spoils system. Politicians publicly humiliated the male reformers by questioning their masculinity. They were called “political hermaphrodites,” “mamby-​ pamby,” and “Miss Nancy’s” (Stivers 1995, 525). Taylor’s scientific management provided an attractive, objective, and manly model to anchor their profession. Hence, the practice of PA defined itself using masculine lenses, which left little room for the contributions of the settlement women (Stivers 1993, 2000).

Influence on PA Theory Addams influences public administration theory through her feminist pragmatism. Since the late 1990s, PA scholars have explored the relevance of philosophical pragmatism to PA.6 Pragmatism’s emphasis on practice, focus on resolving problematic situations, non-​ideological stance, and vision of participatory democracy make it a good fit for a field responsible for the “implementation and stewardship of the products of a living democracy” (Shields 1998, 199). By claiming that democracy went beyond the procedures of politics into a “way of life,” Addams opened the door for public administrators to become an integral part of democracy by organizing and participating in public meetings (participatory democracy) and everyday interactions with citizens. Public administration was no longer something separate from democracy. Addams’s practice-​oriented, feminist pragmatism and experiences at Hull House showed people how to work as if democracy was a way of life and not just something men did when they went to the voting booth, jury room, or political rally. In addition, her philosophical contributions, such as sympathetic knowledge, perplexity, and lateral progress, provide new theoretical tools applicable to a field searching to incorporate diversity and care into its theoretical toolkit.7

Influence on Social Welfare Policy Her influence on policy is perhaps most dramatic, “Addams, more than any other individual, should be credited with conceiving and spawning. . . a maternal welfare state”

On the Maturation of Addams Studies     23 with caring, compassionate, and comprehensive institutions focused on the desperate “problems of women, mothers, children and the urban poor” (Stillman 1998, 82). Her leadership led to successful efforts to pass protective legislation that established and maintained “fair standards of wages, hours and housing,” prohibited child labor, regulated dangerous workplaces, established more vigorous, “effective public health programs, and instituted a more practical system of public education” (Trattner 1979, 183). The Sheppard-​Towner Act of 1921, which established state agencies for maternal and child health education services, and New Deal legislation are examples (Skochpol 1992). Social service agencies “that grew out of her moral convictions permanently transformed how the United States cares for its poor” (Stillman 1998, 97). Although Addams had an enormous influence on social welfare policy, this was one policy area that public administration professionals did not embrace. As a result, state and federal programs dealing with maternal and child health and social welfare became the purview of social work.

Addams Place in Social Work Social work is a professional world where women have always been in the decided majority and filled the leadership ranks. The influence of Jane Addams is evident. Hull House is on the campus of the University of Illinois at Chicago, just a few blocks from the Jane Addams College of Social Work (Johnson 2004). The Grace Abbott School of Social Work at the University of Nebraska at Omaha and the University of Chicago’s School of Social Service Administration demonstrate that her Hull House protégés were instrumental in defining the profession.

Tension Between Casework and Community Service In the late 1800s, urban and industrialized patriarchal societies had little capacity or interest in addressing public problems affecting women and children. As a result, women’s organizations formed and fought to improve the lives of women and children through playgrounds, libraries, and neighborhood clean-​up campaigns that improved public health (lowered child and infant mortality) (Skochpol 1992). In this way, women secured a niche in public policy formulation and implementation. The settlement movement emerged from this tradition. In this world of laissez-​faire economics, poverty was attributed to personal failures such as laziness and drunkenness. The powerful and conservative Charity Organization Society (COS) created the “friendly visitor” program whereby young, upper-​class, mostly women, visited desperate poverty-​stricken families to teach them habits that would encourage self-​reliance and self-​sufficiency. Social work in the United States has roots in both traditions. Not surprisingly, the field inherently experiences tensions associated with this bifurcated legacy.

24    Patricia M. Shields, Maurice Hamington, and Joseph Soeters When Addams arrived at Hull House, the punitive, individual, or family-​ oriented Charity Organization Society dominated public approaches to charity. Another influential founder of US social work, Mary Richmond, began her career as a COS-​f riendly visitor. She devoted herself to establishing the social work profession and shaping the field through its curriculum. She did not support women’s right to vote and had little use for the social settlements, viewing them as “old-​ fashioned missions doing harm by their cheap sprinkling sort of charity” (Franklin 1986, 510). Addams, who disdained labels, never claimed to be a social worker, and she certainly had little interest in the social work curriculum. Addams was critical of the friendly visitor program because it failed to “recognize the catastrophic consequences of intransigent, societal injustices.” She instead sought a social work field “that recognized systematic problems and worked to remedy them” (Shields 2017, 48). Advocates of the two views were active in charity organizations during the early 1900s. Jane Addams had significant influence during this period, rising to the position of president in the National Conference of Charities and Corrections (later National Conference of Social Work), “signaling the social work professionals were adopting many of her ideas” (Davis 1994, 198). At the same time, the progressive movement was achieving legislative success. Unfortunately, this strong foothold in the field was short-​lived. Like lawyers and medical doctors, social workers wanted to be recognized as professionals. In a 1915 address, Abraham Flexner declared social work ineligible for “professional” status because, among other things, it lacks “its own unique technology.” This led the field to adopt, like medicine and law, individual/​family casework as its technology (Austin 1983). Mary Richmond led the effort.8 The ability to charge for casework services was another practical advantage. However, the focus on casework undermined Addams’s vision of social work. Jane Addams also turned her attention to World War I and the peace movement at this critical time. Her influence in social work waned as her national stature collapsed. Ultimately, the social work curriculum emphasized casework. Today, this can be witnessed in the mental health field where social workers engage in individual or family psychotherapy. As a result, Addams’s perspective became a critical second-​tier influence in social work. Her influence is seen in courses covering social policy, poverty, injustice, and administration and in the many social workers implementing the public and nonprofit programs of the maternal welfare state (Shields 2017). In 1930, Addams addressed the National Conference of Social Work and advocated for a social work profession that focused on the community and helped to ameliorate structural social problems. She compared social workers to doctors and lawyers who “quietly and unobtrusively collect their fees” from individuals who received their services. While social workers “must collect fees, not from the people” they serve whose “pockets are empty, but from the prosperous members of the community who are convinced that those services in the first place are necessary and in the second place have been well performed” (Addams 1931, 50).

On the Maturation of Addams Studies     25 In this speech, she used social work’s contribution to public health as an example. Social workers were able to show that a “tuberculosis map of a given city, superimposed upon a poverty map of the same city will almost exactly coincide” (Addams 1931, 51). She also noted social work’s role in venereal disease prevention. The physician treats the patient, but the social worker contributes to the campaign against the disease and assists in the patient’s readjustment “upon his return to the community.” Communicable diseases cannot be separated from the community, and the social worker makes the link (Addams 1931, 51). The disparity between social work’s mission of serving the community and promoting social justice and its practical needs is a constant, reoccurring source of tension in the field (Haynes 1998). In the 1960s, during the civil rights era, social work reemphasized its social justice mission (Ruth and Marshall 2017, 53). Yet, by the 1990s, the focus of psychotherapy drew criticism. For example, Specht and Courtney’s (1995) influential book Unfaithful Angels: How Social Work Has Abandoned Its Mission highlighted Addams. It showed how social work focused on the paying, worried-​well while losing track of their true mission—​promoting social justice. One would expect this tension to continue. Also, given Addams’s pragmatism, one would know she did not view these as strict, mutually exclusive categories but rather perspectives that would require balance and evolution.

Feminism/​Postmodern Philosophy Addams is recognized for her feminist pragmatist contributions to sociology, philosophy, and public administration. Ironically, during the 1970s, when social work began to integrate feminism into its corpus, Addams was marginalized—​her feminism was even considered disastrous (Chambers 1986). Critics claimed that Addams’s focus on civic housekeeping and traditional feminine concerns undermine contemporary feminist objectives. “Liberation in the end required more than an expansion of domestic values into the world” (Phillips 1974, 65). Addams’s recognition as a feminist pragmatist philosopher only began in the 1990s (Seigfried 1996). Most social work academics interested in epistemology investigated postmodern philosophy (Sands and Nuccio 1992). A Google scholar search for “ ‘social work’ and Foucault” resulted in 63.7 thousand sources. In contrast, “ ‘social work’ and Addams” resulted in over 17.7 thousand. The social work academic literature was more focused on Foucault. A recognized effort by US social work scholars to recover Addams’s feminist pragmatism has not happened.

International Attention In life, Addams was recognized as a leader on the international stage. Contemporary social work scholars, well beyond the United States, are finding inspiration in Addams,

26    Patricia M. Shields, Maurice Hamington, and Joseph Soeters and they are drawing from feminist pragmatism and peace literature as they do. Her work on democracy as a way of life and social justice is of particular note (Melgar et al. 2021; Braches-​Chyrek 2018; Tröhler 2005). They are also linking her to their historical traditions. For example, one of the pillars of German social work, Alice Salomon, traveled to Hull House and brought back ideas that influenced social work practice and education (Braches-​Chyrek 2018). The definition of social work from the International Federation of Social Workers is consistent with Addams’s pragmatic, social-​justice-​oriented vision. The social work profession “Promotes social change, problem-​solving in human relationships, and the empowerment and liberation of people to enhance well-​being. Utilizing theories of human behavior and social systems, social work intervenes at the points where people interact with their environments. Principles of human rights and social justice are fundamental to social work” (Hare 2004, 409). Whether by accident or design, Addams’s vision of social work appears to be alive and well.

Handbook Organization The work of Jane Addams is challenging to categorize. She was skeptical of rigid categorical systems. Her work is known for bridging categories rather than defining them strictly. The sections that organize this handbook reflect the blurred boundaries characteristic of her contributions to thought and practice. These categories represent useful distinctions, not strict intellectual borders. The handbook contains six sections. The chapters in the first section, “Addams, Democracy and Social Theory,” address Addams’s rich understanding of democracy as an ethic and a way of living. In “Jane Addams’s Democratic Vision,” political scientist Carol Nackenoff explores Addams’s evolving notion of democracy and the development of democratic citizens who transcend insularity and an individual ethic through association and collaboration. Democracy depends on the recognition of truth and the rejection of lies. In “Vital Lies and the Fate of Democracy,” philosopher Scott Pratt examines how Addams addresses this critical challenge to democracy. Public Administration scholar DeLysa Burnier explores Addams’s care and justice approach to managing and leading in a living democracy in “Jane Addams: Care Centered Leadership and the Democratic Community.” In “Jane Addams and Richard Rorty: The Philosophy and Practice of Pragmatist Social Ethics,” philosopher Chris Voparil uses their shared vision of democratic life to show surprising alignment in their thinking. Philosopher Maurice Hamington concludes the section with “Labor Unions as a Factor in a Caring Democracy.” Here he links Addams’s vision of a caring, social democracy with the efforts of collective bargaining organizations in a manner that appears absent in today’s care ethics literature. Section Two, “Addams and Her Contemporaries,” focuses on Addams’s relationships with significant thinkers and opinion leaders of her time. In “The Complementary

On the Maturation of Addams Studies     27 Theory and Practice of Jane Addams and George Herbert Mead: Bending Toward Justice,” philosopher Barbara Lowe elaborates on the connection and disconnection between these two public figures and foundational scholars in the social and behavioral sciences. Obie Clayton, June Gary Hopps, Shena Leverett Brown, and Chris Strickland, all scholars in sociology and social work, examine the impact of Jane Addams and W. E. B. Du Bois on policies toward minorities today in “Legacies of Jane Addams and W.E.B. Du Bois: Lessons for Scholarship on Diversity and Inclusion in Organizations.” Philosopher Shane Ralston examines the work of possibly the two most influential figures in American pragmatism in “Jane Addams and John Dewey.” Philosophers Erin Tarver and Shannon Sullivan focus on specific differences between Jane Addams and William James in their views of leisure time activities in “Jane Addams and William James on Sport and Relaxation.” Sociologist Joseph Soeters compares Jane Addams’s and Mary Parker Follet’s views on general aspects of human interaction and connects these insights with current research in “Jane Addams and Mary Parker Follett’s Search for Cooperation.” Philosopher and Addams scholar Judy Whipps elaborates on aspects of the political inheritance of Jane Addams in “Hull House Social Change Methodology and New Deal Reforms.” At the end of this section, political scientist Wynne Walker Moskop examines peculiarities in how Jane Addams built and maintained political connections in “Intersections of Race, Gender, and Class in Jane Addams’s Political Friendships.” The contributors to Section Three, “Addams Across Disciplines,” interrogate Addams from the variety of academic fields that she influenced. In “Inhabiting Reality: The Literary Art of Jane Addams,” English scholar Katherine Joslin frames Addams as an important literary figure of her time who engaged art, novels, plays, and storytelling as vital methods of social amelioration. “A Biographical Angle on Jane Addams’s Feminism,” contributed by historian and Addams biographer Louise W. Knight explores Addams’s complex relationship to feminism. In “Jane Addams and Public Administration: Clarifying Industrial Citizenship,” public administration theorist Patricia Shields describes Addams’s role in public administration by delving into the nature of “industrial citizenship.” Public administration scholar Nuri Heckler addresses how the field can still learn from Addams’s race and class analysis in “Public Administration and Social Equity: Catching Up To Jane Addams.” In juxtaposing feminism and pragmatism in light of cross-​cultural thinking, philosopher Amrita Banarjee offers an expansive and contemporary look at Addams’s moral approach in “Dialogic Reciprocity, Liminal Spatiality: Jane Addams’s Social Ethics at the Confluence of Feminism and Pragmatism.” Exploring educational theory, philosopher Nuria Sara Miras Boronat shows the relevance of Addams’s engagement with educational ideas to contemporary challenges in “Jane Addams on Play, Education and Ethical Teaching.” This section’s final chapter, “Was Jane Addams A Sociologist” by sociologist Kaspar Villadsen, argues that Addams was a sociologist with a strong social vision inspired by Christian ethics. Section Four, “Addams, Peace and International Relations,” takes up Addams’s public role as a peace advocate. As a leading expert in international affairs, political scientist Jacqui True explains Jane Addams’s position in “Peace Pragmatism: Jane Addams’s

28    Patricia M. Shields, Maurice Hamington, and Joseph Soeters Role in Feminist International Relations.” Philosopher Tadd Ruetenik shows how critical Jane Addams was to the pervasiveness and limitations of military virtues in “Jane Addams, Expansive Masculinity, and the Fragility of the War Virtues.” Public administration scholar Patricia Shields and sociologist Joseph Soeters translate important insights from Addams’s pragmatism to ambitions in today’s peacekeeping operations in “Jane Addams and the Noble Art of Peaceweaving.” Political scientists Chiara Ruffa and Chiara Tulp apply recommendations that evolve from Jane Addams’s experiences in settlement work to fieldwork on conflict situations in “Strange Encounters? Contemporary Field Researchers and Six Lessons from Jane Addams.” At the end of this section, philosopher Tess Varner examines Addams’s useful insights into current problems in “Jane Addams and Twenty-​first-​Century Refugee Resettlement: Towards the Substitution of Nurture for Warfare.” Section Five, “Addams on Knowledge and Methods,” explores the processes, thinking, and values that inform her theories and practices. Philosopher Marilyn Fischer initiates the section interrogating Addams’s evolutionary thinking as essential for understanding her work in “Addams’s Writing, Thinking, and Activism.” Geography scholar Núria Font-​ Casaseca suggests that Addams employed a mixed-​methods approach in her urban sociology that offers insights for contemporary research in “Hull House Maps And Papers, 1895. A Feminist Research Approach To Urban Inequalities By Jane Addams And Florence Kelley.” Addams was a community organizer and social thinker who addressed the entrenched problems of her day. Philosopher Danielle Lake explores her ameliorative methods in “Designing In, With, and Across: Jane Addams’s Approach to Wicked Problems.” Sociologists Patricia Madoo Lengermann and Gillian Niebrugge discuss how Addams employs narrative tools in “Jane Addams’s Use of Story in Sociological Research: ‘As No One But A Neighbor Can See.” Relatedly, sociologist Erik Schneiderhan and criminology scholar Kaitlyn Quinn offer a methodological analysis of Addams’s use of neighborly proximity in their chapter, “Jane Addams and the Return to Settlement Sociology: Inspiration for How to Help Others in the Digital Age.” Education and disability scholar Claudia Gillberg brings Addams’s methodology into conversation with modern disability studies in “Jane Addams’s Pragmatist Feminist Thoughts and Actions: For and With Ill and Disabled Women.” The section concludes with a chapter of interest for those conducting research in Addams Studies by archival scholar Cathy Moran Hajo: “Making the Jane Addams Papers Accessible to New Audiences.” Section Six contains chapters that address how Addams’s ideas are being implemented as social practice today. Sociologist Ann Oakley defines the practice-​oriented and international field of settlement sociology and shows the role played by Addams in “Jane Addams and Settlement Sociology.” In “Social Ethics for Ecological and Community Resilience: Jane Addams and the Environment,” philosopher Heather Keith shows the usefulness and timeliness of Addams’s social ethics for environmental disasters. Addams spent critical formative years at Rockford Female Seminary (now Rockford University). In “Jane Addams’s Education, Hull-​ House and Current-​ Day Civic Engagement Practices in Higher Education: Coming Full Circle,” psychologist Belinda Wholeben and English professor Mary Weaks-​Baxter, both with faculty experience at

On the Maturation of Addams Studies     29 Rockford University, show the influence of Rockford on every aspect of Addams’s life and works. Social workers Heidi Muurinen and Aino Kääriäinen show how Addams’s pragmatic view of knowledge is successfully applied to social work practice in “Jane Addams and Epistemic Agency in Contemporary Social Work.” Finally, in “Affect and Emotion in Jane Addams’s Thought,” philosopher Clara Fischer shows the relevance of Addams’s view of emotion across disciplines, focusing on affect in political and ontological settings.

Conclusion The content of this handbook is only the beginning. We hope that these chapters resonate with scholars from multiple disciplines, countries, and generations and generate a further blossoming of discussion regarding the extraordinary insights of Jane Addams. The Epilogue, “Addams’s Contemporary Relevance,” considers the implications of Addams’s work for today’s complicated and increasingly divisive environment. This final chapter draws from and extrapolates the analysis of the chapters that follow.

Notes 1. For a comprehensive discussion of the influence and impact of this essay see Stillman (1973). 2. Also see Stivers (1995) for more evidence of the “masculine” nature of PA during this period. 3. See Stivers (2000); Bruiner (2022); McGuire (2011); Shields (2017, 2022); Shields and Elias (2022); Schachter (1997, 2002). 4. See (Stivers 1995, 2000, 2010; Shields 2005, 2008, 2022; Shields and Rangarajan 2011; Brom and Shields 2006; Brunier 2022).   These scholars drew heavily on scholarship in sociology and philosophy. Of particular note are Deegan,1988, Sigfried 1996, and Whipps 2004. Political Scientist Theda Skocpol’s (1992) Protecting Soldiers and Mothers: The Political Origins of Social Policy was also pivotal. 5. See Shields (2005, 2017, 2022); Burnier (2022); Fenton (2022); Stivers (2010). 6. See Ansell 2011; Hildebrand 2005; Shields 1996, 2003, 2008, 2011; Snider 2000; Evans 2005. 7. See Evans 2000; Shields 2003, 2006, 2017, 2022. 8. Please note, Richmond did recognize the problems with the coercive “policing character” of the friendly visitor mission and linked case work with experiential, practical wisdom and helped it become a “shared platform of insights which allowed for a realistic identification of tasks to be shared between assistant and the assisted in the resolution of problems” (Lorenz 2014, 19).

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Pa rt I

A DDA M S , DE M O C R AC Y, A N D S O C IA L T H E ORY Edited by Patricia M. Shields

Chapter 2

Jane Adda ms ’ s Demo cratic V i si on Carol Nackenoff

Introduction: Addams’s Milieu and Her Networks Jane Addams maintained a longstanding commitment to democracy, and in her unfolding understanding of it, theory and practice became inextricably intertwined. Democracy had been a centerpiece of her speeches since about 1890; Christian fellowship had been an early key to democracy for her, and she had expanded to include social justice and empowerment at the workplace (Knight, 2005, p. 363). The role that the political empowerment of women played in advancing democracy came later in her thinking, and Addams was a relative latecomer to the cause of suffrage. As an advocate of municipal reform, she came to realize that women’s votes could help elect reform candidates, and that women’s ethical concerns would only be taken seriously if they had the ballot (Knight, 2005, pp. 380–​381). In this chapter, we will explore Addams’s evolving understanding of democracy and what she thought it would take to create modern democratic citizens who could transcend insularity and an outmoded individualistic ethos by collaboration and association. Through interaction, she believed, people with diverse backgrounds and experiences could forge an identification with the common lot and develop understanding, respect, and empathy, and make adjustments that would allow them to live peacefully together in a cosmopolitan community. Women, Addams thought, were helping lead the way. Addams herself was enmeshed in networks that ranged from local to national and international; she modeled the new era of associational activity that group theorists wrote about. She believed that these networks offered an opportunity to enlarge morality, though the onset of a world war and failures of the League of Nations disappointed Addams and set back the kinds of reforms she had hoped to

38   Carol Nackenoff see; war and intense nationalism did not foster the kind of shared understanding that could build a transnational civil society. Political institutions at all levels had important roles to play in addressing social problems, but liberal institutions would have to be flexible, responsive, and dynamic, not bureaucratic and sclerotic. And democracy meant more than a set of institutions—​goals had to come from the citizens who would develop them together. The chapter ends by considering some of the 20th-​and early 21st-​century developments that have posed obstacles and challenges to the realization of Addams’s progressive democratic vision. Those who are inspired by Addams to seek a more socially just, humane world where citizens are empowered to realize their ends collaboratively must deal with these challenges. Industrialization and urbanization brought masses of people together in cities, and more and more goods and services were produced outside the household. As Charlotte Perkins Gilman, who lived briefly at Hull House in 1895, put it, “our claim of domestic isolation becomes merely another domestic myth” (Gilman, 1903, p. 330). Addams was familiar with some of the late 19th-​century evolutionary scholarship that accorded white women a unique and vital role to play in advancing civilization (Rosenberg, 1975, pp. 142–​144; Conway, 1971/​1972, pp. 171–​172).1 Addams argued that “as society grows more complicated it, is necessary that woman shall extend her sense of responsibility to many things outside of her own home if she would continue to preserve the home in its entirety” (Addams, 1910a, p. 21). An interdependent society was fast emerging, and for Addams, the 19th-​century ethos of individualism and conceptions of self-​reliance were outmoded. At a time when women were emphasizing the special talents, experiences, and community-​building skills that they could contribute to the public realm, masculine dispositions were cast as barriers to social progress. In a 1913 essay she wrote for the Ladies’ Home Journal, Addams imagined a situation in which men had to appeal to women for the ballot. She cast men as too fond of fighting and expenditure on military equipment, of ignoring industrial safety and the harms of long hours of factory work and of child labor (Addams, 1913a). She often drew upon the metaphor of government as housekeeping to argue that cities needed women’s skills, and that men were indifferent to civic housekeeping: Unsanitary housing, poisonous sewage, contaminated water, infant mortality, the spread of contagion, adulterated food, impure milk, smoke-​laden air, ill-​ventilated factories, dangerous occupations, juvenile crime, unwholesome crowding, prostitution and drunkenness, are the enemies which the modern cities must face and overcome, would they survive. (Addams, 1906)

A human-​welfare point of view was needed. Increasingly, philanthropic activities were passing from the private to the public sphere, and Addams felt that women needed to participate in politics so that they would not lose that over which they used to claim authority (Addams, 1906). For Addams, clinging to outmoded ideas that women’s place was in the domestic sphere was inappropriate—​just as inappropriate as clinging to the

Jane Addams’s Democratic Vision    39 expression of individual self-​interest. It was a moral and civic imperative for women to move beyond their own family circles. Even for conservative women, there are essential duties related to the home “which no one woman or group of women can adequately discharge unless they join the more general movements looking toward social amelioration through legal enactment”—​and therefore women needed to vote (Addams, 1910a, p. 21). The lines between what was public and what was private were shifting, blurring, so that for Addams, “[t]‌here is perhaps no one thing in American life at present which is changing so rapidly as the dividing line between private beneficent effort and public governmental effort” (Addams, 1913b, p. 2140). What defined public space—​and, indeed, public work—​was expanding, and Addams and other female reformers would play an important role in this transformation (Nackenoff, 2014). Indeed, Addams discerned this as early as 1910: How far have the Philanthropists contributed to the formation of the modern State, not because they would stifle their own personal sentiments of pity and justice, but because they realized how inadequate these were unless they could find expression as an integral branch of corporate government. Through a century, therefore, in anticipation of coming changes which does so much to bring changes about, the Philanthropists have been steadily engaged in making a new State. (Addams, 1910b, p. 70, italics added)

Around the time of this observation, the state itself was likened to an important association that could be usefully enlisted to address societal problems. Addams’s own vision challenged traditional boundaries between public and private. She did this in part by redefining “home” more broadly. She also believed that the work of organized Progressive Era women supported the development of a more nurturing, caring, interconnected, and collaborative society and state. Addams wrote and worked during a time of rapid growth in mass-​membership organizations. Organizations such as the General Federation of Women’s Clubs had chapters in almost every state, held face-​to-​face meetings, and promoted coordinated causes. People were increasingly seen as being members of multiple groups; human ideas and feelings were social. A number of her contemporaries joined in the conviction that, for modern liberal democracies, the era of the individual had ended. Arthur Bentley’s classic work, The Process of Government, argued that “the individual as a definite, firm, positive, foundation for individualized feelings and ideas, is a highly abstract social idea himself and in the way in which he is put to use, fictitious” (Bentley, 1949/​ 1908, p. 170, quote p. 204). Bentley considered groups the raw material of political life and linked associational activity and democracy. Addams’s life seemed to exemplify what Bentley saw. She was a leader and organizer of many large-​membership organizations operating on municipal, state, national, and international levels. For her, building democracy required work at all these levels, transcending the parochial but also working face-​to-​face with neighbors to create trust, understanding,

40   Carol Nackenoff and a sense of common purpose. Addams was part of a network of female and other progressive reformers. Just to offer some examples of Addams’s reach, within the United States, she served as vice president of the National American Woman Suffrage Association, she served on the platform committee of the newly founded Progressive Party when it nominated Theodore Roosevelt, she served as president of the National Conference on Corrections and Charities, and she was a founding member of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. As a cofounder of the Hull House Settlement, Addams worked to create wholesome activities for youth; playgrounds; domestic and juvenile courts; residence space for women working in the needle trades; cultural and intellectual enrichment opportunities; opportunities to appreciate the crafts, traditions, and culture of immigrant neighbors; meeting health care and other needs in the neighborhood; and building community. Reaching beyond national boundaries, Addams was a cofounder of the Women’s Peace Party, and founder and long-​serving president of the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF). As a thinker and reformer, Addams was enmeshed in extensive networks. At Hull House, Addams’s networks included University of Chicago faculty in the social sciences and the law school—​faculty who were, themselves, invested in seeking solutions to social problems—​as well as leaders in commercial enterprises, and leaders of religious organizations. She corresponded with and maintained a friendship with pragmatist philosopher William James, who emphasized the value of experience and the social nature of the self. James said that Democracy and Social Ethics was one of the great books of the time. Addams had given a series of lectures through the University of Chicago extension program in 1899, from which Democracy and Social Ethics grew (Fischer, 2013, p. 17). John Dewey, who headed the Department of Philosophy, Psychology, and Pedagogy at the University of Chicago, was a longtime friend, fellow activist, and member of the board at Hull House. Dewey taught Addams’s Democracy and Social Ethics in some of his classes. Addams was an original thinker in her own right; she and Dewey influenced each other (Hamington, 2018). Both Addams and Dewey had strong interests in how to generate a new, democratic public. During most of the time Addams was working and writing, the boundaries between academic research, research conducted by reformers, and reform work were not rigid. There was, for example, a great deal of reciprocal influence between the well-​educated women of Hull House and Chicago social scientists, philosophers, and legal scholars. The Chicago School of Civics and Philanthropy, closely associated with Julia Lathrop of Hull House, was incorporated into the University of Chicago as the School of Social Work in 1920. The American Journal of Sociology, founded at the University of Chicago in 1895, published a number of articles by Addams and fellow reformers. Addams, Julia Lathrop, Edith Abbott and Grace Abbott, and Sophonisba Breckinridge all sometimes taught at the University of Chicago. The leading scholars of the time visited or frequented Hull House. Scholars participated in, or advised, a number of progressive initiatives launched out of Hull House, including Roscoe Pound and George Herbert Mead. John Dewey served on the Hull House board from 1897 to 1903 (Nackenoff & Sullivan, 2014, 198–​200; Nackenoff, 2014; Lohmann, 2000, p. 12).

Jane Addams’s Democratic Vision    41 Networks meant more to Addams than just professional ones. She sought to construct cross-​ class, multi-​ ethnic, and cosmopolitan networks. Immigrant neighborhoods and labor unions were particularly cosmopolitan, in her view. People in each of these networks had to adjust so that they could find ways to live peacefully together, even when they were from traditionally hostile nations. Diversity, then, had educative and civic value.

Learning How to Realize Democracy Addams, who was familiar with some of John Stuart Mill’s writings,2 seemed drawn to his claim in Utilitarianism, that, with the advance of civilization, the citizen “comes as though instinctively, to be conscious of himself as a being who of course pays regard to others” (Mill, 1961/​1863, pp. 217–​218). A hallmark of progress for both was when democratic citizens came increasingly to consider the good of others as a component of their own feelings of happiness. Yet Addams was far more concerned than was Mill with the processes by which such changes in thinking could be brought about, and what work was required. Through what processes could modern democratic citizens be created, and how could a new, democratic public be created? Both Addams and John Dewey thought extensively about these issues. Consultation, Dewey said, uncovered “social needs and troubles” (Dewey, 1927, p. 206). Dewey wrote that the extension in space of the number of individuals who participate in an interest so that each has to refer his own action to that of others, and to consider the actions of others to give point and direction to his own, is equivalent to the breaking down of those barriers of class, race, and national territory which kept men from perceiving the full import of their activity. These more numerous and more varied points of contact denote a greater diversity of stimuli to which an individual has to respond. (Dewey, 1916, 101)

As early as 1895, Addams saw that the development of what she termed “social conscience” required connecting the injury to one with the concern of all—​something she saw elements of in labor unions (Addams, 1895, p. 183). This would prove to be a key to building the social ethic. Unless new democratic citizens were forged, 20th-​century social problems would not be addressed effectively. People had to come to understand and respect their differences. It was not about erasure of different backgrounds, experiences, and values, but about finding common ground. Learning required association and collaboration. For Addams, modern democratic citizens could be forged through “wider acquaintance with and participation in the life about them” because “much of the insensibility and hardness of the world is due to the lack of imagination which prevents a realization of

42   Carol Nackenoff the experiences of other people” (DSE, 5, 9). Addams’s creative vision for new and equal democratic citizens required building community, respect, and mutual understanding. It was a process that broke down individualism and insularity. For Addams, realizing democracy required that the privileged learn how to identify with the common and humble. “Identification with the common lot which is the essential idea of Democracy becomes the source and expression of social ethics” (Addams, 1902, p. 11). Acquiring a dynamic understanding of the characteristics, experiences, and values of others required sustained interaction with them. Too often, elite and bourgeois women instead spoke on behalf of what they considered the interests of subordinates—​those they sought to help.3 Addams articulated a version of this insight in Democracy and Social Ethics (1902). Young female charity workers would accomplish little unless they learned from, and listened to, the people in the poor and mostly immigrant communities in which they were working. These privileged young women would otherwise simply speak on behalf of their urban neighbors, advocating for what they thought should be in their interests. Humility and discussion across differences would help these young charity workers develop sympathy, respect, and understanding. Such interactions were essential “not only in order to believe in their integrity, which is after all but the first beginnings of social morality, but in order to attain to any mental or moral integrity for ourselves or any such hope for society” (Addams, 1902, p. 177). The perspectives of the privileged require constant testing by broader experience, or it would be easy for reformers to simply assume they know what is in the interest of those less privileged (Nackenoff, 1999, p. 151). “Most of the misunderstandings of life are due to partial intelligence, because our experiences have been so unlike that we cannot comprehend each other,” she wrote (Addams, 1902, p. 93). She counseled: “We are under a moral obligation in choosing our experiences, since the result of those experiences must ultimately determine our understanding of life” (Addams, 1902, pp. 9–​10). Addams learned her lessons about not speaking on behalf of others in part through her association with organized workers in the Chicago area during times of tense industrial relations at Pullman and elsewhere. She noted in Democracy and Social Ethics that industrialists learned nothing about the needs and feelings of the workers and failed to connect their own experiences to theirs when these industrialists simply tried to do something for their workers. In merely being taken care of, the workers feel the absence of democracy (Addams, 1902, pp. 144–​145). “To perform too many good deeds may be to lose the power of recognizing good in others”; the moral lesson of the current time is easily lost (Addams, 1902, p. 146). Dewey later noted that “[w]‌hat is sometimes called a benevolent interest in others may be but an unwitting mask for an attempt to dictate to them what their good shall be instead of an endeavor to free them so that they may seek and find the good of their own choice” (Dewey, 1916, p. 141). Conceptions of morality must evolve beyond an individualistic ethic (e.g., Addams, 1902, p. 13). Allowing people to seek and find their own good, in conjunction with others, was important to this process. “Much of our ethical maladjustment in social

Jane Addams’s Democratic Vision    43 affairs arises from the fact that we are acting upon a code of ethics adapted to individual relationships, but not to the larger social relationship to which it is bunglingly applied” (Addams, 1902, p. 221). When she celebrated the habits of self-​sacrifice for the well-​being of others that she saw among her immigrant neighbors, Addams thought she saw a standard of morality higher than that of the average charity visitor (Fischer, 2013, p. 26; Addams, 1902, pp. 19–​20, 22–​23, 30). Even if she felt that they were generally indicators only of a primitive morality, these sentiments could be built upon in the broader quest.

How Data Gathering and Participation, Conjoined, Promoted Good Policy Making In contrast to a number of other Progressive Era thinkers, Addams insisted that crafting solutions to social problems was not a matter of scientific management or expertise as conventionally understood. It required a different kind of understanding in which the meanings and experiences of others formed essential building blocks. Distancing policy solutions from the people they were designed to help was doomed to miss the mark. Addams saw a sharp distinction between this approach to knowledge and that of budding social scientists who sought specialized knowledge in order to build and defend academic professionalization (or, for that matter, insulated expertise inside bureaucratic institutions) (Deegan, 1988, p. 255).4 For pragmatists, experimentation and experience promoted knowledge acquisition, and the reformer must discover what improvements actually worked in practice. In Twenty Years at Hull-​House (1910c, pp. 130–​131), Addams offers a story that provides a number of lessons about experience, expertise, and democratic decision-​making. She recalled Hull House’s painstaking effort to implement the latest in nutritional science in what she called the New England kitchen. Despite their best efforts, local residents did not respond well to the food. “We did not reckon . . . with the wide diversity in nationality and inherited tastes,” Addams observed. One woman confessed that, while the food was nutritious, she liked to eat “what she’d ruther.” Meanwhile, “the social value of the coffee-​ house and the gymnasium . . . were quickly demonstrated” (Addams, 1910c, pp. 130–​ 131; Schneiderhan, 2011, pp. 608–​609). This lesson also demonstrated that consumers of services needed to be involved in the co-​production of these services if such services are to be useful to them, having unique knowledge of their particular circumstances (Dorf & Sabel, 1998, 317). The story underscored a perspective Addams shared with Dewey and James: that thinking and action were inextricably linked, and habits of intelligence emerged through action (Schneiderhan, 2011, pp. 594–​597).5 The story held lessons for designing public policies. Such policies also had to be field tested and subject to revision. There must be opportunities to monitor results and make

44   Carol Nackenoff adjustments in consultation with those affected by policies. This was part of democratic governance and collaborative decision-​making. For Addams, Dewey, and James, constant inquiry would yield good policy choices, so long as the community relationships that had been built were maintained, and experimentation led to more intelligent adjustments. And there were implications for participatory democratic citizenship. The poor were deliberative agents and should be accorded voice, agency, and dignity. Citizens were capable of articulating their own needs and learning through action, too. To take the knowledge, standpoints, experiences, and wishes of others into account in designing good solutions to social problems, policy making had to be inclusive and dynamic. Addams’s democratic vision involved generating new practices that would help open up the public sphere to groups formerly excluded. Experimentation furthered collaborative approaches to problem solving; both were essential to progress. Addams’s experiences with immigrants from different nations and backgrounds in the Hull House vicinity convinced her that social cooperation and collaboration were possible. Addams and a number of her allies were also engaged in a variety of public-​private collaborations, and they occasionally devised experimental projects at the local level that they then worked to persuade legislatures to adopt (Nackenoff & Sullivan, 2014, pp. 181, 189; Nackenoff 2014, pp. 154–​155). The juvenile court was one such project, and what Julia Lathrop and a number of volunteers helped launch became a national movement in the first years of the 20th century (Nackenoff & Sullivan, 2014). Successes in one arena might suggest approaches to a related set of problems, and different groups of reformers learned from each other’s efforts (Nackenoff, 2014, p. 153 and passim; Dorf & Sabel, pp. 314–​315, 322). Addams and her Hull House allies considered open-​minded pursuit of wider experience and social-​scientific inquiry as related endeavors. From the time Hull House Maps and Papers project was launched in 1893, Addams and allied reformers began to realize that collecting and disseminating data and statistics through investigative reports, journals, newspapers, and testimony were tools for persuading the public and legislative bodies. It helped professionalizing women persuade fellow citizens that the problems they worked to address required governmental resources and not merely philanthropic efforts (Muncy, 1991, p. 37; Nackenoff, 2016, p. 233; Shields, 2006, p. 433). And it was the currency of the day: Addams observed in 1910 that when appearing before the legislature, the philanthropist “was obliged to wield the weapon of statistics if only that he might appear as a man of science and not as a sentimentalist” (Addams, 1910b, p. 71). However, reformers such as Addams, Dewey, and William James understood that data gathering was insufficient for gaining knowledge about neighbors and fellow citizens. Sustained interaction was required. To understand and respect the interests and felt needs of others, contact, discussion, and collaboration were critical. Gaining experience was a broadening of the “sample” of life; it helped reformers learn about their neighbors, and vice versa, and therefore fostered the democratic spirit (Nackenoff,

Jane Addams’s Democratic Vision    45 2016, p. 223). Data collection, then, was a kind of social scientific inquiry that created a wider experience for the privileged and could be disseminated and used by other members of the community in pursuit of goals the community would envision together. Acquiring experience, like acquiring social scientific knowledge, was a process of error reduction and challenging preconceptions. During what she called the long 19th century, “as the Philanthropist endeavored to transform his pity into political action, he learned the use of two other great implements, first of popular agitation, second of statistical information” (Addams, 1910b, p. 70). Engagement in efforts to mediate the 1894 Pullman strike and by developing ties with working girls in the needle trades, Addams “discovered that grassroots politics, unlike the politics of representative governance, set no limits on who could participate, that it welcomed the nonvoter and the inexperienced, and that it could operate outside party structures. And she learned that grassroots politics . . . redistributed political power and resources” (Knight, 2005, p. 268). Building a new sense of morality for the modern democratic era necessarily involved problem solving in action. “We continually forget that the sphere of morals is the sphere of action . . . a situation does not really become moral until we are confronted with the question of what shall be done in a concrete case, and are obliged to act upon our theory” (Addams, 1902, pp. 273–​274). Addams added: “It is insanity to expect to receive the data of wisdom by looking on. We arrive at moral knowledge only by tentative and observant practice” (Addams, 1902, p. 274).6 Democracy required extending social morality, the social ethic, and sympathy to the larger society, and social action was the means to that end. Political democracy requires that we “take pains to keep on common ground in our human experiences”; otherwise, differences in ethical standards lead to misunderstandings (Addams, 1902, pp. 221–​222). “All parts of the community are bound together in ethical development” (Addams, 1902, p. 263). Politics must be informed by a new kind of morality if democracy is to be achieved. Democracy, then, was not just a set of institutions; it was a form of association that was both moral and spiritual (Shields, 2006, p. 425). For Addams, democracy was not merely a sentiment but “a rule of living” (Addams, 1902, p. 6). This wider social experience was a process of searching for—​and building—​social morality. This is how a democratic spirit is created; diversified human experience builds sympathy, and these are the “foundation and guarantee of Democracy” (Addams, 1902, p. 7).

Addams’s International Vision “[E]‌nlarged opportunities are ever demanding an enlarged morality,” Addams wrote in the earliest years of the 20th century (Addams, 1907, p. 214). She had begun to think

46   Carol Nackenoff globally as well as locally when she spoke of “social sympathy in a larger measure” (Addams, 1907, p. 214). Her approach to transnational cooperation and toward building new democratic citizens in a larger arena followed the approach she had already been articulating. Addams hoped that new cross-​border relationships might generate new understandings on a wider scale, and she thought about the “necessary relational foundations for a democratic vision of multileveled governance” (Sarvasy, 2009, pp. 184, 185). It was through daily experience that cosmopolitan relations could be generated (Sarvasy, 2009, p. 188).7 A meeting was held at the Henry Street Settlement in early fall 1914 among a small group of social workers considering a reaction to the war. “We believed that the endeavor to nurture human life even its most humble and least promising forms had crossed national boundaries” and that “nothing of social value can be obtained save through wide-​ spread public opinion and the cooperation of all civilized nations” (Addams, 1922, pp. 2–​3; quote p. 3). It seems that, even in advance of that meeting, Addams had presented the Hague program to Wilson in August 1914, noting that “[w]‌e considered that the United States was committed not only to using its vast neutral power to extend democracy throughout the world but also to the conviction that democratic ends could not be attained through the technique of war” (Addams, 1922, p. 59). Addams supported the development of transnational civil society. Her activism and leadership in WILPF serve as an important example; she thought that nurture, helping, and feeding could bring women together and help shape new, transnational democracy. She also supported new transnational participatory institutions, and early on she had hopes for what the League of Nations might accomplish (Sarvasy, 2009, pp. 185, 198). It held promise of being “the instrument of a new era” to “carry on the enlarged life of the world” (Addams, 1922, pp. 201, 208). For Addams, the coming of world war threatened to undermine progress, reinscribing a narrow nationalism and primitive forms of patriotism. “War itself destroys democracy wherever it thrives and tends to entrench militarism” (Addams, Balch, & Hamilton, 1915, p. 77). WILPF attempted to mobilize sentiment against the world war at the Hague International Congress of Women (1915) and beyond. Addams recognized that the war in Europe was even dividing her immigrant neighbors from one another (Addams, 1922, p. 3). It negatively impacted the spirit of cooperation she and other residents of Hull House had been working to build. War and revolution—​throwbacks to a primitive spirit—​retard the work of democracy. “Democracy is a system of life depending upon a system of work which can only be carried forward through times of uninterrupted peace” (Addams, 1930b, p. 387). Addams’s opposition to the war darkened her reputation within the United States in a number of quarters. Pacifists were linked, in the public mind, with support for the enemy. Following the Russian Revolution, the term “internationalism” itself came to be linked to the Third International and the Russian régime (Addams, 1930a, p. 161). Efforts to “open better international relationships between widely separated people” were sometimes regarded as treasonous after the war (Addams, 1930a, p. 162). Her efforts, with Alice Hamilton and the American Friends Service Committee, to procure food and

Jane Addams’s Democratic Vision    47 aid for German children and civilians following the war were often met with hostility in the United States (Knight, 2010, pp. 233–​234). Addams’s ability to promote a wider vision of democracy was weakened during the decade prior to her receipt of the Nobel Prize in 1931. New York’s Joint Legislative Committee to Investigate Seditious Activity was convened in 1919 and a sentence from its report (known as the Lusk Report) stood atop the infamous Spider Web Chart of organizations and individuals considered to be socialist. The header read: “The Socialist-​Pacifist Movement in America Is an Absolutely Fundamental and Integral Part of International Socialism,” and it was first published in Henry Ford’s Dearborn Independent in 1924. WILPF was front and center. While early versions of the chart did not mention Addams, later versions did (Knight, 2010, p. 245). Addams’s dream of advancing the democratic spirit through global efforts suffered after the war, and the League of Nations, which the United States failed to join, disappointed her and “cautiously refused to become the tentative instrument of the longed for new age” (Addams, 1922, pp. 201, 208). Her aspirations for promoting democratic reforms at home were generally thwarted in the politically conservative 1920s. She lamented that efforts toward social progress were stymied. “Any proposed change was suspect, even those efforts that had been considered praiseworthy before the war. To advance new ideas was to be a radical, or even a bolshevik” (Addams, 1930a, p. 154). The Sheppard-​Towner Maternity and Infancy Act of 1921, which provided funding to states for prenatal and infant care to combat infant mortality, had been a major goal and late accomplishment of the Progressive Era women’s movement through the efforts of the Children’s Bureau. It expired in 1929 in part due to this atmosphere, denounced as socialized medicine and part of a Bolshevist conspiracy against America (Lemons, 1969, p. 779). One petition in opposition denounced its supporters, mentioning Jane Addams by name (Lemons, 1969, p. 784).

Addams’s Democratic Vision in the 21st Century There was, among progressives in Addams’s circle, a firm belief that progress toward the realization of democracy was within reach in the 20th century.8 For some progressives, there was great faith that government and scientific management would provide the solution to social problems; for some others, the precondition for democracy was the creation of a well-​educated and information-​armed public. For Addams, educating good citizens was not a matter of imparting information. While government at various levels did have an important role to play in improving the lives of citizens, goals had to come from the citizens. And the route to forging these goals was through engagement, interaction, sympathy, and understanding. “[M]‌an’s moral idealism is the constructive force of progress,” she contended (Addams, 1902, p. 179).

48   Carol Nackenoff Without attention to the means of creating and attaining political democracy, it could become “a mere governmental contrivance” rather than a social expression (Addams, 1902, p. 221). Although Addams looked to local, state, national, and even international institutions for solutions to many social and economic problems, she resisted bureaucratic claims to expertise that distanced government from the people public officials were supposed to serve (Stivers, 2009; Stivers, 2000, ch. 4). It was essential to build democracy from the grassroots. By the early decades of the 20th century, some part of Addams’s feminist vision seemed to be on the cusp of realization. Liberalism was being transformed: Liberalism came to be understood not as individualism and laissez faire but as a sense of social responsibility coupled with a more activist, bureaucratic, and “efficient” government. This understanding of government and politics meshed nicely with that of women’s groups. Both emphasized social science ideas and methods, organization, and collective responsibility for social conditions. (Baker, 1984, p. 641)

But there were real differences in the democratic visions of Progressive Era thinkers and activists. Walter Weyl, author of The New Democracy (1914/​1912), was one of the progressive thinkers who thought the best way to increase popular control over the government was to centralize power. “The democracy seeks a complete control over governmental machinery and processes,” and increased efficiency of government. Governmental functions must also be extended: “[w]‌e are increasingly perceiving that many of our problems are national problems and cannot be solved by any governmental unity less than the nation,” he wrote (Weyl, 1914/​1912, pp. 298, 310, 311, 314). Many progressives elided the tension between growing the national state and encouraging a democracy based in more direct action.9 The problem of how to make liberal institutions flexible, responsive, and dynamic turned out to be daunting. Increasingly centralized bureaucracies and the ballooning administrative state and growth of regulations stood in tension with goals of participation with institutions and new iterations that would allow adjustments based on feedback, new evidence, and new circumstances. Policy choices, pathways, and resource investment tended to become locked in and resistant to change. This tension between institutional development and social expression was one that Addams and like-​minded progressive reformers failed to resolve and that still haunts democratic aspirations. The kinds of participatory groups to which Addams belonged and which she led have also been eclipsed by different sorts of organizations. Many are membership-​based in name only, often merely means to collect money from mailing lists for particular causes; they do not promote active civic engagement or generate the same kinds of political pressure on elected officials as did earlier organizations that had a large membership base in most states (Skocpol, 2004). In addition, contemporary women’s organizations are less likely to emphasize broad social-​welfare goals and more likely to emphasize issues such as reproductive rights. Surveys indicate that women consistently express

Jane Addams’s Democratic Vision    49 different policy preferences than men do—​supporting social-​welfare spending, education and health care spending, firearm regulation, and disapproving of the death penalty and the use of force—​but these preferences are not being effectively mobilized into politics by contemporary women’s organizations (Goss and Skocpol, 2006, pp. 324–​327, 341–​351). While women now vote at even higher rates than do men, it is remarkable that they were more influential in establishing a social-​welfare agenda in the years before they were enfranchised (Skocpol, 1992). Recent decades have witnessed the hollowing out of modern welfare states, with the devolution of problem-​solving responsibilities (often unfunded) to state and local jurisdictions. Such devolution can encourage policy innovation, or it can lead to elimination of services and public functions. In addition, neoliberal visions in many Western democracies are promoting the return of responsibilities and care work once seen as state responsibilities to individuals, or to families. Government and corporate divestment from certain aspects of the welfare state, leaving economic insecurity in its wake, has been termed “the great risk shift” (Hacker, 2006). When the modern state divests itself of welfare responsibilities, prospects for the amelioration of social and economic problems that progressives expected to flow from a wider democracy and a developing social ethic dim. At the same time, a number of high-​income, developed democracies have witnessed decades-​long, widening income gaps between the rich and the poor (Piketty, 2014). Some scholars have found that American institutions are much more responsive to wealthy voters than to others, and quite unresponsive to voters in the bottom third of the income distribution (Gilens and Page, 2020, ch. 4; Bartels, 2016/​2008). It is unclear whether these phenomena are related to growing disillusionment with democracy as a system of governance, but Mounk and Foa (2020) have found that public confidence in and support for democracy have been falling in Europe, Latin America, Japan, sub-​Saharan Africa, and markedly the United States. At a minimum, it appears that democracies, as commonly defined, have not delivered on aspirations from the past century. This is not the fault of Addams or her progressive peers, but it does suggest that faith in the promise of democracy has eroded in the face of failures to deliver. While authoritarianism has gained traction, it is not clear whether new visions of participatory decision-​making will gain traction. In the United States, the Occupy Wall Street movement, Black Lives Matter, and efforts such as those led by Stacey Abrams (Fair Fight) to push back against state-​level efforts to restrict voting by persons of color suggest that participatory, inclusive democracy is still a meaningful dream. The United States is currently diversifying even faster than expected, although the foreign-​born constituted 11.5% of US residents in 2000 compared with 15% in 1910, which was near the height of immigration from southern and eastern Europe and Russia that spurred increasing calls for restriction (Population Reference Bureau, 2003; Frey, 2020). Diversification, the rising presence of non-​documented immigrants, and the prospect of the United States becoming a majority minority nation is contributing to new nativistic, racist, and nationalistic movements. Addams rejected “[t]‌he constant cry that American institutions are in danger because of immigrants” (Addams, 1907, p. 40;

50   Carol Nackenoff Sarvasy, 2009, p. 190). As her experience grew, Addams came to look forward to a cosmopolitan, pluralistic society, and she celebrated the diverse customs, traditions, and histories of the southern and eastern European immigrants that lived in her neighborhood. She had come to view culture not simply as high culture, but as “an understanding of the long-​established occupations and thoughts of men, of the arts with which they have solaced their toil.” Culture included a “group’s traditions and customs derived from the past and embodied in present modes of thinking, feeling, producing, and acting in concert with others” (Fischer, 2014, p. 41).10 She declared that “[a]ll the members of the community are equally stupid in throwing away the immigrant revelation of social customs and inherited energy” (Addams, 1907, p. 79). As a founding member of the NAACP, Addams at least devoted some effort to ameliorating conditions facing black citizens, and she founded and helped raise money for two Chicago settlements in black neighborhoods (Fischer, 2014, p. 38). Her cosmopolitanism and message of inclusion were not popular amid nativist and rising exclusionist sentiment in the run-​up to the national-​origins quota system, and it is not a popular position among the white and male-​skewed right-​wing movements of the early 21st century. Following Addams’s death in 1935, it became impossible for later champions of progressive, participatory visions of democracy to ignore the Holocaust, the threat of nuclear warfare, the cold-​war arms race, terrorism at the hands of nonstate actors, religious and ethnic genocide, hate crimes, and mass shootings. Hannah Arendt wrote of the banality of evil, of the conditions for mass politics, and for totalitarianism (Arendt, 1951). Humans, even in supposedly advanced democracies, were capable of following malevolent leaders under some circumstances. Globalization has helped forge some common perspectives, especially among elites, and has facilitated flourishing transnational political movements focused on social, environmental, economic, and political justice. Modern communication technologies have made it far easier to interact with people whose experiences, values, and perspectives differ. Yet achieving national and international agreement and action—​for example, to address climate change—​has proven difficult for democratic and collaborative institutions. Nations are loathe to yield any part of national sovereignty to construct global agreements with power to coerce or even monitor individual member states. Reactions against globalization and a resurgence of national, religious, and ethnic divisions would have disappointed (and possibly surprised) Addams. And information silos enabled by modern technologies may be making it harder, not easier, for people to find common ground. Global interactions in and of themselves have no magic to promote justice, equity, or democracy. It takes enormous work to dislodge power and entrenched interests, and the task is, if anything, more daunting than when Addams was alive. But visions of a more just, equitable, humane world in which citizens are empowered to seek their own good in collaboration with others are still very present, and new democratic visions for a new era—​as Addams hoped—​can still be nurtured.

Jane Addams’s Democratic Vision    51

Notes 1. Among these were Herbert Spencer, Study of Sociology (1873); Lester Ward, “Genius and Woman’s Intuition” (1890) (although Ward dismissed extended claims for the instinctual powers of women); she had met Patrick Geddes, who, with J. Arthur Thomson, authored The Evolution of Sex (1889); Addams may have been familiar with Antoinette Brown Blackwell’s The Sexes Throughout Nature (1875) and William I. Thomas, “On a Difference in the Metabolism of the Sexes” (1897). 2. She read and quoted from The Subjection of Women, which was published in a newly reissued American edition in combination with On Liberty in 1885. See Louise Knight, Jane Addams: Spirit in Action, p. 57. 3. For development of this theme, see Peggy Pascoe, Relations of Rescue: The Search for Female Moral Authority in the American West, 1874–​1939 (Oxford University Press, 1990). 4. Deegan cites Ellsworth Fuhrman’s The Sociology of Knowledge in America, 1883–​1915. 5. The phrase “habits of intelligence” used by Schneiderhan (597) is Dewey’s. 6. Addams here quotes an essay by the future British Labour Party prime minister Ramsay MacDonald. 7. Sarvasy (2009) explores how women could cooperate transnationally, drawing upon primitive memories of food provision, to supply bread to the hungry following the war. “Alliances of women bread providers democratized world social citizenship by turning the management of global food needs into a daily social ecological practice” (p. 186). 8. For a review of some of these hopes and expectations, and considerations on what went wrong, see Stephen Skowronek, Stephen M. Engel, and Bruce Ackerman (eds.), The Progressives’ Century: Political Reform, Constitutional Government, and the Modern American State (Yale University Press, 2016). 9. Milkis (2016, p. 175) also points out progressives’ disdain for political parties, while also seeking more direct citizen control through initiatives, recall, and referenda. Milkis finds that, eschewing building a progressive party in the United States, these well-​meaning reformers bequeathed the nation a more executive-​centered partisanship (p. 188). 10. The first quote is Fischer quoting Addams from “Social Settlements in Illinois,” Transactions (Illinois State Historical Society) 1906, 162–​170 at 170. JAPM 46:1418. In the second, Fischer herself is quoted.

References Addams, J. (1895). The settlement as a factor in the labor movement. In Residents of Hull-​ House, Hull-​House Maps and Papers (pp. 181–​204). Crowell. Addams, J. (1902). Democracy and social ethics. Macmillan. Addams J. (1906). The modern city and the municipal franchise for women: Speech delivered at the annual convention of the National American Woman Suffrage Association. Schlesinger Library History of Women microfilm collection. Addams, J. (1907). Newer Ideas of Peace. Macmillan. Addams, J. (1910a). Why women should vote, Ladies’ Home Journal 27 (January), 21–​22. Addams, J. (1910b). Charity and social justice, North American Review 192 (July), 68–​81. Addams, J. (1910c). Twenty years at Hull House. Macmillan.

52   Carol Nackenoff Addams, J. (1913a). If men were seeking the franchise. Ladies Home Journal (June). http://​natio​ nalh​uman​itie​scen​ter.org/​pds/​gil​ded/​power/​tex​t12/​add​ams.pdf Addams, J. (1913b). Philanthropy and politics. In Shailer Mathews (Ed.), Woman and the Larger Citizenship, vol. 9 in Woman Citizen’s Library (pp. 2123–​2142). Civics Society. Addams, J. (1922). Peace and bread in time of war. Macmillan. Addams, J. (1930a). Second twenty years at Hull House. Macmillan. Addams, J. (1930b). Aspects of the woman’s movement. Survey 64 (August), 384–​387, 410. Addams, J., Balch, E. G., & Hamilton, A (1915). Women at the Hague. Macmillan. Arendt, H. (1951). The origins of totalitarianism. Harcourt Brace. Baker, P. (1984). The domestication of politics: Women in American political society, 1780 –​ 1920. American Historical Review 89 (2, June), 620–​647. Bartels, L. (2016/​2008). Unequal democracy: The political economy of the new gilded age, 2nd ed. Princeton University. Bentley, A. (1949). The process of government with an introduction by H. T. Davis (originally published 1908). Principia Press of Illinois. Conway, J. K. (1971/​1972). Women reformers and American culture, 1870–​1930. Journal of Social History 5 (2), 164–​177. Deegan, M. J. (1988). Jane Addams and the men of the Chicago School, 1892–​1918. Transaction Books. Dewey, J. (1916). Democracy and education. Macmillan. Dewey, J. (1927). The public and its problems. Henry Holt and Company. Dorf, M. C., & Sabel, C. F. (1998). A constitution of democratic experimentalism. Columbia Law Review 98 (2, March), 267–​473. Fischer, M. (2013). JOSEPH BLAU AWARD: Reading Addams’s democracy and social ethics as a social gospel, evolutionary idealist text. The Pluralist 8 (3), 17–​31. https://​doi.org/​10.5406/​ plural​ist.8.3.0017 Fischer, M. (2014). Addams on cultural pluralism, eastern Europeans, and African Americans. The Pluralist 9 (3), 38–​58. Frey, W. H. (2020, July 1). The nation is diversifying even faster than predicted, according to new census data. Brookings Institution, https://​www.brooki​ngs.edu/​resea​rch/​new-​cen​sus -​data-​shows-​the-​nat​ion-​is-​diver​sify​ing-​even-​fas​ter-​than-​predic​ted/​ Gilens, M., & Page, B. I. (2020/​2017). Democracy in America? What has gone wrong and what we can do about it. University of Chicago. Gilman, C. P. (1903). The home: Its work and influence. Mcclure, Phillips and Company. Goss, K. A., & Skocpol, T. (2006). Changing agendas: The impact of feminism on American politics. In B. O’Neill and E. Gidengil (Eds.), Gender and Social Capital (pp. 323–​356). Routledge. Hacker, J. S. (2006). The great risk shift: The assault on American jobs, families, health care, and retirement, and how you can fight back. Oxford University Press. Hamington, M. (2018). Jane Addams. In Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. https://​plato .stanf​ord.edu/​entr​ies/​add​ams-​jane/​#Inf Knight, L. W. (2005). Citizen: Jane Addams and the struggle for democracy. University of Chicago Press. Knight, L. W. (2010). Jane Addams: Spirit in action. W.W. Norton. Lemons, J.S. (1969). The Sheppard-​Towner Act: Progressivism in the 1920s. Journal of American History 55 (4) (March), 776–​786.

Jane Addams’s Democratic Vision    53 Lohmann, R. A. (2000). Charismatic authority and the board of the Hull House association, 1895–​1935. Faculty Scholarship, 1131. https://​res​earc​hrep​osit​ory.wvu.edu/​facul​ty_​pu ​ bli​cati​ ons/​1131 Milkis, S. M. (2016). The Progressive Party and the rise of executive-​centered leadership. In S. Skowronek, S. Engel, & B. Ackerman (Eds.), The Progressives’ Century: Political reform, constitutional government, and the modern American state (pp. 174–​196). Yale. Mill, J. S. (1961). Utilitarianism (originally published 1863). In M. Lerner (Ed.), Essential Works of John Stuart Mill (pp. 189–​248). Mounk, Y., & Foa, R. S. (2020). This is how democracy died. Atlantic (January 29). Muncy, R. (1991). Creating a female dominion in American Reform 1890–​1935. Oxford. Nackenoff, C. (1999). Gendered citizenship: Alternative narratives of political incorporation in the United States, 1875–​1925. In D. F. Ericson & L. B. Green (Eds.), The liberal tradition in American politics: Reassessing the legacy of American liberalism (pp. 137–​169). Routledge. Nackenoff, C. (2014). The private roots of American political development: The immigrants’ protective league’s ‘friendly and sympathetic’ touch,’ 1908–​1924. Studies in American Political Development 28 (October), 129–​160. Nackenoff, C. (2016). Toward a more inclusive community: The legacy of female reformers in the progressive state. In S. Skowronek, S. Engel, & B. Ackerman (Eds.), The Progressives’ Century: Political reform, constitutional government, and the modern American state (pp. 219–​242). Yale. Nackenoff, C., & Sullivan, K. S. (2014). The house that Julia (and friends) built: Networking the Chicago juvenile court. In C. Nackenoff & J. Novkov (Eds.), Statebuilding from the Margins: Between Reconstruction and the New Deal (pp. 171–​202). University of Pennsylvania Press. Pascoe, P. (1990). Relations of rescue: The search for female moral authority in the American West, 1874–​1939. Oxford. Piketty, T. (2014). Capital in the twenty-​first century. Translated by Arthur Goldhammer. Belknap Press of Harvard University Press. Population Reference Bureau. (2003, June). Number of foreign-​born reaches all-​time high in U.S. https://​www.prb.org/​resour​ces/​num​ber-​of-​fore​ign-​born-​reac​hes-​all-​time-​high-​in-​u-​s/​ Rosenberg, R. (1975). In search of woman’s nature 1850–​1920. Feminist Studies 3 (1/​2, autumn), 141–​154. Sarvasy, W. (2009). A global “common table”: Jane Addams’s theory of democratic cosmopolitanism and world social citizenship. In M. Fischer, C. Nackenoff, & W. Chmielewski 202). University of (Eds.), Jane Addams and the Practice of Democracy (pp. 183–​ Illinois Press. Schneiderhan, E. (2011). Pragmatism and empirical sociology: The case of Jane Addams and Hull-​House, 1889–​1895. Theory and Society 40 (6), 589–​617. Shields, P. M. (2006). Democracy and the social feminist ethics of Jane Addams: A vision for public administration. Administrative Theory and Praxis 28 (3) (September), 418–​443. Skocpol, T. (1992). Protecting soldiers and mothers: The political origins of social policy in the United States. Belknap Press of Harvard University Press. Skocpol, T. (2004). Voice and inequality: The transformation of American civic democracy, American Political Science Association Presidential Address. Perspectives on Politics 2 (1), 1–​18.

54   Carol Nackenoff Stivers, C. (2000). Bureau men, settlement women. University Press of Kansas. Stivers, C. (2009). A civic machinery for democratic expression. In M. Fischer, C. Nackenoff, & W. Chmielewski, (Eds.), Jane Addams and the Practice of Democracy (pp. 87–​97). University of Illinois Press. Weyl, W. (1914). The new democracy (originally published 1912). Macmillan.

Chapter 3

Vital Lies an d t h e Fat e of Demo c rac y Scott L. Pratt

Six months after the election of Joseph R. Biden as president of the United States, belief in the claim that he had, in fact, lost the election to the incumbent, Donald J. Trump, had become a litmus test for members of the Republican Party. Despite no evidence to verify the claim—​and the inauguration of Biden four months earlier—​one Republican declared, “I think I speak for many people in that Trump has never actually been wrong, and so we’ve learned to trust when he says something, that he’s not just going to spew something out there that’s wrong and not verified.” According to this Republican organizer, Trump had, in fact, won the election (Parker and Sotomayer, 2021). In the months after the election, protests against the verified election results led to a violent insurrection at the United States Capitol, a congressional vote in which 147 members of the US Congress voted against certifying the election, and dozens of states passing laws to restrict voting in order to prevent a repeat of the alleged fraud. Assent to these false claims about the election had the immediate effect of trying to disenfranchise the majority of voters who had, in fact, cast ballots in favor of the winner. Lurking behind this disenfranchisement effort was the recognition, by the purveyors of the false claims, that the majority also represented a majority of voters of color and so the assertion of falsehoods as truth was also a transparent effort to override the votes of Black and Brown voters in the United States. On February 24, 2022, Vladimir Putin, president of Russia, declared that his nation’s army would invade its neighbor, Ukraine, “to protect people who for eight years now have been facing humiliation and genocide perpetrated by the Kyiv regime.” “To this end,” Putin continued, “we will seek to demilitarize and denazify Ukraine, as well as bring to trial those who perpetrated numerous bloody crimes against civilians, including against citizens of the Russian Federation” (English translation quoted in Treisman, 2022). Putin’s claims were baseless fiction. They were nevertheless repeated in Russian and international media as statements of the motive for war (Treisman, 2022). A few days later, the Russian parliament passed a law banning “what it consider[ed] ‘fake’

56   Scott L. Pratt news about the military, including any rhetoric that call[ed] the invasion of Ukraine an ‘invasion’ ” (Izadi and Ellison, 2022) or “the war a ‘war’ ” (Troianovski, 2022). The goal of the lies and the prohibition on questioning them (at least domestically) was to help restore Russia’s geopolitical power by proposing an overarching purpose that would obscure and override the interests of both peoples to live at peace and, in the case of Ukraine, to foster a democratic society. The false claims made after the 2020 election—​in particular the claim that the incumbent had in fact won the election—​and the false claims that began and sustained the Russian war on Ukraine were instances of what Vernon Lee called “Vital Lies” in her 1912 book Vital Lies: Studies of Some Varieties of Recent Obscurantism. A vital lie is a claim that is false but, in treating it as true, realizes the desired ends of its maker. By posing as truth, Lee argues, a vital lie both marks the ends desired by its advocates and marks the presence of some truth that is overridden or obscured in order to realize those ends. Jane Addams cites Lee’s idea several times in her later work as a method used by those in power to supersede democracy. Like Lee, Addams seems to cite the idea of vital lies for several reasons: as a way of identifying a problem to be addressed, as recognition that there is a truth available, and as an affirmation that democracy depends upon access to that truth while rejecting lies.1 At one level, advocates of democracy and those familiar with Addams will accept this assessment—​that vital lies are a problem for democracy and that there is a truth that must be accessible to members of a democracy in order to foster its function and the growth of the community and its members. In the introduction to Democracy and Social Ethics, Addams observes that “We know, at last, that we can only discover truth by a rational and democratic interest in life, and to give truth complete social expression is the endeavor upon which we are entering” (2002a [1902], 9). Democracy, for Addams, is “not merely . . . a sentiment which desires the well-​being of all men, nor yet . . . a creed which believes in the essential dignity and equality of all men, but . . . that which affords a rule of living as well as a test of faith” (2002a [1902], 7). Successful rules of living depend upon their success in “genuine experience,” what, for Addams, grounds truth and what Lee called “reality” (Addams, 2002a [1902], 7; Lee, 1912, vol. 1, 20–​21, 28). Lee cites Peirce’s conception of reality as proposed in “How to Make Our Ideas Clear.” According to Lee, reality is the “objective correlate” of truth that cannot be reduced to what is desired (1912, vol. 1, 28). She quotes Peirce: “The opinion which is fated to be ultimately agreed to by all who investigate is what is meant by truth, and the object represented is the real” (vol. 1, 20; see Peirce, 139). The pragmatism of William James and F. C. S. Schiller, in contrast, “is not intended to ‘make our ideas clear’; it is calculated to teach us to Will-​ to-​Believe and to Make Truth. The Pragmatism of Mr Peirce is a formula of the ‘Logic of Science.’ The Pragmatism of Messers W. James and Schiller, so far as it possesses any originality, a method of apologetics, a not always strictly grammatical new Grammar of Assent” (vol. 1, 47).2 By invoking Lee’s idea, Addams opens both the idea of vital lies and her own conceptions of pragmatism and democracy to further examination. Lee, though an English writer living in Italy at the time, knew the current of American thought, pragmatism in particular. In her 1912 book, she developed the concept of vital

Vital Lies and the Fate of Democracy     57 lies through a close examination and critique of the work of William James and F. C. S. Schiller, especially James’s theory of truth as presented in his 1896 lecture, “The Will to Believe,” and Pragmatism (1908). Lee then examines the implications of this view, what she calls “applied pragmatism,” in the work of George Tyrrell, Christianity at the Cross-​ roads (1909), Ernest Crawley; The Tree of Life: A Study of Religion (1905); and Georges Sorel, Reflections on Violence (1914). If Lee’s analysis is correct and Addams is willing to affirm it, and if vital lies are correctly viewed as a consequence of pragmatism, then Addams’s idea of pragmatism also deserves a closer look, especially in relation to the idea of democracy. In this chapter, I will first set out the idea of vital lies as developed by Lee. I will then consider Lee’s analysis in relation to Addams’s use of the idea, its relation to democracy, and Addams’s response to vital lies. Finally, I will discuss how pragmatism is modified in the face of this analysis and its implications for today’s vital lies.

The Pragmatism of Violet Paget Vernon Lee was the pseudonym of Violet Paget (1856–​1935), who was born to British parents living in Boulogne on the coast of France and became a well-​known novelist, essayist, and philosopher. With occasional visits to England, she spent most of her life in continental Europe, her longest stay near Florence, Italy. Her primary interest was in aesthetics, and she published several sets of essays on the impact of places and other essays on what she called literary psychology. She knew many of the prominent artists of the time, including James Singer Sargent (whose portrait of Paget is in the Tate Gallery), and was, for a time, a friend of Henry James, and the essayist and critic Walter Pater (author of the well-​known book The Renaissance: Studies in Art and Poetry [1894], originally published in 1873), among other intellectual leaders of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.3 Her first book, taking her lead from Pater, was Studies of the Eighteenth Century in Italy (1880), and it established her as an important commentator on art and culture. In addition to her historical studies, she also published numerous novels, travel accounts, essays, anti-​war polemical works, and several volumes on philosophy. Despite her considerable body of work, Lee is rarely read and discussed today, nearly a hundred years after her death. As her biographer, Vineta Colby, summarizes: “She was too late to be a Victorian, too early to be a Modernist. She was a non-​militant feminist, a sexually repressed lesbian, an aesthete, a cautious socialist, a secular humanist” (2003, xii). In one of Lee’s last books, Colby notes, “[s]‌he quoted Whitman—​ ‘and if I contradict myself, I contradict myself ’—​with no apologies, she challenged her reader to accept her terms or reject her altogether” (2003, xi). Lee’s 1912, two-​volume work, Vital Lies, is an overlooked critique of several key thinkers of the early twentieth century framed by a general criticism of the pragmatism of James and Schiller. It is also a good example of her incisive and often abrasive style.4 Pleading general agreement with James, Lee nevertheless challenges the theory of truth presented in his lectures on pragmatism (1912, Vol. 1, 3; vol. 2, 186).5 Her focus considers

58   Scott L. Pratt three of James’s major works: the essay “The Will to Believe,” Pragmatism, and Varieties of Religious Experience. In Pragmatism, James attributes the origins of the view he calls pragmatism in the work of C. S. Peirce. While affirming the attribution, Peirce also more or less rejected the view that James said followed from it. “In 1897 [sic],” Peirce said (in a passage cited by Lee), “Professor James remodeled the matter and transmogrified it into a doctrine of philosophy, some parts of which I highly approved, while other and more prominent parts I regarded, and still regard, as opposed to sound logic” (quoted in Lee, vol. 1, 18). Echoing Peirce’s own criticism of James, Lee holds that James does not, in fact, develop Peirce’s view but rather diverges from it significantly and generates a second form of pragmatism that she calls “Will-​to-​believe pragmatism” in contrast to the pragmatism of “How to make our ideas clear” (vol. 1, 17). The two pragmatisms begin by affirming the pragmatic maxim that meaning is a matter of consequences but understand it in contradictory ways. “The contradiction amounts to this,” she writes, “that while Mr Peirce makes truth into an intellectual imperative which sooner or later imposes itself (or would impose itself but for human ‘perversity’) on opinion, Messrs James and Schiller (besides constantly confusing ‘Truth’ with its objective correlate ‘Reality’) calmly identify truth with belief, and belief with opinion, and they test truth (which is itself belief ’s and opinion’s standard) by the beneficial or agreeable, the useful consequences due to holding a given belief or opinion” (vol. 1, 28). While Peirce views truth as the connection between signs or claims and things and actions (the category of thirdness in Peirce’s terms), he also makes a place for untruth since both truth and untruth are at least partly independent of the knower. James and Schiller, however, “have refused to proclaim the value of what is possibly not true, and they have applied themselves to identifying that which possesses value with truth itself ” (vol. 1, 12). The difference is key in that by making value to the believer constitute truth, untruth is simply whatever is not valuable for the believer. Lee quotes James: “What would be better for us to believe! This sounds very like a definition of truth [italics Lee’s]. It comes very near to saying what we ought [italics James’s] to believe! And in that definition, none of you would find any oddity. Ought we ever not to believe what it is better for us to believe? And can we then keep the notion of what is better for us and what is true for us [italics Lee’s] permanently apart? Pragmatism says no, and I fully agree with her!” (quoted by Lee, vol. 1, 24). She also cites James stating the apparent equivalence of usefulness and truth: “You can say of it either that: it is useful because it is true; or that it is true because it is useful. True is the name for whatever starts the verification process; useful is the name for its completed function in experience” (James, quoted by Lee, vol. 1, 50). The resulting conception, Lee concludes, is that “truth” no longer sustains the possibility of error outside its failure to have value for someone. Such truth Lee calls “truth-​ in-​so-​far-​forth,” drawing on James’s own description: “Any idea upon which we can ride, so to speak; any idea that will carry us prosperously from any one part of our experience to any other part, linking things satisfactorily, working securely, simplifying, saving labor; is true for just so much, true in so far forth, true instrumentally” (James, 1907, 58). Combining this notion of truth as a matter of desirability of the results and

Vital Lies and the Fate of Democracy     59 the recognition that such truths are sometimes necessary, Lee names these instrumental truths “vital lies,” a term borrowed from Henrik Ibsen’s play, The Wild Duck, where “livslögnen,” “literally ‘the life-​lie’ ” (1907, n1, 370), is translated as “life-​illusion” in the English edition of the play. In the play, Ibsen introduces the term through the character, Dr. Relling, as a means of treating his patient who is “suffering from self-​contempt and despair” (1907, 371). The doctor explains “illusion” as “the stimulating principle” and that if you “[r]‌ob the man of his life-​illusion,” “you rob him of his happiness at the same stroke” (1907, 372). The doctor admits, however, that “livslögnen” is “only a piece of gibberish I’ve invented to keep up the spark of life in him” (1907, 370). Lee translates the term as “vital lies” and introduces it as a theoretical term in her 1909 essays, Gospels of Anarchy. “Even apart from sensuality, sloth or the weakling’s need for excitement, we still require, for the most part, to be kept alive by Ibsen’s ‘vital lies,’ ballasted by prejudice, stiffened into consistency by vanity, and tempted into activity by every lust and covetousness” (1908, 15). Lee’s critique of pragmatism is a form of reductio ad absurdum aimed, in the last phase, to illustrate that the desirability or value of a result is insufficient to resolve a conflict of truths. James argues for the value of claims about the Absolute, for example, in contrast to his argument for the value of pluralism. While these views lead to incompatible outcomes, they are, James seems to insist, both true. “Here,” Lee writes, we have two “truths,” of which one restricts (so-​far-​forths) and the other is restricted (so-​far-​forthed). The so-​far-​forthing truth is the one labelled the Pluralistic Universe, the so-​far-​forth is the one labelled the Absolute: both are true in-​so-​far-​forth they bring comfort. . . . But the matter of so-​far-​forth by no means ends here. One of these truths, the so-​far-​forthed truth labelled “the Absolute” inspired reliance upon . . . well, on the “Absolute,”; the other truth, the so-​far-​forthing, labelled “Pluralistic Universe” inspires reliance on oneself (1912, Vol. 1, 86).

From a pragmatic perspective, the two “truths” are incompatible because they have incompatible consequences. In her analysis of James’s treatment of religion, she concludes that James finds the larger contradictions acceptable because they are true instrumentally and the idea of truth allows for “what is better to believe” (vol. 1, 99). The result is that “fallacies, mistakes, nay falsehoods, may sometimes have remarkably life-​ preserving and life-​improving effects, in other words that there exists, alongside of vital truths, a by no means negligible category of vital lies” (vol. 1, 99). In her discussion of Georges Sorel’s syndicalism as presented in his book, Réflexions sur la violence, Lee develops the political category of vital lies she calls “myths.” Sorel’s book, published in 1909 and in English in 1914, argued for a distinctive form of socialism often confused with “trade unionism” (Lee, vol. 2, 65). In the latter, unions work to address the problems of labor within the context of capitalism, and “its members, besides being members of the union, are also parts of other collectivities, members of a church, a township, or a political party; above all, citizens of a State employing their civic powers,

60   Scott L. Pratt municipal and parliamentary votes, like any other citizens” (vol. 2, 66). In the former—​ syndicates—​a member “is, or wishes to be, nothing but a member of that Syndicate, and through it only of whatever confederacy of similar syndicates may have been formed in or outside his country” (vol. 2, 66). In this context, Lee explains, “labour is going to besiege and starve out Capitalism. And the battles which must be fought in the great class warfare are what we call strikes” (vol. 2, 68). Sorel proclaims “[M]‌en who are participating in a great social movement always picture their coming action as a battle in which their cause is certain to triumph. These constructions, knowledge of which is so important for historians, I propose to call myths; the syndicalist ‘general strike’ and Marx’s catastrophic revolution are such myths” (Sorel, 1914, 22). The “Armageddon called the General Strike” (Lee, vol. 2, 68), rather than being an event that will occur at some point, is a kind of inspirational abstraction that is essential for change but will not actually happen. “In employing the term myth,” Sorel writes, “I believe that I had made a happy choice, because I thus put myself in a position to refuse any discussion whatever with the people who wish to submit the idea of a general strike to a detailed criticism, and who accumulate objections against its practical possibility” (1914, 23–​24). It is, in short, a vital lie that can be, Lee argues, justified by pragmatism: “Add to [the superior efficacy of myths] that course of pragmatism . . . has prepared us all for the practical, if not theoretical, recognition that it is quite easy, and a good deal more efficacious, to begin by believing oneself whatever others had better believe is true in so far forth and according to its ‘fruits for life’” (vol. 2, 78–​79). In the end, the goal of the general strike is to bring about “proletarian new humanity,” a post-​capitalist world (Lee, vol. 2, 81). For Sorel, Lee observes, “Violence is requisite to keep up the myth” (Lee, vol. 2, 89), but the violence also is never fulfilled. While there may be limited acts of violence—​a sort of promise for something more devastating, “we are in the land of myths, [where] a myth of violence may produce a myth of bourgeois reaction without resorting to coarse material facts: the facts, as usual when we deal with myths, are to be employed merely as symbols” (vol. 2, 89). As Sorel explains, “the idea of the general strike (constantly rejuvenated by the feelings roused by proletarian violence) produces an entirely epic state of mind, and at the same time bends all the energies of the mind to that condition necessary to the realization of a workshop carried on by free men, eagerly seeking the betterment of the industry” (Sorel, 1914, 294). However, Lee argues, if the post-​capitalist world can only be brought about by the general strike and the general strike is, according to Sorel, unrealizable, then the post-​ capitalist world is likewise unrealizable. As a vital lie—​as a myth—​the dream of a general strike and the coming of a better world can serve Sorel’s purpose of keeping the proletariat alive. Where James and Schiller establish the theoretical framework for such vital lies, Lee proclaims that “it takes bolder men than they to call mistakes mistakes, lies lies, and yet assert that both may have usefulness and goodness and value fully as much as truth, and even occasionally more” (vol. 2, 61). Sorel, an “ultra-​pragmatist” for Lee, is willing to do just this despite its risk to the cause. It is this idea presented by Lee and developed from James and Sorel that Addams takes up in her late work as a means

Vital Lies and the Fate of Democracy     61 of understanding the impact of the world war in general and the fate of democracy in particular.

Russia, War, and Vital Lies Almost immediately after the Russian Czar was overthrown in the 1917 October Revolution, the new Soviet government, led by Vladimir Lenin, issued the “Decree on Peace” calling all combatant nations to accept “A just and democratic peace for which a great majority of wearied, tormented, and war-​exhausted toilers and laboring classes of all belligerent countries are thirsting . . ., such a peace the government considers to be an immediate peace without annexations . . . and without indemnities” (Wheeler-​ Bennett, 1939, 375). Russia’s allies against Germany—​including Great Britain and France—​rejected the call and refused to participate in the negotiations between Russia and their enemies. The result was a final treaty signed at Brest-​Litovsk in March 1918 that included the annexation by Germany of significant Russian territory. In the wake of the treaty’s ratification, President Woodrow Wilson declared in a speech on April 6, 1918, that the treaty was an example of Germany’s quest for empire. Germany, he declared, is “enjoying in Russia a cheap triumph in which no brave or gallant nation can long take pride.” “There is,” he concluded, “but one response possible from us: Force, Force to the utmost, Force without stint or limit, the righteous and triumphant Force which shall make Right the law of the world, and cast every selfish dominion down in the dust” (Wilson, 1918). In August 1918, Addams drafted her own response to the Russian call for peace and, indirectly, to Wilson’s call for “the righteous and triumphant” use of “Force.” At the center of her argument presented in a series of four draft speeches6 was the idea that the failure of the Allies to engage in the peace talks was a consequence of the use of “vital lies” of the political sort Lee called “historic myths.” Addams’s assessment was that the Allies failed to engage in a real opportunity for peace because they held to slogans that promoted war (1918b, 3). The Decree of Peace, she held, was an expression of the real desire of the Russian people, not merely a political response to Russian soldiers walking away from the fight. The Allies’ decision not to support the Russian effort to end the war can be found in recognizing that “the slogans—​this is the war to end war and a war to safeguard the world for democracy—​[had] become . . . necessary for military action . . . that they are so obsessed by the dogmatic morality of war, so lost in the grey abstraction” (1918b, 2). The “obsession,” she observes, quoting Lee, “suggests one of those great historic myths [which] large bodies of men are prone to make for themselves when they unite in a common purpose requiring for its consummation the thorough and efficient output of moral energy” (1918b, 2).7 When this happens, people “are prone to make for themselves slogans and fixed ideas which gradually evolve into great historic myths [that] always accompan[y]‌a period of great moral awakening” (1918d, 2).8

62   Scott L. Pratt The effect of the commitment to a myth of the sort presented by Wilson, both in the popular slogans and his April 8 address, is that it overrides the “fraternal intercourse” that is “the very matrix of democracy” (1918b, 3) by introducing a common purpose that cannot be achieved. A historic myth works “so long as it does not attempt to produce its own realization” since, as an abstraction, “it begets unhesitating belief and wholesale action and that as men go on expecting it with sufficient self-​denying fervor, they secure a great output of sanctity and heroism” (1918b, 3; Lee, vol. 2, 62, 71–​75). The Allies, committed to the myth, “ignore the fact that at least on one front, war is actually ending under conditions of disarmament and free trade, and that democracy can be established throughout one sixth of the earth’s surface” (1918b, 3). Regardless of what came after in Russia and in Europe, Addams held, in 1918, that peace could at least have been actively pursued and, with it, democracy established. Rather than believing vital lies, by recognizing the desires and needs of the people, Russia had applied “the touchstone of reality to this warring world so absorbed in abstraction” (1918b, 4).9 Democracy for Addams, as for Dewey, is understood as a way of life. As I mentioned at the outset, in Democracy and Social Ethics (2002a [1902]), Addams holds that democracy is “that which affords a rule of living as well as a test of faith” (7). To this notion, Addams later adds two key qualifications, one regarding the place of individuals and the other the role of the wider community. “Democracy,” she writes in her late essay, “Education by Current Event,” “believes that the man at the bottom may realize his aim only through an unfolding of his own being, and that he must have an efficacious share in the regulation of his own life” (1930, 382). At the same time, arguing for the necessity of pluralism over homogeneity in a democracy and the place of recreation and the arts, she observes, “[i]‌t is always easy for a democracy which insists upon writing its own programs to shut out imagination, to distrust sentiment and to make short work of recreation. It takes something like a united faith and a collective energy to insist that the great human gifts shall be given the sort of expression which will develop into the arts” (1930, 368). Democracy, then, is a way of life that fosters the development of individuals in the context of a wider community with shared purpose (a “united faith”) and a collective energy. Historic myths—​or vital lies—​of the sort identified by Lee are a danger to democracy because they operate as abstractions that override variety and cultivate what Addams calls “one of the chief dangers of democracy—​the tyranny of the herd mind” (1930, 289). What Addams took to be key in the effort of Russian soldiers to end the war is the idea that “inner consent” is necessary to find meaningful agreement among the combatants. Such consent is a “slow process” that can cause participants in the process to opt out: “it is quicker to fight armies of men then to convince them one by one” (1918d, 8). The Russian soldiers, she argues, “put moral sentiment to the test of action” (1918d, 8). The concept of inner consent is one that Addams introduces in material that would be incorporated in Twenty Years at Hull House (1910). In 1909 in the American Magazine she writes, The entire experience in a Settlement has made nothing more obvious than that justice in industrial relationship will have to be established with the same care and

Vital Lies and the Fate of Democracy     63 patience which has been necessary for centuries in order to approximate it in men’s civic relationships. As the sense of the perplexity and difficulty in attaining public morality grows, the conviction deepens that it will not be stable until it has received the sanction of those upon whom it presses hardest. Upon “inner consent” of the humblest man “the mystery of justice,” as Maeterlinck tells us, must ultimately depend. (italics added, 1909, 348)

In the Buried Temple (published in English in 1902), Maeterlinck argues that justice, rather that something granted by “the gods” or the “forces of the universe,” is “an unchangeable instinct” (Maeterlinck, 1902 33). “Such justice as we actually discover in nature,” he declares, is not from nature, “but from our selves, who have unconsciously placed it there by becoming one with events, by animating them, and adapting them to our uses” (Maeterlinck, 1902, 37). There is in nature “no moral reaction; for it emanates from our own thoughts, or the thoughts of other men. It is not in things, but in us, that the justice of things resides” (1902, 28). “[P]‌overty, wretchedness, hopeless toil, slavery, famine,” “it is we who organize these, we who maintain and distribute them” (1902, 96–​97). Although Maeterlinck does not use the phrase “inner consent,” he argues that resistance to injustice is a slow process for which “agreement” on matters of morality is “indispensable” even if “of a provisional, conditional kind” (1902, 59). Addams proposes to accept the idea that justice is an inward disposition but suggests further that justice depends in particular upon the agreement of those who seek it most and labels the disposition “inner consent,” a phrase that may have been borrowed from Mary A. Ward’s introduction to the 1900 edition of Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights. “Inner consent,” Ward says, “is the final test of all imaginative effort” (1900, xxx).10 As a means of resistance to war, inner consent involves convincing combatants to imagine both the horrors of war and the promise of peace and agree to its moral value. The vital lies promulgated by national leadership served to block or even erase the prospect of agreement among those affected by the war, the soldiers and their families, with the transformative moral principle of peace. When the Allies refused to join the peace negotiations, Trotsky proposed to resume the fighting. “[T]‌he Russian peasants [however] were quite unprepared for Trotsky’s proposition that the fighting should continue and should merely transfer itself to a war between the proletarians and the capitalists” (1918d, 8). Addams’s substantial discussion of Russia was included in Peace and Bread in Time of War (2002b [1922]) using material from “Russia—​A Touchstone” (2002b, [1922], c­ hapter 5). Even though Addams does not quote Lee directly in this version, she mentions Lee and the concept of “historic myths.” In the chapter “Speculation of Bread Labor and War Slogans,” she formulates her speculation this way: “The many Allied nations in the midst of a desperate war, were being held together by certain formulae of their war aims which had gradually emerged during long years of mutual effort” (2002b [1922], 56). The result was a means of formulating the war through the use of abstract general principles that, in the end, illustrated “the contention that men die willing only for a slogan” (2002b

64   Scott L. Pratt [1922], 57). Peace and Bread, in a sense, developed this central theme contrasting the power of abstraction—​promised by politicians, widely held claims about the war and its value, the reporting and opinions of the press—​against the efforts of “ordinary” people struggling to survive during and after the war. She summarized her struggle “against the impregnable weight of public opinion, the appalling imperviousness, the coagulation of motives, [and] the universal confusion of a world at war.” “It therefore came about,” she concludes, “that ability to hold out against mass suggestion, to honestly differ from the convictions and enthusiasms of one’s best friends did in moments of crisis come to depend upon the categorical belief that a man’s primary allegiance is to his vision of the truth and that he is under obligation to affirm it” (2002b [1922], 86). In effect, inner consent to principles of action labored against the myths that sustained the war effort. The end of the fighting changed little. “Many people had long supposed liberalism to be freedom to know and to say, not what was popular or convenient or even what was patriotic, but what they held to be true. But those very liberals came to realize that a distinct aftermath of the war was the dominance of the mass over the individual to such an extent that it constituted a veritable revolution in our social relationships” (2002b [1922], 104). Even the Russian peasants that were a source of hope in 1918 could no longer resist the militarization of the Soviet Union under its banner of the war against capitalism. The principles of the League of Nations—​largely proposed by the Women’s Peace Party in 1915 (2002b [1922], 6–​7)—​“grew vague in men’s minds because it was difficult to make them objective” (2002b [1922], 119). As Maeterlinck had said, the principles of justice are a matter of inner commitment and outward action. Peace and Bread ends by reasserting that the resolution of injustice is to be found in the slow transformation of people in their daily lives. The women of the Third International Congress held in 1921 “had come to realize that every crusade, every beginning of social change, must start from small numbers of people convinced of the righteousness of a cause; that the coming together of convinced groups is a natural process of growth” (2002b [1922], 127).11

American Vital Lies Addams further developed her interpretation of Lee’s conception of vital lies in her 1919 address to the American Sociological Society, titled “Americanization” (2003 [1919]). She observes that Americanization, like other nationalisms, had changed its character over the course of the war. Where it had formerly stressed “likenesses and pulling scattered people together, it now seemed equally dogmatic and effective in pushing apart those who had been combined” (2003 [1919], 190). Such “nationalistic dogmas,” she claims, “suggests one of those great historic myths” (2003 [1919], 192). She then quotes Lee (without citation) and several lines from her Russia drafts, this time applying the observation to the United States she encountered when she returned from her trip abroad in August 1918: “One finds in the United States the same manifestation of the world-​wide tendency toward national dogmatism, the relation of blind patriotism above intelligent

Vital Lies and the Fate of Democracy     65 citizenship as evinced elsewhere” (2003 [1919], 193). Rather than fostering genuine differences among groups, such commitment to nationalism identifies “bodies of men by a collective name . . . an egregious blunder” that “confounds doctrines with people [and] shows that we understand neither one nor the other” (2003 [1919], 194). Here, the vital lie is to accept the idea that people are regarded “as we believe the principles deserved to be regarded” (2003 [1919], 194). The proper response, she concludes, is to make the patriotism inspired by the war “more inclusive” and so ready to accept the diversity of immigrant and other citizens in order to “discover many opportunities for mutual effort . . . and thus establish a new center and perspective” (2003 [1919], 195). In 1921, the Unites States Congress passed the Emergency Quota Act aimed at limiting the flow of immigrants from eastern and southern Europe in the aftermath of the war. The act limited the number of immigrants in a year to 3 percent of the number of immigrants admitted from each country according to the 1910 US census. Since much of the pre-​war immigration was from western and northern Europe, the act effectively stopped immigration from the rest of Europe. The 1924 Immigration Act further restricted immigration to 2 percent of the number of immigrants admitted from countries according the 1890 census and barred any immigration from Asia. In the essay “Immigrants under the Quota,” included in The Second Twenty Years at Hull House (1930), Addams returned to the role played by vital lies and its relationship to nationalism discussed earlier. The essay sets out the conditions faced by immigrants in the 1920s. The discussion is framed by an anecdote intended to “dramatize” the situation. The story, only briefly outlined by Addams, connects the concept of vital lies, diversity, and the fate of democracy. Like Addams’s use of the story of Alderman Johnny Powers in Democracy and Social Ethics (2002a [1902], 116–​118), Addams here recalls another Chicago politician, William “Big Bill” Thompson. Thompson, a Republican, had served as mayor from 1915 to 1923, but lost the 1923 election to William Dever, a Democrat, whom he challenged again in the 1927 election. According to Addams, Thompson (she does not give his name in the essay) used “totally irrelevant slogans” about the king of England to rally his crowds. “It is said,” she continues, “that the candidate stumbled upon the use of King George during his campaign when a jibe produced an unexpected and overwhelming response from a delighted audience of foreign-​born citizens” (1930, 365). Thompson had inadvertently “hit upon one of those vital lies of which Vernon Lee has written so convincingly” (1930, 265). The use of Lee’s idea again here is crucial to Addams’s larger analysis of the situation faced by immigrants at this time. Thompson’s campaign, mirroring national campaigns in the twenty-​first century, adopted an “America First” platform. Supported by the America First Committee including Charles Lindbergh (who participated in a Thompson rally at Soldier Field), Thompson promised, among other things, “that Chicago school children will be taught to love America,” “that American histories will replace pro-​English histories,” and “that Chicago will be an example of patriotic devotion to American ideals, not a pest-​hole of anti-​Americanism” (ad in Chicago Daily News, Nicols, 2017). Thompson’s campaign for Chicago mayor led him on a speaking tour across the western Unites States ending in Los Angeles (See Bulkowski, 2013). Despite Thompson’s

66   Scott L. Pratt version of America First, which explicitly rejected new immigrants and “foreign” influences, he was nevertheless popular with foreign-​born citizens and Black voters. He was even popular with Native American voters, some of whom published a letter of support for Thompson “[begging] to be set right in the school histories in which a successful foray of [Native people] was invariably described as a massacre while one made by Whites was called a victory over a savage foe” (1930, 267). Addams notes that “King George represented for the moment the men of those dominant races who were slave traders on the coast of Africa, who were masters on Southern plantations, who were the shrouded night riders in the reconstruction days, the members of the Ku Klux Klan who had recently denied full high school privileges to an ambitious colored group living in the neighboring city of Gary” (1930, 267). Thompson’s America First populism won the election with a wide majority of the Black and immigrant votes. His campaign embodied for Addams the effectiveness of vital lies to motivate a community by seeming to address their needs through repeated abstract slogans while taking little or no action in reality. There was no conspiracy in the Chicago public schools as Thompson claimed, and his ad hominin attacks on his opponent were baseless (Schottenhamel, 1952). Capturing the mechanisms of vital lies, Addams concludes, “Everyone wants to be like his neighbors, which is doubtless an amiable quality, but leading to one of the chief dangers of democracy—​the tyranny of the herd mind” (1930, 289). “Inner consent” can play no role in an environment controlled by vital lies in part because inner consent requires an engagement with the truth (2002b [1922], 86). In “Immigrants under the Quota,” Addams offers an example that stands against the “herd mind,” describing the aftermath of the 1910 Chicago Garment Strike. The Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America, in their contract successfully achieved “cooperative production.” The agreement serves as an example of diverse groups coming together in a “common purpose” that involves the promise of “economic advantage,” “a moral appeal with a sense of responsibility,” and “a clear understanding that at moments the individual’s advantage must be sacrificed to the good of the whole” (1930, 291). In a sense, even as Thompson’s campaign brought together a diverse range of groups and individuals, it did so by convincing them that their particular interests were primary and that the interests of others were obstacles. Since its goal was ultimately to eliminate the presence and influence of these same groups, the demands of the campaign could not be fulfilled without destroying the very coalition it depended upon. Thompson’s America First campaign presented a vital lie that aimed to bring groups together without regard for truth and only so long as its ends remained unachieved. Perhaps unsurprisingly given the theory of vital lies, after his successful election, Thompson’s administration fell apart as he failed to fulfill his promises to the groups who had supported him and crime and corruption flourished. The Great Depression began in October 1929, destroying the city’s economy, and Thompson lost his bid for reelection in 1931 (Schottenhamel, 1952). He was the last Republican elected as mayor of Chicago. Despite the success of the garment workers using what Addams called “the American method”—​“reaching our ends through voluntary action with fair play to all interests involved” (1930, 295)—​their success had nevertheless been ignored by policy makers and

Vital Lies and the Fate of Democracy     67 journalists thanks to the “contemptuous attitude toward [the workers] [that] remains unchanged” (1930, 295). The vital lies remain—​despite the success of “vital truths”—​as the frame and chief danger of democracy.

Pragmatism and Democracy But what of pragmatism? Lee’s challenge to pragmatism is that it makes a case for the use of vital lies, which, though effective at times, separate their believers from reality and lead them to destruction. “These Vital Lies, new-​fangled or old-​established,” Lee writes, “thus pressed upon us by philosophers, are of the nature of those royal roads . . . along which our wishes magically [turn] into horses we beggars are wont to ride . . . For they most often represent, they and all their cognate utopias and panaceas, the expression, the passionate desire of some man or men to compass, single-​handed (and often single-​ witted), the reformation or the preservation of the moral and sometimes of the social world” (vol. 2, 114). Such lies are not without risk: “Such seekers after royal roads would make the world a wilderness, and like religious fanatics, choke hell with victims to keep their private paradise select” (vol. 2, 116). In Peace and Bread in Time of War, Addams herself illustrates the challenge to pragmatism when she criticizes “historic myths” in one chapter and, in another, offers the myths of the Corn Mother as the background for her call to women who, “in response to the food saving and food production appeals issued by one country after another, [will] so enlarge their conception of duty that the consciousness of the world’s needs for food should become the actual impulse of their daily activity” (2002b [1922], 47). In short, belief in the wide-​spread myth of the Corn Mother can lead to a desired, beneficial action. In this case, she observes that “every widespread myth has its counterpart in the world of morals” and that “[t]‌his is certainly true of the ‘fostering Mother’ ” of the corn myths described by James George Frazer in The Golden Bough (1890). What makes one myth unacceptable and the other fundamental? From the angle of the “will-​to-​believe” pragmatism presented by Lee, there would seem to be no reason to prefer one over the other outside what would be better for a believer to believe from their own perspective. Wilson and Thompson would be as justified in their myths as Addams would be in hers. What, if anything, makes one a vital lie and the other a vital truth? Lee’s response to vital lies is to acknowledge their usefulness and nevertheless to argue that they are to be avoided. “[F]‌ar be it from me to deny the existence, even occasional advantage, of such Vital Lies. All I protest against is our latter-​day neglect of the everyday, humdrum, taken for granted, paramount importance of Vital Truths” (vol. 2, 151). Lee’s response should be understood in terms of three larger claims: lies require a context in which there is something “real” in relation to which a claim or belief is true or not true, lies require faith by the believer in the liar, and the lie must be useful as a means of advancing the interests of the believer. With regard to the first, Lee writes, “in order to fabricate . . . delusions or any other kind of Vital Lie, we are obliged

68   Scott L. Pratt to postulate something outside and independent of them, namely reality” (vol. 2, 172). To the second issue, Lee holds that convincing people to believe vital lies is “the chief danger and odium of such applied Pragmatism; in this zeal for the moral edification of others, rather than in any individual paltering of truths” (vol. 2, 147). Promoting a vital lie “is taking an undue advantage, accepting the principle of fair play and not playing fair. For we cannot teach what we know to be a myth or a fallacy, without first making those whom we teach believe in the good faith we are breaking” (vol. 2, 148). To the last claim, that vital lies must be useful to the believer, Lee declares: “it seems as if Vital Lies meant the need of the moment and the individual against the need of the race and of the future.” They are, she continues, “among the devices with which the Gods, possibly blind . . ., shape us and our desires and powers” (vol. 2, 185). Truth, on the other hand, requires the first two elements, a relation to reality and faith in the teller and in this sense mirrors what Lee takes as part of the pragmatic theory of truth. It differs from lies, however, in that believing it does not depend on the present interests of the believer. “Truth,” she says, “is that which does not care a button what you think of it” (vol. 2, 207). Her conception of vital lies is part of her own larger philosophical view, which includes a form of realism that she describes as “utilitarianism, relativism, and the idea vaguely roughed out in the saying that Man is the Measure of All Things” (vol. 2, 186). The resulting view is humanistic (rather than anthropocentric).12 She summarizes: “Our human interests, our thoughts, are conditioned and limited by our constitution. Our constitution is limited, qualified by the Universe. But the only universe which can exist for us is the Universe which exists through the medium of those limitations and qualifications of our constitution” (vol. 2, 187). On this view, humans are “only a tiny portion of Reality” (vol. 2, 200) and so are limited to a narrow experience of the world. As a result, human knowledge is never certain but only relative to the circumstances at hand and must be relied upon, like it or not. The problem with “will-​ to-​believe” pragmatism, she thinks, is that it responds to the “relativity yet certainty” of human knowledge and distorts it “into a shambling sophistic that turns belief into choice and truth into expediency; a sophistic which, requiring belief in truth for efficacy of fallacy and falsehood, is ipso facto condemned to perpetual self-​contradiction” (vol. 2, 188–​189). In short, “will-​to-​believe” pragmatism is exactly the way vital lies are produced. This is not all bad, however, because realizing the nature of vital lies allows for “more careful criticism and rigorous selection” of beliefs that can respond to the real problems of experience (vol. 2, 189). This is the standard that distinguishes between lies and truths. Human norms are the product of evolution and that process is ongoing. Echoing Peirce’s claim about the evolution of reality,13 Lee argues that the process of evolution has produced “our bodily structure and functions” and has produced our morality as well: despite the origin of morality in the same process, we must admit that “morality is ‘good’ and tends to even greater goodness” (vol. 2, 200). This, she thinks, will be “difficult to recognize” in light of the actual behavior of humans, “[b]‌ut in proportion as we face things as they are, and not as we should like them to be, we shall gradually recognize that whatever infringement of our moral preferences may have been needed for the elaboration

Vital Lies and the Fate of Democracy     69 of our moral codes and ideals, these are, on the whole the best and improvable among our possessions, and one of the safest means to the gradual elimination of those very processes of human stupidity and brutality which have been active in their production” (vol. 2, 201). Recognizing the origin and role of vital lies opens people to a “new ethical attitude of recognizing that our moral preferences are not necessarily shared by the Cosmos, nor by all our fellow creatures, nor by our ancestors and descendants even to the seventh generation, but that it is needful that we, being what and where and how we are should give these moral preferences paramount importance” (vol. 2, 202). The operating norm across responses to moral preferences is “balance”: “balancing and looking both to the right and to the left, casting our chance forwards and backwards and all round us” so that judgments are a consequence of the ego and the present such that, in taking action, she says, we “must perpetually sacrifice to the Alter and the Future” (vol. 2, 203). These are the “only real existences” and the “sole practical and moral touchstone” (vol. 2, 203). Lee concludes with a question: “For what are we living?” And answers: “For nothing: But BECAUSE of everything” (vol. 2, 210). What purposes there are, are a consequence of complex human life, its guiding norms and its propensity to believing vital lies. But, “if we go on thinking long enough, we may come to the conclusion that ‘to what purpose?’ is a question that man has the right to ask only of his own doings, but has, with regard to them, the duty of asking it rather more critically at times, than he does” (vol. 2, 210). And on asking such questions, vital lies will be set aside in favor of “the spontaneous convergence of scientific thought and utilitarian ethics” (vol. 2, 189). A case can be made that Addams affirms much of Lee’s view about vital lies. For Lee, norms are finally a matter of adjusting individual interests to the realities of the present circumstances. The future—​bound to collective interests—​provides a framework but does not replace individual interests. For Addams, norms are a product of the situation at hand, its past and future. Her neighbors at Hull House came to set the standards for action taken by the Hull House residents. In Peace and Bread, proper norms—​vital truths—​were offered by those affected by the war. The difference between a vital lie and a vital truth is not merely its truth value but its impact in a time and place on the flourishing of individuals in community. Democracy, rather than a name for a form of government, social structure, or even a set of practices, is a set of commitments in light of a particular understanding of how the world, in fact, is. Vital lies—​or historic myths—​make it clear that the world is more than human engagement. The contrasting case of productive myths shows that a narrow conception of truth in relation to reality also undercuts human flourishing. Like Lee, Addams sees meeting biological needs as norms, but it is the fostering of possibilities that make sense of flourishing, which, like movement, cannot be reduced to an instant present. The difference between the “historic myth” of the efficacy and gallantry of war and of the Corn Mother’s commitment to feeding her children is that only the latter connects with the real present needs and makes possible a future of flourishing possibilities. The claim following the 2020 United States presidential election that the loser won regardless of the evidence recalls the need for a theory of vital lies and vital truths and

70   Scott L. Pratt for a pragmatism that can tell the difference. For Addams, such lies attack democracy because they block the engagement of individuals and other communities in dealing with the realities of their lived present in relation to an emerging future. Democracy is a balancing of individual interests and collective ones. Vital lies—​the lies of politicians and corporate presidents, news networks and social media—​are the enemies of democratic lives because they destroy the future. For Lee and Addams, the standard that values truth over lies is not found in a yet-​to-​be-​realized future but in ongoing realization of opportunities in the present and the possibilities that follow. That autocrats—​Thompson, Trump, Putin—​were purveyors of vital lies should reinforce the need by advocates of democracy to challenge claims and seek clearer ideas of the issues that frame collective needs and actions. The fact that autocrats made use of vital lies should not obscure their presence and danger in democratic communities as well. Rule by either a majority or a minority can also be carried out in terms of vital lies that support the advantages and power of some group. White supremacy, wealth, patriarchy, heteronormativity all can (and do) use vital lies to make their power seem natural. Recognizing the role and origins of vital lies in instrumental thinking is—​as it was for Lee and Addams—​the key to resistance and change. Challenging the lies of the powerful does not guarantee that they will not be told and used, but it will affirm the value of vital truths as a critical frame of reference with which to test claims and revise or reject them in order to achieve a better life for the community. Why does Addams use Lee’s theory of vital lies without acknowledging and responding to Lee’s argument that pragmatism is, in practice, the process of generating vital lies? Addams knew James’s work and Dewey’s. I suspect that in the end Addams felt no need to respond to this concern. She may have agreed with Lee’s criticisms of the pragmatic theory of truth especially after Dewey and so many of her intellectual colleagues joined in support of the war effort and Randolph Bourne argued that such a failure was a consequence of the commitment to instrumental pragmatism.14 Addams remained opposed to the war and argued, among other things, that the very claims made by Wilson and promoted by Dewey were vital lies. Addams, like Lee, held that truth and lies were complex productions that could be analyzed to provide insight into those that should be affirmed and those which were, in the end, destructive of lives and democracy. Addams did not defend pragmatism of the sort attacked by Lee because her own pragmatism was not instrumental in the sense of a will-​to-​believe pragmatism but, like Lee’s, affirmed both that truth was grounded in present realities and was constantly revisable as circumstances change. Lee would agree with Addams’s conclusions in her essay “Education by the Current Event.” “Our environment moves much faster that we do. If we would keep the world contemporaneous, we must hasten to mold the plastic material of life into our own current image” (1930, 392). We must change what can be changed to transform our circumstances to foster human life. “The flow of personal experience comes to pause at nodal points where a man first grows vividly aware of the whole situation as calling for new adjustments. The course of circumstances has outstripped his capacity for those offhand and instinctive responses which up to that moment had kept him unshattered in a world of change” (1930, 392). But the response

Vital Lies and the Fate of Democracy     71 cannot be only theoretical. Again, echoing Lee, Addams concludes: “education should be continued throughout life and should play a leading role in the interpretation of contemporaneous developments. Possible education in a democracy must in the end depend upon action for raw theory cannot immediately be applied to life without grave results” (1930, 413). On this account, the vital lies of the present world cannot be met silently or in theory, but through real action, calling on vital truths and standing for a democratic future.

Notes 1. In Goldman’s Vital Lies Simple Truths, vital lies are a species of the failure to pay attention to aspects of one’s experience, what William James identified as “selective attention” and sometimes called “a certain blindness” (Goldman, 1997, 21; James, 1900). The failure to attend is a consequence, according to Goldman, of a tradeoff between anxiety and awareness—​more awareness means more anxiety and vice versa. It might be argued that the vital lies discussed by Lee and Addams can be understood in terms of this tradeoff, but the same tradeoff can also be seen as part of the pragmatist requirement that humans are fallible. A vital lie can obscure a mistake or a practice of cruelty and awareness can reveal it. In this case, awareness is better taken as liberation from and not as the cause of anxiety. Goldman’s treatment provides an analysis of the human disposition to avoid anxiety by not paying attention. “We set bounds on the range of our thoughts and feelings, limit our freedom of perception and action, in order to feel at peace” (Goldman, 1997, 131). Goldman, like Lee, begins with James, but pursues the issue from that perspective of psychology; Lee from the perspective of pragmatist philosophy. The result is similar, but Lee aims to address the role of values while Goldman presumes them. “There is, to be sure, a fundamental difference between those blind spots that spring from benign self-​protection and those that spring from ugly collusions. When the truth threatens to bring down a conspiracy of silence that protects moral ugliness, the choice is straightforward: speak the truth or join the conspiracy. But some blind spots . . . help us survive in the face of painful truths; they are an essential part of the human condition” (Goldman, 1997, 248). The question is how to tell the difference between vital lies and vital truths. 2. The reference is to An Essay in Aid of a Grammar of Assent, by John Henry Newman, 1870. Newman aims to give something like a logic of assent where assent is “unconditional,” inference is “conditional,” and doubt is dismissed as either disbelief or a form of assent or inference. 3. Henry James occasionally visited her at her home in Florence. She regularly corresponded with him and she may have met William James as well. The James brothers fell out with Lee after her publication, in 1884 and 1885, of a satirical, three-​volume novel, Miss Brown, dedicated to (and to some extent aimed at) Henry. See Colby, 2003, ­chapter 6. William James died before Lee published Vital Lies. She was nevertheless clear that she was directly challenging only part of his view. She writes, “I want it to be thoroughly understood that in dealing with the work of the late Professor James I am attacking and condemning only that ‘Will-​to-​B elieve’ element with which this very suggestive and delightful thinker has, in my opinion, alloyed, debased, diminished so much of his own intellectual wealth” (1912, 3). Whether the challenge to James’s theory of truth challenges his entire view is a matter for debate.

72   Scott L. Pratt 4. It is interesting to note that Bertrand Russell offered a similar critique of James at the same time and Randolph Bourne, writing just a few years later during the world war, criticized Dewey in much the same way. Both Russell and Bourne have become part of the canon of critics of pragmatism while Lee makes no appearance at all. 5. Also see Lee’s Gospels of Anarchy. “Would it be possible, for instance, for Professor James to realize that the writer of these notes is one of his warmest admirers? And is it then possible for me, while marshaling my counter arguments, to remember the hundred points of agreement, the hundred suggestions with which Professor James’s essays have delighted me?” (1908, 230). 6. The drafts are differently titled and include “Russia—​A Touchstone” (1918b). “Remarks on Tolstoy and the Russian Revolution” (1918d), “The Russian Complication in Light of Tolstoy’s Teachings” (1918a), and “Three Efforts of Contemporary Russia to Break Through Current Abstractions” (1918c). Portions of “Russia-​A Touchstone” are included in Peace and Bread in Time of War (2002b) and her lecture for the American Sociological Association titled “Americanization” (2003). 7. In the draft, the passage only has a clear closing quotation mark. Nearly the same passage is used again in Remarks on Tolstoy (1918d, 2) beginning “when large bodies of men unite . . .” leaving some question as to whether this is a direct quote from Lee or a paraphrase. 8. The source of the quotation is unknown to me but the text closely follows the discussion of the syndicalist myth in the second volume of Vital Lies (vol. 2, 71–​75). 9. Lee refers to the “sole practical and moral touchstone” for people trying to balance interests and reality (vol. 2, 203). 10. “Inner consent” is also used twice in Twenty Years at Hull House (1910, 14, 60). The second use there roughly parallels the use in The American Magazine, but it is far less explicit about the meaning of the phrase. The phrase is also used in New Conscience and an Ancient Evil (1912, 150). Addams’s use in “My Experience as a Progressive Delegate” (1912) reaffirms the use in the McClure’s Magazine but does not mention Maeterlinck. She writes: “The members of [the Resolutions Committee] had all experienced the frustration and disappointment of detached and partial effort. They had come to this first national convention of the Progressive Party, not only to urge the remedial legislation which seemed to them so essential to the nation’s welfare, but to test its validity and vitality by the ‘inner consent’ of their fellow citizens, to throw their measures into the life of the nation itself for corroboration” (1913, 12). 11. In Addams’s sense, at the end of the war, such commitment and action meant, in particular, feeding the hungry. The Second Meeting of the Assembly of the League of Nations was presented with the famine faced by much of Russia. “It was,” Addams writes, “a situation which might turn men’s minds from war and a disastrous peace to great and simple human issues; in such an enterprise the governments would ‘realize the failure of national coercive power for indispensable ends like food for the people,’ they would come to a cooperation born of the failure of force” (2002b, 125). The embedded quotation is from Angell, 1921, 176. 12. See Lee, 1912, vol. 2, 187–​188. “We are the Measure of All Things, because the only things we know of are known with reference to our standards. We are more important than the rest of things, because when we say important we are implying a relation to ourselves, a relation we can conceive as outside ourselves only by attributing the modes of our own experience to what exists beyond our own experience. The Universe has made and is still making us.” 13. See Peirce, 1992, 138–​139. 14. See Bourne, 1917.

Vital Lies and the Fate of Democracy     73

References Addams, Jane. (1909). Autobiographical note upon twenty years. American Magazine 70 (May to October), 84–​93, 192–​202, 338–​348, 494–​505, 638–​646. Addams, Jane. (1910). Twenty years at Hull-​House with autobiographical notes. Macmillan. Addams, Jane. (1912). New conscience and an ancient evil. Macmillan. Addams, Jane. 1913. My experiences as a progressive delegate. McClure’s Magazine 40 (November–​April, 1912–​1913), 12–​14. Addams, Jane. (1918a). The Russian complication in light of Tolstoy’s teachings. Jane Addams Digital Edition. https://​digi​tal.jan​eadd​ams.ram​apo.edu/​items/​show/​10658. Addams, Jane. (1918b). Russia—​A touchstone. Jane Addams Digital Edition. https://​digi​tal.jan​ eadd​ams.ram​apo.edu/​items/​show/​10506. Addams, Jane. (1918c). Three efforts of contemporary Russia to break through current abstractions. Jane Addams Digital Edition. https://​digi​tal.jan​eadd​ams.ram​apo.edu/​items/​show/​10659. Addams, Jane. (1918d). Remarks on Tolstoy and the Russian Revolution. Jane Addams Digital Edition. https://​digi​tal.jan​eadd​ams.ram​apo.edu/​items/​show/​10653. Addams, Jane. (1930). The second twenty years at Hull-​House, September 1909 to September 1929, with a record of a growing world consciousness. Macmillan. Addams, Jane. (2002a [1902]). Democracy and social ethics with an introduction by Charlene Haddock Seigfried. University of Illinois. Addams, Jane. (2002b [1922]). Peace and bread in time of war with an introduction by Katherine Joslin. University of Illinois. Addams, Jane. (2003 [1919]). Americanization. In Marilyn Fischer and Judy D. Whipps (Eds.), Jane Addams’ Essays and Speeches (pp. 189–​196). Continuum. Angell, Norman. (1921). The fruits of victory: A sequel to “The Great Illusion.” W. Collins Sons & Co. Bourne, Randolph. (1917). Twilight of the idols. The Seven Arts 11, 688–​702. Bukowski, Douglas. (2013). Big Bill Thompson: The model politician. In Paul M. Green and Melvin G. Holli (Eds.), The Mayors: The Chicago Political Tradition (pp. 61–​81). 4th ed. Southern Illinois UP. Colby, Vineta. (2003). Vernon Lee: A literary biography. University of Virginia. Crawley, Alfred Ernest. (1905). The tree of life: A study of religion. Hutchinson & Company. Frazer, J. G. (1890). The Golden Bough: A Study of Comparative Religion. 2 vols. Macmillan. Goldman, Daniel. (1997). Vital lies, simple truths: The psychology of self-​deception. Bloomsbury. Ibsen, Henrik. (1907). The collected works of Henrik Ibsen, vol. vii. Introductions by William Archer. Charles Scribner’s Sons. Izadi, Elahe, and Sarah Ellison. (2022). Russia’s independent media, long under siege, teeters under new Putin crackdown. The Washington Post, March 8, 2022. https://​www.was​hing​ tonp​ost.com/​media/​2022/​03/​04/​putin-​media-​law-​rus​sia-​news/​. James, William. (1900). On some of life’s ideals. Henry Holt. James, William. (1907). Pragmatism, a new name for some old ways of thinking. Longmans, Green. Lee, Vernon. (1880). Studies of the eighteenth century in Italy. W. Satchellint. Lee, Vernon. (1908). Gospels of anarchy, and other contemporary studies. T.F. Unwin. Lee, Vernon. (1912). Vital lies: Studies of some varieties of recent obscurantism. 2 vols. J. Lane. Maeterlinck, Maurice. (1902). The buried temple. Translated by Alfred Sutro. Dodd, Mead and Company.

74   Scott L. Pratt Newman, J. Henry. (1870). An essay in aid of a grammar of assent. Burns, Oates, & Co. Nichols, Jeff. (2017). Chicago mayor Big Bill Thompson used “America First” decades before Trump. The Chicago Reader (June 2). https://​chicag​orea​der.com/​blogs/​chic​ago-​mayor-​big -​bill-​thomp​son-​used-​amer​ica-​first-​deca​des-​bef​ore-​trump/​. Parker, Ashley, and Marianna Sotomayer. (2021). For Republicans, fealty to Trump’s election falsehood becomes defining loyalty test. The Washington Post (May 23, 2021). https://​www .was​ h ing​ t onp ​ o st.com/ ​ p olit ​ i cs/ ​ repu ​ b lic ​ a ns- ​ t rump- ​ e lect ​ i on- ​ f alseh ​ o od/ ​ 2 021/ ​ 0 5/ ​ 0 1/​ 7bd380a0-​a921-​11eb-​8c1a-​56f​0cb4​ff3b​5_​st​ory.html. Pater, Walter. (1894). The Renaissance: Studies in art and poetry. Macmillan. Peirce, Charles Sanders. (1992). The essential Peirce, volume 1: 1867–​1893. Indiana University Press. Schottenhamel, George. (1952). How Big Bill Thompson won control of Chicago. Journal of the Illinois State Historical Society (1908-​1984) 45(1), 30–​49. Sorel, Georges. (1914). Reflections on violence. Translated by T. E. Hulme. B.W. Huebsch. Troianovski, Anton. (2022). Russia takes censorship to new extremes, stifling war coverage. The New York Times (March 4). https://​www.nyti​mes.com/​2022/​03/​04/​world/​eur​ope/​rus​ sia-​cen​sors​hip-​media-​crackd​own.html. Treisman, Rachel. (2022). Putin’s claim of fighting against Ukraine “neo-​Nazis” distorts history, scholars say. National Public Radio (March 1). https://​www.npr.org/​2022/​03/​01/​108​3677​765/​ putin-​denaz​ify-​ukra​ine-​rus​sia-​hist​ory. Tyrrell, George. (1909). Christianity at the cross-​roads. Longmans, Green. Ward, Mary A. (1900). Introduction to Wuthering Heights. In Wuthering Heights, by Emily Brontë (Ellis Bell) and Agnes Grey, by Anne Brontë (Acton Bell) with an introduction by Mrs. Humphry Ward. Harper & Brothers, xi–​xl. Wheeler-​Bennett, John W. (1939). The forgotten peace, Brest-​Litovsk, March 1918. W. Morrow & Co. Wilson, Woodrow. (1918). Address of President Wilson Delivered at Baltimore, April 6, 1918. Papers Relating to the Foreign Relations of the United States, 1918, Supplement 1, The World War, Vol. 1, Document 139 (https://​hist​ory.state.gov/​hist​oric​aldo​cume​nts/​frus19​18Su​pp01​ v01/​d139.

Chapter 4

Jane Adda ms Care-​Centered Leadership and the Democratic Community DeLysa Burnier

Jane Addams co-​founded Hull House in 1889 with Ellen Gates Starr in Chicago, Illinois, and for the next 46 years the settlement house was the center of social reform in the city, the state, and the nation. Addams very quickly became a national and internationally recognized reform leader and public figure, and by 1895 “it was not unusual for crowds to turn out to hear Addams speak anywhere from San Francisco to Boston” (Brown, 2004, p. 1). By the time Addams published Twenty Years at Hull House in 1910, she had become the “most famous and influential woman in America” (Brown, 2004, p. 8). Louise Knight (2010) described Addams as “one of the nation’s most effective reform leaders, as influential in her day on both the national and world stages as Eleanor Roosevelt was in hers” (Knight, 2010, p. xiv). Addams was not only an effective reform leader, but also an “organizer and mediator of labor unions; a peacemaker; and a visionary who helped create the welfare state,” and an “early feminist who understood the importance of women’s relationships and connectedness” (Lundblad, 1995, p. 661). Even as she continued to oversee Hull House, Addams assumed leadership positions in multiple organizations, serving in municipal government as the 19th Ward garbage inspector in 1895 and on the Chicago School Board from 1905 to 1909. Deeply committed to the cause of women’s suffrage, she held office in the National American Women’s Suffrage Association. Addams was a founding member of the National Association of Colored People (NAACP) and the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU). She helped launch the National Child Labor Committee, the National Consumers’ League, and the Women’s Trade Union League, all of which became major social and economic reform organizations. In 1910 Addams became the first woman president of the National Conference of Charities and Corrections, as well as the first women president of the National Council of Social Work. A dedicated pacifist and peace activist, Addams headed the Women’s Peace Party in the United States, became

76   DeLysa Burnier president of the International Congress of Women at The Hague, and helped found the Women’s International League of Peace and Freedom in 1919 (Shields, 2017). In 1931, she was awarded the Nobel Peace prize. Addams also exercised leadership as a public intellectual by writing ten books and more than 200 popular and scholarly articles, as well as giving hundreds of speeches in support of social reform, social justice, and the democratic community (Lundblad, 1995, pp. 661–​662). Addams’s books were popular with general readers, and they were read and reviewed by William James, John Dewey, and Theodore Roosevelt. James hailed Addams’s first book, Democracy and Social Ethics, as “one of the great books of our time” (Knight, 2010, p. 108). Her Twenty Years at Hull House (1910) is still widely read today. Since the 1990s, scholars have recognized Addams’s intellectual contributions to sociology (Deegan, 1991, 2013), performance studies (Jackson, 2001), care ethics (Hamington and Miller, 2006), feminism, (Hamington, 2010), democratic theory (Fischer, Nackenoff, and Chmielewski, 2009), pragmatism (Seigfried, 1996; Shields, 2003, 2005; Hamington, 2009), and public administration (Stivers, 2000; Shields, 2017). Across this diverse scholarship, Addams emerges as an engaged citizen, dedicated activist, and complex thinker committed to making the democratic community inclusive, pluralistic, participatory, cooperative, and socially just for all citizens. Despite being a visible public leader, Addams neither viewed herself as a leader nor discussed “leadership” in her autobiographical writings. Indeed, Addams resisted the idea that she was the leader of Hull House because, in her view, it was democratically led and managed by the settlement residents themselves (Knight, 1991). Furthermore, all Hull House residents and workers, including Addams, took their “leadership charge” from the people who lived in and around the settlement. Hull House attracted residents such as Florence Kelley, Julia Lathrop, Grace Abbott, Edith Abbott, and Francis Perkins, all of whom became nationally known social reform leaders, public policy experts, and government administrators. Lathrop, for example, became the first woman to head a federal bureau in 1912, and Perkins was appointed the first woman cabinet secretary in 1932. Many other residents remained in Chicago to lead civic clubs, boards, and organizations (Deegan, 2013). Addams never took leadership credit for their successes and instead wrote movingly and selflessly about residents’ hard work and talent, and the concrete improvements they made in citizens’ everyday lives. Louise Knight (1991) observes that “it should hardly be a surprise that more leaders blossomed at Hull House (and were willing to live there even after they had emerged as leaders in their own right) than any other settlement. This result—​highly motivated, creative followers who became leaders—​flowed naturally from Addams’s method” (p. 131). Addams chose not to name her “method” of leading and administering, but this chapter argues that she is an exemplar of care-​centered leadership and administration. Care-​centered leadership is a relational approach to leadership that calls for establishing caring relationships within and outside the organization (Burnier, 2003, 2009). Leaders cultivate and manage multiple and fluid relationships and processes over time in support of collaboration, caring, courage, intuition, and organizational vision (Regan and Brooks, 1995). Relational leaders model caring principles and values and communicate

Jane Addams   77 to others that care is an organizational-​wide value. Care ethics is integral to this form of leadership (Tronto, 1993, 2013). An ethic of care attends to real people, their needs, and the circumstances of their lived experiences, and it takes into account how empathy, sympathy, and responsiveness operate in the particular situations in which persons and problems are embedded. Care-​centered leadership and administration shaped Hull House’s internal relations and informed the programs and activities the residents undertook for and with their neighbors. Equally important, Addams came to understand that caring for one another also must define social relations within the political community if democracy is to have genuine meaning and substance for all citizens. This chapter defines the central elements that comprise Addams’s care-​centered approach to leading and managing and then examines Addams’s vision of a democratic community focused on care, social justice, and her process of collective democratic problem-​solving driven by sympathetic understanding and affectionate interpretation. The chapter then examines the problematic marketization of care and community under neoliberalism and concludes by arguing for the need today to adopt Addams’s democratic perspective on care and community.

The Development of Care-​C entered Leadership and Administration Addams’s (2002a [1902]) belief that government’s “ultimate purpose” was “securing the welfare of the people” led her to doubt the efficacy of urban reform movements led by “businessmen and the better element” because they placed too much emphasis on “the correction of political machinery” and were overly dedicated to “better administration” to the exclusion of the “final aims of city government” (p. 99). In choosing to see the city as a “great business corporation,” male officials ignored the many ways the city is but a form of “enlarged housekeeping” (Addams, 2007 [1907], p. 101). She claimed that the “men of the city have been carelessly indifferent to much of this civic housekeeping, as they have always been indifferent to the details of the household” (p. 101). The unfortunate consequence is that city streets are not clean, garbage goes uncollected, water supplies are impure, food is not inspected, and public recreation and leisure spaces are scarce (pp. 101–​102). In fact, how could citizens expect otherwise when “the very multifariousness and complexity of a city government demands the help of minds accustomed to detail and variety of work, to a sense of obligation for the health and welfare of young children, and to a responsibility for the cleanliness and comfort of others” (p. 102). To rectify this situation, Addams implored women, who traditionally have managed households and families, to take up the cause of “civic housekeeping” through women’s clubs, philanthropy, voluntarism, settlement work, and later the vote. Already, according to Addams (2007 [1907]), “most of the departments in a modern city can be

78   DeLysa Burnier traced to women’s traditional activities,” but they “slipped from women’s hands” once sanitation, street sweeping, health, and housing maintenance were defined as government functions (pp. 102–​103). Addams rejected the view that because women could not vote, they had no role to play in municipal affairs. Rather, women must get involved because they could help make cities cleaner, safer, and more humane through reform initiatives based on their experiences as “housekeepers,” and by pressuring elected officials to focus programmatically on material needs of citizens. Believing that cities were on the cusp of progressive change, Addams (2007 [1907]) claimed that “to be in any measure successful, this effort will require all the intelligent powers of observation, all the sympathy, all the common sense which may be gained from the whole adult population” (p. 104). Addams and other activists “assumed the centrality of the administrative state as a site for exercising power to alleviate the inequalities” that immigrants, workers, and the poor experienced daily (Sarvasy, 2010, p. 295). Over time, Addams came to envision Hull House as a space where women and men “could learn to formulate, defend, and administer specific labor and social laws as instruments of the new common good” (p. 303). The activism that Addams and others practiced “was not top-​down; it was embedded in gendered cross-​class alliances” that emerged from the experiences of their Halsted Street neighbors and manifested in the caring values and activities that Hull House residents and neighbors alike enacted inside and outside the settlement (p. 295). As Maurice Hamington (2004) notes, Addams was “practicing care ethics before the term existed,” for she believed that certain habits of caring—​of active listening, participation, connected leadership and activism—​will allow society to flourish and grow” (p. 92). Addams and Starr selected the former Charles Hull mansion as their “home” because it was located in a multi-​ethnic, religiously diverse, largely working-​class neighborhood of young and old where they felt they could respond to “all sides of the neighborhood life” with social, educational, humanitarian, and civic initiatives (Addams, 2002c, p. 32). The settlement’s activities evolved over time, as Addams (1910) documents in Twenty Years at Hull House, in response to their neighbors’ needs. The kindergarten, begun by an early volunteer, attracted immediate interest, but so also did the social clubs and art classes for older children (Knight, 2010, p. 71). There was programming and humanitarian help for all ages and genders, as well as weekly receptions for different ethnic communities, theater, dances, book clubs, women’s clubs, college extension courses, and English-​speaking and citizenship classes. The Working People’s Social Science Club was especially noteworthy for its “free weekly series of public lectures about economic and social issues of interest to working people” (Knight, 2005, p. 204). The club attracted a wide following, and Addams believed it shaped her own “political and economic education” (p. 204). There also were nursing and health-​care services, a diet kitchen, coffee house, gym, playground, public library, a post-​office savings bank, public baths, and the Labor Museum. Hull House also experimented with cooperative economic enterprises and did extensive liaison work for neighbors with government offices, schools, and courts.

Jane Addams   79 What started as a “mere foothold” of a house eventually became a complex of 13 buildings with both women and men residents. Attempting to capture the organic, intersectional quality of the settlement, Dorothy Moore (1897) explained that Hull House “stands not so much for a solution of problems as a place of exchange,” by which she meant that material help, knowledge, kindness, and friendship were shared or exchanged through associations of “richer with poorer, wise with simple, learned with untaught, dynamic with static” (p. 640). It was a place that daily “put out its hands, touching, it is believed, with humility as well as hopefulness and trust the lives of those about it” (p. 635). Even though Hull House was filled with constant activity, it was fundamentally a space for democratic discourse, dialogue, and interaction among residents, neighbors, and visitors. Hull House “never was a highly structured organization” and ultimately became an “institution without being institutionalized” (Hamington, 2004, p. 97). The latter characteristic was essential for Addams (1910) because she recognized that Hull House must not “lose its flexibility, its power of quick adaptation, its readiness to change its methods as its environment may demand” (p. 126). Maintaining this adaptive, flexible character required residents “to live quietly side by side with their neighbors until they grow into a sense of relationship and mutual interest” (p. 126). Addams’s “life-​work was grounded in a deep faith in people,” and for this reason Hull House was not a faith-​based institution, avoiding any religious affiliation so that believers and nonbelievers alike would feel welcome (Elson, 1954, p. 4). Neither did it operate like a contemporary homeless shelter or soup kitchen, even though assistance for food, shelter, and medical emergencies was available (Shields, 2005). Hull House also was not a “social laboratory,” as residents’ focus was not on their neighbors as subjects of social inquiry, but on the actual social and economic problems they faced (Shields, 2005, p. 308). Alex Elson (1954), who grew up at Hull House, observed that she “worked not on people but with them” (p. 6). Settlement residents were expected “to see the needs of their neighborhood as a whole, to furnish data for legislation, and to use their influence to secure it” (Addams, 1910, p. 126). Having demonstrated a community need for a particular program or service at Hull House, Addams did not object if local government subsequently took over its delivery (Addams, 1910). Finally, Addams hoped that Hull House would not become an institution like a hospital or county agency because those organizations must “lace [themselves up] in certain formulas,” and in doing so they erase the “mystery and complexity of life” (Addams, 2002c, p. 39). Observing, interpreting, and acting on the “mystery and complexity of life” stand at the crux of Addams’s care-​centered approach to leadership and administration. Such an approach begins by understanding citizens’ concrete and variegated experiences, which emerge from and are shaped by their physical and social environments (Fischer, Nackenoff, and Chmielewski, 2009). One comes to understand others’ experiences by engaging in dialogical listening, which in turn helps to construct relationships based on “sympathetic, or affectionate, interpretation” (Addams, 2002d). Addams’s process of sympathetic interpretation will be explicated later in this chapter.

80   DeLysa Burnier Addams avoided the exercise of formal leadership because she preferred a non-​ hierarchical, democratic, relational approach to leading. Francis Perkins (1934) credited Addams for having “taught us to take all the elements of the community into conference for the solution of any problem—​the grasping landlord, the corner saloonkeeper, the policeman on the beat, the president of the university, the head of the railroad, the labor leader—​all cooperating through the latent desire for association” (pp. 41–​42). Relatedly, Addams (1910) noted that she “never addressed a Chicago audience on the subject of the settlement and its vicinity without inviting a neighbor to go along with her” so that she would not be tempted to generalize about “conditions” that her neighbor knew better than she (p. 96). Neither did she presume a shared subject position with her working class and immigrant neighbors even after living nearby for years. Addams (1910) explained that “there was always present the harrowing consciousness of the difference in economic conditions between ourselves and our neighbors” (pp. 133–​134). Although Addams felt these differences could be bridged by working collectively to solve neighborhood problems such as sanitation, she also understood “that persons are unequally positioned to contribute to problem-​solving or be heard as having validly unique points of view” (Siegfried, 2002a, p. xiv). One way around this problem was to establish a “democratically grounded inclusiveness sensitive to differences in power” (p. xiv). To that end, Addams (1910) stressed democratic, reciprocal learning across classes based on the “solidarity of the human race” that demands attending to even the hardest or most difficult cases (p. 126). Addams also believed that distinctions should not be made, as we typically do today, between the worthy and unworthy poor (Addams, 2002a [1902], p. 30). Above all, the “superior” judgments of charity workers and reformers must be avoided because they often rest on class-​based platitudes about thrift, hard work, and alcohol that fail to capture the complexities of her neighbors’ lived experiences (Addams, 2002a [1902]). Despite possessing substantial authority at Hull House, Addams chose “to disperse a significant amount of power through democratic policies and procedures” with respect to its operation (Knight, 1991, p. 134). Residents, for example, shared some common duties, but they were otherwise encouraged to develop activities in accord with their own artistic, educational, social, or political interests. They also participated in weekly meetings governed by parliamentary procedure, group discussion, and voting (p. 131). All residents, including Addams, on occasion performed household chores, and everyone worked to maintain the settlement’s home-​like atmosphere that neighbors found so appealing. Addams’s relational leadership style, however, did not turn on creating “emotional intimacy” with residents (Knight, 1991). Alice Hamilton (1943), a long-​term resident, recalled that “we knew each other’s opinions and interests and work and we discussed them often and freely but the atmosphere was impersonal” (p. 61). “Miss Addams was warm and magnetic, but she never tolerated the sort of protecting, interfering affection” that, according to Hamilton, is sometimes associated with women leaders, and she was “impatient of solicitude” (p. 61). Addams instead modelled “connected leadership” grounded in her commitment to understand deeply and dialogically her neighbors’ actual experiences through “active listening, participation . . . and activism” (Hamington,

Jane Addams   81 2004, p. 108). Her style of leadership also depended on encouraging residents and neighbors to learn from each other so that they might work collectively to solve shared problems. Hamington’s (2004) description of Addams as a “connected leader” is consistent with her overall care-​centered approach in that both entail sympathetic interpretation, being fully present in the moment, and remaining flexible while continually learning from experience.

Constructing Care-​C entered Democratic Communities Addams (1930) believed that “it was the function of the settlements to bring into the circle of knowledge and fuller life, men and women who might otherwise be left out” (p. 276). The circle metaphor also describes the values-​based, reform function of democratic political communities. Instead of limiting or denying social and political access to women, immigrants, minorities, workers, and the poor, the circle of community should be inclusive and welcoming to all. Women should be granted suffrage, for example, and African Americans should not be denied their constitutional and civil rights; nor should individuals be left outside the circle because of ethnicity, class, age, or religion (Deegan, 2010). Broadening the definition of political participation also would widen the circle of community by including women active in settlement and club networks, men and women in unions, and diverse citizens working collaboratively on shared social problems (Gabriele, 2015; Shields, 2017). Addams’s conception of what constituted legitimate public knowledge within the circle and how such knowledge should be gathered follows from her commitment to truly democratic communities. Addams believed “that social research was a condition precedent to social reform. Time after time she advised against the ‘soapbox approach’ and instead suggested finding and publicizing facts” (Elson, 1954, p. 5). To promulgate the facts, Addams and others met with public officials and community leaders, but they also used the press, public meetings, and other available forms of communication (p. 6). The source for these “facts” was the pioneering social scientific research that Addams, Kelley, the Abbotts, and other associates conducted on the issues related to employment, housing, prostitution, juvenile delinquency, women, and children, which then became the basis for progressive legislation in Illinois and the nation. The data-​ gathering methods underlying such research were themselves consistent with a “community of inquiry” approach whereby “any analysis and subsequent actions to resolve the practical problems of Chicago’s poor immigrant communities needed to incorporate the insights and experiences” of those neighbors (Shields, 2017, p. 22). For Addams and her colleagues, then, community discourse and public policy should be informed by sound social science and plural values and experiences, and grounded in the concrete experiences and material conditions of those experiencing the problem.

82   DeLysa Burnier The ultimate goal of inquiry shaped by the values of a care-​centered democratic community would be to offer all of its members the opportunity for a “fuller life.” Elson (1954) notes that “Addams strongly believed and frequently stated that the existence of the state depends upon the health, the welfare, and the moral character of its citizens” (p. 4). Her decades-​long experience living in Hull House meant she saw firsthand the punishing effects of unregulated sweat shops and factory work, the deleterious consequences for citizens when local government is corrupt, the illness and death caused by impure drinking water and uncollected garbage, and the impact of work on children who start work before they become adults. Addams maintained that a care-​centered community must meet a “standard of decency” for all its members, and if the community fails to do so then government must provide the corrective legislation (p. 4). Elson commends Addams and her associates not just for their belief in democratic political community but also for their efficacy in setting into motion “far-​reaching social legislation and governmental machinery” that advanced a progressive reform agenda (p. 4). Examples of the landmark reforms in which Addams and her colleagues had a role include the first factory law in Illinois regulating working conditions, creating the first juvenile justice system, establishing the federal Children’s Bureau, and helping write the federal Social Security Act. Addams (2002a [1902]) observed that “the demand of an individual for decency and comfort, for a chance to work and obtain the fullness of life may be widened until it gradually embraces all the members of the community, and rises into a sense of common weal” (p. 117). Her vision of a “fuller life” calls for everyone inside the circle of community to leave “the sequestered byway” and begin “mixing on the thronged and common road where all turn out for one another, and at least see the size of one another’s burden” (Addams, 2002a [1902], p. 7). Addams here is clearly advancing the case that the common good is central to the idea of care-​centered democratic communities. Citizens must be dedicated to entering the diverse life worlds of others with sympathy and empathy and be able to work together cooperatively so that all may enjoy a “fuller life.” Addams knew well that the caring relationships that formed the democratic community at Hull House were not commonly encountered in the wider political community. She astutely observed that aldermen’s apparent care for workers and immigrants, expressed through family gifts, free rail passes, holiday turkeys, help with funerals, and other such “kindnesses,” was little more than a transactional relationship through which they sought constituents’ votes (Addams, 2002a [1902], p. 104). She also objected to the “daintily clad charity worker” who supplied only “guarded-​care” defined by platitudes and rules and lacking the “emotional kindness with which relief is given by one poor neighbor to another” (pp. 13, 15). Similarly problematic for Addams (2002a [1902]) was the self-​identified “reformer” who attempts to make “people over into good citizens as defined by the reformer” (p. 117). The reformer’s priority, in Addams’s view, is the official application of “expert knowledge” that favors a “better method of administration” over the more important priority of “securing the welfare of the people” (p. 99). Addams thus held that permanently serving the “welfare of the people” meant that all citizens must be brought into the “circle of knowledge and fuller life,” which requires

Jane Addams   83 the political community to embrace inclusivity, participation, and democratic decision-​ and policy-​making processes grounded in the values of care and social justice. Addams’s “redefinition of government,” according to Shannon Jackson (2009), “was thus based on the desire to institute provisions for all citizens and to do so without recourse to what she and others found to be the undemocratic ‘relation which obtains between benefactor and beneficiary’ ” (p. 150). Citizens in a democracy deserve a full life by virtue of being members in a common political community. They should not have to depend on the goodwill or self-​interest of benefactors such as the machine politician, the charity worker, or reformer in order to achieve a full life.

Sympathetic Understanding and Affectionate Interpretation Addams was schooled by her father to value the ethic of benevolence whereby decisions are made on “behalf ” of citizens whose status was unequal to one’s own (Knight, 1997). However, her direct experiences with her Hull House neighbors and the benefactors described above led her to reject that ethic and replace it with an ethic of social justice, which emphasized working “with” citizens of unequal status in order to empower them to make decisions with the settlement house and the larger political arena (Knight, 1997, p. 112). Putting that ethic into meaningful practice requires establishing empathetic relationships grounded in “sympathetic understanding” or “affectionate interpretation” (Addams, 2002d). Addams used both terms interchangeably to signify the practice of coming to know others’ life worlds without judgment and in ways that allowed one to grasp fully what those worlds meant to them. The process of arriving at sympathetic understanding aligns with the construction and maintenance of democratic political communities because it is based on engagement with fellow citizens’ experiences and the search for reciprocal understanding. Indeed, Addams (2002a [1902]) observed that “that much of the insensitivity and hardness of the world is due to the lack of imagination which prevents a realization of the experiences of other people” (p. 8). Living in a poor immigrant neighborhood shaped Addams’s ability to see with empathy her neighbors’ lives, which, in turn, led her to imagine new programs, services, and policies that would materially and socially benefit their lives. She acknowledged the impact of diverse experience on her own thinking by noting that “it is impossible that you should live in a neighborhood and constantly meet people with certain ideas and notions without modifying your own” (as cited in Knight, 2005, p. 367). National events such as the 1894 Pullman strike also shaped her views on empathy. Addams (2002d) attempted to make sense of the tragic labor strike in “A Modern Lear,” an essay wherein she argues that the “great ethical lesson” to be learned was the failure of all parties in the Pullman labor dispute, but most especially George Pullman, to practice affectionate interpretation (p. 163).

84   DeLysa Burnier Addams, as the title indicates, framed “her analysis in terms of a traditional patriarchal understanding of a father-​daughter relationship” (Hamington, 2009, p. 135). Pullman, like Lear with his daughters, maintained that his was the only interpretation of people and events that mattered. He refused to commit fully to labor arbitration or let his workers unionize, nor would he acknowledge that changes were needed in the operation of his company town. Pullman “brought a rigid paternalism to relationships with his employees much like Lear did with his daughters,” which meant his workers, like Lear’s daughters, responded rigidly and righteously to him with calamitous results in both cases (Shields and Soeters, 2017, p. 330). Addams believed that the establishment of “reciprocal relations and sympathetic understanding” was foundational to collective democratic problem-​solving, and she warned that without them our relationships “will be warped” and more tragedies like Pullman will occur (Hamington, 2009, p. 136). Addams viewed sympathetic understanding as a process of deep, interactional inquiry that unfolds through four interrelated steps that ask participants to respect each other’s perspectives and to strive genuinely to understand others as they wish to be understood (Burnier, 2021). The four cumulative steps are encountering a perplexity, seeking to understand a perplexity’s sources and conditions through listening and dialogue, working jointly to achieve democratic cooperation, and arriving at principled compromise based on mutual trust and shared, reciprocal power. The process begins with a “perplexity,” which is “something that reveals a rupture with conventional attitudes, beliefs, and practice” (Siegfried, 2002a, p. xxii). Perplexities emerge regularly in daily life in and around the “clashes of beliefs, habits, and interests” that are inevitably present in complex and diverse societies (p. xxiii). Individuals engaged in the process of sympathetic understanding become puzzled by the perplexity and presume that it “cannot be resolved without developing a new understanding of the situation” that calls “into question received values” (pp. xxii–​xxiii). Perplexities, by disrupting what we already know, push us “to inquire into our assumptions” and thereby broaden “our understanding of what it is to be human” (Cromie, 2015, p. 132). For Addams, perplexities are “the pivot around which analysis of social issues are developed,” highlighting as they do “the diverse sexual, class, ethnic, and other cultural relations that constitute persons and the disparities of power operative in the resolution of moral dilemmas” (Siegfried, 2002a, p. xxx). The second step of the process centers on active, dialogical listening with the aim of producing sympathetic understanding. This type of listening is a form of discovery Addams used to “overcome biases” toward those in different situations (Cromie, 2015, p. 124). Active, dialogical listening—​understanding others as they wish to be understood—​ also requires both appreciating others’ circumstances and views and suspending judgments and presuppositions. Addams, as part of her settlement work, was “foremost a listener, willing to listen to and attempt to negotiate the competing needs of a variety of people and perspectives” (Schaafsma, 2014, p. 180). She listened actively “as a way to explore [emphasis in the original] rather than argue about issues through the medium of story as she conducted meetings and discussions” (p. 181). Her practice was to “listen to and engage in an exchange of stories across differences of opinions” (p. 181).

Jane Addams   85 By listening first and then sharing stories, Addams discovered that “what were deemed ‘alien’ practices and puzzling points of views expanded her horizons and could contribute to overcoming complex problems” (Cromie, 2015, p. 124). The third element of the sympathetic understanding process entails democratic cooperation, which depends on the involved parties having proceeded through step two and achieved a level of mutual understanding. Addams viewed cooperation as a process of working “with” others not “for” them. The end here is to replace hierarchy, charitable benevolence, and paternalism with mutual trust, respect, openness, and shared aims in order to forge co-​produced agreements. Addams intentionally chose “to work on mutual interests with others rather than work on one’s own project, to enter into every conversation with an open mind, and to ask how she could help” (Knight, 2009, p. 78). Democratic cooperation also depended on “stepping back, creating space, but also connecting with others’ hopes, trusting, and moving forward on a collectively determined agenda” (p. 78). Addams’s commitment to democratic cooperation was deep and thoroughgoing. She devotes an entire chapter in Twenty Years at Hull House (1910) to the civic projects made possible by democratic cooperation. Within Hull House proper, the adult and children’s social clubs were run “on the principle of cooperation and were self-​governing groups,” and the coffee house and coal delivery projects were organized as economic cooperatives (Knight, 2009, p. 71). Addams supported collective endeavors such as labor unions and social movements, and her work for the National Child Labor Committee, Women’s Trade Union, and international peace groups underscored her commitment to working with others to achieve collective ends. Mary Deegan (2010) credits Addams for helping to start “a series of organizations to institutionalize nonviolent social change that directly and indirectly improved American race relations” (p. 231). The final element of the process is “principled compromise.” Addams maintained that for a compromise to be genuinely principled and not merely expedient, it had to start with a “respect for the understanding and dignity of all human beings” (Siegfried, 2009, p. 44). The initial move should be both to seek resolutions that foreground “democratically grounded inclusiveness sensitive to differences in power” and to avoid moral certitude (Siegfried, 2002a, p. xiv). Addams never assumed that her approach to social betterment was superior to others, and she refused to “affirm or take any position that in principle demonized some other group and excluded their participation” (Siegfried, 2009, p. 44). Principled compromise is an appropriate capstone to the process of sympathetic understanding because, as with the other steps, it starts with the “recognition of multiple perspectives,” all of which must “be respected and examined” (Siegfried, 2009, p. 44). It also expects that participants seeking collective resolution to public problems do so with reciprocity, mutual trust, and affectionate interpretation. Addams recognized that the efficacy of sympathetic understanding depends on participants’ sincere commitment to the process and willingness to maintain a balance among their perspectives and interests and those of others. If participants remain rigidly within their perspectives, moral and otherwise, and thereby ignore the need for balance based on reciprocity and trust, then the process of sympathetic understanding will

86   DeLysa Burnier fail. In the political arena of the contemporary United States, the failure to commit to this balanced approach has led to policy stalemate and inaction at all levels of government, which in turn has left many citizens frustrated, angry, and doubting government’s very ability to solve public problems. Acting on one’s partisan and moral absolutes at the expense of perspective-​taking and compromise have become admired political norms for many policy participants even as it threatens the viability of democratic political community and the common good. Too many citizens across categories of race, age, disability, class, gender, sexual orientation, religion, and geographic location have felt the sting of insensitivity and increased hardness in their lives because so many public leaders and fellow citizens refuse or are unable to enter their life worlds with sympathetic understanding and affectionate interpretation.

The Marketization of Care and Community Addams’s vision of a caring democracy has been challenged by the emergence of neoliberalism as a dominant philosophy of governance. Neoliberalism is an “economic policy, a modality of governance, and an order of reason,” which has become a “global phenomenon” (Brown, 2015, p. 20). Its defining characteristic is the “economization” of political life and other “noneconomic spheres and activities” such as education, health care, culture, and the nonprofit voluntary sector (p. 17). Neoliberalism draws its values from the marketplace in emphasizing efficiency, competition, performance measurement, privatization, and personal responsibility over democratic values such as equity, fairness, responsiveness, and responsibility for others. Neoliberalism is not inherently anti-​democratic, and the market values it elevates are themselves deeply rooted in liberal democratic political cultures’ emphasis on individualism. That neoliberalism has gained a strong and enduring foothold should not then be surprising, particularly given its support for a global economic order centered on free trade and the deregulation of finance, as well as its advocacy for both welfare reform and reduced taxes for citizens and businesses. What has come to be questioned by critics of neoliberalism is its implementation and its policy consequences for equity, social justice, and the common good. In the United States neoliberalism surfaced with President Ronald Reagan’s conservative policies designed to shrink the welfare state, reduce taxes, and deregulate the economy, but it gained deep traction when President Bill Clinton, a moderate liberal, ended the federal welfare entitlement program that Addams and her associates helped pass in the 1930s. His policy placed strict time limits on beneficiaries, tied benefits to work, and promoted personal responsibility. In addition to his support for other neoliberal policies, Clinton promised to “reinvent government,” which would be accomplished both by incorporating new governing values and practices drawn from the marketplace

Jane Addams   87 and by introducing substantive changes intended to make government more like a business (Gore, 1993). The introduction of performance measurement and outcomes assessment to government sparked the replacement of outmoded bureaucratic government cultures with those that were entrepreneurial and innovative. The movement to reinvent government led to the creation of the New Public Management (NPM), which was implemented in various forms both domestically and globally (e.g., Great Britain, New Zealand, and Australia) (Newcomer, 2015). Both neoliberalism and its corollary the NPM are problematic for Addams’s care-​ centered approach to leading and administering. Not only do they offset democratic values with those of the marketplace, but neoliberalism and NPM also recast citizens and public-​service clients as customers who evaluate public goods and services by how efficiently and economically they are delivered (Kaboolian, 1998). To increase efficiencies and choice, neoliberalism and NPM proposed that public goods and services no longer need to be delivered by public entities, but instead should be privatized or contracted out to the private and nonprofit/​voluntary sectors. Whether these services are also delivered in ways that are fair, equitable, and representative, or whether citizen participation was sought in shaping these programs and services, is secondary to meeting measurable program and service outcomes (Denhardt and Denhardt, 2015). Even when neoliberalism invites citizen participation, it seldom takes the form of the “deliberative dialogue and engagement” that Addams found to be so important with respect to democratic participation (p. 666). Addams understood that “when done well, citizen dialogue and engagement” can “build citizenship, trust, and capacity,” but these democratic commitments and practices are not part of neoliberalism’s redefinition of the citizen as customer (p. 666). A fundamental element of neoliberalism and the NPM is the requirement of performance measurement and outcomes assessment, which their advocates champion as an apolitical, data-​driven way to evaluate program efficiency. Administrators are expected to “look” to the data and away from political, agency, citizen, or public client interests when making evidence-​based decisions. Addams always supported program and service assessment, but she believed such data should be used not just to assess efficiency but also to determine whether equity and social justice outcomes were met. Further, neoliberalism and the NPM’s focus on quantitative measures would give Addams pause because it is based on a narrow definition of what counts as data. Addams and her associates believed in the primacy of qualitative data grounded in the life worlds of the people who were experiencing the problem and ultimately using the program or service. She also believed that storytelling and first-​person narratives were sources of valid qualitative data, but these forms of data are used only occasionally in contemporary program outcomes assessment (Burnier, 2018). Another point of contrast is that Addams, unlike neoliberalism and NPM, appreciated administrators whose expertise was acquired over time and deeply connected to service recipients’ direct experiences and knowledge. Addams (1910) praised, for example, Julia Lathrop’s expert knowledge of those living in state charitable institutions because it was derived from the standpoint of the care-​receivers and not “managers”

88   DeLysa Burnier (p. 312). This type of bottom-​up administrative expertise has been devalued under the NPM in favor of “managers” whose knowledge derives from their mastery of program regulations and rules and the application of performance management systems (Soss, Fording, and Schram, 2011; Burnier, 2018). Addams’s (1910) core beliefs that “life cannot be administered by defined rules and regulations” and that “the wisdom to deal with [people’s] difficulties comes only through some knowledge of [their] life and habits of the whole” do not fit within neoliberalism and the NPM’s top-​down, rule-​driven service-​delivery approach (p. 162). Front-​line employees with client knowledge who exercise discretion in their application of rules, a practice Addams strongly supported, not only is discouraged under NPM but also could lead to those employees losing their jobs (Soss, Fording, and Schram, 2011). Contrary to Addams, who believed that government and the nonprofit/​voluntary sector share collective responsibility for citizens’ well-​being, neoliberalism holds that individuals, barring exceptional circumstances, are responsible for themselves and their families’ well-​being (Mounk, 2017). Indeed, individuals must take personal responsibility for their circumstances and actions even if they started out in life with little or have been overtaken by unplanned life events. For this reason, neoliberalism has a more circumscribed view of the welfare state’s safety net as a “selective social tool” for helping only those deemed “deserving” by the state (p. 69). Neoliberalism’s privileging of personal responsibility has helped justify reducing social and human services public spending, adding work requirements for recipients, and regulating their personal behavior. Underlying the differences highlighted above between Addams’s expansive conception of a vibrant, caring, collaborative democracy and the attenuated, market-​driven, individualistic conception found in neoliberalism and the NPM is disagreement about the nature of the common good. Addams views the common good as the outcome of democratic processes that bring together diverse participants to work cooperatively and with sympathetic understanding to solve common problems. Neoliberalism and the NPM embrace instead what Adam Dahl and Joe Soss (2014) call a “managerial vision of the common good” that has contributed to the “downsizing of democracy” (p. 501). Robert Reich (2018) also laments how the retreat by neoliberalism and the NPM from a democratic communitarian sense of the common good has meant that political and social life no longer is understood as a “system of mutual obligation” animated by caring relationships (pp. 98–​99). After decades of neoliberalism policy, many citizens have not achieved a “fuller life” through market competition and individual effort. Neoliberalism has produced a “fuller life” for those at the top of the United States economy, while leaving behind a shrinking middle class and a struggling working class (Reich, 2018; Brown, 2019). For the first time since World War II, many young people believe that they will not have a better economic life than their parents. Reduced spending in social and human services has created “care deficits” in the United States and other countries as care needs go unmet (Robinson, 2010; Tronto, 2013). Individuals with means can afford high-​quality services for themselves and their families, and so do not experience a deficit of care. Many individuals,

Jane Addams   89 however, struggle to meet their families’ care needs privately and must depend on the underfunded and highly regulated public programs that remain. Moreover, as the demand for private care labor has increased, citizens in the Global North have come to depend on care workers from the Global South to perform low-​wage care, thereby opening yet another care deficit for their families left behind (Glenn, 2010; Robinson, 2010). Even nonprofit and voluntary organizations have come under neoliberal pressure to become market driven, which has “affect[ed] their ability to fulfill their traditional roles as enhancers and maintainers of civil society” (Sandberg and Elliott, 2019, p. 286). Current national and global crises, including climate change, immigration, and COVID-​19, have exposed and exacerbated care deficits that continue to disadvantage many groups, especially those living in communities with an insufficient tax base, few economic resources, and a weak nonprofit/​voluntary sector.

Care-​C entered Governance and the Full Life The preceding analysis makes clear that Addams presents a worthy alternative to neoliberalism and the NPM that turns on a care-​centered approach to leadership and administration. Addams’s approach embodies the principle that being a “citizen in a democracy is to care for its citizens and to care for democracy itself ” (Tronto, 2013, p. x). Addams offers a pragmatic vision of an inclusive democratic community where citizens’ collective and collaborative efforts to solve public problems are informed by sympathetic understanding and guided by a democratically arrived at consensus on the common good. Although the goal of Addams’s policy agenda was to provide a decent life for all citizens, it never became ossified but rather evolved to meet changing circumstances and needs. Addams also acknowledged that while government might be the best solution for some problems, in other cases nonprofit and voluntary associations might be more effective in addressing other problems (Elson, 1954). Significant here as well is Addams’s argument that a decent life must include ready access to the educational and enrichment opportunities that the arts, cultural institutions, recreation, libraries, and public green spaces provide. Under the austerity budgets that are a hallmark of neoliberalism, such opportunities have been cut, privatized, funded by user fees, or closed outright. Addams’s approach to governance gives us a wide and deep foundation upon which to build 21st-​century care-​centered democratic communities and from which to exercise care-​centered leadership at all levels of governance and public organizations. At the heart of Addams’s approach is her proposition that the answer to our public problems is more democracy, not less, which could not be more timely given the ongoing effects of neoliberalism and the growing threat of illiberal political movements domestically and globally.

90   DeLysa Burnier

References Addams, J. (1910). Twenty years at Hull House. Macmillan. Addams, J. (1930). Widening the circle of enlightenment: Hull House and adult education. The Journal of Adult Education 11(3), 276–​279. Addams, J. (2002a [1902]). Democracy and social ethics. University of Illinois Press. Addams, J. (2002c). The objective value of a social settlement. In Jean Bethke Elshtain (Ed.), The Jane Addams Reader (pp. 29–​45). Basic Books. Addams, J. (2002d). The modern Lear. In Jean Bethke Elshtain (Ed.), The Jane Addams Reader (pp. 160–​176). Basic Books. Addams, J. (2007 [1907]). Newer ideals of peace. University of Illinois Press. Brown, V. (2004). The education of Jane Addams. University of Pennsylvania Press. Brown, W. (2015). Undoing the demos: Neoliberalism’s stealth revolution. Zone Books. Brown, W. (2019). In the ruins of neoliberalism: The rise of antidemocratic politics in the West. Columbia University Press. Burnier, D. (2003). Other voices/​other rooms: Towards a care-​centered public administration. Administrative Theory & Praxis 25(4), 529–​544. Burnier, D. (2009). Markets no more: Towards a care-​ centered public administration. Administrative Theory & Praxis 31(3), 396–​402. Burnier, D. (2018). Reimagining performance in public administration theory and practice: creating a democratic performativity of hope. Administrative Theory & Praxis 40(1), 62–​78. Burnier, D. (2021). Embracing others with “sympathetic understanding” and “affectionate interpretation”: Creating a relational and care-​centered public administration. Administrative Theory & Praxis 43(1), 42–​57. Cromie, T. (2015). Jane Addams and the “devil baby tales”: The usefulness of perplexity in “sympathetic understanding,” a tool in learning empathy. Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association 63(1), 101–​136. Dahl, A., & Soss, J. (2014). Neoliberalism for the common good? Public value governance and the downsizing of democracy. Public Administration Review 74(4), 496–​504. Denhardt, J., & Denhardt, R. (2015). The new public service revisited. Public Administration Review 75(5), 664–​672. Deegan, M. J. (Ed.). (1991). Women in Sociology. Greenwood Press. Deegan, M. J. (2010). Jane Addams on citizenship in a democracy. Journal of Classical Sociology 10(3), 217–​238. Deegan, M. J. (2013). Jane Addams, the Hull House school of sociology, and social justice, 1892 to 1935. Humanity & Society 37(3), 248–​258. Elson, A. (1954). First principles of Jane Addams. Social Service Review 28(1), 3–​11. Fischer, M., Nackenoff, C., & Chmielewski, W. (Eds.). (2009). Jane Addams and the practice of democracy. University of Illinois Press. Gabriele, K. (2015). Lessons from a buried past: Settlement women and democratically anchored governance networks. Administration & Society 47(4), 393–​415. Glenn, E. (2010). Forced to care: Coercion and caregiving in America. Harvard University Press. Gore, A. (1993). From red tape to results: Creating a government that works better and costs less. Report of the National Performance Review. Plume/​Penguin. Hamilton, A. (1943). Exploring the dangerous trades: The autobiography of Alice Hamilton, M.D. Little, Brown, and Company.

Jane Addams   91 Hamington, M. (2004). Embodied care: Janes Addams, Maurice Merleau-​Ponty, and feminist ethics. University of Illinois Press. Hamington, M., & Miller, D. (Eds.). (2006). Socializing care. Rowman and Littlefield. Hamington, M. (2009). The social philosophy of Jane Addams. University of Illinois Press. Hamington, M. (Ed.). (2010). Feminist interpretations of Jane Addams. Pennsylvania State University Press. Kaboolian, L. (1998). The new public management: Challenging the boundaries of the management v. administrative debate. Public Administration Review 58(3), 189–​193. Knight, L. (1991). Jane Addams and Hull House: Historical lessons on nonprofit leadership. Nonprofit Management and Leadership 2(2), 125–​141. Knight, L. (1997). Biography’s window on social change: Benevolence and justice in Jane Addams’s “A Modern Lear.” Journal of Women’s History 9(1), 111–​138. Knight, L. (2005). Citizen: Jane Addams and the struggle for democracy. University of Chicago Press. Knight, L. (2009). Jane Addams’s theory of cooperation. In M. Fischer, C. Nackenoff, & W. Chmielewski (Eds.), Jane Addams and the Practice of Democracy (pp. 65–​86). University of Illinois Press. Knight, L. (2010). Jane Addams: Spirit in action. W. W. Norton. Jackson, S. (2001). Lines of activity: Performance, historiography, Hull House domesticity. University of Michigan Press. Jackson, S. (2009). Toward a queer social welfare studies: Unsettling Jane Addams. In M. Fischer, C. Nackenoff, & W. Chmielewski (Eds.), Jane Addams and the Practice of Democracy (pp. 143–​162). University of Illinois Press. Lundblad, K. (1995). Jane Addams and social reform: A role model for the 1990s. Social Work 40(5), 661–​669. Moore, D. (1897). A day at Hull House. The American Journal of Sociology 11(5), 629–​642. Mounk, Y. (2017). The age of responsibility: Luck, choice, and the welfare state. Harvard University Press. Newcomer, K. (2015). From outputs to outcomes. In M. Guy & M. Rubin (Eds.), Public Administration Evolving (pp. 125–​156). Routledge. Perkins, F. (1934). People at work. The John Day Company. Reich, R. (2018). The common good. Alfred. A. Knopf. Regan, H., & Brooks, G. (1995). Out of women’s experience: Creating a relational leadership. Corwin Press. Robinson, F. (2010). After liberalism in world politics? Toward an international political theory of care. Ethics and Social Welfare 4(2), 130–​144. Sandberg, B., & Elliott, E. (2019). Toward a care-​centered approach for nonprofit management in a neoliberal era. Administrative Theory & Praxis 41(3), 286–​306. Sarvasy, W. (2010). Engendering democracy by socializing it: Jane Addams’s contribution to feminist political theorizing. In M. Hamington (Ed.), Feminist Interpretations of Jane Addams (pp. 293–​310). Pennsylvania State University Press. Schaafsma, D. (2014). Manifestations of altruism: Sympathetic understanding, narrative, and democracy. In D. Schaafsma (Ed.), Jane Addams in the Classroom (pp. 179–​200). University of Illinois Press. Shields, P. (2003). The community of inquiry: Classical pragmatism and public administration. Administration & Society 35(5), 510–​538.

92   DeLysa Burnier Shields, P. (2005). Classical pragmatism: Roots and promise for a PA feminist theory. Administrative Theory & Praxis 27(2), 370–​376. Shields, P. (Ed.). (2017). Jane Addams: Progressive pioneer of peace, philosophy, sociology, social work and public administration. Springer. Shields, P., & Soeters, J. (2017). Peaceweaving: Jane Addams, positive peace, and public administration. American Review of Public Administration 47(3), 323–​339. Siegfried, C. (1996). Pragmatism and feminism. University of Chicago Press. Siegfried, C. (2002a). Introduction to the Illinois edition. In Social Ethics and Democracy (pp. ix–​xxxviii). University of Illinois Press. Siegfried, C. (2009). The courage of one’s convictions or the conviction of one’s courage? Jane Addams’s principled compromises. In M. Fischer, C. Nackenoff, & W. Chmielewski (Eds.), Jane Addams and the Practice of Democracy (pp. 40–​62). University of Illinois Press. Soss, J., Fording, R., & Schram, S. (2011). Disciplining the poor: Neoliberal paternalism and the persistent power of race. University of Chicago Press. Stivers, C. (2000). Bureau men, settlement women: Constructing public administration in the progressive era. University Press of Kansas. Tronto, J. (1993). Moral boundaries, a political argument for care. Routledge. Tronto. J. (2013). Caring democracy: Markets, equality, and justice. New York University Press.

Chapter 5

Jane Adda ms a nd Richard Rort y The Philosophy and Practice of Pragmatist Social Ethics Chris Voparil

Jane Addams is rightly known for her conception of social ethics. Her Democracy and Social Ethics, perhaps the fullest elaboration of a distinctly social view of ethics in the Western canon, marks a radical departure from dominant moral philosophies of Aristotle and Kant in rejecting the emphasis on the individual and locating ethics squarely within the context of democratic life (Seigfried, 2002). The “source and expression of social ethics,” Addams explains, is “the identification with the common lot which is the essential idea of Democracy” (2002/​1902, p. 9). Although Addams scholars and pragmatist feminists have documented the distinctive ethical sense in which Addams sought to “socialize” democracy (Sarvasy, 2010; Seigfried, 1999), the originality and importance of her conception of social ethics remain unjustifiably underappreciated. A leading voice in intellectual debates of the late 20th century, American philosopher Richard Rorty (1931–​2007) gained international renown for influential philosophical works like Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature (1979), for his role in the contemporary resurgence of pragmatism, and his popular writings on social and political issues of the day (Rorty, 2022). Inspired by John Dewey’s efforts to reconstruct philosophy to make it responsive to social and moral problems of the time rather than technical issues of concern only to specialists, Rorty preached “the priority of democracy to philosophy” and rethought notions of language, community, truth, and justice in ways that foreground our relations to each other (see Voparil & Bernstein, 2010). While not widely discussed in sociology, Rorty’s writings have been suggested as a model for public sociology (Hart, 2016).1 Despite their mutual proximity to the pragmatic tradition, it is hard to imagine two figures with less in common. The social activist founder of Hull House, with her enduring legacy of tireless public policy reform on behalf of the least privileged, had a vastly different

94   Chris Voparil existence than the self-​described “paunchy” professional philosopher frequently “zipping off to interdisciplinary conferences held in pleasant places” (Rorty, 1998a, p. 85). Existing scholarship has affirmed this distance, seldom considering the two together. On the few occasions where they have, their deep incompatibility is taken for granted (e.g., Green, 2010, pp. 239–​240; Sarvasy, 2009, pp. 184–​185). Sociologist Erik Schneiderhan (2013) offers perhaps the only in-​depth treatment of the pair. There would seem little reason to examine them in tandem and even less promise of fruitful dialogue between them. This chapter challenges prevailing assumptions about the incongruity of Addams and Rorty and argues that they share a vision and practice of how to extend the ethical and epistemic preconditions of democratic life through the cultivation of sympathetic attachments. Specifically, I outline the key insights that Addams and Rorty, when considered together, contribute to pragmatist social ethics. In keeping with their pragmatist philosophical orientation, they understood that communal bonds are contingent achievements that must be actively cultivated rather than assumed via a shared human nature. Their underappreciated insights include the specific barriers they perceived which limit our ability to achieve sympathetic understanding. Both were attuned to the ways in which the absence of democratic relations among citizens undermines any melioristic effort at collective self-​improvement. Taken together, Addams and Rorty help us better orient the practice of social justice to overcome the ethical and epistemic obstacles faced in the quest for greater justice. The first section explicates the program of cultivating sympathetic knowledge as an ethical and epistemic project that Addams and Rorty share. This project is summed up by the idea that justice is unattainable without both extending ethical ties via sympathy and fostering epistemic resources of shared knowledge or understanding. After laying out Addams’s linking of sympathetic knowledge and democratic collective self-​ improvement, I show how Rorty advances this same conception. Surprisingly, their philosophical stances and practices prove mutually complementary. The second section zooms in on the key contributions to pragmatist social ethics that emanate from putting them into constructive dialogue, including their insights into the barriers their own projects of cultivating sympathetic knowledge face: the presence of undemocratic relations and how to overcome them. The final section briefly sketches how their shared insights speak to contemporary challenges of our “post-​truth” condition. Putting Addams and Rorty into constructive dialogue not only enriches our understanding of pragmatist social ethics but offers crucial remedies for problems of echo chambers and fragmentation that currently beset democratic communities around the globe.

Forging Democratic Relations as an Ethical and Epistemic Project Standard accounts of pragmatist ethics stress the importance of habits, the way knowledge is shaped by experience, a commitment to fallibilism, the need to cultivate moral

Jane Addams and Richard Rorty     95 imagination, and attention to social context and the social constitution of individuals (Fesmire, 2003; LaFollette, 2000; Lekan, 2003; Liska, 2013; Pappas, 2008). Both Addams and Rorty share these emphases. These broader treatments capture pragmatism’s contribution from the perspective of moral philosophy. What is distinctive about Addams and Rorty is that their social and relational conception of ethics is part and parcel of a project of collective democratic self-​reform—​that is, of fostering ties of affect and understanding capable of facilitating action on behalf of others. Addams’s project of socializing democracy seeks to develop a moral community where “All parts of the community are bound together in ethical development” (2002/​1902, p. 115). Rorty’s later work aims to promote ethical development through a program of “sentimental education,” designed to edify and foster imaginative identification with others. For both, this project’s ethical, communal, and epistemological dimensions are interwoven and inextricable. Creating a democratic moral community requires knowledge and mutual understanding attainable only through sympathetic interpretation. As Charlene Haddock Seigfried has explained, “Knowledge, for Addams, aimed at bettering the community and was most usefully acquired through social sympathy. . . Sympathetically understanding multiple perspectives therefore, is a requirement for intelligible insight into any realm of reality” (2001, pp. 18–​19). Rorty’s emphasis on understanding epistemic justification—​that is, how we validate or warrant beliefs as knowledge—​as a social practice similarly sought “to broaden the size of the audience [we] take to be competent, to increase the size of the relevant community of justification.” Not only is this project relevant to democratic politics, he continues, “it pretty much is democratic politics” (2000b, p. 9).2 In Addams’s moral vision, epistemic and ethical communities merge to form democratic ones. In Maurice Hamington’s words, for Addams “empathy, understanding, and action on behalf of one another are essential for democracy to be effective” (2004, pp. 217–​218). Indeed, Hamington identifies sympathetic knowledge as Addams’s “most significant contribution to philosophy” (2009, p. 71). The chapters of Democracy and Social Ethics recount richly contextualized examples of the “various types and groups” whose social experiences exemplify what Jean Bethke Elshtain has called the “ethics of realizable action made possible by sympathetic knowledge” that Addams’s view of democracy requires (Addams, 2002/​1902, p. 9; Elshtain, 2002, p. 72).3 In emphasizing social dependence rather than individual autonomy, Addams’s ethical thought is fundamentally relational. Hamington captures the moral and ontological dimensions of this relationality well: “For Addams, democracy implied a system of relationships in which people genuinely care for one another and are willing to act on those sentiments.” At the core of her understanding of the democratic spirit, he argues, is “a transformation of how people relate to one another” (Hamington, 2001, pp. 115–​116). The signal source of this relational social ethics is social experience: “social perspective and sanity of judgments come only from contact with social experience” (Addams, 2002/​1902, p. 7). And not just any experience: those who desire social morality “must be brought in contact with the moral experiences of the many in order to procure an adequate social motive” (2002/​1902, p. 6). In one of the most powerful expressions

96   Chris Voparil in the book, Addams asserts that “we are under a moral obligation in choosing our experiences, since the result of those experiences must ultimately determine our understanding of life” (2002/​1902, p. 8). The contours of this brief summary of Addams’s social and relational ethics will be familiar to anyone who knows her work. That Rorty, who is associated with a masculinist ethos of the strong individual, thought in social and relational terms may be more surprising.4 On occasion he did in fact distinguish “social ethics as opposed to personal ethics” (Rorty, 2020, p. 189). An appreciation of the ethical and political bent of Rorty’s philosophy is essential for grasping his unexpected proximity to Addams. Although I am unable to provide a full account of Rorty’s political thought here, a crucial insight is how fully his pragmatism is oriented toward relations with our fellow human beings. While evident in Rorty’s explicit turn to moral and political issues in the early 1990s, more recent work has elucidated how moral and political concerns also inform his philosophical orientation.5 His democratic appeals to community in the first-​person plural “we” and focus on generating solidarity are among the most widely recognized and discussed elements of his work. Less known is the extent to which his philosophical stances are informed by these same commitments. As Richard Bernstein has suggested, Whether Rorty is dealing with abstract metaphilosophical topics, or the hotly debated philosophical issues concerning truth, objectivity, and the nature of reality, or ethical and political issues concerning human rights, or even with the role of religion in our daily lives, there is a dominant theme that emerges over and over again. There is nothing that we can rely on but ourselves and our fellow human beings. (2010, p. 211)

This work casts in bolder relief the full import of Rorty’s characteristic assertions about “the priority of democracy to philosophy”—​the virtue of “putting politics first and tailoring a philosophy to suit” (1991, p. 178)—​and the notion of pragmatism as anti-​authoritarianism (2021). As a result, the ethical commitments behind or alongside his more familiar epistemological critiques have come to light in previously unnoticed ways. Central to Rorty’s interpretation of philosophical commitments in moral and relational terms is not only this foregrounding of community but, not unlike Addams, his understanding of the relation of ethical communities to communities of inquiry or knowledge. The critical move in Rorty’s conception of normativity, or our standards for validating knowledge, as Susan Dieleman has argued, is reversing the priority of epistemology over community. Not unlike some feminist epistemologists, for Rorty “community comes before the postulation of these sorts of norms” (Dieleman, 2013, p. 45). A key insight of Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature is that knowledge involves “a shift in a person’s relations with others,” rather than making our representations more accurate (1979, p. 187). Indeed, “We can only come under epistemic rules when we have entered a community where the game governed by these rules is played” (1979, p. 187).

Jane Addams and Richard Rorty     97 While Mirror is more narrowly concerned with how this relationality and membership in a moral community impact the social practice of justification, the framework he establishes already intimates his later political project of expanding the scope of our democratic moral community. This leads to a keen awareness of issues of inclusion and exclusion. Even our conceptions of rational agency are, for Rorty, a function of “membership in our moral community” (1979, p. 191n23) and “what it is to count as a moral agent” to someone in this community (1998b, p. 177). What results is an alternative, noncriterial conception of rationality understood as “responsibility to larger and more diverse communities of human beings” (Rorty, 2003, p. 46). If rationality is understood in terms of our relations with others, then to be rational is “to be willing to pick up the jargon of the interlocutor rather than translating it into one’s own” (Rorty, 1979, p. 318). This focus on membership enables Rorty to highlight the constitution of community through exclusion and what he calls “borderline cases”—​individuals or groups that we exclude from membership in our moral community (1998b, p. 168). For Rorty, to be part of a society is to be taken as a “possible conversational partner” by those who shape that society’s self-​image. Expanding the range of people we regard as conversation partners emerges in the 1980s as an enduring priority of his work (1991, p. 203).6 In a step toward Addams, Rorty also identifies a key role for “social” or moral virtues, like curiosity, conversability, decency, respect for others, and tolerance (2000b, p. 62). Cultivating social virtues and habits of sympathy and flexibility are for both an indispensable part of the practice of citizenship (Curtis, 2015; Hanagan, 2013). Absent a directive for commensuration, knowledge becomes more like “getting acquainted with a person than like following a demonstration.” And “getting into conversation with strangers” is for Rorty a matter of acquiring a “new virtue or skill” (1979, p. 319). The more one scratches the surface the more we see how Rorty understands ethics in relational terms and, like Addams, is fundamentally concerned with broadening our democratic moral community. In “Ethics Without Principles,” he critiques “the myth of the self as nonrelational” and elaborates a conception of “Moral development in the individual, and moral progress in the human species as whole” as “a matter of re-​marking human selves so as to enlarge the variety of the relationships which constitute those selves” (1999, pp. 77–​79). Rortyan ethics focuses on “increasing sensitivity” so that we are able to “respond to the needs of ever more inclusive groups of people” (1999, p. 81). Like Addams, who held that “Sympathetic knowledge is the only way of approach to any human problem” (2002/​1912, p. 7), sympathetic understanding for Rorty is a key component of this process of getting to know and taking into account “the needs and interests of more and more diverse human beings” (Rorty, 1999, p. 82). Rorty dubbed this “sentimental education”—​a Humean cultivation of sentiment to create felt identifications with others by seeing “the similarities between ourselves and people very unlike us as outweighing the differences” (1998b, p. 181). What Rorty’s account demands is “a rich and full a knowledge of other people as possible –​in particular, knowledge of their own descriptions of their actions and of themselves” (2010, p. 393).7 The upshot of the foregoing discussion is that Rorty not only is aligned with Addams’s project of forging democratic relations but extends it. We see this in their efforts to

98   Chris Voparil expand our web of moral relations, what Addams called “social adjustment” (2002/​1902, p. 6), and what Rorty also referred to “a process of adjustment” (1999, p. 81). The primary importance of expanding democratic relations is creating affective ties that facilitate action on behalf of others. To repeat, Addams held that the “source and expression of social ethics” is “the identification with the common lot which is the essential idea of Democracy” (2002/​1902, p. 9). Rorty similarly emphasized expanding the sphere of our felt identifications to foster an inclusive moral identity and “reciprocal relation of trust” (2007, p. 45), and to increase “the degree to which we identify with those whom we help” (1999, p. 79). The parallels here are striking. For Addams the shift from an individual to social morality demands attending not to “personal and family relations” but more distant others in need: “the poor, the criminal, the sick, and . . . the hungry” (2002/​1902, p. 6). Rorty seeks to extend the close ties we feel to family and loved ones to remote others, “even the cows and the kangaroos –​or perhaps even to all living things, even the trees” (2007, p. 45). “Procur[ing] an adequate social motive,” for Addams, results from “contact with the moral experiences of the many.” The primary aim of what Rorty called sentimental education is the cultivation of sympathetic and imaginative identification with others and an expansion of “the sheer quantity of relationships which can go to constitute a human self ” (1999, p. 81). In highlighting the similarities between Addams’s and Rorty’s melioristic projects, I do not want to minimize or obscure the differences between them. A clear sense of these differences remains a fertile resource for the advancement of pragmatist social ethics, particularly in relation to feminism.8 Yet if they are assumed a priori to be too divergent even to be conversation partners, we lose the opportunity to learn from their distinctive shared emphases. For instance, Wendy Sarvasy holds that Addams, unlike Rorty, orients her ethics toward “relations with and among the less powerful” (Sarvasy, 2009, p. 185). While I do not dispute this entirely, I have been arguing that Rorty was more attentive to the less powerful than has been recognized. Erik Schneiderhan (2013) succeeds in creating a frame that enables us to see their shared emphases on social hope and “cooperation and reciprocal relations,” upon which I seek to build, while avoiding his conclusion that “Addams’s work exemplifies the kind of practice that Rorty pointed to with his ideas” (2013, p. 433). Addams’s philosophical contributions deserve to be recognized in their own right.

Social Ethics amid Undemocratic Relations I now want to call attention to the underappreciated insights from both thinkers into the barriers that a melioristic ethics of sympathetic identification with others must address. This too is key to their distinctive contribution: their social ethical projects take into account dynamics of exclusion, marginalization, and privilege. They give us a conception

Jane Addams and Richard Rorty     99 of ethics especially attuned to injustice and then cultivate collective responsiveness to that injustice. One of Addams’s most insightful accounts of undemocratic relations and how to remedy them comes in the “Charitable Effort” chapter of Democracy and Social Ethics. This discussion is instructive for the process of achieving a social morality or socializing moral virtues (2002/​1902, p. 33). Addams focuses on the charitable relation between benefactor and beneficiary to exemplify the challenges inherent in social interactions that lack democratic relations. The presence or absence of such relations determines how much sympathetic knowledge is possible. For example, Addams contrasts the “emotional kindness” displayed by poor families helping their neighbors in times of dire need with the detached and distant “guarded care” affected by the privileged charity visitor toward the beneficiaries of her assistance. To improve these undemocratic relations the charity visitor must work to deprivilege herself. The aim is bringing the privileged experiences which inform the charity visitor’s value judgments regarding the poor family’s choices to consciousness via a state of “perplexity” for the charity visitor. Thinking one’s way through that perplexity generates the growth of sympathetic knowledge (Lake, 2014). As Addams explains, “the wider social activity, and the contact with the larger experience, not only increases her sense of social obligation but at the same time recasts her social ideals” (2002/​1902, p. 33). The self-​realization by the benefactor that even relative social privilege constitutes “a cruel advantage,” as Addams explains, is a crucial part of this process: She discovers how incorrigibly bourgeois her standards have been and it takes but a little time to reach the conclusion that she cannot insist so strenuously upon the conventions of her own class, which fail to fit the bigger, more emotional, and freer lives of work people. (2002/​1902, pp. 21–​22)

Addams sought to extend the affective attachments we feel toward those closest to us to those whom we may consider Other, without rendering moral judgment on them. Her description of enlarging our parochial loyalties is not unlike Rorty’s idea of “justice as a larger loyalty” (Rorty, 2007): Just when our affection becomes large enough to care for the unworthy among our poor as we would care for the unworthy among our own kin, is certainly a perplexing question. To say that it should never be so, is a comment upon our democratic relations to them which few of us would be willing to make. (Addams, 2002/​ 1902, p. 31)

As we shall see in the next section, for Addams, a major obstacle to developing sympathetic knowledge is “dogmatic conviction” and the self-​certainty that one is right, or what Rorty calls “egotism” (2010). As she explains it, “in our charitable efforts we think much more of what a man ought to be than of what he is or of what he may become; and we ruthlessly force our convictions and standards upon him” (2002/​1902, p. 32). A

100   Chris Voparil self-​consciousness of privilege and resulting fallibilism and tempering of egotism are precisely what genuine democracy, in Addams’s view, demands. Even with her account of deprivileging, Addams nonetheless takes a sober view of how easily such socialization flounders in cases where “the visitor entirely failed to get another point of view” (2002/​1902, p. 29). Socially minded benefactors might despair of the paralyzing perplexity and give up entirely on visiting the poor to provide charitable aid. In other cases, a second barrier emerges: the disjunctions of perception and valuation spurred by contact with diverse social experience reinforce rather than transform the unjust view that “only the ‘worthy poor’,” judged from the vantage of the charity visitor’s “bourgeois” standards, “are to be helped” (2002/​1902, p. 30). Undemocratic relations prevail and individual standards of virtue fail to be transformed into larger social ones. Rorty was similarly preoccupied with how often we draw the bounds of our moral community too tightly and judge others to be justifiably excluded as unworthy conversation partners. He offers several complementary insights that further inform how to overcome undemocratic relations. Discussing our practices for justifying knowledge, he observed that “None of us take all audiences seriously; we reject requests for justification from some audiences as a waste of time”—​this is the point of having such norms. He continues: Not every language user who comes down the road will be treated as a member of a competent audience. On the contrary, human beings usually divide up into mutually suspicious (not mutually intelligible) communities of justification –​mutually exclusive groups –​depending upon the presence of sufficient overlap in belief and desire. This is because the principal source of conflict between human communities is the belief that I have no reason to justify my beliefs to you, and none in finding out what alternative beliefs you may have, because you are, for example, an infidel, a foreigner, a woman, a child, a slave, a pervert, or an untouchable. In short, you are not “one of us,” not one of the real human beings, the paradigm human beings, the ones whose persons and opinions are to be treated with respect. (2000b, p. 15)

Rorty wants us to take seriously the possibility that the category of “people whose requests for justification we are entitled to reject” may also include, were we sufficiently interested, opportunities for edification and developing alternative descriptions that we cannot afford to ignore (2000b, p. 27n24). Without intentional efforts to expand both our community and the logical space of moral deliberation, those whom we have ignored will remain unacknowledged and our beliefs unimproved. For all his emphasis on expanding the reach of felt attachments and efforts to cultivate imaginative identification with the suffering of others, Rorty like Addams was cognizant of the limits of the ethics and politics of sympathy. One example is his attention to the prejudice that “only the worthy poor are to be helped” in reflections on E. M. Forster’s paradigmatic appeal to sympathy in the novel Howards End’s famous message: “only connect.” Specifically, Rorty examines Forster’s suggestion that the

Jane Addams and Richard Rorty     101 poor can be “unthinkable,” or in Rorty’s term, “unconversable,” within the dominant discourse (1999, p. 223). Rorty’s reflections on this matter, he tells us, were prompted by a visit to India and firsthand encounter with the realities of its poverty. The experience sparks the worry that large segments of the global poor—​he mentions Indonesia, India, and Haiti as examples—​risk “becoming increasingly unthinkable” (1999, p. 226). In 2022, we have the pandemic’s polarization around masking and vaccines as evidence of unwillingness to engage sympathetically with the experiences of others.9 By “unthinkable” he means unable to be imagined as conversation partners, or co-​participants in the work of expanding love and sympathy, and therefore judged dispensable as contributions of experience and knowledge. Rorty also grasps a barrier associated with material realities of economic inequality that, if left unaddressed, undermine the capacity for tenderness. He suggests that increasing sympathy is only possible “when there is enough money to produce a little leisure, a little time in which to love” (1999, p. 224). I do not think Rorty means here that the poor are unable to deeply love and care for kin, only that the project of expanding affective ties to different and distant others has material preconditions that Northern Hemisphere liberals ought to acknowledge. He admonishes other privileged liberals to “at least keep ourselves honest” when advocating broadly humanistic projects of fostering human connection, by recognizing that “love is not enough” (1999, p. 227). Putting the thought of Addams and Rorty in dialogue generates other complementary insights that strengthen our understanding of pragmatist social ethics. One involves Addams’s focus on the importance of institutions and institution-​building to augment Rorty’s account of the education of sentiment. Rorty’s project of constructing a “global moral community” through the cultivation of “affectional relations” needs to be supplemented by institutional measures capable of alleviating large-​scale injustices that need more than activated sentiment to address (2007, pp. 55, 44). Addams’s focus on social policy and legislative reform also introduces essential dimensions that Rorty largely neglects. Not only were institutions central to her thinking, many of her ideas grew out of experiences within organizations like Hull House, the Anti-​Imperialist League, and the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom (Alonso, 2009). For Addams these institutions represent the possibility of developing “a wider conception of justice than any one nation has yet been able to obtain” (1930, pp. 341–​342). Her concern for “the sympathetic understanding that enlarges the sphere of justice,” as Seigfried nicely puts it (1996, p. 239), is reflected in Rorty’s effort to promote justice as a larger loyalty. Yet in The Second Twenty Years at Hull-​House, Addams focuses more directly on institutional expressions of this enlargement than Rorty ever did, including the 1899 establishment of the first Juvenile Court and the World Court at The Hague to arbitrate international disputes peacefully (Seigfried, 1996, p. 239). Addams and Rorty respond to the barriers to enlarging sympathy with different measures. For Addams, the remedy for dogmatism is science, or a method of learning informed by fallibilism, openness to growth, and, ultimately, humility. She evinces a perspective rooted in experience and life itself, and therefore not artificially detached from the sympathies (and antipathies) that characterize our relations to concrete others.

102   Chris Voparil Yet even after acknowledging its limitations, Addams renews the call for genuine democracy via an appeal to diverse experience as the main engine of collective and individual moral self-​reform. A consciousness of limits does not cause Rorty to abandon the enterprise of sentimental education he elsewhere advocates, but his faith is chastened. Love and sympathy alone are not going to raise the marginalized out of poverty, and definitely not a “bottom-​up” Marxian revolution in values. There may not be enough wealth to go around, globally, or willingness to distribute it, to alleviate all material needs. Almost out of desperation, he holds out hope for as yet undreamt of “top-​down techno-​bureaucratic advances” buttressed by a breakthrough that would make things like “fusion energy, and thus (for example) desalination and irrigation on a gigantic scale, possible and cheap” (1999, p. 227). Even this hope does not offer much reason for optimism. But it is “all we have got” (1999, p. 228). Nevertheless, even with their limits, love and sympathy are needed to foment the energy and moral commitment required to instigate material redistribution. The point is that we must keep the barriers in view if we are to be successful. Rorty’s account would seem to fall considerably short of Addams’s requirements for social ethics when it comes to experience as a necessary condition for sympathetic identification. In her view, “It is most difficult to hold to our political democracy and to make it in any sense a social expression and not a mere governmental contrivance, unless we take pains to keep on common ground in our human experiences” (2002/​ 1902, p. 98). Addams’s call for social experience appears to collide sharply with the prohibitions against experience in Rorty’s language-​centered pragmatism. However, even though Rorty harbored enduring concerns about philosophical appeals to experience, there is little reason to infer that he did not value the transformative power of everyday experiences, especially given his emphasis on face-​to-​face conversation.10 Still, Addams’s explicit attention to the need to choose our experiences intentionally is a crucial component of pragmatist social ethics. While Rorty did not go as far as Addams in claiming we have a moral obligation to seek diverse experiences, he counseled citizens to “stay on the lookout for marginalized people –​people whom we still instinctively think of as ‘they’ rather than ‘us’ ” (1989, p. 196). Literature, for Rorty, offers a way to get to know the experiences of people we may not otherwise have an opportunity to meet. “[A]‌n encounter with a new and strange person, in real life or in a novel or a play” (2010, p. 391), he held, is essential in the process of self-​redescription through which people “reweave their webs of belief and desire in light of whatever new people and books they happen to encounter” (1989, p. 85). To be sure, his narrative conception of the self led him to focus on altering the self-​ descriptions and stories we use to construct our self-​understandings through language. If not social experience as such, Rorty’s melioristic projects of individual and collective moral development nevertheless are premised upon knowledge of the experiences of diverse, often distant, others. Addams too, we should note, recognized the role of literature for meeting the “desire to know all kinds of life” and as “preparation for better social adjustment—​for the remedying of social ills” (2002/​1902, p. 8).

Jane Addams and Richard Rorty     103 Rorty’s emphasis on language also reaps benefits. It enables him to discern that there are changes at the level of discourse that need to be enacted for the benefits of social experience to be transformative. Like Addams, Rorty’s attention to those we exclude extends beyond the ethical to include the realm of knowledge. Unless what Rorty refers to as “the logical space necessary for moral deliberation” is expanded, the claims of the excluded will fail to register in the dominant discourse, even if victims of oppression are able to give voice to their suffering and injustice. When it comes to “a voice saying something never heard before,” Rorty saw, the problem is that “injustices may not be perceived as injustices, even by those who suffer them, until somebody invents a previously unplayed role” (1998b, p. 203). His insights regarding “unwarranted assertions” (1998b, p. 50) and the active attention to them we need to cultivate, as well as the importance of expanding the logical space of moral deliberation in order for a voice saying something never heard before to have standing in our thinking about justice, augment our understanding of the barriers Addams’s important efforts face. Underscoring these issues seems apropos given Addams’s own endeavors to create social policy reforms that would address previously unnoticed injustices faced by immigrant populations in Chicago’s 19th ward and by the city’s youth (Addams, 1972/​1909).

Social Experience and Problems of Truth and Trust As we enter the third decade of the 21st century, nations, communities, even families across the globe find themselves deeply divided. While the factors responsible for recent divisiveness are manifold, most diagnoses cite a “post-​truth” condition where each party lays claim to “alternative facts” to buttress their position (McIntyre, 2018). The remedy for restoring democratic discourse seems to require reestablishing our ties to the objective reality of facts. Phenomena described as “echo chambers” and “epistemic bubbles” further entrench this fragmentation. The account of sympathetic knowledge and relational social ethics offered by Addams and Rorty teaches us that this perspective oversimplifies the connection between fact and belief, and between truth and democratic politics. Most in need of recovery, in a post-​truth world, is not just our relation to objective reality, but ties to our fellow citizens. Epistemic and ethical communities are intertwined. Recent work on the nature of echo chambers helps us understand why: “An echo chamber doesn’t destroy their members’ interest in the truth; it merely manipulates whom they trust and changes whom they accept as trustworthy sources and institutions” (Nguyen, 2018). Appeals to facts and truth get nowhere when the underlying trust that unifies communities is absent. In societies like that depicted in George Orwell’s 1984, and perhaps our current state, it becomes difficult, if not impossible, Rorty suggested, to find out what the facts are, since the normally reliable agreement of our fellow citizens “is no longer a good

104   Chris Voparil sign of truth” (2000a, p. 342). Truth can never be a guiding light if everyone around you believes in lies. This final section briefly highlights Addams’s and Rorty’s crucial insights into these problems of truth and trust, and where we must look for remedies. Echo chambers function through creating distrust toward all outside epistemic sources (Jamieson & Cappella, 2010), with particular disparagement directed at anyone who expresses a contrary view: “outsiders are not simply mistaken—​they are malicious, manipulative and actively working to destroy” (Nguyen, 2018). To put it in the terms discussed here, the problems of truth and trust are problems of undemocratic relations and the absence of sympathetic understanding—​precisely the barriers to which both Addams’s and Rorty’s transformative efforts speak most directly. I focus on two areas: their common emphasis on the problem of “egotism” and their call for social experience to build democratic relations. The project of developing democratic relations for both Addams and Rorty begins with mitigating selfishness or egotism. Converting egotism to a social perspective is an essential element of their pragmatist social ethics. Rorty defines “egotism” as: being “satisfied that the vocabulary one uses when deciding how to act is all right just as it is, and that there is no need to figure out what vocabularies others are using” (2010, p. 395). This stance recalls Addams’s diagnosis of the Pullman president: “an individual was directing the social affairs of many men without any consistent effort to find out their desires, and without any organization through which to give them social expression” (2002/​1902, p. 66). Addams addressed the problem of “selfish people” who “refuse to be bound by any relation save the personally luxurious ones of love and admiration, or the identity of political opinion, or religious creed.” She grasped that their shortcoming is “a narrowness of interest which deliberately selects its experience within a limited sphere” (2002/​1902, pp. 8–​9). The relevance of this attention to egotism to our current predicament can be seen in Tracy Llanera’s work (2019) on the phenomenon of “group egotism,” the category she uses for extreme cases of people who have been socialized within hate groups. Recent analyses of echo chambers suggest that cult-​like dynamics, which isolate individuals and groups from external sources of information by fostering distrust, exist much more widely than just within hate groups (Jamieson & Cappella, 2010). For Llanera, group egotists are not only are actively ignorant and dogmatic, but “proud of their group identity” (2019, p. 1). Addams and Rorty both understood that appeals to rational discourse and the force of the better argument are powerless in the face of such attitudes, which are powerfully buttressed by identity-​based affective bonds and enmities. Overcoming such attitudes and the exclusions they entrench for Addams is what makes social experience so crucial to democratic life amid pluralism, diversity, and inequality: “we are under a moral obligation in choosing our experiences, since the result of those experiences must ultimately determine our understanding of life” (2002/​1902, p. 8). Similarly, Llanera’s research highlights the importance of what she calls, drawing on Rorty, “redemptive relationships” in cases where people have abandoned lifelong membership in hate groups. Such transformation happens only after

Jane Addams and Richard Rorty     105 patient and deliberate efforts to build affective ties through one-​on-​one conversations over time. In Llanera’s view, “the force of better arguments, and the long and patient employment of conversational virtues—​while necessary and critical for triggering belief-​revision—​ do not illuminate the tipping point of apostasy cases” (2019, p. 7). These individuals “change because their self-​conceptions have evolved to accommodate reasons and justifications outside both their range of epistemic recognition and existential sphere of care” (2019, p. 3). In these cases, counter-​arguments against the belief systems of hate groups only became transformational amid the presence of redemptive relationships. Llanera concludes that “disillusioned extremists have a better chance at successful reformation and social reintegration when treated with compassion, empathy, and kindness” (2019, p. 14). Llanera’s revealing work helps us see the timeliness and urgency of Addams’s and Rorty’s insights into how to practice pragmatic social ethics as a way to recognize and remedy the epistemic and ethical divides of privilege and exclusion. As Rorty held, philosophers should drop questions about how to get in touch with “mind-​independent and language-​independent reality” and replace them with questions like, “What are the limits of our community? Are our encounters sufficiently free and open? Has what we have recently gained in solidarity cost us our ability to listen to outsiders who are suffering? To outsiders who have new ideas?” (1991, p. 13). Applying this to the issue of echo chambers translates into a helpful basic check: “does a community’s belief system actively undermine the trustworthiness of any outsiders who don’t subscribe to its central dogmas?” (Nguyen, 2018).

Conclusion I have argued that both Addams and Rorty can be understood as advocating what Hamington has described as “an approach to personal and social morality that shifts ethical considerations to context, relationships, and affective knowledge” (2001, p. 108). Beyond their compelling visions of democratic social ethics, both thinkers were especially perceptive regarding the limitations their own projects of fostering sympathetic knowledge face. Paramount among the obstacles is the persistence of undemocratic relations within and between communities structured by social privilege and injustice. Addams’s insights into practices for becoming aware of unearned privileges are essential for remedying these social hierarchies. Rorty grasped how the bounded space of moral deliberation always entails excluded individuals and groups whose claims about injustice fall outside the frame and therefore go unacknowledged. By attuning us to the role of unwarranted assertions in social and political change and by counseling us to remain continually on the lookout for those we either explicitly or implicitly reject, he promotes the practice of ethical and epistemic virtues needed to make our communities more responsive to social injustice.

106   Chris Voparil In the end, Addams’s assertion that “we are under a moral obligation in choosing our experiences” remains one of the most profound statements of pragmatic social ethics that we have. Her ideas, lifetime of work at Hull House, and extraordinary commitment to realizing this obligation are exemplary. As inspiring as it is as an ideal, contact with social experience may be necessary but not sufficient for attaining democratic collective self-​reform. Few will attain the degree of contact with social experience that Addams lived on a daily basis. Nevertheless, we must avail ourselves of opportunities for transformative contact with the experience of diverse and distant others that our face-​to-​face existence may not afford, while seeking out those we have excluded as conversation partners to build redemptive relationships. Additional avenues for engaging “detailed descriptions of what unfamiliar people are like” (1989, p. xvi), as Rorty held, in literature, drama, movies, television programs, and good narrative journalism fall under the purview of Addams’s moral obligation to seek out the experience of others and supplement the work that a pragmatist social ethics requires. Without new metaphors and non-​logical changes in belief, we may fail to expand moral space so that these excluded experiences attain full ethical and epistemic standing. Taken together, Addams’s and Rorty’s insights into how we can reconstruct the philosophy and practice of pragmatist social ethics to make them more responsive to injustice are precisely what rectifying our post-​truth condition demands.

Notes 1. See also Cruickshank (2014). Gross (2003) reads Rorty through the lens of the new sociology of ideas, but does not address his broader relevance for the field of sociology. On sociology’s “relational and pragmatist roots,” see Mische (2011) and Kivinen and Piiroinen (2018). 2. Parts of this section and the following one draw from the fuller account in Voparil (2022a, ­chapter 5). 3. A great example of this is Addams’s attentive analysis of those who believed the preposterous story of the Devil Baby (1916, ­chapter 1). 4. The aestheticized individualist who predominates in Rorty (1989), as Fraser helpfully discerns, gives way to a socially conscious practice of redescription “tied to the collective political enterprise of overcoming oppression and restructuring society” with his “Feminism and Pragmatism” (in 1998b) essay (Fraser, 1991, p. 262). See also Dieleman (2011). 5. See Bacon (2007); Curtis (2015); Dieleman (2013); and Voparil (2006, 2014). 6. See “The Priority of Democracy to Philosophy” (in Rorty, 1991); Rorty (1998b, pt. 2); and “Justice as a Larger Loyalty” (in Rorty, 2007). 7. For an in-​depth account of Rorty’s ethical thought, see Voparil (2014, 2020). 8. Cf. Hamington (2010) and Janack (2010). 9. I thank Pat Shields for prompting me to think about this parallel. 10. Malachowski similarly notes: “Experience is not something that Rorty finds intrinsically problematic” (2011, p. 54). For discussion of the extensive literature on Rorty and experience, see Voparil (2022b).

Jane Addams and Richard Rorty     107

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108   Chris Voparil Kivinen, O., & Piiroinen, T. (2018). Pragmatist methodological relationalism in sociological understanding of evolving human culture. In F. Dépelteau (Ed.), The Palgrave Handbook of Relational Sociology (pp. 119–​142). Palgrave Macmillan. LaFollette, H. (2000). Pragmatic ethics. In H. LaFollette and I. Persson (Eds.), The Blackwell Guide to Ethical Theory (pp. 400–​419). Blackwell. Lake, D. (2014). Jane Addams and wicked problems: Putting the pragmatic method to use. The Pluralist 9(3), 77–​94. Lekan, T. (2003). Making morality: Pragmatist reconstruction in ethics theory. Vanderbilt University Press. Liska, J. (2013). New directions in pragmatic ethics. Cognitio 14(1), 51–​61. Llanera, T. (2019). Disavowing hate: Group egotism from Westboro to the Klan. Journal of Philosophical Research 44, 1–​19. Malachowski, A. (2011). Putting pragmatism into better shape: Rorty and James. Pragmatism Today 2(1), 51–​55. McIntyre, L. (2018). Post-​truth. The MIT Press. Mische, A. (2011). Relational sociology, culture, and agency. In J. Scott & P. J. Carrington (Eds.), The SAGE Handbook of Social Network Analysis (pp. 80–​97). SAGE. Nguyen, C. T. (2018). Escape the echo chamber. Aeon (April 9). https://​aeon.co/​ess​ays/​why-​its -​as-​hard-​to-​esc​ape-​an-​echo-​cham​ber-​as-​it-​is-​to-​flee-​a-​cult. Pappas, G. F. (2008). John Dewey’s ethics: Democracy as experience. Indiana University Press. Rorty, R. (1979). Philosophy and the mirror of nature. Princeton University Press. Rorty, R. (1989). Contingency, irony, and solidarity. Cambridge University Press. Rorty, R. (1991). Objectivity, relativism, and truth: Philosophical papers, Vol. 1. Cambridge University Press. Rorty, R. (1998a). Achieving our country: Leftist thought in twentieth-​century America. Harvard University Press. Rorty, R. (1998b). Truth and progress: Philosophical papers, Vol. 3. Cambridge University Press. Rorty, R. (1999). Philosophy and social hope. Penguin Books. Rorty, R. (2000a). Response to James Conant. In R. B. Brandom (Ed.), Rorty and His Critics (pp. 342–​350). Blackwell. Rorty, R. (2000b). Universality and truth. In R. B. Brandom (Ed.), Rorty and His Critics (pp. 1–​30). Blackwell. Rorty, R. (2003). Some American uses of Hegel. In W. Welsch & K. Vieweg (Eds.), Das Interesse des Denkens: Hegel aus heutiger Sicht (pp. 33–​46). Wilhelm Fink Verlag. Rorty, R. (2007). Philosophy as cultural politics: Philosophical papers, Vol. 4. Cambridge University Press. Rorty, R. (2010). Redemption from egotism: James and Proust as spiritual exercises. In C. Voparil & R. J. Bernstein (Eds.), The Rorty Reader (pp. 389–​406). Wiley-​Blackwell. Rorty, R. (2020). On philosophy and philosophers: Unpublished Papers, 1960-​2000 (W. P. Małecki & C. Voparil, Eds.). Cambridge University Press. Rorty, R. (2021). Pragmatism as anti-​authoritarianism (E. Mendieta, Ed.). Belknap Press of Harvard University Press. Rorty, R. (2022). What can we hope for? Essays on politics (W. P. Malecki & C. Voparil, Eds.). Princeton University Press. Sarvasy, W. (2009). A global “common table’ ” Jane Addams’s theory of democratic cosmopolitanism and world social citizenship. In M. Fischer, C. Nackenoff, & W. Chmielewski (Eds.), Jane Addams and the Practice of Democracy (pp. 183–​202). University of Illinois Press.

Jane Addams and Richard Rorty     109 Sarvasy, W. (2010). Engendering democracy by socializing it: Jane Addams’s contribution to feminist political theorizing. In M. Hamington (Ed.), Feminist Interpretations of Jane Addams (pp. 293–​310). Pennsylvania State University Press. Schneiderhan, E. (2013). Rorty, Addams, and social hope. Humanities 2(3), 421–​438. Seigfried, C. H. (1996). Pragmatism and feminism: Reweaving the social fabric. University of Chicago Press. Seigfried, C. H. (1999). Socializing democracy: Jane Addams and John Dewey. Philosophy of the Social Sciences 29(2), 207–​230. Seigfried, C. H. (2001). Pragmatist metaphysics? Why terminology matters. Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society 37(1), 13–​21. Seigfried, C. H. (2002). Introduction. In C. H. Seigfried (Ed.), Democracy and Social Ethics (pp. ix–​xxxviii). University of Illinois Press. Voparil, C. (2006). Richard Rorty: Politics and vision. Rowman & Littlefield. Voparil, C. (2014). Taking other human beings seriously: Rorty’s ethics of choice and responsibility. Contemporary Pragmatism 11(1), 83–​102. Voparil, C. (2020). Rorty’s ethics of responsibility. In A. Malachowski (Ed.), A Companion to Rorty (pp. 490–​504). Wiley Blackwell. Voparil, C. (2022a). Reconstructing pragmatism: Richard Rorty and the classical pragmatists. Oxford University Press. Voparil, C. (2022b). Rorty and experience. In G. Marchetti (Ed.), The Ethics, Epistemology, and Politics of Richard Rorty (pp. 148–​167). Routledge. Voparil, C., & Bernstein, R. J. (Eds.). (2010). The Rorty reader. Wiley-​Blackwell.

Chapter 6

L ab or Unions as a Fac tor in a Caring De mo c rac y Maurice Hamington

Fortunately, every action may be analyzed into its permanent and transient aspects. The transient aspect of the strike is the anger and opposition against the employer, and too often the chagrin of failure. The permanent is the binding together of the strikers in the ties of association and brotherhood, and the attainment of a more democratic relation to the employer; and it is because of a growing sense of brotherhood and of democracy in the labor movement that we see in it a growing ethical power. —​Jane Addams (2007a, p. 149)

The above quote reveals the strong association that Jane Addams made among labor unions, relationality democracy, and morality. For Addams, labor is framed as essential to a caring democracy. The literature on feminist care ethics has taken a distinctively political turn over the last several decades. One of the outcomes of care political theory is a quest for a more caring form of democracy. Although the number of democratic nations is growing globally (Desilver, 2019), the specter of severe inequality and disenfranchisement still haunts the world, even in democracies. Modern democracies have not consistently fulfilled their promise of bringing a better life to the masses. Accordingly, care political theorists have endeavored to reimagine social policy and values to reinvigorate a more inclusive and flourishing democratic social structure. For example, political scholar Julie Anne White points out that a robust democracy and quality care are time-​intensive activities: “If our democratic concerns are to be at the center rather than the margins of our collective lives, we will have to insist on the time to care” (2020, p. 175). Modern democracies have become entangled with neoliberal values that emphasize productivity and individual achievement over relationality. Feminist care ethics points to a different vision of caring democracy. At the turn from the 19th to the 20th century, Progressive Era social philosophers also endeavored to imagine and work toward a vital democratic ideal. Jane Addams was

112   Maurice Hamington a towering figure from that era who is best known for her pacifism and work in urban migrant communities. However, Addams also attempted to revitalize democracy by giving greater significance and meaning to work (Winkelman, 2013, p. 357). She had a tremendous track record in aiding the nascent labor movement in the United States. Addams viewed labor organizing as another form of human association that was crucial for a holistic, social democracy as well as for abating the oppressive practices of unfettered capitalism. Labor unions do not get a great deal of attention in today’s feminist care political analysis. There is some modest recognition among care theorists that Addams’s approach was a forerunner of today’s feminist care ethics (Noddings, 2002, p. 299; Hamington, 2009, pp. 58–​61; Tronto, 2013, p. 12; Bourgault, 2017, p. 214). Leveraging Addams’s social and political philosophy, this chapter attempts to open up a discusion regarding the essential role of labor unions in a caring democracy. In what follows, we examine Addams’s support for labor organizing and the pragmatist philosophy about the character of democracy behind it. Joan Tronto’s vision of a caring democracy is juxtaposed with Addams’s view of the role of labor unions to draw suggestions and implications for how to think about the labor movement in a caring society. Addams’s work is particularly intriguing because her advocacy for labor unions was nuanced. As a good pragmatist theorist, she was not absolute in her support for labor organizing. She sometimes even drew the ire of labor organizations who perceived that she did not go far enough in her support. Nevertheless, she advanced the labor movement on many fronts. Because Addams viewed unions with the same relational and associative lens that she regarded democracy, as the epigraph above indicates, her analysis may provoke new avenues of thought for today’s care theorists.

Addams on the Labor Movement Hull House was situated in a diverse, migrant, working-​class neighborhood. So, although Addams’s background consisted of an upper-​class upbringing, the settlement could not avoid labor issues experienced by the community. The rise of industry in a capitalistic environment unfettered by health, safety, or wage laws made Addams acutely aware of how manufacturing could exploit laborers. The residents of Hull House were keenly concerned about working conditions in their Chicago neighborhood beginning in the early years of the settlement. For example, one of the residents’ initial projects, published in 1895, Hull-​House Maps and Papers (2007), is hailed as a landmark study in urban sociology and cultural demography. The book also contained labor analysis. Chapters in the book address local sweatshops (Kelley, 2007) and child labor (Kelley & Stevens, 2007). Addams contributed a chapter on the role of settlements in the labor movement (2007). According to Addams, Hull House was established with the general notion of being responsive to the needs of the neighborhood: “The settlement, then, is an experimental effort to aid in the solution of the social and industrial problems which are engendered by the modern conditions of life in a great city” (1990, p. 75). For the

Labor Unions as a Factor in a Caring Democracy    113 residents, worker protections emerged as one of the social and industrial problems of the community. Addams and her Hull House collaborators famously spearheaded child labor reforms. Their first success was in changing Illinois state labor laws. In 1903, Addams recognized the exploitative nature of industry: “. . . we are tempted as never before to use the labor of little children and the temptation to exploit premature labor is peculiar to this industrial epoch” (p. 114). Addams worked with Hull House resident and social reformer Florence Kelley to collaborate with unions and women’s groups in the drive to change child labor legislation at the federal level. However, Addams did not ignore the plight of other exploited communities in the rise of industrial capitalism. Under Addams’s leadership, Hull House undertook particular efforts to support women in the workforce, who, of course, received additional discrimination and carried different social burdens than male laborers. Only two years after the founding of Hull House, Addams recounts an 1891 effort to assist women workers: At a meeting of working girls held at Hull-​House during a strike in a large shoe factory, the discussions made it clear that the strikers who had been most easily frightened, and therefore first to capitulate, were naturally those girls who were paying board and were afraid of being put out if they fell too far behind. After a recital of a case of peculiar hardship one of them exclaimed: “Wouldn’t it be fine if we had a boarding club of our own, and then we could stand by each other in a time like this?” (1990, p. 81)

Congruent with a care ethical approach, Addams was responsive to the needs of vulnerable community members (Brown, 2004, p. 261), and that included their work lives. Hull House helped established an independent cooperative for the single women workers that, by its third year, grew to house 50 people (Addams, 1990, p. 81). Addams’s description of the events reveals a bit of feminist pride as she recounts a Department of Labor representative telling her that no boarding cooperative run by women had previously succeeded (1990, p. 81). The Jane Club was a unique space for single women ages 18 to 45 that did not impose paternalistic rules regarding their activities (Jackson 2000, pp. 135–​ 143). However, the Jane Club embraced Addams’s vision for a cosmopolitan democratic morality. Addams saw the value of the proximal knowledge gained when women from various trades lived together and could compare experiences in a shared space. As Jane Club member Eliza P. Whitcombe colloquially describes, “we have all sorts and conditions of people,—​I mean, people of all sorts and conditions of occupation. This must, I think, tend to broaden the interests, which, after all, is what makes for real living” (1901, p. 88). Facilitating the Jane Club was only the beginning of Addams’s work on behalf of women union members. Mary Jo Deegan documents many women’s labor groups and organizers that met at Hull House and made the settlement a center for women’s organizing (2010, p. 222). In 1903, after the American Federation of Labor (AFL) made it clear that women would not be admitted, Addams worked with Mary McDowell and Mary Kenney O’Sullivan to launch the Women’s Trade Union League, the first national organization dedicated to the collective organizing of women workers (Knight, 2005, pp. 391–​392). The

114   Maurice Hamington organization subsequently advocated for the eight-​hour workday, minimum wage, ending child labor, and eliminating night work for women (Britannica, 2015). Hull House became a hub of labor-​organizing activity in the community. Bessie Abramowitz Hillman, a Russian immigrant who attended classes at Hull House, founded the Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America (ACWA) in 1910 at the age of 20, and she would guide it for the next 60 years. Hillman referred to the settlement as “A House of Labor” (Pastorello, 2009, p. 99), and she worked with and admired Addams until the latter’s passing in 1935. Another resident who became a significant labor leader was Alzina Stevens, who became head of the Dorcas Federal Labor Union and a member of the Council of Women’s Trade Unions of Chicago. Addams cultivated a dynamo of labor leadership. In “The Settlement as A Factor in The Labor Movement,” Addams, ever the American pragmatist, begins with an experiential observation and thematizes from that experience. The immigrant neighborhood around Hull House included many people employed in the sewing trades, often working in oppressive sweatshop conditions. Addams notes that these workers have not collectively organized. She refers to them as working in comparative “isolation.” Addams’s theme of the power and value of social relation and interaction emerges. She explicitly criticizes the circumstances: “in industrial affairs isolation is a social crime” (2007, p. 139). Addams proceeds to describe how too many laborers chasing too few jobs results in substandard wages in an unregulated environment. Although this analysis is reminiscent of Marx (whom Addams refers to later in the chapter), she adds a feminist lens by noting the perils of desperate mothers willing to accept meager compensation to care for their children (2007, p. 140). In an article “Trade Unions and Public Duty” (1899) published in the American Journal of Sociology, Addams argues for advancing child labor laws. She assumes that democracy has a moral foundation and that labor unions support that ethical structure. Addams suggests that it is widely understood that “the public has a duty toward the weak and defenseless members of the community” (1899, p. 48). This Progressive Era faith in society appears radical compared to contemporary individualism advanced by neoliberalism. Although Addams views that collective labor organizations are fulfilling democratic ideals, she is also saddened that democratic political systems and leadership have abdicated their responsibility: “trades unions are trying to do for themselves what the government should secure for all its citizens” (1899, p. 456). For Addams, trade unions are a democratic institution (Knight, 2010, p. 135). Yet, again, in the contemporary United States context (unlike European unions), public discourse does not characterize labor unions as an extension of democracy. Instead, they are often viewed as adversarial and sometimes anachronistic entities.

Addams on Democracy and Labor Since the rise of Addams studies in the 1990s, scholars have documented her vision of democracy as a vital, relational, and evolving organism rather than a mere political

Labor Unions as a Factor in a Caring Democracy    115 structure (Fisher, 2019, pp. 4–​5). Even early in Addams’s public career, she attached a moral ideal to democracy beyond political form, as historian and biographer Louise W. Knight notes: [Addams’s] large vision was to create a place that would nurture universal and democratic fellowship among peoples of all classes. It was a distinctly social, not political, ideal Democracy, she told an audience of Chicago clubwomen in 1890, ought to involve not only “political freedom and equality” but also “social affairs” and a democratic “theory [of] the social order.” (2010, p. 68)

Addams’s focus on the relational, interactive, and experiential aspects of democracy (Seigfried, 2002, p. xi) makes her analysis ripe for linking to care political theory. In Addams’s first book, Democracy and Social Ethics, she explicitly ties democracy to morality in the title and throughout the book. However, the democratic morality that Addams has in mind is not simply the adjudication of ethical dilemmas but rather an abiding moral way of being that manifest in relational action and experience. We are thus brought to a conception of Democracy not merely as a sentiment which desires the well-​being of all men, nor yet as a creed which believes in the essential dignity and equality of all men, but as that which affords a rule of living as well as a test of faith. (Addams, 2002b, p. 7)

Addams’s treatment of labor unions is not a separate and compartmentalized consideration from her broader political thinking. Instead, she locates collective worker associations and bargaining as actively participating in the democratic narrative. For Addams, meaningful human interaction and association are essential aspects of a thriving democracy. To explore the associative character of Addams’s vision for democracy, I turn to the work of Marilyn Fischer (2019), who meticulously interrogated the context, preliminary works, and source material for Democracy and Social Ethics. Fischer’s fundamental contention is that Addams’s first book was strongly influenced by evolutionary thinking. Within that framework, Fischer offers nuanced analyses of Addams’s social and relational vision for democracy that are pertinent to the project here of locating the value of labor unions within a robust democracy. Addams was willing to fight for women’s suffrage, worker rights, and progressive candidates, but she knew that rich social relations were equally crucial to high-​quality political processes. As Fischer describes, Addams’s “sympathy and generosity of spirit were more than personality traits; they are requirements for democracy” (2019, p. 22). One of the preliminary works to Democracy and Social Ethics that reflects Addams’s developing thinking regarding democracy is “The Subjective Necessity for Social Settlements” (2002a). This essay was first published under a different title in 1892 and

116   Maurice Hamington then eventually included in revised form as chapter six of Twenty Years at Hull-​House (1990). Addams describes how people are longing to socialize their democracy, are animated by certain hopes which may be thus loosely formulated; that if in a democratic country nothing can be permanently achieved save through the masses of the people, it will be impossible to establish a higher political life than the people themselves crave; that it is difficult to see how the notion of a higher civic life can be fostered save through common intercourse. (Addams, 1990, p. 69)

Social interaction and exchange in an educational atmosphere where people can associate to learn of one another’s past and present burdens was an ever-​present aspect of the Hull House settlement that Addams created and led. Social, educational, and political clubs were formed. An innovative labor museum that offered a living experience of international textiles work was completed. Art and performance opportunities were established to encourage and facilitate cultural exchange. Such activities were not simply recreational luxuries, but they were part of Addams’s vision for social democracy. She explained the purpose of the social settlement was “to extend democracy beyond its political expression” (2002a, p. 15). Just as morality could no longer be considered separately from its social dimension (2002b, p. 7), neither could democracy. Addams claimed that if the French Revolution marked the origins of the modern democratic movement, her era might be witnessing the second phase of democracy (2002a, p. 16), expressed as social democracy. Fischer finds the shift in democracy that Addams addresses as reflecting evolutionary thinking. Democracy must adapt to flourish. In this manner, although Addams showed great respect for the founding figures of American democracy, for example, regularly celebrating George Washington’s birthday at Hull House, she was not a democratic foundationalist. Fischer asserts that for Addams, “the very meaning of democracy needs to be conceptualized anew to meet the challenges of the era caused by industrialization and the global movement of people” (2019, p. 31). Addams’s Chicago was increasingly cosmopolitan as it witnessed a significant influx of migrants from Europe. A democracy was needed that could bridge the new cultural identities of society. Like today’s political care theorists, Addams was asking how to make diverse community members care about one another. Her answer was an enlarged version of democracy whereby progress was possible through sympathetic understanding. As Fischer describes, Addams understood “democracy as response to human needs based on reciprocity and solidarity” (2005, p. xviii). There is a class character to Addams’s second socializing phase of democracy. In particular, Fischer points to the class consciousness of two figures that Addams read and referred to: Italian activist and political theorist Giuseppe Mazzini and British economic historian and social thinker Arnold Toynbee (Fischer, 2019, p. 29). Although Addams had read Marx, she preferred to reference the economic works of Mazzini and Toynbee. In particular, they argued that labor unions could democratize industry (Fischer, 2019, p. 29). Addams was not content with economic analysis and extended

Labor Unions as a Factor in a Caring Democracy    117 her notion of relational democracy to all of society, but that is not to say that she ignored the economic realm. Labor unions are a vital associative institution in Addams’s vision of democracy.

Labor Unions as Means Rather than Ends Addams views it as the task of social settlements like Hull House to support labor organizing, not as an end but as a means. She is critical of labor unions for having limited goals and employing hostile and antagonistic tactics. Still, she finds the underlying value of worker collectives in supporting the democratic voice of the workers. In “Trade Unions and Public Duty,” Addams tells a speculative tale that reveals her sense of proportionalism and why she juxtaposes labor organizing against public duty in the article’s title. She asks the reader to imagine a “comfortable man,” a “philanthropic lady,” and a “workingman trained in trades-​union methods” sitting on a streetcar when an eight-​year-​old boy hops on. The boy is hawking newspapers by announcing the sensationalist lead story to make his product more appealing. Addams imagines that the well-​ to-​do gentleman might feel good about buying a newspaper because “the little fellow who is making his way in the world.” Addams further fantasizes that the philanthropic woman might pity that the boy is not in school, which only reinforces her drive to do more charity. Her concern about the family that the boy is trying to provide might cause her to be extra generous in her purchase of the paper. Not surprisingly, Addams saves the most complex response for the union member: “He knows very well that he can do nothing in the way of ameliorating the lot of this particular boy; that his only possible chance is to agitate for proper child-​labor laws in order to regulate, and, if possible, prohibit, street vending by children, so that the child of the poorest may have his school time secured to him, and may have at least his short chance for growth” (1899). Addams views labor unions as a means to social progress rather than an end or ultimate goal. Note that she did not project self-​interest onto the union member in Addams’s speculative scenario on the streetcar. She could have had him lament that the boy was not a union member. Instead, Addams saw that cooperative associations were born out of human need, and so her imaginary union member had a larger vision of social justice than simply supporting unions. Addams did not project a delineation of ethical adjudication on the three positions taken: “These three people sitting in the streetcar are all honest and upright and recognize a certain duty toward the forlorn children of the community” (1899). However, she praised a greater vision for what is good for all, the systemic good, as more plausible for those who had collectively witnessed the oppression of labor in an unregulated capitalist economy. Addams was a proponent of unionization for what collective efforts could do for society, but she never lost sight of the need for the common good or “lateral progress.”

118   Maurice Hamington Perhaps Addams’s most acclaimed work on labor unions was “A Modern Lear” (2002c). Early in her public career, Addams was drawn into a labor action of national importance, the unsuccessful Pullman Strike of 1894. She had already garnered significant local labor experience, for example, when Hull House had arbitrated the strike at the Star Knitting Works in 1892 (Brown, 1999, p. 134). The Pullman Strike pitted Eugene Debs and his American Railway Union against George Pullman and the Pullman Car Company. The strike only lasted a few months, but it crippled the freight and transportation rails of the country. Addams was part of a Chicago effort to arbitrate between the two sides (Knight, 2005, p. 312). She endeavored to bring the opponents to the bargaining table but ultimately failed. The strike ended shortly after President Grover Cleveland sent federal troops to Chicago, and the American Railway Union was forced to admit defeat (Schneirov et al., 1999, p. 9). The strike included violence that led to fatalities and property damage (Addams, 2002b, p. 64). The Pullman Strike, which culminated a decade of significant labor unrest, is considered a watershed moment in the history of business and labor, the significance of which continues to be debated. On the one hand, corporations proved their ability to crush labor resistance. On the other hand, sympathy for labor grew, leading to sweeping labor legislative changes that would protect worker rights. Amidst the turmoil, Addams wrote one of the definitive first-​person accounts of the conflict: “A Modern Lear,” which can be viewed as a forerunner of later sociological analyses of labor actions (i.e., Gouldner, 1954, and Bacharach et al., 1996). John Dewey would describe “A Modern Lear” as “one of the greatest things I have read both as to its form and ethical philosophy” (quoted in Brown, 1999, p. 148). The essay stands out as a unique rhetorical strategy, but more importantly for the present discussion, it reveals a great deal about Addams’s democratic philosophy of labor unions. The rhetoric of “A Modern Lear” was so unique and in some ways ahead of its time that it took eighteen years for Addams to find a publisher after it was first delivered in speech form. Addams applies a literary analysis of Shakespeare’s play to the central players in the Pullman strike in describing the tragedy of events that unfolded. George Pullman was King Lear, a somewhat benevolent autocrat who paternalistically believed he was doing good for his subjects/​workers by creating a company town. Pullman, Illinois, located south of Chicago, was built to house the Pullman Palace Car Company employees. Pullman was complete with the amenities of a model town including row houses, parks, schools, churches, and a library. The economic panic of 1894 resulted in cuts to worker wages but no commensurate reduction in rents, utility charges, and other housing costs. The Pullman strike was a result of the financial hardship the workers were experiencing. Addams frames Pullman as the self-​proclaimed benevolent leader who did not realize that his self-​perceived largesse was out of touch with the experience of the workers. He fostered his employes (sic) for many years, gave them sanitary houses and beautiful parks, but in their extreme need, when they were struggling with the most difficult question which the times could present to them, when, if ever, they required the assistance of a trained mind and a comprehensive outlook, he lost his touch and had nothing wherewith to help them. (Addams, 2002c, p. 169)

Labor Unions as a Factor in a Caring Democracy    119 Addams viewed paternalism as immoral and undemocratic. She did not suffer the paternalism of charity workers (Addams, 2002b, pp. 11–​34), and she criticized it in institutional leadership. As Katherine Joslin describes, for Addams, “Paternally conceived relationships suffer from a lack of democratic ethics” (2004, p. 65). Moreover, “A Modern Lear” exemplifies Addams’s nuanced and instrumental advocacy of unions. For Addams, unions were essential to a socialized democracy in at least two ways. First, labor unions ostensibly democratize the workplace. Worker unions bring people that would otherwise be isolated labor resources into association and democratically organizes them. Addams outright claims that “the task of the labor movement is the interpretation of democracy into industrial affairs” (2007a, p. 145). She describes the internal process of labor unions as manifesting democracy. Decisions are made through egalitarian methods of one vote per member. For example, Addams defends the union leader (“walking delegate”) who is perceived poorly by society as an “agitator” (1899, p. 454). She points out that a union leader cannot act on their own because “the organization of a trades union is so democratic that no one man, even in exceptional crises, can set aside the constitution of his union” (1899, p. 454). The second way that Addams frames unions as necessary to her vision of a socialized democracy is as a force for more democracy. Specifically, labor unions can advocate for further democratic changes that benefit society as a whole, keeping in mind that democracy entails a social ethic for Addams. Often, Addams portrays labor unions, when they are at their best, as leading-​edge democratic institutions that push social progress forward and seek lateral advancement beyond just the immediate interests of their members. However, she recognizes that sometimes the public does not appreciate the actions of unions even when “trades unions alone are doing that which belongs to the entire public” (1899, p. 452). Sometimes, Addams suggests that labor unions would be unnecessary if the government could bring democratic practices to fruition: “If the objects of trades unions could find quiet and orderly expression in legislative enactment, and if their measures could be submitted to the examination and judgment of the whole without a sense of division or of warfare, we should have the ideal development of the democratic state” (1899, p. 459). In other words, labor organizations can fill the gaps in democratic life. Thus, for Addams, labor unions potentially offer a wellspring of democracy that otherwise is unlikely to occur. Victoria Brown describes Addams as “contributing to the redefinition of the role of the democratic state in regulating economic relations” and “regarded as one of the Progressive Era’s most effective organizers and most articulate philosophers” (2004, pp. 3–​4). Part of this redefinition is the inclusion of labor unions as an instrument of democracy rather than simply an oppositional advocacy institution. It is the latter point regarding the role of labor unions in bringing about broad benefits to a social democracy that can be witnessed in the divergence of European and American models of worker unions and the decline of United States labor union membership. In the United States, labor unions enjoyed widespread popularity and political power during the first 15 years of the 20th century, but that status precipitously fell off thereafter (Foner, 1984, p. 60). Addams sought a labor-​fueled social consciousness

120   Maurice Hamington that did not take hold as it did in Europe.1 In “A Modern Lear,” Addams addresses the advantages of “lateral progress” over individual progress. Recognizing that individuals striving to advance is quicker and easier, she prefers a community’s more comprehensive and inclusive progress (2002c, pp. 175–​176) or what we might describe as infrastructure. For Addams, this is the work of labor unions: to lift all of society and not just their constituency. Many European labor unions incorporated such an approach as they engaged in bargaining for work sectors (sectarian bargaining) instead of exclusively advocating for members, as did unions in the United States (Matthews, 2017). Unfortunately, the Taft-​Hartley Act of 1947 served to curtail the progressive agenda of US labor unions and left most collective bargaining efforts as narrowly focused on wages and benefits for their members (Walsh, 2013, p. 18). In all of Addams’s activist agenda, she balanced a socially broad vision with particularist concern for the local community. Addams did not live to see the evolution of labor unionism in much of the 20th century, but it is not hard to imagine that she would have favored the broader-​scope take-​up by the European model in the 20th century.2 It should be noted that Addams was not single-​minded in her advocacy of unions. In an 1899 address made in Chicago, titled “Democracy or Militarism?” (2019), Addams reminds her audience that democracy entails peace. This peace is not just the absence of violence but an enlarged notion that allows society to progress. For Addams peace entails “the unfolding of life processes which are making for a common development” (p. 626). Addams then praises labor organizations and the statements of Samuel Gompers against imperialist threats around the globe (p. 626). In this instance, Addams viewed labor unions as an instrument of promoting peace that is a requisite of democracy. Addams firmly believed that “democratic ends could not be attained through the technique of war” (2002d, p. 36). Accordingly, Addams is not afraid to criticize labor unions when they are corrupt or violent (2007b, pp. 73–​75). For Addams, labor unions are a means to a better social democracy when they practice their ideals: “I have been impressed with the noble purposes of trade unions” (1899, n.p.). However, Addams did not believe that unions are an inherent good to be pursued regardless of their methods. At their best, labor unions contribute to a thriving democratic society, but that does not make them immune to criticism. For example, Addams would have been critical of the history of racism and sexism exhibited by many collective bargaining units. Addams’s vision of a caring ideal for organizations must be extended to unions as well.

Tronto on a Caring Democracy The most recognized figure in the work of contemporary feminist political care theory is Joan Tronto. Through her books, Moral Boundaries: A Political Argument for an Ethic of Care (1993) and Caring Democracy: Markets, Equality, and Justice (2013), as well as her many published articles, Tronto has established one of the most compelling and

Labor Unions as a Factor in a Caring Democracy    121 complete visions of a caring democracy available today. I briefly describe the contours of Tronto’s caring democracy as a current comparator to Addams’s vision, with particular attention to the role of labor unions. Like Addams, Tronto views politics and ethics as connected. Modernist thinking has favored categorical thinking with clear taxonomies that allow for precise analysis of subjects and terms. Two such categories are “morality” and “politics.” In Moral Boundaries, the distinction between morality and politics, mainly as one category dominant over the other, is the first of three boundaries that can be traversed by care theory. She argues, “care serves as both a moral value and as a basis of the political achievement of a good society” (1993, p. 9). Interestingly, Tronto mentions Addams in this context as having suffered from challenging this boundary when she made a moral argument for pacifism in the face of World War I (1993, p. 9). According to Tronto, Addams’s “woman’s morality” was not welcome in the political realm. Tronto also refers to Addams several times in Caring Democracy, including quoting her to open a chapter on democratic caring: “We are thus brought to a concept on Democracy not merely as a sentiment which desires the well-​being of all men, nor yet as a creed which believes in the essential dignity and equality of all men, but as that which affords a rule of living as well as a test of faith” (Addams 2002b, p. 7). Several care theorists mention Addams in the context of contemporary feminist care ethics (Noddings, 2002; Hamington, 2009), but Tronto’s work particularly resonates with Addams in seeing democracy and morality as co-​requisite. For Tronto, “the practice of care describes the qualities necessary for democratic citizens to live together well in a pluralistic society, and that only in a just, pluralistic, democratic society can care flourish” (1993, pp. 161–​162). Although Addams did not have the language of care theory available to her, the similarities to Tronto’s position can be found in her introduction to Democracy and Social Ethics: “we can only discover truth by a rational and democratic interest in life, and give truth complete social expression is the endeavor upon which we are entering. Thus the identification with the common lot which is the essential idea of Democracy becomes the source and expression of social ethics” (2002b, p. 9). In Caring Democracy, Tronto reinforces the relationship of care and democracy as mutually contingent and that neither can flourish without the other (2013, pp. 18, 45). Analogous to how care has been historically overlooked in moral theory, Tronto argues that political theory has unwittingly given an account of care, even when not explicitly describing it (2013, p. 25). Tronto suggests that feminist democratic caring is marked by its underlying relational ontology, which recognizes human interdependence (2013, pp. 29–​30). As such, individualistic accounts of social morality are inadequate to address our interconnected existence. This contemporary need for a social ethic rather than an individual ethic is a point that Addams made over a hundred years ago. She worked and wrote in the post-​industrial revolution and witnessed the rise of cosmopolitan big cities like Chicago (Fischer, 2005, p. 170). Addams is pointedly critical of individualistic ethics: “To attain individual morality in an age demanding social morality, to pride one’s self on the results of personal effort when the time demands social adjustment, is utterly to fail to apprehend the situation” (Addams, 2002b, p. 7). Tronto would agree.

122   Maurice Hamington Addams did not directly contend with neoliberalism as the term was coined several years after her death (Hartwich, 2019). However, the genesis of neoliberal economic forces and values were already at play in Addams’s time as industrial values ascended. Tronto regards the ethos of neoliberalism as the antithesis of care: “From the standpoint of an ethic of care, neoliberalism is a disastrous worldview” (2013, p. 38). In particular, neoliberalism emphasizes individual choice and individual responsibility, which runs counter to the relational ontology that underlies a social ethic of democratic care (Tronto, 2013, pp. 39–​44). Moreover, neoliberalism as both a disposition and a practice is an overarching threat to labor unions. As Susan L. Kang describes, the dominant ideology of neoliberalism regards “trade unions and collective rights to be inflexible relics” (2012, p. 17).

The Role of Labor in a Modern Caring Democracy Although Tronto provides the richest exploration of caring democracy in the feminist care ethics literature to date, she does not explicitly offer a role for labor unions. However, this absence is hardly the whole story. Tronto describes the elements of democratic, caring institutions that certainly can be applied to worker’s unions: “First, a clear account of power in the care relationship and, thus a recognition of the need for a politics of care at every level; second, a way for care to remain particularistic and pluralistic; and third, for care to have clear, defined, acceptable purposes” (2013, p. 159). These elements can be applied to labor unions. For example, the National Union of Healthcare Workers emphasizes its democratic internal practices and inclusion (NUHW, 2017). For Tronto, as with other feminist care theorists, care is ultimately about relationships (2013, p. 166). She finds both a democracy and a caring deficit that can be ameliorated through reflection and rethinking prevailing values and the distribution of caring responsibilities. Addams argues that an expansive vision of collective organizing can bring about progress—​social and lateral progress. However, in the United States, the dominant political narratives do not include labor unions as democratic institutions. Some experiments in Europe have given labor unions greater recognition as democratic institutions with mixed results. For example, some Nordic countries have employed a “Ghent System,” which provides labor unions the role of distributing unemployment benefits and thus an official responsibility in the democratic economy. However, this experiment has not been without its struggles because of shifting economic trends and neoliberal ideology (Lind, 2007, p. 49). Whether unions are given official caring responsibilities or not, uplifting the people and relationships engaged in labor—​the essentialness of all work—​ can support achieving Tronto’s caring democracy. Addams describes a kind of collective care for the other beyond the narrow adversarial self-​interest that is all too often associated with today’s labor unionism. Graham Cassano and Jessica Payette point out that Addams can be favorably compared to Marx and Engels in viewing the interests of

Labor Unions as a Factor in a Caring Democracy    123 working people as the interests of all people (2018, p. 37). Addams frames labor unions in ways that are unfamiliar to contemporary narratives of collective bargaining: “Probably the labor organizations come nearer to expressing moral striving in political action than any other portion of the community, for their political efforts in most instances have been stimulated by a desire to secure some degree of improvement in the material condition of working people” (1899, pp. 459–​460). Addams viewed working people’s associations as one foundational institution within a caring, social democracy.

Notes 1. In many ways, the question of the divergent development of unions in Europe and the United States is part of the larger question posed by the German sociologist Werner Sombart over a century ago: Why is there no socialism in the United States? (1976). As Eric Foner points out, although Sombart’s analysis remains significant, modern sociopolitical reflection finds the divergence between the extent to which European and US citizens embraced socialism as complex and including many factors including economic, social, geographic, and political ones (1984, pp. 59–​60). 2. Today, European unionism is also in decline although not to the same extent as the United States. This decline does not diminish the moral and social value of labor unionism for a vision of caring democracy.

References Addams, Jane. (1899). Trade unions and public duty. American Journal of Sociology 4 (4), 448–​ 462. https://​open.oreg​onst​ate.educat​ion/​soc​iolo​gica​lthe​ory/​chap​ter/​add​ams-​on-​trade-​uni​ ons-​1899/​ Addams, Jane. (1903). Child labor and pauperism. In Isabel C. Barrows (Ed.), Proceedings of the National Conference of Charities and Correction at the thirteenth annual session held in the city of Atlanta, May 6–​12, 1903 (pp. 114–​121). Press of Fred J. Herr. https://​babel.hat​hitr​ust .org/​cgi/​pt?id=​wu.8903​0648​927&view=​2up&seq=​10&size=​125 Addams, Jane. (1990 [1910]). Twenty years at Hull-​House. University of Illinois Press. Addams, Jane. (2002a [1893]). The subjective necessity for social settlements. In Jean Bethke Elshtain (Ed.), The Jane Addams Reader (pp. 14–​28). Basic Books. Addams, Jane. (2002b [1902]). Democracy and social ethics. University of Illinois Press. Addams, Jane. (2002c [1912]). A modern lear. In Jean Bethke Elshtain (Ed.), The Jane Addams Reader (pp. 163–​176). Basic Books. Addams, Jane. (2002d [1922]). Peace and bread in time of war. University of Illinois Press. Addams, Jane. (2007a [1895]). The settlement as factor in the labor movement. In Residents of Hull-​House (Eds.), Hull-​House maps and papers: A presentation of nationalities and wages in a congested district of Chicago, together with comments and essays on problems growing out of the social conditions (pp. 138–​150). University of Illinois Press. Addams, Jane. (2007b [1906]). Newer ideals of peace. University of Illinois Press. Addams, Jane. (2019 [1899]). Democracy or militarism. In Mary Lynn Bryan, Maree de Angury, and Ellen Skerrett (Eds.), The selected papers of Jane Addams, vol. 3: Creating Hull-​House and an international presence, 1889–​1900 (pp. 625–​629). University of Illinois Press.

124   Maurice Hamington Bacharach, Samuel B., Bamberger, Peter, & Sonnenstuhl, William J. (1996). The organizational transformation process: The micropolitics of dissonance reduction and the alignment of logics of action. Administrative Science Quarterly 41 (3), 477–​506. Bourgault, Sophie. (2017). Prolegomena to a caring bureaucracy. European Journal of Women’s Studies 24 (3), 202–​217. Britannica, Encyclopedia editors. (2015). Women’s trade union league. Encyclopedia Britannica. https://​www.bri​tann​ica.com/​topic/​Wom​ens-​Trade-​Union-​League Brown, Victoria Bissell. (1999). Advocate for democracy: Jane Addams and the Pullman strike. In Richard Schneirov, Shelton Stromquist, and Nick Salvatore (Eds.), The Pullman strike and the crisis of the 1890s: Essays on labor and politics (pp. 130–​158). University of Illinois Press. Brown, Victoria Bissell. (2004). The education of Jane Addams. University of Pennsylvania Press. Cassano, Graham, & Payette, Jessica. (2018). Addams, sympathy, and the “public.” In Graham Cassano, Rima Lunin Schultz, and Jessica Payette (Eds.), Eleanor Smith’s Hull House songs: The music of protest and hope in Jane Addams’s Chicago. Haymarket Books. Deegan, Mary Jo. (2010). Jane Addams on citizenship in a democracy. Journal of Classical Sociology 10 (3), 217–​238. https://​doi.org/​10.1177/​14687​95X1​0371​7 14 Desilver, Drew. (2019). Despite global concerns about democracy, more than half of all countries are democratic. Pew Research Center. https://​www.pewr​esea​rch.org/​fact-​tank/​2019/​ 05/​14/​more-​than-​half-​of-​countr​ies-​are-​dem​ocra​tic/​ Fischer, Marilyn. (2005). Introduction. In Marilyn Fischer and Judy Whipps (Eds.), Jane Addams’ essays and speeches (xiii–​xxii). Continuum International Publishing. Fischer, Marilyn. (2019). Jane Addams’s evolutionary theorizing: Constructing “democracy and social ethics.” University of Chicago Press. Foner, Eric. (1984). Why is there no socialism in the United States? History Workshop 17, 57–​80. Gouldner, Alvin Ward. (1954). Wildcat strike: A study of an unofficial strike. Antioch Press. Hamington, Maurice. (2009). The social philosophy of Jane Addams. University of Illinois Press. Hartwich, Oliver Marc. (2019). Neoliberalism: The genesis of a political swearword. The Centre for Independent Studies Limited. https://​www.cis.org.au/​app/​uplo​ads/​2015/​07/​op114.pdf Jackson, Shannon. (2000). Lines of activity: Performance, historiography, Hull-​House domesticity. University of Michigan Press. Joslin, Katherine. (2004). Jane Addams: A writer’s life. University of Illinois Press. Kang, Susan L. (2012). Human rights and labor solidarity: Trade unions in the global economy. University of Pennsylvania Press. Kelley, Florence. (2007 [1895]). The sweating-​system. In Residents of Hull-​House (Eds.), Hull-​ House maps and papers: A presentation of nationalities and wages in a congested district of Chicago, together with comments and essays on problems growing out of the social conditions (pp. 63–​72). University of Illinois Press. Kelley, Florence, & Stevens, Alinza P. (2007 [1895]). Wage-​earning children. In Residents of Hull-​House (Eds.), Hull-​House maps and papers: A presentation of nationalities and wages in a congested district of Chicago, together with comments and essays on problems growing out of the social conditions (pp. 73–​89). University of Illinois Press. Knight, Louise W. (2005). Citizen: Jane Addams and the struggle for democracy. University of Chicago Press. Knight, Louise W. (2010). Jane Addams: Spirit in action. W.W. Norton. Lind, Jens. (2007). A Nordic saga? The Ghent system and trade unions. International Journal of Employment Studies 15 :1, 49–​67.

Labor Unions as a Factor in a Caring Democracy    125 Matthews, Dylan. (2017). Europe could have the secret to saving America’s unions. Vox https://​ www.vox.com/​pol​icy-​and-​polit​ics/​2017/​4/​17/​15290​674/​union-​labor-​movem​ent-​eur​ope -​bar​gain​ing-​fight-​15-​ghent National Union of Healthcare Workers. (2017). What is a union? https://​nuhw.org/​wp-​cont​ent/​ uplo​ads/​2017/​11/​2017-​What-​Is-​a-​Union-​FINAL.pdf Noddings, Nel. (2002). Starting at home: Caring and social policy. University of California Press. Pastorello, Karen. (2009). “The transfigured Few”: Jane Addams, Bessie Abramowitz Hillman, and immigrant women workers in Chicago, 1905–​15. In Marilyn Fischer, Carol Nackenoff, and Wendy Chmielewski (Eds.), Jane Addams and the Practice of Democracy (pp. 98–​118). University of Illinois Press. Residents of Hull-​House. (2007 [1895]). Hull-​House maps and papers: A presentation of nationalities and wages in a congested district of Chicago, together with comments and essays on problems growing out of the social conditions. University of Illinois Schneirov, Richard, Stromquist, Shelton, & Salvatore, Nick. (1999). Introduction. In Richard Schneirov, Shelton Stromquisty, and Nick Salvatore (Eds.), The Pullman Strike and the crisis of the 1890s: Essays on labor and politics (pp. 1–​20). University of Illinois Press. Seigfried, Charlene Haddock. (2002). Introduction to the Illinois Edition. In Jane Addams, Democracy and social ethics (pp. ix–​xxxviii). University of Illinois Press. Sombart, Werner. (1976 [1906]). Why is there no socialism in the United States? Sharpe. Tronto, Joan. (1993). Moral boundaries: A political argument for an ethic of care. Routledge. Tronto, Joan. (2013). Caring democracy: Markets, equality, and justice. New York University Press. Walsh, Brian. (2013). Battling business-​as-​usual unionism: Worker insurgencies and labor revitalization. Dollars & Sense (May/​June), 17–​22. Whitcombe, Eliza P. (1901). The Jane Club of Hull House. The American Journal of Nursing 2 (2), 86–​88. https://​doi.org/​10.1097/​00000​446-​190111​000-​00004 White, Julie Anne. (2020). Time for caring democracy: Resisting the temporal regimes of neoliberalism. In Petr Urban and Lizzie Ward (Eds.), Care ethics, democratic citizenship, and the state (pp. 161–​178). Palgrave Macmillan. Winkelman, Joel. (2013). A working democracy: Jane Addams on the meaning of work. The Review of Politics 75, 357–​382.

Pa rt I I

A DDA M S A N D H E R C ON T E M P OR A R I E S Edited by Joseph Soeters

Chapter 7

The C om ple me nta ry Theory and Pr ac t i c e of Jan e Addams a nd G e org e Herbert Me a d Bending Toward Justice Barbara J. Lowe

This chapter focuses on the complementary theory and practice of Jane Addams (1860–​ 1935) and George Herbert Mead (1863–​1931). When applied to intractable contemporary problems, the application of their combined insights “bends toward justice.”1 Readers will see that progress that bends toward justice will be incremental yet “incomparably greater” and more secure as the actions taken and the commitments embraced will be inclusive and socially just (Addams, 1902/​2002, 69–​72). For both Addams and Mead, the development of the self and society was closely connected with expanding circles and communities of diverse interaction. Sustainable expansion of engagement occurs when the exchanges are open, inclusive, and richly communicative. Addams and Mead considered the selves and resulting communities to be more advanced, more socially just than would have otherwise occurred. However, forming and sustaining these types of interactions requires time and inclusive effort, and for this reason, progress is often incremental. These insights have contemporary relevance, particularly in today’s polarized society. Rather than expanding, our social circles have narrowed and become more insular, our political institutions have become more divisive, the economic gap between the rich and the poor has widened, and threats to democratic forms of participation have increased. Addams and Mead’s work can help us see the problematic nature of these divisions and offer suggestions for how to best move forward, toward more just social, political, and economic arrangements.

130   Barbara J. Lowe Section one of this chapter will offer background information on Addams and Mead. Section two provides an account of the complementary nature of their work, especially related to theory and practice. Finally, section three considers the implications for applying these insights to our contemporary society, arguing that greater attention to increased interconnections and intercommunication across and among diverse groups and nations is essential to moving toward a society and world that “bends toward justice.”

Bios and Connections Jane Addams and George Herbert Mead were central figures in developing pragmatist thought, were recognized leaders in the Chicago school of American pragmatism, and influenced each other in “dynamically interactive” ways (Seigfried, 1996, 59; Deegan, 1988/​1990).2 Addams is best known, with Ellen Gates Starr, as the co-​founder and head resident of the Chicago settlement house known as the Hull House (1889); for receiving the Nobel Peace Prize in 1931; and for an extensive number of social reforms related to immigration, poverty, education, sanitation, and labor. In addition, Addams helped to found the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), and the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF) (Knight, 2005, Knight 2010; Seigfried, 2004; Hamington, 2009, 2019; Deegan, 1988/​1990). While primarily recognized for her community-​engaged activism and social reform, contemporary scholars have recognized Addams for her theoretical work in philosophy and sociology (Deegan, 1988/​1990; Seigfried, 1996; Hamington, 2009; Fischer, 2019). This was not, however, always the case. Addams’s approach to doing philosophy was different from a traditional academic; as a result, her theoretical contributions to the field of American pragmatist philosophy were long overlooked. As Charlene Haddock Seigfried notes, Addams “lived her life outside academia” and “more directly than most philosophers, she exercised the pragmatic method in everyday life” (Seigfried, 1996). Seigfried also highlights that, out of all the classical American pragmatists, Jane Addams could be “the most completely receptive to the pragmatist ideal of developing theory out of practice, rather than bringing theory to practice” (Seigfried, 1996). Mead was recognized as a significant figure in the Chicago School of Sociology and the Chicago School of Pragmatism (Deegan, 1990; Baldwin, 1986).3 He is considered one of the founders of “symbolic interactionism.” Along with Addams and William I. Thomas, he is credited with creating this separate school of thought within the Chicago School.4 Lewis A. Coser refers to Mead as a “pathsetter,” leading the way in the establishment of the “concrete sociological links between social and thought processes” (Coser, 1971, 339). Symbolic interactionism, part of what John Baldwin calls Mead’s unifying

The Complementary Theory and Practice    131 theory of sociology (Baldwin, 1986), posits that “humans are the central figures in ordering and maintaining social structures built on language and the capacity to understand and respond to others” (Deegan, 1990, 22). Mead’s “unified theory of sociology” highlights the “bilateral” relationship between the self and the environment (Baldwin, 1986). A “bilateral determining relationship” means that just as the environment partially determines the nature and development of the individual, so too does the individual impact the environment’s nature and development (Baldwin, 1986, 134–​135). As Mead explains, As a man adjusts himself to a particular environment he becomes a different individual; but in becoming a different individual he has affected the community in which he lives. It may be a slight effect, but in so far as he has adjusted himself, the adjustments have changed the type of the environment to which he can respond and the world is accordingly a different world. (Mead, 1934, 215)

Consistent with the pragmatist tradition, Mead committed to the practical application of theory to practice. Like Addams, Mead made concerted efforts to address a broad range of social issues (Deegan, 1990, 106; Coser, 1971, 344–​355). For example, Mead participated in the Immigrants’ Protective Leagues, serving as the first vice president, from 1909 to 1917.5 In addition, he spoke in support of trade unions and women’s suffrage, chaired both the social settlement and Child Welfare Committees, and held leadership roles in the Chicago City Clubs Committee on Education. He was a member of the Chicago Federal Commission on Industrial Relations and the Citizens Committee of Garment Workers, was the Chair of the social work conference section on war and reconstruction and the vice president of the Illinois Progressive Party, and served on the board of trustees of the University of Chicago Social Settlement Committee (Deegan, 1990, 133–​134). He worked closely with the Hull House as one aspect of its “pioneering work in the settlement house movement” (Coser, 1971, 345). In addition, Mead was a respected and gifted educator. Especially popular was his course on social psychology, attended by students from diverse disciplines, especially sociology and psychology (Coser, 1971, 345). Mead found publishing challenging but wrote over eighty articles, offered numerous lectures, and, posthumously, authored five books, many of which focused on education (Coser, 1971, 344; Deegan, 1990, 107). As we can see, both Addams and Mead were true to the pragmatist insight that theory and practice should inform each other. Both believed that, with directed effort, a society could progress toward improved conditions, and both developed theory and engaged in practice to assist in this progress. Importantly, not only did they do this work separately, they also worked together, a collaboration highlighted by Deegan (Deegan, 1990, 249). For example, though Addams is consistently omitted from accounts of the origination of the Chicago School of Sociology and the Chicago School of Pragmatism, Deegan shows the undeniable connections and notes, “[i]‌t is obvious

132   Barbara J. Lowe that Addams and Mead had considerable overlap in their thought. This fusion of ideas resulted from their common approach to various issues, whether in Chicago, at Hull House, or in and through their mutual intellectual exchanges” (Deegan, 1990, 107). As Seigfried highlights in connection with the mutual influence between Addams and John Dewey, the same is true for Addams and Mead. They dynamically inform each other in a “transactive,” back-​and-​forth sort of way, where the influence “goes both ways” (Seigfried, 1996, 59). A few examples of their overlapping commitments include shared support for the 1910 Garment Workers’ Strike, improvements to the immigration experience, advocacy for women’s suffrage, and, among other shared interests, supporting and working for programs related to the University of Chicago Settlement House (Deegan, 1990, 118). Mead also regularly lectured at the Hull House and developed his ideas about human development based on his experience with everyday problems, which overlapped with experiences and commitments shared with Addams. Mead and Addams had a rich and long-​lasting connection, personal and professional, beginning soon after Mead arrived in Chicago when Mead visited the Hull House and quickly became involved with House programs and activities (Deegan, 1990, 118). This friendship and collaborative work expanded each of their social, professional, and intellectual spheres. This is consistent with what we will see as the promise of their combined work. Addams and Mead were both practitioners and theoreticians; however, the primary lens Addams employed was that of a community activist, social reformer, and the head resident of the Hull House. In contrast, Mead’s primary lens was as an academic and educator whose life work developed his unified theory of the individual and society (Baldwin, 1986). Addams theorized about her concrete ameliorative practices in terms that built on specific intellectual trends of her day, mindful of the diverse and often non-​academic audience with whom she was communicating (Fischer, 2019). Mead articulated similar and overlapping ideas using concepts and vocabulary of the academy. Addams wrote for a lay audience and conveyed her theory through her words and practice, using rhetorical, dramatization, and storytelling to alter people’s views (Fischer, 2011; Fenton, 2021). In contrast, Mead’s primary audience was academics, and he employed the traditional academic machinery to reach his audience. Thus, we uncover overlapping strategies and insights but packaged differently.6 It would be incorrect, however, to say that Addams and Mead were wholly aligned. We can see differences in their respective roles in the community and their opposing stances on war and peace. First, because of her position in society, Addams focused on community-​based efforts, operating at what we would call today the “grassroots” level. Addams’s goal was to meet the people’s educational, economic, and social needs at a specific time and localized in the neighborhood. Thus, in the 19th Ward of Chicago, Addams advocated for forms of education that suited adults who worked full time, had family responsibilities, and had little formal education. This neighborhood-​based approach distinguishes her work from the other Chicago pragmatists if not in kind (all

The Complementary Theory and Practice    133 were committed to place-​based approaches), at least in degree. Mead recognized this himself and lauded the benefits of the rootedness of the settlement method as embodied in Addams’s work.7 In addition, prior to World War I, both Addams and Mead embraced “international pacifism”; however, Mead later came to support World War I, believing it necessary in a “battle for democracy” (Deegan, 2008, 35​–​36, 103). Thus, while Addams retained her pacifist position, Mead came to believe that engaging in WWI was necessary to defend the democracy requisite for moving toward an international-​minded society.8 War would, Mead reasoned, generate shared conceptions of international rights and international organizations and believed these would lead to a more secure and peaceful future (Deegan, 1988/​1990, 11). Mead expressed it thusly, We are fighting for the larger world society which democratic attitudes and principles make possible. . . a fight for the inviolability of peoples, for the right of a people to determine itself and its life in self-​respecting intercourse with other nations. (Mead, 1918, found in Deegan, 2008, 98)

In contrast, Addams was opposed to the United States’ engagement in World War I, believing that social progress required a “nurturant” approach, one that “values people more than profits” and has the “mores that governed the home and family as part of the rule of interaction for the entire community” (Deegan, 1988/​1990, 232). Addams was critical of patriotism and “Americanization,” believing it to justify and conceal oppressive and divisive behaviors (Addams, 1919; Deegan, 1988/​1990, 295), creating “boundaries between people, preventing cooperation and unity” (Deegan, 1988/​ 1990, 232). Current political and social conditions challenge both Addams and Mead’s work. As contemporary society faces ubiquitous violations of human rights, deepening divisions among and between nations, and the multiplying issues of injustice connected with various social issues, we can say that aggression in the form of war (as Mead reluctantly embraced) has yet to be a straightforward way to secure peace and often seems to result in more significant discord and harm to innocent individuals. However, an absolute position in favor of pacifism also seems suspect. When faced with the current (April 2022) reality of Russian soldiers killing innocent Ukrainian civilians, an absolutist pacifist approach also seems untenable. In these moments, we must ask if reaching across and through differences (and taking the time that this demands) has limits, requiring something more definitive and even violent in response to egregious violations of human rights. Despite and perhaps because of these perplexities, the life and work of Addams and Mead offer a rich place to begin collaborative thinking. Their work suggests that, though “the arc of justice is long” and imperfect, it can still “bend toward justice.” Understanding this through the eyes of Addams and Mead’s complementary work can help us consider how we might best proceed.

134   Barbara J. Lowe

The Complementary Work of Jane Addams and George Herbert Mead According to Addams and Mead, humans are interconnected and interdependent beings, embodied and living in physical and biological environments. As such, we change and grow in connection and communication with others. Addams explains that we are all “mired in the same soil,” bound together, for better or worse, in our ongoing development (Addams 1902/​2002, 112, 115–​117). Similarly, Mead argues that “the self is something which has a development; it is not initially there, at birth, but arises in the process of social experience and activity, that is, develops in the given individual as a result of his relations to that process as a whole and to other individuals within that process” (Mead, 1934, 135). In this way, for both Addams and Mead, the self is relational and always in-​process, constantly engaged in a co-​constitutive dynamic exchange with others and the environment in which they are located. Through these engagements, the self has the opportunity to develop and refine consciousness. The quality of relations affects the nature of the growth and change that can occur. Mead’s theory of symbolic interactionism helps clarify how this is the case.

Symbolic Interactionism, Empathetic Understanding, and Social Progress Mead maintained that individuals are more effective in their roles in society if they understand these roles in connection with those of others (Mead, 1934, 152–​156). We can better understand this through the lens of Mead’s theory of symbolic interactionism. This theory is central to Mead’s sociological and social psychological theorizing. This theory maintains that there can be “no self apart from society, no consciousness of self and no communication” and “society must be understood as a structure that emerges through an ongoing process of communicative social acts, through transactions between persons who are mutually oriented toward each other” (Coser, 1971, 334). Symbolic interactionism explains how selves, communities, and institutions come to be within social contexts. Humans facilitate this with their ability to use language to make meaning and create new or change existing institutions, communities, perspectives, and processes. With symbolic interactionism, there is an awareness that we are necessarily embedded in specific environments and that our actions and roles are not separate from the actions and roles of others. Humans are unique because we can communicate with “significant” gestures and symbols. These are “significant” because they arouse “in the individual himself ” the “response which he is calling out in the other individual, a taking of the role of the other, a

The Complementary Theory and Practice    135 tendency to act as the other person acts” (Mead, 1934, 73). In other words, when one is communicating with significant gestures and symbols, there is a visualization by the one communicating of one’s “own performance from the standpoint of the other,” understanding how and with what meaning one’s actions and communication will be received by the other and then responding to this understanding in turn. This allows for “self-​ conscious adjustment” of the person communicating “to the conduct of others,” both actual conduct as well as predicted, making possible the adjustment of one’s continued communication and actions in an ongoing, back-​and-​forth way (Coser, 1971, 335). We can see this in Mead’s example of communication and the game of baseball (Mead, 1934, 151–​154). To be a good baseball pitcher, one must know one’s position and be able to imagine, even feel, what it is like to be in the position of the other, performing one’s actions in relation to the predicted actions of the other. An individual’s baseball expertise is only as good as its connection with the roles of others on the team. Each player and each team is successful only to the extent that each player has performed their particular role well and done so in connection with the other positions on the team and in anticipation of how one’s actions will be received by individual others and by the team (“generalized other”) taken as a whole. This requires concrete knowledge about the rules and roles of the game as well as affective knowledge. Affective knowledge involves “taking on” the roles of the others, “reflexively” absorbing the others’ roles into one’s being, as if these other roles were also one’s own. In other words, the players on successful teams will possess empathetic understanding involving knowledge of one’s role in connection with an imagined conversation with the roles of others on the team. This pushes individuals and the team beyond a narrow, individualistic understanding of excellence to a broader and deeper understanding of expertise, one that is realized in connection and collaboration with the whole (Mead, 1934, 281–​289). The self, as Coser explains, “arises gradually through a progressive widening of the scope of human involvement,” and it is affective knowledge, what Mead called “reflexivity,” that enables this growth (Coser, 1971, 337). Reflexivity is the human ability to “put [themselves] in the place of the other” or, in other words, “to take on the attitude of the others toward oneself ” (Mead, 1934, 134), and it is this that enables the possibility of effective and purposeful change. Reflexivity allows individuals to ascribe meaning to their own and others’ gestures and symbols and share this meaning with others. Further, reflexivity enables the self to adjust actions and responses to others in ways that carry meaning forward and shape that meaning along the way. Empathetic understanding requires proximal familiarity, making possible the reflexivity and the kind of expertise that Mead champions. Using the term “sympathetic understanding,”9 Addams also highlights this, both in what she said and wrote and how she lived and advocated for her community. We might say that Addams embodied the same skills needed to be the expert baseball player when acting as a community activist. Addams worked to understand and represent the diverse perspectives and roles involved in the problems and perplexities she faced. She entered situations in order to discern the roles of the different players involved, striving to understand each person’s unique

136   Barbara J. Lowe perspectives, strengths and weaknesses, as well as how they were likely to respond when confronting particular situations. If this understanding alluded her, she took the time and engaged with the people to understand better, forming and revising her approach as her appreciation of the people and the situation improved. With this reflexivity, Addams worked toward ameliorating present situations, collaborating with a shared conception of what would count as a “win” for the individuals and community involved. Addams’s approach to the problem of garbage in the 19th Ward offers an example. Frustrated with the ineffectual work of others in this position, Addams campaigned for and secured the role of garbage removal contractor for the 19th Ward. Her goal was to model how one might do this job well and how a community might work together, each conscientiously performing their roles “expertly,” thereby successfully addressing the community issue of garbage (Knight, 2006, 20–​22). To be effective in this position, Addams had to “take on the role” of the garbage contractor. At the same time, she had also to take on the perspectives of the 19th Ward community members and government workers. To do this, empathetic understanding of each role enhanced her ability to act effectively. With this understanding, she was able to model for the community and other government officials how one might perform these positions well, showing how a community might work together to address successfully not only the problem of garbage in the 19th ward but other problems as well (Knight, 2006, 20; Lowe, 2022). Using the same insight, a community can effectively address various types of intractable problems, working together to progressively learn from mistakes and build on successes, progressively expanding empathetic understanding of the situation and the people involved. Success is enhanced with this expanded understanding, making sustained ameliorative change possible.10 Expanding our concept of “team” to a broad range of community organizations or groups and, within these groups, numerous individual roles (worker, activist, teacher, parent, citizen, etc.), it is possible to see the role and benefit of reflexivity in performing well in these various roles. In each case, “taking on the attitude of the other(s)” enhances the ability to act effectively. For example, a community organizer seeking to advocate for a particular group will more likely achieve sustainable success if they know the role of each specific community member and how these roles and connected perspectives fit together. With humility and knowledge of their fallibility, the individual enhances their effectiveness when they absorb the roles of the members of the group as if they are themselves holding these roles and responsibilities. This reflexivity enhances their success in advocating and organizing for a particular community. When this level of empathetic understanding exists between and among the group members, the highest level of success may be possible. Further, it is with this that tangible sustained positive change may be secured. Mead helps us understand how growth and change occur and how these might occur in co-​creative ways, ways that have the potential and promise of “bending toward justice.” To understand how this is the case, it is helpful to unpack Mead’s concepts of the generalized other, the “me,” and the “I.”

The Complementary Theory and Practice    137

The Generalized Other, the “Me,” the “I,” and Bending Toward Justice The whole is what Mead calls the “generalized other,” which is the “organized community or social group which gives the individual his unity of the self ” (Mead, 1934, 154). In the case of baseball, the generalized other is the baseball team and the game of baseball, including the rules, roles, practices, and associated customs. The individual internalizes the social expectations from the generalized other, and these elements make up what Mead calls the “me” of the self. The “me” is received or “assumed” by the self and, as such, is the “conventional, habitual individual” (Mead, 1934, 175, 198). The “me” is what the self has come to believe the generalized other expects of them, typically consistent with society’s stated and unstated norms. Mead also explains that to perform at the highest level, there will often be a creative, even aesthetic element in responding to issues and conflicts. This aesthetic achievement requires knowledge of one’s role in the community combined with an understanding of the relation of this role to the role of others, especially others and their roles to a shared commitment or goal. Successful collaboration is enhanced by sharing an openness to executing these roles in ways that have not been previously imagined. One must function within the generalized other as an individual and as a team, working together in recognizable ways while also creating new moments and opportunities for creative growth and change. The equivalent of this on a baseball team would be the execution of a previously unimagined play, made possible by the fully absorbed knowledge and affective understanding of how the various positions on the team do and might in the future work together, opening up the possibility of new configurations without immediately changing the basic roles. This continued growth is made possible by pushing within and beyond the expected. In part, Mead explains how this occurs with the concept of the “I.” The “I” is the phase of the self that responds to the conventional (both the “me” and the “generalized other”) in ways that are often unexpected or novel. As Mead explains, [The “I”] express[es] himself, not necessarily assert[s]‌himself in the offensive sense but express[es] himself, being himself in such a co-​operative process as belongs to any community. The attitudes involved are gathered from the group, but the individual in whom they are organized has the opportunity of giving them an expression [through the “I”] which perhaps has never taken place before. (Mead, 1934, 197–​198)

Thus, the “I” is the phase or part of the self that is unpredictable, capable of producing novel, previously unimagined change (Mead, 1934, 176–​177). In contemporary terms, on the person’s level, we might call this “agency.” Rather than re-​creating what has come before, the self that has tapped into the ability to act as an “I” creates something fresh, making creative problem solving possible. As Mead describes the “I,” it is the “answer the individual makes to the attitude that others take toward him when he assumes an

138   Barbara J. Lowe attitude toward them” (Mead, 1934, 177). Because of the “I,” there is always an aspect of our response that even we do not know until after the performance of the response (Mead, 1934, 177).11 This unpredictability is valued because it allows for creativity, imagining new possibilities with the potential to move toward more just outcomes. The Hull House Labor Museum offers an example. When Addams noticed that recently immigrated parents were struggling to garner the respect of their children and their new community, she sought ways to provide opportunities for the community, the children, and the workers themselves to see their relation to the community in a new light. The Hull House Museum featured immigrant workers as docents and guides as well as skilled workers, demonstrating their various crafts and doing so within a curated museum that situated these crafts in connection with the work and products produced in the 19th Ward factories (Fischer, 2019, 136–​137). The immigrant workers demonstrated their unique skills in woodworking, spinning, metallurgy, and weaving and, with this, developed a “ ‘consciousness of the social value of [their] work’ that would enable them to see themselves ‘in connection and cooperation with the whole’ ” (Fischer, 2019, 134). Visitors (children, community members, government officials, etc.) were able to see the immigrants in a new light, gradually expanding their understanding of the immigrant population (Fischer, 2019, 137). Addams understood that desired social reform in industry would require a reconsidered conception of the immigrant worker, seeing this worker not as aberrant to or separate from the idealized norms of the current generalized other but as part of and integral to its advancement and growth. With the museum, Addams introduced a new way to see the immigrant population, shifting a conception of the community to include the immigrant worker as integral to the community and holding an invaluable role. This enabled the “generalized other” to grow and provided opportunities for various “I” moments to emerge. Immigrant children created and expanded their conceptions of their parents (and therefore themselves), parents created and grew connections to their new communities, and community members expanded their generalized other to include a new and fuller conception of the humanity of the immigrant population. The result was a renewed ability to imagine differently how the community might more fully come together, creating new possibilities from present realities. The above example shows how Mead’s symbolic interactionism offers a theoretical account of the social-​psychological nature of the theory of the self. Given the example above, it is not surprising to learn that Addams too develops a similar conception of the self as interconnected and interdependent with others. This conception informs her approach to social reform and activism. Both Addams and Mead embraced an “evolutionary” conception of the self. The next section explores what this means.

The Interconnected and Interdependent Self as an Evolutionary Self The “evolutionary” conception of the self embraced by Mead and Addams is grounded in Darwin’s notion of species evolution (Fischer, 2019; Baldwin, 1986, 8–​9, 124, 348;

The Complementary Theory and Practice    139 Coser, 1971, 348–​349). All selves are relationally connected and mutually influence the development of the interacting components. The self changes as it responds to the generalized other, redefines the generalized other, and incorporates parts of that generalized other into what is the “me” of the self. This often occurs without conscious awareness; however, it is possible to bring awareness into the process and engage in purposeful efforts toward the growth of the self and the community in which the self is located. Understanding ourselves as this kind of being, a bilateral being and, as such, as a being who is composed of an “I” and a “me” and existing within the constructed—​yet also changeable—​generalized other, augments our ability to act with intentionality in our world. To act in this way is to act with greater intelligence. Without using the specific term “intelligence,” Addams also encourages this. She argues that we are under a moral obligation in choosing our experiences, [since] the result of those experiences must ultimately determine our understanding of life. We know instinctively that if we grow contemptuous of our fellows, and consciously limit our intercourse to certain kinds of people whom we have previously decided to respect, we not only tremendously circumscribe our range of life, but limit the scope of our ethics. (Addams, 1902/​2002, 8)

In other words, the growth of individuals and society is influenced by experiences had in connection with shared communities (generalized others). By seeking out and inviting diverse experiences, we can affect growth and change for ourselves, for others, and for our communities. This is so because we create our communities and ourselves (e.g., how they function, what they stand for, who they include and exclude) through how we transact with them. We can invite new and potentially overlooked, ignored, or excluded perspectives into the mix, and through this, we have the ability to effect change. For example, one value of the Hull House Labor Museum was the opportunity it provided all community members to learn about and engage with diverse others. This made possible the arrangement of society in previously unimagined ways. With this account of growth and change, it is possible to see how Addams and Mead’s conceptions of the self might be called “evolutionary.” The self develops over time and can do so in socially progressive ways. The self may begin with a narrow focus but can “evolve,” expanding circles and focus to become more relationally inclusive. Social advancement of democracy may also progress positively, moving from a focus on individual ethics and a narrow form of nationalism toward a more inclusive, social morality emphasizing social justice and cosmopolitan humanitarianism, advancing toward this more fully social morality through “concentric circles of affiliation.”12 This pattern of conceiving of self and social development as evolutionary is consistent with both Addams’s and Mead’s work.13 The benefits of this expanded notion of growth include the ability to imagine together new possibilities and solutions to shared problems. Experiences are the raw material for possible futures, so creative options are multiple and expand with wider input. From this follows an ethical

140   Barbara J. Lowe responsibility to seek ways to expand our experiences. Addams belief in this is reflected in her social ethics. She argued, We are learning that a standard of social ethics is not attained by traveling a sequestered byway, but by mixing on the thronged and common road where all must turn out for one another, and at least see the size of one another’s burdens. To follow the path of social morality results perforce in the temper if not the practice of democratic spirit, for it implies that diversified human experience and resultant sympathy which are the foundation and guarantee of Democracy. (Addams, 1902/​2002, 7)

Without this approach, the resolution of problems as they emerge becomes difficult, and the perplexities that might otherwise encourage reflection and deliberation might not be experienced. By increasing connections and collaborations in and among different groups, we assume a more open attitude to see and then address perplexities and problems as they emerge. Our approach should be inclusive, working with relevant individuals to identify the issues and avoiding doing “to” or working for “them” “on their behalf.” This was embedded in the philosophy of Hull House, where “no political or social propaganda” was advocated; instead, “It [the settlement] must, in a sense, give the warm welcome of an inn to all such propaganda, if perchance one of them be found an angel” (Addams, 1910/​1990, 75). Addams indeed advocated for democracy; however, her notion of democracy did not impose any particular ideology; instead, the goal was to provide “channels” in and through which democracy could flow, without the censoring of any specific conception of being and living well (Addams, 1910/​1990, 25). Mead addresses this expanded interconnectedness specifically, arguing that though the self emerges in relation to a generalized other, it may do so in two notably different ways. First, it may do so through a kind of competitive comparison of oneself to the other and, in this comparison, find its identity primarily through perceiving itself to be superior to the other (Mead, 1934, 315). Second, the self may emerge not from competition but through the contribution it offers to a shared and mutually created social end (Mead, 1934, 315). In the second case, an individual‘s “expertise” is not defined by how they are better than others but instead on how they uniquely contribute to and advance the common good (Mead, 1934, 285, 315–​317). While the competitive sort of self-​ realization can lead to tribalism and polarization, the “intelligent” form serves to break down distinctions while still recognizing individual uniqueness, especially uniqueness in what the individual can contribute to a common good, through the “performing a social function” (Mead, 1934, 315). This brings the community together, valuing and encouraging collaborative work and fighting against individualization, tribalism, and polarization. For Addams, too, a more advanced self is a more inclusive self. A more developed society makes room for and facilitates the kind of selves that grow expansively toward a shared, increasingly pluralistic conception of a good. Addams’s reference to the need for a “neighborhood point of view” (Addams, 1896, 149) is consistent. With the

The Complementary Theory and Practice    141 “neighborhood point of view,” the individual looks to the community and personal experiences entangled in that community to determine the issues and how best to address them, doing so with the above-​explored “reflexivity.” As Fischer explains, this “neighborhood point of view” requires “fraternal cooperation” where “residents should not impose their vision for community improvement but work with initiatives already adopted by the neighbors or ones the neighbors would like to undertake” (Fischer, 2019, 46). It is important to emphasize that both Mead and Addams conceive the growth of the self and the community as connected, and “reflective consciousness” enhances growth. Reflective consciousness requires that we engage in the situation—​and the context of the situation—​so that the development involves the evolution of the self, the community, and the problem. Successful reform will include putting “our own thoughts and endeavor into the very process of the evolution” so that the process involves an “identification of our efforts with the problem that presents itself ” (Mead, 1899, 5). In this way, problem-​solving is tied with the growth of both the self and the community. This is also the case for Addams. In Democracy and Social Ethics, Addams muses about “perplexities” that emerge in daily experiences. For example, in “Filial Relations,” Addams outlines the tension that manifests when a daughter graduates from college and finds that her college developed sense of duty to the betterment of the society clash with her particularized assumed responsibilities as a daughter to her parents and family (Addams, 1902/​2002, 36). Addams argues that the growth of both the daughter and the family depends on pushing beyond the narrow focus of the nuclear family toward a broader consideration of society as a whole. The development of society and the individual connects with broadening one’s focus. Addams explains this as follows: The family, like every other element of human life, is susceptible to progress, and from epoch to epoch its tendencies and aspirations are enlarged, although its duties can never be abrogated and its obligations can never be cancelled. It is impossible to bring about the higher development of any self-​assertion or breaking away of the individual will. . . .The family in its entirety must be carried out into the larger life. Its various members together must recognize and acknowledge the validity of the social obligation. (Addams, 1902, 38, my emphasis)

This represents a push toward a social rather than an individualistic ethic, a common theme throughout Democracy and Social Ethics, and is connected with the “evolutionary” nature of the self already mentioned above. Considering concepts such as democracy, freedom and human flourishing through the lens of a social rather than an individualistic ethic yields compelling insights. While it is common to view these concepts within an individualistic framework, Addams and Mead apply a social framework and thereby expand the meaning of the terms, framing each to include the interconnected and interdependent nature of our existence

142   Barbara J. Lowe as human beings. Thus, a less “evolved” conception of flourishing value distinction through “besting” or winning at a perceived competition. In contrast, a more evolved notion of flourishing would emphasize the essential nature of our interconnectedness and the idea that any one person’s success is generally linked with the thriving of the whole. With this conception of human flourishing, others need not be deemed inferior for the self to shine; instead, the self may achieve distinction through the “intelligent performance” of their “social function” in connection with the community in which they are located (Mead, 1934, 316–​317). Addams makes this point regarding the meaning of democracy, seeing democracy as not simply a political system but as a way of life. She questions individualistic morality, seeing it as typically inadequate or lacking full potential when applied. Instead, we would do better to strive for a social morality where we take “the betterment of humanity for [our] aim and end” and with this necessarily “also take the daily experiences of humanity for the constant correction of [our] process. [We should] not only test and guide [our] achievement by human experience, but [we] must succeed or fail in proportion as [we have] incorporated that experience with [our] own” (Addams, 1902/​2002, 78–​79).

Implications of the Complementary Work of Addams and Mead Given the polarized nature of our contemporary social, economic, and political elements of society as well as the ubiquitous existence of intractable problems, we have much to gain from the complementary work of Addams and Mead. In this concluding section, I highlight three overlapping areas of insight. First, overcoming moral tribalism is essential for society to bend toward justice. Polarization prevents us from achieving the social democracy that Addams and Mead envisioned. Accordingly, the second insight is that working toward meaningful connections entails widening our circles of moral concern. Such efforts at depolarization must stem from individuals, communities, and institutions. Third, Addams and Mead viewed social amelioration as holistic, including attention to how we engage in our chosen practices, implement policies, and create new institutions. Our attitudes and dispositions matter. Ameliorative results will be more likely when we consider these in connection with actions. First, overcoming moral tribalism requires working to reduce polarization. Doing so on the individual, national, and international levels allow for communication across and through differences, expanding the human connections and growing generalized others in number and diversity. Both Addams and Mead are clear in their support for decreased polarization in society. Addams argues, [I]‌t is necessary to know of the lives of our contemporaries, not only in order to believe in their integrity, which is after all but the first beginnings of social morality,

The Complementary Theory and Practice    143 but in order to attain to any mental or moral integrity for ourselves or any such hope for society. (Addams, 1902/​2002, 79)

Similarly, Mead, insisting on the need to cultivate the “social” aspect of human society rather than the “asocial,” argues, The “social” aspect of human society—​which is simply the social aspect of the selves of all individual members taken collectively –​with its concomitant feelings on the parts of all these individuals of co-​operation and social interdependence, is the basis for the development and existence of ethical ideals in that society; whereas the “asocial” aspect of human society [ . . . ] is responsible for the rise of ethical problems in that society. (Mead, 1934, 321)

To achieve just and ameliorative ends, we should seek out ways to expand our circles of experience, supporting institutions, practices, and processes that do the same. For example, individuals might seek to converse with and understand the point of view of other persons who occupy different political, economic, and social positions. In the United States, this might entail supporters of the politics of the far left seeking out open conversations with those on the far right, focusing on understanding points of view rather than changing each other’s minds. Programs that intentionally bring individuals from diverse positions together offer hope for achieving reduced polarization. Sustained Dialogues, a method used effectively in educational and political institutions, works within and across national boundaries to bring people and groups from diverse positions into dialogue. This offers one concrete example of what individuals, institutions, and nations might do to increase understanding and decrease polarization.14 Second, expanding circles call us to deepen and extend connections of moral concern. To be in relationship with others brings with it moral responsibility. Growth and change occur through social interaction, resulting in a dynamic back-​and-​forth between and among individuals and communities. These dynamic relationships affect the lived realities of all. Moral implications follow. When deciding what we will do, we should consider the effect our actions will have on others, and, as these circles of influence expand, so should our consideration. Finally, how and with what disposition we engage matters. By expanding our circles of experience, we have the potential to affect positive change toward more just conditions. To the extent that this is possible, we have an ethical obligation to do so in ways that support the full participation of all. Though not universal or absolute, there are qualities and dispositions of interacting with situations and others in those situations that will assist in these efforts. These qualities and dispositions apply to individuals as well as groups and include:15 • assuming a problem-​and place-​based approach; • a commitment to being in proximity to the problematic situation so that empathetic understanding may result;

144   Barbara J. Lowe • assuming a democratic approach, working “with” the people affected and seeking out and welcoming diverse perspectives; • being open to and embracing empathetic understanding, humility, and patience as efficacious aspects of securing gradual, ameliorative change; and • embracing lateral progress toward the “feasible ideal” while keeping a “best possible” goal in mind (Addams, 1902/​2002, 69). We must “choose our experiences” wisely (Addams, 1902/​2002, 8) and engage purposefully in our interactions. When addressing divisive issues (e.g., mask mandates, immigration policies, monument removal, and climate change), it is helpful to seek out the voices of those with whom we disagree, even those we think to be unquestionably wrong. Embracing what others believe about these divisive issues is not required; however, it behooves us to hear and try to understand them. Attempting to see the humanity in the people with whom we disagree is helpful as it allows us to imagine better what it is like to view the world and specific problems from others’ points of view. Solutions will often be hard to come by; however, pushing forth policy and mandates from on high is not likely to yield sustainable solutions. Instead, we will often need to accept incremental steps toward the ideal, an ideal that we must determine together. This requires prioritizing the cultivation of the “neighborhood point of view” rather than an imposed solution that may be satisfying in substance but unsustainable in practice. In today’s polarized world, the work of building relationships across and through differences is not easy. However, it is a way forward and uniquely provides hope that we may incrementally realize sustainable democratic and socially just relations, practices, and institutions.

Notes 1. The phrase “bend toward justice” has roots in the speeches of Martin Luther King. See Mychal Denzel Smith, “The Truth about the Arc of the Moral Universe” and Joseph Coohill’s “Martin Luther King: Arc of the Moral Universe Bends toward Justice.” 2. For more on the Chicago school of American pragmatism see, among others, Charles Morris’s (1970/​1990) The Pragmatic Movement in American Philosophy. See also Mary Jo Deegan’s (1988/​1990) Jane Addams and the Men of the Chicago School, 1892-​1918 for a justification for including Jane Addams, with Dewey and Mead, among the founders of the Chicago school of Pragmatism. See John Baldwin’s George Herbert Mead: A Unifying Theory for Sociology for helpful explanation of the social and ethical orientation that distinguishes the Chicago school of pragmatism from the pragmatism developed by Charles Peirce and William James (Baldwin, 1986, esp. 10–​11). 3. For more extensive biographical information on Mead see Lewis A. Coser’s Masters of Sociological Thought, 1971, esp. 341–​347 and Deegan, 1988/​1990, 21–​22. 4. Mead and Thomas are often credited with forming a “unified Chicago school of social psychology.” However, Lewis A. Coser argues that the idea that there was a unified school at Chicago during this time is a myth and that the term “social interactionism” was not a

The Complementary Theory and Practice    145 term used at Chicago during Mead’s time (Coser, 1971, 345). Of course, we might still argue that Mead is central to the founding of what we now call symbolic interactionism and it is clear that symbolic interactionism is important for the development of sociology. In addition, Deegan’s point that Addams may rightfully deserve credit for her influence on its development is persuasive (Deegan, 1990). 5. Mead was the first vice president and Addams was the second vice president of the Immigrants’ Protective League in 1909, the first year of the League. https://​lib​sysd​igi.libr​ ary.illin​ois.edu/​oca/​Books2​009-​06/​ann​ualr​epor​tofi​m191​9091​917i​mmi/​ann​ualr​epor​tofi​ m191​9091​917i​mmi.pdf. 6. I have Marilyn Fischer to thank for this point, offered in communication regarding an earlier draft of this chapter. 7. Personal correspondence from Mead to Addams contains evidence of Mead’s appreciation of Addams’s methods. For example, in a April 12, 1908, letter to Addams after attending her lecture given on “War and Progress” at the Chicago Woman’s Club on April 11, Mead states, “My consciousness was . . . completely filled with the multitude of impressions which you succeeded in making, and the human responses which you called out from so many unexpected points of view. . . . I want to express my very profound appreciation of the human document you read to us” (Mead, 1908. George H. Mead to Jane Addams. April 12, 1908). 8. Mead developed the distinction between “international-​mindedness” and “national-​ mindedness” in “National-​Mindedness and International-​Mindedness” (1929) as well as in Mind, Self, and Society from the Standpoint of a Social Behaviorist (1934/​1967). 9. As clarified by Judy Whipps, Addams’s intended meaning of the term sympathy or sympathetic understanding is better captured with the what we today call empathy or empathetic understanding. For a more in depth account of this see Whipps, “Dewey, Addams, and Design Thinking: Pragmatist Feminist Innovation for Demographic Change” (Whipps, 2019, 319). 10. For an analysis of how Addams (and other community activists) used a pragmatist approach to successfully address sanitation issues in the 19th Ward of Chicago in the 1890s, see Barbara J. Lowe’s essay “Quelques Questions Pragmatistes qui Traversent “Garbage & Democracy” de Louise Knight” (Lowe, 2022). 11. For Mead, the distinction between the “I” and the “me” functions descriptively. He does not intend to point out a metaphysical separation of the self into two parts but rather posits the distinction as a way to discuss and analyze conduct of the self (Mead, 1934, 173). For more on the “I” and the “me” and their distinction see Baldwin, “The ‘I’ and the ‘Me’ ” in George Herbert Mead: A Unifying Theory for Sociology, 1986, 115–​121. 12. Marilyn Fischer explores the phrase “concentric circles of affiliation” in her essay “A Pragmatist Cosmopolitan Moment: Reconfiguring Nussbaum’s Cosmopolitan Concentric Circles.” For further development of the concept of “cosmopolitan humanitarianism” see Jennifer Fenton and Barbara Lowe’s “Jane Addams (1860-​1935), the Settlement Women of Hull House, and the Feminist Pragmatist Orientation.” 13. Neither Addams nor Mead maintains positive evolution as inevitable (evolution can be troublesome or problematic), but both Addams and Mead see it as possible, within human ability, to cultivate conditions within themselves and in their communities that are more likely to result in growth that is ameliorative in nature. For more on the role evolution plays in Addams’s work and theory, see Fischer, Jane Addams’s Evolutionary Theorizing; and for more on how evolution was understood by Mead, see Baldwin’s George Herbert Mead: A Unifying Theory for Sociology.

146   Barbara J. Lowe 14. As explained on the Sustained Dialogue (SD) Institute webpage, SD involves “listening deeply enough to be changed by what you learn” and focuses on “understanding the nature of community relationships, which are often the ‘problem behind the problem.’ Individuals carry culture and stories that ultimately shape national behavior or institutional culture. SD reaches beyond formal institutions to include ‘whole bodies politic’—​ everyday community members as well as formal leaders.” There are, of course, other methods and organizations that likely offer similar benefits. SD is just one example. For additional information on SD see Sustained Dialogue Institute, https://​sustai​nedd​ialo​gue .org/​our-​appro​ach/​. 15. For a discussion of these qualities explained as “guiding ideas,” see Marilyn Fischer’s Jane Addams’s Evolutionary Theorizing: Constructing “Democracy and Social Ethics.” esp. ­chapter 2. For an analysis and further development of these ideas, see Barbara J. Lowe’s “Ideas, Principles, and the Goal of Lateral Progress in Jane Addams’s Evolutionary Theorizing.” For a more extensive development of these qualities, see Jennifer Fenton and Barbara Lowe’s “Jane Addams (1860-​1935), the Settlement Women of Hull House and the Feminist Pragmatist Attitude.”

References Addams, J. (1896). The object of social settlements. Union Signal 22 (March 5), 148–​149. JAMP 46, 752. Addams, J. (1902/​2002). Democracy and social ethics. University of Illinois Press. Addams, J. (1910/​1990). Twenty years at hull house with autobiographical notes. University of Illinois Press. Addams, J. (1919). Americanization. Proceedings of the American Sociological Society 14 (1919), 206–​214. Baldwin, J. D. (1986) George Herbert Mead: A unifying theory of sociology. SAGE. Coohill, J. (2021). Martin Luther King: Arc of the moral universe bends toward justice. Professor Buzzkill. https://​profes​sorb​uzzk​ill.com/​mlk-​arc-​of-​moral-​unive​rse/​. Coser, L. A. (1971). Masters of sociological thought: Ideas in historical and social context. Harcourt Brace Jovanovich. Deegan, M. J. (1988/​ 1990). Jane Addams and the men of the Chicago school, 1892-​ 1918. Transaction Publishers. Deegan, M. J. (2008). Self, war, & society: George Herbert Mead’s macrosociology. Transaction Publishers. Fenton, J. (2021). Storied social change: Recovering Jane Addams’s early model of constituent storytelling to navigate the practical challenges of speaking for others. Hypatia 36(2), 391–​409. Fischer, M. (2007). A pragmatist cosmopolitan moment: Reconfiguring Nussbaum’s cosmopolitan concentric circles. Journal of Speculative Philosophy 21(3),151–​165. Fischer, M. (2011). Interpretation’s contrapuntal pathways: Addams and the Averbuch affair. Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society 47(4), 482–​506. Fischer, M. (2019). Jane Addams’s evolutionary theorizing: Constructing “Democracy and Social Ethics.” University of Chicago Press. Hamington, M. (2009). The social philosophy of Jane Addams. University of Illinois Press.

The Complementary Theory and Practice    147 Hamington, M. (2019). Jane Addams. In E.N. Zalta (Ed.), The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Summer 2019. https://​plato.stanf​ord.edu/​archi​ves/​sum2​019/​entr​ies/​add​ams-​jane/​. Knight, L. W. (2005). Citizen: Jane Addams and the struggle for democracy. University of Chicago Press. Knight, L. W. (2006). Garbage and democracy: The Chicago community organizing campaign of the 1890s. Journal of Community Practice 14(3), 7–​27. http://​dx.doi.org/​10.1300/​ J125v1​4n03​_​02. Knight, L. W. (2010). Jane Addams: Spirit in action. W.W. Norton. Lowe, B. J. (2021). Ideas, Principles, and the Goal of Lateral Progress in Jane Addams’s Evolutionary Theorizing. The Pluralist 16(1, Spring), 107–​112. Lowe, B. J. (2022). Quelques questions pragmatistes qui traversent “Garbage & Democracy” de Louise Knight?. Pragmata 5, 306–​330. Fenton, J., and B. Lowe (2023, forthcoming). Jane Addams (1860–1935), the settlement women of Hull House, and the feminist pragmatist orientation. The Oxford Handbook of American and British Women Philosophers in the Nineteenth Century. Mead, G. H. (1899). The working hypothesis in social reform. The American Journal of Sociology 5(3), 367–​371. Mead, G. H. (1908). George Herbert Mead to Jane Addams, April 12, 1908. Personal Correspondence. Jane Addams Digital Edition. https://​digi​tal.jan​eadd​ams.ram​apo.edu/​ items/​show/​2231. Mead, G. H. (1918). The conscientious objector. National Security League, Patriotism through Education Series, pamphlet No. 33. In Mead Project 2.0, eds., Robert Throop and Lloyd Gordon Ward. https://​bro​cku.ca/​Mead​Proj​ect/​Mead/​pubs/​Mea​d_​19​17a.html Mead, G. H. (1929). National-​mindedness and international-​mindedness. The International Journal of Ethics 39(4), 385–​407. Mead, G. H. (1934). Mind, self, and society from the standpoint of a social behaviorist. Edited by Charles W. Morris. University of Chicago Press. Morris, C. (1970/​1990). The pragmatic movement in American philosophy. Gorge Braziller. Seigfried, C. H. (1996). Pragmatism and feminism: Reweaving the social fabric. University of Chicago Press. Seigfried, C. H. (2004). Jane Addams, 1860-​1935. In A. Marsoobian and J. Ryder (Eds.), The Blackwell Guide to American Philosophy (pp. 186–​198). Blackwell. Smith, M. D. (2018). The truth about the arc of the moral universe. HuffPost. https://​www.huffp​ ost.com/​entry/​opin​ion-​smith-​obama-​king​_n ​ _​5a​ 590​3e0e​4b04​f3c5​5a25​2a4. Whipps, J. (2019). Dewey, Addams, and design thinking: Pragmatist feminist innovation for demographic change. In S. Fesmire (Ed.), Oxford Handbook of Dewey (pp. 313–​334). Oxford University Press.

Chapter 8

Legacies of Ja ne A dda ms and W. E. B. Du B oi s Lessons for Scholarship on Diversity and Inclusion in Organizations Obie Clayton Jr., June Gary Hopps, Chris Strickland, and Shena Brown

Introduction: The Social Environment of Du Bois and Addams The period during which W. E. B. Du Bois and Jane Addams produced their most influential work was one of turmoil, especially in the south, where Du Bois and other black leaders were laboring. Even though Atlanta and several other southern cities were witnessing the development of a black middle class, the legally and socially segregated environment, popularly referred to as “Jim Crow,” gave rise to a poor and working-​ poor class. Though the socioeconomic condition, for many, was improving, the scope of policy and economic disparity was far greater than the services and resources available for helping a large impoverished and uneducated population. Political rights for civic engagement were often denied through enforcement of de jure (legal) and de facto (informal) segregation (Hopps, Lowe, & Clayton 2021). The de facto segregation that existed during this period resulted in housing, educational and economic separation, and exclusion based solely on race. Therefore, of necessity, Atlanta and other cities around the country had to deal with these social and economic problems stemming from the significant combined forces of industrialization, immigration, emigration, and urbanization. Cities were plagued with severe poverty, child welfare needs, inadequate housing, sanitation, and corruption (Trattner, 1994).

150    Clayton, Hopps, Strickland, and Brown The late 1800s were years marked by constant social upheaval. There was ongoing social and economic turmoil mainly related to the panic of 1873 and subsequent ones in the 1880s (Blau & Abromovitz, 2014). People flocked to the cities in search of better economic positions. However, cities were ill equipped to deal with this influx of people. Former slaves and European immigrants to northern cities were both in need of services. Cities like New York, Chicago, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Boston, and Washington DC were burgeoning with new faces competing with existing citizens for jobs, healthcare, housing, and education (Coll, 1971). With these population dynamics, many institutions, namely churches, government, social agencies—​notably the Charity Organization Society (COS) and settlements—​were beginning to tackle pressing urban social problems. Of even greater importance was the role being given to institutions of higher education. American colleges and universities, especially the newly formed black colleges and universities now referred to as Historical Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs), worked to improve the life chances of the poor, including African Americans, by utilizing the social sciences and research being generated by Jane Addams and W. E. B Du Bois and others. These social problems did not escape the attention of the national political parties. However, it was the progressives who called Americans’ attention to these social ills as well as the potential for social reform and improvement (Blau & Abramovitz, 2014). The country’s problems fell disproportionally on the shoulders of racial minorities and immigrants. In the south, race was seen through the lens of black versus white. In the north, and especially Chicago where Addams worked, race was not a binary issue. There were differences between eastern and northern Europeans, blacks and whites. These race issues were heightened because of the increasing awareness of the depth and scope of inequality in a swiftly growing economy with a wave of European immigrants and new African American migrants from the south to the north. Given the problems that these populations faced, Addams began the country’s most widely known settlement, Hull House. Hull House was an intellectual and experimental setting. It was known for its emphasis on the worth and equality of immigrants and the contributions that they could make to the nation if given the opportunity. Addams saw this inequality and poverty up close and began a life-​long mission to improve the living conditions for these populations. Addams’s respect for people, regardless of their station in life, was developed and nurtured during a trip to Europe. From 1883 until 1885, she traveled throughout Europe, where she saw European urban poverty firsthand. She returned to Europe in 1888 with Ellen Gates Starr, a Rockford classmate, where they visited Toynbee Hall, a settlement house in London’s East End, which she used as a model for her later endeavors (Social Welfare History Project, 2011). Upon her return to Chicago, Addams, with Hull House co-​founder Starr, developed programs designed to work with multiple immigrant groups; education was viewed as the cornerstone of reform (Day & Schiele, 2013). Addams was the moving force in developing the Hull

Legacies of Jane Addams and W. E. B. Du Bois    151 House’s research and scholarship agenda, taking on a community-​based participatory approach.

The Role of Settlement Houses Several forms of mutual aid were established to provide aid, even if only a modicum. The Charity Organization Society (COS) began as a social-​service delivery organization that would impact the scientific charity paradigm. The organization brought in “friendly visitors” (volunteers) to keep account of those who sought and applied for assistance, what was received, and also to evaluate their “worthiness.” Their ideology embodied a mistrust of the poor and concern about their morals. The idea was that the poor needed friends, not alms, to help them through their problems (Figueira & McDonough, 2007; Dolgoff & Feldstein, 2003). The settlement-​house movement developed as a counter-​ideology to the COS, holding a stance that the cause of poverty was related to societal structures and not an individual failing. Consequently, each developed different intervention approaches; the COS focused on the case-​by-​case resolution of problems, and the settlement movement focused on structural change and reform. Both dispensed morality, virtue, and good character, partly owing to dominant religious influences of the time (Addams, 1901b). Mary Richmond became a leading scholar in the case approach (i.e., casework), and Jane Addams in the social-​change reform approach, emphasizing group work (Austin, 2000). The development of both COSs and settlements was contemporaneous, although COSs were founded in 1877 and the settlement movement in the late 1880s, a decade later. The College Settlement Association (CSA) grew into a national movement that was embraced by intellectuals and academicians who had a strong social-​minded orientation and began to refute or challenge the moral/​character flaw perspective as the cause of poverty (Addams, 1901b; Karger and Stoesz, 2014). The social gospel was an undergirding orientation of the progressives, including Jane Addams and many early social workers. Therefore, social ills should be attacked, and individuals, families, and communities would all improve. The Hull House approach of study and activism, as advanced by Addams, differed from that of the University of Chicago’s Sociology Department and other academic programs where there was less interaction with and embracing of people and their struggles with pressing social conditions that impacted their lives. Addams’s focus not only was on the theoretical but also, perhaps more significantly, applied intervention(s) to address social problems. Addams’s work and presence, Hull House, and the progressives were becoming more widely acknowledged. Given Addams’s stature in the community and national acclaim, she was offered a graduate faculty appointment at the University of Chicago’s Department of Sociology, which she declined because of her interest in greater community involvement; however, she elected to teach courses in the Extension Division (Deegan, 2002).

152    Clayton, Hopps, Strickland, and Brown

The Beginnings of the Addams-​D u Bois Collaboration Aside from academic study, teaching, and research, Addams’s primary goal was to see settlements expanded to other urban areas. To Addams’s delight, there were corresponding interests in Philadelphia for a settlement and community-​based research. The College Settlement of Philadelphia (CSP) was founded in 1892. Hull House likewise presented a university collaboration with the University of Pennsylvania (UPENN), where courses and research on conditions in the neighborhood/​environment were available at the outset. Starr Center, a separate branch of CSP, was established to deliver services to the African American community. The research/​coursework foci proved desirable to Addams and other progressives, including Du Bois (Deegan, 1988). Philadelphia’s interest in the “black condition” led to a comprehensive study related to the negro community, culminating with the publication of the Philadelphia Negro. It is argued that the genesis of the Philadelphia Negro rests with a wealthy Quaker woman, Susan Wharton, a member of the family that founded the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School of Economy and Finance. Susan Wharton and Jane Addams had been in communication concerning the need to study the life chances of blacks in Philadelphia, and Addams may have suggested Du Bois as the key researcher/​ investigator for the Sociology Department at the University of Pennsylvania (Deegan, 1988). However, there is another viewpoint. Settlement women, influential as they were, had ideas regarding staffing. Samuel McCune Lindsay of the Wharton School was suggested as the director. Because they wanted a woman in a significant role, Isabel Eaton was recommended as a significant field researcher. Lindsay convinced the Settlement women that the study should be conducted by a man of the residents’ race in order to increase the study’s credibility and receptivity. Additionally, the environment might pose dangers for the settlement women. The organizers then turned to Du Bois, who was gaining a reputation as a budding scholar (Deegan, 1988). Du Bois was a natural choice at the time. After graduating from Fisk College, Du Bois matriculated at Harvard University, where he received his PhD in 1895, the first African American to attain this status from Harvard. Du Bois also did a study abroad in Germany from 1892 to 1894, where he studied along with another internationally recognized scholar, Max Weber (Morris, 2015). Du Bois stated that in Germany, he was first treated as an equal, and the color of one’s skin did not matter (Morris, 2015). Du Bois returned from Germany in 1894 and, upon his return, joined the faculty at Wilberforce College after having failed to secure an appointment at any of the white institutions, although eminently qualified (Morris, 2015; Wright & Wallace 2015; Wright & Calhoun, 2006). Du Bois spoke to that rejection in his autobiography (Deegan, 1988; Du Bois, 1968). Here in my case, an academic accolade from a great American University would have given impetus to my life work which I was already determined to make in a Negro

Legacies of Jane Addams and W. E. B. Du Bois    153 institution in the South. The thing that galled was that such an idea never occurred to the Institution . . . . But I did not mention this rebuff. I did not let myself think of it. But then, as now, I know an insult when I see it. (Du Bois, 1968, p. 199)

He noted that “White classmates of lower rank than I became full professors at Pennsylvania and Chicago” (Du Bois, 1968, p. 199). Without much deliberation, Du Bois accepted the position in Philadelphia, where he was expected to replicate Hull House Maps and Papers (Aptheker, 1951; Du Bois, 1903, pp. 7–​15; Deegan, 1988; Lewis, 1993). Du Bois was initially excited about his new appointment because it offered a way out of Wilberforce, which he considered a career mistake (Du Bois, 1920). While there, he had become dissatisfied and unhappy with certain decisions of Wilberforce’s leadership and subsequently led a faculty/​staff strike in protest. Although there was a winning result for academic standards, a bright future with a stable income was not clear (Du Bois, 1920; Deegan, 1988; Lewis, 1993). However, Du Bois’ role as an assistant instructor at the University of Pennsylvania proved hardly satisfactory owing to menacing, discriminatory, and micro aggressions. In addition, he disliked the treatment that the director of the school, Samuel Lindsay, and other academicians gave him. Du Bois’ account is that Lindsay “put his finger on me for the task” (Du Bois, 1968, p. 194). He went on to state that if “he had been a smaller man and had been induced to follow the usual pattern of treating Negroes, he would have asked me to assist him as his clerk in his study” (ibid., p. 194). Du Bois expressed that Lindsay “regarded me as a scholar in my own right and probably proposed to make me an instructor” (ibid., p. 194). Because of the faculty’s position relating to race and its influence on faculty appointments, but in recognition of Du Bois’ Harvard degree, a compromise was made, and he was offered a position at the University of Pennsylvania with the rank of “assistant” instructor—​a position clearly below what his academic credentials should have warranted. For this period in time, the offer was probably good: a salary of $900. However, the position came with a professional price, which plagued Du Bois throughout his life, and he stated that he had “no real academic standing, no office at the university, no official recognition of any kind, my name was eventually omitted from the catalogue” (ibid., p. 194). Additionally, there was no contact with students and only limited contact with faculty, including those in Du Bois’ department (ibid., p. 194). Nonetheless, his meticulously thought out and well-​organized plan of study produced the monumental work, The Philadelphia Negro (1899). The Philadelphia Negro has been hailed by many as the best piece of American sociological research of its time for its extensive use of quantitative data enhanced by qualitative in-​depth interviews. Du Bois is credited with conducting over 5,000 interviews himself. Hence, the University of Pennsylvania affiliation became another resource for demonstrating Du Bois’ great intellectual prowess, although by no means a substitute for full recognition as a professor at the university and the richness and stimulation of a growing, reputable academic research environment. However, a close relationship with Jane Addams and other women

154    Clayton, Hopps, Strickland, and Brown scholars did develop with a progressive conviction to social change based on first-​rate empirical research. It was also in Philadelphia that Du Bois developed his views regarding the role of education in achieving change.

Intellectual Connection At the core of the Addams/​Du Bois relationship were tremendous intellectual capacities that undergirded their thinking and activism. However, arguably, it would be best to suggest Du Bois as scholar/​activist and Addams as activist/​scholar. According to Du Bois, the only avenue for blacks to advance was education. “The very first step toward the settlement of the negro problem is the spread of intelligence. The first step toward wider intelligence is a free public-​school system; and the first and most important step toward a public-​school system is the equipment and adequate support of a sufficient number of negro colleges” (Du Bois, 1903, p. 410). After the Civil War amendments, southern states were mandated to make public education available to all. Nevertheless, despite these legal actions, there was little support for the post-​secondary education of blacks for a half century after slavery in the states where they resided. Without exception, more resources were allocated to whites (Drewry & Doermann, 2001). To fill this void, HBCUs emerged. The foci of these newly developing schools were usual, elementary, and college education, lofty goals that were envisioned, although the resources for operational development and growth were slim. The development of HBCUs was encouraged and fostered via cooperation among philanthropic organizations, learned African Americans, and churches; however, these resources were at the same time sources of conflict relative to curriculum design and focus of the new institutions (Allen et al., 2007). Even though the mission of the newly formed HBCUs was in its infancy, colleges and universities, including the new HBCUs, were essential parts of the geopolitical landscape and were being called upon to address social ills plaguing the country. There was emerging recognition of the social sciences as an academic unit in the academy and the belief that these disciplines could be applied to the resolution of urban social problems. Sociology departments and newly developing schools of social work joined in the growing discourse relative to the need for improving life for the urban “downtrodden.” At the same time, academic institutions had their issues regarding the place, rights, and acceptance of nonwhite Americans; African Americans and women were certainly among this group (Bowles, Hopps, & Clayton, 2016a). Most major American universities, for example, did not accept African American students until the latter part of the 1800s, and even then, those admitted were very carefully selected (Du Bois & Dill, 1910). Colleges, particularly in New England, had admitted blacks earlier in the 1800s; Harvard and Yale did not admit African Americans until the 1870s (Kimball, 2009). The University of Chicago would be in the 1890s before there was an African American presence in the undergraduate program and the early 1900s for the graduate school. Seemingly, the university had very little interest in

Legacies of Jane Addams and W. E. B. Du Bois    155 educating black students. Atlanta University stepped into the vacuum created by the discriminatory practices of the major white institutions. The 1890s added several novel professional training programs and a conference designed to provide answers to social problems to its curriculum. Given the success of these initiatives, in 1897, Atlanta University’s president Horace Brumstead extended an invitation to W. E. B. Du Bois to become a professor in history and economics, to “take charge of the work in sociology and the news conference” (Du Bois, 1938, p. 14). The Conference of the Study of the Negro Problems, under Du Bois, became the most ambitious scientific inquiry regarding the exploration of African American life and living conditions ever, even surpassing his work done in Philadelphia—​so much so that the conference proceedings were heralded in the press and widely circulated in the top university libraries around the country. Without a doubt, Atlanta University was growing in stature in both academic and community circles and becoming a repository of innovative scholarship. The world was taking notice. Thus, the university’s movement in scientific sociological inquiry and its application to local and regional social reform was taking root (Hopps, Lowe, & Clayton, 2021). These conferences attracted the attention of leading white scholars, including Frank Sanborn, Franz Boas, and Jane Addams. Each brought a different perspective and, in some areas, differed markedly from Du Bois. However, their mere presence at the conferences showed the growing importance of Du Boisian thought. At the 13th conference on the family, the professional relationship between Jane Addams and Du Bois was firmly established. Jane Addams was a speaker at this conference, and it was here that she gave Du Bois the accolades that his work deserved. The following quote from her address gives a glimpse into her respect for the man and scholar: I feel a certain diffidence in speaking upon a topic which has been before you all day. With such a careful sociologist as Dr. Du Bois at the head of your department, I am quite sure you would be quick to detect my ignorance if I tried to say very much about a subject which has been handled so well. Still, I have many friends among the Negro colony of Chicago, and I have been very much interested in the settlement started there by Mrs. [Woolley], to which the fair-​minded people of both sides of society may come and discuss the serious problems which arise—​ problems of the difficulty of finding positions, with which many of the educated young Negroes in Chicago are confronted, and of the difficulty of equal opportunity and a square deal. (Addams, 1908, 1–​2)

Sociological Methodology/​E mpiricism Through his training and experiences, Du Bois developed a positive affinity for empirical-​evidence-​based research. Addams, too, was an eminent researcher, and each

156    Clayton, Hopps, Strickland, and Brown regarded the work of the other with high esteem. Both drew from Charles Booth’s work on the life of poor citizens of London from 1886 to 1900 (O’Connor, 2009). Data collection in The Philadelphia Negro was guided by a questionnaire from Booth’s study, which highlighted individuals, families, street life, homes, and community institutions. Addams used a similar methodology in Hull House Maps and Papers. What separated Du Bois from both Addams and Booth was the importance he placed on the policy perspectives of research. Booth, Addams, and Du Bois’ research all employed theoretical, methodological, and empirical dimensions, but it was Du Bois who emphasized the necessity that research must inform public policy (Wright & Wallace, 2015; Young & Deskins, 2001). Du Bois’ theoretical dimension was centered around race as a socio-​ historical construct. Viewing race in this manner showed that any difference was related to discrimination and not innate biological differences. This point was driven home in the Negro American Family (Du Bois, 1908). The object of these studies is primarily scientific -​a careful research for truth conducted as thoroughly, broadly and honestly as the material resources and mental equipment at command will allow; but this is not our sole object: we wish not only to make the Truth clear but to present it in such shape as will encourage and help social reform. (Du Bois, 1908, 5)

As the preceding quote illustrates, one of Du Bois’ primary goals was to use social-​ science research for reform. To make the “truth” clear, Du Bois’ methodological dimensions focused on his use of multiple methodologies: surveys (interviews), archival work, and field observations—​then called methodological triangulation, an approach that Booth had used earlier in his studies of the poor in London. Du Bois’ approach is now popularly called mixed-​methods research. A salient strength of using this approach is to focus on the contexts and meaning of human lives and experiences for inductive or theory-​development-​driven research. His work was systematic and rigorous (Wright & Wallace, 2015; O’Connor, 2009). Du Bois embraced some of the methodological work advanced by Addams and others at Hull House—​specifically, their style of collaboration, cooperation, and community involvement; Addams’s approach more recently has been termed “feminist pragmatism” (Hill & Deegan, 2007, p. 1). Du Bois, like Addams, held a scholarly, scientific orientation that was channeled toward reform and social justice. Du Bois felt that research offered data analysis that activists could use to develop policy early in his career. He embraced the importance of accurate information based on solid data-​ gathering techniques and analytical approaches. Later, however, he recognized the value of standpoint epistemology, that is, he was both an insider and an outsider vis-​à-​vis his studies of “the negro.” He was both a researcher of race and a black man in a racist society. The research he conducted impacted not only him but also his family in ways not possible for a Caucasian scholar who studied blacks. He had a faceted standpoint that guided his research, which incorporated his experiences, including understanding the infused mantra of white supremacy

Legacies of Jane Addams and W. E. B. Du Bois    157 and Eurocentrism, especially as it impacted African Americans and those of African descent (Gibril, 2015). Du Bois’ research particularized his understanding of oppression based on his experiences in America and Europe. Looking back over his work, he stated: I do not for a moment doubt that my Negro descent and narrow group culture has in many cases predisposed me to interpret my facts too favorably for my race; but there is little danger of long misleading here, for the champions of white folk are legion. (Du Bois, 1939, xxxii)

Activism and National Movement for Rights As we have stated elsewhere in this contribution, at the top of the century, there was great hatred against African Americans and a sense that they were inferior and would somehow take jobs from whites. From 1882 to 1930, there were 2,800 lynchings in 10 southern states (Aptheker, 1951; Hofstadter & Wallace, 1970). Even with these astonishing numbers, Congress never passed federal anti-​lynching legislation because of the power of states’ rights (Aptheker, 1951; Hofstadter & Wallace, 1970). Violent actions were not limited to African Americans; Hispanics, Jews, and Catholics were also targeted (Day & Schiele, 2013). Jane Addams became the first northern white woman to speak against lynching and atrocities being levied against blacks and wrote “Respect for Law” in 1901, which condemned the act of lynching and noted its connections to racism, classism, and sexism (Addams, 1901a; Apthecker, 1977). Ida B. Wells-​Barnett, a black progressive in Chicago, responded to Addams in “Lynching and the Excuse for It,” complimenting her courageous stance and activism. At the same time, she criticized her reasoning—​that black men were lynched because they engaged in criminal activity by raping white women (Bent-​Goodley, 2001). Wells-​Barnett used data to demonstrate that Addams’s reasoning was not substantiated (Wells, 1901). Despite their differences, however, Addams and Wells-​Barnett forged ahead. They remained amicable colleagues, building a strong civil-​ rights forum that included the Chicago Association for the Advancement of Colored People, which they jointly led, which later influenced the formation of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) (Addams, 1901a). Addams, like Du Bois, fought for human and civil rights. She was heavily invested in the progressive movement, particularly as a suffragist. The progressive movement and the NAACP were the first significant forces for social reform that had any long-​term consequences. Du Bois had this to say about Addams and her work for racial equality: “Save Jane Addams there is not another social worker in the United States who has had either her insight or her daring, so far as the American Negro is concerned” (Du Bois,

158    Clayton, Hopps, Strickland, and Brown 1932, p. 131). The NAACP founding members included white progressives such as Jane Addams, Lillian Wald, Florence Kelley, Sophonisba Breckinridge, Joel Spingarn, and John Dewey (Karger & Stoesz, 2014). This was a stellar list; however, Du Bois was the only African American selected to serve in a leadership role, specifically as director of research and publicity (Day & Schiele, 2013). Later, the NAACP launched an intellectual arm manifested through its journal, The Crisis, which was developed under the leadership of Du Bois after some protest from “many of my associates” (Du Bois, 1968, p. 256). The Crisis presented another “role of interpreting to the world the hindrances and aspirations of American Negroes” (ibid., p. 256). Du Bois believed in the NAACP and expressed that it had “proved between 1910 and the first World War, one of the most effective organizations of the liberal spirit and the fight for social progress which America has known.” It fought frankly to make Negroes “politically free from disenfranchisement, legally free from caste and socially free from insults.” (Du Bois, 1968, p. 256)

The NAACP afforded yet another opportunity for Addams and Du Bois to champion their belief in the dignity of all people concerning their constitutional rights. However, their units of attention and analysis differed. Moving into the second decade of the 20th century, Addams and the settlement movement and Mary Richmond at COS began to lose clout within the social work profession. Both ran for the office of president of the National Conference of Charities and Corrections but lost the election (Specht & Courtney, 1994). New settlement houses with different orientations cropped up and were interested in exercising more social control on clients than their predecessors. As some settlements and the social-​work profession became more conservative, Addams, a true reformer, aligned herself with labor, feminists, socialists, and other reform activists (Addams, 1901b). Addams supported Teddy Roosevelt when he ran for president on the Progressive ticket, and some social workers considered her actions non-​professional (ibid.). She was committed to reform, which she understood to require activism, including political action. In her assessment, social work was adopting more psychoanalytic Freudian and Rankian methodologies, and she commented: Throughout the decade (the Twenties) this fear of change, this tendency to play safe was registered most conspicuously in the field of politics, but it spread over into the other fields as well. There is little doubt that social workers exhibited many symptoms of this panic and with a kind of protective instinct, carefully avoided any identification with the phraseology of social reform. (Addams, 1930, p. 155)

Addams saw the movement shift away from group work and community practice methods. The price of professionalism was becoming more evident. Many, including

Legacies of Jane Addams and W. E. B. Du Bois    159 the upper-​class women, who were instrumental in providing services, the COSs, and settlements, could not or would not conclude that the whole profession should be dedicated to the function of reform (Blau & Abramovitz, 2014). Du Bois understood and embraced groups, community, mutual aid, and reform, although he was impatient with the pace of change and often the direction. He noted that as enslaved people, blacks secretly created mutual aid and burial societies, and when freed, they openly formed mutual aid societies, fraternal organizations, and churches (Du Bois, 1903).

Different Causes—​Different Paths—​and Controversy As shown, Addams and Du Bois were partners from the late 1800s through the progressive era. They both worked with others to establish the NAACP in the fight against brutal injustice and lynching. The two contributed meticulous research methodologies and insightful theoretical frameworks to applied sociology and social work. They were members of the Progressive Party, where their different values, ideological direction, and priorities became more clearly evident and pronounced. Nowhere was this more evident than at the Progressive Party’s convention in 1912. At this convention, former president Theodore Roosevelt was nominated to head the ticket after a split in the Republican Party between himself and the more conservative William Howard Taft. Jane Addams gave a seconding speech for Roosevelt’s nomination for president as a member of the Progressive Party. Addams’s nomination of Roosevelt must have been a hard-​felt blow to Du Bois, who had grown increasingly disappointed with the Republican Party. In 1908, he suggested that blacks leave the party after several unconscionable race-​based actions by Republicans, including Roosevelt, who was president at the time. In Du Bois’ opinion, Roosevelt was a poor choice to lead the progressive ticket, and Roosevelt held unfavorable views of Du Bois. Roosevelt made his view that Du Bois was dangerous known to Joel Spingarn, a friend of both Du Bois and Addams and himself a leading member of the NAACP. Roosevelt stated to Spingarn: “Be careful of that man Du Bois”. . . who is “dangerous” (Du Bois, 1968, p. 263). Nevertheless, Spingarn introduced the Du Boisian plank to the progressive convention. Both Du Bois and Spingarn argued for racial inclusion, and Roosevelt was against this position. Roosevelt also demanded that African American Republicans from the south be excluded from the convention because he regarded them as corrupt and ineffective. Du Bois held harsh views about Roosevelt because of his stance toward rights and justice for African Americans, among other political slights. However, he did recognize that Roosevelt had some attractive reform items, including suffrage for women.

160    Clayton, Hopps, Strickland, and Brown There was hope that a plank for greater recognition of rights for negroes would be included in the 1912 platform, and Du Bois went as far as drafting a plank in the office of The Crisis, which Roosevelt advised the platform committee to ignore (Du Bois, 1912, p. 29). It included the following: The Progressive party recognizes those distinctions of race or class in political life have no place in a democracy. Especially does the party realize that a group of 10,000,000 people who have in a generation changed from a slave to a free labor system, reestablished family life, accumulated $1,000,000,000 [in] property, including 20,000,000 acres of land, and reduced their illiteracy from 80 to 30 percent, deserve and must have justice, opportunity, and a voice in their government. The party therefore, demands the American of Negro descent the repeal of unfair discriminatory laws and the right to vote on the same terms on which other citizens vote. (Du Bois, 1968, p. 263)

Although the plank called for an end to discriminatory laws and practices, and for the right to vote, and was supported by two Board members including Jane Addams, it was not accepted by candidate Roosevelt or the party (Du Bois, 1968). The progressive era represented a low point for African American progress in the 20th century partly because of lingering white supremacy and an impenetrable class structure. Du Bois resigned from the Progressive Party Convention in 1912 because the progressives, including delegate Jane Addams, did not support a resolution that would have affirmed the status of negroes as citizens (Austin, 2000; Miller, 1992). The rationale for the Progressive Party was political since it related to the fear of angering white voters in the south. In an October 1911 issue of The Crisis, Du Bois wrote that the president of the National American Women Suffrage Association (NAWSA), who was also a Methodist minister and physician, Anna Howard Shaw, stated: “Do not touch the Negro problem. It will offend the South” (Du Bois, The Crisis 1911, pp. 243–​2 44). Since the late 1800s, the suffragists had internalized the belief system of the geopolitical environment in which they lived. Constitutional principles that sacrificed the rights of Blacks were acceptable as long as they did not interfere with their goals (Cott, 1987). The driving force for suffragists was gender equality, and racial equality was placed on the “back burner.” Hence, Addams and Du Bois played out different narratives in their appreciation of the complexities, contradictions, and dilemmas involved in their mission for equality and justice as they dealt with lingering racism, sexism, and classism. Given Du Bois’ character, intellectual vision, and determined spirit, he was unwilling to tolerate the idea, notion, and belief that “negroes” would not be considered citizens. He believed it was the obligation of African American leadership to reject all apologies for inequality and curtailment of the rights and freedom of people (Du Bois, 1903).

Legacies of Jane Addams and W. E. B. Du Bois    161 Du Bois, ever vigilant, challenged and resisted racist and sexist oppression, political and economic exploitation, and white hegemonic philosophy. Further, he stated in Souls of Black Folks: The problem of the twentieth century is the problem of the color line,—​the relation of the darker to the lighter races of men in Asia and Africa, in America and the islands of the sea. (Du Bois, 1903, pp. 16–​17)

He saw the struggle between the races and colors as entrenched and ongoing. Many have argued that Du Bois spoke only about the black and white racial divide in the preceding passage. However, Du Bois had a more profound understanding of race relations. The strife between black and white cannot be minimized. However, as the Native American historian and scholar Vine Deloria Jr. stated, “The whole of American society has been brainwashed into believing that if it understood blacks, it could automatically understand every other group simply because blacks were the most prominent minority group with which society had to deal” (Deloria, 1970, p. 88). However, Du Bois chose his words carefully and mentioned the darker races in America to include the indigenous population (Native Americans). Hence, for Du Bois, human rights are universal rights afforded to all (Meier, 1966). Because he was Black, Du Bois drew most of his examples from this population. The same goes for Jane Addams, who interacted daily with European immigrants in Chicago, and most of her attention was directed to this population. However, as more blacks and Latinos moved into Chicago, they were embraced by Hull House and Addams. Therefore, we argue that both Du Bois and Addams were against the oppression of any group. Although Du Bois vigorously attacked racism, he never wavered in his support of women’s rights and the need to recognize their accomplishments; he never acquiesced in denial of rights for any group. However, he understood that many women were imbedded in the existing class structure and held the same views on race as did the men, and he expressed that there was no reason to think that women: “are going to be any more intelligent, liberal, or humane toward the black, the poor and unfortunate than white men are (Lewis, 1993, p. 419). He went on to state: “Every argument for Negro suffrage is an argument for women’s suffrage; every argument for women is an argument for Negro suffrage; both are great moments for democracy” (ibid., p. 419). In 1934, after becoming frustrated with politics and the slow pace of social change, Du Bois headed back to his earlier place of employment, Atlanta University. He would produce several important scholarly books at Atlanta University, including Black Reconstruction in America, 1860–​1818 (1935); Dusk to Dawn: An Essay toward an Autobiography of a Race Concept (1940), his most engaging and poignant autobiographical essay since The Souls of Black Folk (1903); Color and Democracy: Colonies and Peace (1945); and The World and Africa: An Inquiry into the Part Which Africa Has Played in World History (1947). Another significant achievement was the

162    Clayton, Hopps, Strickland, and Brown establishment of a university journal, Phylon, which provided an opportunity for academicians at Atlanta University and elsewhere to write about the plight of African Americans in the United States and offer commentary about potential solutions (W. E. B. Du Bois Papers). Unlike Du Bois, Addams was willing to compromise her belief in equality for all in support of her interest as a suffragist and other professional interests and assumed a leadership role within the progressives. Here, she was an accommodationist, at least on race matters. At The Crisis, she sided with those who felt that Du Bois was pushing too fast and hard in his advocacy for negro rights. She, along with others, advocated a more moderate stance. Addams moved on to become president of the National American Women’s Suffrage Association in 1911. That organization later became the League of Women Voters in 1920, after women won the right to vote.

Take-​Aways from the Addams-​D u Bois Relationship and Lessons for Scholarship on Diversity and Inclusion in Organizations There are several valuable takeaways from the scholarship and activism of Addams and Du Bois relative to diversity and inclusion in organizations. If organizations are to take diversity seriously, they must commit to the value of all human beings and consider the viewpoints of those from varying backgrounds. This ideal was foremost in the life and work of both Addams and Du Bois (Lasch-​Quinn, 1993; Hamington, 2005). Both the scholar-​activist Du Bois and the activist-​scholar Addams believed that engagement and participation were critical in a democratic society (Boles, Hopps, Clayton Jr., & Brown, 2016). Equality for all was the hallmark for both, although Du Bois would focus primarily on the plight of black and brown people, while Addams would focus on gender and women’s rights. Du Bois was concerned that the contributions of Africans and African Americans were omitted from history and social science, which provided a protective framework for the hegemonic, race-​driven doctrine of white supremacy and Eurocentric views. Critical to thought analysis. Du Bois was convinced that the aim of science was to find and reveal the truth for purposes of transformative social action (Gibril, 2015). As Provenzo and Abaka (2019, p. ii) stated: “Du Bois’ significance as an international figure for racial equality and social justice, and as a champion of Africa and its people, has been underemphasized in much of the scholarly writings about him—​ particularly in the United States.” Du Bois advocated for defeating international colonialism and imperialistic racism at the beginning of the 20th century. In the manifesto of the 2nd World Congress, he noted that “the habit of democracy must be made to encircle the world” (Du Bois, 1921, p. 6).

Legacies of Jane Addams and W. E. B. Du Bois    163 The embracing of equality and freedom was present in Du Bois’ work and how the individual and race would overcome the debilitating structure of systemic racism. One way was to focus on education. Addams also knew the value of education: Hull House was a facility for classes, and there was a curriculum. Both Du Bois and Addams held the belief that education was emancipatory. Du Bois was outspoken about how African Americans could facilitate their advancement through academic mastery and achievement. Education was an equalizer for the race, owing to its lack of opportunity. He understood the impact of injustice in education, viewed across generations—​from slavery, emancipation, Jim Crow, civil rights, and current generations (Bowles, Hopps, & Clayton, 2016a). This systemic racism limited access to education, job markets, housing, and the economic arena, significantly reducing upward mobility (Fairfax, 2020). The conceptualization of education as an emancipatory practice echoed critical theory regarding innovative pedagogy that animated the rest of the 20th and early 21st centuries worldwide. Paulo Freire (1975) maintained that appropriate education transformed the marginalized imaginary from object to subject, granting communities of color the space to construct theories of personal politics. As was trailblazed and celebrated by Addams and Du Bois, education culminated in the transgression of sociopolitical boundaries, racially dichotomizing the human experience, and is in itself the unity of theory and practice when it involved self-​exploration (hooks, 1994). In their activism and academics, Du Bois and Addams erected physical and virtual spaces for deconstruction centered around how gender and class impacted human existence, and these lessons must be taught and stressed in any organization that wants inclusion and diversity in its workplace. How can the contributions of Addams and Du Bois be acknowledged and replicated in institutions today? Because of their commitment to science and scholarship and transformative social activism, thousands of effective social-​change agents have been educated to think about theories and strategies to improve the human condition. This approach involves challenges to white-​supremacist hegemony wherever it exists. Many have been educated in the social sciences and social work to address overt racism, but more attention needs to be placed on other forms of racism and discrimination, which may be under-​theorized and developed. They exist in subtle, nuanced, and complex ways (Combs, 2018). Because of the lasting impact of Du Bois on racism and Addams on gender inequality, progress is still taking place in academic and service-​oriented institutions. As we and others have shown, Du Bois and Addams’ contributions to science and society are legendary. Many argue that Addams is the mother of modern social work, and Du Bois is the founding father of sociology/​social work and social epidemiology. One cannot stop here concerning the lasting impact of these two scholars and activists; that would be an injustice. During an American epoch dominated by a dialectical conjecture of racism and faux universalism, Du Bois extended the reach of sociology to expose prevalent disparity in the lives of black Americans, utilizing and augmenting many of its traditional methodologies of inquiry for use in researching racial disproportion in urban contexts. Du Bois, alongside the Atlanta Sociological Laboratory, injected concepts of self-​help,

164    Clayton, Hopps, Strickland, and Brown community empowerment, and grassroots engagement into the social work sensibility (Bowles, Hopps, & Clayton, 2016b), providing the theoretical impetus for both clinical and macro-​level social-​work interventions. In the realm of epidemiology, his research has contributed contemporary concepts of health determinants animating prevailing Western public-​health interventions (Jones-​Eversley & Dean, 2018). Du Bois’ social-​ science innovation continues to be relevant in contemporary social-​science and intervention landscapes by offering an evidence-​based and theoretically sound organizing framework for various institutions. Jane Addams’ contributions to social work are still felt today. Specifically, the work that she started at Hull house, which stressed the worth of individuals and families, is at the core of contemporary social work. Prior to the pioneering work of Addams, poverty, illiteracy, and poor health were viewed as individual failings. Addams and her colleagues showed that these social problems were rooted in structural conditions and not individual fallacies. Throughout her illustrious career, she lobbied for immigrants’ rights, children, and those who could not protect themselves (Johnson, 2004). Her work laid the foundation for developing the juvenile court and a separate juvenile justice system. From its founding, Hull House catered to the needs of children and worked tirelessly for their well-​being. Specifically, Addams advocated for child labor laws, public education for minors, and safe spaces for the children of working parents (Johnson, 2004; Schultz & Hast, 2001). Addams is credited with building Chicago’s first public playground on the grounds of Hull House to provide a wholesome leisure activity for the children. These are just a few of the novel ideas advanced by Addams. However, it must be reiterated that Addams pushed and worked for women’s rights and remained politically active until her death. Both Addams and Du Bois must be remembered for their work for those who could not help themselves: the poor, the uneducated, the immigrants, and the children.

References Addams, J. (January 3, 1901a). Respect for law. The Independent. http://​arch​ive.org/​str​eam/​ Lynchi​ngRa​peAn​Exch​ange​OfVi​ews/​Apthek​er_​d​jvu.txt Addams, J. (1901b). Democracy and social ethics. University of Illinois Press. Addams, Jane (1908). Advantages and disadvantages of a broken inheritance. Atlanta University Bulletin (June), 183. Addams, J. (1930). The second twenty years at Hull House. McMillan. Allen, W. R., Jewell, J. O., Griffin, K. A., & Wolf, D. S. (2007). Historically black colleges and universities: Honoring the past, engaging the present, touching the future. The Journal of Negro Education 76 (3), 263–​280. Aptheker, H. A. (1951, 1977). A documentary history of the Negro people in The United States. Citadel Press. Austin, D. (2000). Greeting the second century: A forward look from a historical perspective. In J. G. Hopps & R. Morris (Eds.), Social Work at the Millennium (pp. 18–​41). The Free Press.

Legacies of Jane Addams and W. E. B. Du Bois    165 Bent-​Goodley, T. (2001). Ida B. Wells-​Barnett: An uncompromising style. In Carlton LeNay (Ed.), African American Leadership: An Empowerment Tradition in Social Welfare (pp. 87–​ 98). NASW Press. Blau, J., & Abramovitz, M. (2014). The dynamics of social welfare policy. 4th ed. Oxford University Press. Bowles, D., Hopps, J. G., & Clayton, O. (2016a). The impact and influence of HBCUs on the social work profession. Journal of Social Work Education 52 (1, spring), 118–​132. Bowles, D., Hopps, J. G., & Clayton, O. (2016b). Spirituality and social work practice at historically black colleges and universities. Journal of Human Behavior in the Social Environment 27, 424–​437. Boles, D. D., Hopps, J. G., Clayton, O., & Brown, S. L. (2016). The Dance Between Addams and Du Bois: Collaboration and Controversy in a Consequential 20th Century Relationship. Phylon, 53(2), 34–​53. Coll, B. (1971). Perspectives in public welfare: A history. Government Printing Office. Combs, B. H. (2018). Everyday racism is still racism: The role of place in theorizing continuing racism in modern US society Phylon 55 (1), 38–​59. Cott, N. F. (1987). The grounding of modern feminism. Yale University Press. Day, P., & Schiele, J. (2013). A new history of social welfare. Pearson. Deegan, Mary J. (1988). W. E. B. Du Bois and the women of Hull House, 1895–​1899. The American Sociologist 19 (4), 301–​311. Deegan, Mary J. (2002). Race, Hull House and, the University of Chicago: A new conscience against ancient evils. Prager. Deloria, Vine. (1970). We talk, you listen: New tribes, new turf. Macmillan. Dolgoff, R., & Feldstein, D. (2003). Understanding social welfare. Allyn and Bacon. Drewry, H., & Doermann, H. (2001). Stand and prosper: Private black colleges and their students. Princeton University Press. Du Bois, W. E. B. (1899). The Philadelphia Negro; a social study. University of Philadelphia Press. Du Bois, W. E. B. (1903). Souls of black folk. A. C. Clurg. Du Bois, W. E. B. (1908). Economic cooperation among negro Americans. Atlanta University Press. Du Bois, W. E. B. (1911). “Forward Backward,” The Crisis, October 1911: 243–​244. Du Bois, W. E. B. (1912). “The last word in politics”, The Crisis, November 5, 1912: 29. Du Bois, W. E. B., & Dill, A. C. (1910). The college bred negro. Atlanta University Press. Du Bois, W. E. B. (1920). Dark water: Voices from within the veil. Harcourt. Du Bois, W. E. B. (1921, November). Manifesto of the second Pan-​African Congress. The Crisis 22 (4), 5–​18. Du Bois, W. E. B. (1935). Black reconstruction in America, 1860–​1818. Harcourt, Brace. Du Bois, W. E. B. (1938). A pageant in seven decades, 1868–​1938. W. E. B. Du Bois Papers (MS 312). Special Collections and University Archives, University of Massachusetts Amherst Libraries. Du Bois, W. E. B. (1939). Black folk: Then and now. Kraus-​Thomson Organization. Du Bois, W. E. B. (1940). Dusk to dawn: An essay toward an autobiography of a race concept. Repr. Schocken. Du Bois, W. E. B. (1932). Postscript. The Crisis, 39. Du Bois, W. E. B. (1968). The autobiography of W. E. B. DuBois: A soliloquy on viewing my life from the last decades of its first century. International Publishers.

166    Clayton, Hopps, Strickland, and Brown Fairfax, C. N. (2020). The need to be: Since 1619, trauma and anti-​blackness. Phylon (1960-​), 57(1), 56–​75. Figueira-​McDonough, J. (2007). The welfare state and social work. SAGE. Freire, P. (1975). Pedagogy of the oppressed. Penguin Education. Gibril, H. T. (2015). Methodological matters in the study of Africa: An appreciation of W. E. B. DuBois’ Africanist scholarship. Phylon 51 (1), 158–​177. Hamington, M. (2005). Public pragmatism: Jane Addams and Ida B. Wells on lynching. The Journal of Speculative Philosophy 19 (2), 167–​174. Hill, R., & Deegan, M. J. (2007). Jane Addams, the spirit of youth, and the sociological imagination today. Presented to the American Sociological Association’s 102nd Annual Meeting, New York City. Hofstadter, R., & Wallace, R. (1970). American violence: A documentary history. Random House. hooks, bell. (1994). Teaching to transgress: Education as the practice of freedom. Routledge. Hopps, J. G., Lowe, T. B., & Clayton, O. (2021). I’ll find a way or make one: Atlanta University and the emergence of professional social work education in the Deep South. Journal of Social Work Education Journal of Social Work Education 57 (3), 419–​431. Johnson, M. (2004). Hull house. In J. Grossman, A. D. Keating, & J. Reiff (Eds.), The encyclopedia of Chicago (Vol. 1, p. 402). The University of Chicago Press. Jones-​Eversley, S., & Dean, L. (2018). After 121 years, it’s time to recognize W. E. B. Du Bois as a founding father of social epidemiology. The Journal of Negro Education 87 (3), 230–​245. Karger, H., & Stoesz, D. (2014). American social welfare policy: A pluralist approach. 7th ed. Allyn and Bacon. Kimball, B. A. (2009). This pitiable rejection of a great opportunity: W. E. B. DuBois, Clement G. Morgan, and the Harvard University graduation of 1890. The Journal of African American History 94 (1), 5–​20. Lasch-​Quinn, E. (1993). Black neighbors: Race and the limits of reform in the American settlement house movement, 1890–​1945. New ed. University of North Carolina Press. Lewis, D. L. (1993). W. E. B. DuBois: Biography of a race 1868–​1919. 1st ed. Henry Holt and Co. Meier, A. (1966). Negro thought in America, 1880–​1915: Racial ideologies in the age of Booker T. Washington. University of Michigan Press, 1966. Miller, N. (1992). Theodore Roosevelt: A life. William Morrow and Company, Inc. Morris, A. (2015). The scholar denied: W. E. B. Du Bois and the birth of modern sociology. University of California Press. O’Connor, S. (2009). Methodological triangulation and the social studies of Charles Booth, Jane Addams, and W. E. B. Du Bois. Sociation Today 7 (1), paras. 3–​13. http://​www.ncso​ciol​ ogy.org/​soc​iati​onto​day/​v71/​three.htm Provenzo, E. F., Jr, & Abaka, E. (Eds.). (2019). W. E. B. Du Bois on Africa. Routledge. https://​doi .org/​10.4324/​978131​5415​932 Schultz, R., & Hast, A. (2001). Women building Chicago 1790–​1990: A biographical dictionary. Indiana University Press. Specht, H., & Courtney, M. (1994). Unfaithful angels: How social work abandoned its Mission. Free Press. Starr, Ellen Gates. (2011). Social Welfare History Project. https://​social​welf​are.libr​ary.vcu.edu/​ peo​ple/​starr-​ellen-​gates/​ Trattner, W. I. (1994). From poor law to welfare state: A history of social welfare in America. Free Press. Wells, I. (1901). Lynching and the excuse for it. The Independent (May 16), 1133–​1136.

Legacies of Jane Addams and W. E. B. Du Bois    167 Wright, E. II, & Calhoun, T. C. (2006). Jim crow sociology: Toward an understanding of the origin and principles of black sociology via the Atlanta Sociological Laboratory. Sociological Focus 39 (1), 1–​18. Wright, E. II, & Wallace, E. V. (2015). The Ashgate research companion to black sociology. Ashgate Publishing Co. Young, A. A., & Deskins, D. R. (2001). Early traditions of African-​American sociological thought. Annual Review of Sociology 27 (1), 445–​477. https://​www.annual​revi​ews.org/​doi/​ 10.1146/​annu​rev.soc.27.1.445

Chapter 9

Jane Adda ms a nd John Dew ey Shane J. Ralston

Philosophy recovers itself when it ceases to be a device for dealing with the problems of philosophers and becomes a method, cultivated by philosophers, for dealing with the problems of men. —​John Dewey (1978 [1917], MW 10:42) I recall . . . an audience who listened to a series of lectures by Dr. John Dewey . . . as genuine intellectual groups consisting largely of people from the immediate neighborhood, who were willing to make ‘that effort from which we all shrink, the effort of thought.’ But while we prize these classes as we do the help we are able to give to the exceptional young man or woman who reaches the college and university and leaves the neighborhood of his childhood behind him, the residents of Hull-​house feel increasingly that the educational efforts of a Settlement should not be directed primarily to reproduce the college type of culture, but to work out a method and an ideal adapted to the immediate situation. —​Jane Addams (Twenty Years at Hull House, 1910, p. 435)

Jane Addams and John Dewey were contemporaries, collaborators, and friends. Dewey assigned Addams’s books as required readings in his philosophy courses at the University of Chicago. Addams was regularly invited by Dewey to guest lecture in his courses. Dewey served on the Hull House board of directors, which Addams led. Addams often invited Dewey to deliver lectures for the Hull House residents as part of their weekly philosophy club. And Dewey showed his appreciation for Addams’s immense intellectual influence on his social philosophy by dedicating Liberalism and Social Action (1935) to her. In this chapter, I outline the points of intellectual consonance between Jane Addams and John Dewey, specifically their (1) shared belief that philosophy is a method, (2)

170   Shane J. Ralston parallel commitments to philosophical pragmatism, and (3) similar convictions that philosophy should serve to address social problems. I also examine notable points of divergence in their thought. The chapter concludes with an argument that Addams’s and Dewey’s most significant joint contribution to the contemporary philosophical landscape is a vision of practically engaged pragmatism. While acknowledging that Addams and Dewey were contemporaries, friends, and collaborators, it ought to be kept in mind that their ideas were not identical. We should also be careful not to force Addams’s ideas through the filter of Dewey’s philosophical framework, for the sake of finding more common ground than there actually is.1

Philosophy as a Method Similar to the 17th-​century French philosopher René Descartes, Addams and Dewey believed that philosophy is a method. Unlike their predecessor, though, they appreciated the philosophical method for its ability to directly impact our individual and collective lives, enriching both intellectual and practical endeavors. To Descartes, in contrast, philosophical inquiry was a thoroughly individual and intellectual activity, a meditation or way to methodically doubt all prior knowledge in order to arrive at a set of clear and distinct ideas (Descartes, 1984 [1641], p. 9). What distinguishes Addams and Dewey from Descartes is that the former knew that we are at our best when functioning as members of a community of inquiry, not solitary thinkers. A human being is not an island. Living and working together—​for instance, in a university, collective, or a settlement—​generates cascading benefits for community members. Addams and Dewey believed that the method of philosophy should serve as a model for social inquiry, enriching the lives and activities of all members of a “community of inquiry” (Shields, 2003, 1999). While Addams and Dewey were fellow philosophical travelers, their paths did, at times, diverge—​even on the matter of philosophical method. Addams opined that the most educative of social situations do not demand the formal accouterments of higher-​learning institutions—​what Addams referred to as “the college type of culture” (Addams, 1910, p. 435). Although philosophy for Dewey was a method “for dealing with the problems of men” (1978 [1917], MW 10:42), he was nevertheless an academician at heart, having spent the majority of his life immersed in university culture. For Addams, in contrast, a shared working space or commune could provide more propitious circumstances than a college or university for “work[ing] out a method and an ideal adapted to the immediate situation.” Unlike Dewey, Addams viewed scholastic pursuits as too fixated upon thought and preparation for life, and not sufficiently adapted to action and the effectuation of social change.2 So, while the thinking of Addams and Dewey parts ways on a few issues, their differences are mostly confined to the details, owing to distinct shades of contrast in

Jane Addams and John Dewey    171 their backgrounds, occupations, and, of course, their situated knowledge in a time when men and women were expected to pursue separate careers and life paths.

Intellectual Entanglement Addams and Dewey have been described as “intellectual soul mates from the moment they met in 1892” (Hamington, 2019). Their first encounter could have been the outcome of serendipitous circumstance, owing to a short visit Dewey made to Hull House, scouting his imminent academic home at the University of Chicago. Alternatively, the occasion of their first meeting could be credited to Dewey’s susceptibility to the influence of practical geniuses. According to Jay Martin, “[i]‌t was and remained a characteristic of [John] Dewey that he was always receptive to alternative ideas. With professional philosophers, he generally held to his own positions, but with intelligent women, non-​ philosophers, odd thinkers, and ordinary folk, he was a student again” (Martin, 2003, p. 167; cited in Cunningham et al., 2007, p. 27). Addams was one of those “intelligent women” who would, from their first encounter in 1892, have an immense influence on Dewey’s intellectual development going forward. The significance of Addams and Dewey’s intellectually entanglement has been the subject of extensive commentary. For pragmatism scholar Scott Pratt, the annals of classic American pragmatism receive a renewal of diversity when Addams and Dewey met, inviting a novel, feminine perspective to a philosophical movement that had become temporarily dominated by male voices: “In their meeting, there is a sense in which the diverse sources of pragmatism were rejoined and together provided the catalyst and many of the key resources for the development of classical pragmatism” (Pratt, 2002, p. 283). According to Addams scholar Louise Knight, “[t]‌he influence of the two friends [Addams and Dewey] on each other was profound, and, in many of its various parts, untraceable to one party or the other. As the years passed, it was not Dewey who influenced Addams or Addams who influenced Dewey so much as the friendship that influenced them both” (Knight, 2005, p. 240). Nevertheless, it is possible to trace some direct influences from Dewey to Addams, and vice versa. For Barbara Stengel, Dewey was the beneficiary of Addams’s poetic insight: “Dewey became Dewey in the last decade of the nineteenth century and . . . Jane Addams was present as poet to his philosopher” (Stengel, 2007, p. 30). Through her activities at Hull House, Addams had “discerned the shape of democracy as a mode of associated living and uncovered the outlines of an experimental approach to knowledge and understanding; Dewey analyzed and classified the social, psychological and educational processes Addams lived” (Stengel, 2007, p. 30). While Addams provided the raw data—​namely, her experience working with Chicago’s vulnerable populations at Hull House—​Dewey contributed the tools of analysis, specifically his newfound pragmatist method, which was largely inspired by Addams’s example.

172   Shane J. Ralston Stengel (2007) bases her position on two letters Dewey (2002a [1894]) wrote to his wife, Alice, in October 1894, both recounting Addams’s participation in a recent University of Chicago program. The purpose of the program was to share the aims of the Settlement Movement in anticipation of the university establishing its own settlement house. After hearing Addams’s talk and reflecting on her thesis that unity in the Settlement Movement was an outgrowth of diverse community aims, Dewey confessed in a letter to his wife: “Addams converted me internally” (Stengel, 2007, p. 33). Stengel interprets Dewey’s confession in two ways: (1) his devoutly Christian outlook and expression settled into a more secularized and humanitarian orientation toward the world, and (2) his high-​minded Hegelianism took a more naturalized and experimental turn: “[H]‌e let go of religious practice and theological language, focused a conception of democracy as a mode of associated living, shifted from Hegelian dialectic to pragmatic experimentalism, acknowledged the relational nature of the self and found a way to think about thinking rooted in human action, thus acknowledging the unity of human experience” (Stengel, 2007, p. 30).3 Addams’s talk given in October 1894—​the same one that likely inspired Dewey’s conversion—​was likely an elaboration of her earlier essay “The Subjective Necessity for Social Settlements.”4 Some commentators have noticed the striking similarity between it and Dewey’s essay, shared earlier as a talk at Hull House, titled “Christianity and Democracy” (1893). In commentator Steven Rockefeller’s view, Dewey’s essay and talk impressed Addams, for she “may have drawn on Dewey’s thinking in ‘Christianity and Democracy’ ” in her own writings and later talks (Rockefeller, 1991, p. 208). In the essay, Dewey portrays democracy as a “Kingdom of God on Earth,” or a spiritual commitment to improving conditions for the poor, ameliorating industrial strife, and reforming institutions (Tröhler, 2006, p. 102; Ralston, 2010, p. 68). According to Dewey, “Christianity is revelation, and revelation means effective discovery, the actual ascertaining or guaranteeing to man of the truth of his life and the reality of the Universe. It is at this point that the significance of democracy appears. The kingdom of God, as Christ said, is within us, or among us” (Dewey, 1971 [1893], pp. 6–​7). Dewey’s message about the Christian impulse toward social reform, mutual aid, and democratic ethos hints at an imminent shift in his thought. At around the turn of the century, he shed his Christian identity and embraced democratic humanism.5 It also resonates with Addams’s message in “The Subjective Necessity for Social Settlements”: “[T]‌here is a distinct turning among many young men and women toward this simple acceptance of Christ’s message. [ . . . ] The Settlement movement is only one manifestation of that wider humanitarian movement which . . . is endeavoring to embody itself, not in a sect, but in society itself ” (Addams, 1893, p. 19). To accept Christ’s message, for Addams and Dewey, does not simply mean to affirm the believer’s Christian faith; more importantly, it indicates an inclusive commitment to serve God by serving humanity—​even to the extent of seeing Jesus Christ as an early social reformer. However, Stengel insists that Rockefeller overstated Dewey’s influence on Addams. In her account, Dewey’s ideas about Christianity and democracy were the result of

Jane Addams and John Dewey    173 observing Addams’ work at Hull House: “What he [Rockefeller] doesn’t state clearly is that Dewey’s search [for a link between Christian ethos and democratic function] found fruition at Hull House. Jane Addams’s work gave substance to Dewey’s embryonic thinking” (Stengel, 2007, p. 34). Regardless of the exact direction of influence, both Addams and Dewey were intellectually entangled as early as 1892. They shared commitments to social democracy, economic justice, industrial peace, secular humanism, and—​as we will see in the next section—​philosophical pragmatism.

Fellow Pragmatists In addition to being contemporaries, friends, and collaborators, Addams and Dewey were both budding Pragmatists.6 Pragmatism is a philosophy of action and experience, endorsing a number of positions that differentiate it from—​or offer a third way between—​the two standard Western philosophical traditions: analytic and continental philosophy (Margolis, 2011, p. 136). Pragmatism’s commitments include instrumentalism, fallibilism, experimentalism, naturalism, and pluralism, among others.7 At the turn of the century, Dewey embarked on a period of philosophical transition, undergoing a conversion from Hegelian idealism to experimental Pragmatism.8 In the late 19th century, the idealist philosophical outlook was most closely associated with thinkers such as T. H. Greene, F. H. Bradley, and Edward Caird, all followers of G. W. F. Hegel. Pre-​1894, Dewey’s philosophy was unmistakable for its idealistic commitments: meaning is constituted by ideal relations (i.e., bare objects or facts have significance in virtue of humans’ ideas about them); comprehension of meaning involves negating those relations (through dialectical reasoning); and, ultimately, meaning progresses (in consciousness and history) toward the ideal limit of rational thought, the absolute.9 According to Dewey (1969 [1889]), “the problem of the nineteenth century reduces itself to a choice between pessimism and faith” (p. 42). As the superiority of scientific method became increasingly obvious, pessimism set in. Idealism lost its glow for Dewey. Particularly after reading William James’s Principles of Psychology, he sought to recover his faith in the truth of his philosophical convictions, gravitating toward a more empirical and scientifically based theory of human psychology. Consequently, Dewey abandoned his earlier, idealistic views.10 According to Stengel, Addams likely inspired this philosophical conversion too. Interacting with Addams and observing her experimental work in the settlement movement were probably the impetus for Dewey to embrace a naturalistic understanding of social relations. Stengel elaborates: “Dewey was searching for a way to instantiate his thinking about democracy, about Christianity and about experimentalism. [ . . . ] [I]‌t was at Hull House in the company of Jane Addams that Dewey found what he was looking for” (Stengel, 2007, p. 30). Charlene Haddock Seigfried echoes Stengel’s point: “In the early years, when Dewey was developing pragmatist philosophy, there were two communities with which he was intensely engaged and that he

174   Shane J. Ralston frequently acknowledged as important influences but were largely ignored by subsequent scholars in favor of a more traditional history of ideas approach. One was the Laboratory School [. . . and] [t]he other community was the Hull House Settlement . . .” (Seigfried, 1999, p. 212). The change in Dewey’s philosophical allegiances, from absolutism to experimentalism, from Hegelianism to Pragmatism, was therefore the result of Addams’s influence. Specifically, Stengel suggests that the reason for Dewey’s philosophical conversion was Addams’s 1894 talk, which—​as noted above—​was likely a variant of her essay “The Subjective Necessity for Social Settlements” (1893). In a letter to his wife, Dewey explained how Addams’s ideas disrupted his idealism: “I can see that I have always been interpreting the Hegelian dialectic wrong end up—​the unity as the reconciliation of opposites, instead of the opposites as the unity in its growth, and thus translated physical tension into a moral thing” (Stengel, 2007, p. 33). For Dewey-​the-​idealist, similar to Greene, Bradley, and Caird, philosophical method was identical to dialectical reasoning, that is, negating and synthesizing concepts into a singular object, thereby revealing the all-​inclusive and transcendental whole, the absolute (Hegel 1910 [1807]). In transitioning from absolutism to experimentalism, Dewey operationalized Hegelian concepts and objects as instruments and objectives of inquiry; scientized dialectical reasoning, making it the process of experimental inquiry; and biologized the absolute into the unity of all experience.11 In this way, Dewey loosened his intellectual grip on idealism. He naturalized the philosophical method, so that it became a tool of scientific inquiry and practical reform. Biological metaphors, such as adaptation, growth, and experience, substituted for idealist ones, such as concept, object, and absolute. For catalyzing that philosophical transformation, Stengel concludes, Dewey owed an immense debt to Addams. Charlene Haddock Seigfried also reveals the overlap between Addams’s and Dewey’s Pragmatist philosophies. She contends that the “emancipatory” quality of Addams’s social theory is itself an elaboration of Dewey’s idea that democracy is not primarily political, but social—​a means of association and community living: [T]‌he pragmatist model of democracy is radically different from the liberal model. Pragmatists see behind the political forms of democracy another reality altogether. Instead of taking the political form as an expression of isolated units of self-​seeking individuals, they understand democracy as a form of association especially appropriate for persons who are constituted by the multiple relations through which consciousness evolves and values develop [ . . . ] Having imaginatively reconceived the behavior it encourages and the values it presupposes, they seek to cooperate with others in that continual transformation of varied and interactive forms of life toward those better ends that pragmatism seeks. [ . . . ] The horizontal linkage of persons, no one of whom is granted antecedent advantage, that constitutes democratic forms of organization profoundly challenges the assertion of privilege that underlies hierarchical forms of government in which power flows from the top down. (Seigfried, 1999, p. 210)

Jane Addams and John Dewey    175 To combat these fixed social hierarchies, Addams recommended leveling liberal-​ democratic institutions and then rising above the structural inequalities through philanthropic and educational projects. Accomplishing this involves the integration of the interests of the privileged and the marginalized, so that the former serve the latter, redistributing cultural, educational, and economic capital more widely. Hamington (2009a, p. 11) calls Addams’s solution “lateral progress,” Seigfried (1999, p. 220) “emancipation,” and Dewey (2008[1939], LW 13:226)—​four years after Addams’s death—​“democracy as a way of life” (Ralston, 2008).

Social Reform Ethics Addams and Dewey integrated their vision of right or ethical action with a practical goal to enact far-​reaching social reforms. According to Erin McKenna, both conceived ethics as relational: “We find ourselves in socially complex and reciprocal relationships that demand a social, rather than an individualistic, ethic” (McKenna, 2002, p. 147). In undertaking such reforms, Dewey and Addams’s conception of social ethics was tested by events in late 19th-​century Chicago, where urban poverty, industrial strife, and the exploitation of children were commonplace. Three cases stand out: (1) Hull House, a project integral to the larger settlement movement, (2) the Pullman strike, a monumental event in the US labor movement and (3) child labor practices in industrial factories, which were slowly being reformed in favor of universal compulsory public education. While Addams and Dewey’s levels of commitment to social reform were not identical—​and some even note, insufficiently radical12—​these three cases illustrate their shared devotion to democratic meliorism (i.e., hope for continual improvement for the prospects of people across the social spectrum) and social inquiry (i.e., cooperative effort to solve problems of public concern and distribute gains widely) (Westbrook, 1991, xiv).

The Hull House Settlement While the settlement movement can be traced back to 1884—​specifically Samuel Bennet’s encampment in east London—​the late 19th-​century United States became a hotspot for settlements aimed at aiding the poor. Three appeared in this period independently of each other, located in Boston, New York, and Chicago. The settlement in Chicago was, of course, Hull House, led by Addams, and later served by Dewey, who was on its board and gave regular talks to its philosophy club. In “The Subjective Necessity for Social Settlements,” Addams described the purpose of Hull House: “The Settlement . . . is an experimental effort to aid in the solution of the social and industrial problems which are engendered by the modern conditions of life in a great city” (Addams, 1893, p. 22). Rather than isolate Hull House, the idea was

176   Shane J. Ralston to integrate it into the wider community. Chicago’s luminaries, including professors, politicians, and community leaders, came to the settlement to share their wit, wisdom, and resources with its residents. According to Addams, the settlement fostered democracy with projects that emphasized our common humanity: “[T]‌he identification with the common lot which is the essential idea of Democracy becomes the source and expression of social ethics” (Addams, 1902, p. 11). Dewey shared this democratic conviction and devoted his time to advancing the project. Addams also commented on the political situation in Chicago in “The Subjective Necessity for Social Settlements.” While the “franchise” (or right to vote) had been expanded, it did not improve the quality of life of the city’s immigrants, marked as it was by growing urban poverty, industrial strife, and racial inequality. Addams lamented, “[d]‌emocracy has made little attempt to assert itself in social affairs” (Addams, 1893, p. 2). In the absence of genuine social democracy, Chicago became a balkanized city, its communities and neighborhoods divided along socioeconomic, racial, and ethnic lines. The clearest division manifested between those who were uneducated, indigent, and culturally impoverished and those with wealth, power, and education. Addams identifies the crux of the problem: “[T]he paradox is here: when cultivated people do stay away from a certain portion of the population, when all social advantages are persistently withheld, it may be for years, the result itself is pointed at as a reason, is used as an argument, for the continued withholding” (Addams, 1893, p. 5). In a viciously circular way, the status quo served to justify itself; only dedicated reform and integration of these divided communities could produce genuine social change. The purpose of Addams, Dewey, and other Chicago settlement reformers, then, was to disrupt the status quo. They aimed to foster interaction between segregated communities, especially through philanthropic projects aimed at uplifting the poor and marginalized. The wealth, ideas, and culture of the well-​to-​do were recruited to serve this end. Hull House was the realization of an ideal that emerged from the lived experience of Addams and Dewey, two of Chicago’s public figures and social reformers devoted to healing a community that had long been divided by social enmity, economic injustice, and industrial strife.

The Pullman Strike Although Addams was more directly involved in the Pullman Strike than Dewey, both reacted similarly to the 1894 uprising of industrial workers in southern Chicago. Arriving in the city during the first days of the strike, Dewey (2002b [1894]) commented in a letter to his wife that the industrial action was “a great thing and the beginning of greater.” In the month prior, discussions between the workers’ union and the Pullman Car Company had reached an impasse, leading to the closure of most railroad lines, as union workers refused to touch any trains with Pullman cars attached. Addams tried to mediate the strike and, likely owing to her gender, was rebuffed by Chicago’s elites.

Jane Addams and John Dewey    177 In reaction, Addams authored an essay titled “A Modern Lear,” comparing the owner of the Pullman Car Company, George M. Pullman, to Shakespeare’s King Lear and his striking workers to Lear’s daughter, Cordelia. Addams chastised Pullman for his overly paternalistic approach to managing the lives of his workers. In the essay, she also demonstrated how enlightened leadership leads to “lateral progress”: The man who insists upon consent, who moves with the people, is bound to consult the feasible right as well as the absolute right. He is often obliged to attain only Mr. Lincoln’s “best possible,” and often have the sickening sense of compromising with his best convictions. He has to move along with those whom he rules toward a goal that neither he nor they see very clearly till they come to it. [ . . . ] What he does attain, however, is not the result of his individual striving, as a solitary mountain climber beyond the sight of the valley multitude, but it is underpinned and upheld by the sentiments and aspirations of many others. Progress has been slower perpendicularly, but incomparably greater because lateral. (Addams, 1912, p. 136)

Slow, lateral change occurs when the enlightened leader brings her followers along with her, rather than forces them to follow her and to trust in her purportedly superior judgment.13 Dewey (2002a [1896]) praised Addams’s essay as “one of the greatest things I have ever read as to its form and ethical philosophy.” During the Pullman Strike, both Addams and Dewey experienced stressful events in their separate lives. Addams’s sister, Mary, was suffering from a terrible illness that would eventually end her life. Though less tragic, Dewey was in the midst of a career transition, moving from an academic post at the University of Michigan to the chair of the Philosophy and Pedagogy Department at the University of Chicago. Both set aside their personal troubles to show sympathy toward the industrial workers. The practical activism and writings in support of the strikers are a testimony to what Leffers identifies as the “caring response”: “The work of Addams and Dewey can explain why the caring response in moral reasoning is capable of becoming universal, including the self, those who are close to us, and those who lie outside of our circle of personal relationships” (Leffers, 1993, p. 74).

Child Welfare Another way in which Addams and Dewey demonstrated the caring response was in how they reacted to the exploitation of children. In the late 19th and early-​20th centuries, poor children would forego education in order to supplement family income through factory work. Children’s small hands and agile bodies were valued by industrialists. Addams saw city government and regulation as a vehicle for social justice, a mechanism to reform these deplorable practices. She subscribed to a model of city administration, referred to as “municipal housekeeping,” whereby the point was to ameliorate social problems, such as the

178   Shane J. Ralston industrial exploitation of children, by remedying the underlying social and economic conditions (Addams, 1905, p. 425). In concert with local government, Addams and the settlement movement established organizations and rules (e.g., the Children’s Bureau and child labor laws) to protect the welfare of children. Dewey likewise opposed the industrial exploitation of children. He supported mandatory public schooling as an alternative to the factory work system, which damaged the health and life prospects of poor children. In 1913, a New York Times article highlighted Dewey’s endorsement of public schooling, settlement activism to protect child workers, and vocational education for “dull children,” who would ordinarily be exploited by the industrialists (Dewey, 1913, p. 4). Dewey’s consonance with Addams in this regard is perhaps unsurprising, given his love for children and his seminal work on the philosophy of education. According to Dewey’s friend Max Eastman, “Dewey is at his best with one child climbing up his pants leg and another fishing in his inkwell” (quoted in Peter Gibbon, 2019).

Points of Divergence Although they might have been soulmates, Addams and Dewey’s practical and philosophical commitments did not always align. According to the orthodox interpretation of the two figures’ differences, the reformist and practical impulse of Addams can be sharply distinguished from the academic and theoretical focus of Dewey.14 However, this account is in all likelihood an oversimplification, since, as Stengel (2007) notes, Dewey’s philosophical transformation benefited immensely from Addams’s influence, both as a practical and theoretical matter. Where the points of divergence are more noticeable is with respect to their positions on issues of the day—​for instance, US entry into World War I—​and, more generally, how they viewed the value of conflict in social life.

United States Entry into World War I Though the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand arguably triggered the outbreak of World War I, it was ultimately the web of deadly alliances that brought all of Europe into the melee of armed conflict and mass death in the trenches on the Western Front. US entry into the “war to end all wars” was hotly debated. Addams, the pacifist, argued against US involvement, and suffered public scorn as a result. On June 10, 1917 (two months after US entry into WWI), Addams gave a speech before the First Congregational Church in Evanston, Illinois, titled “Pacifism and Patriotism in Time of War,” in which she argued that “opposition to the war is not necessarily cowardice.” Pacifism is instead perfectly compatible with patriotism. She was heckled by members of the audience and portrayed by the press as soft, sentimental, and prone to expressing “pro-​German twaddle” (Joslin, 2010, p. xix).

Jane Addams and John Dewey    179 Dewey, in contrast to Addams, believed that US entry into the war was a necessary evil. American involvement was crucial to secure long-​lasting global harmony. World War I was to be the “war to win the peace” or, more ambitiously, the “war to end all wars.”15 According to Molly Cochran, . . . when it came to practical judgment about what democracy as a way of life required at the international level, they [Dewey and Addams] disagreed on arguably the most significant matter of the day: the US decision to enter World War I. For Dewey, US participation was needed to defeat Germany and move to the important business of public control of transnational interests and world organization; war was a necessary means to international democratic ends. Jane Addams, in the face of harsh public criticism . . . maintained a pacifist stance; democracy as a way of life could not be realized through such means. (Cochran, 2017, p. 160)

Although Addams and Dewey never publicly debated the issue of American entry into WWI, Dewey suffered at the hands of his critics too. The public intellectual Randolph Bourne (1977[1917]) launched a scathing attack against Dewey’s, accusing the Pragmatist philosopher of hypocrisy. Historian Alan Cywar comments: “Bourne contended that Dewey’s instrumentalism was no longer an adequate ideology for radical reform in America” (Cywar, 1969, p. 579). According to Bourne, democratic ends no longer require only democratic means for their realization. Indeed, Dewey’s instrumentalism licenses jingoistic means as well.16 With respect to US involvement in WWI, Dewey’s thinking could not have differed more from Addams’s.17 Later Dewey would realize the error of his ways and support the outlawry of war movement. On the occasion of Dewey’s seventieth birthday, Addams’s toast to Dewey acknowledges that their differences on the war was a learning experience for both: Only once in a public crisis did I find my road taking a sharp right angle to the one he [Dewey] recommended. That fact in and of itself gave me pause to think, and almost threatened my confidence in the inevitability of that road. Our rough journeyings thereon often confirmed John Dewey’s contention that unless truth vindicates itself in practice it easily slips into futile dogma. (Addams, 2002, p. 29)

Their differing positions on US entry into World War I also suggested a deeper disagreement about the value of social conflict.

The Value of Social Conflict Anticipating his later view that “conflict is the gadfly of thought” (Dewey, 1922, p. 300), Dewey conceived social conflict as instrumentally valuable to inspiring fresh ideas and

180   Shane J. Ralston new paths of inquiry. Although he did not embrace violence, he viewed friction and unease as instigations for more productive avenues of thought. In Dewey’s 1894 letter to his wife, describing his first encounter with Addams, Dewey distinguished his view of social conflict from Addams’s. Dewey summarized Addams’s position as follows: “[A]‌ntagonism was not only . . . useless and harmful, but entirely unnecessary; that it lay never in the objective differences, which would always grow into unity if left alone.” When Dewey pressed Addams, asking whether “a realization of the antagonisms was necessary to an appreciation of the truth,” she responded in the negative.18 One way to illustrate their contrasting views is to consider the difference between conflict as pluralism versus conflict as acrimony. Conflict understood as an ever-​present feature of social and political life is sometimes described as value pluralism. Since humans have diverse opinions, cultures, and ways of life, pluralistic conflict is inevitable. It is distinct from acrimony, or hateful and tribalistic conflict that takes the form of ad hominem attacks and threats of physical violence. Neither Addams nor Dewey endorsed the latter, though Dewey, more than Addams, insisted that the former was a sociological fact. Addams did not share Dewey’s view that social conflict was an inevitable and valuable feature of social life. On Addams’s account, pluralistic conflict lacked social worth. For her, unity and harmony are the only valuable social states toward which all groups, institutions, and communities should aspire and progress. In contrast, for Dewey, social conflict possesses a functional value insofar as it generates rupture between the ideal and the real—​between what ought to be and what is the case. In the process of inquiry, a felt difficulty, problem, or conflict disturbs an initially unified and harmonious state, initiating a process of problem-​solving aimed at resolving the conflict and restoring unity. Although on its face Addams’s and Dewey’s differing views concerning the value of social conflict might appear trivial or semantic, they could explain why Addams, on some social issues of the day (e.g., US entry into WWI), took a decidedly more pacifistic stance than Dewey.

Toward a Vision of Publicly Engaged Pragmatism Despite their divergent views on the value of social conflict, what Addams and Dewey shared was a unique understanding of the philosophical method. Indeed, it was more public, practical, and engaged than had been witnessed among fellow pragmatists. In their hands, philosophy was no longer a solitary, intellectual endeavor, or a Cartesian search for clear and distinct ideas. By applying experimental inquiry to social and political issues, philosophy becomes what Dewey called “a method, cultivated by philosophers, for dealing with the problems of men” (Dewey, 1978 [1917], MW 10:42). As Stengel persuasively argues, Addams inspired Dewey’s conversion to democratic

Jane Addams and John Dewey    181 humanism and experimental pragmatism through her own examples of public, practical, and engaged activism. Hamington (2005) calls this Addams’s “public pragmatism” (p. 167). The approach also resonates with what nowadays is termed “public philosophy.”19 However, public philosophy as it is currently performed in mass culture—​ specifically, the popularization of philosophical ideas for wider consumption—​does not quite capture the philosophical practice of Addams and Dewey.20 For them, the method of philosophy involved immersing oneself in public issues and political controversies, engaging in debates of the day and applying ideas to experience in order to improve existing social conditions. So, perhaps a better way to describe Addams and Dewey’s vision of philosophy or philosophical activism is “publicly engaged pragmatism.” Their pragmatism begins and ends with worldly engagement. The purpose of publicly engaged pragmatism is not to theorize from an armchair, but to engage actual social problems as a member of a community of inquiry. In other words, the ultimate value of pragmatism as a philosophical method is tested in the crucible of public, practical, and engaged experience.

Notes 1. This heuristic manuever is what I have elsewhere referred to as the “filtering strategy.” Filtering involves forcing the ideas of a historical figure through more contemporary interpretive lenses or filters, so that the result is a version of those ideas that supports the interpreter’s pet theory. See Ralston (2011, 2009, 2008). Although Dewey and Addams were contemporaries, it is nevertheless possible to filter Addams’s ideas through Dewey’s more familiar philosophical framework. 2. For instance, in Addams’s essay “The College Woman and Christianity,” she argues that Christianity might be a better preparation for life than university, especially for women who wish to become “ready to act.” She portrays Jesus as a social activist who “alone of all great teachers made a masterly combination of method, aim and source of motive power” (Addams, 1901, p. 1855). Cited in Hamington (2009b, p. 88). 3. In this section I address the first stage in Addams’s conversion of Dewey, the theological-​ political, while in the next section I address the philosophical stage of his conversion. 4. The essay was composed in 1892, anthologized in Philanthropy and Social Progress (1893), and later reprinted in Twenty Years at Hull House (1910). I quote from text of Addams’s essay collected in Philanthropy and Social Progress (1893). 5. For those more familiar with Dewey’s mature writings on religion and religious experience—​for instance, his landmark A Common Faith (1934)—​Dewey’s pre-​1894 statements about Christianity might seem out of place. This is because Dewey made a break with the institutionalized Christian religion sometime between 1894 and 1904, secularizing his faith and adopting the outlook of a democratic humanist. Rockefeller (1991) explains: “Dewey as a young man acquired an abiding sense of religious meaning and value of life [ . . . ] Over time he learned to trust in the democratic way of freedom and growth, a faith in intelligence, and an understanding of ideals as natural possibilities can be a valid liberating religious way in its own right. It gave his life hope, purpose and unity” (533). Also see Baurain (2011), Ralston (2007), and Morse (2019).

182   Shane J. Ralston 6. I use the capital P to indicate the philosophical or sophisticated sense of Pragmatism, rather than more ordinary or garden-​variety pragmatism. Eldridge (2009) refers to the latter as the “adjectival” sense—​as in pragmatic, synonymous with efficacious, realistic or sensible. 7. For presentations of Pragmatism’s basic tenets, see Talisse and Aikin (2008), Brandom (2011), and Margolis (2011). 8. The question of which factors ultimately influenced the transformation of Dewey’s philosophy from Hegelian absolutism to Pragmatist experimentalism is highly contentious. For want of space, I will not wade into the debate. A sample of perspectives in the debate, including arguments concerning what constitutes the “permanent Hegelian deposit” in Dewey’s pragmatism, can be found in Dalton (1997), Shook (2000), Good (2005), Garrison (2006), Midtgarden (2011), Jackson (2012), and Morse (2019). 9. Donald J. Morse (2019) distinguishes Hegelian Idealism from Dewey’s idealism insofar as the former emphasizes continuity and harmony, while Dewey’s version focused on disruption and longing (4). Also, in contrast to T. H. Greene’s (1969) idealism, the absolute for Dewey was not a thing—​in Greene’s case, an eternal consciousness—​but instead was an ideal limit to development. With the switch to naturalism and experimentalism, Dewey’s epistemological and metaphysical theories began to endorse both continuity and disruption as phases of biological growth and cultural experience. 10. See, for instance, Dewey’s “Reflex Arc Concept in Psychology” (1896). In this paper, he first treats stimulus and response as distinguishable functions, rather than as pre-​given categories or concepts. Backe (1999) argues that although Dewey’s approach is largely credited to William James, the extent to which actually influenced this shift is likely exaggerated. It could have just as easily been the result of Addams’s influence. 11. For Dewey’s (1930) own account of his turn-​of-​the century philosophical transition, see the essay “From Absolutism to Experimentalism.” 12. Cornel West (1989) refers to Addams as “bourgeois progressive,” a pejorative description that also pertains to Dewey insofar as his commitment to social reform, like Addams’s, was not radical enough (pp. 78–​79). Hamington (2009b) believes Addams was more radical than Dewey, for she “addressed a wide audience while provoking significant discussions of social import” (p. 87). Fischer (2013) identifies a strain of Burkean conservativism in both Addams’s and Dewey’s social reform ethics, evidenced in Addams’s strategy of compromise during the 1912 Progressive political convention and Dewey’s tragic notion of political reconstruction. Although scholarly opinion is indeterminate on the matter of whether they were sufficiently radical in their commitment to social reform, it is perhaps safe to state that neither Dewey nor Addams were what we would nowadays call social justice warriors. 13. For more extended treatments of Addams’s Lear essay, see Knight (1997) and McMillan (2002). 14. For instance, Hamington (2008), notes: “Although Dewey and Addams would gain celebrity status in their lifetime, their fame and legacies are characterized much differently. Dewey was the great intellectual—​a thinker—​and Addams was the activist—​a doer.” Many scholars have since attempted to correct this mischaracterization. For instance, see Davis (1973), Deegan (1988), Farrell (1967), Lasch (1965), Linn (2000), Seigfried (1996), and Stengel (2007). 15. President Woodrow Wilson’s administration was especially effective at communicating this message through its Committee on Public Information (CPI), as well as severely punishing free speech aimed at criticizing the war effort. Walter Lippmann, who would later author the books Public Opinion (1922) and The Phantom Public (1925), was a member

Jane Addams and John Dewey    183 of the CPI and, despite Dewey’s initial support for the war, would come under fire from Dewey in The Public and Its Problems (1927) for his elitist view that government experts should manipulate public opinion because most public issues were inscrutable to all but the very few. See Ralston (2005). 16. For more exhaustive treatments of Bourne’s criticisms of Dewey’s position on US involvement in WWI, see Livingston (2003) and Nichols (2017). 17. Nevertheless, it is possible to find inspiration for a model of constabulary peacekeeping in Dewey’s writings on international relations. See Soeters and Shields (2013) and Ralston (2013). Also, Shields (2016) notes that Addams supplies a notion of an active, positive peace—​what she calls “peace-​weaving”—​that is perhaps a better model for contemporary peacekeepers. 18. The letter dated October 10, 1894, titled “John Dewey to Alice Chipman Dewey” can be found in Dewey (2002 [1894]). This is the same letter discussed by Stengel (2007, 32–​35). It is also summarized by Morse (2019, 22–​23), who claims that it proves that Dewey “believed that antagonism should not be seen ‘merely negatively’ [contra Addams] but had real ‘functional value’ instead. It could lead to something valuable” (23). To his credit, Dewey wrote Addams a letter to apologize for his disagreeable tone and to admit that she was right in her own way. 19. Hamington (2019) writes: “Addams was indeed a public philosopher.” Shields (2017) also offers a compelling account of Addams as a public philosopher. 20. Indeed, this could also be another instance of the filtering strategy. Op cit. note 1.

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186   Shane J. Ralston Nichols, Christopher McKnight. (2017). Education, expediency, and democratic dilemmas during war time: Inside the Dewey-​Bourne debate. The Journal of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era 16 (4), 438–​455. Pratt, Scott. (2002). Native pragmatism: Rethinking the roots of American philosophy. Indiana University Press. Ralston, Shane J., ed. (2013). Philosophical pragmatism and international relations: Essays for a bold new world. Lexington Books. Ralston, Shane J. (2005). Deliberative democracy as a matter of public spirit: Reconstructing the Dewey-​Lippmann debate. Contemporary Philosophy 25 (3/​4), 17–​25. Ralston, Shane J. (2011). John Dewey’s great debates—​ reconstructed. Information Age Publishing. Ralston, Shane J. (2010). Can pragmatists be institutionalists? John Dewey joins the non-​ideal/​ ideal theory debate. Human Studies 33 (1), 65–​84. Ralston, Shane J. (2009). Hollowing out the Dewey-​Lippmann debate. https://​www.acade​mia .edu/​5517​504/​Holl​owin​g_​Ou​t_​th​e_​De​wey-​Lipp​mann​_​Deb​ate Ralston, Shane J. (2008). In defense of democracy as a way of life: A reply to Talisse’s pluralist objection. Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society 44 (4), 629–​660. Ralston, Shane J. (2007). John Dewey “on the side of the angels”: A critique of Kestenbaum’s phenomenological reading of A Common Faith. Education and Culture 23 (2), 63–​75. Rockefeller, Steven (1991). John Dewey: Religious faith and democratic humanism. Columbia University Press. Seigfried, Charlene Haddock (1999). Socializing democracy: Jane Addams and John Dewey. Philosophy of the Social Sciences 29 (2), 207–​230. Shields, Patricia M. (2017). Jane Addams: Public philosopher, and practicing, feminist pragmatist. In: Patricia Shields (Ed.), Jane Addams: Progressive pioneer of peace, philosophy, sociology, social work and public administration, vol. 10 (pp. 17–​29). Springer International. Shields, Patricia M. (2016). Building the fabric of peace: Jane Addams and Peaceweaving. Global Virtue Ethics Review 7 (2), 21–​33. Shields, Patricia M. (2003). The community of inquiry: Classical pragmatism and public administration. Administration & Society 35(5), 510–​538. Shields, Patricia M. (1999). The community of inquiry: Insights for public administration from Jane Addams, John Dewey and Charles S. Peirce. Presented at the Public Administration Theory Network, Portland, Oregon, March 23–​25, 1999. https://​digi​tal.libr​ary.txst​ate.edu/​ bitstr​eam/​han​dle/​10877/​3979/​fullt​ext.pdf Shields, Patricia M., & Soeters, Joseph. (2013). Pragmatism, peacekeeping, and the constabulary force. In: Shane J. Ralston (Ed.), Philosophical pragmatism and international relations: Essays for a bold new world (pp. 87–​110). Lexington Books. Shook, John. (2000). Dewey’s empirical theory of knowledge and reality. Vanderbilt University Press. Stengel, Barbara. (2007). Dewey’s pragmatic poet: Reconstructing Jane Addams’s philosophical impact. Education and Culture 23 (2), 29–​39. Talisse, Robert B., & Aikin, Scott F. (2008). Pragmatism: A guide for the perplexed. Continuum. Tröhler, Daniel. (2006). The “Kingdom of God on Earth” and early Chicago pragmatism. Educational Theory 56 (1), 89–​105. West, Cornel. (1989). The American evasion of philosophy: A genealogy of pragmatism. University of Wisconsin Press. Westbrook, Robert. (1991). John Dewey and American democracy. Cornell University Press.

Chapter 10

Jane Addams a nd W i l l ia m Jam es on Sp ort a nd Recreat i on Erin C. Tarver and Shannon Sullivan

This chapter contrasts Jane Addams’s analysis of the social significance of recreation and sport with William James’s examination of sport and physical activity to bring out the value of their accounts for philosophy of sport. Addams (1860–​1935) and James (1842–​1910) were roughly contemporaries and maintained a professional friendship. Addams cites James’s work on occasion, and two of Addams’ major works, Democracy and Social Ethics (1902) and Newer Ideals of Peace (1906), were published before James died (Hamington, 2018).1 James corresponded with Addams to praise Democracy as “one of the great books of our time” and to congratulate Addams on the publication of Newer Ideals.2 James’s and Addams’s shared interest in developing alternatives to war has perhaps attracted the most scholarly attention (see, e.g., Schott, 1993), but their work contains additional points of intersection deserving analysis, including their views on sport. This is particularly true given that James’s last known letter to Addams in December of 1909 was effusive in its praise of her newest book, The Spirit of the Youth and the City Streets, in which Addams took up the question of public recreation and sports in cities. In addition to calling the book “simply great,” James went further, declaring, “you are not like the rest of us, who seek the truth and try to express it. You inhabit reality; and when you open your mouth truth can’t help being uttered. I think that this book will have a great and vital influence” (James, 1909, pp. 1–​2, emphasis in original). Whether or not James genuinely believed Addams to have such truth-​revealing powers, his praise of this specific Addams text suggests that more attention to their respective work on recreation, relaxation, and physical activity is needed. As we will suggest, James was correct in his prediction of Addams’s influence, even if he did not adequately recognize the implications of her work for his own. Synthesizing Addams’s writings on recreation and practice of sports at Hull House with James’s essays “The Gospel of Relaxation” and “The Energies of Men,” we argue that

188    Erin C. Tarver and Shannon Sullivan Addams’s theory and practice of recreation provide an important corrective to James’s assessment of the moral and psychological value of physical activity. In particular, we argue that Addams’s emphasis on the social goods of sport and her concern about the lack of sporting opportunities for young women illuminate the limitations of James’s advocacy of an individually focused relaxation via sport as the cure for what ails contemporary Americans. We also demonstrate the different values that Addams and James allot to sport. Although both appear to speak positively of sport, its value for James is merely to eliminate a negative form of energy, whereas its value for Addams is to build positive interpersonal connections and communities.

James on Sport and Over-​tension “The Gospel of Relaxation” was a presentation James made in 1895 to a female student audience at Boston Normal School of Gymnastics in Boston, Massachusetts (USA). The presentation most obviously diagnoses the so-​called American problem of over-​tension and provides concrete suggestions for how to cope with and reduce stress in life. Sport—​for example, skiing, bicycling, snowshoeing, tennis, hiking, and skating—​is the practical advice that James offers. He thinks that Americans, including the women in his audience, should relax, and the practice of sports will help them do so. Get physically active, James tells the female students, and you will loosen up, allowing you to feel and perform better. “Just as a bicycle-​chain may be too tight, so may one’s carefulness and conscientiousness be so tense as to hinder the running of one’s mind,” James (1896) cautions. On this reading, “The Gospel of Relaxation” is a kind of “secular sermon and upbeat self-​help manual” (Gibbon, 2018), one of the fluffier pieces in the Jamesian corpus perhaps because it was written for “girl-​ students” (James, 1896). While not inaccurate, this understanding of “Gospel” overlooks the fact that the talk is grounded in the physiological psychology of the emotions found in James’s 1890 Principles of Psychology. “Gospel” is an applied essay, but it cannot be properly understood absent the theory of emotion provided in Principles. James explicitly announces the essay’s psychological underpinnings in the essay’s first few lines, referencing what in 1896 already was known as the James-​Lange theory and then proceeds to remind his audience that when he speaks of psychology, they are supposed to understand it as fully physiological. While later formulations of discipline of psychology focus almost exclusively on the mind (sometimes including the brain), for James—​and thus for modern psychology at its birth—​psychology was not about the mind considered separate from the body. Jamesian psychology instead concerns the “ceaseless inpouring currents of [bodily] sensations, which help determine what our inner states shall be.” That is “the fundamental law of psychology,” James (1896) reminds us, and it explains why “Gospel of Relaxation” fundamentally concerns “the future of our muscular system” in an increasingly anxious world.

Jane Addams and William James on Sport and Recreation    189 For this reason, we could say that “The Gospel of Relaxation” is only secondarily about relaxation. Primarily, it is about muscular action and the “the well trained and vigorous body,” for these are the things that best alleviate over-​tension, according to James. Americans tend to prize “bottled lightning,” as James colorfully calls it. This is an intense concentration of energy, metaphorically electric and high-​charged. In the case of Americans, however, their energy is “superficial and illusory,” a jacked-​up breathlessness accompanying a frenetic pace that is fueled by anxiety. James blames this condition on Americans’ “habits of jerkiness.” Americans have lost most of their moral elasticity, as James calls it, meaning the stretch-​and-​give that eases a contracted state and “rounds off the wiry edge.” James’s comparison of a person’s moral or moral state with a tightly contracted muscle is not merely a metaphor. A person’s tensely contracted body that never releases is a tensely contracted personality that produces the classically American intensity of “a wild-​eyed look . . . of too desperate eagerness and anxiety or of too intense responsiveness and good-​will.” Both contribute to a psychosomatic weakness and general wearing-​out that result in irritability (James, 1896). In contrast, muscular vigor contracts and then releases the muscle, producing a “blessed internal peace and confidence . . . that wells up from every part of the body of a muscularly well-​trained human being, and soaks the indwelling soul of him with satisfaction.” Physical and moral jerkiness are smoothed out in this activity, resulting in a peaceful, harmonious calm. In the tangle of the physical and moral, physical action is paramount, James tells us. It is what begins the needed transformation to eliminate over-​tension, not willing oneself to be calm and then assuming that one’s body will follow suit and relax. As James reminds us, “action seems to follow feeling, but really action and feeling go together.” Emotion just is bodily states and changes, as Principles argues (James, 1950; see also Sullivan, 2015, 2021). Given their identity, why then is it important to begin transformation with physical action via sport? The answer is that sport is something a person can consciously decide to do and thereby access aspects of themselves that are not easily manipulable. “By regulating the action, which is under the more direct control of the will, we can indirectly regulate the feeling, which is not.” Sport and other forms of physical activity provide access to the non-​conscious and unconscious aspects of ourselves. In that respect, James grants sport and physical activity an extremely important role in human life (James, 1896). Despite James’s praise of the value and usefulness of sport, there nonetheless exist significant problems with his account due to its narrowness. (There also is a gendered dimension to his account, to which we will return.) Those problems are twofold. First, James’s account of sport is very individualistic, limited to praising physical activity’s impact on individuals and failing to consider how the social goods of sport can and do play an extremely important role in human life. This might seem like an odd criticism given that “Gospel” is not merely a physiological essay; it explicitly concerns cultural and national matters. Not all peoples or nations are characterized by bottled lightning, after all. According to James, over-​tension is a particularly American affliction. He even claims that “the American over-​tension and jerkiness and breathlessness and intensity and agony of expression are primarily social, and only secondarily physiological,

190    Erin C. Tarver and Shannon Sullivan phenomena” (James, 1896)? How then do the individualistic, physiological, and social/​ cultural/​national elements of the essay fit together? And why, for example, does James advise individuals to engage in sport rather than in something like social activism to promote social and cultural change in the nation? The answer is that James thinks that individual physiological transformation (via sport) is what is most likely to produce national changes. For James (1896), American over-​tension and jerkiness “are bad habits, nothing more or less, bred of custom and example, born of the imitation of bad models and the cultivation of false personal ideals.” Americans have bad muscular habits not because human physiology necessarily includes the development of over-​contraction and jerkiness, but because American physiology has been shaped/​constituted by a particular society that worships bottled lightning. If taken out of context, however, James’s claim about the social being primary can be misleading. For James, it is not the case that the social comes first and then human physiology follows. Human physiology never exists outside of some kind of social context that provides bodily sensations. For James, this is because of the human tendency to imitate. Individual habits are contagious because people imitate one another, sometimes deliberately but more often unconsciously. Not just bad habits, but also healthy habits can be spread in this way. “If you should individually achieve calmness and harmony in your own person, you may depend up on it that a wave of imitation will spread from you, as surely as the circles spread outward when a stone is dropped into a lake,” James (1896) assures his audience. Individual changes can ripple out to other individuals: “there is only one way to improve ourselves, and that is by some of us setting an example which the others may pick up and imitate till the new fashion spreads.” Here then is how American habits of jerkiness can be changed: start engaging in sport to calm your bottled lightning, and other people will see this change and begin to copy you. We see here that even when James highlights the social, his account remains fundamentally individualistic.3 James exhorts individuals to take up sport so that their physiological and thus spiritual transformation can influence other people, but his approach is always individual to individual. For James, it is not primarily a connection with community that alleviates over-​tension. It instead is one’s individual muscular vigor, even if that changed vigor influences other people also to change their own muscular vigor. James underscores this point when he compares the United States to Great Britain, which he claims does not suffer from habits of jerkiness. “The strength of the British Empire,” James (1896) exclaims, “lies in the strength of character of the individual Englishman, taken all alone by himself. And that strength, I am persuaded, is perennially nourished and kept up by nothing so much as by the national worship, in which all classes meet, of athletic outdoor life and sport.”4 In their value of individual strength developed through physical activity, James thinks that Americans would do well to imitate the English. Strong, healthy nations depend on citizens’ individual character developed through sport and physical activity. For James, the defusing of American bottled lightning is not a social challenge, but an individual one.5 As we later will see, Addams’s understanding of the individual as fundamentally social generates a very different solution to the problem of modern, newly industrialized life in America.

Jane Addams and William James on Sport and Recreation    191

James on Vital Energy The second significant problem with James’s account of sport is that it implicitly limits the scope of sport and physical activity to reducing a negative form of energy (over-​ tension). Sport does not have the ability to help generate positive forms of energy that, according to James, also are essential to human life. In that way, “Gospel” devalues sport and physical activity precisely in the way that it praises them. “Gospel’s” devaluation of sport becomes more apparent when its analysis of energy is contrasted with the positive depiction of energy found in James’s 1906 essay “The Energies of Men,” which was given as a presidential address at the American Philosophical Association. In his presidential address, James identifies and analyzes a different type of energy than the one discussed in “Gospel,” an energy that is “vital” and thus positive, rather than nervous and negative. As we will show, James’s advice for achieving optimal energy levels also changes correspondingly from “Gospel” to “Energies.” Rather than reduce (negative) energy via sport and physical activity, what is needed is for individuals to increase (positive) energy via mental, moral, and spiritual exercises. James’s concern in “Energies” is “the amount of energy available for running one’s mental and moral operations by” (James, 1907, p. 2, emphasis in original). James admits to the vagueness of the concept of energy. He says that we each know when we feel its ups and downs, but it is unclear what it is, and it cannot be reduced to merely the fluctuations of the nervous system. It is clear what energy means in physics: physical work. However, mental and moral work are much more difficult to comprehend. “The problem is too homely,” James (1907, p. 18) laments, “one doesn’t see just how to get in the electric keys and revolving drums [of moral tone and higher levels of power and will] that alone make psychology scientific to-​day.” Despite the lack of scientific understanding of energy, it is crucial to human life. Indeed, “to have its level raised is the most important thing that can happen to a man” (1907, p. 2). We tend to underuse this crucial resource, James laments. The result is that we are sluggish and low on fuel, as if we are stumbling through life half asleep (1907, p. 3). Rather than over-​tension, inhibition is the key culprit that reduces vital energy. Social conventions and intense concern for respectability and decorum make people hesitant to speak forthrightly and honestly. They prefer to stick with safe conventions and are reluctant to explore truths that might be unfashionable or provocative. This mental cowardice, as James calls it, is one manifestation of low energy. If people were brave enough to tap into sealed off aspects of vital energy, their lives would be “freer in many directions” (James, 1907, p. 4). Gaining this freedom will require a change in habit, however. “There seems no doubt,” James warns, “that we are each and all of us to some extent victims of habit-​ neurosis. We have to admit the wider potential range and the habitually narrow actual use” (1907, p. 5). We are plagued with “the habit of inferiority to our full self ” (1907, p. 18). The remedies offered in “Energies” also are strikingly different from those provided in “Gospel.” Rather than sport, James praises powerful life events that can reshape

192    Erin C. Tarver and Shannon Sullivan habit-​neurosis. These include new positions of responsibility—​James clearly has then–​ US president Theodore Roosevelt in mind at this point—​as well as great love affairs, shipwrecks, and wars (James, 1907, p. 6). (James’s inclusion of war in this list downplays its physical challenges, which would seem to make it like sport, and selectively focuses instead on war’s mental and spiritual demands.6) Whatever the pivotal life event, what is key is that it helps increase a person’s willpower. James claims that the will is “the normal opener of deeper and deeper levels of [vital] energy” (1907, p. 9). The tricky part is to figure out how to exercise the will consistently. Since wars and shipwrecks do not happen frequently and everyday life can make the will shallow, spiritual and ascetic exercises, such as yoga, are valuable because they can help maintain will’s depth in the absence of more extreme events. Although in our view the physicality of yoga is inseparable from its spiritual effects, in line with his treatment of war James singles out yoga’s mental aspects, praising yoga as a form of mind-​cure. Quoting a yogi master, James agrees that “this is the truth at the bottom of all mind-​cures. Our thoughts have a plastic power over the body” (James, 1907, p. 12). When James disagrees with the yogi about the importance of physical poses and activities such as breathing, the yogi concedes that James is “quite right that religious crises, love-​crises, indignation-​crises, may awaken in a very short time powers similar to those reached by years of patient Yoga practice. . . . Hindus themselves admit that Samadhi [supreme consciousness] can be reached in many ways and with complete disregard of every physical training” (1907, p. 14). Likewise, James praises the power of ideas and suggestion as crucial vehicles for augmenting vital energy. “Suggestion, especially under hypnosis . . . throws into gear energies of imagination, of will, and of mental influence over physiological processes, that usually lie dormant” (1907, p. 12). Throughout “Energies,” James’s message is that will power, rather than physical activity, is what increases the invigorating, vital forms of energy whose high levels are crucial to human life. Because bottled lightning is depicted as weakening individuals and vital energy strengthens them, we might be tempted to think of them as feminine and masculine, respectively. On that view, sport would be devalued by James because of its link to feminine energy, which needs reduction. The two different audiences for James’s presentations encourage this temptation. “Gospel” clearly was presented to an all-​ woman audience, and it is likely that “Energies” was presented to a predominantly—​ perhaps completely—​ male audience given the demographics of the American Philosophical Association in 1906. (Indeed, the full title of “The Energies of Men” can suggest that vital energy is energy characteristic of men, not merely of human beings.) While not without some merit—​James’s work is notoriously gendered, after all (Seigfried, 2015; Tarver, 2015)—​we think that this temptation should be resisted. One reason is that James never explicitly genders the two energies in either essay. In “Gospel,” American men also are afflicted with bottled lightning, and Englishmen (English men?) are praised for their use of sport to eliminate it. In “Energies,” James explicitly praises “what men and women are able to do and bear” in the face of wartime hardships, which increase vital energy (James, 1907, p. 6, emphasis added). For James,

Jane Addams and William James on Sport and Recreation    193 both men and women can suffer from negative energy (over-​tension) and would benefit from improving their positive energy (vitality). The result of reading “Gospel” and “Energies” together is not necessarily that over-​ tension and bottled lightning should be considered feminine. It instead is that the value James allots to sport and physical activity is not as affirmative of them as it appears when reading “Gospel” in isolation. While James encourages people to engage in sport, it is not for the purposes of increasing positive, life-​supporting energy but for the reduction of negative, life-​sapping energy. What “Energies” helps reveal is that a mind-​body hierarchy persists in James’s work and, relatedly, that bodily activity via sport is useful merely for diminishing negative energy. And here is where the implicitly gendered dimensions of James account shine through given the historical gendering of mind as masculine and body as feminine. Even though sport is praised and recommended in “Gospel,” sport implicitly is a second-​tier activity in James’s philosophy because of its physicality and the kind of energy that it addresses. Sport is not the type of valuable activity that can increase positive forms of energy. In an about-​face from James’s criticism of will in “Gospel,” that honor goes to mind and will power in “Energies.” Keeping at bay the weakness of over-​tension via sport might help pave the way for an increase in positive energy, but that is all that sport and physical activity can do. It cannot increase vital energy the way that mind and willpower can. Synthesizing “Gospel” and “Energies” also shows how James’s individualism pervades James’s two accounts of energy. Whether countering over-​tension or building vital energy, the management of energy that is crucial to human life is merely an individual affair for James. While we do not disagree that individuals can play an important role in the cultivation of their personal wellbeing, we think James’s exclusive focus on individuals is narrow and misguided. Human wellbeing, including its various energy types and levels, is fundamentally connected to social connections, relations, and environments. James’s account of sport fails to acknowledge this fact and is thus less valuable for thinkers and practitioners seeking to assess recreation, sport and its value.

Addams’s Theory of Recreation Like James, Addams was acutely aware that the conditions of modern, newly industrialized life in the United States resulted in psychological and physiological harm to individuals. The crowding of slums and tenement houses in cities, the isolating nature of modern factory work, and the increased emphasis on productivity as the sole purpose of American life combined, Addams believed, to stifle joy and to compound the miseries of immigrant communities and poor people living in Chicago. As a result, Addams devoted her life to work that would mitigate such suffering, particularly via the Hull House settlement. A significant part of that work was a deliberate attempt to counteract the “stupid experiment of organizing work and failing to organize play,” which “has, of course, brought about a fine revenge” (Addams, 1910, p. 9). In what follows, we

194    Erin C. Tarver and Shannon Sullivan examine Addams’s theoretical account of the importance of recreation and the reasons humans cannot do without it, contrasting it with James’s advocacy of relaxation and the management of “energy.” We will argue that Addams’s account is superior to James’s, both in virtue of its ability to account for the social dimensions of the problems faced by contemporary Americans, and in virtue of its practical efficacy, as observable in the Hull House record. There are two crucial components to Addams’s theory of recreation: one, like James’s, is based on a particular view of the human individual as such; the second is connected with Addams’s view of broader society and what it needs to properly function. Of course, because Addams’s view of the individual is fundamentally social, she does not enumerate these as separate issues in her account of recreation.7 Nevertheless, we will treat them separately for the sake of clarity and with a view to contrasting her account with James’s more distinctly. These two components are, respectively, Addams’s view of the human play-​instinct and its need for satisfaction, and her account of democracy in a diverse society. As Addams argued, the conditions of modern life were inimical both to the fundamental human drive to play and the need for citizens of a democracy to care about one another’s interests or well-​being—​and as such, for her, the provision of recreation was an absolute necessity. In an essay titled “The Gospel of Recreation”8—​perhaps an allusion to James’s “Gospel of Relaxation” first delivered a decade prior—​Addams argues passionately for the basic human requirements of play, leisure, and creativity that find expression in the recreational activities pursued across history and cultures. She writes, The classical city promoted play with careful solicitude, building the theater and stadium as it built the market-​place and the temple. The Greeks held their games so integral a part of religion and patriotism that they came to expect from their poets the highest utterances at the very moments when the sense of pleasure released the national life. In the medieval city the knights held their tourneys, the guilds their pageants, the people their dances, and the Church made festival for its most cherished saints with gay street processions, and presented a drama in which no less a theme than the history of creation became a matter of thrilling interest. Only in the modern city have men concluded that it is no longer necessary for the municipality to provide for the insatiable desire for play. In so far as they have acted upon this conclusion, they have entered upon a most difficult and dangerous experiment; and this at the very moment when the city has become distinctly industrial, and daily labor is continually more monotonous and subdivided. (Addams, 1910, p. 9)

Industrialization in the American context, characterized by a ruthless capitalism that reduces human life to its labor value or profit-​making potential, has thus had two distinctly negative effects, which are mutually reinforcing. It discounts as unimportant any activity that does not maximize profit, and at the same time, it isolates laborers—​both from one another and from the products that they produce. Human beings, Addams argues, simply cannot live in such conditions, and so will invariably seek out whatever

Jane Addams and William James on Sport and Recreation    195 sources of pleasure or social connections they can find, even if such sources are ultimately self-​destructive. The shrewdest capitalists, Addams suggests, recognize this fact about human nature, and seek to exploit it by organizing “enterprises which make profit out of this invincible love of pleasure,” specifically by opening “gin-​palaces” that market alcohol consumption and dancing as the sole outlet for young people longing to escape the drudgery of their working lives. At times Addams’s descriptions of these bars and dance halls may sound a bit prudish to contemporary readers—​her discussion of them as “lurid places” full of “vice” in which “little ewe lambs have been so caught upon the brambles” is certainly overwrought. Yet, her concern appears less motivated by moralizing judgment about the evils of alcohol and more by the injustice of a situation in which entire populations are deprived of meaningful interactions by jobs that reduce them to their labor power, and sold a “solution” to their misery that, conveniently, serves to enrich the very class of people most responsible for their working conditions.9 In such establishments, Addams (1910, p. 9) writes, “alcohol is dispensed, not to allay thirst, but, ostensibly to stimulate [gaiety], it is sold really in order to empty pockets.” The result, Addams argues, is not only the exploitation and immiseration of individual workers, but also the corrosion and disruption of social bonds. The lack of outlet for the social and play instincts,10 then, creates a situation in which normal and healthy emotions become “a cancer in the very tissues of society” (Addams, 1910, p. 9). The lack of opportunities for recreation, play, and socialization is particularly dangerous for young people, Addams suggests. In “The Play Instinct and the Arts,” she writes that “it is the business of youth to reaffirm the beauty and joy in the world that such spontaneity may become a source of new vitality, a wellspring of refreshment to a jaded city” (Addams, 2002/​1930, p. 416). Children and youths’ instincts for play, creativity, and novelty are ultimately the source of the human impulse to create art, to seek new forms of expression, and to imagine the world differently. The play instinct’s crucial role in society makes the industrial revolution’s reliance on child labor in factories especially dangerous, Addams warns, as the daily repetition of such monotonous work can only be achieved by “prematurely extinguishing that variety and promise and bloom of life which are the unique possession of youth and the basis of the arts” (2002/​1930, p. 421). And yet, young people are drawn to cities to do such work in numbers never before seen, with the promise of opportunity and dreams of escape. Addams is particularly concerned about the effects of the modern city and its stultifying factory work on young women. Some of her concerns, no doubt, sound laughably puritanical to the contemporary ear—​she recounts, for example, a conversation in which she laments a young man’s efforts to find a “nice girl” in such a “tawdry” place as a public dance hall (Addams, 2001/​1909, p. 12). But others would not be out of place in contemporary feminist discourse. Likening the entry of young women into the workforce to “the discovery of a new natural resource,” Addams (1908, p. 260) warns that the contemporary city’s “ruthless” exploitation of their labor power “deprive[s]‌all of them of their natural form of expression” and encourages the growth of a bleak “[skepticism] of life’s value.” Lacking outlets for play or creativity, young women turn especially

196    Erin C. Tarver and Shannon Sullivan to fashion, which, while perhaps appearing frivolous or silly to outside observers, is a clear effort to assert their own individuality. The young woman who dons an enormous feathered hat, according to Addams (2001/​1909, p. 8), “demands attention to the fact of her existence, she states that she is ready to live, to take her place in the world.” The fact that young women seek outlets in fashion is not indicative of shallowness or materialism; it is reflective of a world that has reduced them to producers and consumers, that has deprived them of meaningful work, and that has constricted their choices for pleasure, socialization, and recreation to those that make profit for others. The problem that a lack of recreation created for young women was only exacerbated, for Addams, during World War I. Speaking to a crowd in St. Louis in 1918, Addams noted that “The drafting of all our available youths has left the girls high and dry, so to speak, because a vast majority of the girls have always depended on their young men friends for recreation,” (St. Louis Post-​Dispatch, 1918, p. 15) whether via trips to the movies or walks in the evenings. With young men away at war or in army camps awaiting deployment, “girls find themselves alone and restless.” This results in a situation in which young women—​“who are morally good,” Addams is quick to point out—​seek companionship and excitement by hanging around army camps. Although she does not spell out precisely what goes on at the camps, Addams notes that they “often lead to disaster for the girls,” and expresses deep concern that such girls are aged fifteen on average, with “some being as young as twelve and thirteen years” (1918, p. 15). The lack of social and recreational outlet, in other words, creates a situation in which girls’ natural desires are exploited to make them easy victims of (presumably) sexual predation by adult male soldiers. Young women and girls, then, are particularly harmed by industrialization and (what would later be called) the military-​industrial complex. Although the lack of recreational opportunities hurts youth in general and impoverishes human life more broadly, it is particularly important, for Addams, that we appreciate the necessity of providing such opportunities for women, whose social position renders them particularly vulnerable. Thus, when Addams (2001/​1909, p. 20) writes, “it is as if our cities had not yet developed a sense of responsibility in regard to the life of the streets, and continually forget that recreation is stronger than vice, and that recreation alone can stifle the lust for vice,” she is not merely engaged in prudish moralizing about sex or alcohol. Rather, the “vice” that concerns Addams does so because it cynically exploits and abuses young women’s natural desires for social connection, recognition, and pleasure. Beyond the necessity for an outlet for the play impulse, the second major reason for Addams’s commitment to recreation is her view of the importance of empathetic connections for the success of democracy in a diverse society. As recreation historian Paul McBride (1989, p. 58) puts it, “It was precisely because of her abiding love of democracy, and her deep respect for the sense of community that is necessary to make it work, that Jane Addams devoted so much effort to the promotion of urban recreation.” Contemporary American democracy is dependent upon the ability of extraordinarily diverse populations to live together, to cooperate, and to respect one another’s goals and

Jane Addams and William James on Sport and Recreation    197 desires as, minimally, having legitimate standing in the public sphere. If the isolation of communities from one another in cities is inimical to such goals, so too is forced homogenization or assimilation to a singular cultural standard. Thus, Addams (1912, p. 616) writes, “the patriotism of the modern state must be based not upon a consciousness of homogeneity but upon a respect for variation, not upon inherited memory but upon trained imagination.” Recreation—​in contrast to mere relaxation or pleasure-​seeking, which may well be done in isolation—​brings people together through the pursuit of some common purpose or activity. In Twenty Years at Hull-​House, Addams describes her thinking about recreational programming (which included everything from sports to military drills to art classes) this way: “It seemed to me that Hull-​House ought to be able to devise some educational enterprise, which should build a bridge between European and American experiences in such wise as to give them both more meaning and a sense of relation” (quoted in Reynolds, 2017, p. 14). It bears emphasizing that the theory of recreation Addams offers here is not merely about showing people what they have in common, and certainly not a facile effort to suggest that “deep down, we’re all the same.” Rather, by suggesting that these activities “give them both more meaning” (emphasis added), Addams indicates an understanding of recreation that makes space for and thrives on the contributions of diverse participants. This is what makes it indispensable for citizens of a diverse democracy. Speaking about the importance of community centers in 1902, Addams declared, Give the people of Chicago, or any other great city, a chance to bathe in community life and a revelation in the social conditions will be brought about. . . Neighborhood social centers will do much to reveal one neighbor to another . . . In other words it means the pooling of lives. The contempt we have for human nature mainly comes from uncultivation. There is a vast amount of experience and knowledge floating about and it is the drawing out of this that is brought about in these gatherings brought for mutual benefit. (St. Louis Post-​Dispatch, 1902, p. 3)

This “revelatory” capacity of recreation again resists the isolation and dehumanization of contemporary city life and factory work. Participating in common activities and experiences with my neighbors gives me opportunities for cooperative and sympathetic interaction that I simply would not have otherwise. As Nate Whelan-​Jackson (2020, p. 560) explains, this matters politically because “for Addams, democracy is not solely a form of government, but a mode of life that demands emotional attunement to our neighbors.” Recreation, insofar as it is creative and collaborative, “is an imaginative co-​ operation that allows for an appreciation of both a common humanity and the uniqueness of another’s characteristics” (2020, p. 568). It is no wonder, then, that Addams put such emphasis on the necessity of provisions for recreation in contemporary cities: it is both a crucial outlet for innate human desires and a desperately needed corrective “to bring together all classes of a community in the modern city unhappily so full of devices for keeping them apart” (Addams, 2001, p. 96).

198    Erin C. Tarver and Shannon Sullivan

Recreation in Practice at Hull House Addams’s theory of recreation clearly informed her practical organization of the activities at Hull House. Her work was not merely to create public spaces for recreation, though she certainly did so, acquiring a building formerly used as a saloon to add onto the Hull House settlement as a coffee house and gymnasium, followed by a tenement house that she succeeded in getting the former owner to tear down so that a playground could be built in its place (McBride, 1989, p. 59). Rather, “she orchestrated recreation and sport programs, managed staff who supervised these programs, and provided financial support and resources to facilitate these” (Reynolds, 2017, p. 15). Indeed, it is difficult to overstate how vast the opportunities for organized recreation—​and particularly organized sport—​were at Hull House. Community members could participate in sports from indoor baseball (or “base ball” as it was known at the time), to fencing, to gymnastics, to military drill draining. Hull House fielded both boys’ and girls’ basketball teams as early as 1896, and the Hull House Boys Club had 1500 members by 1910 (Reynolds 2017, p. 13). There were track meets, boxing competitions, and meticulously recorded schedules to ensure that each team had fair use of the shared gymnasium (Hull House Year Book 1906–​1907). The centrality of organized sport at Hull House was a conscious choice. Not only were sports a natural outlet for the play instinct, but, as Addams (1910a, p. 443) put it, “Young people who work long hours at sedentary occupations, factories and offices [ . . . ] are quick to respond to that fellowship which athletics apparently affords more easily than anything else.” The physical and social isolation of work life made sports particularly appealing to young people. In addition, though, the exertion required by sports was particularly effective in connecting people across and in spite of their cultural differences. As Maurice Hamington (2009, p. 162) has argued, Addams recognized the inclusive potential of athletics because “the physicality and practices of sport appeal to a common denominator of humanity: the body.” At the same time, the cooperative and rule-​governed nature of sports were important for developing the habits of interaction that democracies require. Like many contemporary philosophers of sport, Addams recognized the value of team sports as tools to habituate “abstinence and the curbing of impulse” (quoted in McBride, 1989, p. 61), close attention to rules, and the subordination of immediate self-​interest to the larger goals of the group. Importantly, team sports at Hull House were not limited to those who actively played them. Games were organized as events for spectators, and members of the community regularly attended. In fact—​and perhaps surprisingly to contemporary readers—​ both the men’s and women’s basketball teams at Hull House had a significant enough following that their games were regularly reported on in the Chicago papers, and even drew public praise from the game’s inventor, James Naismith (Reynolds, 2017, p. 13). Sports quite literally brought the diverse Chicago community together, bearing out Addams’s view of them as “a means for crossing social divisions through common concern as player and spectator” (Hamington, 2009, p. 162). The use of sports as recreation

Jane Addams and William James on Sport and Recreation    199 at Hull House, in other words, was inclusive in multiple ways. Not only did sports at Hull House enable athletic engagement across genders, interests, and abilities; they also invited active participation on the part of spectators and community members—​even those whose age or condition precluded playing as a member of the team. In so doing, Addams’s work was prescient, recognizing well before the advent of televised games or elaborate marketing strategies the potential for sports and sports fandom to cultivate feelings of communal identity and connection.11 The most strikingly revolutionary feature of recreation at Hull House, however, was its role in promoting women’s athletics, particularly basketball. Women not only played basketball; they did so in a social context in which there was significant fear and social stigma about women’s participation in athletics at all. Shortly after Naismith’s creation of basketball in 1891, an alternative version for women was created at Smith College, which called for seven rather than five players, who were stationed in fixed positions around the court to minimize their physical exertion. Members of the medical establishment—​including a University of Chicago physician—​warned against even this version of the game, claiming that the exertion required would give young women “enlarged, irritable, and overactive hearts” (quoted in McDermott, 2019). The Illinois State High School Athletic Association took such concerns even further, banning girls’ basketball in 1907 on the grounds of its “roughness” and that “exercise in public is immodest and not altogether ladylike” (quoted in McDermott, 2019). Despite the power of such suspicions of women’s athletics, Addams’s Hull House continued to field and promote its teams in the community, and even moved to adopt the standard, more physically demanding men’s rules in 1903, along with the rest of the Chicago girls basketball league (which was not governed by the high school ruling). As historian Stacy Pratt McDermott has demonstrated, the practice of women’s basketball at Hull House was enormously influential: players from the early Hull House women’s teams went on to direct athletic programs elsewhere in the city; additionally, Hull House’s gymnasium director ultimately became a physical education teacher in the Chicago suburbs, where she significantly expanded athletic opportunities for students there (Reynolds, 2017, p. 15). Accordingly, as McDermott (2019) puts it, “hoops at Hull-​House could arguably be credited with establishing the popularity of basketball in the city of Chicago.” That Addams and her colleagues accomplished this in a context in which there was so much anxiety and suspicion about the dangers of women’s athletics is extraordinary.

Conclusion: Recreation versus Relaxation and Addams’s Corrective of James The women’s basketball program at Hull House was a direct outgrowth of Addams’s philosophical emphasis on the centrality of recreation in moral and social development,

200    Erin C. Tarver and Shannon Sullivan and her determination to remedy the consequences of “the failure of the modern city to organize recreation for young girls.” Her work toward the creation of robust recreational and athletic offerings at Hull House more broadly likewise reflected her commitment to building a community that recognized and appreciated the diversity of its members and their value beyond their labor power. The creation of such a community was necessary not only for the individuals who found an outlet at Hull House, but for the successful practice of democracy in a diverse society. Although James, like Addams, rightly understood the isolating and immiserating dangers of the American emphasis on productivity and the necessity for meaningful activity outside of work, he did not fully grasp, as she did, the positive social potential of recreation. In contrast to James’s, Addams’s approach to recreation, both in her writings and in her practice at Hull House, was community based and committed to the positive social effects of sport and recreation for both the individual and the community. Addams’s recognition of these positive social effects is significant historically, of course: in addition to popularizing basketball (and particularly women’s basketball) in the Chicago area, her work at Hull House paved the way for the transformation of American cities through community centers and public parks, and it transformed the field of social work from an emphasis on the medicalization of social problems and the management of individual “cases” to one that insisted on an approach to individuals as necessarily connected to their larger environment (Reynolds, 2017, p. 12). Beyond these contributions, however, Addams’s approach to recreation is significant for what it can tell us about the present moment and how we might foster a more inclusive, caring democratic society. In contrast to James’s individualistic description of relaxation and the dissipation of nervous energy, Addams’s theory and practice of recreation demonstrate the necessity of activities that draw individuals outside of themselves and connect them in tangible ways with their communities. This is true not only of those who actively participate in athletic activities, but also of those who come together around them as spectators, since, as Nate Whelan-​Jackson (2020, p. 573) insightfully puts it, “esteem for an athletic performance requires a social backdrop that acknowledges the possibility of such a performance’s value.” In other words, coming together to watch a women’s basketball game conveys the idea that the women who compete are agents whose activities and efforts are worth our time and attention. In a broader social context in which women’s activities have traditionally been devalued or dismissed, such recognition, as Tarver (2017, p. 173) has argued, can “constitute a site of resistance” to oppression. Addams’s approach to recreation demonstrates that such resistance is possible through something as deceptively simple as team sports at community centers. The success of women’s basketball at Hull House highlights the importance of social structure, shared goals, and even healthy competition in addressing the problems of anxiety, isolation, and nervous energy that James rightly diagnoses, but does not adequately address. Given the challenges of our current political environment, and the isolation and anxiety that have only been exacerbated by the global pandemic, Addams’s recognition of the value of recreation and sports—​particularly for women—​remains as crucial and incisive as ever.

Jane Addams and William James on Sport and Recreation    201

Notes 1. Addams’s Twenty Years of Hull House was published in November 1910, and James died in August of that year. 2. https://​digi​tal.jan​eadd​ams.ram​apo.edu/​items/​show/​1118; https://​digi​tal.jan​eadd​ams.ram​ apo.edu/​items/​show/​1848. 3. Craig 2015 is more sanguine about the social dimensions of “Gospel” and finds in the essay a criticism of individualism, especially as associated with ideals of labor. 4. James’s praise of empire here is somewhat curious given his criticism of “bigness” and corresponding anti-​imperialism (Livingston, 2016). However, we do not think it should be read as a throw-​away remark, especially given James’s admiration for President Theodore Roosevelt and the connection between manhood and national/​racial dominance that infused the late 19th and early 20th century in the United States and elsewhere (Bederman, 1996). 5. Is individualism an inevitable byproduct of a physiological psychology? The answer, in brief, is no: human bodies are not necessarily or always siloed into individualist compartments. They communicate emotionally and, more generally, live across and through their skins (Brennan, 2004; Sullivan, 2001). Giving primacy to physiology thus does not necessarily translate into individualism. While James neglects the importance of community in sport and physical activity for achieving freedom from over-​tension and anxiety, the physiological dimensions of his psychology should not be blamed for this flaw. (See also note 7 below.) 6. In “The Moral Equivalent of War,” presented in 1906, James also focuses on war’s alleged ability to increase a person’s spiritual energies. While James’s pacifist goal in that essay is to find substitutes for war, successful substitutes will not sacrifice the so-​called martial virtues of “intrepidity, contempt of softness, surrender of private interest, [and] obedience to command” (https://​www.uky.edu/​~eus​he2/​Paja​res/​moral.html). In that regard, Jamesian equivalents of war do not eliminate the moral effects of war. See Tarver (2020) for an application of James’s equivalency strategy to the contemporary problem of football that goes a step further by rejecting James’s quasi-​anti-​war denigration of femininity and the hypermasculine promotion of hardness. 7. Of course, James, too, offers a social account of the individual, at least in his Principles of Psychology. (See note 5 above.) As we have argued elsewhere, however, James’s moral philosophy is not always consistent in this regard, seeming to set up particular individuals as outside social influence (Tarver, 2015). 8. The essay is a version of the opening pages of Addams’s book, The Spirit of the Youth and the City Streets, published a year prior. 9. Addams was certainly not the only progressive era activist who held such negative opinions about the traffic in liquor. Although it has been historically popular to consider prohibition evidence of American prudishness, historian of prohibition Mark Lawrence Schrad (2019, 2021) has persuasively argued that this explanation fundamentally misunderstands most prohibition movements, which were found worldwide, not only in the United States, and which were regularly linked (often explicitly) to broader social justice and anti-​colonial movements. Many prohibitionists, like Addams, objected to the sale of alcohol because they believed it a tool of exploitation and oppression, not because they were fundamentally opposed to its consumption. 10. As Shannon Jackson (2000, p. 213) has noted in Lines of Activity, Addams’s recognition of the play instinct predates and anticipates the influential theory of human nature, culture, and play developed by play theorist John Huizinga in his Homo Ludens.

202    Erin C. Tarver and Shannon Sullivan 11. For more on the role of sports fandom in contemporary American identity, see Tarver’s (2017) The I in Team.

References Addams, Jane. (1908). Recreation for girls in cities. In Everett B. Mero (Ed.), American Playgrounds: Their Construction, Equipment, Maintenance and Utility, pp. 260–​261. America Gymnasia Co. Addams, Jane. (1910). The gospel of recreation. The Northwestern Christian Advocate (January 5), 9–​10. https://​digi​tal.jan​eadd​ams.ram​apo.edu/​items/​show/​6156. Addams, Jane. (1910a). Twenty years at Hull-​House. Macmillan. Addams, Jane. (1912). Recreation as a public function in urban communities. American Journal of Sociology 17(5), 615–​619. Addams, Jane. (2001/​1909). The spirit of the youth and the city streets. University of Illinois Press. Addams, Jane. (2002/​1930). The play instinct and the arts. In Jean Bethke Elshtain (Ed.), The Jane Addams Reader (pp. 416–​431). Basic Books. Bederman, Gail. (1996). Manliness and civilization: A cultural history of gender and race in the United States, 1880-​1917. University of Chicago Press. Brennan, Teresa. (2004). The transmission of affect. Cornell University Press. Craig, Megan. (2015). Habit, relaxation, and the open mind. In Shannon Sullivan and Erin Tarver (Eds.), Feminist Interpretations of William James (pp. 165–​188). Penn State Press. Gibbon, Peter. (2018). The thinker who believed in doing: William James and the philosophy of pragmatism. https://​www.neh.gov/​hum​anit​ies/​2018/​win​ter/​feat​ure/​the-​thin​ker-​who-​belie​ ved-​in-​doing-​0. Hamington, Maurice. (2009). The social philosophy of Jane Addams. University of Illinois Press. Hamington, Maurice. (2018). Jane Addams. In E. Zalta (Ed.), Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Metaphysics Research Lab, Stanford University. https://​plato.stanf​ord.edu/​entr​ ies/​add​ams-​jane/​. Hull-​House. (1907). Hull-​House Year Book 1906-​1907. Hull House Association Records, Jane Addams Digital Edition, Ramapo College. http://​digi​tal.jan​eadd​ams.ram​apo.edu/​items/​ show/​4797. Jackson, Shannon. (2000). Lines of activity: Performance, historiography, Hull-​House domesticity. University of Michigan Press. James, William. (1896). The gospel of relaxation. https://​www.uky.edu/​~eus​he2/​Paja​res/​jgos​ pel.html. James William. (1906). The moral equivalent of war. https://​www.uky.edu/​~eus​he2/​Paja​res/​ moral.html. James, William. (1907). The energies of men. The Philosophical Review 16(1), 1–​20. James, William. (1909). Letter to Jane Addams. December 13. https://​digi​tal.jan​eadd​ams.ram​ apo.edu/​items/​show/​3295. James, William. (1950). The principles of psychology, vol. 2. Dover Publications. Livingston, Alexander. (2016). Damn great empires! William James and the politics of pragmatism. Oxford University Press. McBride, Paul M. (1989). Jane Addams, 1860-​1935. In Hilmi Ibrahim (Ed.), Pioneers in Leisure and Recreation (pp. 53–​63). American Alliance for Health, Education, Recreation, and Dance.

Jane Addams and William James on Sport and Recreation    203 McDermott, Stacy Pratt. (2019, Dec 18). Women’s hoops at Hull-​House. Jane Addams Papers Project. https://​jan​eadd​ams.ram​apo.edu/​2019/​12/​wom​ens-​hoops-​at-​hull-​house/​ Reynolds II, Jerry F. (2017). Jane Addams’ forgotten legacy: Recreation and sport. Journal of Issues in Intercollegiate Athletics, 2017, Special Issue, 11–​18. https://​csri-​jiia.org/​jane-​add​ams -​forgot​ten-​leg​acy-​rec​reat​ion-​and-​sport/​ Schott, Linda. 1993. Jane Addams and William James on alternatives to war. Journal of the History of Ideas 54(2), 241–​254. Schrad, Mark Lawrence. (2019). Misconceptualizing prohibition: Problems with American cultural explanations. In Susannah Wilson (Ed.), Prohibitions and Psychoactive Substances in History, Culture and Theory (pp. 10–​32). Routledge. Schrad, Mark Lawrence. (2021). Smashing the liquor machine: A global history of prohibition. Oxford University Press. Seigfried, Charlene Haddock. (2015). The feminine-​mystical threat to scientific order. In Shannon Sullivan and Erin Tarver (Eds.), Feminist Interpretations of William James (pp. 15–​ 56). Penn State Press. St. Louis Post-​Dispatch. (1902). School halls to be social centers. February 24. St. Louis Post-​Dispatch. (1918). Jane Addams talks on girl problem and war, June 5. Sullivan, Shannon. (2001). Living across and through skins: Pragmatism, feminism, and transactional bodies. Indiana University Press. Sullivan, Shannon. (2015). James and feminist philosophy of emotion. In Shannon Sullivan and Erin Tarver (Eds.), Feminist Interpretations of William James (pp. 189–​209). Penn State Press. Sullivan, Shannon. (2021). William James on emotion: Physiology and/​as spirituality. In Sarin Marchetti (Ed.), The Jamesian Mind. Routledge Philosophical Minds Series (pp. 61–​69). Routledge. Tarver, Erin C. (2015). Lady pragmatism and the great man: The need for feminist pragmatism. In Shannon Sullivan and Erin Tarver (Eds.), Feminist Interpretations of William James (pp. 98–​117). Penn State Press. Tarver, Erin C. (2017). The I in team: Sports fandom and the reproduction of identity. University of Chicago Press. Tarver, Erin C. (2020). The moral equivalent of football. The Pluralist 15(2), 91–​109. Whelan-​Jackson, Nate. (2020). Disability and the playing field: Jane Addams, sports, and the possibility of inclusion. Transactions of the Charles Peirce Society 56(4): 558–​579.

Chapter 11

Jan e Addam s a nd Ma ry Park er Follet t ’ s Se a rc h for C o ope rat i on Joseph Soeters

Introduction Jane Addams (1860–​1935) and Mary Parker Follett (1868–​1933) were American women, living more or less in the same period of time, the former in Chicago, the latter in Boston. The lives of both women went in different directions, but the similarities in their thinking are remarkable (e.g., Whipps, 2014; Soeters, 2020). Addams and Follett were kindred spirits. The two of them were interested in the grassroots development of democracy and were convinced that elections and primacy of the majority in a voting system are not a sufficient basis of democratic consent (Ansell, 2011, pp. 17–​18; Whipps, 2012). Both stressed the importance of local communities in making democratic decisions. Both acted in a context of rapid urbanization that was causing new challenges at the community level. Both were concerned about the social ills of growing industrialization; both refuted self-​interest as the main driver of action, and both recognized the importance of looking at others’ interests, thus bringing raw capitalism into question (Prieto & Phipps, 2014). Both, Addams and Follett, used the principles of pragmatism in their work, and both were successful in the development of approaches and theories to understand and disentangle conflictual dynamics. What is more: both attempted to foster cooperation between groups of people in everyday practice. And finally, both had an interest in international affairs: Addams, from early on in her career, being a member of the anti-​imperialist league in the late 1890s and being at the foundation of the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom in 1915, and Follett, developing a keen interest in the League of Nations, but only later in her life (e.g., Armstrong, 2002).

206   Joseph Soeters Despite these similarities, there were also discrepancies. Jane Addams’s actions started with community engagement, social work, and political action advocating women’s suffrage, actions that gradually morphed into full-​time peace work. Mary Parker Follett, at first more of a political scientist and philosopher, became gradually more involved in spheres of business and entrepreneurship. Whereas Follett nowadays is seen as a thinker in management studies with a penchant for organizational psychology (Graham, 1996), Addams has a status as a sociologist, social philosopher, and founder of social work as an academic discipline. Perhaps because of these divergences, there was amazingly little interaction between the two. As far as is known, there is no reference to Jane Addams’s work in any of Follett’s writings. Conversely, Jane Addams knew of Follett’s work and praised her book on Creative Experience at least once, in the Second Twenty Years at Hull-​House (Addams, 1930, pp. 202–​209; Whipps, 2012, p. 121; Whipps, 2014, pp. 413–​4 14). She referred to Follett’s work in the context of her own experiences in foreign relations and presented those experiences to illustrate the importance of mutual action, common purpose, joint action, and genuine understanding (Whipps, 2014, p. 414). Addams particularly mentioned occurrences in China and events in relation to Ireland striving for liberation from England. These ideas were very much focused on the resolution of acrimonious social conflicts, which was an ambition both Addams and Follett shared. Within Follett’s framework of circular responses,1 conflicts are viewed as constructive and essential for change (Armstrong, 2002). This approach compares favorably to Addams’s insights about solving conflicts by bringing the different interests and positions to the table, scrutinizing and trying to understand them in a positive manner, and regarding them as equally important. Both women’s approaches emphasized the importance of active listening, keen perception, and the rejection of “either/​or” tactics. It may be possible not only to compare both women’s work on conflict resolution and the creation of cooperation but also to combine and integrate these views into a more general, updated theory of collaboration. Such a theory may be based on the combination of Addams’s and Follett’s work with recent results from game-​ theoretical exercises, social experiments, computer simulations, and institutional analyses. These insights have the potential to become influential in today’s world, which still knows many tedious conflicts. About a hundred years old, Addams’s and Follett’s ideas may serve today as guiding concepts to develop new paths in the search for cooperation, in everyday life, as well as in the larger arena of international politics. This chapter does not pertain to Addams’s important work on peace activism, military affairs, and war (see Soeters, 2018, 65ff.; Shields and Soeters in this volume). Instead, this chapter focuses on Addams’s accomplishments in resolving conflicts in Chicago and its immediate neighborhoods: engagements in civilian life (e.g., Addams, 1902, 1905). In particular, this aspect of her work connects with Follett’s contributions.

Jane Addams and Mary Parker Follett’s Search for Cooperation    207

Addams on Conflict Handling and Getting People Together at Work In Addams’s view, conflicts, violent or not, can be avoided by trying to understand the other with sympathy and understanding, certainly not with direct rejection (e.g., Hamington, 2009). Addams claimed that serious attempts to comprehend and intervene in what is going on and what is driving the main actors in a disagreement might prevent the emergence and ongoing of tensions and disputes. At the beginning of her time as the founder of the Hull House, she developed an interest in solving tensions and conflicts of interest as they resulted from differences in working and living conditions in Chicago’s nearby neighborhoods. In a number of her early analyses, Addams (1895, 1899, 1907) stipulated that—​next to community life—​the labor movement was a crucial factor in understanding modern, urban life in the neighborhoods where she and her friends lived and conducted so many activities (see also Hamington, this volume). The Hull-​House Maps and Papers, co-​authored by Jane Addams, analyzed the conditions of the immigrant workers, and Addams’s analysis of the precarious work conditions of laborers in the sewing trade (Addams, 1895, pp. 46–​51) resonates with parts of Karl Marx’s descriptions of such situations in Das Kapital. Addams described how immigrant workers in the sewing industry were exploited as they gradually earned smaller wages for their efforts. She showed that the work process was continuously subdivided into smaller parts, as a consequence of which craftsmanship in tailoring became less valuable. Jane Addams emphasized the importance of trade unions to counter such developments. She facilitated union organizing and thought strikes could be a positive force in labor relations. She even spoke about a “sympathetic strike” if workers in one economic sector show solidarity with workers in other domains. She, however, rejected strikes if these would produce negative actions—​riots, blockades, sabotage, violence. Addams was critical of “class warfare,” consistent with her later rejection of warfare altogether (Fischer, 2019, p. 50). But, if the labor movement is the expression of an “immense fund of altruism” leading to “equality of condition and opportunity,” “it is clear that the labor movement is at the bottom an ethical movement” (Addams, 1895 [2002], p. 59). In this vein, she addressed “the notion of universal kinship,” and she dreamed of “the consciousness of a common brotherhood” (Addams, 1895 [2002], pp. 57, 60). A well-​known article in Addams’s repertoire is her examination of the Pullman strike (Addams, 1912 [2002]; Hamington, 2009, pp. 132–​138; Hamington, this volume). This strike originated in the Chicago area at the Pullman Company, which built luxury railroad passenger cars. The upheaval was caused by the reduction of wages while the rents for the houses in the company city were unaffected. The strike got out of hand, expanding nationwide as all railway transport with Pullman cars got blocked. After some time, the federal government intervened with military means leading to the loss

208   Joseph Soeters of lives. The strike ended after court decisions ordered to get the railroads rolling again, and sympathy among the general public had waned. Addams had been drawn into the conflict as she was asked to arbitrate the dispute. This effort ended without success, as Pullman did not want to speak with her, indicating that “there is nothing to arbitrate” (Addams, 1912 [2002, p. 171]). Nonetheless, this experience inspired her to ponder the events that had been going on. In her article, Addams compared the dynamics between the striking workers and the president of the Pullman Company with the conflictual relation between the royal father and his youngest daughter in Shakespeare’s well-​known play King Lear (Addams, 1912). Addams observed the ingratitude that both the father and the philanthropic president of the company perceived. Both had demonstrated good intentions throughout their lives, far exceeding their duties as a father toward his children or an employer toward his employees—​and they were applauded for these virtues. Yet, they were criticized because they had blundered in the conflicts they had become part of, the one with his daughter, the other with his workers. Both had displayed a degree of escalating commitment to a failing course of action that is an often occurring social-​psychological reaction to emotion-​loaded confrontations and risky situations in general (e.g., Brockner, 1992). In her analysis, both major characters in the conflict could not see the legitimate demands the others expressed. “By following the dictates of conscience by pursuing their own ideals,” they left their “ideals unconnected with the consent of their fellow-​ men” (Addams, 1912 [2002], p. 175). In these sentences, one can sense the sadness with which Jane Addams came to this conclusion. From these two publications, it becomes clear Jane Addams was not a Marxist. Although her analysis of worsening labor-​management relations was as sharp and insightful as Marxist analyses almost a century later2 (e.g., Braverman, 1974), she did not believe in Marxist solutions to the social and economic evils she witnessed in her everyday life. She considered it dangerous to promote oppositional stances between employers and employees, between capitalists and workers (Fischer, 2019, p. 50). Yet, she was always involved in improving the position of the less well-​off and the not-​so-​ powerful. She certainly attempted to mitigate and amend the rough sides of raw capitalism (e.g., Prieto and Phipps, 2014). Therefore, it is not surprising to see Jane Addams being acknowledged as a “reluctant socialist,” as Maurice Hamington (2009, pp. 127ff.) phrased it. Her activism is, for instance, also illustrated by her work on founding the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) much later in 1920, which until now remains the nation’s premier defender of the rights and freedoms guaranteed by the Constitution (Chabon and Waldman, 2020). In another chapter (Shields and Soeters, this volume), several specific features of Addams’s ways of handling conflicts and fostering cooperation between people have been listed. Among them are sympathetic understanding, affectionate interpretation and openness to new views and insights, the avoidance of rigid moralism and moral chauvinism, the striving for lateral and broad progress, and the importance of working bottom-​up with the ones who are closest to you—​those who live in your own neighborhood. In her work, it is never about punishment, revenge, or coercion, but all the time

Jane Addams and Mary Parker Follett’s Search for Cooperation    209 about cooperation and bringing different positions together (Hamington, 2009; Shields, 2017; Burnier, 2021). Addams expressed that democracy should have a meaning in everyday life and that true democracy is based on the participation of all. In Addams’s view, democracy begins with actions in the neighborhoods. Crucial in Addams’s way of thinking and acting in her Hull House time is her pragmatic attitude and philosophy of life, aiming at the improvement of living and working conditions for all, particularly those who live closest to you. This includes the most mundane matters such as hygiene and physical exercise for children, about which most men would not care a lot about. As such, she was a true American, a child of her time but most of all a feminist with social ethical views (Shields, 2006). Her practical touch goes along with a modus vivendi that has later and elsewhere been coined as social bricolage (Di Domenica, Tracey, & Haugh, 2010). This concept contains three interrelated elements: (1) making do with what is at hand for new purposes, (2) the refusal to be constrained by limitations, and (3) improvisation. These elements can be recognized in Jane Addams’s work at Hull House for so many years, always with peace in mind. She believed in cooperative actions, not in fights.

Follett on Conflict Handling and Getting People Together at Work A Bostonian, Mary Parker Follett, had the opportunity to enroll at the newly opened Harvard Annex, a non-​degree academic program for women, who were not permitted to attend Harvard University. There she studied history and political science (Whipps, 2014, 2015; Eylon, 1998; McKenna and Pratt, 2015, pp. 129–​130). These early years of study, including some time in Cambridge, England, resulted in a first book, which was on the Speaker of the House of Representatives in US politics and government (Follett, 1896). In this book, she combined interviews with former politicians in the House of Representatives and the analysis of written sources (Graham, 1996, 11–​32). This study of power games in American politics was a specimen of what nowadays would be seen as a qualitative study in social or political science (Mckenna and Pratt, 2015, p. 130). It attracted nationwide attention and gave her a name in the Boston community. She started to act as a social activist, striving to make school buildings throughout the city available for educational, social, and recreational activities in the evenings. After some time, she successfully realized this ambition. She then got involved in setting up placement bureaus and centers of vocational guidance (Whipps, 2015). This brought her on the path of industrial relations, giving her a position in arbitration boards, minimum-​ wage boards, and public tribunals. In particular, she got involved in issues of employee representation and collective bargaining. After a series of smaller publications and public speeches, Follett published a new book, The New State, in which she stated that group processes are essential to attain true

210   Joseph Soeters democracy. Such group processes consist of individuals taking part in the decision-​ making process and accepting responsibility for the result (Follett, 1918). In Follett’s eyes, democracy should be more than just “majority rule and ballot boxes” (Armstrong, 2002; Ansell, 2011). Like Jane Addams, she stated that neighborhood needs are the basis of politics. Politics should no longer be outside “our daily life”; in her own words: “we are now beginning to recognize . . . that the work we do, the conditions of that work, the houses in which we live, the water we drink, the food we eat, the opportunities for bringing up our children, that in fact the whole area of our daily life should constitute politics.” And, by consequence, a woman should not be given a place in politics, but “woman is in politics; no power under the sun can put her out” (Follett, 1918, pp. 189–​190). Additionally, Follett talked about the self-​and-​others illusion, as “the question is not what is best for me or for you, but for all of us” (Follett, 1918, pp. 79ff., 81). Follett’s fame even increased when she published a third book, Creative Experience, which—​as mentioned earlier—​was the book Jane Addams referred to. In this book, Follett (1924) developed her view of people’s actions as reactions to other people’s actions that are followed by actions by the latter responding to these reactions again, and so on, ad infinitum. Therefore, all responses are circular responses, as Follett put it in this book, which put a strong emphasis on group dynamics in the context of a larger whole. Thus, in her eyes, all human relations are in constant flux and always connected to one another. It was a message with a large impact in business (Whipps, 2015, p. 120). In the 1920s and early 1930s, she lectured in the United States and the United Kingdom on issues of leadership, control, coordination, the giving of orders, authority, and conflict between individuals and groups (Follett, 1940, 1949; Eylan, 1998). Gradually, she developed a career as a management scholar and an expert in organizational behavior. Explaining her preference for the business domain, she was convinced that management in enterprises was more vital and more inclined to experimental thinking than any other atmosphere of human action. In the context of this chapter, Follett’s understandings of conflict dynamics—​with the goal to gain bottom-​up consent (Ansell, 2011, pp. 154ff.)—​are particularly important. Knowing how to solve conflicts opens up the gates to cooperation. Contrary to mainstream thinking, Follett deemed conflicts as something essential in human lives. In her own words: “conflict is a fact of life”; “instead of being viewed as warfare, conflict should be seen as the legitimate expression of differences”; and “fear of difference is fear of life itself.” And, stated differently, “as conflict—​difference—​is here in the world, as we cannot avoid it, we should, I think, use it. Instead of condemning it, we should set it to work for us. Why not?” (Follett, 2013 [1940], p. 30; Child, 1996; also: Soeters, 2020, pp. 25ff.). Conflicts—​for simplicity’s sake, between two parties3—​can be solved in three manners, according to Follett (2013 [1940], pp. 31–​49), who uses logical and creative thinking and practical experiences as her guidelines (Armstrong, 2002). All these manners can be recognized in everyday realities at all levels—​in households, neighborhoods, work organizations, and politics, then and now (Armstrong, 2002). The first way to end a conflict is by domination, which aims at coercion, punishment, victory, and conquest. This obviously results in power over the other (e.g., Ansell, 2009). Throughout history, this has been an attractive, thrilling, and fascinating

Jane Addams and Mary Parker Follett’s Search for Cooperation    211 option. For many people, particularly men, there is nothing as exciting as a good and risky fight because the gains of a victory are likely to be high. Yet, those results often do not last for long—​although sometimes they do. If not voluntarily submitting and accommodating to the new situation4 (Armstrong, 2002), the losing faction will feel frustrated and look for opportunities to strike back. This retaliation will hurt the faction that was so victorious previously. A vicious cycle of strike and strike back, of continuous escalation, is then likely to emerge. Follett was particularly critical of the power-​over option. A better option seems to occur when the two rivaling parties decide to settle for a compromise. Nonetheless, compromising, which essentially is splitting differences between two points of view, is again a solution Follett did not prefer. Follett argued that compromises to end controversies, although better than domination, contain intrinsic difficulties. She claimed compromises are futile; they are not ideal because every party in the conflict needs to give up some of its demands. Concessions render everyone displeased because the final outcome will not be the best solution on either side. The truth does not lie somewhere between the two sides, as she put it. Striving for compromises also assumes that the two sides in the conflict are static, whereas in reality, people can shift, adapt, and refine their preferences and positions during the process, as a result of the conflict’s dynamics. After all, all human relations are in constant flux—​ hence her disapproval and her wording of compromises as “sham reconciliation” and “a postponement of the issues” (Armstrong, 2002). The best solution, Follett argues, is to come to integration, which is a new solution to the problem and conflict at hand and a new way to foster cooperation (Armstrong, 2002). Integration is based on a process of attempting to achieve a qualitative change in thinking, in seeking new and creative answers to the challenges ahead, and in realizing an innovation with which everyone can live. Such a process requires that all factions involved first put their cards on the table in terms of goals, interests, and positions, and subsequently examine them in a neutral way. This should be based on participation in decision-​making and equality in responsibility, voice, and authority (Whipps, 2014, p. 416). Emotional, antagonistic, and derogatory language as a form of moral chauvinism, or on the other hand praising qualifications, should be avoided—​there should be no mention of superiority or weakness with respect to any of the participants. From there, it becomes conceivable to reevaluate and maybe align those differences, possibly by formulating a creative invention by seeing things differently. “It is about going back to the basics to find common ground” (Mintzberg, 1996, p. 202). The famous example Follett used was about opening a window in a library to satisfy the need for fresh air without someone getting cold—​two different needs and interests expressed by two people in the library’s room. According to Follett, the solution is to open the window, someplace farther away where no one is sitting. This is a simple example without severe consequences, even though during the COVID-​19 pandemic the ventilating and air conditioning of closed rooms became an important factor in limiting the spread of the virus. The example gives an idea of how conflicts in principle can be used constructively. Solutions should be turned into a practical “proposed activity”; merely theorizing only provides obstacles to integration. “I have been interested

212   Joseph Soeters to watch how often disagreement disappears when theorizing ends and the question is of some definite activity to be undertaken” (Follett, 2013 [1940], p. 46). Conflict resolution via integration will create power with the other(s) instead of power over the other(s) (Follett, 2013 [1940], pp. 95–​116). This is the essential difference between integration and domination. Empowerment at the workplace is today’s keyword to indicate the essence of power with the others (Eylon, 1998). It entails the idea that jointly developed power, horizontal cooperation, cooperative thinking, and collective creativity, based on the free exchange of information, is essential to create high performance and satisfaction in any work organization. In this connection, Follett rejected the giving of orders, the regular bossing around that was and today still seems so standard in conventional work organizations (Ansell, 2011, pp. 69ff.). In her view, commanding—​or forcing someone to obediently do something—​ is an outdated practice. It arbitrarily disregards one of the most crucial aspects of human life, namely people’s wish to be in control of their own life. Being bossed around is detrimental to one’s pride, self-​esteem, and self-​reliance, and it decreases one’s sense of responsibility. For orders to be tolerable, they should be depersonalized for order-​giver and order-​receiver alike, and they should be given with a reason, according to what the situation demands (Follett, 1949, p. 26; Soeters, 2020, p. 28). Besides, the giving of orders may be less efficacious considering the covert influence of the order-​receivers who supply—​and sometimes manipulate—​the information on which the new orders are based (Collins, 1992, p. 85). For many reasons, the giving of orders may be based on a partial illusion of efficacy as it always entails the potential for conflict (Collins, 1992, p. 27). In yet another piece, Follett addresses the psychology of control (Follett, 2013 [1940], pp. 201–​209]). From a management perspective, control in work processes can best be achieved by uniting the ideas of one’s employees and oneself, as Follett (2013 [1940], p. 202) explained. Control preferably is a matter of unity and integration because this way, self-​ direction is most likely to emerge. Coercive attention and steering by general managers is much less effective, because no matter how powerful, bosses are mostly also dependent on their workers. Hence, like Jane Addams, Follett opposed clashes or even the stressing of different interests and views. Getting different views and interests on one level seems more constructive in her eyes. Employees should not be prepared to meet a strike situation, but to create a strike-​less situation (Follett, 2013 [1940], p. 208). Here again, one can clearly see how much Addams and Follett converge in their ways of thinking.

From Comparison to Integration: Toward Substantiated Theories on Cooperation Mary Parker Follett and Jane Addams share one aspect that has not yet been discussed. Although both were successful and impactful throughout their lives, they also

Jane Addams and Mary Parker Follett’s Search for Cooperation    213 experienced, at least occasionally, the feeling of being outsiders. In Addams’s case, she was severely criticized when she opposed US military intervention in WWI. Although Follett had established a status as a management expert, she operated outside the mainstream of industrial and business affairs. She was not always fully understood at the time she voiced her views, certainly not only, but also because it was a “man’s world” in which she acted (e.g., Nelson, 2017). Both women developed their thoughts outside the main, predominantly male, established thought communities (Zerubavel, 1997)—​cognitive bubbles, in today’s parlance—​that dominated their respective living and working areas in Chicago and Boston. Even though the insights of Addams and Follett at times may have met with doubt, scorn, and neglect, they are highly relevant today (e.g., Whipps, 2015). For instance, Melissa Schilling (2000) used Follett’s thoughts about participation in decision-​making to advance theoretical stakeholder thinking in management. She pointed to the need for modern organizations to integrate the varying interests inside and outside of the organization. Such a broader approach will help to improve the organization’s legitimacy, she argued. An attempt to integrate varying interests may for instance lead to changes in the composition of an organization’s management staff (more women or minority groups aboard, for example), hence influencing the organization’s policies and general direction. For instance, the access of activists expressing concerns about sustainability and climate change into companies’ decision-​making boards is an illustration of such developments (e.g., Whipps, 2012).5 Expressing such views, Follett was “decades ahead of her time” (Schilling, 2000). Addams’s analysis of work conditions and labor disputes may be seen as a forerunner in the sociology of work and industry in general, and the sociology of labor unions and labor disputes in particular. Her work was famously continued by Gouldner’s analysis of a wildcat strike in the late 1950s (Gouldner, 1965) and more recently in an imperative study by Bacharach, Bamberger, and Sonnenstuhl (1996). In the latter study, the authors use concepts such as dissonance reduction and the alignment, misalignment, and realignment of logics of action in order to understand organizational transformation. In their examination of a large-​sized labor dispute in the American airline industry, these scholars did not refer to Jane Addams’s work. Still, their analysis is reminiscent of the emphases she always put on such matters. To foster renewed cooperation, the authors demonstrated the importance of realigning the logics of action of management and flight attendants that had become misaligned due to a suddenly surfacing conflict of interests in the context of airline deregulation. This course of events is what Jane Addams probably had in mind when she accepted the invitation to arbitrate the dispute at the Pullman Company. Here, in the airline industry, the unproductive escalation to a failing course of action, fortunately, did not occur. But next to pointing to such incidental convergence between Addams’s and Follett’s insights and current studies, there is a more fundamental approach to show the relevance and truthfulness of both women’s thinking. This starts with summarizing the convergence between Addams’s and Follett’s insights.

214   Joseph Soeters Both women’s work converges in the following points: • First, the importance of mutual efforts and active cooperation as means to getting things done and ways to resolve tensions and conflicts. Action—​accompanied by keen listening, self-​knowledge, and reflection—​is the heart of the matter, as both contend. • Second, the rejection of the idea that conflicts necessarily have a coercive, zero-​sum character, implying that the win of the one comes at the expense of the other. It is not either/​or. Follett’s position was particularly strong on this, when she completely spurned the domination (power-​over) approach leading to the victory of one over the other. Addams was equally firm in her refusal to accept “warfare” as a means to resolve conflicts. • Third, both women felt that wide disparities—​ that is, social and economic inequalities, between owners and workers, between the poor and the wealthy, between the privileged and the deprived—​were unacceptable. • Fourth, neither woman accepted punishments as a proper way to deal with difficult, “nasty” people, of whatever background. Using force and bullying as a means to getting things done was not part of their repertoire. Follett was even more explicit in this. • Fifth, both women thought that treading new paths is useful for improving human conditions; both were interested in developing new practices and were keen on producing and sustaining original, creative innovations. • Sixth, both women advocated, developed, and encouraged participatory democracy through actions at the grassroots—​i.e., the community or neighborhood—​level. • Seventh, but certainly not least, both were convinced and voiced that women should be part of politics, and in fact could bring something different, something extra to the world of decision-​making and negotiation—​the first demand nowadays accepted by all,6 the latter claim still disputed by some. Addams seemed more resolute in this than Follett. As stated earlier, Jane Addams and Mary Parker Follett derived their insights from everyday practice and action, logical thinking, moral convictions, and creativity, coming along with their position outside the main circles of government, administration, business, and academia. Their insights were and are strong and respected by many, but they may be less convincing for others. The feeling that their ideas show weakness and a certain naiveté still lingers. Yet, today’s academic work provides evidence that demonstrates how true and accurate Addams and Follett were in their analyses and recommendations to foster cooperation and avoid, mitigate, or resolve conflicts. This work, in particular the work done and coordinated by Robert Axelrod (1989), Martin Nowak (2012), and Elinor Ostrom (1990), is based on game-​theoretical approaches, mathematical modelling, computer simulations, experimental social science, and institutional analyses.7 All three scholars have a mathematical background and have studied the ways in which people resolve

Jane Addams and Mary Parker Follett’s Search for Cooperation    215 conflictual tensions and promote mutual cooperation.8 None of these scholars referred (extensively) to Addams or Follett. Still, it will be shown that the resemblance between then and now, between practice and academia, between mere ideas and evidence, is striking. Axelrod’s, Nowak’s, and Ostrom’s work substantiates the relevance and accuracy of Addams’s and Follett’s contributions to our thinking. Axelrod (1989) examined the evolution of cooperation with one question in mind—​ how is cooperation possible? In his response, he developed the so-​called tit-​for-​tat-​ strategy. This strategy-​game has become famous because of its combination of simplicity and importance. It puts together two parties who compete with each other and in fact want to win at the expense of the other. This is a situation that often occurs as Addams and Follett noticed regularly. In order to create cooperation, three rules apply according to the results from these game-​theoretical experiments. (1) One should never be the first one to act defectively (=​acting negatively, i.e., attacking, betraying, or breaching an agreement); (2) one needs to do what the other did before (including acting negatively in response to negative behavior), BUT (3) one should include elements of forgiveness in striking back once bad behavior by the other has occurred. The third rule is incredibly important to avoid escalation of hostilities. These three rules seem universally applicable as recipes for action in all kinds of situations, from war-​type situations such as the trench warfare during WWI to labor disputes and quarrels in marriages. Axelrod’s efforts produced a specimen of academic work that is immediately applicable in everyday life. In addition to other scholars in the field, Harvard professor Martin Nowak (2012) pursued Axelrod’s work on what he calls the “mysteries of cooperation.” Based on mathematical analyses, computer simulations, and games played by people in all corners of the world, he and his associates discovered that altruism, positive interaction, and generosity help to create cooperation, solve problems, and end conflicts. In numerous high-​ranking publications in journals such as Nature and Science, these scholars showed the importance of occasional forgiveness when experiencing an attack or a violation of an agreement. This works well, as long as such forgiveness occurs on the basis of randomness, not certainty; the other faction should not be able to count on, let alone predict, one’s strategy. Furthermore, in situations from which one cannot escape (which is often so), it was shown that punishments of antisocial behavior do not lead to winning the struggle or to promoting cooperation (Nowak, 2012, pp. 221ff.). Punishment is used to hold others down, to exploit them, to weaken them, to get rid of them. Instead, rewards are more effective and produce more pay-​off than punishments; the latter, in fact, destroy the advantages of cooperation. In other words, punishment is costly (Nowak, 2012, p. 225). Occasional forgiveness adds to the positive reputation of the one who can let bygones be bygones. Besides, across the globe people have different views of what is fair about punishments. What may be seen as a justified or fair penalty in some countries may elsewhere be seen as a reason to retaliate in and seek revenge, hence furthering antisocial behavior. Managing conflict and fostering cooperation undoubtedly vary across countries (e.g., Balliet and Van Lange, 2013). Nowak’s main conclusion is that cooperation, not competition, is the key to understand human survival.

216   Joseph Soeters At the end of his book, Nowak (2012, pp. 270–​273) lists five basic principles that constitute the “mechanics of cooperation.” • First, there is the importance of repetition or direct reciprocity, implying that doing good to some other is not necessarily based on kindness or goodness—​a moral virtue—​but on the expectation that you will be treated the same way you treat another. To put it differently: “one good turn deserves another.” Trusting one another is very much related to such expectancies, and hence trust plays a major role in facilitating cooperation (Balliet and Van Lange, 2013). • In the second place, reputation or indirect reciprocity is important, which essentially refers to the same dynamic as the previous one but is now taken in a broader perspective. It is about what you do not only to one other person but also to other people in general—​the latter constitutes your reputation, and hence the way you will be treated in following interactions. In other words, reputation becomes a self-​fulfilling prophecy because it generates interpersonal expectations (e.g., Billig, 2009). • Third, there is the issue of spatial selection, which refers to the importance of neighbors when choosing people to cooperate with (Nowak, 2012, pp. 69–​80). Cooperation with people who are living and working close to you does not require any other affinities (same religion, for instance) than just proximity. • Fourth is the factor of multilevel selection, which relates to the connection between individuals and groups. It is shown that groups of individuals who support each other—​altruists constituting groups of high internal solidarity—​are more successful than groups of mainly selfish people (Nowak, 2012, pp. 81–​94; also: Collins, 1992, p. 24). • Finally, the mechanism of kin selection implies that cooperation with close kin makes more sense than cooperating with strangers—​as they say, “blood is thicker than water.” Here, spatial distance plays a relatively minor role. Concluding the essence of his and his colleagues’ work, Nowak (2012, pp. 272–​273) states that winning strategies in reciprocal interactions demand for hopefulness, generosity, and forgiveness. Hopefulness because it is wise to hope to be able to establish a basis of cooperation with a newcomer by making an effort to cooperate. Forgiveness is useful to re-​establish a cooperative relationship with someone who failed to cooperate. And generosity is needed as one should not adopt a myopic perspective in dealing with others, denoting that one should not complain about who is doing better, but be content with smaller shares and enjoy the larger number of shares that come on your path as a result. A third scholar in this domain of academia, political scientist and Nobel Prize Laureate Elinor Ostrom (1990), came to related conclusions. Based on experiments and institutional case studies, she was able to study the notorious “tragedy of the commons.” This phrase refers to the situation in which people make use of common resources to their individual advantage without considering the consequential wearing

Jane Addams and Mary Parker Follett’s Search for Cooperation    217 down of these resources and the declining availability of these resources for all others. It is the prime example of a conflict between self-​interest and collective interest, a theme Follett also often talked about. According to Ostrom’s work, conflicts of interest can be perceived as common-​pool problems that are sometimes solved by voluntary organizations rather than by coercion from above or from elsewhere. In collaboration with colleagues (Ostrom, Walker, & Gardner, 1992), Ostrom revealed experimentally that people in communities can manage themselves, despite the possibility that some people may misbehave such as by not paying taxes or by abusing another’s or the collective’s property. They concluded that self-​governance without external coercion is possible. This would sound like music to Jane Addams and Mary Parker Follett’s ears, as they always stressed the importance of community life in urban neighborhoods. Given the contemporary analysis by Axelrod, Nowak, and Ostrom, it is not an exaggeration to argue that Addams and Follett essentially were on the path of discovering the same “mechanisms” of cooperation. For sure, both streams of work supplement and strengthen each other. Addams’s and Follett’s positions and insights were analytical, normative, and practical at the same time, but they lacked scientific rigor and evidence, at least the rigor and convincing power that is required nowadays. Yet, what Addams and Follett proposed on the basis of their experiences, moral views, and action-​orientation is substantiated, validated, elaborated, and supplemented to a large degree by today’s top-​notch research.

Implications for Today’s World Undoubtedly, today’s world should be able to profit from Addams’s and Follett’s views, insights, and recommendations. For too long, the domination perspective, the perspective of winners-​and-​losers, the perspective of coercion and exclusion, has run the world, and, most unfortunately, it still does. Battling with the consequences of this approach has been Addams’s and Follett’s destiny—​at some moments in their lives at their own expense and misery, as they were not always well understood or appreciated. Yet, their views have increasingly gained acceptance because contemporary academic work that uses rigorous methods of analysis supports and validates their insights, approaches, and recommendations. Increasingly, the value and significance of cooperation in all aspects is recognized at every level of human living, from neighborhoods and communities to networks and partnerships of companies, armed forces, R&D-​institutions, and universities, to the international integration of national economies and societies. Collaboration from local to global is needed to ensure a better future for the people and the planet (e.g., Gray & Purdy, 2018). True, there are countermovements today showing that the opposite direction—​toward self-​isolation, increased competition, coercion, overpowering, and growing enmity—​still is an attractive option for many. It is an appealing direction because it provides, at least in the short run, the idea of “taking back control” over oneself.

218   Joseph Soeters This is likely to foster a feeling of self-​aggrandizement and indulging in mesmerizing non-​sharing with others—​oh what a joy! Yet, the complexities and the risks of the challenges that the planet and all its people face are immense and involve parties and stakeholders from all corners of the planet. Challenges exist and have the tendency to grow with respect to climate change and its numerous consequences, migration and the increase of demographic diversity, the probability of new pandemics, economic hazards, changes in energy supply, technological risks of all kinds, and indeed unbalanced international relations. It is not an exaggeration to state that approaching these challenges in a legitimate and effective manner is something one needs to do together, with mutual “sympathetic understanding and “affectionate interpretation” (Burnier, 2021). Jane Addams and Mary Parker Follett, who worked and lived about one hundred years ago, show us the way to cooperation in a cosmopolitan world. With respect to one challenge, Addams and Follett’s work may be particularly significant: how to deal with the growing demographic diversity, in work organizations, in politics, in the distribution of scarce resources in neighborhoods, in nations, and at the international level. Jane Addams, and in a different manner Mary Parker Follett too, always emphasized the meaning of diversity and the importance of treating all groups, including minority groups, equally. In their eyes, this is morally the only right thing to do, but they were also convinced it will pay off on the long run. In this, they have the most prominent of today’s scholars of cooperation on their side. In today’s vernacular, this is inclusion, implying that everyone is treated as an insider who really belongs to the larger community, organization, or nation. At the same time, it is important to ensure that everyone retains his, her, or their own uniqueness (e.g., Shore et al., 2011). It is also crucial to ensure that policies that undo previous injustice do not create new imbalances among groups, possibly rendering the previously dominating groups frustrated and angry, creating a destabilizing backlash (e.g., Loury, 1989; Hochschild, 2016). Clearly, all of this will not be an easy journey, but following Jane Addams, Mary Parker Follett, and the newer students of cooperation, this should be a voyage that one can undertake with confidence.

Acknowledgments This chapter profited from very precise suggestions and remarks made by Judy Whipps.

Notes 1. With the concept of circular responses, Follett explained that people’s actions are always reactions to other people’s actions, who subsequently react again, and so on (e.g., Soeters, 2020, p. 26). We will turn to this idea of permanent flux later. 2. This shows that the relevance of Addams’s work has not decreased as even a number of today’s enterprises, such as Amazon, relentlessly follow the strategy of profit maximization through labor cost reduction in a variety of ways (e.g., Malet, 2013).

Jane Addams and Mary Parker Follett’s Search for Cooperation    219 3. In fact, most conflicts tend to develop as confrontations between two parties, even if they have started with multiple antagonistic factions. 4. Theoretically, this may be seen as a fourth option to end quarrels; however, we disregard this as a separate option as this alternative can be seen as belonging to the category of domination, i.e., the first of Follett’s grouping of conflict-​solving approaches. 5. An example is the remarkable access of climate-​change activists to the board of Exxon Mobile, the giant US oil and gas producer (Engine No. 1 wins at least 2 Exxon board seats as activist pushes for climate strategy change –​CBNC https://​www.cnbc.com/​2021/​05/​26/​ eng​ine-​no-​1-​gets-​at-​least-​2-​can​dida​tes-​elec​ted-​to-​exx​ons-​board-​in-​win-​for-​the-​activ​ist. html, May 26, 2021). 6. At least in the Western hemisphere; there are still parts in the world where this demand is not taken for granted. 7. Game-​theoretical approaches formulate dilemmas in a formal manner and analyze the consequences of the participants’ responses to the situations they are put in. If these games are played in various spots on the globe, one introduces cultural variance. Computer simulations are based on programs consisting of equations that are run numerous times with constantly changing but randomly chosen values of the variables in the equations. As such, the large number of runs equals conventional statistical analyses on large N-​data bases. 8. The following makes use of Soeters (2013), in particular the pp. 94–​96.

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Jane Addams and Mary Parker Follett’s Search for Cooperation    221 McKenna, E., & Pratt, S. L. (2015). American philosophy: From Wounded Knee to the present. Bloomsbury. Mintzberg, H. (1996). Some fresh air for management? In P. Graham (Ed.), Mary Parker Follett: Prophet of management (pp. 199–​205). Harvard Business School Press. Nelson, G. M. (2017). Mary Parker Follett: Creativity and democracy. Human Service Organizations: Management, Leadership & Governance 41 (2), 178–​185. Nowak, M. (with R. Highfield). (2012). SuperCooperators: Altruism, evolution, and why we need each other to succeed. The Free Press. Ostrom, E. (1990). Governing the commons: The evolution of institutions for collective action. Cambridge University Press. Ostrom, E., Walker, J., & Gardner, R. (1992) Covenants with and without a sword: self-​ governance is possible. American Political Science Review 86 (2), 404–​417. Prieto, L. C., and Phipps, S. T. A. (2014). Capitalism in question: Hill, Addams and Follett as early social entrepreneurship advocates. Journal of Management History 20 (3), 266–​277. Schilling, M. A. (2000). Decades ahead of her time: advancing stakeholder theory through the ideas of Mary Parker Follett. Journal of Management History 6 (5), 224–​242. Shields, P. M. (2006). Democracy and the social feminist ethics of Jane Addams: A vision for Public Administration. Administrative Theory & Praxis 28 (3), 418–​443. Shields, P. M. (2017). Jane Addams: Progressive pioneer of peace, philosophy, sociology, social work and public administration. Springer. Shields, P, & Soeters, J. (2023). “Jane Addams and the noble art of peace weaving.” In P. Shields, M. Hamington, and J. Soeters (Eds.), The Oxford handbook of Jane Addams. Oxford University Press. Shore, L. M., Randel, A. E., Chung, B. G., Dean, M. A., Ehrhart, K. H., & Singh, G. (2011). Inclusion and diversity in work groups: A review and model for future research. Journal of Management 37 (4), 1262–​1289. Soeters, J. (2013). Odysseus prevails over Achilles: A warrior model suited to post-​9/​11 conflicts. In J. Burk (Ed.), How 9/​11 changed our ways of war (pp. 89–​115). Stanford University Press. Soeters, J. (2018). Sociology and military studies: Classical and current foundations. Routledge. Soeters, J. (2020). Management and military studies: Classical and current foundations. Routledge. Whipps, J. D. (2012). Feminist-​pragmatist democratic practice and contemporary sustainability movements: Mary Parker Follett, Jane Addams, Emily Greene Balch, and Vandana Shiva. In M. Hamington & C. Bardwell-​Jones (Eds.), Contemporary feminist pragmatism (pp. 115–​127). Routledge. Whipps, J. D. (2014). A Pragmatist reading of Mary Parker Follett’s integrative process. Transactions of the Charles Peirce Society 50 (3), 405–​424. Whipps, J. D. (2015). Mary Parker Follett: Creativity, power and diversity in the integrative process. In P. Hugues, J. Muñoz, & M. N. Tanner (Eds.), Expanding interdisciplinarity: A handbook on integrative studies (pp.117–​132). Texas Tech University Press. Zerubavel, E. (1997). Social mindscapes: An invitation to cognitive sociology. Harvard University Press.

Chapter 12

Hull House S o c ia l Change M eth od ol o g y and New Deal Re forms Judy D. Whipps

Introduction Scholars often end the story of progressive feminist-​pragmatist reform after WWI or when women got the vote in 1920.2 Although Jane Addams, one of the leaders of those reform movements, lost significant influence in the United States in the 1920s because of her pacifism, the methods of reform that she helped create and her advocacy of other women leaders lived on to influence social policy into the 1930s and beyond. Addams and early Hull House residents Julia Lathrop and Florence Kelley bonded to form an inner circle at Hull House.3 They supported each other’s careers as they moved into national and international politics and social reform. They were pioneers, “firsts” in their fields. Addams was the most respected public figure of her generation, the first American woman to win the Nobel Peace Prize. Florence Kelley, one of the earliest Hull House residents to hold a salaried political position, was the first Illinois State Factory Inspector. Later she was the first executive secretary of the new National Consumers League. Julia Lathrop was one of the creators of the first juvenile court system in 1899 and was the first woman commissioner on the Illinois State Board of Charities. She later became the first woman to direct a federal agency, the Children’s Bureau, occupying the highest governmental position ever achieved by a woman. Addams, Kelley, and Lathrop mentored and supported a core group of women who developed social and political tools to enact their reform agendas and support each other’s careers and projects. They passed those tools on to the next generation, who expanded them. Addams, Kelley, and Lathrop all had fathers who had been politicians and were familiar with the political process. They, and the women they mentored, individually and collectively became skilled lobbyists, building relationships with lawmakers

224   Judy D. Whipps and authored or co-​authored legislation in both state and federal legislative bodies. They drew on their political and reform networks to garner support for each other’s initiatives, giving them powerful political voices even before women had the right to vote. Addams, Kelley, and Lathrop carved paths for the next generation of women in politics through mentoring and the use of their political influence. Grace Abbott, who followed Lathrop as Chief of the Children’s Bureau, and Frances Perkins, the first female Secretary of Labor, were instrumental in creating New Deal legislation that legalized many aspects of the Progressive Era reform. The political power of these New Deal activists can be traced directly back to their relationships with Addams, Kelley, and Lathrop, among other significant mentors.4 They used and expanded methodologies developed in the early decades of Hull House. Philosophically, Addams, Kelley, and Lathrop were committed to a pragmatist method of continually adjusting their perspectives and goals based on experiences in the field. They knew that social welfare initiatives must originate in and continuously return to the changing conditions and experiences of the people they worked with. Addams warned of “the danger of administering any human situation upon theory uncorrected by constant experience” (1935, p. 50). Their experiential and data-​driven investigative research produced the social scientific data necessary to convince politicians. At Hull House, they “made it their practice to know more about the subject at hand than the people they hoped to convince” (Scott, 2004, p. xxviii). Abbott and Perkins were part of “the generation after the great pioneers” of women in political life (Dewson, quoted in Ware, 1981, p. 19). Addams and Lathrop mentored Hull House resident Abbott, who, in 1930, was the first woman to be recommended for a presidential cabinet position. Frances Perkins lived for a short time at Hull House, and Kelley directly mentored her in New York at the National Consumers League. This next generation of women had an enduring impact on workplace safety, labor legislation, women’s suffrage, children’s rights, and financial security due to the Hull House advocacy network. They built on the work of the early pioneers as they created and expanded new networks leading to an unprecedented number of women appointed to federal positions. The Hull House approach to change included a commitment to systemic change rather than only palliative efforts. The early Hull House vision may have been philanthropic and ameliorative but quickly refocused on changing laws, governmental structures, and industrial practices. Their experience with their neighbors taught them that human welfare depended on establishing legal regulations and workplace practices that could minimize poverty. Unlike those who wanted reform work left to individual charity, businesses, or non-​political organizations, Hull House women believed that the government could and should establish protective legal and social structures. Examining the career trajectories of these women reformers helps us unpack how they created some of the most influential social and economic reforms of the 20th century. In an analogy that Addams used frequently, their work dug “channels” that future work could flow through (1990/​1910, p. 25; 2003/​1915, p. 76). They were particularly successful in developing techniques for public-​private cooperation, relying

Hull House Social Change Methodology and New Deal Reforms     225 on collaboration between government and networks of labor and reform organizations. These Progressive reforms and the subsequent New Deal legislation changed how 20th-​century Americans reconstructed the role of government, a legacy that continues today.

Addams and Women’s Networks In 1889 and 1890, when Hull House was just beginning, Addams tapped into a growing phenomenon to support her work: women’s reform networks. These networks developed out of the 19th-​century women’s clubs or movements that formed when women were excluded or marginalized from male-​centered reform initiatives.5 Addams was a masterful storyteller. Her direct experience with her immigrant neighbors, and her desire to bridge class-​based divisions, put her in a position to bring her experiences and the stories of her neighbors to the attention of these women’s clubs and other civic organizations. Addams and fellow Hull House founder Ellen Gates Starr recruited early support from the Chicago Woman’s Club (CWC), which became a long-​term partner in their reform initiatives.6 In 1890, the CWC joined with the women’s clubs across the nation, forming the General Federation of Woman’s Clubs, providing Addams, and later Hull House women, a national communication network (Skocpol, 1995, p. 331). Women’s traditional role as organizers of social, educational, or cultural events created unique openings to educate communities about issues. Addams and the women of Hull House drew on, and in some instances helped create, women’s networks such as the women’s civic and cultural clubs and the social settlement movement.7 Other networks, such as the maternal movement represented by the National Congress of Mothers, provided additional communication networks even though Addams was not a member. Labor organizations such as the Women’s Trade Union League, founded in 1903, provided a more diverse network that spanned class and race. Additionally, women as purchasers of household goods had economic leverage, which provided them with powerful tools to shape economic and public policies, represented after 1900 by the National Consumers League. Later in her career, Addams was embedded in and sometimes led women’s suffrage groups. Addams was adept at strategically using these resources. As embedded as she was in these women’s networks, her voice often represented a consortium of women’s voices. Hull House gave Addams and the other residents opportunities to build women-​ centered personal and professional alliances that provided support and mentoring. They were loyal to each other and their causes even when they disagreed on issues or methods. Hull House women, particularly Kelley and Lathrop, were known for their vigorous debates. Inclusive professionalism and collegiality at Hull House created a diverse yet cohesive community, a model that continued into the next generation of women political activists. Although the women publicly stressed their professional

226   Judy D. Whipps connections, they cared for each other personally and offered public support, as the letters demonstrate. There are many instances where these women reached out to care for each other’s emotional well-​being personally, along with supporting their careers.8

Addams and Florence Kelley: Mutual Influences Florence Kelley (1859–​1932) changed the early trajectory of Hull House, adding social science research methodologies to the Hull House toolkit. She, Addams, and later Hull House residents used that research to move beyond providing neighborhood services to creating legislative change. Supreme Court Justice Felix Frankfurter said that Florence Kelley “had probably the largest single share in shaping the social history of the United States during the first 30 years of the 20th Century. . . During that period, hers was no doubt a powerful if not decisive role in securing legislation for the removal of the most glaring abuses of our hectic industrialization following the Civil War” (quoted in Goldmark, 1953, p. x). When Kelley first knocked on the door of Hull House on a snowy day in December 1891, she had no political connections nor any job prospects with which to begin her lifetime work. Kelley’s crumbling marriage and her husband’s physical violence had caused her to flee New York for Chicago with her three children. Kelley knew about Addams’s work but had never met her before that morning. She became an early beneficiary of Addams’s networking and advocacy skills as Addams helped her build a career in Illinois. Although Addams was raised in the Midwest and Kelley was raised in Pittsburgh, they shared significant similarities in their family backgrounds. Both of their fathers were politicians. Kelley’s father was a US congressman for over 30 years, and Addams’s father was an Illinois state senator. They both had a childhood shaped by family grief. Five of Kelley’s eight siblings died in childhood, including all her sisters, which left her mother in a state of constant sorrow. Addams’s mother had died in childbirth when Addams was two. As a result, both Kelley and Addams had formed deep connections to their fathers (see Kelley, 1986, p. 26–​28). While their family lives had similarities, when they met in 1891 their philosophical orientations were dramatically different. Addams initially approached Hull House settlement work with an arts and cultures perspective, consistent with her liberal arts education; Kelley’s approach was grounded in expertise in social science research, developed in her studies at Cornell.9 Kelley was committed to Marxist socialism, while Addams held a more gradualist approach to change.10 Their personalities were also dramatically different. “Miss Addams in grey –​serene, dauntless . . . Mrs. Kelley, alight with the resurgent flame of her zeal” (Kellogg, quoted in Sklar, 1995, p. 183) But, as Julia Lathrop later wrote, Kelley and Addams “understood each other’s powers . . . ” which

Hull House Social Change Methodology and New Deal Reforms     227 made them effective co-​workers (Addams, 1935, p. 91). They influenced each other’s philosophical outlooks and built on each other’s political change methodologies. Kelley was trained in social science at Cornell. While doing graduate studies in Vienna, she had a “conversion” to Marxist socialism (Sklar, 1995, p. 87), convinced by Engels’s argument that revolution, not legislation or philanthropy, was the long-​term solution to social injustice. She began working on socialist causes, translating Engels’ The Condition of the Working Class in England in 1844. While Kelley had earlier advocated protective legislation to ensure safety and protection for working women and children; in Zurich she rejected the idea of any cooperative democratic approaches between capitalist owners and workers. (Sklar, 1995, pp. 103–​104). Kelley started preparing for what she called “the coming revolution,” seeing evidence for that revolution in news reports about American violent strikes and labor unrest (Sklar, 1995, p. 106). With missionary zeal, she wrote letters and sent articles to American newspapers and women’s organizations criticizing their lack of attention to the class crisis. Most were not published. In 1886, she returned to the United States with her Russian socialist husband and their children, believing that the Haymarket Riot presaged the beginning of economic class warfare. When Kelley arrived at Hull House in 1891, she needed useful employment and a safe place for her children where they could be hidden away from her husband. Addams was able to help with both. She connected Kelley with Hull House supporter Henry Demarest Lloyd, whose family took in Kelley’s three children. At Addams’s suggestion, Kelley moved into Hull House and started the Hull House Bureau of Labor. The Hull House Bureau of Labor did not provide the income necessary for Kelley to support her family. Kelley approached Richard Ely for work at the university but was told there were no positions open. Addams did not hesitate to call on her networks for important causes or, as in this case, a colleague’s career. She started making inquiries on Kelley’s behalf. As Kelley wrote her mother, “Miss Addams is wire-​pulling with fair prospect of success for a position in the bureau of labor statistics for me” (Sklar, 1992, p. 121). Addams’s connections proved effective, and in May, Kelley was appointed a special agent of the Illinois Bureau of Labor Statistics to investigate child labor in sweatshops. The US Department of Labor Statistics then asked Kelley to lead the Chicago segment of a federal investigation of urban slums. Kelley employed four full-​time government employees for three months, collecting data from every household in the Hull House neighborhood with a 64-​question survey.11 Kelley used the nationality and wage data to produce the maps and data published in Hull House Maps and Papers (1895), with contributions by Addams and Hull House residents. Addams used her influence to get this volume published. This book demonstrates Kelley’s early influence on redirecting Hull House’s work toward public policy change using social scientific data and shows the importance of Addams’s connections. The Hull House data led to a state legislative committee investigation, and Kelley testified in the state legislature. In what became an enduring Hull House political method, Kelley assisted in drafting proposed legislation that banned child labor and limited women to an eight-​hour workday. Addams did her part by mobilizing middle-​class

228   Judy D. Whipps support of the legislation, and she and other residents joined with labor unions to lobby for passage of the law (Sklar, 1992, p. 129). Addams described their efforts at the time: “a little group of us addressed the open meetings of trades-​unions and of benefit societies, church organization, and social clubs literally every evening for three months” along with lobbying the legislature (1990/​1910, p. 119). After the bill passed in 1893, Kelley was appointed the first Illinois chief factory inspector to enforce the bill. When courts overthrew state industrial safety laws, claiming industrial oversight was outside of the purvey of government, Kelley enrolled in law school to be a better advocate within the system. She had moved far away from her earlier Marxist revolutionary beliefs, choosing the more pragmatist path of changing the system from within instead. Like many reformers of her generation, Kelley had come to see “the state as the most enduring progenitor of social justice, the most promising avenue to self-​transcendence and permanence” (Sklar, 1995, p. 314). Addams’s professional advocacy of Kelley’s career continued after Kelley lost her chief inspector position in 1897. Addams was visiting family in Rockford when she heard that the governor had replaced Kelley with an industry insider, and she immediately returned to Hull House. Addams wrote her sister that the Hull House women “put all our spare time looking for a job” for Kelley (Sklar, 1995, p. 286). Addams paid the expenses for her and Kelley to travel to Washington DC to lobby politicians to appoint Kelley to a national industrial commission investigating violence in labor/​business relations. Addams and Kelley met with President McKinley, who seemed receptive to Kelley’s appointment but did not appoint her. When a position as Chief Factory Inspector of New York State opened, Addams traveled to New York to visit Governor Teddy Roosevelt, asking him to consider Kelley for the post. Roosevelt was sympathetic to her request, but he too turned her down.12 With three children to support, Kelley finally took a full-​time position at the library, but the salary did not cover all her bills. Addams’s partner Mary Rozet Smith and Kelley’s mother contributed to the children’s school tuition while Addams and many of the Hull House workers assisted by taking the children on various outings or caring for them at their homes. Addams’s support of Kelley’s career and personal life indicates how Hull House residents worked for each other’s vocational or political advancement. In 1899, Kelley accepted the position as the first executive secretary of the National Consumers League in New York, against the advice of both Addams and Lathrop (Sklar, 1995, p. 311). They wanted her to hold out for a more influential position. This new job took Kelley and her family away from the Hull House community—​a personal blow to Addams and other residents. After she left, Addams wrote Kelley, “Hull House sometimes seems like a howling wilderness without you” (Sklar, 1995, p. 312). Kelley moved into the New York Henry Street Settlement House, led by the dynamic Lillian Wald, who became an important ally. At the National Consumers League (NCL), Kelley continued to improve industrial working conditions, focusing on consumer power rather than legislation. The NCL exerted a powerful force on industries by directly appealing to purchasers, primarily women, to buy only those items produced using fair labor practices. The NCL stamp

Hull House Social Change Methodology and New Deal Reforms     229 of approval guaranteed that the item was made in factories that protected its workers. Kelley built the NCL into a powerful force for safe industrial conditions, making the NCL a key resource for women’s political power. Under Kelley’s influence, the NCL, like Hull House, became a political training ground for women, such as Frances Perkins, who were moving into political life. Kelley followed Addams’s model of energetic professional and political advocacy for other women. The women she hired and mentored went on to advocate for other women, re-​ creating and expanding the model set by the Hull House community. Kelley was also a vigorous social reform advocate for other social causes, such as the National Labor Committee. She was an energetic founder and activist on behalf of the NAACP, serving on many committees and earning W.E.B Du Bois’s praise. (Athey, 1971). Kelley joined Addams and Julia Lathrop, and together they became a seminal force that stimulated and moved a whole generation of women reformers into social action (Torres, 2015, p. 153). Theirs was a mentoring and advocacy model that others replicated once they had established their own networks.

Julia Lathrop: Administrative Excellence As the first head of the federal Children’s Bureau, Julia Lathrop (1858–​1932) held the most powerful position a woman had ever held in the federal government. Like Kelley, Lathrop’s appointment, and her many earlier achievements, became possible because of the Hull House social and political networks she helped build. She, too, was committed to gathering data as the first step of political action, and like Addams and Kelley, she became a skilled administrator. Lathrop came to live at Hull House in its second year, 1891, and immediately formed a close and mutually supportive relationship with Addams that lasted throughout their lives. The two of them had grown up in adjoining counties in northern Illinois, and both had fathers who had been Illinois congressmen. Lathrop attended Rockford College before Addams enrolled there, and the two of them did not meet until the late 1880s. At Hull House, Lathrop was loved by the community for her warmth and her brilliant wit, and skillful intellectual debates—​especially in debates with Florence Kelley. Addams’s affection and respect for Lathrop are apparent in Addams’s 1935 biography of her, My Friend, Julia Lathrop.13 During the depression of 1893, Lathrop began working as a Cook County Visitor, a volunteer position mainly in the Hull House neighborhood. Her job was to visit families, establish their charitable needs, and prepare reports about available relief organizations. The governor then invited her to become the first woman commissioner on the State Board of Charities, where she investigated the operations of relief organizations throughout the state. She continued in that unpaid position until 1909, interacting

230   Judy D. Whipps directly with disabled and poverty-​stricken residents while also evaluating the administrative effectiveness of each agency.14 This work established her first two political priorities: first, to replace the patronage system that rewarded political supporters with civil service administrative positions, and second, to reform the juvenile justice system. Her successes in these first two measures demonstrate how Lathrop developed her political skills. Frustrated with inept administrators due to the political patronage system, Lathrop resolved to change state law to place administrative positions under a Board of Control that could mandate social service expertise. Lathrop had been part of the Hull House effort to pass Kelley’s child labor law in 1893. Her resolve to outlaw civil service patronage was likely strengthened when Kelley was removed from her position as factory inspector in 1897 by a patronage appointee. Lathrop developed her lobbying skills as she worked on the Board of Control bill. As with other Hull House political action, investigative data was the first step. As Anne Firor Scott said, “Women trained at Hull House made it their practice to know more about the subject at hand than the people they hoped to convince” (2004, p. xxix). Armed with empirical data from her experiential and empirical investigations, Lathrop began lobbying politicians. She did not stop at simply lobbying; she also participated in drafting legislation. Utilizing what she learned from reading law in her father’s law firm, she became “intimately involved in—​indeed in charge of—​fashioning legislation” to take politics out of civil service. She took the lead in drafting a failed 1901 bill, but she continued her legislative advocacy and was a co-​ author of “countless drafts of the law that ultimately passed in 1908, which put charities under a new Board of Control” (Cohen, 2017, p. 47). Lathrop also worked on juvenile justice reform, another example of her efforts to address issues systemically rather than through charitable interventions.15 Once again, she began with empirical investigations, compiling stories and data, using her state commissioner expertise. What stands out in this effort is how Lathrop mobilized women’s organizations locally and nationally to support this cause. Through her networks, she also enlisted the support of powerful men in the Chicago Bar Association. She traveled throughout the Midwest, giving speeches and asking women’s reform organization leaders to start letter-​writing campaigns. She co-​wrote the 1899 Illinois Juvenile Court Bill. Lathrop, working with the Chicago Women’s Club and the Juvenile Protection Association, directed most of the lobbying for the successful bill. It created the first Juvenile Court system in the nation (Cohen, 2017, p. 62). The first juvenile court was built diagonally across from Hull House, which allowed Lathrop and others to further develop their relationships by lunching with the judges and other court officials at the Hull House coffee shop. Wealthy Chicago women paid the salaries of the first probation officers, all of whom were Hull House residents.16 After the court was established, Lathrop and the other founders traveled across the country, assisting other communities in developing similar juvenile justice systems. By 1911, 22 states had passed juvenile court laws. Lathrop’s political skill in supporting children’s well-​being eventually led to her appointment as head of the federal Children’s Bureau.

Hull House Social Change Methodology and New Deal Reforms     231 The idea for the Children’s Bureau grew out of a breakfast discussion between Florence Kelley and New York settlement leader Lillian Wald in 1903. Kelley brought the concept to Columbia sociologist Edward Devine, who wired President Roosevelt and arranged for a meeting between Wald and Roosevelt to discuss the issue. (Muncy, 1991, p. 40). Wald and Kelley then turned to Addams, who activated her many networks to support the idea, including the National Conference on Charities and Corrections and the General Federation of Women’s Club.17 Kelley recruited support through the NCL and the National Child Labor Committee, which helped draft the proposed bill in 1906. When the bill remained stalled in Congress, Roosevelt convened a 1909 White House Conference on Dependent Children to bring more attention to the issue. The conference, with Addams as a speaker,18 unanimously endorsed the idea, restarting the legislation.19 Addams, Kelley, and Wald testified in support of the bill in congressional hearings. Legislation creating the Children’s Bureau was signed into law by President Taft in April 1912. Believing it essential to have one of their colleagues in the position of director, “(m)embers of the Hull House network went into action. They were convinced that Lathrop’s skills were just what the unprecedented job required.” (Scott, 2004, xviii). Once again, Addams used her status to intercede at top levels of government. President Taft consulted with Addams and Wald about who should lead the newly created Children’s Bureau. They both recommended Julia Lathrop (Cohen, 2017, p. 77). Lathrop was “dazed” to find herself appointed head of “the country’s most prominent child welfare position,” a position she credited to Addams’s work. (Muncy, 1991, p. 48). The Hull House community continued to support her work. When Lathrop requested a sixfold increase in funding in her second year, she turned again to her “four generals.” According to Muncy, “Lathrop only had to contact Lillian Wald and Florence Kelley in New York and Jane Addams and Mary McDowell in Chicago to obtain the full support of her troops” (1991, p. 63). Letters went sent to Congress from across the country, and Lathrop’s budget passed. The 1921 Sheppard-​Towner Maternity and Infancy Act was the most significant legislation achieved under Lathrop’s leadership. To pass this bill, which aimed at alleviating high infant mortality rates, Lathrop and her networks once again engaged in letter writing. They used another Hull House social change tool: writing editorials for women’s magazines, including the Women’s Journal, Ladies Home Journal, Women’s Home Companion, Good Housekeeping, and McCall’s. By this time, women’s voting rights had changed the political landscape. New organizations formalized the lobbying networks Addams, Kelley, Lathrop, and Wald built, resulting in the Women’s Joint Congressional Committee, a coalition of women’s social welfare organizations. Founded in 1920, it had resources and professional staff to organize lobbying when member organizations supported a bill. Lathrop stepped down from her position as head of the Children’s Bureau in 1922 after Sheppard-​Towner passed. A new chief was needed. Once again, Addams, Kelley, Lathrop, and the national women’s networks sprang into action, this time to get Hull House’s Grace Abbott appointed to the position.

232   Judy D. Whipps

Grace Abbott: The Next Generation Twenty years younger than Julia Lathrop, Grace Abbott (1878–​1939) was part of the next generation of political activists mentored by Addams, Lathrop, and Kelley. In 1908, while studying political science at the University of Chicago, Abbott began working with the Juvenile Protection League and moved into Hull House, as did her sister Edith. Edith taught at Wellesley before moving to the Chicago School of Civics and Philanthropy as assistant director. Grace took on a series of ever-​widening political roles, moving from local to state to federal and into international activism, working alongside Addams and Lathrop, with, as her sister said, “imagination and integrity and astute political skill” (E. Abbott, 1950, p. 374). In 1908, her first year at Hull House, Grace Abbott participated in a Women’s Trade Union League meeting with Addams to discuss protections for immigrant women, many of whom arrived without family or friends. The Immigrants’ Protective League (IPL) was established at that meeting, and Abbott, with her knowledge of labor issues, was appointed the league’s director. Addams served as an advisor to Abbott and a vice president and trustee of the new league. Abbott’s efforts procured employment for female immigrants and created protections and policies to guard young immigrant women from exploitation. She arranged for the IPL to be notified whenever a new female immigrant arrived in New York and was headed to Chicago (Leonard, 1973, p. 277). Addams mentored Abbott and introduced her to reform networks. They both attended the 1908 National Conference of Charities and Corrections, and together they prepared a report for the Committee on Immigration. Addams also invited Abbott along when she went to the state legislature to lobby for the new eight-​hour workday legislation because, she said, “she counted on Grace’s advice and her command of the facts.”20 During that trip, Abbott also worked on two bills related to employment agencies, one of which passed (E. Abbott, 1950, p. 391). Addams came to rely on Grace Abbott to handle the immigration and union issues that came to Hull House. According to Edith, at the informal breakfast table, Addams usually hurried over her mail, handing letters to the different residents according to their specialty. She would say, “Here, G. Abbott, this is child labor; you take this and tell her what to do” or, again, “Here, G. Abbott, this is about immigration—​or trade-​ unions—​won’t you answer, please” (E. Abbott, 1950, p. 380). Like Addams, Kelley, and Lathrop before her, Abbott’s work encompassed a wide variety of political reforms, including international peace and suffrage activism. She went with Addams and other Hull House activists to the 1915 Conference at The Hague. President Wilson asked her to serve as secretary to the White House Conference on Child Welfare and, due to her expertise in labor unions, she became a consultant to the War Labor Policies Board. In 1917, Abbott moved to Washington DC to work with Lathrop in the Children’s Bureau before returning to Illinois for two years as the executive secretary of the Illinois Immigration Commission.

Hull House Social Change Methodology and New Deal Reforms     233 When Lathrop stepped down from the Children’s Bureau, Abbott had the political expertise and the networks to step into the director’s role. Addams, Kelley, and Lathrop mobilized networks in the “well-​oiled Hull House machine” to support Abbott’s nomination. Lathrop told Abbott, “It is time to put on our armor and set to” (Scott, 2004, p. xxiv). Letters from all over the country were sent to the Secretary of Labor and to Congress supporting Abbott as the new director. As head of the federal Children’s Bureau, Abbott was the highest-​ranking woman in the federal government in the 1920s. She also represented the United States at the League of Nations Advisory Committee on Traffic in Women and Children from 1922 to 1934. Like her mentors before her, Abbott led studies that collected sociological data about child labor, juvenile delinquency, and immigrants and utilized that data in the lawmaking process.21 Abbott became the first woman ever to be seriously considered for a cabinet position when her name was circulated for Secretary of Labor in 1930. Many of her supporters were optimistic that Hoover would nominate her, but Abbott herself believed she was too independent to be acceptable in Hoover’s cabinet. In 1932–​1933, Grace Abbott worked for Frances Perkins’s nomination as secretary of labor, activating networks of support from the settlement movement, the NCL, the Women’s Trade Union League, and the Women’s Division of the Democratic Party. Expanding Addams’s, Kelley’s, and Lathrop’s models, she also convened social and educational events where Perkins could connect informally with influential leaders. She also used her influence with media sources to promote Perkins. In 1934 Abbott returned to Chicago to take a faculty position at the University of Chicago.

Frances Perkins: First Madam Secretary Frances Perkins (1880–​1965) broke a political glass ceiling in 1933 by becoming the first madam secretary, the first to serve on a presidential cabinet. As Secretary of Labor in the Roosevelt administration, Perkins was responsible for groundbreaking legislation including Social Security, federal minimum wage legislation, eight-​hour workday limits, and child labor laws. In the 1930s and early 1940s, she was the most powerful woman in a governmental position.22 She had a history of firsts: she had been the first executive director of the New York Committee on Safety and then the first woman on the New York State Industrial Commission. Her many achievements included federal programs such as the Civilian Conservation Corps, the Public Works Administration, and the Federal Works Agency. Like Abbott, Perkins was part of the next generation of activists inspired by and supported by the Hull House network. Perkins was a part-​time resident and volunteer at Hull House between 1904 and 1907 and later was mentored by Kelley while working

234   Judy D. Whipps at the National Consumers League (see Perkins 1954). Perkins may have been the most successful woman to benefit from the Hull House and NCL networks. Although Perkins majored in chemistry and physics at Mount Holyoke, the study of economics awakened her to the need for social reform. In her American economic history course, Perkins had an eye-​opening experience when the students visited factories and saw the working conditions (Downey, 2009, p. 10). In her last year of college, in 1902, Perkins attended a lecture by Kelley about the National Consumers League. In a fiery talk, Kelley described sweatshop conditions and the effect of child labor, promoting the work that the NCL was doing to change these conditions. Perkins left college with a sense of mission, a desire to contribute to social change, but like many educated women of her generation, she initially had a hard time finding employment that would allow her to do that. After graduation, Perkins taught in local academies for two years before accepting a teaching position in Chicago, which allowed her to engage in the work of Hull House. Although she was required to live at the school during the school year, in 1904, Perkins became a regular visitor and occasional resident at Hull House. According to Kristen Downey, she “considered her Hull House sojourn life-​changing,” and she “saw the settlement house workers as her true family, and they felt the same” (2009, pp. 19, 21). In Chicago, Perkins was also first exposed to union activism. Perkins needed more than teaching, and after three years in Chicago, she started looking for full-​time positions in social work. She was offered a position in Philadelphia in 1908 as the general secretary of the Philadelphia Research and Protective Association, an organization founded by Frances Kellor, a Hull House alumna. She learned investigative skills by exploring the sexual and financial exploitation of immigrant and migrant women, often visiting bordellos and back alleys.23 Sometimes she would pose as a young woman looking for employment, while other times, she visited cheap lodging houses and interviewed low-​paid prostitutes. This work often put her in dangerous situations, face-​to-​face with pimps and drug dealers. In Philadelphia, Perkins also started taking classes at the Wharton School of Finance and Commerce, and she joined the Socialist Party, a fact that she later concealed (Downey, 2009, p. 24). Perkins was offered a graduate fellowship in political science at Columbia University, so she moved to New York, living in a settlement house. Many of her courses focused on economics and sociology. From her community work at Hull House and in Philadelphia and her coursework at Columbia, she had gained both the practical and theoretical experience to pursue reform activism. In her first published article in The Survey in 1910, “she insisted that human as well as economic values should be considered in any proposal for reform” (Martin, 1976, p. 74). Like her earlier pragmatist mentors, she argued for a systemic approach to charitable relief. Speaking of malnourished children, she said immediate relief was necessary, but it was only an “expedient” until “society adjusts itself and provides adequate incomes and adequate education to all its workers” (Perkins, 1910, p. 72). After graduating from Columbia in 1910, Perkins worked for two years as executive secretary of the New York Consumers’ League, which allowed her to work closely with

Hull House Social Change Methodology and New Deal Reforms     235 Kelley at the NCL. Sympathetic legislators and Kelley’s mentoring helped Perkins hone her political skills as she lobbied to eliminate child labor and create shorter workdays. Witnessing the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire at age 31 was a life-​changing experience for Perkins. She was having coffee nearby with a friend when she heard the commotion and rushed to the scene. She witnessed the horrific sight of people, primarily young women, jumping to their deaths out of high-​rise windows because they were unable to escape the locked burning building. One hundred forty-​six people died, mostly women between the ages of 14 and 23. This event caused Perkins to dedicate her life to industrial reform and workplace safety. After the Triangle fire, New York created a Committee on Safety to prevent industrial fires. When consulted about who to lead this new organization, Teddy Roosevelt recommended 31-​year-​old Frances Perkins for the position of executive director. Roosevelt knew of Perkins’s work from her work as head of the New York City Consumers League, but recommendations from Addams and Kelley had also influenced him. Perkins accepted the position and quickly became its principal investigator. The Committee on Safety helped create a new legislative commission, the New York State Factory Investigation Commission. Perkins was appointed a commissioner, doing much of the investigative work and legislative lobbying. The commission introduced 15 bills in its first year, 8 of which became law. In their second year, 26 of the 28 safety bills they proposed became law.24 In 1918 Perkins was invited to work with New York Industrial Commission, a high-​ paying position never before occupied by a woman. She consulted with Kelley before accepting the position, unsure about leaving social work for politics. Kelley burst into tears when Perkins told her she was being appointed by the new governor to the role, saying, “I never thought I’d live to see the day when someone that we had trained, and who knew industrial conditions, cared about women . . . would have the chance to be an administrative officer” (Downey, 2009, p. 77). This position allowed Perkins to become integral in formulating much of the state’s labor relation policy at a time of powerful unions. When Franklin Roosevelt became the New York State governor in 1929, he asked Perkins to lead the Industrial Commission. When Roosevelt was elected president in 1933, the Hull House and NCL networks went into high gear, urging him to nominate Perkins as Secretary of Labor.25 Perkins herself thought it unlikely that President Roosevelt would nominate a woman since no woman had ever been on a presidential cabinet. She was also reluctant about accepting such a nomination, given her family’s needs in New York.26 But her supporters went ahead with their campaign for her nomination, holding dinners in her honor and scheduling advocacy meetings with influential Democratic friends. Grace Abbott set up appointments at Capitol Hill for Perkins to meet with legislators. Abbott also arranged for Perkins to speak at a conference on youth unemployment and made sure a large group of female reporters was present, contributing to the efforts to have her name frequently appear in the news. Abbott also set up a photography session for publicity headshots of Perkins. Other reform network women joined the effort to support Perkins, as did the head of the Women’s Division of the Democratic Party, Molly

236   Judy D. Whipps Dewson, another former protégé of Florence Kelley. Like Addams, Kelley and Lathrop had done before her, Dewson organized a national letter-​writing campaign on Perkins’s behalf. Jane Addams wrote directly to Roosevelt in 1932, pointing out that Perkins was “best equipped for the post” (Downey, 2009, p. 115). Even with all of the advocacy on her behalf, Perkins remained reluctant to take the post and was hopeful that the appeals did not convince Roosevelt. Molly Dewson finally convinced her to take the position by pointing out Perkins could carry Kelley’s legacy forward and vindicate Kelley’s lifetime of activism on behalf of workers’ safety and rights. (Kelley had recently died in 1932.) That convinced Perkins. She recalled, “Countless times Mrs. Kelley’s steely look and steady, ‘Frances, you got to do it’ meant the difference between doing it that year and not doing it at all” (Ware, 1987, p. 94). Once confirmed, Perkins became part of a small group of women supporters and activists, what Perkins described as a “cordial, interlocking group of minds” tied by “an almost mystical commitment to social reform.” They even had a humorous nickname, “The Children of Light” (Ware, 1981, pp. 33–​34). Dewson, Perkins, and Grace Abbott were part of this next generation, or “inner conference” of an interlocking network of women who brought social reform to actuality.27 Perkins said the group considered Kelley “the mother of us all” and “the head of the family in this enterprise which binds us all together” (Ware, 1981, p. 36). Perkins said her appointment as Secretary of Labor was not due to her own efforts, instead “it was the Consumers League who had been appointed, and that I was merely the symbol . . . who was willing to serve at the moment”28 (1939, quoted in Ware, 1981, p. 36). Under Perkin’s leadership and Roosevelt’s support, Congress passed the Social Security Administration legislation. Perkins also created the Fair Labor Standards Act, which outlawed child labor and institutionalized an eight-​hour workday, minimum wage requirements, and numerous relief programs for women and children.29 Most of this legislation was initially proposed 20 years earlier by women activists such as Addams, Kelley, and Lathrop. After leaving office as secretary of labor, Truman appointed her to the Civil Service Commission, where she served from 1946 to 1953.

The Hull House Toolbox New Deal legislation was supported by specific women-​centered methods developed by Addams, Kelley, and Lathrop, and the next generation of activists then expanded their strategies. Their work grew out of their personal experiences of fighting injustice. They built support for change through data, joining with their neighbors to tell the stories of those affected by inequities, and creating and publicizing reliable research. They moved that work forward by mentoring and advocating for women in critical positions of power. Networks of women’s civic clubs and emerging local and national reform organizations were essential to their work. They drew on those networks to activate letter-​writing

Hull House Social Change Methodology and New Deal Reforms     237 campaigns to support women’s nominations or support government funding and legislative initiatives. These organizations made connections across class and cultural divides possible, often drawing on labor organizations, such as the Women’s Trade Union League and immigrant support organizations. Local and national consumer’s leagues used women’s roles as household consumers to influence industrial practices. All these women intentionally took advantage of women’s traditional social roles, particularly as convenors and society connectors. In Addams’s case, she established personal connections with many influential people by inviting them to visit or stay at Hull House. Others created social and educational events to connect informally with leaders who could support their causes. They also developed strategic media tools, some of which were only open to women. Some, like Addams, wrote for women’s magazines. They cultivated friendships with women reporters, sometimes building those relationships through informal or formal social events. Wealthier women held dinner parties, inviting influential leaders to meet with their favored candidates and sometimes utilizing their social positions to influence the content in newspaper society pages.30 Individually and collectively, all the women discussed here provided mentoring and professional advice to help women learn political and administrative strategies. Kelley, Addams, and Lathrop learned from one another’s methods; Abbott and Perkins were mentored by all three of these women and mentored other women in government positions. They worked to strengthen one another’s platforms and credibility. As we have seen, the models of cooperation and connections established by the Hull House network carried the early century progressive reforms into New Deal public policy, influencing US policy throughout the 20th century. This next generation of women continued to develop strategic and robust support methodologies. They shared a sense of a public mission superseding their personal career success, which enabled them to build these close connections and mentoring relationships. As Dewson observed in a letter to Eleanor Roosevelt, this generation of women had a strong sense of mission that fueled their work beyond a desire for personal advancement, and they supported those who would best advance that mission.31 Their careful strategizing, mentoring, and advocacy on behalf of social reform measures created a series of legislative changes that we still benefit from in the 21st century.

Notes 1. Scott, 2004, p.xxiv. 2. For example, Charlene Haddock Seigfried’s (1996) Pragmatism and feminism deals with the first generation of feminist pragmatists prior to the 1920s. Two major biographies of Addams end around 1900 (Knight’s 2005 Citizen and Brown’s 2004 The education of Jane Addams). 3. Alice Hamilton and others were part of that inner circle of Hull House women as well. (Hamilton, 1943).

238   Judy D. Whipps 4. The women discussed here were fortunate to have worked with progressive-​minded politicians who appointed women in their administration. Illinois governor Altgeld appointed women on state boards, was the first to appoint women as university trustees, and appointed a woman factory inspector. In the 1920s and 1930s, Roosevelt was also committed to providing opportunities for women in government. 5. By 1910, over one million women were in clubs affiliated with the General Federation of Women’s Clubs (Skocpol, 1995, p. 329). 6. The Chicago Woman’s Club grew out of the cultural improvement women’s clubs of the mid-​ late 1800s, but it turned its attention to social issues. According to Skocpol, by 1913 it had committees focused on traditional women’s issues like social hygiene and children’s education, but it also had committees dealing with child labor and minimum wage laws (1995, p. 331). 7. Although social settlements included both women and men, in the United States they were mostly composed of women reformers (Skocpol, 1995, p. 349). 8. Addams’s supportive concern for colleagues continued even when she was struggling with health issues, such as her concern for Emily Greene Balch’s well-​being as she created the WILPF headquarters in Geneva (Gwinn 2010). 9. Kelley’s research thesis from her studies at Cornell was published in 1882. “On some changes in the legal status of children since Blackstone” in The International Review. 10. Marilyn Fischer (2019) demonstrates that Addams’s gradualist approach to change was consistent with and influenced by Fabian socialism. Kelley’s early revolutionary Marxism shifted in her relationship with Addams. Kelley moved from being a revolutionary to a reformer interested in systemic social improvements coming from within the current governmental structures (see Whipps, 2022.). 11. For more about the research process, see Sklar, 1992, pp. 124–​125. 12. Roosevelt had campaigned against the former Illinois governor and was reluctant to support one of his appointees (Sklar, 1995). 13. Addams shows us that Lathrop was witty, entertaining, intelligent, and hardworking, but, reminiscent of Addams’s Twenty Years, her biography does not reveal her emotional life. 14. Lathrop also created the research arm of the Chicago School of Civics and Philanthropy in 1907 (Jabour, 2019, p. 98). 15. Lathrop called attention to the systemic issues at the base of social programs. She said that “juvenile delinquency is due to grinding poverty” and that a drive was needed to abolish poverty “through state action” (quoted in Addams, 1935). 16. It took eight years after the founding of the juvenile courts for the committee to convince the county to pay for probation officer’s salaries (Muncy, 1991, p. 19). 17. They also gathered support from the Mothers’ Congress, Chicago’s Juvenile Protective Association, and local child welfare organizations (Muncy, 1991, p. 40). 18. Addams’s talk focused on restrictions of working hours for women. In Proceedings of the Conference on the Care of Dependent Children Held at Washington, D.C. January 25, 26, 1909, pp. 99–​101. https://​digi​tal.jan​eadd​ams.ram​apo.edu/​items/​show/​4925 19. Although Congress was unanimous in their support, there was a gendered disagreement about the scope of the bureau. The mostly male academic social scientists thought the bureau should be focused on research, while the mostly female reformers wanted it to include advocacy and education (Muncy, 1991, pp. 43–​45). 20. One of Kelley’s and Addams’s early victories had been the 1893 eight-​hour workday law, but it was declared unconstitutional two years later. In 1908, Addams and Abbott started working toward a new Illinois eight-​hour workday law, eventually supporting the

Hull House Social Change Methodology and New Deal Reforms     239 compromise of a ten-​hour workday, which became law in 1909 (E. Abbott, 392). This law was upheld by Supreme Court in Muller v. Oregon, 1908. 21. https://​crow​nsch​ool.uchic​ago.edu/​grace-​abb​ott 22. Eleanor Roosevelt, as first lady, was a more powerful political activist, but did not hold an elected or appointed position. 23. Perkins’s (1951-​55) summary of this work available at http://​www.colum​bia.edu/​cu/​lweb/​ digi​tal/​coll​ecti​ons/​nny/​perki​nsf/​tran​scri​pts/​perk​insf​_​1_​1​_​28.html 24. See Downey, 2009, pp. 49–​53, for Addams’s recommendation and Perkins’s work on the Committee for Safety. 25. The early Hull House networks spanned both the Republican and Democratic parties, but after Roosevelt was elected, the Women’s Division of the Democratic Party joined forces with the earlier Hull House network. 26. Perkins’s husband was hospitalized with a mental illness, and she was raising a young daughter. 27. Although this second-​generation network spanned class distinctions, it was not always inclusive in terms of race. Mary McLeod Bethune was not in this coalition New Deal women, identifying instead with African American issues, as “the unofficial leader of the Black Cabinet” (Ware, 1981, p. 12). In 1936 Bethune became the director of the division of Negro Affairs of the National Youth Administration, where she remained until 1944. 28. “The Living Spirit of Florence Kelley” (1939) in the Perkins papers, Columbia. Quoted in Ware, 1981, footnote 55, p. 170. 29. Ware, 1987, p. 88. 30. Many, but not all, of these methods were open only to upper-​class women. 31. Dewson also wrote to Eleanor Roosevelt that she feared that the generation that followed them were more interested in “personal advancement in which none of our type are interested” (Ware, 1981, p. 121).

References Abbott, E. (1939). A sister’s memories. Social service review 13 (​September 3), 351–​407. Abbott, E. (1950). Grace Abbott and Hull House, 1908-​21. Part I. Social service review, 24 (September 3), 374–​394. Addams, J. (1990/​1910). Twenty years at Hull House. University of Illinois Press. Addams, J. (2003/​1915). Women and war. Jane Addams’s writings on peace, Vol. 4. Edited by Marilyn Fischer and Judy Whipps. Thoemmes Press, 75–​82. Addams, J. (2004/​1935). My friend, Julia Lathrop. University of Illinois Press. Addams, J., and Residents of Hull House. (1895). Hull-​House maps and papers. Thomas Y. Crowell & Co. Athey, L. (1971). Florence Kelley and the quest for Negro equality. The Journal of Negro History 56 (4), 249–​261. Brown, V. B. (2004). The education of Jane Addams. University of Pennsylvania Press. Cohen, M. (2017). Julia Lathrop: Social service and progressive government. Westview Press. Downey, K. (2009). The woman behind the New Deal: The life and legacy of Frances Perkins. Random House. Frankfurter, F. (1953). Foreword. In J. Goldmark, Impatient crusader: Florence Kelley’s life story (pp. x–​ix). University of Illinois Press.

240   Judy D. Whipps Fischer, M. (2019). Evolutionary theorizing. University of Chicago Press. Goldmark, J. (1953). Impatient crusader: Florence Kelley’s life story. University of Illinois Press. Gwinn, K.E. (2010). Emily Greene Balch: The long road to internationalism. University of Illinois Press. Hamilton, A. (1943). Exploring the dangerous trades: The autobiography of Alice Hamilton. Little, Brown and Company. Kelley, F. (1882). On some changes in the legal status of children since Blackstone. The International Review 13 (August), 7–​98. Kelley, F. (1986). The autobiography of Florence Kelley: Notes of sixty years. Edited by Kathryn Kish Sklar. Charles H. Kerr Publishing Company. Knight, L. W. (2005). Citizen: Jane Addams and the struggle for democracy. University of Chicago Press. Jabour, A. (2019). Sophonisba Breckinridge: Championing women’s activism in Modern America. University of Illinois Press. Leonard, H. B. (1973). The Immigrants’ Protective League of Chicago 1908–​1921. Journal of the Illinois State Historical Society 66 (3), 271–​284. Martin, George. (1976). Madame Secretary: Frances Perkins. Houghton Mifflin Company Boston. 1935. Oxford Muncy, R. (1991). Creating a female dominion in American reform, 1890–​ University Press. Perkins, F. (1910). Some facts concerning certain undernourished children. The Survey 25 (October), 68–​72. Perkins, F. (1951–​ 55) Notable New Yorkers. Columbia University Libraries Oral History Research Office. http://​www.colum​bia.edu/​cu/​lweb/​digi​tal/​coll​ecti​ons/​nny/​perki​nsf/​tran​ scri​pts/​perk​insf​_​1_​1​_​28.html, Accessed 10/​28/​2021. Perkins, F. (1954). My recollections of Florence Kelley. Social Service Review 28, 12–​19. Scott, A. F. (2004). Introduction. In J. Addams, My Friend, Julia Lathrop (pp. ix–​xxxii). University of Illinois Press. Seigfried, C. H. (1996). Pragmatism and feminism: Reweaving the social fabric. University of Chicago Press. Sklar, K. K. (1995). Florence Kelley and the nation’s work: The rise of women’s political culture, 1830–​1900. Yale University Press. Sklar, K. K. (1992). “Hull House maps and papers”: Social science as women’s work in the 1890s: The social survey in historical perspective 1880–​1940. Edited by M. Bulmer, K. Bates, and K. K. Sklar. Cambridge University Press. Skocpol, T. (1995). Protecting soldiers and mothers: The political origins of social policy in the United States. Harvard University Press. Torres, C. (2015). Women’s network behind Frances Perkins’s appointment. Revista de Estudios Norteamericanos 19, 151–​166. Ware, S. (1981). Beyond suffrage: Women in the New Deal. Harvard University Press. Ware, S. (1987). Partner and I: Molly Dewson, feminism, and New Deal politics. Yale University Press. Whipps, J. (2022). Florence Kelley, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, and Emily Greene Balch: American feminist socialists. In Lydia Moland and Alison Stone (Eds.), Oxford Handbook of American and British Nineteenth-​Century Women Philosophers. Oxford University Press.

Chapter 13

Intersections of Rac e , Gender, and C l as s i n Jan e Addams’s P ol i t i c a l Friendsh i ps Wynne Walker Moskop

Jane Addams found seeds of democracy and social ethics among poor and oppressed peoples at the bottom of progressive era industrial hierarchies. She insisted that “propinquity” to the poor—​“sharing of the life of the poor” and working with them to address their needs—​inform the goal-​oriented political friendships she forged with immigrant groups around Chicago’s Hull House settlement (1895, 184). She considered “propinquity” to the poor “an unceasing factor in [the settlement’s] existence” (184). The importance Addams attributes to propinquity to the poor points to cross-​class relations as the framework that underlies her diverse political friendships, which also crossed boundaries of race, ethnicity, and gender. However, propinquity to the poor is not always visible in Addams’s political friendships—​not in her well-​known, long-​standing collaborations with either African American leaders and organizations or activists in the women’s international peace movement.1 Does that mean that cross-​class relations and propinquity to the poor are less important to informing goals and ethics of friendships where race or gender is more visible? Or, are they not generally as important as Addams thought? To consider this puzzle, I compare Addams’s political friendships with three different groups: immigrants around Hull House, African American leaders and organizations, and women peace activists. In each case, I focus on how class relations intersect and overlap with hierarchical relations of ethnicity, race, and gender, and the extent to which perspectives of the poor inform goals and ethics of the political friendship. Regardless of differences among them, all are political rather than personal friendships, because they are based primarily on utilitarian goals shared by the participants, not on personal or kinship ties. Since Aristotle, political friendship has

242   Wynne Walker Moskop been understood as association among parties who collaborate to achieve a common purpose, on terms that all parties consider reciprocal and just, even in the context of inequality (Aristotle 1999; Nicomachean Ethics VIII, 9–12).2 Addams’s pragmatist political friendships at Hull House brought together immigrant neighbors, settlement house residents, wealthy supporters, government agencies, nonprofit organizations, sympathetic experts, and labor unions to address needs and problems of the neighborhood. Addams herself described these collaborations in terms such as friendship, friendly relations, comradeship, and fellowship (Whipps 2004; Lake 2014). Although Addams is famous as social reformer, founder of the settlement house movement in the United States, founder of social work, suffrage and peace activist, and Nobel Peace Prize laureate, her diverse collaborations with immigrants, African Americans, and women peace activists testify that she is also a pre-​eminent practitioner and theorist of political friendship (Moskop 2020).3 I focus on Addams’s political friendships with immigrants, African Americans, and women peace activists, because they are widely known, well-​documented collaborations that can be plumbed to better understand possibilities for cross-​class collaboration with the poor in political friendships that are identified largely by their ethnic, racial, or gender base. The comparison does not address the full range of Addams diverse political friendships or possibilities for political friendship she may have missed. The comparison suggests why connecting to the poor, and being informed by their perspectives and needs, remains important—​generally as well as to Addams—​even when race or gender appears to be more foundational. It also suggests how connections with the poor can be forged and maintained when physical propinquity does not seem possible. Absent an effort to ferret out whether and how relevant communities of the poor figure in political friendships where race or gender relations may be more visible, the risk is that needs and perspectives of the poor will be discounted. Then, the crucial role Addams identifies for the poor in the formation of social ethics and goals that promote justice will be lost. It is useful to note from the outset that Addams did not use class, race, or gender as abstract analytical categories, as contemporary intersectional thinkers often do (Fischer 2019, 98-​99; see also Whipps 2021, 116–​117).4 Instead, Addams’s writings offer experiential narratives that represent how class, race, ethnicity, and gender intersect in people’s lives. Illustrations of intersectionality in different lives are front and center, and Addams’s analyses emerge inductively as evidence from the narratives accumulates into the particular patterns described below. Marilyn Fischer posits that “Addams’s approach . . . reveals the limitations of using categories such as gender, race, and class as primary interpretative lenses,” because “unless used carefully,” such abstractions “can obscure evidence found by close examination of particular lives in particular situations” (Fischer 2019, 98). Such close examination is Addams’s forté. Her nuanced narratives illuminate how class intersects or overlaps with race, ethnicity, and gender in ways that can either facilitate or complicate the capacity of particular political friendships to incorporate perspectives and needs of the poor.

Intersections of Race, Gender, and Class    243

Political Friendships with Immigrants: Addams’s Model Addams and other Hull House residents collaborated with immigrant groups in the surrounding neighborhood to tackle problems such as uncollected garbage in the streets, rampant disease, overcrowded and unsanitary housing, harmful working conditions, and low wages; they also responded to broader needs immigrants had for civic, social, and educational activities. Just as neighborhood needs crossed lines of class, ethnicity, and gender, so did the pragmatist political friendships forged to address those needs. Addams approached neighborhood needs and the process for building collaborative associations to address needs from the perspective of the mostly middle-​and upper-​ class young people like herself, who joined settlement houses to work among poor immigrants brought to crowded urban areas by industrialization. She identified one of the most “incredibly painful obstacles” that confronted democratic-​minded residents of Hull House as the relationship between philanthropist and beneficiary “classes” in the progressive era industrial world (Addams 1899, 163). Addams insisted that Hull House was not a charity with philanthropic aspirations, but its residents had to confront the same class division that charitable organizations do: “an unconscious division of the world into the philanthropists and those to be helped” (163). Although their class status positioned Addams and most Hull House residents among the philanthropist class, their democratic motives were in “revolt” against this “assumption of two classes” (163). Somehow the “two classes” had to be brought to a shared purpose that transformed their unequal economic relation into a more egalitarian relation. The question is: How? Although Addams associates particular individuals or groups with philanthropist and beneficiary “classes,” relations between these groups are not strictly economic. Seen through Addams’s pragmatist lens, the undemocratic gap between classes is not merely that some have more than others, but that the two classes are caught up in the same net, woven by commercial and industrial relations that operate to the advantage of one class and the disadvantage of the other.5 The effect is to organize society in a pervasive systemic hierarchy that carries multiple, more local versions of the same hierarchy, even in relations that individuals perceive as personal. These overarching class relations are, in Addams’s terms, also hierarchical “social relations” that connect people’s daily lives in particular patterns. Young people from the philanthropist side of class relations arrived in the settlement with a self-​centered, individual ethic acquired from their relatively privileged background. That ethic inclined them to teach “industrial virtues” such as thrift and self-​ sufficiency, which had helped the upper classes achieve their status, but could mean little in the context of the poverty, disease, and harsh working conditions that confronted the poor. Addams advised young settlement house activists that an initial step toward bridging the gap between their own experiences and those of recent immigrant must be to empty themselves “of all conceit of opinion and all self-​assertion, and [be] ready to

244   Wynne Walker Moskop arouse and interpret the public opinion of their neighborhood” (1911b, 126). Young settlement house residents should live quietly side by side with their neighbors until they develop “sympathetic knowledge,” that is, until they “grow into a sense of relationship and mutual interests” with their immigrant neighbors (1912, 11; 1911b, 126). Sympathetic knowledge acquired from propinquity to the poor affords settlement house residents two benefits. The first is that they gain more accurate information about the concrete problems that poor working-​class people experience and the needs they express. The poor see, as only those who suffer can see, what their conditions actually are, and what persons and groups share their conditions and social location; they also see, usually from some distance, the expensive clothing and other trappings of wealth that identify those who do not share their conditions. A second benefit of propinquity to the poor is that settlement house residents learn about the social ethic of the poor: an ethic of mutual generosity born of the need to cooperate to survive (Addams 1907/​1964, 20). Addams offered perhaps the clearest contrast between the individual ethic of the philanthropist and the social ethic of the poor in ­chapter 2 of Democracy and Social Ethics, where her narrative follows the epistemological evolution of a charity visitor as the ethic inherited from her class background gives way to her friendship with the “industrially failing” immigrant family she aims to help. The charity visitor’s “individual ethic” is marked by “delay and caution,” by reluctance to share lest she undercut the industrial virtues of frugality and self-​sufficiency she presumes to teach. In contrast, the economic precariousness common to poor immigrant families at the bottom of systemic class hierarchy makes “outflow of sympathy and material assistance the most natural thing in the world” (Addams 1907/​1964, 20). This ethic of the poor effectively critiques, and over time corrects, the self-​regarding individual ethic of the well-​to-​do charity visitor. Addams argued that, for the upper classes, an ethical code adequate to social conditions of the time requires “free[ing] ourselves from the individualistic point of view sufficiently to group events in their social relations and to judge fairly those who are endeavoring to produce a social result through all the difficulties of associated action” (Addams 1907/​ 1964, 175). The ethical code of the poor and oppressed, and the new conception of democracy it fosters, cannot be “attained by travelling a sequestered byway” (6). According to Addams, “social perspective and sanity of judgment come only from contact with social experience” (7), that is, from propinquity to the poor and oppressed.6 Addams’s narrative about the charity visitor and immigrant family serves as a paradigm for the remaining chapters of Democracy and Social Ethics, which explore the ways in which systemic relations between philanthropist and beneficiary classes are embedded in particular hierarchical relations of race, gender, and economic status at different levels of society. For context, it is important to remember that, in Addams’s time, ethnicity and nationality were understood in racial terms. Immigrants from northern Europe, southern Europe, and eastern Europe were all considered white, but they often were portrayed in a racial hierarchy, with Anglo-​Saxon and Teutonic immigrants at the top and Greeks, Italians, and Jews from eastern Europe at the bottom (Fischer 2014, 40).7 Marilyn Fischer identifies the overlap of class with ethnicity/​race in three of the relational pairs described by Addams in Democracy and Social Ethics, noting that there were “basic structural parallels . . .between mistress and servants, industrialist and worker,

Intersections of Race, Gender, and Class    245 and parent and adult daughter,” and that each of those relationships “cross[ed] lines of gender, race, and class” (2019, 98; 2021, 139). In each pair, the parties positioned at the top were more secure financially, and they most likely had northern European roots; conversely the parties at the bottom were poor and most likely had southern European roots. The middle-​class education and political reformers that Addams describes in the last two chapters of Democracy and Social Ethics can be paired similarly with their immigrant clientele, with the middle-​class reformers atop a hierarchy of economic class bolstered by, and intertwined with, a parallel hierarchy of ethnicity/​race. Like those at the upper end of other relational pairs, middle-​class education and political reformers of mostly northern European descent have acquired from their background an individual ethic, which assumes that individuals are responsible for their wealth or poverty. They assume that, given their own secure financial position, they are equipped to pass on the benefits of an individual ethic to poor immigrants of mostly southern European descent and, further, that the poor immigrants will benefit from practicing the same ethic.8 Addams again counters with the importance of the immigrants’ more social ethic; she argues, for example, that, instead of emphasizing the individual ethic of the established upper classes, education reform should provide workers with an understanding of their own value, the value of their family and community, and their contribution to industrial organization as a whole. Education should not neglect the new immigrants’ “ordinary experience of life” (1907/​1964, 180–​181), because connecting the immigrants’ experiences in their homeland in the industrial organization of their new land is key to their flourishing. Here again, Addams’s close examination of hierarchical relations shows how ethnic/​race hierarchy is embedded in larger systemic class relations. The political friendships Addams fostered at Hull House provide a model for democratic processes that she sees as applicable in other settings. She explicitly touts the larger degree of compassion and democratic impulse among the humblest in industrialized cities as the basis of democracy and peace in the international arena. Further, she sees the multi-​ethnic, cross-​class approach to political friendship pioneered at Hull House and other urban settlements as a model for transnational collaboration (1907, 11–​19, 235–​236; 1911b, 308). She intends the approach developed at Hull House to be useful for bridging broad systemic class divisions and democratizing hierarchical relations even when the relevant communities of the poor and oppressed are not immediately at hand.

Addams’s Political Friendships with African American Leaders and Organizations Addams lacked the propinquity to poor and oppressed African American communities that she had with immigrant communities at Hull House, but she developed political friendships with many African Americans leaders and organizations. She helped

246   Wynne Walker Moskop to establish settlement houses that served African Americans, campaigned with Ida B. Wells against efforts to segregate Chicago public schools (Fischer 2014, 38), and supported civic organizations that included black women, such as the League of Women Voters and the Women’s City Club (Deegan 1988, 302, 308; Deegan 2010, 220). She helped to found both the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and the National Urban League. Addams collaborated over many years with well-​ known Black leaders, including W. E. B. Du Bois and Fanny Barrier Williams, in addition to Wells (Deegan 1988, 308). Addams also worked with several biracial women’s groups, including the Cooks County League and the CWC and the LWV (Aptheker 1977, 7; Deegan 2010, 221, 223–​224, 228–​229). Despite her numerous political friendships with African American leaders and organizations and strong record as an advocate for African American equality and civil rights, Addams made some missteps. She occasionally used rhetoric that inadvertently reinforced myths about the supposed inferiority and lawlessness of African Americans. I focus on two examples, not to dispute or contribute to criticisms of Addams; certainly, occasional missteps are to be expected in the work of pragmatist political friendships. My interest is how Addams’s errors look through the lens provided by the model of cross-​class political friendship developed with immigrants around Hull House. To what extent were systemic class relations and propinquity to the poor relevant to understanding Addams’s neglect of African American perspectives on these two occasions? Specifically: can an examination of her errors illuminate the intersection of class and race in her political friendships with African Americans, and thus demonstrate the continuing importance of seeking propinquity to the poor? It is important to recognize that Addams’s extensive biracial networks and political friendships with African American leaders were predominantly with educated middle-​ class African Americans; she was not in a position to provide the same kinds of first-​ hand experiential accounts of cross-​class relations between poor African American communities and city agencies, or between African American communities and industrialists or reformers, that she provided in the case of cross-​class relations involving immigrants in Democracy and Social Ethics. When Hull House opened in 1889, “blacks made up only 1.3% of Chicago’s population,” and even “by 1910, only 2% of Chicago’s 2.2 million people were black.” Also, “housing and employment patterns were less rigidly segregated than they would become in the next few decades,” all of which limited Addams’s access to perspectives of poor African Americans.9 Why were her political friendships with prominent African Americans not sufficient to offset this limitation? In a 1901 article, “Respect for Law,” Addams argued against lawless lynching because such well-​attended public spectacles and the exhibition of mutilated bodies that accompanied them were not effective means for discouraging crime. Lynching was ostensibly intended to punish rape of white women by black men and discourage African American lawlessness, but Addams warned that it was instead brutalizing to perpetrators and victims alike: “Violence is the most ineffectual method of dealing with crime, the most preposterous attempt to inculcate lessons of self-​control” (1901). The problem with Addams’s argument, as her long-​time collaborator and friend Ida B. Wells

Intersections of Race, Gender, and Class    247 pointed out later in a respectful but public reprimand, was that she did not dispute the myth that lynching was a necessary response to the lawless and lack of moral restraint of African Americans. Instead, Addams explicitly set aside the problem of punishing the innocent that results from lawless lynching, when she should have turned to the lynching record published by reliable newspapers to refute the myth. Wells wrote: “It is unspeakably infamous to put thousands of people to death without a trial by jury; it adds to that infamy to charge that these victims were moral monsters, when in fact, four-​fifths of them were not so accused even by the fiends who murdered them” (1901/​1977, 31). A second example begins with a 1908 speech at an Atlanta University conference organized by W. E. B. Du Bois, “Advantages and Disadvantages of a Broken Inheritance,” and continues in a related 1911 article, “Social Control,” published in The Independent. Addams suggested that African Americans differed from communities of recent immigrants because the immigrants could rely on inherited cultures of origin to knit their communities together and maintain norms of social control over errant behavior. In contrast, enslavement cut African Americans off from a cultural inheritance, which deprived them of the shared cultural customs that served immigrant communities as a source of “social control” (1911a). Once again, Addams inadvertently reinforced racist myths about African Americans’ lack of moral restraint and preparation for democratic self-​government. Addams could have avoided her mistakes in “Respect for Law” and her speech and article on social control by seeking advice from her African American colleagues, as scholars have observed (Hamington 2005, 173; Fischer 2014, 49). But why didn’t she? Did she assume she had more knowledge than she did? She had the tools to understand what was lacking in her knowledge of poor African American communities: her experiences with immigrant communities provided a context for understanding intersections of race and ethnicity with class. Her accounts of political friendships with immigrants at Hull House, and her analyses of how race/​ethnicity align with and reinforce class hierarchy in the relational pairs described in Democracy and Social Ethics, display a deep understanding of the overlap between racial and economic hierarchies. In addition, her description of the racialized post-​war construction of legitimate citizenship in The Second Twenty Years at Hull House details how established Nordic races distrusted and discriminated against southern Europeans, African Americans, Mexicans, and Native Americans (1930, 263–​267, 277–​278, 283–​284).10 Further, Addams actually applied her class analysis in “Respect for Law,” which shows her continued awareness of how class relations intersect with race and gender to the greater disadvantage of the lower classes. She explained that “property crimes committed by so-​called ‘lower’ and ‘inferior’ classes against the rich” result in “the most savage punishment” and, further, that “punishments of this sort [lynching] rise to unspeakable atrocities when the crimes of the so-​called inferior class effect the property and persons of the superior.” The speech also connects systemic class relations with gender hierarchy, arguing “that a woman’s virtue could not and should not be protected” by white men lynching black men, “a method which assumed [woman’s] status as property” (Aptheker 1977, 11; Addams 1901).

248   Wynne Walker Moskop One explanation suggested for Addams’s ill-​advised remarks about social control is that she may have undervalued African American cultural resources in comparison to cultural resources of immigrant communities. Marilyn Fischer observes that, contrary to Addams’s assumption of “a broken heritage,” fragments of inherited culture survived enslavement and provided a basis for continual reinvention of culture in the new land. Also, African culture operated as a critique of American individualist culture, just as immigrant cultures did (Fischer 2014, 49–​50). Against the explanation that Addams undervalued African American cultural resources, Mary Jo Deegan cites evidence that Addams in fact did value many of the same elements of African American culture that Du Bois did, including music, rhythm, and oratorical skills (Deegan 2010, 225–​226). Addams’s emphasis on propinquity to the poor and her understanding of systemic class relations as a combination of race, gender, and economic relations that operate differently in different contexts suggests another, or perhaps an additional, explanation. It seems likely that her connection to experiences and perspectives of the poorest African Americans were more remote than she thought, although she was well aware of her lack of experience with African American families and communities. Certainly, Addams did not intend, in either “Respect for Law” or “Advantages and Disadvantages of a Broken Inheritance,” to comment on family and community life of African Americans. Instead she offered broad historical and sociological analyses that she thought she had the knowledge to make. In 1901, she wrote about how the upper classes, historically, have defended their status against rising lower classes with brutal punishment of crimes, real or suspected, and how race antagonism reinforced that tendency in the United States. In 1908, she made arguments based on her experience and observations of immigrant community life about resources needed to support development of community “social control.” Further, at the beginning of that speech, she confessed her ignorance to her Atlanta University audience, stating that her experience “does not reach the [African American] family and does not throw light upon that side of the colony’s life.” She expressed her intention: I thought perhaps I could be of most use this evening in giving you some of my general observations and experiences with the problems which confront families of various nationalities who move into Chicago and meet all the maladjustment, all the ups and downs of city life for the first time. These are, after all, the great human problems which must confront all of us. (Addams 1908)

Despite her best intentions, she proceeded to make the troubling comments about disadvantages of “a broken heritage” to “social control” in African American communities. As her 1911 article on “Social Control” clarifies and illustrates, she had taken concerns about moral restraint in African American communities from African Americans themselves. Further, she blamed the U.S. as a nation for ongoing discrimination and segregation that disrupt possibilities for African American families and communities to develop community norms of social control (22). In A New Conscience

Intersections of Race, Gender, and Class    249 and An Ancient Evil (1912), she complained that discriminatory housing and rent practices force African Americans, “the very people who have confessedly the shortest history of social restraint,” into areas of the city where vice reigns, with predictable results. Addams again faults not African Americans, but “the nation. . . for the broken foundations of [African American] family life” (1912, 118–​119). Addams’s analyses of factors that limit development of social control in African American communities do not seem inaccurate, and neither does her claim that she is repeating concerns about the need for moral restraint expressed by African Americans themselves. She heard such concerns in her bi-​racial network of women’s clubs. The impetus for African American women’s clubs to organize nationally was a coordinated response to accusations made by the likes of Missouri journalist John Jacks, who charged in 1895 that “Negroes in this country are wholly devoid of morality. . . . The women are prostitutes and all are natural liars and thieves” (quoted at NACWC). African American club women responded by focusing on the need for “moral education of the race,” “mental elevation,” and “home training,” as Josephine St. Pierre Ruffin stated at the 1896 organizing conference of the National Association of Colored Women’s Clubs (quoted at NACWC). At the same time, Addams also knew that African American women were offended by “all questions relative to the moral progress of the colored women of America” (Fischer 2014, 49, quotes Fannie Barrier Williams at a conference where Addams was a participant). Yet, Addams’s comments on social control raised these same offensive questions. This suggests that Addams may have been less aware than she should have been of differences between her cross-​class political friendships with immigrant communities and her political friendships with middle-​class African Americans leaders, and of the effects of those differences. The cross-​class socio-​economic hierarchy that marked Addams’s political friendships with poor immigrants at Hull House was not present in her political friendships with educated middle-​class African American leaders.11 While her African American colleagues certainly experienced discrimination, they were not poor. Unlike the hierarchical pairs described in Democracy and Social Ethics, in which race/​ethnic hierarchy aligned with and reinforced economic hierarchy, the socio-​economic status of most African American leaders in Addams’s network did not align with their racial ranking in the dominant culture. In their case, economic class and race diverged, placing middle-​class African Americans at the top of one hierarchy and the bottom of the other. To put it another way, race bridged the class division between Addams’s middle-​class African American colleagues and poor African Americans, but her political friendship with prominent African Americans operated outside that bridge. That racial separation appears to have left her without enough sympathetic knowledge of needs and perspectives of African American as a whole—​as an entire racial group oppressed by the dominant white culture—​to understand that her comments about social control in African American communities would reinforce derogatory myths about African Americans. She could not experience the impact of those comments as African Americans could. In any case, reactions to Addams’s general analyses in this speech, her article “Social Control,” and also the earlier “Respect for Law,” showed that, although she avoided

250   Wynne Walker Moskop comments about African American family life in both examples, her historical and sociological observations about social control reflected on the moral core of African American family and community life in ways that she did not anticipate. Addams’s inability to foresee how her comments would be received by African Americans as a larger social group demonstrate the importance of continually cultivating sympathetic knowledge of relevant communities of the poor within any social group. For these purposes, it seems that maintaining propinquity, or finding adequate substitutes, is key.

Addams’s Political Friendships with Women Peace Activists Addams’s accounts of relations among activists in the women’s international peace movement in Newer Ideals of Peace (1907) and Peace and Bread in Time of War (1922/​ 1960) show that she was constantly aware of the need for those who facilitate political friendships to maintain connections to poor and oppressed people who suffer the most from war, even when propinquity to them seems to be a remote possibility. She proposed her multi-​ethnic, cross-​class collaborations at Hull House as a model for collaborations to promote peace and democracy in the international arena (1907, 11–​19, 235–​236; 1911, 308). The differences among the model of political friendship developed at Hull House, Addams’s political friendships with African American leaders and organizations, and her transnational political friendships with women peace activists are related to differences in her access to relevant communities of poor and oppressed, and to differences in the ways class intersects with race and gender. In all three categories of Addams’s political friendships, spokespersons and facilitators were largely educated middle-​class women. To follow the model of cross-​class political friendship Addams developed at Hull House, her political friendships with African Americans and women peace activists needed ties to those at the lower end of systemic class hierarchy, ties that may sometimes seem external to the main parties to the political friendship. In both cases, substitutes for propinquity must be identified. While Addams’s political friendships with women peace activists on both sides of the Atlantic included some diversity of race and class, propinquity to relevant communities of poor and oppressed was missing due to geographical distance. However, Addams’s narratives suggest that the peace activists were nonetheless able to maintain connections to relevant communities. The questions we endeavor to answer here are: What methods are useful for forging and maintaining ties across class divisions in the absence of propinquity? How do intersections of race, class, and gender figure in these methods? And, finally, what insights do Addams’s narratives about the peace movement offer for developing political friendships in other contexts in which propinquity to the poor and oppressed is not available?

Intersections of Race, Gender, and Class    251 In the peace movement, Addams’s analysis of systemic class relations shifts from the urban settlement house context to broader issues of war and peace, where she translates the class hierarchy of philanthropist over beneficiary to a hierarchy of militarism over industrialism, in the United States and internationally (1907, 1922/​1950). At the upper end of this hierarchy, Addams finds nationalist versions of patriotism touted by government and business elites to support militarism. At the lower end, she finds cosmopolitan versions of patriotism that emerge among crowded urban communities of diverse immigrants who combine allegiance to their respective native countries with allegiance to their new country. Further, Addams associates the spirit of militarism, and the possessiveness, competition, and belligerence of nationalist versions of patriotism with the powerful and propertied; and she associates the peaceful spirit of industrialism with poor and working-class people. Diplomats, generals, businesspeople, and other elites in most countries have the individual ethic of the philanthropist class (understood in this context as a militaristic ethic based on a competitive tribal version of patriotism) that fails to consider wider social relations beneath or beyond what the classes in power perceive as “national” interest. In contrast, those who are guided by forces of industrialism—​either locally or transnationally—​follow a social ethic grounded in the broader perspective of poor and working-​class people who are concerned with the “bread labor” that sustains life.12 For Addams, peace is not “merely absence of war, but the unfolding of life processes which are making for a common development” (1907, 234, 238). Addams’s narratives suggest several measures that helped the women’s peace movement organize themselves to maintain connections with those at the bottom end of international class hierarchies, so that goals and methods of the peace movement itself would be informed by problems of those who suffer most from war. Because of their daily experiences, working-​class and poor people know what the upper classes do not: “Workmen have always realized, however feebly and vaguely they may have expressed it, that it is they who in all ages have borne the heaviest burden of privation and suffering imposed on the world by the military spirit” (Addams 1907, 113). But working men are not the only ones who bear “the heaviest burden”: Addams also locates women in this group because of women’s history of bread labor to sustain life. Women’s gender, and specifically their socialization in the historical role of nurturing their families, leads them to share the poorer classes’ antipathy to war and inclination toward peace (Addams 1907, 189–​192; 1916, 136–​140; Fischer 2009, 169; Sarvasy 2009, 193). Gender is a clear factor connecting the women peace activists at opposite ends of systemic class hierarchies because of the shared historical experience of women with bread labor and all the life-​sustaining activities that connotes. Addams participated in and often led many woman-​centered peace societies at local, national, and transnational levels.13 For Addams, gender performed a role bridging class divisions in political friendships with women peace activists that race could not perform for her in political friendships with African Americans. (In those friendships, race bridged class divisions among African Americans, but separated Addams from knowledge of poor African American communities.) In political friendships with women peace activists, methods

252   Wynne Walker Moskop of organizing took full advantage of multi-​faceted gendered ties developed across multiple countries. Organizational practices in the women’s international peace movement suggest several lessons that can help other social justice activists to develop political friendships that include relevant poor and oppressed groups and to focus on problems experienced by those groups even when immediate propinquity to them is lacking.14

Lessons from the Women’s International Peace Movement 1. Middle-​class facilitators and participants benefit from prior experience collaborating with the poor. People who are not from the lowest classes will benefit from having already undergone the epistemic evolution needed to develop sympathetic knowledge of poor and oppressed communities at some social location. Many prominent women in the peace movement, like Addams herself, brought a wealth of experience from years spent working in settlement houses and elsewhere with immigrants, poor people, and labor groups.15 They had grown beyond the individual ethic of their class background to a more social ethic and were practiced in the continuing need to listen to the poor. 2. The poor must be actively involved as partners in the political friendship. The women who gathered for the 1915 Congress of Women at The Hague were diverse; women from twelve countries and different “classes, creeds, and parties” participated, including some leaders of trade unions. All were “united in expressing sympathy with the suffering of all, whatever their nationality, who are fighting for their country or laboring under the burden of war” (International Congress of Women at The Hague, 1915/​2003, 151). The diversity of attendees, who included representatives from countries most directly affected by war and famine, provided some opportunity for epistemic growth at the upper levels of organization. 3. Organizations should be decentralized to facilitate expression of perspectives and needs of different class, ethnic, and racial groups at local levels. Addams considers it a mistake to think that all peace efforts should feed into one central organization: “In the same war, it is more than five times better to have offices in [many cities] than to have one bang-​up office organization in New York City alone” (Addams and Balch 1934/2005, 353). 4. It is better to welcome efforts related to the goal of a political friendship than to rely only on organizations that focus solely on that purpose. It is a “mistake to regard as coincident the movement toward peace with [only] the organized peace societies” (Addams and Balch 1934/​2005, 355), because that would neglect the role of many other societies and organizations in promoting peace.

Intersections of Race, Gender, and Class    253 5. Avoid treating goals that differ from one’s own as oppositional. From Addams’s perspective, when different peace groups prioritize different goals, they are not “quarrelling” (Addams and Balch 1934/​2005, 354); they are bringing diverse perspectives and strategies to bear on a widely shared end that simply cannot be realized without including all affected parties and the perspectives that come from their varying experiences. 6. It is important to involve all who are affected by a problem in an inclusive, democratic collaborative process to address that problem. This is not only a matter of effectively pursuing a widely shared purpose, it is also a matter of justice, and, therefore, of democracy and peace. Delegates to the second International Congress of Women that met in Zurich in May 1919 during the Paris peace negotiations passed resolutions that protested the effective division of spoils of war among the victors on the grounds that deployment of transnational economic and social relations that link people across the globe should not be controlled by some groups to the disadvantage of others (Addams, 1922/​1960, 162). 7. Political friendships require a positive focus to motivate and direct action toward a shared goal. In Peace and Bread, Addams sees a positive purpose in the Allied effort to distribute food during the war. Through her work with the US Department of Food Administration, she visited many US cities and towns to encourage people “to produce and conserve food” for distribution in Europe. In her view, the “effort to feed hungry people” portended “a new and powerful force. . . to be reckoned with as a factor in international affairs” (Addams 1930, 146). 8. Detailed on-​the-​ground investigation of problems to be addressed is essential to organizing in a way that conforms to the contours of existing economic conditions and systemic class hierarchies. Otherwise, leaders and facilitators will be ignorant not only of the needs and perspectives of the poor, but they will also be ignorant of material conditions that shape the problems of the poor they want to address. Addams led on-​the-​ground investigations, internationally as well as at Hull House; her accounts of her travels during and after the war, and the stories she heard from convalescing soldiers and their nurses, from the families of young men who had gone to fight, and from the diverse attendees at peace meetings, illuminate how middle-​class peace activists with previous experience in communities of the poor and oppressed can continue to evolve epistemically as they learn from those who suffer most from war.

Conclusion While Addams approached systemic class relations as intermingled hierarchies of race, class, and gender, she recognized that these overlapping hierarchies operate differently in different locations and circumstances. In Newer Ideals of Peace (1907) and Peace and Bread

254   Wynne Walker Moskop in Time of War (1922/​1960), she translates the class hierarchy described in cross-​class relations with immigrant communities around Hull House to a hierarchy of forces of militarism over forces of industrialism at multiple local, national, and transnational levels. One can see her cross-​class model of political friendship at Hull House at work in her transnational political friendships with women peace activists; the challenges posed by lack of propinquity to the poor are clear and are met deliberately, as the lessons above illustrate. Addams’s political friendships with African Americans differ because racial division, as well as lack of propinquity to poor African American communities, interrupted her epistemic access to the perspectives of those communities. The gulf between Addams and families and communities of poor African Americans limited her ability to develop the sympathetic knowledge needed to foresee, for example, how African Americans would perceive her references to a “broken inheritance” and the resulting lack of community “social control.” She lacked the more complete understanding of historical and cultural ties among African Americans from different class backgrounds that propinquity to poor African American communities might have afforded. This disruption reinforces the importance of the model of cross-​class relations Addams pioneered at Hull House, as well as her approach to systemic class relations as the overarching framework for pragmatist political friendships. It emphasizes the continuing need for collaborating directly with relevant groups of the poor when possible and for creating organizational substitutes when propinquity to the poor is not possible. In Addams’s friendships with African Americans, the substitute for physical propinquity to poor African American communities would have been greater reliance on her middle-​ class African American colleagues to mediate a connection with perspectives of poor African Americans. That would have given her better understanding of the standpoint of African Americans as social group that transcended class division. She could have consulted with her colleagues before making public ideas and rhetoric that directly affected their lives and communities in ways that she evidently did not understand, and perhaps could not understand, without their input. How can lessons from the peace activists’ organizational practices be useful for leaders and facilitators in similar circumstances, where both distance and intersecting social identities hinder cross-​class collaborations? In particular, the first, second, and sixth lessons listed above can be adapted for this combination of circumstances, whether the possibility for cross-​class political friendships is disrupted by gender, nationality, sexuality, religion, race (as Addams experienced), or some other group social identity. The first lesson emphasizes the acquisition of sympathetic knowledge in an earlier situation. At the same time, it is important not to overextend the relevance of that experience or misjudge its applicability to other groups. While prior experience building cross-​class political friendships helps to prepare one for developing new political friendships in different circumstances, it does not provide the knowledge needed in those different circumstances. The second lesson requires involving the poor and oppressed group in decision-​making processes. However, if a facilitator cannot develop political friendship with the relevant community of poor and oppressed, and if a political friendship with a middle-​class component of the larger oppressed community is

Intersections of Race, Gender, and Class    255 possible (as it was in Addams’s case with African Americans), developing this second, mediating connection with poor communities is essential. And, once developed, this mediating political friendship must be maintained so that it becomes part of a continuing collaborative process that includes the poor. As for the sixth lesson (involving all affected by a problem in the problem-​solving process): if facilitators are not in a position to form even mediated cross-​class political friendships with affected groups of the poor, they can turn to other lessons to meet this criterion. Chief among these other lessons is establishing decentralized organizational processes that welcome cooperation with organizations having related goals (especially goals of the poor), treating goals that differ as valuable input rather than opposition, and providing means for detailed, on the ground investigation of problems of the poor, with input from the poor. Lessons drawn from Addams’s transnational political friendships with women peace activities are useful in the most direct sense for reflecting on organizational substitutes for propinquity to the poor in cases where propinquity is hindered or blocked by geographic separation. It turns out, however, that these lessons also are useful for reflecting on substitutes when class and race (or other social identity) intersect in ways that limit facilitators’ or leaders’ propinquity to relevant communities of the poor. In the case of Addams’s political friendships with African American leaders and organizations, both geographic separation and racial difference limited Addams’s propinquity to poor African American communities and, thus, her ability to develop cross-​class political friendship of the kind she developed with immigrants at Hull House. As noted, lessons from Addams’s political friendship with distant women peace activists suggest that there were times when Addams could have benefitted from greater reliance on her middle-​class African American colleagues to serve as mediators with poor African American families and communities. The comparison of Addams’s experiences with immigrants at Hull House, African Americans leaders and organizations, and distant women peace activists illustrates the importance to pragmatist social justice advocates of maintaining ties to relevant communities of the poor. Further, it suggests how political friendships can be anchored in material conditions, needs, perspectives, and social ethics shared by poor communities, even when physical propinquity to them is not possible. Finally, the comparison shows that maintaining political friendships that are informed by perspectives and goals of the poor requires an understanding of how class intersects in particular circumstances with race, gender, or other social hierarchies, and how such intersections can disrupt or reinforce possibilities for cross-​class political friendships.

Notes 1. Scholars tend to highlight community and fellowship in the context of cultural diversity. See Seigfried 1996, 45–​48, 58–​59, 74–​75; Hamington 2004; Whipps 2004; Bardwell-​Jones 2012; Sarvasy 2010, 294–​296; Fischer 2014; Lake 2014. At the same time, several note Addams’s concern with unequal class relations (Seigfried 1996, 229–​230; Whipps 2004, 120–​123; Sarvasy 2010; Fischer 2014).

256   Wynne Walker Moskop 2. For contemporary applications of political friendship, see Allen 2004; Schwarzenbach 2009, 2011; Moskop 2018, 2020. 3. The argument below includes excerpts from Jane Addams on Inequality and Political Friendship by Wynne Walker Moskop, Copyright 2020 by Routledge, reproduced by permission of Taylor and Francis Group. 4. I shift to the present tense when I discuss Addams’s accounts, which is not uncommon in philosophical interpretations. The texts are present as theory, and they are used as theory in my argument; it may be confusing to write about them as one writes about historical events. 5. Addams’s pragmatist approach to class relations differs from a Marxist approach in that she seeks to establish friendship across classes and does not look for class conflict to increase. 6. Maurice Hamington (2019) argues that Addams is an early standpoint thinker. 7. The Dillingham Commission’s 1911 Report on Immigration counted thirty-​six European (white) races (cited by Fischer 2014, 40). 8. Stated in contemporary terms by Linda Alcoff (2019), the upper classes demonstrate “epistemologies of ignorance” that presume that their own experiences are adequate to capture circumstances and to devise solutions to social problems. 9. Fischer 2014, 38, cites Alan H. Spear. Black Chicago: The Making of a Negro Ghetto: 1890-​ 1920 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1967), 11–​15, 20–​21. 10. There were few Native Americans living in Chicago during the early twentieth century—​ 188 in 1910 (“Indigenous Tribes of Chicago”). It is not clear what contact Addams may have had with them. In The Second Twenty Years at Hull House (1930), Addams noted that the “national tendency to lawless” had been linked to the nation’s “uncured and extra-​ legal violence toward” both Native Americans and African Americans. Addams included Chicago members of the Grand Council Fire among non-​Nordic citizens who helped to elect a 1917 Chicago mayoral candidate whose slogans stirred their resentment of Nordic discrimination and presumptions of superiority (1930, 267). 11. For example, Du Bois was a Harvard-​educated sociologist who taught at multiple universities; Fannie Barrier Williams was a prominent educator and woman suffrage activist who was married to a successful Chicago Lawyer; and Ida B. Wells, born as a slave, became a teacher and then a journalist famous for her anti-​lynching campaign. She also married a prominent Chicago lawyer. 12. She takes the term from Tolstoy. 13. These include the Women’s Peace Party, the 1915 International Congress of Women at the Hague, the second International Congress at Zurich during the Paris peace negotiations, and the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom. 14. Lessons are adapted from Moskop 2020, 113–​120. 15. In addition to Addams, delegates to the 1915 International Congress of Women at the Hague included, for example, sociologist Emily Green Balch and physician Alice Hamilton, both of whom at worked at settlement houses; Hamilton was a long-​time resident of Hull House (Addams 1930, 126; Deegan 2002, 16).

References Addams, Jane. 1895. “The Settlement as a Factor in the Labor Movement.” In Hull House Maps and Papers, edited by Residents of Hull House, 183–​206. New York: Thomas Y. Crowell and Co.

Intersections of Race, Gender, and Class    257 Addams, Jane. 1899. “The Subtle Problems of Charity.” Atlantic Monthly 82 (February): 163–​178. https://​digi​tal.jan​eadd​ams.ram​apo.edu/​items/​show/​7274. Addams, Jane. 1901. “Respect for Law.” Independent (January 3). https://​digi​tal.jan​eadd​ams .ram​apo.edu/​items/​show/​1264#:~:text=​Resp​ect%20for%20Law. Addams, Jane. 1907/​1964. Democracy and Social Ethics. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Addams, Jane. 1907. Newer Ideals of Peace. New York: Macmillan. Addams, Jane, 1908. “Advantages and Disadvantages of a Broken Inheritance.” Atlanta University Bulletin 183 (June): 1–​2. https://​digi​tal.jan​eadd​ams.ram​apo.edu/​items/​show/​7521. Addams, Jane. 1911a. “Social Control.” Crisis 1 (January): 22–​23. https://​digi​tal.jan​eadd​ams.ram​ apo.edu/​items/​show/​7274. Addams, Jane. 1911b. Twenty Years at Hull House. Chautauqua, NY: The Chautauqua Press. Addams, Jane. 1912. A New Conscience and an Ancient Evil. New York: Macmillan. Addams, Jane. 1915/​2003. “Revolt against War.” In Women at the Hague: The International Congress of Women and Its Results, edited by Jane Addams, Emily G. Balch, and Alice Hamilton, 55–​81. New York: MacMillan. Addams, Jane. 1916. The Long Road of Woman’s Memory. New York: Macmillan. Addams, Jane. 1922/​1960. Peace and Bread in Time of War. With an Introductory Essay by John Dewey. Boston: G. K. Hall & Co. Addams, Jane. 1930. The Second Twenty Years at Hull House. New York: Macmillan. Addams, Jane, and Emily Green Balch. 1934/​2005. “Is a United Peace Front Desirable?” In Jane Addams’s Writings on Peace, edited by Marilyn Fischer and Judy D. Whipps, 353–​356. New York: Continuum. Alcoff, Linda Martín. 2019. “Race, Gender, and Epistemologies of Ignorance.” In The Routledge Handbook of Social Epistemology, 1st ed., edited by Miranda Fricker, Peter J. Graham, David Henderson, Nikolaj J. L. L. Pedersen, 304–​312. New York: Routledge. Allen, Danielle. 2004. Talking to Strangers: Anxieties of Citizenship since Brown v. Board of Education. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Aptheker, Bettina. 1977. “Introduction.” In Lynching and Rape: An Exchange of Views, by Jane Addams and Ida B. Wells, ed. Bettina Aptheker Occasional Paper Series No. 25, 1–​24. New York: The American Institute of Marxist Studies. Aristotle. 1999. Nicomachean Ethics. 2nd ed., translated by Terence Irwin. Indianapolis, IN: Hackett. Bardwell-​Jones, Celia. 2012. “Addams and Immigration: Cultivating Cosmopolitan Identities through a Transnational Public Ethos of Care.” New York: Society for the Advancement of Philosophy (March). Deegan, Mary Jo. 1988. “W.E.B. DuBois and the Women of Hull-​House, 1895-​1899.” The American Sociologist 19, no. 4 (Winter, 1988): 301–​311 Deegan, Mary Jo. 2002. Race, Hull House, and the University of Chicago: A New Conscience against Ancient Evils. New York: Praeger. Deegan, Mary Jo. 2010. “Jane Addams on Citizenship in a Democracy.” Journal of Classical Sociology 10 (3): 217–​238. Fischer, Marilyn. 2009. “The Conceptual Scaffolding of Newer Ideals of Peace.” In Jane Addams and the Practice of Democracy,” edited by Marilyn Fischer, Carol Nackenoff, and Wendy Chmielewsky, 165–​182. Urbana: University of Illinois Press. Fischer, Marilyn. 2014. “Addams on Cultural Pluralism, European Immigrants, and African Americans.” The Pluralist 9, no. 3 (Fall): 38–​58.

258   Wynne Walker Moskop Fischer, Marilyn. 2019. Jane Addams’s Evolutionary Theorizing: Constructing “Democracy and Social Ethics.” Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Fischer, Marilyn. 2021. “Reply to Critics,” The Pluralist 16, no.1 (Spring): 137–​144 Hamington, Maurice. 2004. Embodied Care: Jane Addams, Maurice Merleau-​Ponty, and Feminist Ethics. Chicago: University of Illinois Press. Hamington, Maurice 2005. “Public Pragmatism: Jane Addams and Ida B. Wells on Lynching.” Journal of Speculative Philosophy 19, (2): 167–​174. Hamington, Maurice. 2019. “Jane Addams.” In The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Summer 2019 Edition), edited by Edward N. Zalta. https://​plato.stanf​ord.edu/​archi​ves/​ sum2​019/​entr​ies/​add​ams-​jane/​. “Indigenous Tribes of Chicago.” American Library Association, https://​www.ala.org/​about​ala/​ offi​ces/​divers​ity/​chic​ago-​ind​igen​ous. Accessed May 8, 2022. International Congress of Women at The Hague. 1915/​ 2003. “Resolutions Adopted by International Congress of Women at The Hague, May 1, 1915.” In Women at the Hague: The International Congress of Women and Its Results, edited by Jane Addams, Emily G. Balch, and Alice Hamilton, 150–​159. New York: MacMillan. Lake, Danielle. 2014. “Jane Addams and Wicked Problems: Putting the Pragmatic Method to Use.” The Pluralist 9, no. 3 (Fall): 77–​94. Moskop, Wynne Walker. 2018. “Jane Addams and Possibilities for Transnational Political Friendship.” American Political Thought 7, no. 3 (Summer): 400–​431. Moskop, Wynne Walker. 2020. Jane Addams on Inequality and Political Friendship. New York: Routledge. National Association of Colored Women’s Clubs (NACWC). https://​www.nacwc.com/​hist​ory. Accessed March 15, 2022. Sarvasy, Wendy. 2009. “A Global ‘Common Table’: Jane Addams’s Theory of Democratic Cosmopolitanism and World Social Citizenship.” In Jane Addams and the Practice of Democracy, edited by Marilyn Fischer, Carol Nackenoff, and Wendy Chmielewsky, 183–​202. Urbana: University of Illinois Press. Sarvasy, Wendy. 2010. “Engendering Democracy by Socializing It: Jane Addams’s Contribution to Feminist Political Theorizing.” In Feminist Interpretations of Jane Addams, edited by Maurice Hamington, 291–​309. University Park: Penn State University Press. Schwarzenbach, Sibyl. 2009. On Civic Friendship: Including Women in the State. New York: Columbia University Press. Schwarzenbach, Sibyl. 2011. “A Failure of Civic Friendship.” Huffington Post (May 25). https://​ www.huffp​ost.com/​entry/​a-​fail​ure-​of-​civic-​frie​nd_​b​_​387​528. Seigfried, Charlene Haddock. 1996. Pragmatism and Feminism: Reweaving the Social Fabric. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Wells, Ida B. 1901/​1977. “Lynching and the Excuse for It.” In Lynching and Rape: An Exchange of Views, by Jane Addams and Ida B. Wells, edited by Bettina Aptheker. Occasional Paper Series No. 25, 30–​35. New York: The American Institute of Marxist Studies. https://​arch​ive .org/​str​eam/​Lynchi​ngRa​peAn​Exch​ange​OfVi​ews/​Apthek​er_​d​jvu.txt. Whipps, Judy D. 2004. “Jane Addams’s Social Thought as a Model for a Pragmatist-​Feminist Communitarianism.” Hypatia 19, no. 2 (Spring): 118–​133. Whipps, Judy D. 2021. “Querying Addams as ‘Evolutionary Scientist.’” The Pluralist 16, no. 1 (Spring): 113–​118.

Pa rt I I I

A DDA M S AC RO S S DI S C I P L I N E S Edited by Maurice Hamington

Chapter 14

Inhabiting Re a l i t y The Literary Art of Jane Addams Katherine Joslin

“The fact is, Madam, that you are not like the rest of us, who seek the truth and try to express it. You inhabit reality.” —William James

Harriet Monroe, the Chicago poet and founder of Poetry magazine, curled up one afternoon with Democracy and Social Ethics, delighted to find it “as interesting as a novel.” From its title, she had expected academic prose, the sort of starched writing flowering around Jane Addams in Chicago, as scholars divided up into disciplines: sociology, anthropology, economics, psychology, social psychology, and so on. Jane Addams offered her readers, as Monroe put it, “a condition, not a theory.” The poet was listening closely to the words themselves: “the style is so easy and familiar, so much like gracious talk, that one follows it over the height and depths of a great subject scarcely conscious of the author’s mountaineer venturesomeness.”1 Colloquial writing might take us on true adventures. William James was reading Addams, too. He wrote somewhat paternally to assure her that Democracy and Social Ethics was “one of the great books of our time.” He caught in her writing the mingling of voices, a fresh style of writing. “I have learned a lot from your pages.” After reading her next book Newer Ideals of Peace, James wrote again, more affected by her tone: “Yours is a deeply original mind, and all so quiet and harmless! yet revolutionary in the extreme.” He settled into an armchair with her third book The Spirit of Youth and the City Street and confided in his next letter, “Hard not to cry at certain pages!” Perhaps he wiped a tear as he worked again to find the right words: “You inhabit reality; and when you open your mouth truth can’t help being uttered.”2 Jane Addams was born into a generation of writers, including Edith Wharton and Theodore Roosevelt, who came of age amid social, industrial, intellectual, and literary turmoil. This chapter looks at how Jane Addams emerges as major voice in American literature at the turn into the twentieth century.3

262   Katherine Joslin She was not a social scientist, nor was she a novelist. The philosopher Mikhail Bakhtin, born in Russia in 1895, developed a literary theory that explains what Addams was working out in prose. He made a clear distinction about the nature of writing. As he put it, authoritative discourse, the monologic cadence of scientists or businessmen, has an altogether different sound than the dialogic prose we hear in imaginative literature. In his essay, “Discourse in the Novel,” Bakhtin argued that in novels, he heard “a diversity of social speech types (sometimes even diversity of languages) and a diversity of individual voices, artistically organized.”4 A scientist insists on logical conclusions; a novelist opens interpretations. What Monroe and James were hearing in Addams’s early books was a polyphony of voices set in dialogic prose. She introduced characters, imagined their thoughts, placed them in immigrant neighborhoods, and set them into conversation with her and her readers. She listened intently to what people around her had to say. As a writer, she opened their mouths to utter truth about the world around them. The sound of immigrant voices blending into Midwestern English with its differing accents and turns of phrase gave her books the sound of Chicago, the reality she inhabited. She did not take notes, as a cultural anthropologist certainly would, nor did she write ethnographies detailing the cultural mixtures on Halsted Street. Rather she chatted with her neighbors, absorbing their stories. Later she remembered those voices and placed them together with an eclectic array of voices from the books she was reading. She wove into gracious talk the voices of poets, playwrights, novelists, philosophers, sociologists, and historians. Back in her college days at Rockford, Jane Addams had suffered, as students often think they do, through the assigned reading of one academic book after another, wondering, as she confided to her diary, “[W]‌hat is the earthly use of our ever trying to acquire knowledge and insight if this poor book is all the splendidly-​educated and hard-​ working scholar could at last produce?” She flared, “not that we mean to write a book to tell people of our state.”5 Addams broke her vow. Not all at once. She would spend her life writing, first to herself in diaries and journals. We can hear the voice of an earnest Midwestern kid growing into a teenager. The little girl who supposedly suffered from a crooked spine recorded days of sliding and snowball fights in the winters and ball playing and croquet and horseback riding in the warmer months. In March 1875, she wrote that she and her friends “nearly killed” themselves playing hopscotch. As she grew older, she whined, “Everything has been going worng [sic] lately maybe it is because I complain so much. So I must quit it, I find it in every page of my diary.” Jane declared herself “dreadful sick and tired” of public school. She moved along with Clara to the boys’ side of the classroom and declared, “[I]‌n the corner with the boys it is ever so much pleasanter than it was over at the grave yard side.” Her early letters were as spirited. She wrote to her friend Vallie Beck in 1877, “I am enjoying a quiet afternoon sandwiching Martin Chuzzlewit and letters up in my room.” She declared, “I am ‘left alone in my glory.’ ” She paused her writing to read for a while and then joked that if only history writers were “as interesting as Dickens I think I could

Inhabiting Reality   263 really enjoy them.” She laughed even at herself, “Please do not think I wish to appear learned, or any thing [sic] of that sort.” She kept reading Dickens, declaring that he “never wrote any thing stupid” and that she had “a great love of the marvelous.”6 The truth is that she was an adventuresome reader, picking up any book within range. In college, she loudly denied having read “trashy novels,” even as she could map the storyline employed by pretty much any writer of romances. As others of her generation, Jane Addams wrote dozens of letters a day, real letters often stretching down pages, front and back, and along the sides as she tucked in a last thought. She wrote longhand at first, then typed, and later dictated as her hands aged. I came to know her as a writer from the Jane Addams Papers Project at Hull House, a long labor led by Mary Lynn McCree Bryan to preserve her voice for us to read unfiltered, now being digitized. Reading her letters is like reading the best novel you have ever read because all the characters are real people. A collection might include poets Harriet Monroe and William Butler Yeats; novelists Leo Tolstoy, Theodore Dreiser, and Upton Sinclair; public intellectuals William James, Mary Church Terrell, and W. E. B. Du Bois; even President Theodore Roosevelt; and writers he dubbed “muckrakers,” Ida Tarbell and Charlotte Perkins Gilman; as well as fiction writers who turned to playwriting, especially William Dean Howells, whose plays were staged at Hull House, and Zona Gale, who was the first woman to win a Pulitzer Prize in drama in 1921, the same year Edith Wharton became the first woman to win the Pulitzer in fiction. As Addams gained her footing, she invited writers of all sort to visit Hull House, some of them to live for a time. The poet Vachel Lindsay, delighted to be included, wrote to her on October 29, 1916, “I am wondering if I could be man enough to refuse most social invitations and write there a month and take in Hull House in the evenings through the skin as it were?” He had read her book The Long Road of Woman’s Memory and declared it “the work of a Greek, a woman more Greek than Christian—​as was The Spirit of Youth and the City Streets.”7 Ideas took root in the parlor and grew into the neighborhoods of Chicago, branching out across the country and even beyond the borders of any country. Along with all the other things it was, Hull House became a literary salon. Jane Addams, a charismatic speaker, took the stage, any stage, with increasing confidence, speaking on topics with other women and with men, lots of them famous already. She crafted informal talks into speeches, practiced those words in front of all sorts of audiences, and then polished her prose into essays. When Addams put pen to paper, she could not help but tell stories. She inhabited reality by giving voice to ordinary people in books intended for what Virginia Woolf would call “common readers.” She wrote ten books and collaborated on another three. Early essays that tested her voice as a writer appeared in Philanthropy and Social Progress (1893). Two years later, she collaborated with Florence Kelley and others on Hull-​House Maps and Papers (1895). Kelley was the guiding force in the production of the maps themselves, a colorful patchwork of nationalities and wages, designed to be printed onto durable cloth. The maps still have stories to tell. The English, English-​Canadians, and Scotch together with

264   Katherine Joslin “genuine Americans,” born in the country, are painted in white. No surprise there. But the Irish, although they spoke English, are separated out in green. African Americans, who were, after all, born in the country are designated “colored” and recorded, again no surprise, in black. Bohemians are in yellow, Russians in red, Germans in mauve, Italians in blue, French in brown, Greeks in olive, leaving Chinese, oddly, with the color orange. Secondary nationalities are in stripes. The maps show vividly an international community, representing eighteen nations. They also record the “decided tendency” of people to drift into segregated colonies and to move out together as other groups intruded into tenement buildings and neighborhood blocks. The wage maps illustrate how money determines where folks live in tenement buildings. The more money, the more windows, the closer to the front of the building, away from the privies in the back alleys. In order to do social work, the thinking goes, you have to take the measure of your territory. Rima Lunin Schultz in her introduction to Hull-​House Maps and Papers places the book “in the context of protest literature emerging in the late nineteenth century, including Henry George’s Progress and Poverty, 1879, Charles Booth’s Life and Labor of the People of London, 1889, and especially Jacob Riis’s How the Other Half Lives, 1890.”8 Mary Jo Deegan in Jane Addams and the Men of the Chicago School, 1892–​1918 argues that the women of Hull House schooled the men at the University of Chicago on collecting quantitative data, the sort of task the men thought of as “women’s work.” The male sociologists would claim the methodology as their own. As it turned out, the seminal study of the Halsted neighborhood sold fewer than a thousand copies. That was not the kind of writing that Jane Addams had in mind. Her sections, tucked in at the end of the book, were more literary. She depicted Chicago as brute force. “We must learn to trust our democracy, giant-​like and threatening as it may appear in its uncouth strength and untired applications.” Her metaphor might have come from Upton Sinclair or Frank Norris or Theodore Dreiser as they crafted what were called naturalist novels about Chicago. She sounded like Leo Tolstoy, as she ended on a philosophical note: “But life teaches us nothing more inevitable than that right and wrong are most confusedly mixed; that right does not dazzle our eyes with its radiant shining, but has to be found by exerting patience, discrimination, and impartiality.”9 Indeed, the first writer Jane Addams visited was Count Tolstoy, who was caught, as she was, between imaginative prose and social admonition. In his sixties, the great Russian novelist had repudiated his novels and turned to philanthropy and pacifism. He wrote What I Believe (1885) and What to Do? (1886) as he struggled to work out his place living among the peasants around him at his estate Yasnaya Polyana. Addams puzzled over What to Do? She was a modestly wealthy young woman working out a way to live among the poor and to define philanthropy from her experiences in Chicago. As she traveled to Russia, she and her partner Mary Smith met London socialists at the home of Eleanor Aveling, the daughter of Karl Marx. They talked with the British novelist Mary (Mrs. Humphrey) Ward, who would later visit Hull House on a lecture tour of the United States. Jane and Mary took a train to Moscow and continued the 130 miles from there to Yasnaya Polyana in the company of Tolstoy’s translator Aylmer Maude. Writers,

Inhabiting Reality   265 including Howells and George Bernard Shaw, had preceded Addams on the literary pilgrimage. Tolstoy dressed in peasant costume, worked in the fields in the mornings, met with all sorts of acolytes in the afternoons, and held forth over dinners outside in the evenings.10 Shaw saw the absurdity of Tolstoy’s pose, “He put on the dress of a moujik exactly as Don Quixote put on the suit of armor . . . . And he was neither honest nor respectable in his follies. He connived at all sorts of evasions.”11 That afternoon, the sixty-​seven-​year-​old walked with them to the river, where he took a swim with Alymer Maude, and sat at a long table in the garden in the evening, where he held forth. Tolstoy lectured the young social worker on the fraudulence of philanthropy, mocked her for wearing stylish clothes, and accused her of being an absentee landlord who lived on inherited money. He scolded her for not living the way he did. Jane Addams noted his voice, his turns of phrase, even his blustering anger. She would come to use all that she remembered to craft Leo Tolstoy as a character in her own books and essays over the years. Addams penned the introduction to the centenary edition of What to Do? translated as What Then Must We Do? and edited by Aylmer Maude in 1925. With the advantage of age, Addams could be philosophical about Tolstoy’s charges: “Realizing also as we grow older that life can never be logical and consistent, it still remains the fact that Tolstoy makes complacency as impossible now as when What Then Must We Do? first appeared”12 Addams wrote three foundational books in the first decade of the twentieth century, over the years of Theodore Roosevelt’s presidency and his progressive “Square Deal.” She gave her books big titles: Democracy and Social Ethics (1902), Newer Ideals of Peace (1907), and The Spirit of Youth and the City Streets (1909). They illustrate her experiments with prose style as she established herself as an American writer. Democracy and Social Ethics dramatizes the argument that “the cure for the ills of Democracy is more Democracy.”13 Addams creates a “daintily clad charitable visitor” who chides a washerwoman, lecturing her on the merits of hard work, cleanliness, temperance, and—​of all things—​self-​denial. Addams counters with another character, this one an experienced professional social worker who has through experience learned to listen to working women. On that stage, a third character, the writer herself, speaks through the voices of people like the washerwoman, who asks a question Tolstoy’s peasants might have asked, “ ‘What do you want, anyway?’ ” Unless social workers have something tangible to give the poor, why would any of them take the time to answer questions and aid in investigations? The social worker comes to see the limitations of her own manners, mores, and morals, “which fail to fit the bigger, more emotional, and freer lives of working people” (38). Paternal figures make their way onto the stage: the shadow of her own father, the blindness of King Lear, and the capitalism of George Pullman, who “honestly believed that he knew better than they [workingmen] what was their good” (144). Ironically, the hero of Halsted Street is Alderman John Powers, who, boodler though he may be, listens to his constituents, bails sons out of jail, attends and pays for funerals, and turns a blind eye on drinking and gambling. In accepting democracy, Addams illustrates in story after story, we come to see “that we belong to the whole” (120). She borrows her closing scene from Leo Tolstoy’s

266   Katherine Joslin “Master and Man” as an aristocrat throws his own body over his freezing servant and saves him, even as he himself dies in the effort “filled with an ineffable sense of healing and well-​being.” She wrote to William Vaughn Moody on February 9, 1901, as Democracy and Social Ethics was coming to press, “I am enough of a Tolstoyan to care for ‘art’—​as it enables me to express ‘that which one feels but finds inexpressible.’ ”14 The success of the book made Jane Addams a true writer. Macmillan sent her $50 in March on the sale of the first 1,000 copies and sent her on a book tour that included Vassar, Bryn Mawr, and the Consumers’ League in New York City. She cleared $500 in speaker’s fees. On April 4, 1902, J. David Thompson from the Library of Congress wrote in a tender note, “I spent the whole evening with you for as I read your new book, I could hear distinctly the very tones of your voice.”15 On May 3, the economist Edwin Seligman wrote in praise of the book. Even as Jane read his letter, she confided to Mary, “I feel a little better about it, but it is all I can do not to tear out the leaves.”16 Books, after all, come with flaws. Addams audaciously sent a copy of her book to Howells, popularly known as “the Dean of American Letters.” Writing on April 9, he took the opportunity to garner her support for his experiments in playwriting. Howells enthused over the prospects of staging one of his plays at Hull House. “As I told you, I hope somehow, sometime, to do something worthy of the Hull-​House stage, which seems to me a real Theâtre Libre, and forms an opportunity for conscientious drama which is quite unequalled in America.” Howells imagined Hull House attracting “future Tolstoys, Ibsens, and Maeterlincks.”17 He saw Jane Addams as an influential literary colleague. Writing was her art and also her business. She worked as her own agent, insisting on her way with editors and negotiating with publishers to get the best venue and price for her written work. Addams took time away from her work at Hull House and, significantly, away from her friends, most especially her partner Mary Rozet Smith, in order to write. Writing a book is one thing, getting it through editors and into publication is quite another. Addams was working to tell the story of her experiences in Chicago. Her editor at Macmillan, Richard Ely, himself an economist, was working to bring her into the academic fold. She wrote to him on Christmas Eve, 1904, enclosing her convocation address at the University of Chicago as a gift, “in accordance with my absurd custom of considering you my ‘sociological godfather.’ ”18 Flattered to be thought of as her godfather, Ely kept after her to write The Newer Ideals of Peace, a book that would grow, somewhat sluggishly, from her speeches and essays. At the same time, she was working with the editor Edward Bok to publish the series “Fifteen Years at Hull-​House” in Ladies’ Home Journal in 1906. Those stories of Halsted Street drew considerable attention from major publishing houses. Samuel S. McClure wrote inviting her to publish with him. D. Appleton and Company asked if she would entertain a book proposal. Walter Hines Page, a founder of Doubleday, Page, and Company, lured her as well. Relishing their hot pursuit, Addams quipped to Julia Lathrop on March 22, “For two days I have the honor of ‘keeping’ all the presses waiting

Inhabiting Reality   267 and Mary Smith was moved to say that if I could keep them permanently in a state of suspended animation that she would be reconciled to my writing!”19 Ely advised Addams on the merits of publishing with a single press, and she would stay with Macmillan. The manuscript of her second book finally arrived on his desk on September 5 with a warning, “I am sorry it isn’t better, but I do not believe that I will improve it by working on it any longer.”20 As Ely worked to govern her prose, he wrote on October 13, grumbling about her long, involved sentences and peppering them with semicolons and dashes. He even lectured her on the way to properly split an infinitive. Especially, he admonished her to write proper footnotes. “This is generally regarded as more scholarly.”21 The learned professor had had no trouble with her quoting freely from the folks around her in Halsted Street. But he drew a sharp red line at her casual adoption of voices from her peers and her betters. Two days later, Addams fought back: “I can, of course, give the authors of the quotations in footnotes, although I did not do that in Democracy and Social Ethics, and assumed that the book was to be kept popular and colloquial in style rather than exact and scholarly.”22 The truth is that even as Ely pressed her to conform, she continued to quote loosely from memory and could be casual about references. Everywhere in her letters was unease about the book itself. She fired off agitated letters to George Brett, complaining about the time Ely was taking with the editing. Then she turned her pen on Brett, asking for the promised $50 advance for delivery of the manuscript. He wrote diplomatically to remind her that according to their contract she had $200 coming on the day of publication. She wrote again arguing that speed was of the essence for a book that might sway support for an immigration bill moving through Congress. On December 12, she asked Brett to send advance copies to President Roosevelt, Senator Robert La Follette, and James R. Garfield at the Department of Commerce and Labor. Her voice snapped, “This request is not that of the ‘vain author’ but a desire to put a certain aspect of the immigration question before men who are seriously debating the question and who really want to get this point of view.”23 Anxiety and vanity were very much in play as she waited. On January 24, William James settled into Newer Ideals of Peace after a hectic trip to New York City and found himself, rather pleasantly, in Chicago. “I soothed myself by the perusal of your book,” he assured her. In that mood, James admitted he did not care about details, certainly never mentioned splitting infinitives. He told her that he had read “precious little sociological literature.” He could not say whether fellow academics would approve of her prose style or see her as one of them. James left her with a line any writer would hold dear, “I am willing to bet on you.”24 When it came to putting a book together, Jane Addams would joke that a writer always picks up stuff close at hand, the letters, speeches, and essays piling up on her desk. She collected her thoughts, talking them out in public speeches and reworking the prose, with her audience in mind. She then published the polished essay. When she had a pile of essays ready to go, she collected them along with other pieces. In the days of her popularity, Macmillan snapped up pages she had literally pinned together, publishing books that sold well.

268   Katherine Joslin Newer Ideals of Peace is an awkward assortment that defies any usual place in a bookstore or library. A reviewer in the Transcript linked her to Shakespeare, while another in the Examiner retitled it “The Epic of Nations” because it recorded “the elemental feelings of individualized life in neighborhoods made up of many races.” Florence Kelley, writing in the National Consumers’ League, carped that the title should have been “The Newer Manifestations of Government.” Not much music there. Francis Hackett, the literary reviewer for the Chicago Evening Post, thought Addams was not primarily a writer: “As the book stands it is more than a contemporary essay, much more. It is more, on the other hand, than a cool, professorial analysis of the moral issues of to-​day.”25 Some readers found too little sociology and others found too much. Reviewers acknowledged that sociology was a new science, still in search of its scope and purpose. The New York Tribune reviewer upbraided Addams for giving her readers a somewhat miscellaneous collection of essays that fails to satisfy as a monograph. But was her goal to write a monograph? Even her friend George Herbert Mead in the American Journal of Sociology ends what seems an admiring review with the line, “One does not feel, in reading Miss Addams, the advance of an argument with measured tread.”26 Addams was not treading so much as singing in a minor key. She calls on Walt Whitman from Leaves of Grass to set the tone, “As I stand aloof and look, there is to me something profoundly affecting in large masses of men following the lead of those who do not believe in men.” She sees Halsted Street as “a long dreary road” for her immigrant neighbors and searches in the “dim borderland between compassion and morality for the beginnings of cosmopolitan affection.”27 In the poor communities of Chicago, Addams sees a mass of unsuccessful souls who possess a nascent morality that may lift and save humankind. They offer, that is to say, newer ideals of peace. Addams brings together contemporary scholars without the precision that Ely urged upon her. She puts Delos Wilcox, author of The American City: A Problem in Democracy (1904), in conversation with Adna Ferrin Weber, who had written The Growth of Cities in the Nineteenth Century: A Study in Statistics (1899). She quotes L. T. Hobhouse’s Democracy and Reaction (1904) from memory, even giving the wrong page numbers. When adding the voice of Josiah Royce in The Spirit of Modern Philosophy (1901), she truncates his language. Likewise, she clips a passage from John Morley’s The Spirit of Modern Democracy (1886). But she agrees wholeheartedly with Karl Groos in The Play of Man (1901) that building a society demands two seemingly conflicting human desires: aggression and communication. After parading academics through an awkward opening, Jane Addams sets out on her own down Halsted Street. She vividly describes the environmental wasteland of Chicago’s South and West Sides, the sickening stench and scum and smoke from factories and killing floors and overcrowded tenements. Addams counts as her friends a gambler, a prostitute, even a murderer! Her job as a writer is to bring street tales to life. The book becomes “a study of origins, of survivals, of paths of least resistance—​refining an industrial age through the people and experiences which really belong to it and do not need to be brought in from the outside” (60). She assures her readers, “Although the

Inhabiting Reality   269 spiritual struggle is associated with the solitary garret of the impassioned dreamer, it may be that the idealism fitted to our industrial democracy will be evolved in crowded sewer ditches and in noisy factories” (95). Addams takes her readers on a Chicago streetcar, talking with young people along the way. A kid who’s a tramp already at sixteen proclaims, “At last I was sick in bed for two or three weeks with a fever, and when I crawled out, I made up my mind that I would rather go to hell than to go back to the mill” (158). The collection of tales embodies her argument that what we think of as the contagion in a city like Chicago may be the heart of pacifism: “[W]‌e should find in the commingling of many peoples a certain balance and concord of opposing and contending forces” (188). In 1907 with the publication of Newer Ideals of Peace, Jane Addams was emerging as a writer of note. Macmillan sent copies to college professors, devoted readers wrote letters, and reviewers praised her work as a writer. Florence Kelley wrote to her that the book “is noble and wise and parts of it are very beautiful.” Ely enthused, “I am proud to have my name associated with the book.” President of the Women’s Trade Union League Margaret Dreier Robins noted, “I am so very glad that you manage to find time for writing.”28 Jane travelled with Mary to Boulder, Colorado, in the summer of 1908 and then to their retreat, Hull’s Cove, in Bar Harbor, Maine. As Addams pushed away social engagements, she turned to writing The Spirit of Youth and the City Streets, the book that would secure her place in American letters. Edward Marsh, her editor at Macmillan, suggested the title “Juvenile Delinquency and Public Morality.” We imagine her eyes rolling as she remembered her battles with Ely. “The Spirit of Youth and the City Streets has occurred to me, or some such title which would be distinctly literary,” Addams averred.29 She knew what sort of writer she had become. Although she illustrated the book with cases from the Chicago Juvenile Court, she had no interest at all in totting up facts and figures from those records. Her writing was to be, as she herself put it, distinctly literary. Addams stalled at Marsh’s offer of 13 percent on the first 1,500 copies and 15 percent after that. The battle went something like this. She read the offer as a pay cut: “I have just looked over your account rendered April 30th, 1908, and find that I received 16 per cent upon 1112 copies of ‘Newer Ideals of Peace,’ and 16 percent upon 497 of ‘Democracy and Social Ethics.’ ”30 Marsh patiently schooled her on how to read an account. The maximum royalty she had received to date was 13 percent, or 16 ¼ cents on each copy sold at $1.25. He was offering, in truth, a raise in pay with 15 percent for copies over 1,500. Addams got her title, signed the contract, and worked to schedule. At the same time, she bargained with Edward Bok at Ladies’ Home Journal—​who had named her the foremost living woman in America—​to publish chapters from the book. If you were to choose one book to read by Jane Addams, The Spirit of Youth and the City Streets would be the place to start. It was her favorite book according to biographer Allen F. Davis. William James enthusiastically reviewed it in the American Journal of Sociology, telling the world what he had written in his letter to her: “Certain pages of Miss Addams’ book seem to me to contain immortal statements of the

270   Katherine Joslin fact that the essential and perennial function of the Youth-​period is to reaffirm authentically the value and the charm of Life.” He stated her thesis rather directly for fellow sociologists. And then he conceded, “Of how they flow I can give no account, for the wholeness of Miss Addams’ embrace of life is her own secret. She simply inhabits reality, and everything she says necessarily expresses its nature. She can’t help writing truth.”31 The opening passages of the book come from a speech Jane Addams gave for Mary Ward and, fittingly, celebrate the English novelist. Addams begins with the theme she will develop throughout the book. The young generation around her in the city longs to find meaning and what she calls “charm” in life. “This is doubtless one reason why it so passionately cherishes its poets and artists who have been able to explore for themselves and to reveal to others the perpetual springs of life’s self-​renewal.”32 The poems of Wordsworth and the plays of Shakespeare and Ibsen continue to replenish the wellspring for the educated, who also have money and time to retreat into the woods of Wisconsin or Michigan—​Jane Addams had houses with Mary in Michigan and Maine—​ for nature itself. Chicago offers little of art or nature. In 1889, as Jane Addams and Ellen Gates Starr moved into Hull House, 75 percent of the population of Chicago had come from other countries. Girls and boys, alike, were prized more for the products of their labor than for the innocence, beauty, and gaiety of their young lives. Addams is blunt: “This stupid experiment of organizing work and failing to organize play had, of course, brought about a fine revenge” (6). Industrial capitalism exploits the young, offering very little pay for their labor, and then lures them into the city to spend every cent they have struggled to earn. Into that arena, Addams places characters, and her argument comes to life. An overworked girl parades down Halsted Street, and we see that: “through the huge hat, with its wilderness of bedraggled feathers, the girl announces to the world that she is here.” A lonely boy enters a dance hall. “As I was standing by the rail, a young man approached me and quite simply asked me to introduce him to some ‘nice girl,’ ” He confesses, “I’m awful lonely since I came to Chicago.” The image of Miss Addams in a dance hall is remarkable in itself. She paints a Chicago that panders to youthful desire. “The newly awakened senses are appealed to by all that is gaudy and sensual, by the flippant street music, the highly colored theater posters, the trashy love stories, the feathered hats, the cheap heroics of the revolvers displayed in the pawnshop” (27). She even quotes lyrics from a popular song with its refrain, “snatching a kiss from her ruby lips.” One imagines that tune repeating itself in her ear. Popular culture in a city like Chicago, even before the 1920s, captivated the spirit of youth, then as now. Jane Addams was reading novels by Upton Sinclair, Theodore Dreiser, and Frank Norris. They had all read Emile Zola’s influential essay, “The Experimental Novel” (1880), where he called on writers to abandon novels constructed by imagination in favor of novels based in observation and experimentation, using the methods of a scientist. What he dubbed the “naturalist novel” depicts the influences of heredity and environment on the fate of characters. The task of the writer, much like the role of a

Inhabiting Reality   271 sociologist, is to expose the conditions that cause human misery. “We disengage the determinism of human and social phenomena so that we may one day control and direct these phenomena.”33 Novelists, that is to say, would become experimental moralists in curbing and curing the human condition. Literary naturalists were telling stories about Chicago that were much like Addams’s own. Her goal, in a sense, was to turn the theory inside out. As a writer, she was bringing art to science. With the same social and moral goals, Jane Addams was using her literary imagination to animate social scientific prose. Lifting stories from the juvenile court, she set court documents into readable tales. The common reader, settling into an armchair with one of her books, is transported into the seamiest neighborhoods of Chicago, places where cocaine addicts and unbridled murderers control the fates of children and neighbors. She captures readers with grisly tales and, in doing so, works to build camaraderie, a sense of true community. The Spirit of Youth and the City Streets made Jane Addams a popular writer. The book that emerged from her literary fame was her autobiography Twenty Years at Hull-​House. Editors and publishers urged her to tell the story of her own life. John S. Phillips had written to Ida Tarbell, his partner at The American Magazine, that Jane Addams “will, I am confident, prove to be one of the most remarkable writers of our time.” Walter Page Hine at Doubleday Page wrote directly to Addams, warning her to write her story before biographers got ahold of her. The genre was honorable, he assured her: “[S]‌ome of the greatest books are autobiographical.”34 Snippets from the life around her made their way into every book Addams wrote. And yet, even in a literary genre that felt like home, Addams would find ways to resist editors and publishers. She took Hine’s advice to write her own story but followed Ely’s caution to publish with Brett at Macmillan. The project would also be published in The American Magazine, where Phillips offered her $500 for each installment. Ida Tarbell worked closely with Addams on the project. In August of 1909, Addams sent the first seven chapters to her: “I have written the seven chapters—​open of course to an enormous amount of change and elaboration—​and think that I would better go through to the end.” The letter reveals a writer confident of the work she is doing. “I am sure that I ought to do the book pretty well en bloc if it is to have real unity—​it is quite different from the other things which I have done!” Addams had cast off Richard Ely as her godfather and embraced Ida Tarbell: “May I write you later as the child grows and thank you then as now for being such a kind god mother!” As Jane arrived with Mary at Hull’s Cove, she wrote her sister Alice on September 14, 1909, “[I]‌t is a perfectly heavenly place in which to write.” When the full manuscript arrived in November, it was her godmother Ida Tarbell who had the guts to criticize the author: “The only regret is that you did not feel like going on in the vein of the first four or five chapters.”35 The story of her life, so lividly described in the opening section, trails off into a story more about the institution itself. Autobiography is at the very heart of American literature. As model writers, we think of Benjamin Franklin, Frederick Douglas, Henry David Thoreau, even Henry Adams, all men who cast their own stories as revelatory of the American experience.

272   Katherine Joslin The feminist literary scholar Carolyn Heilbrun in Writing a Woman’s Life brought to light a defining pattern in autobiographies written by women, especially those writing in the nineteenth and into the twentieth century. American women, including Margaret Fuller, Harriet Jacobs, and Edith Wharton, divert attention from the details of their private lives by turning the reader’s gaze to the accomplishments of others. Edith Wharton begins A Backward Glance, as Addams did, with the story of her early life and a walk with her father into the wider world. Then Wharton turns toward influential male friends, among them Henry James and Theodore Roosevelt. Both Addams and Wharton wrote autobiographies that display the freshest notes in the early pages. The full title of the book is Twenty Years at Hull-​House (1910) with Autobiographical Notes. “No effect is made in the recital to separate my own history from that of Hull-​ House,” Addams reiterates in her preface. She had no intention of telling intimate stories about her Boston marriage to Mary Smith, for example, or to report details of her personal life during her adult years at Hull House. It was a strategy that worked. Her literary impulses created a story that delighted common readers. Critics seemed content finally to read the book Addams wanted to write. The reviewer in The Sociological Review conceded that she had hit her mark: “The narrative of schemes begun and developed, or attempted and abandoned, is interwoven with passages of personal reminiscence and confession, with stories of tragedy and heroism, drawn from a marvelously full store.” No critic sounded more like Addams herself than Francis Hackett in the “Book of the Week” column in The Chicago Evening Post: “Most books on the social question are agreeable, inert, dead books, capable of dissection on doctrinaire lines. But Miss Addams’ is a book with all the richness, all the complexity, and all the self-​justification of a living being. To estimate it is like trying to perform a vivisection, out of curiosity.”36 Addams was pleased with her Macmillan royalty statement in the spring of 1911. She had earned $3,922.10, including 407 copies of Democracy and Social Ethics, 409 copies of Newer Ideals of Peace, and 2,756 copies of The Spirit of Youth and the City Streets. The Chautauqua “cheap edition” of Twenty Years at Hull-​House sold a surprising 16,877 copies in the first year. She had become a serious writer, popular with common readers, who found her writing as satisfying as a novel. Jane Addams’s next book told stories about sexual slavery. What would the ladies at Hull House know about such a salacious topic? Turns out, they lived among young women who turned to them for succor. Theodore Dreiser, whose novels Sister Carrie and Jenny Gerhardt worked to tell the truth about young women in the city, invited Jane Addams to write an article on female sexual vulnerability for The Delineator, where he was an editor. On July 5, 1910, Dreiser wrote to James E. West, who was negotiating the contract, “She understands the problem so well, though, that you had better not suggest an outline unless she questions the method of treatment. I will pay her price.”37 From that essay, Addams wrote A New Conscience and an Ancient Evil (1912), a disconcerting book about what was called “white slavery” or the sexual exploitation of young white women and girls in Chicago.

Inhabiting Reality   273 Addams had become a popular writer and a powerful political voice. Theodore Roosevelt famously invited her to second his nomination at the 1912 Progressive National Convention, dubbed the Bull Moose Convention, in Chicago. She travelled the country that year, campaigning for the Progressive Party in speeches she crafted from the party platform. During the years of World War I, Roosevelt turned on her, declaring she was the most dangerous woman in America because of her pacificism and the power of her prose. Jane Addams served as the president of the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom and collaborated with Emily Greene Balch and Alice Hamilton to tell that story in Women at The Hague (1915). Addams would go on to win the Nobel Peace Prize, though not until 1931. Publishers shied away from her writings on peace. It was in that mood that she wrote “The Devil-​Baby at Hull House” and bravely sent it to Ellery Sedgwick, the editor of Atlantic Monthly. As he read through the essay in February 1916, Sedgwick enthused, “This is the Miss Addams in whom we all believe—​militarists, pacifists, progressives, and the rest of us—​and shall take very greatest pleasure in publishing this paper.”38 Jane Addams was a writer, first of all. She packed the essay into a book about myth and imagination, The Long Road of Women’s Memory (1916). At the very moment she was out of political favor, Jane Addams was embraced by her literary friends. After reading her antiwar essay in Survey, Zona Gale wrote an impassioned letter to Addams in September, “Oh my dear, when you can keep saying it, and can say it new every time as the Survey article has it, the world as a voice for its dreams.” Gale saw in Addams’s prose “the far look that accompanies the skeptical smile.”39 The Society of Midland Authors, including such writers as Gale, Edna Ferber, Hamlin Garland, Harriet Monroe, James Whitcomb Riley, and Edith Wyatt, gave Addams a warm welcome into their circle. And after the war, she worked to gain back her literary reputation, by writing Peace and Bread in Time of War (1922), The Second Twenty Years at Hull-​House (1930), and The Excellent Becomes the Permanent (1932). In the last year of her life, she worked on My Friend, Julia Lathrop (1935), a biography, even as her nephew was writing one about her own life. Reading her papers and books, one hears a voice as modern as our own. Jane Addams of the twenty-​first century would surely craft eloquent emails, the long style that is quickly fading as we grow impatient with words themselves. She might very well direct pointed texts and fire witty tweets. She would be utterly at home posting a blog like “Letters from Hull House.” Her issues are familiar to us in the twenty-​first century. The sexual trafficking of powerless women and girls drives political debate today, as do the seemingly sensible ideas of a living wage and safety in the workplace and healthcare for all. One would have found her Progressive Party platform, or something very like it, in the pocket of Bernie Sanders in the 2020 election. Addams had warned us about environmental racism and the toxicity surging in the urban landscape a century before we came to the Green New Deal. We might curl up with her books today and feel very much at home, knowing that we inhabit the very world she lived in a century before us.

274   Katherine Joslin

Notes 1. The Jane Addams Papers, 1860–​1960, an eighty-​two-​reel microfilm edition, edited by Mary McCree Bryan (Microfilming Corporation of America and University Microfilms International, 1985), 1–​21. See http://​jan​eadd​ams.ram​apo.edu for a list of libraries holding a complete set. 2. Addams Papers, 4-​444, 5-​63, and 5-​963. 3. Biographers and scholars have always taken note of Addams as a writer. Her nephew James Weber Linn admired her graceful writing style in Jane Addams: A Biography (1935). In A Centennial Reader (1960), William O. Douglas found her prose a tonic; Helen Hall considered her an artist; and Ashley Montagu placed her in the literary company of Emerson and Thoreau. By 1965, Christopher Lasch in The Social Thought of Jane Addams characterized her writing as radical storytelling. Allen F. Davis, in the groundbreaking biography American Heroine: The Life and Legend of Jane Addams (1973), considered her power as a mythmaker. Ellen Moers’s Literary Women: The Great Writers (1963) began a second-​ wave feminist retrieval of women writers, a movement that looked anew at Addams. In 1964, Jill Conway in “Jane Addams: An American Heroine” reconsidered her power as social thinker. In 1988, Mary Jo Deegan’s Jane Addams and the Men of the Chicago School illustrated how Addams influenced the development of male thinking about the discipline of sociology. Several biographers have considered her writing as a source of information about her life and thought: Barbara Garland Polikoff, With One Bold Act: The Story of Jane Addams; Gioia Diliberto, A Useful Woman: The Early Life of Jane Addams; and Jean Bethke Elshtain, Jane Addams and the Dream of American Democracy: A Life. In 2002, Elshtain edited The Jane Addams Reader, offering us a selected collection of her writings. That same year, the University of Illinois Press began publishing new editions of all her books. My work on Addams as a writer began in 2002 with introductions to A New Conscience and an Ancient Evil and Peace and Bread in Time of War, followed by a full literary biography Jane Addams, a Writer’s Life in 2004. Biographer Louise W. Knight published two widely read books about Addams’s place in American culture: Citizen: Jane Addams and the Struggle for Democracy (2005) and Jane Addams, Spirit in Action (2010). More recently, philosophers have analyzed her work as an American pragmatist. In that cause, Marilyn Fisher and Judy D. Whipps edited Jane Addams’s Writings on Peace (2003) and Jane Addams’s Essays and Speeches (2006). Charlene Haddock Seigfried wrote introductions to Democracy and Social Ethics and The Long Road of Women’s Memory. Maurice Hamington edited Feminist Interpretations of Jane Addams, a volume in the series Re-​reading the Canon, whose general editor is Nancy Tuana: “Devoted to the work of a single philosopher, each volume contains essays covering the full range of the philosopher’s thought and representing the diversity of approaches now being offered by feminist critics.” Most recently, philosopher Marilyn Fischer offers us an especially close reading of Addams’s prose in Jane Addams’s Evolutionary Theorizing: Constructing “Democracy and Social Ethics” (2019). 4. Mikhail Bakhtin, The Dialogic Imagination: Four Essays by M. M. Bakhtin, ed. Michael Holquist, trans. Caryl Emerson and Michael Holquist (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1981), 262. 5. Quoted in Joslin, Jane Addams, A Writer’s Life (Urbana and Chicago, University of Illinois Press, 2004), 1. 6. See Joslin, A Writer’s Life, 24–​27. 7. Addams Papers, 10-​0174.

Inhabiting Reality   275 8. Rima Lunin Schultz, Introduction, Hull-​House Maps and Papers, (1895; Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2007), 2. 9. Maps and Papers, 146. 10. Howells, William Dean, “Bernard Shaw’s Criticism of Tolstoy,” Current Literature (July 1911): 71–​72. 11. Bernard Shaw’s Book Reviews, ed. Brian Tyson (University Park: Penn State University Press, 1996), 255. 12. Leo Tolstoy, What Then Must We Do?, trans. Aylmer and Louise Maude (1882; trans. in London: Oxford University Press, 1934), introduction by Jane Addams, vii. 13. Jane Addams, Democracy and Social Ethics, Citizen’s Library Series (New York: Macmillan, 1902), 11–​12. Subsequent references will appear in the text. 14. Addams Papers, 4-​0024. 15. Addams Papers, 4-​0303. 16. Addams Papers, 4-​0373. 17. Addams Papers, 4-​0324. 18. Addams Papers, 4-​1007. 19. Addams Papers, 4-​1300. 20. Addams Papers, 4-​1434. 21. Addams Papers, 4-​1475. 22. Addams Papers, 4-​1478. 23. Addams Papers, 4-​1516. 24. Addams Papers, 5-​0029. 25. Addams Papers, 11-​0207, 11-​0206, 11-​0201, and 11-​0209. 26. Addams Papers, 11, 0218 and 0311. 27. Jane Addams, The Newer Ideals of Peace, Citizen’s Library Series (New York: Macmillan, 1907), 11. Subsequent references will appear in the text. 28. Addams Papers, 5-​0025 and 5-​0042. 29. Addams Papers, 5-​0711. 30. Addams Papers, 5-​0716. 31. James, William, American Journal of Sociology 15 (January 1910): 553. 32. Jane Addams, The Spirit of Youth and the City Streets (New York: Macmillan, 1909), 3. Subsequent references will appear in the text. 33. Émile Zola, “Le Roman Experimental,” translated as “The Experimental Novel” in Documents of Modern Literary Realism, edited by George J. Becker (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1963), 162–​196. 34. Addams Papers, 5-​0403 and 5-​0518. 35. Addams Papers, 5-​0863 and 5-​0869. 36. Addams Papers, Addendum 11-​0802 and 11-​0600. 37. Addams Papers, 5-​1214. 38. Addams Papers, 9-​1070. 39. Addams Papers, 10-​0002.

References Jane Addams Papers, 1860–​1960, an 82-​reel microfilm edition. Edited by Mary McCree Bryan. Microfilming Corporation of America and University Microfilms International, 1985.

276   Katherine Joslin Addams, Jane. Democracy and Social Ethics. Citizen’s Library Series. New York: Macmillan, 1902. Addams, Jane. Newer Ideals of Peace. Citizen’s Library Series. New York: Macmillan, 1907. Addams, Jane. The Spirit of Youth and the City Streets. New York: Macmillan, 1909. Addams, Jane. Twenty-​Years at Hull-​House. New York: Macmillan, 1910. Addams, Jane. A New Conscience and an Ancient Evil. New York: Macmillan, 1912. Addams, Jane. The Long Road of Women’s Memory. New York: Macmillan, 1916. Addams, Jane. Peace and Bread in Time of War. New York: Macmillan, 1922. Addams, Jane. The Second Twenty Years at Hull-​House. New York: Macmillan, 1930. Addams, Jane. The Excellent Becomes the Permanent. New York: Macmillan, 1932. Addams, Jane. My Friend, Julia Lathrop. New York: Macmillan, 1935. Addams, Jane, Emily Greene Balch, and Alice Hamilton. Women at The Hague. New York: Macmillan, 1915. Bakhtin, Mikhail. The Dialogic Imagination. Edited by Michael Holquist and translated by Caryl Emerson and Michael Holquist. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1981. Conway, Jill. “Jane Addams: An American Heroine.” Daedalus 93, no. 2 (1964): 761–​780. Davis, Allen F. American Heroine: The Life and Legend of Jane Addams. New York: Oxford University Press, 1965. Deegan, Mary Jo. Jane Addams and the Men of the Chicago School, 1892–​1918. New Brunswick and Oxford: Transaction Books, 1988. Diliberto, Gioia. A Useful Woman: The Early Life of Jane Addams. New York: Scribner, 1999. Elshtain, Jean Bethke. Jane Addams and the Dream of American Democracy. New York: Basic Books, 2002. Elshtain, Jean Bethke, ed. The Jane Addams Reader. New York: Basic Books, 2002. Fischer, Marilyn, and Judy Whipps, eds. Jane Addams’s Writings on Peace. 4 volumes. Bristol, UK: Thoemmes Press, 2003. Fischer, Marilyn, and Judy Whipps, eds. Jane Addams’s Essays and Speeches. Bristol, UK: Thoemmes Press, 2006. Fischer, Marilyn. Jane Addams’s Evolutionary Theorizing: Constructing “Democracy and Social Ethics.” Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2019. Hamington, Maurice, ed. Feminist Interpretations of Jane Addams. Re-​reading the Canon Series. Nancy Tuana, gen. ed. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2010. Heilbrun, Carolyn. Writing a Woman’s Life. New York: Norton, 1988. Howells, William Dean. “Bernard Shaw’s Criticism of Tolstoy.” Current Literature 51 (July 1911): 71–​72. James, William. “Review of Jane Addams, The Spirit of Youth and the City Streets.” American Journal of Sociology 15 (January 1910): 553. Joslin, Katherine. Jane Addams, A Writer’s Life. Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2004. Joslin, Katherine. “Reading Jane Addams in the Twenty-​ first Century.” In Feminist Interpretations of Jane Addams, edited by Maurice Hamington, 31–​53. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2010. Knight, Louise W. Citizen: Jane Addams and the Struggle for Democracy. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005. Knight, Louise W. Jane Addams: Spirit in Action. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2010. Lasch, Christopher, ed. The Social Thought of Jane Addams. The American Heritage Series. Edited by Leonard W. Levy and Alfred Young. Indianapolis and New York: Bobbs-​ Merrill, 1965.

Inhabiting Reality   277 Moers, Ellen. Literary Women; the Great Writers, 1963; repr. Garden City, New York: Anchor Press/​Doubleday, 1977. Monroe, Harriet. Review of Democracy and Social Ethics (1902). Jane Addams Papers Addendum, 11-​0021. Polikoff, Barbara Garland. With One Bold Act: The Story of Jane Addams. Chicago: Boswell Books, 1999. Shaw, Bernard. Bernard Shaw’s Book Reviews. Edited by Brian Tyson. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1996. Schultz, Rima Lunin. Introduction. Hull-​House Maps and Papers by Residents of Hull House, 1895. Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2007. Tolstoy, Leo. What to Do?, 1882. Centenary Edition, What Then Must We Do? Translated by Aylmer and Louise Maude. Introduced by Jane Addams. London: Oxford University Press, 1934. Zola, Émile. “Le Roman Experimental.” Translated as “The Experimental Novel” in Documents of Modern Literary Realism, edited by George J. Becker, 162–​196. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1963.

Chapter 15

A B io grapher’ s A ng l e on Jan e Addam s’s Fe mi ni sm Louise W. Knight

Introduction Was Jane Addams a feminist? Most Addams scholars agree she was but differ as to what kind or kinds. The categories include cultural,1 democratic,2 extended kinship,3 ethic-​ of-​care,4 essentialist,5 liberal,6 maternalist or maternal,7 public administration,8 pragmatist,9 queer imagining,10 responsibility,11 social,12 social justice,13 and socialist.14 On the other hand, Addams scholar Victoria Brown argues that Addams was not a feminist at all, since she was neither a “liberal” nor a “radical” feminist and offered no “feminist analysis of gender power.”15 A related question is whether Addams was an original feminist thinker or feminist theorist. Here too there are a variety of views. Christopher Lasch and Maurice Hamington say she was.16 Judy Whipps calls her a “feminist” social theorist, while noting she did not develop an “explicit philosophical feminist critique of the gender exclusions in liberal theory[.]‌”17 Many Addams scholars judge her to be a feminist theorist of pragmatism.18 To be sure, as Hamington notes, Addams “does not fit easily” into any of the usual categories that feminist theory recognizes.19 All this diversity of views regarding Addams’s feminism makes sense for several reasons. One is that scholars bring their discipline’s interests, vocabularies, and conceptual tools to the question. Those cited above represent the disciplines of philosophy, political science, history, sociology, public administration, and social work. Another is that Jane Addams is a richly complex thinker and an activist in innumerable causes. Her life and writings offer scholars a great deal to work with. Yet another reason is that often Addams’s styles of argument were so subtle, at times, as to be positively obscure. She liked to stretch her readers’ minds with hypotheticals, weave narratives that could not be parsed for definitive claims, and speak like a prophet. These strategies of persuasion sometimes make it hard to know what she

280   Louise W. Knight definitely believed. As a skilled rhetorician, she also shaped her arguments to address the assumptions and prejudices of different audiences. This gives the misleading impression that those arguments were central to her own thinking as well. A final reason, and perhaps the most important, is that the English words “feminism” and “feminist,” like so many other big-​concept words, have no single meaning but rather a range of meanings. This makes sense since feminism is a contested idea with high cultural salience. People with widely different beliefs want to claim it.20 Happily, there is a word for such historically rich, highly debated, open-​ended ideas. The word is “ideograph.” According to Michael McGee, the rhetoric scholar who invented the term, an ideograph is “a one-​term summary of an aspect of a people’s historical ideology” that brings with it “a long history of intense arguments.”21 Every society, every nation, every culture has its ideographs. In the United States, notable ones include liberalism, conservativism, left, right, democracy, radicalism, mainstream, socialism, and progressivism. The ideographic nature of American “feminism” is reflected in Addams scholarship. All ideographs can be further grouped by attaching distinguishing adjectives to them. In the twentieth century in the United States, “feminism” has often been categorized as liberal, radical, cultural, or socialist, or white, black, middle class, working class, lesbian, queer, and so on.22 These categories may emphasize a particular feminism’s methods or ideological camp or the category of women whose oppression it is attending to. As noted above, Addams’s feminism has also been subdivided using some of these terms. In addition to these various, fruitful approaches to Addams’s feminism, there is the biographical approach. This involves exploring a woman’s possibly changing ideas about herself as a woman, her possibly changing interpretations of the barriers her gender created for her and others, and whether and when she identified with the meanings of “feminism” current in her times. I take this approach here in the hope that examining Jane Addams’s feminism on its own terms and from the perspective of her historical period will enrich the ongoing debate about this fascinating public intellectual’s relationship to the ideograph of feminism, which, however it is defined, has inspired one of the essential legal, social, and cultural revolutions of the modern era. This chapter is organized in five parts. In the first part, I trace Addams’s ideas about and experiences as a woman in the years before Hull House. In the next two parts, I examine how, beginning in the 1890s, she embraced new ideas about gender equality and patriarchal authority. In the fourth part, I consider Addams’s eventual, explicit embrace of what she called “feminism.” In the fifth part I discuss her feminist vision for the family. The conclusion considers her feminism in the context of democracy, the central ideograph of her time, the central ideal of her thought, and the driving commitment of her life.

Part I:  What Could an Ambitious Woman Do? The times a child grows up in—​its cultural assumptions and debates—​set her expectations and hopes out before her in a limited banquet. In the United States in the 1860s

A Biographer’s Angle on Jane Addams’s Feminism    281 and 1870s, when Jane Addams was coming of age in the small town of Cedarville, in northern Illinois, there were a wealth of heroes who were white, like she was, and male, like she was not. Because she was a child of much ambition—​that is to say because she was someone with a vague longing to be heroic, to be great—​she did what many ambitious girls do and relied on real and fictitious male heroes for inspiration. When she was older, in high school and college, she found female heroes too, but many were either from literature or mythical figures from classical Greece and Rome. This lack of real female people to admire instructed her in a core message of her times to girls and women—​they could be heroic in their imaginations, and possibly within the walls of home, most likely in their self-​sacrificing suffering, but they were not expected to be heroic in the wider world. Addams had male heroes all of her life. As a child, her first hero was her father (her mother died when she was two), who instructed her that a person “must always be honest with yourself inside.”23 She also admired Abraham Lincoln, an Illinois politician whom her father knew for the “long effort [he made] to understand the greatness of the people.”24 Reading Little Women as a girl, she was enchanted by the oldest daughter, Jo, whose ambition to be a writer Addams shared.25 In high school, she gained two radical heroes from reading the Atlantic magazine: the utopian reformer of industrial life Robert Owen, and the abolitionist John Brown.26 And from the newspapers, she gained two reform lecturer heroes—​social critic Ralph Waldo Emerson and suffragist Lucy Stone.27 Later in life, her male heroes included Leo Tolstoy and Jesus, for their commitment to nonresistance and love as life’s guiding principles.28 At Rockford Female Seminary she often found inspiration in the goddesses of Greek mythology, who possessed public powers.29 But there was a mixed message in her decision to write about the Greek priestess Cassandra in her senior essay. She was drawn to Cassandra because she was a woman who instructed an audience of men that they were about to make a grave error of judgment, but disappointed that the men did not believe her. A core part of Addams’s essay was her attempt to solve Cassandra’s problem of lack of “auctoritas” for her own generation by urging “woman” to study science (a daring recommendation) as well as rely on female “intuition” (embodied in the Greek goddess Athena) as “one of the holy means given to mankind in [its] search for truth.”30 This awkward attempt to amalgamate a gender stereotype with unauthorized female ambition was the best she could achieve at age twenty. Addams’s interest in science arose from her decision to help “the poor” by becoming a medical doctor. Her inspirations were all male. Aside from the beloved family doctor of her small hometown, there were two heroic, if fictitious, doctors who worked among “the poor”—​Allan Woodcourt in Dickens’s Bleak House (1853) and an unnamed doctor in the novel by John Habberton, Jericho Road (1877).31 Since Rockford had offered no science courses, Addams decided after graduation she would attend Smith College, in Massachusetts, which offered women the same BA as a men’s college would, and had strong offerings in science. Her beloved father refused to let her go. He argued that she was too worn out from her college studies and that, in any case, since her first duty was to the family, her desire to go East for more education was selfish. Addams accepted his condemnation. She blamed

282   Louise W. Knight herself for even proposing the idea. Later she would frame her dilemma as one common to daughters—​that of being caught between “the family” and the “social” claims.32 He died of appendicitis at the end of that summer, and she eventually joined her sister and stepbrother in studying medicine in Philadelphia, but she only completed one year of medical school, and after exams, she had a nervous breakdown. She condemned herself anew for this failure. What could she do with her life? She was not interested in marrying—​as a college senior she had turned down a proposal—​or in teaching, one of the few careers a woman could pursue. Depressed, she traveled to Europe twice, took care of her stepmother, visited her married sisters, and read lots of books (George Eliot’s novels were a favorite). She was doing all that was expected of her as a single woman, and she was miserable. She wanted to achieve something in life, and she saw no path. Addams discovered the idea of a settlement house from reading a magazine article about the world’s first, in London. Toynbee Hall, as it was called, was founded by a married couple, and only men college graduates lived there, but in every other way, it seemed to be something Addams could do. If she founded a settlement house in a working-​class district in a large American city, she could “help the poor” another way and invite other women and men, college educated or not, to live in the house with her. Together they would bridge the class social divide that seemed to Addams highly undemocratic, offer clubs and classes for adults and children, and be generally responsive to the needs of the neighborhood. Her college friend Ellen Gates Starr gamely agreed to join Addams in this daring plan, which Addams had the funds to finance. They agreed to start their settlement house in Chicago, with Addams as head resident. It was the first settlement house in the United States.33 Addams was bending the gender rules of her times in undertaking this plan. While she would be creating a kind of home and “helping the poor”—​two traditional female roles—​she would also be co-​founding an institution, living in a working-​class district without her family, and running an organization, all of which only men were supposed to do. Addams struggled with the sense that she was no longer conforming to the expectations of her class, race, and gender and resolved her doubts in an interesting way. In early 1889, just months before the new settlement opened, in a letter to her equally ambitious older sister Alice, she wrote about their shared need to have an outlet for that ambition. “[I]‌t seems almost impossible [for us] . . . to express inherited power and tendencies [while] constantly try[ing] to exercise another set [of behaviors].”34 To free herself from gender-​based inhibitions, she had decided she was just like her father.

Part II:  Gender Equality Addams grew up in a time when white men and women of the middle and upper classes were generally segregated socially by gender. Outside the home, men and women attended dinner parties together and went on family outings together, but they spent

A Biographer’s Angle on Jane Addams’s Feminism    283 most of their social time with those of the same sex. Social clubs were separated by gender. Only men went to saloons. Only men played sports. Only women went to tea parties. Charitable organizations were also sex segregated. Only women ran the church fairs, only men sat on the church boards, and so on and so forth. From her first days at Hull House and throughout the rest of her life, Addams believed in gender equality in social relations. She believed that men and women, regardless of their class or race, should work together. She also believed that daughters were too often constrained by family in ways that sons were not. These beliefs were foundational to the feminist ideas she would later embrace. Hull House was always going to be co-​ed. In the months before its doors opened, Addams and Starr gave talks in parlors to interest women and men in volunteering or becoming settlement-​house residents. Addams was delighted when, on one occasion, men were the majority of those who attended. She wrote her sister Mary that this allayed “our fear re [becoming a] home for single women[.]‌”35 Men volunteered at Hull House from the beginning, and by the fall of 1891 the first male resident had moved in.36 Over the years, many men lived at Hull House, although the majority of the residents were always women. For a long time Hull House was not only the first, but also the only, “co-​ed” settlement house in the United States and the world. Throughout her life Addams consistently pushed for inter-​gender reform efforts. She once wrote the suffrage leader Carrie Chapman Catt, when they were debating whether the new peace party should be all female, “I believe that men and women work best together on these public measures.”37 Addams served on the boards of a wide variety of innovative co-​ed organizations, from the Civic Federation of Chicago and the National Federation of Settlements to the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and the American Civil Liberties Union. She encountered resistance, of course, and often used humor to deflect it. In 1909, when she was elected the first female president of the thirty-​five-​year-​old National Council of Charities and Corrections, she teased the men present for taking this “rather adventuresome and unusual action” and noted dryly that “you have not been hasty, you have waited thirty-​five years.” With her tongue in her cheek she then added, mindful of the female stereotypes surging in the men’s imaginations at that moment, that “the woman whom you have elected will promise to walk as softly as possible, think twice before she speaks, and then speak only after counting to ten, that nothing untoward may happen.”38 At the same time, Addams, ever the pragmatist, reluctantly accepted gender-​ segregated activism when necessary. She joined and led many women’s organizations when the men refused to cooperate on a particular issue. And she helped found such organizations when necessary. For example, when the American Federation of Labor refused, after a few minor efforts, to organize women in the trade unions, she and other allies joined women labor organizers in co-​founding the National Women’s Trade Union League.39 Other frontiers of gender equality were particularly challenging. At Hull House, she was reminded of what she called the “daughter” problem in her conversations with

284   Louise W. Knight other young women volunteers from backgrounds of privilege. Seeing the pattern, she formulated a theory that she then explored throughout the 1890s in a series of speeches and essays. She never said that she herself had faced the situation she was describing the summer after graduating from college, but the language she used in these pieces was too searing and frank to leave much doubt that she was speaking from firsthand experience.40 In all of the speeches she portrayed the daughter as eager to begin her adult life of independent usefulness and the parents as dismissive of her ambition as a “foolish” and “selfish” desire. She did not say, because she did not need to, that sons were encouraged to pursue their own interests without any charges of selfishness.41 She did not criticize the parents—​or the father—​directly, but she clearly believed they should not have blocked their adult daughter’s pursuit of independence, self-​development, and service to the world. Living in the Nineteenth Ward, Addams also had many conversations with the adult daughters of mostly immigrant, working-​class families, and she saw they suffered from the same dynamics of father’s domination (for in truth it was generally the fathers, regardless of class). In these situations, she was more comfortable saying it was the father. In Twenty Years at Hull-​House (1910) she wrote of how fathers “accustomed to the patriarchal authority of peasant households, hold their children in a stern bondage” by requiring them to “surrender all of their wages” and denying them “time or money for pleasures.”42 She wrote “children,” but she was actually thinking of adolescent and adult daughters. This became clear in something she wrote two years later. In A New Conscience and an Ancient Evil (1912), she noted that, in “the worst instances,” when a father was drinking heavily, he not only “demands all of his daughter’s wages but treats her with great brutality when those wages fall below his expectations.”43 Over time, Addams’s thinking about gender equality broadened further. She knew virtually nothing about the jobs held by working-​class women and girls when she arrived on Halsted Street, but she quickly learned not only that women and girls were severely underpaid and endured bad working conditions, but also that they, even more than men and boys, often had no union to represent them. Addams had not seen the need for unions at first. She thought that employers would gladly make work conditions safe if someone pointed out the problem to them. When she tried that method several times without success, she came to fully support working trade unions, including for women.44 Another way to press for gender equality was to rebut gender stereotypes. In her senior essay at Rockford, she had tried to redefine the jurisdiction of female intuition. And sometimes she dismantled the stereotypes themselves. Regarding women’s much praised gentleness and compassion, she wrote in 1899, “Brutal instincts [are] latent in every human being.”45 Regarding who was better intellectually equipped, she wrote in 1912, “[T]‌he intelligence of men and women is made of the same stuff.”46 Regarding women’s supposed unselfishness, she wrote in 1915 that “women could be angry . . . for selfish or unjustified reasons.”47

A Biographer’s Angle on Jane Addams’s Feminism    285 She also rejected the popular gender stereotype that mothers were biologically determined to be nurturers. In 1903 she wrote that young men should be encouraged to discover “the excitement and pleasure. . . of nourishing human life.”48 In Women in The Hague (1915), she described women as only “the earliest custodians” of “those primitive human urgings to foster life and protect the helpless.”49 In her subtle way, she was suggesting that future custodians would be male as well as female. Given that Addams often wrote and spoke about mothers when she urged women in her audiences to become activists in local, state, or federal affairs, some scholars have thought she was advocating for motherhood as a gendered ideal. As others have pointed out, however, she spoke of the broadened responsibilities of mothers because most of the women in the United States and most of the women who attended her lectures and read her books were mothers. As Hamington, Fischer, Siegfried, Jackson, and Nackenoff have noted, she was simply making the wise rhetorical decision to invoke the experiences of motherhood in order to persuade women to see the connections between their domestic duties and those as citizens.50 Addams addressed herself to another set of gendered assumptions when she wrote about war and peace. The popular view was that women by their nature hated war and wanted peace. Addams rejected that view, writing that she knew plenty of pro-​war women during the years of World War I. She was willing to grant, however, that women’s experiences gave them “special training for peacemaking.”51 Some scholars have thought that in her chapter “Women and Internationalism,” in Women in the Hague, she was arguing for an innate gender difference when she wrote that women sometimes experienced “a peculiar revulsion when they see [men] destroyed [in war],” but she preceded that observation with the key qualifying comment that women felt revulsion because they gave birth to babies and, so far, were the ones who also “nurtured them.” Indeed, she set up the whole discussion by comparing mothers to artists who have seen their beautiful creations destroyed.52 As Charlene Haddock Seigfried notes, Addams “believed that some of the experiences women shared (such as bearing children) . . . gave them a particular line of vision.”53 In much of the nineteenth and in the early twentieth centuries, the language used to advocate for gender equality was “woman’s rights” or “women’s rights.” Given Addams’s general embrace of equality as a guiding principle of her thinking and her life, we might have expected her to have spoken often of “women’s rights.” In fact, it appears she only used the phrase once and that was in disapproval. This was in Twenty Years (1910), when she praised Chicago women because they argued that women should vote in city elections by using pragmatic arguments rather than “traditional women’s rights” arguments often found at “suffrage meetings.”54 Addams avoided women’s rights language, not because she did not believe in the idea loosely speaking, but because she disliked rights language in general. In her day, much as in our own, rights arguments were arguments for individual rights. They were also, by definition, understood to be timeless and unchanging in their moral authority. As Fischer, Sarvasy, Hamington, and others, including myself, have noted, Addams rejected the idea that there were eternal absolutes. She deeply believed that a nation’s morality

286   Louise W. Knight evolved with the times.55 In a 1911 suffrage speech, for example, she said that arguing for the women’s vote as a “human right” was “an anachronism,” though, ever grounded in time, she agreed it made sense to do so back in the 1860s, when such phrases were spoken with “solemn conviction.”56

Part III:  Patriarchy In the United States, the great majority of nineteenth-​century women with fathers present in the home grew up with the father making the family’s important decisions, and this was true for Jane Addams as well. In addition, almost all nineteenth-​century white women in the United States, including Addams, grew up in a society where white, prosperous men held all the important positions of authority. This was because females, as well as all nonwhite men, were thought to be too inferior in their abilities to hold such positions. A society that ranks wealthy, white men at the top is not only classist and sexist; it also meets the definition of “patriarchy” offered in the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, Second Edition (1966–​1983). According to that dictionary, a “patriarchy” is a “society based on the form of social organization” in which “the father is the supreme authority” and “descent is reckoned in the male line.”57 Feminists in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries had different responses to this situation. Some focused on gender inequality as the problem and ignored or denied patriarchy’s existence. Others insisted that it was central to understanding gendered power.58 These different responses make sense. Gender inequality is easy to recognize; the existence of patriarchy is not. Seeing the latter requires studying the historical origins of inequality and the way gendered power works structurally in institutions and laws. Such study reveals that reforming a patriarchal society—​which in the United States is also a white supremacist society—​is very difficult. And that is also why gender equality is most often emphasized. It is easier (though still very hard) to achieve than the end of patriarchy. Jane Addams first dipped her toe into patriarchal analysis when she criticized the family’s oppression of daughters. June of 1895 was the first time she described how patriarchy oppressed women in the wider world. Her analysis was part of a commencement speech she gave at her alma mater, the now-​renamed Rockford College. Aware that the young women graduates in her audience believed in the gender stereotype that they were morally superior to men, she said, “I have a warning to give [female] college graduates, a warning against self-​righteousness. Perhaps the reason women have not made politics impure, have not corrupted legislatures and wrecked railroads is because they have not had the opportunity to do so, as they have been chained down by a military code whose penalty is far worse than the court martial.”59 Chained down by a military code? A penalty worse than the court martial? Addams was not mincing words here. The only subtle aspect of her remarks was that she chose not to use the word “patriarchy.”

A Biographer’s Angle on Jane Addams’s Feminism    287 She was quite familiar with the word, however. She had first encountered it as a term of analysis when, around the time of her visit to Toynbee Hall, she read Karl Marx’s Capital, which includes references to family-​based industries as “patriarchal.”60 She would encounter the idea again in 1892, when she read a new edition of the English translation of Frederick Engel’s The Condition of the Working Class in England in 1844 (1845). In the book, Engels, Marx’s close friend and colleague, argued that the old, kindly “patriarchal” relationship between workers and employer that had typified the agricultural economy was being cruelly abandoned in industrial England. The translator was Florence Kelley, Addams’s close friend and fellow resident at Hull House.61 About the same time that Addams read Capital, she read John Stuart Mill’s The Subjection of Women (1869). While Mill also did not use the term “patriarchy” (which may also explain why Addams did not), it was the true subject of his book. In it he sought to persuade the reader that the idea that men were superior to women, although presently embedded in institutions and habits, was a cultural construct.62 Mill also rejected the popular, compensating idea that women possessed “superior moral goodness,” and added, “This piece of talk . . . is only an admission by men of the corrupting influence of power.”63 Notably, that was the exact point Addams made in her 1895 Rockford speech. As with Mill’s book, Addams did not forget what she had read in Marx and Engels’ books. She took their ideas and applied them to the industrial economy in a speech she first gave in 1896 on a strike that erupted in 1894 in Chicago. George Pullman, president and owner of the Pullman Company, had refused to negotiate with the workers’ union, and Addams had sought to mediate the dispute, without success. Upon reflection, Addams was struck by the similarities in the moral dilemmas between how King Lear treated his daughter Cordelia in Shakespeare’s play and how George Pullman treated his workers. She thought that old-​fashioned paternal (patriarchal) authority had shaped both sets of unjust relations. In her speech, which she published in 1912 under the title “A Modern Lear,” she set out a brilliant, expanded analogy.64 She called Lear’s “paternal expression was one of domination and indulgence without . . . any belief that [his daughters] could have a worthy life apart from him.”65 She characterized George Pullman as believing in the “belated and almost feudal virtue of personal gratitude.” While she did not use the word “patriarchal,” in both cases she was describing the patriarchal system’s ethic of benevolence. This required that the patriarch treat the inferior people in his care with kindness and that those people—​daughters and workers in this case—​responded with gratitude.66 “A Modern Lear” also contained Addams’s most searching and honest version of her “daughter” analysis. In it she explicitly credited the father for the first time for blocking his daughter’s path. It is also in this essay that her own anguished experience surfaced in a new way. Addams rarely expressed regret about anything, but in a poignant passage she pondered the pain caused in the family when its ethics did not evolve with the times. She wrote, “If only a few families of the English-​speaking race had profited by the dramatic failure of Lear, much heart-​breaking and domestic friction might have been spared.”67 In “A Modern Lear,” Addams was able to write with insight and passion about the cruel disrespect patriarchy showed to the equal humanity of those under its domination.

288   Louise W. Knight Addams continued to mull these ideas. In her 1907 book, Newer Ideals, she put more flesh on the bones of her “military code” metaphor and took it in a new direction since, by this time, she was a supporter of the women’s suffrage movement. In the chapter “Utilization of Women in City Government,” she said that men had the vote because, historically (and this was accurate history), only they had been the warriors. She wrote, “Because the franchise had in the first instance been given to the man who could fight, because in the beginning he alone could vote who could carry a weapon, the franchise was considered an improper thing for a woman to possess.”68 Now that the “war virtues” were passing away, she continued, speaking in her favorite, prophetic voice, women will “formally” enter into “municipal life.”69 Newer Ideals was the first book in which she argued that pro-​war forces were opposed to women’s greater role in democracy. Four years later, in 1911, she added new complexity to that argument. In a suffrage speech she gave many times titled “Woman and the State,” she embraced the idea that women had ruled society in a pre-​patriarchal period of human history, which she called “the matriarchal period.”70 This began to decline, she explained, as tribes increasingly competed for territory and male warriors rose in status, while the women lost status as they hid in caves to protect the children. Men then formed the archaic state, which caused women to be “pushed . . . quite outside state affairs.” But she saw a better future already taking shape. Today, she argued, the trend was reversed and women were reclaiming for the state the responsibilities it had once had during the “matriarchal period.”71 As usual, Addams had been doing some reading. Pieces of her argument came from three books that were popular among suffragists at the time. In Engels’s Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State in Light of the Researches of Lewis H. Morgan (first English translation 1902), the author argued that at first ancient societies were governed by the “matriarchal” principle, which he declared to be essentially egalitarian. In time, he explained, it was displaced by the hierarchical “patriarchal” principle. Engels blamed this historical upheaval, which he called “the world historical defeat of the female sex,” on the emergence of farming, that is, private property. He did not agree that the patriarchy emerged from a shift to a warrior society.72 That idea came from another book suffragists were reading—​August Bebel’s Woman and Socialism (first published in the original German in 1879; in English in 1885). While Engels thought the transition from matriarchy to patriarchy was peaceful, Bebel argued it was prompted by the emergence of men undertaking armed conflict and that this led directly to the emergence of the state, headed by successful warriors—​the very argument Addams made.73 Addams would have read this book too because, again, it was a favorite of Florence Kelley’s. Kelley had read it in the early 1880s in the original German when she was a socialist and living in Europe. When the first English translation was published in London in 1885, with a new title, Kelley was back in the United States. Eager for US women to read it, she sent a few short paragraphs recommending the book to readers of the American suffragist paper, the Woman’s Tribune.74 When another English edition was published in London in 1893, an insistent Kelley surely thrust a copy into Addams’s

A Biographer’s Angle on Jane Addams’s Feminism    289 hands.75 The book proved so popular among Americans that the first American edition was published in 1910.76 In her 1911 suffrage speech, Addams mentioned twice the third book she had been reading, Emily James Putnam’s The Lady (1910). Putnam, an American, wrote about the long history of privileged women’s fate in “patriarchal societies,” societies in which, she argued, “they held women to be perpetual minors.”77 Addams narrated, with some humor, how this all worked out in the Middle Ages. Suffragists were reading this book too, not the least because Putnam’s sister-​in-​law, Mary Putnam Jacobi, was a leader in the suffragist movement.78 Much of the 1911 speech was an amalgam of Addams’s reading, but one part was original. In the middle of the speech, Addams, ever the storyteller, hypothesized an imaginary society where the matriarchy had survived and women had the vote and men did not.79 She skewered the men for being unworthy of such a trust, given their love of fighting and their greed in employing children in industries, and she wittily reversed the arguments men made to justify refusing to grant women the vote. In 1913, The Lady’s Home Journal, recognizing the rhetorical and playful brilliance of Addams’s arguments, published a revised version of this fantasy as a separate piece titled, “Miss Addams [on the Family and the State],” thus putting it into wide circulation. (It was not until the magazine version of the piece was reprinted in a 1960 collection of Addams’s writings that it was given the title “If Men Were Seeking the Franchise”).80 As Patricia Shields notes, in this “hilarious” essay, which she calls an example of the author’s feminism, Addams “demonstrates her understanding of how the male perspective influences policy.”81

Part IV:  Addams Embraces “Feminism” Anyone who reads Addams’s writings soon realizes that she often presented her ideas with subtlety and indirectness. This is probably the main reason she avoided using the term “patriarchy.” Though she was certainly an advocate for causes, she tended not to make straightforward arguments for them using logic and truth claims. Instead, as many have noted, she often preferred telling stories. A second favorite method is what Marilyn Fischer calls her historical method of reasoning.82 Charlene Haddock Seigfried lists Addams’s diverse methods of arguments as “autobiographical, contextual, pluralistic, narrational, experimentally fallibilist, and [arguments] embedded in history and specific social movements.”83 My list includes hypotheticals, predictions, and gently mocking observations that pointed out absurdities. These last provided her with a way to implicitly invoke obvious logical or common sense arguments without spelling them out. In the discipline of rhetoric, which Addams studied in college, these kinds of arguments, where the unstated premise is supplied by the audience, are called enthymemes.84 Addams used the same indirectness regarding her ideas about feminism in her books. Although she often wrote about the unjust situations women found themselves in, in

290   Louise W. Knight her books she only used the word “feminist” once. This was in Long Road of Woman’s Memory (1916), and it was placed in the mouth of a fictitious woman, as discussed below. In the chapter “Aspects of the Woman’s Movement” in Second Twenty Years (1930), she never once used the word “feminist.” But if Addams avoided the word in her books, she did not avoid it altogether. In 1913 and 1914 she used it in suffrage speeches and also used it in two essays she published in 1914.85 The timing makes sense. In 1913 and 1914, the word was in wide circulation around the nation, especially because in these years the suffrage movement was sometimes referred to as the “feminist movement.” The word “feminist” has an interesting history. It emerged in Europe in the 1890s and became popular there long before it was popular in the United States. The French invented the adjective to indicate a person’s support for what they called women’s emancipation.86 The word “feminist” was first used prominently in Paris in May 1892, when a group of women organized an international (European) “Feminist Congress.”87 Within a month, news of the congress had reached the United States. American papers, including the Chicago Tribune, published short squibs about the event.88 After that, news of the French “feminists” were sometimes covered in the US press. When, in 1897, the word appeared for the first time in the New York Times, it was in an article with a Paris dateline.89 The word began to catch on in the United States between 1900 and 1912. In small-​town newspapers it was first used not by the newspapers themselves but in advertisements about new “feminist” novels. The year 1913 was when American suffragists first adopted the word, judging from newspaper articles covering their speeches. That was also the year when Addams first adopted it too, possibly also in part because of a convention she attended. In May 1913 she served as a delegate to the International Suffrage Congress in Budapest, Hungary, where she heard European women often use the words “feminist movement,” and not just to refer to suffrage. As Addams noted upon her return in July, when she gave a suffrage speech to 600 women at the Chicago City Club, “On the [European] continent [suffrage] is recognized as a branch of the larger feminist movement.”90 For the rest of 1913 and during much of 1914, while Addams was campaigning in various states for suffrage laws and for a federal amendment in Congress, she often referred, both in interviews with newspapers and in speeches covered by the press, to the women’s movement as “feminist.” To give just a few examples, in December 1913, she gave two speeches using the word. The first was in New York City at Carnegie Hall, where, according to a reporter, she consistently referred to the suffrage movement as “the feminist movement.”91 The other was in Chicago at the Sinai Temple, where she used the term again, this time with a broader meaning. According to the reporter, she said that “the feminist movement [is] a recognition of what woman may do for humanity and one of the great achievements of the age.”92 In 1914, she continued to use the word “feminist,” as is documented, for example, in an interview she did in Lincoln, Nebraska.93 The year 1914 was also the year in which she used “feminist” in two published essays. In “The Unexpected Reactions of A Traveler in Egypt,” published in the Atlantic Monthly in February 1914, she referred to Queen Hatshepsut, the Egyptian

A Biographer’s Angle on Jane Addams’s Feminism    291 pharaoh, as “the first feminist.”94 Later that year, she used “feminist” again in an essay titled “The Larger Aspects of the Woman’s Movement” that was published in a special issue the editors titled Woman in Public Life of the journal Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science. Writing about three broad trends that were advancing the suffrage cause, Addams introduced the third one by calling it a “trend in the feminist movement.”95 Indeed, two of the essays in the special issue used the word “feminist” in their title, and Addams’s own essay was in a section titled “The Feminist Movement.” Addams also used the noun “feminism.” In 1916, for example, she deployed it to mean a complex of ideas and policies—​what today we would call an ideograph—​that she considered the opposite of “militarism.” “Militarism” was another French word that was on everyone’s lips by the turn of the century, and especially after 1910, as the war spirit in Europe heated up. The word was used to refer to a nation’s support for a strong military policy, or even to the essence of a nation itself. Two years after World War I broke out in Europe, Addams wrote in Long Road of Woman’s Memory (1916) that “feminism” and “militarism” were diametrically opposed, which was a more concise way to make the point she had made in Newer Ideals and had first subtly invoked with her “military code” metaphor in 1895. But instead of stating this in her own voice, she had a fictitious woman say it. In a chapter in Long Road titled “Challenging War,” Addams explained in a footnote that while she was in war-​torn Europe in 1915, she had conversations with two women who, after losing sons on the battlefields, no longer supported the war. Rather than quote them separately, she combined what they said into one long statement, as if a single woman was talking.96 Addams found in those conversations new material to make her case not only against war, which she had long rejected as a way of settling international disputes, but also against men’s sole control of government, the policy that the suffrage movement was committed to ending. The woman speaker set up “militarism” and “feminism” as opposite choices for the state. She had come to realize, she said, that there was an “unalterable cleavage between militarism and feminism”—​that “militarism and feminism are in eternal opposition.”97 By “militarism,” the speaker explained, she meant the belief “that [the authority of] government finally rests upon . . . physical force.” By “feminism,” she explained, she meant the belief that the authority of government should rest on “moral agencies”—​by which she meant the power of moral arguments, as distinct from force. If women were to achieve “equal rights,” she said, “feminism . . . must assert ultimate supremacy” over “physical force.”98 Though some might read this passage as an endorsement of the popular view that women were by nature morally pure and incapable of physical violence, Addams was using the speaker’s story to make a different point. She was saying that the movement to advance women’s voice in government, “feminism,” was committed to using democracy to avoid war, while the movement to celebrate men’s role in government, “militarism,” was committed to using a severely restricted, male-​controlled democracy to engage in war.

292   Louise W. Knight

Part V:  Addams’s Feminist Vision for the Family Every feminism contains within it a vision—​narrow or grand—​for a nation’s or a society’s future. Some seek a society where every opportunity is open to individual women; some go further and seek a society that has no gendered hierarchies in its laws, institutions, or cultural values; some go further still and seek a society that abandons additional hierarchies. In 1981, poet, educator, and author bell hooks expressed that most radical view when she declared that feminism was “a commitment to eradicating the ideology of domination that permeates Western culture.”99 Addams’s multifaceted feminist vision, as well as its limitations, may be teased out from her writings. Here I will focus on just one aspect—​her vision for the family. I choose that subject not just because her interest in the family was sustained over decades and ranged broadly, from finding the daughter’s proper place in it to reforming the family’s relation to society, but also because it was her own struggle with her family’s expectations that put her feet on the path to feminism. Also, a feminist vision for the family is a good place to ground any discussion of feminist visions since the family in its classic form in European society was the seat of patriarchal rule and the model, as Aristotle and many other political philosophers pointed out, on which the governance of cities, states, kingdoms, and nations was based. Addams had developed her “daughter” theory in the 1890s, and it informed her thinking about families for more than a decade, but when she reached her fifties, her search for ways to increase women’s freedom inside and outside the family took an interesting turn. That was when she began to call for greater equality of communication between men and women. This was her newer vision for how the feminist revolution could be made manifest in the family. In Addams’s day women were supposed to keep a degree of self-​imposed silence in the presence of the male family head. Women who disputed a point a man had made were considered “uppity.” Women who disagreed with—​or worse, disobeyed—​their fathers, husbands, or adult sons met with severe disapproval. Whether in public or private discussions, women—​perhaps especially middle-​class women—​believed it was unwomanly to assert oneself. Addams commented on this problem by predicting that it was passing. In 1912, in New Conscience and Ancient Evil, writing in her prophetic voice, she said, “[The] modern relationship between men and women will continue to make women . . . less timid of reputation and more human.”100 A few years later, in an interview with a reporter—​a situation in which she often used blunter language than in her speeches, essays, or books—​she said, women “have dropped their old policy of repression and are talking –​saying what they think and what they want.” This change, she predicted, “will accelerate the progress of the world.”101 She might have also said it would accelerate the progress of the family.

A Biographer’s Angle on Jane Addams’s Feminism    293 If a woman was not supposed to argue with a man, it was even more verboten to be angry with him for a good reason. Plenty of women, of course, got justifiably angry on occasion, but fewer did so without guilt, and for each woman that did explode, hundreds bit their tongues, trying to comply with the cultural expectations of the day. Addams rejected that inhibition and urged men to respect women’s justified anger and to agree with women that it was simply fair to do so. Women are rightly irritated, she told the same interviewer, “when men who don’t understand them refuse to give them what they are entitled to.”102 Such infuriating conversations, of course, happened most often in families. A third way women’s freedom was inhibited in the family, and perhaps the most basic way, was the cultural expectation that aside from some church or charity work (which was supposed to be kept to modest levels), a woman’s duty was to devote herself to her husband, her children, and her home. Addams had always rejected this as woman’s main duty, but as she grew older, Addams was more explicit than before about the dangers of living such a life. In her keynote address to the 1912 National American Woman Suffrage Association Convention, she daringly said that “the sense of duty to [the family] to which women have been prone” was morally “narrowing” because it “set a limit on all obligations to people outside.” She also took the opportunity to affirm that while some women fulfilled the “moral obligations of womanhood” by devotion to family, that was “not true for all women.”103 In other words, women like herself, single women, could fulfill their womanhood, by which she meant their female personhood, outside marriage. Shannon Jackson neatly captures the radical meaning of these ideas of Addams when she writes of her “denormalization of nuclear family bonding.”104 As for sexuality, Addams rejected the double standard that gave married men a freedom that married women did not have. She judged it unfair that men could have sex outside of marriage, either by paying for it or by having an affair, without fear for their reputation, while women could do neither without severe condemnation raining down on their heads. She had in mind, in particular, (male) politicians. In A New Conscience and an Ancient Evil (1912), she observed that a man could have a “domestic [private] life” that was sexually “corrupt” and yet “claim praise for his public career,” while women, isolated in the home, were held to the highest standard “of personal virtue.” Unwilling to advocate for married women to have sex outside of marriage, she argued that married men should be held to the same standard as married women. She hoped suffrage would help in this. Once women could vote and hold public office, she wrote, they “may at last [be able to] force men to [stop using their] public record as a cloak for a wretched private character because society would never permit a woman to make such excuses for herself.”105 She would have been entirely in favor of today’s worldwide “Me Too” movement, and she would have been particularly pleased that popular disapproval has sometimes succeeded in removing politicians from office who sexually harassed or abused or assaulted women. As for the homosexual or homosocial family, Addams both believed in it and lived it. She was lucky in that, for most of her adult life—​until attitudes changed in the conservative 1920s—​women, though not men, could form lifetime, intimate partnerships

294   Louise W. Knight without arousing societal disapproval. Legal marriage was not possible for such couples, but she twice formed a committed, romantic partnership with a woman, first with Ellen Gates Starr, and later with Mary Rozet Smith.106 As I discuss in more detail in my 2010 essay, “Love on Halsted Street,” Addams led a woman-​identified, intimate life, and she was therefore, by most modern definitions, a lesbian.107 Addams fell in love with Mary Rozet Smith in 1895, and they remained partners for life. In 1902, while missing her on the road, Jane wrote Mary, “There is reason in the habit of married folk keeping together.”108 In a letter she sent Mary in 1912, she wrote, “I am moved to send you some fresh picked violets. Did you ever think I’d be so sentimental? But I am about you, dear.”109 In letters, Jane addressed Mary as “my best beloved.”110 When late in life Jane called marriage “the highest gift life can offer to a woman,” there is no reason to suppose she meant only heterosexual marriage.111 Although same-​sex couples could not legally marry in Addams’s lifetime, there is good reason to suppose, based not only on her life choices but also on her ethical beliefs, that she would have supported that change. In her first book, Democracy and Social Ethics (1902), she wrote that “action is indeed the sole medium of expression for ethics,” and her own actions as a member of two same-​sex couples were clear.112 In addition, she believed that a society’s ethics must evolve with the times. Such a philosophy equipped her to welcome today’s same-​sex revolution.

Conclusion: Feminism and Democracy From the day in 1889 that Jane Addams and Ellen Gates Starr moved into Hull House to the day in 1935 that Addams died, advancing democracy was her constant theme, and advancing women’s engagement with democracy—​first socially, then through trade unions, then politically, and then around the world—​was a steady goal. In all eleven of her books, women’s particular challenges or experiences were a focus or a partial focus. In her first book, Democracy and Social Ethics (1902), three of the six topical chapters were about obstacles women faced in growing into the new democratic social ethics. In Twenty Years at Hull House (1910), she particularly featured stories about women living in her neighborhood. In her last book, My Friend Julia Lathrop (1935), she described how Lathrop, her cherished friend, someone who embodied Addams’s ideal of a deeply committed citizen, became the first woman to head a bureau in the federal government. Although Addams did not make fighting for black women’s rights a focus of her energies or writings, she was their reliable ally. For example, in 1914, during internal struggles within the National American Woman’s Suffrage Association, Addams resigned from the board once she understood that its rejection of the federal amendment and support for a state-​by-​state approach would help ensure that black women in the south would not get the vote.113 And she worked for progress on the central issue affecting all black women, anti-​ black racism. After the Springfield, Illinois, massacre of 1908, she joined with others

A Biographer’s Angle on Jane Addams’s Feminism    295 in co-​founding the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and served on its board for the rest of her life.114 At the 1912 Progressive Party Convention, she lobbied party leaders to include the NAACP-​drafted plank calling for justice for African Americans and for the seating of the southern, integrated delegations, both without success.115 In 1915, when the racist film, “Birth of a Nation,” opened in New York City, Addams and other NAACP board members went to see it in order to make informed comments. Addams released a long statement to the press, published in the New York Evening Post, in which she said that the film gave “a pernicious caricature of the Negro race.”116 She and other Chicagoans managed, though only temporarily, to block its showing in the city. In 1916, she and other Chicagoans, black and white, co-​founded the Chicago Urban League, and she was chosen as its first president.117 While Addams sometimes wrote about expanding women’s place in the United States and the world’s democracies, many of her most eloquent pleas did not speak of women per se. She was fully aware, however, that women were half of every nation. When she wrote, for example, in The Second Twenty Years at Hull House (1930) that “our hope of achievement . . . lies in a complete mobilization of the human spirit, using all of our unrealized and unevoked capacity,” it is safe to say she meant it to apply as much of women and girls of every class, ethnicity, and race, as to men and boys.118 And the same was likely true of her observation in Peace and Bread (1922) that “social advance depends as much upon the process through which it is secured as upon the result itself.”119 Jane Addams’s democratic vision was deeply feminist. Addams generally framed her devotion to democracy in philosophical and moral terms, but there was, I believe, an underlying personal reason for that defining passion. Of all the fine sentences Addams wrote about democracy, perhaps my favorite is from her first major speech, “The Subjective Necessity of Social Settlements” (1892). She said, “The good we secure for ourselves is precarious and uncertain . . . until it is secured for all of us and incorporated into our common life.”120 At the time she said it, it was a hypothesis—​ one might even say a feminist hypothesis. By the time she died in 1935, she had proved it.

Notes 1. Mahowald, “What Classical American Philosophers,” 39–​54; Deegan, Jane Addams, 225. I am deeply grateful to Marilyn Fischer for her helpful comments on this essay. 2. Shields, “Democracy,” 418. According to Wendy Sarvasy, Addams’s “contribution to democratic theorizing” through activism constitute “a feminist method.” Sarvasy, “Engendering Democracy,” 295. 3. Jackson, “Toward a Queer,” 176. 4. Hamington, Social Philosophy, 67–​69. 5. Lasch, Social Thought, 151–​152. 6. Hamington, Social Philosophy, 49. 7. Ladd-​Taylor, Mother-​Work, 3; Gordon, Pitied But Not Entitled, chs. 3 and 4; Shannon Jackson discusses Jean Bethke Elshtain’s view of Jane Addams as a maternalist feminist. Jackson, “Toward A Queer,” 171–​172.

296   Louise W. Knight 8. Shields, “Classical Pragmatism.” 9. To cite only a few, Siegfried, “Courage of One’s Convictions,” 45; Fischer, “Trojan Women,” 82; Shields, “Classical Pragmatism,” 371; Nackenoff, “New Politics,” 129. 10. Shannon Jackson, “Toward a Queer,” 161. 11. Fischer, “Uncovering Addams’s Feminism.” 12. Shields, “Democracy,” 418; Elshtain, Jane Addams, 139, 157. 13. Sarvasy, “Engendering Democracy,” 307; Haslanger, “Epistemic Housekeeping,” 10. 14. Haslanger, “Epistemic Housekeeping,” 10n14. 15. Brown, “Sex and the City,” 127, 131. This essay is solely about Addams’s book New Conscience and an Ancient Evil, though Brown’s statement seems to be about Addams in general. 16. Lasch, Social Thought of Jane Addams, xv; Hamington, Social Philosophy, 48, 52–​58. 17. Quotation is from Whipps, “Jane Addams’s Democratic Theory,” 119. 18. The philosophy scholars of pragmatism who write of Addams in their various works as a feminist theorist of pragmatism include Judy Whipps, Charlene Haddock Siegfried, Maurice Hamington, and Marilyn Fischer. See also Shields, “Classical Pragmatism,” 370–​376. 19. Hamington, Social Philosophy, 49. 20. A good treatment of that variety is in McAfee, “Feminist Philosophy,” in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, passim. 21. McGee, “Ideograph,” 381. 22. Giardina, Freedom for Women, 25. 23. Addams, Twenty Years, 15. 24. Addams, Twenty Years, 34. 25. Knight, Citizen, 69. 26. Knight, Citizen, 65. 27. Knight, Citizen, 69–​70, 63, 76. 28. For Tolstoy, see Knight, Citizen, 145, 148, 149; for Jesus in the years before Hull House, see Knight, Citizen, 73, 93, 128, 138–​139; for Jesus after that, see Knight, Citizen, 190, 222, 353–​ 354, 323, 371, 380. 29. Knight, Citizen, 93. 30. Knight, Citizen, 106–​107. See also 93. 31. Knight, Citizen, 78. 32. Knight, Citizen, 109–​110, 255–​257, 273, 358, 376–​377, 513n40; Knight, “Biography’s Window,” 126–​127. 33. When Addams and Starr first agreed to found a settlement house, they did not know that a group of East Coast college alumnae had the same idea. The College Settlement opened almost two weeks after Hull House. See Knight, Citizen, 191–​192, 463n40. 34. Knight, Citizen, 165–​166. 35. Knight, Citizen, 191. 36. Knight, Citizen, 226. 37. Quoted in Hamington, Social Philosophy, 52. 38. Quoted in Knight, Jane Addams, 154. 39. Knight, Jane Addams, 132. 40. Knight, “Biography’s Window,” 137n76; Knight, Citizen, 358–​359. 41. Knight, Citizen, 235–​236, 110. Jean Bethke Elshtain has a different interpretation of these concepts. See Elshtain, Jane Addams, 108–​110. 42. Addams, Twenty Years, 248.

A Biographer’s Angle on Jane Addams’s Feminism    297 43. Addams, New Conscience, 165. 44. Knight, Citizen, passim. Later, when the National Women’s Party lobbied for an Equal Rights Amendment, Addams did not oppose it, although it threatened to undo protective labor legislation for women and girls. She merely noted that it was “legalistic.” Knight, Jane Addams, 264. 45. Addams, “Democracy or Militarism,” 2. 46. Addams, “The Civic Value,” 60. 47. Addams, “As I See Women,” 11. 48. Addams, “Address of Miss Jane Addams,” 261. 49. Addams “Women and Internationalism,” 131. 50. Hamington, Social Philosophy, 67–​69; Fischer, “Addams on Suffrage,” 7–​8; Siegfried, “Introduction,” Long Road, xi; Jackson, “Toward A Queer,” 173; Nackenoff, “New Politics,” 131. 51. Addams, “Women’s Special Training,” 252. 52. Addams, “Women and Internationalism,” 128. See also, Sarvasy, “Global ‘Common Table,’ ” 192. 53. Seigfried, “Introduction,” Long Road, xiii. 54. Addams, Twenty Years, 1910, 340. 55. Fischer, Jane Addams’s Evolutionizing, passim; Hamington, Social Philosophy, 81–​84; Knight, Citizen, 357–​358, 367–​368, 391, 398, 400–​401. 56. Addams, “Woman and the State,” 22. 57. For more about patriarchy and its history as a concept, including as a feminist concept, see Thompson, Radical Feminism, 59–​63; Miller, Patriarchy, passim. For one scholar’s view of patriarchy’s relationship to feminism in 1999, see Becker, “Patriarchy,” passim. 58. Many suffragists, for example, only wished to assert women’s right to vote, and rejected other calls for other kinds of gender equality. 59. Quoted in Knight, Citizen, 350. 60. Knight, Citizen, 172. 61. Engels, Condition of the Working Class. 62. Knight, Citizen, 221. Addams revised Mill’s sentence slightly. For Mill’s version, see Mill, Subjection, 98. 63. Mill, Subjection, 76–​77. 64. Addams, “A Modern Lear.” 65. She makes these points in “A Modern Lear” passim, but this quotation is from a different version of the speech, which was a chapter in Democracy and Social Ethics. See Addams, Democracy, 100. For other views on this speech, see Elshtain, Jane Addams, 111–​112; Brown, Education, 288–​292; Seigfried, Pragmatism and Feminism, 229–​230. The essay, “A Modern Lear,” was the final version of her speech. The title was provided by the Survey editor. The title Addams gave the speech when she delivered in 1896 (she tried but failed to get it published at the time) was “A Modern Tragedy: An Analysis of the Pullman Strike.” An earlier version, written in 1895, was titled “A Modern Tragedy.” See Knight, Citizen, 331, 502n74. 66. Addams, “A Modern Lear,” 170–​172. 67. “A Modern Lear,” 137. 68. Addams, Newer Ideals, 103. 69. Addams, Newer Ideals, 116, 114. See also Knight, Jane Addams, 137. 70. See Fischer’s analysis of this speech in “Uncovering Addams’s Feminism.”

298   Louise W. Knight 71. Addams, “Woman and the State,” 9. 72. Quoted in Miller, Patriarchy, 45. Addams was likely also influenced by another book. In 1907 a friend of hers, William I. Thomas, published Sex and Society: Studies in the Social Psychology of Sex. In it, he discusses the history of civilization as passing through the prematernal and maternal stages, before arriving at the patriarchal stage. Thomas, however, believed that women had an innate capacity to care for their offspring, an idea that Addams rejected. On Addams’s friendship with Thomas, see Deegan, Jane Addams, passim. 73. Bebel’s argument is discussed in Miller, Patriarchy, 49. 74. Sklar et al., Social Justice Feminists, 85. 75. Bebel, Woman in the Past (1893). 76. Bebel, Woman in the Past (1910). 77. Putnam, Lady, 40; JA, “Woman and the State,” 4–​5, 23. 78. Jacobi co-​founded the suffragist League for Political Education in 1894. 79. Elshtain, Reader, 233–​234. 80. “Miss Addams [on the family and the state],” 21; Addams, “If Men Were Seeking,” 107–​113. 81. Shields, “Democracy,” 422. 82. Fischer, “Uncovering Addams’s Feminism,” 5; personal communication with the author, March 23, 2021. Marilyn Fischer argues throughout Jane Addams’s Evolutionary Theorizing that Addams’s use of history and storytelling were not simply rhetorical moves but often also constituted her actual arguments. 83. Seigfried, “Introduction,” to Addams, Democracy and Social Ethics, xiv. 84. Haskins, Logos and Power, 102. See also Hood, “Enthymeme,” 159–​162. For Addams’s study of rhetoric in college, see Knight, Citizen, 86–​87; Knight, “An Authoritative Voice: Jane Addams and the Oratorical Tradition,” 230–​232. Scholars with a knowledge of the discipline of rhetoric will find many diverse and brilliantly deployed rhetorical strategies in Addams’s writings. 85. In this digital era, one can search newspaper databases for many examples. See newspapers. com or genealogybank.com. 86. Offen, “Defining Feminism,” 126. She rejects the presentist-​minded argument that the idea of feminism did not exist until the word itself was invented. 87. N.a., “The ‘Feminist’ Congress in Paris,” 5. See also Offen, “on the French Origin,” 45–​51. 88. N.a., Chicago Tribune, June 11, 1892, 20. See also Offen, “On the French Origin,” 45–​51. She investigated whether Charles Fourier invented the term, as he was commonly thought to have done, and concluded that he did not. Offen, “Defining Feminism,” 126; Offen, “On the French Origin,” 45–​46. 89. “What Gay Paris Talks of,” New York Times, February 28, 1897. 90. N.a., Chicago Inter-​Ocean, July 18, 1913, 12. 91. “Jane Addams Speaks Here,” New York Sun, December 8, 1913. http://​digi​tal.jan​eadd​ams .ram​apo.edu/​items/​show/​30865. 92. N.a., Chicago Tribune, December 22, 1913, 15. JAPP. 93. N.a., “Jane Addams Sees,” page. 94. Addams, “Unexpected Reactions,” 178. 95. Addams, “Larger Aspects,” 6. 96. Addams, Long Road, 115n1. 97. Addams, Long Road, 129. 98. Addams, Long Road, 129. Sarvasy interprets several passages of this fictitious “woman’s” statement as representing Addams’s views. See Sarvasy, “Global ‘Common Table,’ ” 192.

A Biographer’s Angle on Jane Addams’s Feminism    299 99. Hooks, Ain’t I a Woman?, 194. 100. Addams, New Conscience, 212. 101. Addams, “As I See Women,” 11. 102. Addams, “As I See Women,” 11. 103. Addams, “Communion of the Ballot,” 3. 104. Shannon Jackson, “Toward a Queer,” 177. 105. Addams, New Conscience, 211–​212. 1912 edition. 106. Re her relationship with Starr, see Knight, Citizen, 214–​218; Davis, American Heroine, 46; Brown, Education, 227–​229, 254–​255; regarding her relationship with Smith, see Knight, Citizen, 251–​252, 359–​360, 377–​379; Brown, Education, 255–​257; Joslin, Jane Addams, 72; Davis, American Heroine, 85–​87; Elshtain, Jane Addams, 114. 107. Knight, “Love on Halsted Street,” 65–​66. 108. Jane Addams to Mary Rozet Smith, May 26, 1902. Quoted in Knight, Jane Addams, 124. 109. Jane Addams to Mary Rozet Smith, February 26, 1912, Jane Addams Papers Project website, http://​digi​tal.jan​eadd​ams.ram​apo.edu/​items/​show/​4101. 110. Knight, Jane Addams, 125. 111. Addams, Excellent, 19. 112. Addams, Democracy and Social Ethics, 273–​274. 113. Knight, Jane Addams, 237. 114. Knight, Jane Addams, 152, 255. 115. Knight, Jane Addams, 174, 177. 116. “Jane Addams Condemns Race Prejudice Film,” New York Post, March 13, 1915, at Jane Addams Papers Project website, http://​digi​tal.jan​eadd​ams.ram​apo.edu/​items/​show/​30865 117. Strickland, History, 34, 38. 118. Addams, Second Twenty Years, 3. 119. Addams, Peace and Bread, 133. 120. Addams, “Subjective Necessity,” 7. The speech was published in 1893, but it was written and delivered in 1892. Knight, Citizen, 252–​258.

Bibliography Addams, Jane. “Address of Miss Jane Addams.” University Settlement Society Annual Report, 1903. New York: privately printed, 1903. Addams, Jane. “As I See Women.” Ladies Home Journal 32 (August 1915): 11. Addams, Jane. “The Civic Value of Higher Education for Women.” June 6, 1912, 60. MS. The Jane Addams Papers website, http://​digi​tal.jan​eadd​ams.ram​apo.edu/​items/​show/​8275. Addams, Jane. “The Communion of the Ballot,” November 24, 1912, 3. MS. The Jane Addams Papers Project website, http://​digi​tal.jan​eadd​ams.ram​apo.edu/​items/​show/​8938. Addams, Jane. “Democracy or Militarism.” In Liberty Tracts: Anti-​imperialist League of Chicago 1 (1899): 35–​39. Repr. in Addams’s Essays and Speeches on Peace, 1–​4. New York: Continuum International Publishing Group, 2005. Addams, Jane. Democracy and Social Ethics. New York: Macmillan, 1902. Addams, Jane. The Excellent Becomes the Permanent. New York: Macmillan, 1932. Addams, Jane. “If Men Were Seeking the Franchise.” In Jane Addams: A Centennial Reader, edited by Emily Johnson, 107–​113. New York: Macmillan, 1960. Repr. in The Jane Addams Reader, edited by Jean Bethke Elshtain, 229–​234. New York: Basic Books, 2002.

300   Louise W. Knight Addams, Jane. “The Larger Aspects of the Woman’s Movement.” Women in Public Life. Special Edition of the Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 56 (November 1914): 1–​8. Addams, Jane. “Miss Addams [on the family and the state].” Ladies’ Home Journal 30 (June 1913): 21. Addams, Jane. “A Modern Lear.” Survey 29 (November 2, 1912): 131–​137. Repr. in The Jane Addams Reader, edited by Jean Bethke Elshtain, 163–​176. New York: Basic, 2002. Addams, Jane. A New Conscience and An Ancient Evil. New York: Macmillan. 1912. Addams, Jane. Newer Ideals of Peace. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2007. Addams, Jane. Peace and Bread in Time of War. New York: Macmillan, 1922. Addams, Jane. Second Twenty Years at Hull House. New York: Macmillan, 1930. Addams, Jane. “The Subjective Necessity of Social Settlements.” In Philanthropy and Social Progress, edited by Henry C. Adams, 1–​26. New York: Thomas Y. Crowell, 1893. Addams, Jane. Twenty Years at Hull House with Autobiographical Notes. New York: Macmillan, 1910. Addams, Jane. “The Unexpected Reactions of a Traveler in Egypt. Atlantic Monthly 113 (February 1914): 178–​186. Addams, Jane. "What Peace Means." 1899. In Jane Addams on Peace, War, and International Understanding, 1899-​1932, ed. Allen F. Davis. 11–​18. New York: Garland, 1976. Addams, Jane, Emily Greene Balch, and Alice Hamilton, eds. Women at the Hague. New York: Macmillan, 1915. Addams, Jane. “Women and Internationalism.” In Women in the Hague, edited by Jane Addams, Emily Greene Balch, and Alice Hamilton. 124–​141. New York: Macmillan, 1915. Addams, Jane. “Woman and the State.” February 2, 1911. MS. Website of the Jane Addams Papers Project, http://​digi​tal.jan​eadd​ams.ram​apo.edu/​items/​show/​7270. Addams, Jane. “Women’s Special Training for Peacemaking.” In Writings on Peace: Jane Addams’s Essays and Speeches, edited and introduced by Marilyn Fischer and Judy D. Whipps, 47–​48. New York: Continuum International Publishing Company, 2005. Bebel, August. Woman in the Past, Present, and Future. Translated by H. B. Adams Walther. London, 1893. Bebel, August. Woman in the Past, Present and Future. New York: Boni and Liveright, 1910. Becker, Mary. “Patriarchy and Inequality: Towards a Substantive Feminism.” University of Chicago Legal Forum no. 1 (1999): article 3. Available at the website http://​Chi​cago​unbo​und .uchic​ago.edu/​uclf/​vol1​999/​iss1/​3. Brown, Victoria. The Education of Jane Addams. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004. Brown, Victoria. “Sex and the City: Jane Addams Confronts Prostitution.” In Feminist Interpretations of Jane Addams, edited by Maurice Hamington, 125–​157. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2010. Davis, Allen F. American Heroine: The Life and Legend of Jane Addams. New York: Oxford University Press, 1973. Deegan, Mary Jo. Jane Addams and the Men of the Chicago School, 1892–​1918. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction, 1988. Elshtain, Jean Bethke. Jane Addams and the Dream of Democracy. New York: Basic Books, 2002. Engels, Frederick. The Condition of the Working Class in England in 1844, with a Preface Written in 1892. Translated by Florence Kelley Wischenewetzky. London, 1892.

A Biographer’s Angle on Jane Addams’s Feminism    301 Fischer, Marilyn. “Addams on Suffrage.” Feminist-​Pragmatist Colloquium, St. John Fisher College, November 14–​17, 2019. Fischer, Marilyn, and Judy Whipps, eds. Addams’s Essays and Speeches on Peace. New York: Continuum International Publishing Group, 2005. Fischer, Marilyn. Jane Addams’s Evolutionary Theorizing. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2019. Fischer, Marilyn. “Trojan Women and Devil Baby Tales: Addams on Domestic Violence.” In Feminist Interpretations of Jane Addams, edited by Maurice Hamington, 81–​105. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2010. Fischer, Marilyn. “Uncovering Addams’s Feminism.” University of Dayton Philosophy Colloquium Series, Dayton, OH, September 30, 2016. Giardina, Carol. Freedom for Women, Forging the Women’s Liberation Movement, 1953–​1970. Gainesville, FL: University Press of Florida, 2010. Gordon, Linda. Pitied but not Entitled: Single Mothers and the History of Welfare: 1890–​1935. New York: Free Press, 1994. Hamington, Maurice, ed. Feminist Interpretations of Jane Addams. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2010. Hamington, Maurice. The Social Philosophy of Jane Addams. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2009. Haskins, Ekaterina V. Logos and Power in Isocrates and Aristotle. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 2010. Haslanger, Sally. “Epistemic Housekeeping and the Philosophical Canon: A Reflection on Jane Addams’s ‘Women and Public Housekeeping.’ ” In Ten Neglected Classics of Philosophy, edited by Eric Schliesser. New York: Oxford University Press, 2017. An MIT Open Access Article, at website, http://​hdl.han​dle.net/​1721.1/​108​272. Hood, Michael. “The Enthymeme: A Brief Bibliography of Modern Sources.” Rhetoric Society Quarterly 14 (1984): 159–​162. hooks, bell. Ain’t I a Woman?: Black Women and Feminism. Boston: South End Press, 1981. Jackson, Shannon. “Toward A Queer Social Welfare Studies.” In Feminist Interpretations of Jane Addams, edited by Maurice Hamington, 143–​162. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2010. Joslin, Katherine. Jane Addams: A Writer’s Life. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2004. Knight, Louise W. “An Authoritative Voice: Jane Addams and the Oratorical Tradition.” Gender & History 10, no. 2 (August 1998): 217–​251. Knight, Louise W. “Biography’s Window on Social Change: Benevolence and Justice in Jane Addams’s ‘A Modern Lear.’ ” Journal of Women’s History 9, no. 1 (spring 1997), 111–​138. Knight, Louise W. Citizen: Jane Addams and the Struggle for Democracy. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005. Knight, Louise W. Jane Addams: Spirit in Action. New York: W. W. Norton, 2010. Knight, Louise W. “Love on Halsted Street.” In Feminist Interpretations of Jane Addams, edited by Maurice Hamington, 181–​197. University Park: Pennsylvania State University, Press, 2010. Knight, Louise W. “Jane Addams and Hull House: Historical Lessons in Nonprofit Leadership.” Nonprofit Management and Leadership 2 (winter 1992): 128–​141. Ladd-​Taylor, Molly. Mother-​Work: Women, Child Welfare, and the State, 1890–​1930. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1994. Lasch, Christopher, ed. Social Thought of Jane Addams. New York and Indianapolis: Bobbs-​ Merrill, 1965.

302   Louise W. Knight Mahowald, Mary. “What Classical American Philosophers Missed: Jane Addams, Critical Pragmatism, and Cultural Feminism.” Journal of Value Inquiry 31, no. 1 (1997): 39–​54. McAfee, Noelle. “Feminist Philosophy.” In The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (fall 2018 edition), edited by Edward N. Zalta. https://​plato.stanf​ord.edu/​entr​ies/​femin​ist-​phi​ loso​phy/​ McGee, Michael Calvin. “Ideograph.” In The Encyclopedia of Rhetoric, edited by Thomas O. Sloane. New York: Oxford University Press, 2001, 378–​381. McMillan, Gloria. “Keeping the Conversation Going: Jane Addams’ Rhetorical Strategies in ‘A Modern Lear.’ ” Rhetoric Society Quarterly 32, no. 3: 2002, 61–​75. Mill, John Stuart. The Subjection of Women. Cambridge: The M.I.T. Press, 1970. Miller, Pavla. Patriarchy. New York: Routledge, 2017. Nackenoff, Carol. “New Politics for New Selves: Jane Addams’s Legacy for Democratic Citizenship in the Twenty-​First Century.” In Jane Addams and the Practice of Democracy, edited by Marilyn Fischer, Carol Nackenoff, and Wendy Chmielewski, 119–​142. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2009. Offen, Karen. “Defining Feminism: A Comparative Historical Approach.” Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 14, no. 11 (autumn 1988), 119–​209. Offen, Karen. “On the French Origin of the Words, Feminism and Feminist.” Feminist Issues 8, no. 2 (fall 1988): 45–​51. Putnam, Emily James. The Lady: Studies of Certain Phases of Her History. London: G Putnam’s Sons, 1910. Sarvasy, Wendy “Engendering Democracy by Socializing It: Jane Addams’s Contribution to Feminist Political Theorizing.” In Feminist Interpretations of Jane Addams, edited by Maurice Hamington, 293–​310. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2010. Sarvasy, Wendy. “A Global ‘Common Table’: Jane Addams’s Theory of Democratic Cosmopolitanism and World Social Citizenship.” In Jane Addams and the Practice of Democracy, edited by Marilyn Fischer, Carol Nackenoff, and Wendy Chmielewski, 183–​202. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2009. Seigfried, Charlene Haddock. “The Courage of One’s Convictions or the Conviction of One’s Courage? Jane Addams’s Principled Compromises.” In Jane Addams and the Practice of Democracy, edited by Marilyn Fischer, Carol Nackenoff, and Wendy Chmielewski, 40–​62. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2009. Seigfried, Charlene Haddock. Introduction to Democracy and Social Ethics, by Jane Addams, ix–​xxxviii. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2002. Seigfried, Charlene Haddock. Introduction to Long Road of Woman’s Memory, by Jane Addams, ix–​xxxiv. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2002. Seigfried, Charlene Haddock. Pragmatism and Feminism: Reweaving the Social Fabric. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996. Shields, Patricia M. “Classical Pragmatism: Roots and Promise for a PA [Public Administration] Feminist Theory.” Administrative Theory & Praxis 27, no. 2 (2005): 370–​376. Shields, Patricia M. “Democracy and the Social Feminist Ethics of Jane Addams: A Vision for Public Administration,” Administrative Theory & Praxis 28, no. 3 (2006): 418–​443. Strickland, Arvarh E. History of the Chicago Urban League. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1966. Thomas, William I. Sex and Society: Studies in the Social Psychology of Sex. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1907.

A Biographer’s Angle on Jane Addams’s Feminism    303 Thompson, Denise. Radical Feminism Today. London: SAGE, 2001. Whipps, Judy. “Encountering Addams’s Democratic Theory Through a Postcolonial Feminist Lens.” In Feminist Interpretations of Jane Addams, edited by Maurice Hamington, 275–​292. University Park: Pennsylvania State University, 2010. Whipps, Judy. “Jane Addams’s Social Thought as a Model for a Pragmatist-​ Feminist Communitarianism,” Hypatia 19, no. 2 (spring 2004): 118–​133.

Chapter 16

Jane Addams a nd P u bl i c Adm inistrat i on Clarifying Industrial Citizenship Patricia M. Shields

We are still indifferent to the quality of public service. A merit system of appointments is evaded whenever and wherever possible. Yet a merit system means only some effective method of securing competent honest public servants. . . Public business has vastly increased in scope since the first civil service laws were written in the United States fifty years or so ago. The present juncture with the growing tendency to enact social legislation is crucial in its need of a new public conscience as to Public Administration. —Julia Lathrop in Addams, 1935, p. 147

Jane Addams’s last book, My Friend Julia Lathrop, was published after her death. This final labor of love examined the life, accomplishments, and personality of Julia Lathrop, fellow Hull House member, reformer, and public administrator. In this book, Addams looks backward and highlights the struggles and accomplishments of Lathrop. Gone are the days when women could not vote, water systems were filled with typhoid bacteria, and children were placed in adult prisons. Further, the Great Depression and the election of Franklin Roosevelt were ushering in New Deal legislation that provided some insurance against unemployment and income for the aged. There was still much to do, but a network of social legislation was emerging that would care for her fellow citizens in new ways. So, perhaps it is not surprising that Addams often highlighted Julia Lathrop’s role, behavior, and critiques of public administration (PA) in My Friend.1 Questions of how these programs would be administered took on new significance. Adams’s most explicit thoughts on public administration are found in My Friend. Addams’s influence on public administration, however, began much earlier through her activism, leadership at Hull House, and writings on democracy, social ethics, peace, feminist pragmatism, care ethics, and social justice. Her ideas are part of a newly

306   Patricia M. Shields recovered alternative model of public administration that emerged from the settlement movement. Between the 1880s and the 1940s, two models of public administration emerged. One crafted by male reformers emphasized efficiency and effectiveness. These bureau men, reacting to the inefficiencies and unfairness of crony political hiring practices, worked for key reforms that de-​politicizing the administrative function. Examples include civil service reform and the council/​manager form of city government. The second model originated from the women of the settlement movement. It had a social justice reform agenda. Given the generally low status and powerlessness of women, this model received little formal recognition (Stivers, 2000). Nevertheless, it clearly had influence (child labor laws, city playgrounds, Children’s Bureau) and a philosophical underpinning often articulated by Jane Addams (Shields, 2017). Contemporary public administration scholars have identified two interrelated components within the alternative model—​municipal housekeeping and industrial citizenship. Both have implications for policy and administration in the 21st century. The two components emphasized different aspects of the changing society (urbanization and industrialization). The alternative or settlement model also helped to open doors for the disenfranchised—​women, children, immigrants, old, poor. Municipal housekeeping emphasized a caring, safer, more livable communities (playgrounds, cleaner streets, better water and sewer systems). Industrial citizenship focused on safer, more humane working conditions (workplace regulation—​child labor laws, old-​age insurance, workplace safety, safer products, recognizing role of organized labor). The settlement model was successful at crafting policy and creating administrative structures to support this policy2 (Children’s Bureau, Women Bureau, child labor laws, regulation of workplace safety, and social security). Somewhere around WWII the efficiency and effectiveness focus of the bureau men cemented the historical narrative, and the alternative or settlement model of public administration was lost to historical memory (Burnier, 2008a, 2008b; McGuire, 2011; Shields, 2022). The absence of the settlement model from the public administration historical narrative is a contemporary problem. The views of women founders should inform history and contemporary policy and administration. For example, a commitment to the notion of a city as a household informed by an ethic of care could bring a fresh perspective to urban problems of homelessness, immigrant resettlement, and police training. During the first two decades of the 21st century, PA scholars have been studying, recovering, articulating, and applying the alternative vision of PA3. This model is buttressed by two overlapping pillars—​municipal housekeeping and industrial citizenship. Of the two, municipal housekeeping has been emphasized. This paper explores the meaning of industrial citizenship through the feminist pragmatist lenses supplied by Jane Addams. It begins by defining public administration highlighting PA’s role in policy implementation and as stewards of a living democracy. The second section describes Addams’s insight into the feudal and militaristic nature of the early 20th-​century industrial workplace. Here working conditions were generally deplorable and conflict between labor and business often violent. Further, governments

Jane Addams and Public Administration    307 at all levels supported the business agenda. Section three presents an overview of the settlement model’s vision for the role of government and its administration. The next sections focus on Addams’s contribution to industrial citizenship. They show her influence on theory (feminist pragmatism, an ethic of care) and practice (workplace safety, industrial charity, and labor relations). The chapter closes with a focus on contemporary implications of the settlement model and Addams’s contributions for public administration.

Public Administration: Definitions and Historical Perspective One of the problems of Democracy is how to put true and noble human qualities into politics, and into the administration of the state. (Lathrop as cited in Addams, 1935, p. 87)

According to the Britannica dictionary, public administration is concerned with the implementation of government policy (britannica.com). It is the engine of government that delivers goods and services. Public administrators run government agencies and implement public policy authorized through laws. Shields (1998) broadened this traditional definition by incorporating democratic values. So, for purposes of this chapter, we use the following definition: “Public Administration deals with the stewardship and implementation of the products of a living democracy” (Shields, 1998, p. 199). This richer definition moves beyond the scope of “implementation” and “government.” Rather it places an organic, and imperfect, “living democracy” at its core. Public administrators are doers and the makers of this living democracy. The products of a living democracy are those things that are constructed or produced such as clean drinking water, primary education, roads, workplace safety regulations, playgrounds, public health programs, literacy programs, social security, and anti-​discrimination laws. Public administrators implement these programs and policies. They inspect workplaces, run schools, and ensure sewer and water systems run properly and that social security payments are accurate and arrive on time. Public administrators are stewards in that they are concerned with proper use of resources (so finance and personnel policy is within their scope). Their role as stewards also extends to moral and ethical questions surrounding the implementation of products within a living democracy. They are stewards of democratic values. Public administration is not limited to government because the products of a living democracy are generated by government and the non-​profit and private sectors. Public administration changes over time because “living democracies” respond to contemporary public problems. Clearly, the field of public administration is served by Addams’s theory of democracy, her social and care ethics, her experience running a thriving nonprofit organization, and her skillful ability to keep an eye on the big picture while focusing on and articulating

308   Patricia M. Shields the practical problems of the people she served. She had an expansive view of ethics and democracy that included social justice. She linked social morality to a larger democratic spirit, one that implied “that diversified human experience and resultant sympathy are the foundations and guarantee of democracy” (Addams, 1902, p. 7). “The principle of racial and class equality is at the basis of American political life, and to wantonly destroy it is one of the gravest outrages against the Republic” (Addams, 1906, p. 141). She moved beyond considering democracy’s essentially political expression; rather, she also articulated and emphasized its social function (Addams, 1893, p. 14). When Addams and her sister Hull House residents opened the doors of Hull House, they were legally barred from participating in America’s political democracy. Her early mission was to socialize democracy. According to Marilyn Fischer (2009, p. 175) Addams viewed social democracy “as a form of associated living, extending to communities and industry as well as to Political institutions.” She maintained that “people need to move from individual morality, characterized by individual virtues, to social morality, or social democracy, in which the social point of view is paramount.” And where there was room for an ethic of care and sympathetic understanding (Hamington, 2009, p. 76). Settlements became microcosms of social democracy “whereby meeting and knowing one another leads to care and action” (Hamington, 2009, p. 77).

Industrial Society’s Feudal Legacy The modern city is a stronghold of industrialism, quite as the feudal city was a stronghold of militarism, but the modern city fears no enemies, and rivals from without, its problems of government are solely internal. . . .Insanitary housing, poisonous sewage, contaminated water, infant mortality, the spread of contagion, adulterated food, impure milk, smoke laden air, ill-​ ventilated factories, dangerous occupations, juvenile crime, unwholesome crowding, prostitution, and drunkenness are the enemies which the modern city must face and overcome would it survive. (Addams, 1906, p. 182)

In the quotation above, Addams presents a litany of problems that characterize the early 20th-​century city in the United States.4 She links these problems to industrialism and its legacy of feudalism. Feudal cities were surrounded by walls and filled with armies that protected the residents from invaders and ensured loyalty and compliance with the dictates of the feudal lord. Military prowess was valued, while ordinary workers, particularly women and children, were ignored and often exploited. Addams saw remnants of this heritage in Chicago as captains of industry and city leaders joined forces often relying on militarism as if feudal lords. In addition, a laissez faire, survival-​of-​the-​ fittest mindset provided a rationale for exploitation. Addams continually points out the implications of this mindset for children, workers, women, immigrants, and the poor, and their quality of life as urban residents.

Jane Addams and Public Administration    309 Addams’s Chicago was filled with violent labor strife. In a 1905 teamsters strike (April–​ July), violent riots erupted killing 21 and injuring 416. During that strike, the government backed business and used an “element of warfare” to repress strikers (Addams, 1906, p. 100). The working conditions of industrial workers during this time were often horrendous. Workers, including children, were at risk of fire, infectious diseases, life threatening accidents, and more. They often worked 14-​hour days, in poorly lit factories for extremely low pay. Labor had organized to fight for better working conditions. Violent conflict was common. Polarization between business/​government and labor left both groups aggrieved and resulted in Chicago losing a “most precious possession”—​ her “democratic spirit” (Addams, 1906, p. 140). Marilyn Fischer (2009, p. 171) maintains that for Addams, the power of industrialism comes from ownership of machines instead of arms. With machines as centerpiece, communities face the same problems as the military/​arms view. “The possessors of the machine, like the possessor of arms who preceded him, regarded it as a legitimate weapon of exploitation, as the former held the sword.” Widespread industrial abuses come from this “exploitive perspective.” For example, children are to be exploited rather than nurtured. The existing system also depended on “coercion, compulsion, and remnants of military codes to hold the community together,” which led to “maladministration of our cities” (Addams, 1905, p. 427). As in the feudal period, women were expressly excluded from a formal voice in decision making. Using informal means, primarily women’s clubs/​organizations, white and black women entered the political fray in the newly industrializing and urbanizing United States (Skocpol, 1992; Seaholm, 1988; Sterling, 1988). They staked out a territory viewed as women’s work (care of women and children) where the male leadership was often willfully negligent. Here they organized and worked for policy changes within their communities, the nation, and the world. The US settlement movement grew and flourished in this environment. The alternative view of public administration was one of its many offspring.

The Alternative View of Public Administration The well-​to-​do men of the community think of politics as something off by itself...political effort is not the expression of their moral or social life. As a result of this detachment, ‘reform movements,’ started by businessmen and the better element, are almost wholly occupied in the correction of political machinery and with a concern for the better method of administration, rather than with the ultimate purpose of securing the welfare of the people. They fix their attention so exclusively on methods that they fail to consider the final aims of city government. (Addams, 1902, pp. 222–​223)

310   Patricia M. Shields In the quotation above, Addams is criticizing the reform movement spearheaded by the public administration’s founding bureau men. She sees their efforts as too narrowly focused on reforming the “corrupt political machine” through “better methods of administration” (Addams, 1902, p. 223). She supported their efforts, including civil-​service reform meant to ensure that qualified individuals delivered the services of government programs. She just believed that their reform efforts were too narrowly conceived. The alternative vision5 of public administration attributed to the settlement women pushed the boundaries and metaphors of reform in new directions (Stivers, 2000; Shields, 2017; McGuire, 2011; Gabriele, 2015). The settlement movement defined by Addams as an “experimental effort to aid in the solution of the social and industrial problems which are engendered by modern conditions of life in a great city” (Addams, 1893, p. 25) was just the dynamic force needed to expand these boundaries and leverage meaningful metaphors inspired by feminine experience. As mentioned earlier, public administration scholars have identified two components in the settlement vision of public administration—​municipal housekeeping and industrial citizenship. Municipal housekeeping recognized the “shame of the cities” and that the city fell short in its “housekeeping” functions (Addams, 1905, p. 425). Basic functions like cleanliness, health, safety, and a place for children were ignored and at a high cost. As a result, the filthy streets, contaminated water and sewer systems, as well as poorly lit, ventilated, cluttered, unsanitary working conditions all led to disease, chronic health conditions, or accidents. These are all things that have counterparts in the household, and which women are responsible for. Cities should care for their citizens. She notes that the “men of the city have been carelessly indifferent to much of this civic housekeeping.” Candidates often “totally disregard” the capacity of the city “to keep the streets clean” in favor of a position on a tariff or another problem unrelated to their effectiveness as a city leader (Addams, 1906, p. 183). The municipal housekeeping model was widely advocated by reform-​minded club women throughout the United States (Flanagan, 1990). Addams and the settlement movement infused it with an ethic of care, connected it to social democracy, and used it as an argument for diversity in city leadership and management (Haslanger, 2016). Women care for their family as they ensure that the house is clean, safe, and uncluttered. Women, who have expertise and experience dealing with these issues, are excluded from the municipal decision-​making framework. Society should draw on this experience when addressing the acute problems of the urban early 20th-​century landscape. The civic housekeeping model would be useful today as we deal with police reform. Contemporary municipal police forces, far from conceiving themselves as part of a city-​household, with the responsibility for safety of its members, are increasingly evolving toward a military model with a friend/​enemy mentality (Campbell and Campbell, 2010; Junior, 2021). The 2020 murder of George Floyd by Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin illustrates the problems with treating a suspect as an enemy compared to as a member of a household or family. Public administration scholars have actively worked to recover the municipal housekeeping component of the settlement vision of PA (Stivers, 1997, 2000; Schachter, 1997, 2011; Burnier, 2008a; Shields, 2003, 2017). Municipal housekeeping focused on urban

Jane Addams and Public Administration    311 problems, while the second component of the settlement model of PA, industrial citizenship, centered on the industrial workplace.

Industrial Citizenship We conscientiously ignore industry in relation to government and because we assume that its regulation is unnecessary, so we conclude that the protection of the young from premature participation in its mighty operations is not the concern of the government. (Addams, 1906, 156–​157). Residents are pledged to devote themselves to the duties of good citizenship and to the arousing of the social energies which too largely lie dormant in every neighborhood given over to industrialism. (Addams, 1893, p. 26) Prolonged strikes produce either victors or martyrs . . . organizations based upon a mutual sense of grievance or of outrage have always been militant, permanent association is difficult when the chief bond is a sense of exasperation and wrong dealing. (Addams, 1906, p. 137) Industrial relations imply peaceful relations.

(Addams, 1906, p. 113)

These four quotations capture the complexity of industrial citizenship. It clearly deals with the abuses of the industrial workplace, one of which was child labor. It also encapsulates the activist duties of good citizenship. Finally, it deals with the place and challenges of organized labor in industrial society. While municipal housekeeping focused on the management of the city and local government, industrial citizenship is more expansive and applicable to state and federal government policies too. And it is here that the Hull House settlement women, influenced by Addams, eventually moved into high-​profile government positions. For example, Julia Lathrop was the first director of the Children’s Bureau, and Frances Perkins became secretary of labor. John Thomas McGuire (2011) was the first PA scholar to identify industrial citizenship as a component of the alternative vision of PA. He puts forward some early definitions—​industrial citizenship is the idea “through which labor and capital work together as equals” (p. 66). It also encompasses administrative structures “through which the federal government would act as mediator between management and labor” (p. 74). McGuire (2012) also focuses on women, pragmatism, and social justice feminism as playing a key role in the development of the alternative vision of PA. In addition, industrial citizenship is linked to Fredrick Taylor and scientific management. Hindy Schachter (2002) notes that Florence Kelley, who was a member of the Taylor Society, believed that scientific management had the potential to be a useful tool to promote

312   Patricia M. Shields social equity in the workplace. She used studies that showed reducing hours of work reduced fatigue and enhanced productivity (p. 569). McGuire does not explicitly incorporate the works, ideas, or activities of Addams in his industrial citizenship model. For example, he seldom mentions democracy, and when he does, it is within the context of a political democracy (McGuire, 2011). Jane Addams’s insights into the nature of industrial society (e.g., feudal, laissez faire, remnants of militarism, elevation of property rights, and rational for exploitation) as well as her philosophical contributions (e.g., social ethics, social democracy, feminist pragmatism, care ethics, peace) could be usefully integrated into the industrial citizenship component of the alternative view of public administration. Industrial citizenship is about our interconnectedness. It can manifest in surprising places. One can be found in Addams critique of the way charity was conceptualized and remediated. In the survival of the fittest industrial world, poverty was viewed as a personal flaw or defect such as laziness or drunkenness. The charitable organizations responsible for dealing with the problem sent charity workers out to teach people how to change their ways and pull themselves out of poverty. Instead of laying blame on the individual, Addams (2002 [1899]) maintained the “root difficulty of the charitable relationship” was the blame on the poor families. She counters that “only families who apply for aid to the charitable agencies are those who have come to grief on the industrial side; it may be through sickness, through loss of work, or for other guiltless and inevitable reasons, but the fact remains that they are industrially ailing and must be bolsterer and helped into industrial health” (p. 63). This affects the charity worker, who is “embarrassed to find herself obliged to lay all the stress of her teaching and advice upon the industrial virtues, and to treat members of the family almost exclusively as factors in the industrial system. She insists that they must work and be self-​supporting; that the most dangerous of all situations is idleness. . . ignoring claims and responsibilities” (Addams, 2002 [1899], p. 63).6 In addition, industrial citizenship relies on a social ethic. When the charity worker is able to see beyond blaming individual flaws and understand the ways industrial society can harm workers by throwing them into poverty, she is moving from an individual ethic to a social ethic. Addams expands ethical boundaries and challenges people to look beyond their fixed belief system, and she does this using feminine lenses. In other words, her analysis is steeped in feminist pragmatism.

Informed by Feminist Pragmatism But life itself teaches us nothing more inevitable than that right and wrong are most confusedly mixed... We cease to listen for the bugle note of victory our childish imagination anticipated, and learn that our finest victories are attained in the midst of self-​distrust and that the waving banner of triumph is sooner or later trailed to the dust by the weight of self-​righteousness. (Addams, 1895, p. 199)

Jane Addams and Public Administration    313 “To love mercy” and at the same time “to do justly,” is the difficult task. To fulfill the first requirement alone is to fall into the error of indiscriminate giving, with all its disastrous results; to fulfill the second exclusively is to obtain the stern policy of withholding, and it results in such a dreary lack of sympathy and understanding that the establishment of justice is impossible. (Addams, 2002 [1899], p. 75) The maternal instinct and family affection is woman’s most holy attribute; but if she enters industrial life, that is not enough. She must supplement her family conscience by a social and industrial conscience. She must widen her family affection to embrace the children of the community. (Addams, 1895, pp. 186–​187)

When leading pragmatists Charles Sanders Peirce (1877) wrote the “Fixation of Belief ” and John Dewey (1896) wrote the “Reflex Arc,” both warned against the problem of thinking in rigid categories. In the quotations above, Jane Addams echo’s these concerns as applied to values like “right and wrong” and “mercy and justice.” Her goal is to mediate dualisms. She also asks us to bring humility and self-​distrust into our conversations and arguments. Using these lenses, we are more apt to listen and bring sympathetic understanding to discourse (Fischer, 2019). She also implicitly and explicitly brings a feminine standpoint to her analysis. Feminist philosophizing argues that “standpoint or context of the knower affects the known. No one can escape to an independent objective reality” (Hamington, 2009, p. 53). Hence, there is an important place for everyday experience. The experiences of women had traditionally been discounted and with them the experiences of caring for children and the sick. By recognizing the experiences of the previously voiceless, “Addams radicalized pragmatism by applying a stronger egalitarian approach to social issues, one that was keenly tuned to the impact of class, race and gender” (Hamington, 2009, p. 43). This quotation from Newer Ideals of Peace captures her perspective “We constantly forget that, in the last analysis, the spiritual growth of one social group is conditioned by reaction of other social groups upon it. We ignore the fact that the worship of success, so long dominant in America, has taught the majority of our citizens to count only accomplishments” (Addams, 1906, p. 127). The community of inquiry is another concept that captures other aspects of Addams feminist pragmatism. Pragmatism is concerned with problematic situations and ways to resolve practical problems (problematic situations reside in the world of experience). Focus on problems diverts attention away from rigid belief systems toward the common goal of fixing something. A community of inquiry includes all those who have an interest in resolving the problem. Hence, it is both pluralistic and participatory and a kind of social democracy (Shields, 2003). When a group is in the process of resolving problems, they are engaged in inquiry. Although total objectivity may be impossible, pragmatists do trust science and approach problem resolution with a scientific attitude.

314   Patricia M. Shields This means that solutions should be tried and evaluated for their success (Shields, 2003). In many ways, Hull House’s, “experimental effort to aid in the solution of the social and industrial problems which are engendered by modern conditions of life in a great city,” was an ongoing community of inquiry (Addams, 1892, p. 25). In the case of industrial citizenship, the problematic situation often dealt with workplace safety and tensions between management and labor. Referring back to the definition of public administration, one could see that implementation of the products of a living democracy would generate endless problematic situations that if situated in a living democracy would call for collaboration and consultation with citizens affected by the problematic situation or policy. Shields (2003, p. 511) described the community of inquiry as an “organizing principle” for public administration.

Informed by an Ethic of Care We are learning that a standard of social ethics is not attained by traveling a sequestered byway, but by mixing on the thronged and common road where all must turn out for one another, and at least see the size of one another’s burden. (Addams, 1902, p. 6) Social morality results perforce in the temper if not the practice of the democratic spirit, for it implies that diversified human experience and resultant sympathy which are the foundations and guarantee of democracy. (Addams, 1902, p. 7)

Addams called for a social ethic that was based on sympathetic understanding, diversified human experience, and care. It contrasted widely with an existing benevolence ethic that prevailed throughout the 18th, 19th, and early 20th centuries. According to Louise Knight (1997), this “duty of the strong for the weak” ethic governed relationships of unequal status such as between men and women, rich and poor, and so on. Perhaps surprisingly, this ethic of benevolence was “wholeheartedly embraced” by women of JA’s time. “[I]‌t permeated their lives, starting with their families. As daughters first, and later as wives and mothers, they relied on the kindness of men” (p. 111). In return, they were expected to be grateful and obedient (Knight, 1997, p. 111). Women of Addams’s time generally took this unequal relationship for granted. “The ethic of benevolence was regularly employed by those in power (business, slave owners, male citizens, husbands, and fathers, upper-​class women) to justify their right and responsibility to make decisions for others (employees, slaves, women citizens, wives, adult daughters, poor)” (Knight, 1997, p. 111). It was the moral basis for top-​down decision making.

Jane Addams and Public Administration    315 Aside from the ethic of benevolence, an ethic of individualism governed relationships between equals and economic relationships. The ethic of benevolence and the ethic of individualism combined to justify the political democracy of the time, which excluded women and prized economic relationships among men. It also helped to circumscribe the role of government. “The ethic of benevolence taught the (male) individual that his attempts to advance his own interests would naturally serve the common good and that there need not be a conflict between personal desire and social justice” (Knight, 1997, p. 112). Jane Addams’s care ethics challenged and dismantled this prevailing belief system. She also maintained that “the public has a duty toward the weak and defenseless members of the community” (Addams, 1899, p. 448). She constructs her duty of care differently, one with a basis of “emotional kindness” (Addams, 1902, p. 19) and with a demand “that good citizens pursue knowledge of others—​not just facts but a deeper understanding of others—​for the possibility of caring and acting in their behalf ” (Hamington, 2009, p. 60). According to Hamington (2001), Addams’s ethics questioned and defied traditional ideals of rugged individualism and self-​centered laissez faire capitalism (p. 110). Care ethics “acknowledges that traditional forms of morality, in particular principle-​ based and consequence-​based ethics, did not adequately address the richness of the human condition” (Hamington, 2009, p. 58). These approaches often exclude emotions, relationships, creativity, and reciprocity, focusing instead on immediate moral conflicts. Care ethics moves the moral spotlight from the “abstract individuals and their actions to concrete situated people with feelings, friends, and dreams—​ someone who can be cared about” (Hamington, 2001, p. 58). This sense of “care” incorporated an implicit equality that rests on sympathetic understanding. She argued that “more diverse experiences of others will give us greater information to feed our imaginations, thus creating the possibility for greater understanding and sympathy for them” (Hamington, 2009, p. 110). The municipal housekeeping component of the settlement model of public administration included Addams’s more equitable and sympathetic notion of care. It employed a feminine standpoint. Caring mothers are the bedrock of an effective, loving, and happy household. Mothers care for their children. They do this by keeping the home clean, and tending to the needs of the young and sick. Cities should care for their citizens in an analogous manner. The model contained an implicit call for equality beyond the traditional notion of benevolence, because it sought to expand the diversity of city leadership to include immigrants (Addams, 1906). The industrial citizenship component focused on changing the relationship between employer and employee,7 which had used the traditional benevolence model. It also examines the injustices, lack of caring, and consequences of the “industrial side.” Industry benefits as children lose their limbs in factories, unregulated workplaces produce food and clothing that can make consumers sick, and dangerous workplaces lead to accidents that send families into poverty. Consequences of these problems are interpreted through the

316   Patricia M. Shields lenses of traditional benevolence, where any decision of the strong protector automatically benefited the weak. Jane Addams argued and told stories that challenged long-​standing belief systems and crafted a different, more caring lens. This lens, the lens of industrial citizenship, also focused on problems well beyond the policy boundary of a city.

Workplace Safety We conscientiously ignore industry in relation to government and because we assume that its regulation is unnecessary, so we conclude that the protection of the young from premature participation in its mighty operations is not the concern of the Government. (Addams, 1906, p. 156–​157) Thrift is an ineffective insurance against emergencies . . .What happens when the power of self-​help is lost? (Lathrop, 1895 p. 143)

The quotations above speak to Addams’s concern with the widespread use of children in the workspace and for an expanded role of government in the care of children.8 They also examine the practice of blaming the individual for their “grief ” while not taking into account “industrial ailing,” which contributes to families in poverty. This poverty left them at the door of poorly equipped charity agencies because thrift was ineffective insurance against industrial emergencies. Industrial citizenship called for workplace regulation and a different model of charity. The workplace regulation the settlement women called for extended the model of a caring city to state and federal government. In Newer Ideals of Peace, Addams (1906) criticized practices that excluded women from contributing to city government. Government workplace regulations, on the other hand, was one of the first settings where women took leadership roles. For example, Florence Kelley’s 1893 “job as chief factory inspector of the state of Illinois gave her an unprecedented opportunity to expand governmental responsibility for social welfare. . . . Nowhere else in the Western world was a woman trusted to enforce the labor legislation of a city, let alone of a large industrial region the size of Illinois” (Sklar, 1995, p. 237). In many ways, Hull House Maps and Papers was a report on the status of these early efforts at regulation. Three chapters were devoted to findings of the new inspection system (Kelley, 1895; Kelley and Stevens, 1895; Eaton, 1895). These reports, which included substantial data, revealed industrial worksites responding to regulations in a limited fashion, but were still filled with wage-​earning children and poorly paid men and women, working from 5:00 a.m. until midnight9 (Eaton, 1895, p. 84). The Maps and Papers chapters demonstrated sympathy toward the workers and recognition of the importance of data in making sense of a situation. These chapters also represented an example of a report written by public administrators informed by an industrial citizenship perspective.

Jane Addams and Public Administration    317

Industrial Charity [O]‌nly families who apply for aid to the charitable agencies are those who have come to grief on the industrial side; it may be through sickness, through loss of work, or for other guiltless and inevitable reasons, but the fact remains that they are industrially ailing and must be bolsterer and helped into industrial health. (Addams, 2002 [1899], p. 63)

The perils of industrial life are filled with interconnections. The stress and dangers of the poorly regulated workplace contributes to physical and mental breakdown of individuals and their families. Charity organizations were charged with addressing these ills. Armed with the knowledge that hard work, temperate habits, and self-​reliance would solve poverty, family visitors from charity organizations brought these solutions to poverty-​stricken families throughout Chicago (Shields, 2017). In addition, large institutions existed to remedy (or warehouse) physical and mental illness among the industrial poor. Jane Addams had much to say about both systems and in the process revealed components of industrial citizenship. Addams often used story and paradox to challenge existing belief systems. Attitudes and societies change when people experience perplexity and begin to distrust rigid moral systems. In Democracy and Social Ethics, Addams uses the experiences of a somewhat forgotten group of women—​charity workers or family visitors—​and laid out the paradoxes of their experiences. They brought with them tools of self-​reliance, diligence, thrift, and hard work to teach the urban, industrialized poor how to change their circumstances and move out of poverty. These trusty tools, however, seemed out of place when they were sitting in the crowded tenement, during a recession, among miserable, sick, and ailing families. These women were caught between the certainty of the charity organization benevolence dogma and the desperate conditions of workers/​families trapped in an industrial system that treated them like disposable screws in a machine that often broke down. Addams developed this paradox or dilemma in order to nudge the reader toward becoming open to the need for a social ethic, one based on care and social justice that moved beyond individual responsibility and explored problems with an industrial system that needed reform. She did not set up a dichotomy, claiming that a social ethic should replace a personal ethic, rather that the two could co-​exist but should be sensitive to circumstances. Jean Elshtain (2002) described her pursuit of balance. Her approach called people to action (end child labor, safety regulations for industry) and to thoughtfully reflect on situations. Hindy Schachter (1997, 2002) points out that the harsh distinction between bureau men and settlement women is overdrawn. She notes that some bureau men were settlement residents and that they were involved in reform campaigns. Also, one of the key reforms advocated by the traditional PA reformers—​civil service reform or taking politics and inserting qualification into the hiring practices—​also had a larger equity objective (Shields, 2008). Overall, government jobs would be distributed more fairly (equitably) if competency standards were substituted for political connections.10 Jane

318   Patricia M. Shields Addams brought a well-​developed, innovative social ethics to the settlement view of public administration that clearly connected to industrial citizenship. Julia Lathrop wrote about and was heavily involved with Cook County charities. This is where the casualties of an ailing industrial system landed and where poor public administration could be harmful. In My Friend Julia Lathrop, Addams uses Lathrop’s words to shed light on the importance of a “caring” public administration. “The comfort, the recovery, the lives, of all these thousands of dependent people, hang upon the knowledge, the kindliness, the honesty, and good faith of those hired to care for them. How are these people hired,—​in the open labour market, for fitness, by examination? Not even an Altrurian11 would waste words on such a question” (emphasis added). Care is linked to honesty, kindliness, knowledge, good faith, and fitness for the job. Political patronage or the allocation of jobs based on loyalty to a candidate undermined the ability of the system to care or bring kindliness, knowledge, and health to broken people. “The charities of Cook County will never properly perform their duties until politics are divorced from them” (Addams, 1935, p. 52, quoting Lathrop, 1895, p. 161; emphasis added). Addams and Lathrop employ familiar public administration themes (separation of administration and politics) but also add new moral considerations to the stewardship role by emphasizing care and kindliness, two virtues associated with the feminine experience. Addams’s emphasis on care and kindliness is clearly missing from contemporary mental health services for the poor. In the 1960s congress passed the Community Mental Health Act, which moved most responsibility for the low-​income-​chronically mental-​ill away from residential facilities, common in Addams’s time, to community programs. Unfortunately, these programs were underfunded, and the chronically mentally ill often ended up homeless or in local jails, which were tasked with incarceration and prisoner punishment. Widespread homelessness and mass incarceration have replaced the asylums of the 1920s (Parsons, 2018; Erickson, 2021). Addams’s call for care and kindliness could reorient the approach to these chronic problems.

Labor Relations The lack of organization in trade tends to the industrial helplessness of the workers in that trade. (Addams, 1895 p. 186) The labor movement may be called a concerted effort among the workers in all trades to obtain a more equitable distribution of the product, and to secure a more orderly existence for the laborers. How may the settlement be of value to the effort? (Addams, 1895, p. 187) Injury toward one . . . becomes the concern of all.

(Addams, 1895, p. 183)

Jane Addams and Public Administration    319 By the early 1890s, when Hull House was beginning to make its mark, labor had successfully organized in sectors of the economy such as the railroads, mining, and the building trades. Labor also flexed its muscle through strikes, which sometimes resulted in violence and, as with the Pullman strike of 1894, resulted in federal intervention. Labor historian Asa Briggs (1966) characterized the period between 1880 and 1920 as a short period “packed with development” and filled with “huge changes in the scale, scope and impact of trade unions” (p. 42). It was also a time when states such as Illinois and Massachusetts “created primitive industrial safety inspection systems” (Asher & Dunn, 2014, p. 280). The sewing trades of the garment industry, which dominated the Halsted neighborhood, were unevenly organized (Addams, 1895, p. 185). The unionized “cutters” who cut the fabric had far superior working conditions than the nonunionized “sweaters” who took the cut fabric and stitched it together to become dresses, coats, and pants. The unorganized “sweaters” exhibited a kind of industrial helplessness that left the workers unhealthy and in dire poverty. A dramatic chapter in Hull House Maps and Papers by Florence Kelley (1895), “The Sweating-​System,” documents the cramped spaces, dim lighting, poor ventilation, and long, tedious hours of the sweaters (usually women and children). Labor organized to counter the early workplace abuses of business and to improve the lives of working people through higher wages, reasonable hours, and safe working conditions. At least in the beginning, labor unions were almost by definition organs of protest and change. Their goals often aligned with the vision of Hull House, and they joined together in many projects. Hull House, for example, provided meeting rooms where workers could organize. Neighborhood unionized workers also seemed to have adopted a broader social ethic, one that extended beyond the individual and family. Aside from negotiation and sometimes organizing strikes, members of labor unions understood that the system needed larger changes that required new laws. Labor, for example, fought along with Hull House residents and other activists for child labor laws. While the municipal household component of the settlement vision of public administration emphasized the city and their different, more caring model of civic governance, industrial citizenship articulated a different mindset, where “[i]‌njury toward one . . . becomes the concern of all” (Addams, 1895, p. 183). This represented a new kind of ethic—​a social ethic that not only looked beyond the individual, but also was imbued with participatory democratic processes (Hamington, 2023). This quotation from the “Industrial Amelioration” chapter of Democracy and Social Ethics captures the importance and challenges of relying on participatory democracy. While this was an uneasy journey often filled with a “sickening sense of compromise” of convictions and lack of clarity with regard to goals, it represents progress that is “sustained and upheld by the sentiments and aspirations of many others” and is comparatively greater because it is lateral (Addams, 1902, p. 152). The man who insists upon consent, who moves with the people, is bound to consult the “feasible right” as well as the absolute right. He is often obliged to attain

320   Patricia M. Shields only Mr. Lincoln’s “best possible” and then has the sickening sense of compromise with his best convictions. He has to move along with those whom he leads toward a goal that neither he nor they see very clearly till they come to it. He has to discover what people really want, and then “provide the channels in which the growing moral force of their lives shall flow.” What he does attain, however, is not the result of his individual striving, as a solitary mountain-​climber beyond that of the valley multitude but it is sustained and upheld by the sentiments and aspirations of many others. Progress has been slower perpendicularly, but incomparably greater because lateral. He has not taught his contemporaries to climb mountains, but he has persuaded the villagers to move up a few feet higher; added to his, he has made secure his progress. (Addams 1902, p. 151)

She had observed this vision and ability among union organizers and used it as a kind of model for industrial citizenship. She contrasts this ethic with the dominant individual and benevolent ethic of her time in a story of three individuals on a streetcar who observe a boy of eight jumping on to sell papers. The business man appreciates the boy’s initiative and buys a paper demonstrating an individual ethic. A “philanthropic” lady believes it is a “pity such a bright boy is not in school.” She vows to support schools that will offer such boys a “chance at manual training.” Next to her sits a “working man trained in trades-​union methods.” He sees a boy whose natural development would be arrested by the work. He has seen “many a man, entering the factory at eighteen or twenty, so worn out by premature work that he is laid on the shelf within ten to fifteen years.” He cannot help this particular boy. “His only possible chance is to agitate for child labor laws” (Addams, 1902, p. 169). This man, schooled in the participatory process of the trades-​union methods, saw a problem and had the vision to conceive a solution that reaches beyond the single boy, or a small set of boys who would attend a school. He also saw a role for government and public administration. Jane Addams clearly calls for public administration to include a social ethic within its stewardship role. Her vision would challenge contemporary public administrators to take on a greater advocacy role, one that nourishes the discourse of social democracy, works to promote equity through policies (and their implementation), and motivates people to work together and figure out how to move up the mountain. Jane Addams’s notion of labor relations extends beyond the unions and the behavior of workers to the employer and the nature of the employee/​employer relationship. Industrial citizenship extended to the behavior and belief systems of the businessmen who controlled commerce. In Democracy and Social Ethics, Addams explored social ethics by examining relationships such as that between a father and daughter who wants a life of service outside the family, a mistress and her live-​in household help, and an industrial leader and his employees. In these cases, she evoked sympathetic knowledge to examine the relationships and showed, even when there were the best of intentions, the notion of how benevolence commonly understood trapped one of the partners in the relationship without real voice or agency. Her chapter on industrial amelioration referenced the lengthy, bloody Pullman strike of 1894 and the actions of George Pullman

Jane Addams and Public Administration    321 toward his workers. George Pullman’s company made railroad cars and garnered much praise for constructing a model town (Pullman, Illinois) for his workers. Here he controlled and owned everything from the homes to the stores. He also demanded proper off-​duty behavior such as temperance. His model town seemed to work well until the recession of 1893, when demand for his railroad cars fell. In the face of falling income, he cut wages and laid off workers, without also lowering rents or prices at their stores. Workers went deeper and deeper in debt and eventually went on a strike. The workers were able to get others such as the railroad union to join them, which stopped rail traffic for an extended period. Pullman saw this as a big betrayal, dug in, and would not negotiate with his workers. These events illustrate the difficulty of managing an industry which has become organized into a vast social operation, not with the cooperation of the workman thus socialized, but solely by the dictation of the individual owning the capital. There is a sharp divergence between the social form and the individual aim, which becomes greater as the employees are highly socialized and dependent. . . .[Pullman] socialized not only the factory, but the form in which his workmen were living. He built, and in a great measure regulated, an entire town, without calling upon the workmen either for self-​expression or self-​government. He honestly believed that he knew better than they what was for their good, as he certainly knew better than they how to conduct his business. (Addams, 1902, p. 143)

The point here is that the individual ethic and the benevolence ethic no longer work for the industrial era or the industrial leader. They cannot go it alone and assume they know what is best for their employees. The partnership between business and government that kept in place power structures that resembled the feudal lord also needed to go. Government should work with both sides using democratic processes and take on the role of workplace regulator when needed. This ushered in a different role for PA and perhaps why Addams saw a “need of a new public conscience as to Public Administration” (Julia Lathrop in Addams, 1935, p. 147).

Implications for Contemporary Public Administration Contemporary public administration and public policy have much to learn from the settlement model of public administration that was never fully recognized and then lost to the field. George Fredrickson (1980, p. 37) is known for pointing out the limits of traditional public administration, “To say that a service may be well managed and that a service may be efficient still begs the question: Well managed for whom? Efficient

322   Patricia M. Shields for whom? Economical for whom?” He argued that social equity should be added to the pantheon of public administration guiding values. Subsequently, scholars of the field have explored the meaning and implications of Fredrickson’s challenge (Savara and Brunet, 2005; Riccucci, 2009; Blessett et al., 2019; Guy and McCandless, 2012; Bearfield, 2009). Clearly, the buried alternative/​settlement model and Jane Addams’s insights have much to add to this scholarly, policy, and practical initiative. Her feminist pragmatism provides ways to recognize and navigate rigid dualisms that can stifle constructive debate. It also brings an emphasis on sympathetic understanding and a strong egalitarian approach to problem solving—​one that actively seeks out and engages often overlooked voices. Her care ethics brings a sense of duty that implicitly incorporates equality. During a pandemic, a caring ethos would underscore the importance and duty toward others. That combined with a common-​sense reliance on science would support and underscore policies like vaccination, masking, and social distancing. In a time of vast income inequality, her notion of lateral progress has special significance. The soaring stock market tells us how the richest are doing. We should also pay attention and actively celebrate indicators of lateral progress such as decreases in the percent of the population who are food insecure or the percent who are not covered by health insurance. These questions are important for those who are stewards of a living democracy. Contemporary public administrators face a polarized environment where large segments of society are seemingly unable and unwilling to engage in civil discourse. Public servants are facing harassment and even death threats by hostile citizens (Marijnissen et al., 2020; Brennan Center, 2021). Jane Addams’s message of peace, empathy, and care and her broad faith in the human connections forged in a living democracy offers strategies, hope, and inspiration to public administrators trying to navigate these complicated times.

Notes 1. In My Friend, Jane Addams often quotes Julia Lathrop’s speeches and articles. These editorial decisions reflect a message from the thoughtful and deliberate Addams. She chose which segments of Lathrop’s work to cite and emphasize. Hence, although often Lathrop’s words, there is also intentionality on Addams’s part and a larger coherent message. 2. It should be noted that these successes were often short-​lived because courts overruled reforms that limited employer discretion. The Lochner v. New York case used business owners “liberty of contract” to overrule a law regulating bakers hours of work (Lapore, 2018, p. 378). 3. For example, see Schachter, 2011; McGuire, 2011; Burnier, 2021; Shields, 2017, 2006, 2022; Brom & Shields, 2006, Schachter 2017. 4. It should be noted that the industrial problems highlighted by Addams above can still be found throughout the world as firms moved factories to the developing world to exploit cheaper labor and fewer effective workplace regulations (Klein, 2009). In addition, aging

Jane Addams and Public Administration    323 infrastructure and bad policy decisions result in contaminated water systems like those found in Flint Michigan (Butler et al., 2016). 5. Hereafter, the terms alternative and settlement vision will be used interchangeably. 6. One needs to look no further than the stagnate US minimum wage ($7.25 since 2009) to see how industrial virtues may still have little to do with a family’s inability to break the chains of poverty. 7. We have much to learn from Addams’s insights on unions and employee/​employer relationships today. The industrial age has spawned a high-​tech era with firms like Amazon that are also known for low pay, poor benefits, intimidation, threats, and union busting (Streitfeld, 2021). 8. The inadequacy of the existing childcare system continues to plague the United States. The fragility of the care system during the COVID-​19 crisis also demonstrated the need for greater government involvement. 9. Books like Naomi Klein’s (2009) No Logo continue the tradition of reporting on labor abuses in the contemporary garment industry of developing nations. 10. It should be noted that the equity objectives would mostly apply to white men. 11. Altrurian refers to 1894 novel A Traveler From Altruria by William Dean Howells. Altruria is an egalitarian utopia. The author contrasts the selfish obsession with profit and money in the United States with the Utopian island of Altruria.

References Addams, J. (1893). The subjective necessity for social settlements. In H. Adams (Ed.), Philanthropy and Social Progress, Seven Essays by Miss Jane Addams, Robert A. Woods, Father J. O. S. Huntington, Professor Franklin H. Giddings, and Bernard Bosanquet. Delivered before the School of Applied Ethics at Plymouth, Mass., during the Session of 1892 (pp. 1–​26). Thomas Y. Crowell & Co. Addams, J. (1895). The settlement as a factor in the labor movement. In Residents of Hull House (Eds.). Hull-​House Maps and Papers: A Presentation of Nationalities and Wages in a Congested District of Chicago, together with comments and essays on problems growing out of the social conditions ((pp. 183–206)). Thomas Y. Crowell & Co. Addams, J. (2002 [1899]). The subtle problems of charity. In J. Elshtain (Ed.), The Jane Addams Reader (pp. 62–​75). Basic Books. Addams, J. (1902). Democracy and social ethics. Macmillan. Addams, J. (1905). Problems of municipal administration. American Journal of Sociology 10 (4), 425–​444. Addams, J. (1906). Newer ideals of peace. Macmillan Addams, J. (2004 [1935]). My friend, Julia Lathrop. University of Illinois Press. Asher, R., & Dunn, M. L. (2014). Organized labor and the origins of the Occupational Safety and Health Act. NEW SOLUTIONS: A Journal of Environmental and Occupational Health Policy 24 (3), 279–​301. Bearfield, D. A. (2009). Equity at the intersection: Public administration and the study of gender. Public Administration Review 69 (3), 383–​386. Blessett, B., Dodge, J., Edmond, B., Goerdel, H. T., Gooden, S. T., Headley, A. M., Riccucci, N. M., and Williams, B. N. (2019). Social equity in public administration: A call to action. Perspectives on Public Management and Governance 2 (4), 283–​299.

324   Patricia M. Shields Brennan Center for Justice. (2021). Election officials under attack. Brennan Center for Justice, NYU School of Law. https://​www.brenna​ncen​ter.org/​our-​work/​pol​icy-​soluti​ons/​elect​ion -​offici​als-​under-​att​ack. Briggs, A. (1966). Trade-​union history and labour history. Business History 8 (1), 39–​47. Brom, R., & Shields, P. (2006). Classical pragmatism, the American experiment and public administration. In Thomas Lynch & Peter Cruise (Eds.), Handbook of Organization Theory and Management: The Philosophical Approach. 2nd edition (pp. 301–​322). Taylor & Francis. Burnier, D. (2008a). Frances Perkins’ disappearance from American public administration: A genealogy of marginalization. Administrative Theory & Praxis 30 (4), 398–​423. Burnier, D. (2008b). Erased history: Frances Perkins and the emergence of care-​centered public administration. Administration & Society 40 (4), 403–​422. Burnier, D. (2021). Hiding in plain sight: recovering public administration’s lost legacy of social justice. Administrative Theory & Praxis, 1–​17. Butler, L. J., Scammell, M. K., & Benson, E. B. (2016). The Flint, Michigan, water crisis: A case study in regulatory failure and environmental injustice. Environmental Justice 9 (4), 93–​97. Campbell, D. J., & Campbell, K. M. (2010). Soldiers as police officers/​police officers as soldiers: Role evolution and revolution in the United States. Armed Forces & Society 36 (2), 327–​350. Dewey, J. (1896). The reflex arc concept in psychology. Psychological Review 3 (4), 357. Eaton, I. (1895). Receipts and expenditures of cloakmakers in Chicago. In Residents of Hull House (Eds.), Hull-​House Maps and Papers: A Presentation of Nationalities and Wages in a Congested District of Chicago, together with comments and essays on problems growing out of the social conditions (pp. 79–​90). Thomas Y. Crowell & Co. Elshtain, J. (2002). Jane Addams and the dream of American democracy: A life. Basic Books. Erickson, B. (2021). Deinstitutionalization through optimism: The community mental health act of 1963. American Journal of Psychiatry Residents’ Journal 16 (4), 5–​7. Fischer, M. (2009). The conceptual scaffolding of Newer Ideals of Peace. In M. Fischer, C. Nackenoff, & W. Chmielewski (Eds.), Jane Addams and the Practice of Democracy (pp. 165–​182). University of Illinois Press. Fischer, M. (2019). Jane Addams’s evolutionary theorizing: Constructing democracy and social ethics. University of Chicago Press. Flanagan, M. A. (1990). Gender and urban political reform: the city club and the woman's city club of Chicago in the progressive era. The American Historical Review 95 (4), 1032–​1050. Fredrickson, G. (1980). The new public administration. The University of Alabama Press. Gabriele, K. R. (2015). Lessons from a buried past: Settlement women and democratically anchored governance networks. Administration & Society 47 (4), 393–​415. Guy, M. E., & McCandless, S. A. (2012). Social equity: Its legacy, its promise. Public Administration Review 72 (s1), S5–​S13. Hamington, M. (2001). Jane Addams and a politics of embodied care. The Journal of Speculative Philosophy 15 (2), 105–​121. Hamington, M. (2009). The social philosophy of Jane Addams. University of Illinois Press. Hamington, M. (2023). Labor unions as a factor in a caring democracy. In P. M. Shields, J. Soeters, & M. Hamington (Eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Jane Addams. Oxford University Press. Haslanger, S. (2016). Epistemic housekeeping and the philosophical cannon: A reflection on Jane Addams’s Women and public housekeeping. In Schliesser (Ed.), Ten Neglected Philosophical Classics. Oxford University Press.

Jane Addams and Public Administration    325 Junior, D. P. S. (2021). Violence and moral exclusion: Legitimizing domestic military operations in Brazil. Armed Forces & Society. https://​doi.org/​10.1177/​00953​27X2​0988​106 Kelley, F., & Stevens, A. (1895). Wage-​earning children. In Residents of Hull House (Eds.), Hull-​ House Maps and Papers: A Presentation of Nationalities and Wages in a Congested District of Chicago, together with comments and essays on problems growing out of the social conditions (pp. 49–​78). Thomas Y. Crowell & Co. Kelley, F., (1895). The sweating system. In Residents of Hull House (Eds.), Hull-​House Maps and Papers: A Presentation of Nationalities and Wages in a Congested District of Chicago, together with comments and essays on problems growing out of the social conditions (pp. 27–​48). Thomas Y. Crowell & Co. Klein, N. (2009). No Logo. Picador. Knight, L.(1997). Biography’s window on social change: Benevolence and justice in Jane Addams’s “Modern Lear.” Journal of Women’s History 9 (1), 111–​138. Lathrop, J. (1895). The Cook county charities. In Residents of Hull House (Eds.), Hull-​House Maps and Papers: A Presentation of Nationalities and Wages in a Congested District of Chicago, together with comments and essays on problems growing out of the social conditions (pp. 143–​164). Thomas Y. Crowell & Co. Lapore, J. (2018). These truths: A history of the United States. W. W. Norton and Co. Marijnissen, D., Kolthoff, E., & Huberts, L. (2020). Coping with threats and harassment in politics. Public Integrity 22 (5), 485–​506. McGuire, J. T. (2011). Continuing an alternative view of public administration: Mary van Kleeck and industrial citizenship, 1918–​1927. Administration & Society 43 (1), 66–​86. McGuire, J. T. (2012). Gender and the personal shaping of public administration in the United States: Mary Anderson and the women’s bureau, 1920–​1930. Public Administration Review 72 (2), 265–​271. Parsons, A. E. (2018). From asylum to prison: Deinstitutionalization and the rise of mass incarceration after 1945. UNC Press Books. Peirce, C. S., (1877). The fixation of belief. Popular Science Monthly 12 (Nov), 1–​15. Riccucci, N. M. (2009). The pursuit of social equity in the federal government: A road less traveled? Public Administration Review 69 (3), 373–​382. Savara J. H., & Brunet, J. (2005). Social equity is a pillar of public administration. Journal of Public Affairs Education 11 (3), 253–​258. Schachter, H. L. (1997). Settlement women and bureau men: Did they share a usable past?. Public Administration Review 57 (1), 93–​95. Schachter, H. L. (2002). Women, progressive-​ era reform, and scientific management. Administration & Society,34(5), 563–​578. Schachter, H. L. (2011). The New York school of philanthropy, the bureau of municipal research, and the trail of the missing women: A public administration history detective story. Administration & Society 43 (1), 3–​21. Schachter, H. L. (2017). Women in public administration: Giving gender a place in education for leadership. Administration & society 49 (1), 143–​158. Seaholm, M. (1988). Earnest women: The white woman’s club movement in Progressive Era Texas, 1880–​1920 [Doctoral dissertation, Rice University]. Shields, P. (1998). Pragmatism as a philosophy of science: A tool for public administration. Research in Public Administration 4, 195–​225. Shields, P. M. (2003). The community of inquiry: Classical pragmatism and public administration. Administration & Society 35 (5), 510–​538.

326   Patricia M. Shields Shields, P. (2006). Democracy and the social feminist ethics of Jane Addams: A vision for public administration. Administrative Theory & Praxis 28 (3), 418–​443. Shields, P. M. (2008). Rediscovering the taproot: Is classical pragmatism the route to renew public administration?. Public Administration Review, 68(2), 205–​221. Shields, P. (2017). Jane Addams: Pioneer in American sociology, social work and public administration. In P. Shields (Ed.), Jane Addams: Progressive Pioneer of Peace, Philosophy, Sociology, Social Work and Public Administration (pp. 43–​67). Springer. Shields, P. (2022). The origins of the settlement model of public administration: Stories of women pioneers. In P. M. Shields and N. Elias (Eds.), Handbook on Gender and Public Administration (pp. 35–​52). Edward Elgar. Sklar, K. (1995). Florence Kelley and the nation’s work: The rise of women’s political culture, 1830–​ 1900. Yale University Press. Skocpol, T. (1992). Protecting soldiers and mothers: The political origins of social policy in the United States. Harvard University Press. Sterling, D. (1988). Black foremothers: Three lives. Feminist Press at CUNY. Stivers, C. (1997). Settlement women and bureau men: Rejoinder to Schachter. Public Administration Review 57 (4), 370–​371. Stivers, C. (2000). Bureau men, settlement women: Constructing public administration in the progressive era. University Press of Kansas. Streitfeld, D. (2021). How Amazon crushes unions. The New York Times (March 16). https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/16/technology/amazon-unions-virginia.html

Chapter 17

Jane Addams on Pl ay, E duc ation, an d Et h i c a l Teach i ng Nuria Sara Miras Boronat

Introduction: Play and Childhood in Context Traditionally, play has been considered as a marginal, non-​productive activity, and therefore philosophy and the social sciences have paid less attention to it. It was not until the dawn of the 20th century that educators, mathematicians, economists, culture historians, social scientists, and philosophers started to understand the centrality of play for human life.1 Since then, a ludic turn has been taking place, and the research on play is growing exponentially (Huizinga, 1955; Sutton-​Smith, 2001)2. However, the problem with play is that it seems impossible to find a single definition that can cover all the phenomena we identify with play and games. A good illustration of this is the iconic painting “Children’s Games” (1560) by Pieter Bruegel the Elder, in which we can appreciate the immense variety of activities that we identify as playing games (figure 17.1)3. To explain it simply, while it is in fact very complex, “Play has temporal diversity as well as spatial diversity” (Sutton-​Smith, 2001, p. 6). An additional problem is the identification of all the dimensions and disciplines that are related to these phenomena (Salen & Zimmermann, 2004). Indeed, play phenomena imply pleasure, spontaneity, and chance, but also rule-​following, competing, and fighting.4 Play remains an elusive concept for philosophy, like power, love, and language.5 However, that a concept is elusive does not mean that it cannot be central to human existence. Perhaps its elusiveness is proportional to its centrality. According to the main accounts on the history of play, the interest in play runs parallel to the emergence and consolidation of the social sciences. However, at the end of

328    Nuria Sara Miras Boronat

Figure 17.1.  “Children’s Games” (1560), Pieter Bruegel the Elder, currently exhibited at the Kunsthistorisches Museum of Vienna. Image courtesy of the Kunsthistorisches Museum Wien, Gemäldegalerie.

the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century, different traditions of play were in the process of formation, and my hypothesis, which is shared by many others, is that it was this that resulted in the divergent and contradictory concepts of play and games that we currently have. One of the most prominent play scholars of the contemporary era, Brian Sutton-​Smith (1924–​2015), proposed a system for organizing definitions of play into play rhetorics in which rhetoric is used as “being a persuasive discourse, or an implicit narrative, wittingly or unwittingly adopted by members of a particular affiliation to persuade others of the veracity and worthwhileness of their beliefs” (Sutton-​Smith, 2001, p. 8). Each rhetoric underlines or gives priority to a limited set of characteristics of play. Some of them emphasize the positive aspects of ludic activities; others, on the contrary, are more critical and perceive the ludic impulse as dangerous, or tend to see play as a marginal phenomenon. Following Sutton-​Smith, there are seven main rhetorics, which are presented in table 17.1 through some examples and authors that contributed to the development or the understanding of these rhetorics: In Sutton-​Smith’s view, the rhetorics are also related to some sort of zeitgeist, “The rhetoric of progress, the rhetoric of the self and the rhetoric of the imaginary constitute the modern set of rhetorics, with a history largely elaborated ideologically only in the past two hundred years” (2001, p. 11). It is quite surprising that the work of the

Table. 17.1. The seven rhetorics of play, applied to a given range of ludic phenomena as they have been presented in the main play literature of each rhetoric6 Rhetoric

Application

Definitions and Examples

FATE

Gambling, Games of chance

Human lives as controlled by destiny, gods, atoms, neurons, or luck, but very little by ourselves. The Play of the Gods (Indian cosmology) Universe at Play (Jacques Monod, 1970; Modern Physics) Stock market Roger Caillois (1994)

POWER

Sports and Contests

Play is used to represent conflict and to fortify the status of those who control the play. Johan Huizinga (contest and festival forms of play are a form of civilization) Game Theory Eric Berne (1964)

IDENTITY

Rituals, Traditions, Celebrations

Play and traditions as means of confirming and maintaining communal identities Cultural Studies and Diagnostic Folklore Johan Huizinga, (1955) Victor Turner (1969)

FRIVOLOUS

Idle, Foolish

Play as frivolous and unproductive, devaluation of play Work ethics and Protestantism (Max Weber, 1930)

PROGRESS

Children’s and Animal’s play

Play as fundamental for the development of adaptative skills Rhetorics of Animal Progress Children’s Play as Learning (Bronislaw Malinowski, 1944; Karl Groos, 1922; Jean Piaget, 1951; Lev Vygotsky, 1967) I add here: Mead (1967), Dewey (1966), Addams (1906)

SELF

Solitary or High-​Risk Activities

Focus on the desirable experiences of the players (fun, relaxation, aesthetic experiences) escaping from routine and obligation Jean Baudrillard (1970), Roland Barthes (1972) Psychology of the Individual Subjectivity (Hans-​Georg Gadamer, 1999; Edmund Husserl, 1980 and Martin Heidegger, 1961) Ecstatic Performance

IMAGINARY

Playful Improvisation Originality Autonomy

Playfulness linked to imagination, transformation, and fiction Romantic Imagination (Friedrich Schiller) Emergence of Childhood in the 20th Century (Franz Boas, 1966) Literature as Play (Gregory Bateson, 1972) Play of Signifiers (Jacques Derrida, 1970) Rhetoric of Ludicism, Child’s Phantoms

330    Nuria Sara Miras Boronat pragmatist social reformers is barely mentioned (only John Dewey’s Democracy and Education is found in the reference list), so one would add quite spontaneously Dewey, Mead, and Addams to the progress rhetoric. Indeed, their thoughts on children’s psychological development fit perfectly in the set of contemporary approaches that follow the “earlier, evolution-​based, biological theories of the function of play, most psychological play scholarship . . . focused on the developmental stages children go through in their play” (Sutton Smith, 2001, p. 35). However, as one becomes increasingly acquainted with Jane Addams’s works, it becomes clearer that already in her first notes on play she had concentrated on phenomena and literature that would fit better into other rhetorics, such as play as identity or play as imaginary. The first section of this chapter is devoted to the play concepts and traditions with which Jane Addams might have been acquainted as she opened Hull House together with Ellen Gates Starr in 1890.7 This is very important, because one of the first public actions of Hull House was the opening of a playground in 1894. The second section of the chapter explores the inner connection of play, the arts, and recreation as kinds of human activity as opposed and complementary to work. Pragmatist accounts usually focus on Mead’s distinction between pure play and organized games in Mind, Self and Society from the Standpoint of a Social Behaviorist (1967) as phases of the child’s development toward the world of adults. From the perspective of developmental psychology, play is the “child’s work,” but it remains instrumental to the logic of social productivity. The question is whether children’s play and adult’s recreation can have value in themselves, and the thesis defended here is that precisely Addams can offer an account of play as autotelic8 activity because of her conceptual affinities to European romantic traditions of play. These traditions link play and recreation to imagination and creativity, and these are as necessary as work and seriousness for a well-​balanced social experience. In the final section, imagination and creativity are discussed in the context of what Addams called “ethical teaching” in Democracy and Social Ethics (1902) and its possible utility for contemporary modalities of education, in particular, service-​learning.

The Social Value of Children’s Play and Its Relation to Democracy Jane Addams’s works and legacy have been recovered from oblivion thanks to the alternative genealogies constructed by feminist pragmatists, in particular the seminal books of Mary Jo Deegan (1990, 1999) and Charlene Haddock Seigfreid (1996). In her book George Herbert Mead: Play, School and Society (1990), Deegan reconstructed the context in which classical pragmatists and progressive leaders like Mead, Dewey, Mary McDowell,9 and Addams addressed children’s play. As Deegan sees it, the concept of play in Mead’s philosophy and social psychology has been barely discussed in the literature on Mead, despite having such a central role in the reciprocal constitution of the

Jane Addams on Play, Education, and Ethical Teaching    331 self and what he called the generalized other.10 But Deegan makes another intriguing asseveration concerning Addams and her being the actual promoter of “the scholarly study of play and the professionalization of workers trained to play” (1999, p. xciii). In this section Addams’s contributions to the study of children’s play are explored, and it is defended that in doing that, she detaches herself quite genuinely from a stream of thought that sees play only as a preparation for adult life. For this the focus is put on her literary production prior to WWI, the years in which Jane Addams acquired her maturity as a philosopher and social reformer.11 Addams wrote an entire book on play and education entitled The Spirit of the Youth and the City Streets (1909), but scattered notes on children’s play are already found in her first authored book Democracy and Social Ethics (1902/​2002a). We can therefore deduce that Addams was concerned with the situation of children since the foundation of Hull House. Addams wrote: “The child who is prematurely put to work is constantly oppressed by this never ending question of the means of subsistence, and even little children are sometimes almost crushed with the cares of life through their affectionate sympathy” (1902/​2002a, p. 23). The sensitivity of Hull House residents toward social vulnerability had a direct impact on the life of the neighborhood. One of their first concerns was to protect children against the harms of rapid industrialization, especially child labor. Thanks to the social survey conducted by the residents of Hull House, Florence Kelley and Alzina Stevens could publish the short report “Wage-​Earning Children” in the collected essays known as The Hull-​House Maps and Papers in 1895. Despite the strict regulations of Illinois and other federal states, the census of 1880 gave a total number of 1,118,258 children under fifteen employed in factories. The 19th Ward of Chicago, according to the authors, was relevant to the study of child labor because there were boys and girls engaged in all lines of industrial activity. They were, as the authors verified, “ill-​fed, ill-​housed, ill-​clothed, illiterate, and wholly untrained and unfitted for any occupation. The only useful thing they learn at their work in common with the children who learn in school is the rapid calculation of small sums in making change; and this does not go far enough to be of any practical value” (V.V.A.A., 1895/​2013, p. 55). The recommendation of the authors is clear: attendance to school and effective care are the best remedies against the atrophy of skills and severe health issues that come from hazardous forms of work. The conclusion of the report may sound remote for us, citizens of the Western welfare societies; however, if we think globally and look at the current situation of children in the world, the numbers are still terrifying. The data collected by UNICEF report that 1 in 10 children around the globe—​that makes 152 million—​are subject to child labor. Migrant children and refugees are the most vulnerable since they are most at risk of “being forced into work and even trafficked, especially if they are migrating alone or taking irregular routes with their families.”12 A lot must be done to ensure that international regulations concerning children’s rights are achieved in this century. We should keep in mind what has been approved by the Convention of the Rights of the Child in 1989 about the conditions in which every single child should live, “[ . . . ] the child, for the full and harmonious development of his or her personality, should grow up in a family

332    Nuria Sara Miras Boronat environment, in an atmosphere of happiness, love and understanding.” Article 31 of the resolution is very specific in the connection of children’s rights with play and leisure: 1. States Parties recognize the right of the child to rest and leisure, to engage in play and recreational activities appropriate to the age of the child and to participate freely in cultural life and the arts. 2. States Parties shall respect and promote the right of the child to participate fully in cultural and artistic life and shall encourage the provision of appropriate and equal opportunities for cultural, artistic, recreational and leisure activity.13 Addams was part of an international movement that aimed to ensure the rights of children, that is, that children be recognized as moral subjects. We forget that the perception of childhood as a good to be preserved is quite new in history: only in 1924 did the League of Nations make the first, still vague, promises to protect young people. For James Marten, the declaration reflected the manifold efforts of different countries to improve the lives of children. This sentiment was echoed by Florence Kelley’s assertion that young people “[had] a right to childhood” (Marten, 2018, pp. 77–​78). In addition to the municipal regulations against child labor, Jane Addams and the residents of Hull House were convinced that the joys of childhood deserved a central space in the organization of modern cities. Hull House inaugurated the first open playground in Chicago in 1894 with huge success, and in a few years the city had the most ambitious program of playground construction (McArthur, 1975, p. 377). The Playground Association of America was founded in 1906, and Hull House hosted the first national convention in 1907. As Benjamin McArthur puts it, the different play traditions and educational theories on the eve of the 20th century were present in the conference: Prominent among them was that of Friedrich Froebel who concerned himself particularly with children between the ages of three and six. At this age, “play is the purest, most spiritual activity of man.” [ . . . ] G. Stanley Hall proposed another influential theory. He held that games are remnants of earlier activities of the race. What may now be just a simple footrace heartens back to times when man had to run down his prey. Philosopher of the play movement, Luther Gulick, asserted that the individual reveals himself completely when at play. And, conversely, play has a greater shaping power on the character and nature of man than any other activity. (McArthur, 1975, p. 378)

In his writings published posthumously as A Philosophy of Play (1920), Gulick stated that having studied play and knowing most literature on play written in English, French, and German, he concluded that play “affords the best and most profitable way of studying humankind itself, both individuals and races. Play consists of that which people do when they have food, shelter, and clothing, are rested and free from worry [ . . . ] Then man is at his best” (Gulick, 1920/​2011, p. xii).

Jane Addams on Play, Education, and Ethical Teaching    333 Gulick’s plea for free play spaces for children in cities emphasized the relationship between play and democracy and postulated that the “playground is our great ethical laboratory” (Gulick, 1920/​2011, p. 249). Addams had used the same line of argumentation in Newer Ideals of Peace (1906), “Only of recent years has an effort been made by the city authorities, by the municipality itself, to conserve the play instinct and to utilize it, if not for the correction of industry, at least for the nurture of citizenship” (1906/​2008, p. 98). Only if the city recognizes play as legitimate, continues Addams, and “provides playgrounds and athletic fields, is the development of that self-​government and self-​ discipline [ . . . ] which forms the most natural basis for democratic political life later [accomplished]” (Addams, 1906/​2008, p. 99). Bringing this with its full consequences to our ordinary life would mean organizing the city in a way that is radically different. This would imply overcoming our adult-​centric comprehension of urban interactions to try to figure out the distribution of spaces and interactions from the child’s perspective (as represented in figure 17.2).

Figure 17.2.  Sculpture and children in fountains, Jane Addams Houses, a housing project in Chicago named after her. Photography by Edgar Miller, Available at the Library of Congress, Peter Sekaer photograph collection. Image courtesy of the Library of Congress.

334    Nuria Sara Miras Boronat

Play, Recreation, and Arts as Fundamental Elements of the Pragmatist Social Philosophy of Jane Addams The book in which Addams addresses the play phenomena in their richest plurality is The Spirit of the Youth and the City Streets (1909). When Luther Gulick received his copy, he sent a letter to her dated December 10, 1909, with these lines: “I have read your book ‘The Spirit of Youth and the City Streets’ with wonder that a person as busy as you should be able to do as finished a piece of literary work as this: it is so beautiful and touching, so apparently spontaneous in form that its appearance is unlabored. You have interpreted most profoundly what the rest of us are groping for dimly.”14 So, if we are to follow Gulick’s appreciation, Addams’s book is her most mature and exhaustive approximation to play. It culminates Addams’s thought paths already present in her previous written works and in her public discourses. Addams’s intention in the writing of the book is evident in the first pages when she denounces how industrialization has destroyed one of the main sources of communal life, play and recreation, whose importance was correctly assessed in earlier ages. The classical city promoted play with careful solicitude, building the theater and stadium as it built the market place and the temple. The Greeks held their games so integral a part of religion and patriotism that they came to expect from their poets the highest utterances at the very moments when the sense of pleasure released the national life. In the medieval city the knights held their tourneys, the guilds their pageants, the people their dances, and the church made festival for its most cherished saints with gay street processions, and presented a drama in which no less a theme than the history of creation became a matter of thrilling interest. Only in the modern city have men concluded that it is no longer necessary for the municipality to provide for the insatiable desire of play. (Addams, 1909, p. 9)15

The epochal disappearance of play due to modernity has generated a cultural void that has to be filled by something that is not always better than what was there before. For Addams, the increasing juvenile delinquency was directly related to the effects of industrialism and the lack of emotional incentive that young people can expect from industrial work. Again, Addams emphasizes that factory monotony produces a sort of “moral fatigue” which leads to the premature assumption of responsibility by factory girls and boys (1909, p. 59). In Addams’s words, as a result of a “stupid experiment of organizing work and failing to organize play,” people have become attracted to forms of evasion and recreation that do not necessarily nurture the democratic spirit—​for example, evasive

Jane Addams on Play, Education, and Ethical Teaching    335 and risky habits such as drug addiction, vandalism, or hanging out with bad influences, which is more dangerous for girls that “go wrong” and do not have other material or spiritual resources.16 If we leave the satisfaction of these natural impulses to industry and do not offer any constructive or healthy alternatives, people will take what industry provides. And my suspicion is that if leisure is organized by the industrial capitalist corporations, the leisure will only satisfy our elemental needs for two reasons. First, to take advantage of those activities that are happening out of the production chain. Nothing new or transgressive is being stated here when we point out that if something can be monetized by capitalism, it will be monetized. Second, leisure under capitalistic conditions will be offered and promoted in such a way that the worker must return to the production chain so that he or she will never have the chance to avoid the “burden of work,” and working is the only means to granting her or his subsistence, including the few hours she or he has for enjoying rest and leisure activities. This may not sound that elaborated in Addams’s book, but Addams identified some current trends of capitalistic forms of consumption that had their origin at the beginning of the 20th century, although some of her remarks might sound prudish to our postmodern ears. In the book, Addams uses indistinctively “play instinct” and “play desire” to explain the strong drive of young people and adults to do recreation activities, their “desire of adventures,” sports, street festivals, and theatre, what she beautifully calls a “veritable house of dreams.” Cheap theatre may constitute “the only possible road to the reals of mystery and romance” for those who spend most of their time in crowded factories (Addams, 1909, p. 41). This is supported by Addams’s refusal to reduce human nature to only one type of fundamental motivation. At some point, she recalls a kind of historic division of man’s motive of power, for we are told that all the activities [ . . . ] may be traced to the impulsion of two elemental appetites. The first drove him to the search for food, the hunt developing into war with neighboring tribes and finally broadening into barter and modern commerce; the second urged him to secure and protect a mate, developing into domestic life, widening into the building of homes and cities, into the cultivation of the arts and a care for beauty. (Addams, 1909, p. 30)

This passage is taken here as relevant for a qualitative step forward in the way Addams addresses the play instinct at the basis of a wider set of human activities beyond children’s games. Indeed, among the few references that can be found in Newer Ideals of Peace is Karl Groos’s essay “The Play of Man” (1899). Karl Groos (1861–​1941) was a philosopher and a psychologist devoted to the study of children’s growth. In his essays he posed a naturalist approach to children’s play as “children’s work.” Groos’s intention was to overcome the common opinion that children’s play has no value since it does not produce anything. Indeed, play accomplishes a biological function: thanks to

336    Nuria Sara Miras Boronat our socialized forms of play, we acquire the necessary motor and mental skills we need to become functional adults. In this sense, human baby animals are not different from other baby animals of other species: all animal species exhibit more or less elaborated forms of play.17 Besides play as “training for life” (Einübung), Groos identifies two other functions of play for human existence: Erholung (rest) and Ergänzung (aesthetic supplement). These three existential functions together cover the widest range of ludic phenomena from childhood to adulthood that a human person needs to live a full life in accordance with her or his nature: play, sports, rest, recreation, leisure, and so on. In a posterior talk called “Play as catharsis” (1910), Groos reminds us of the original sense of the catharsis in ancient Greek tragedies as purification or evasion. Groos also adds flirting, having sex, dancing, and other ways we can find to obtain some relief from the pressures of modern life. Groos praises the function of play as an aesthetic supplement in adult life because it allows us to transcend the world of objects and bodies and enter the realm of beauty. In the literature he has been aligned to the strictly biological accounts of play, but this might not be incompatible with the incorporation of the more spiritual dimensions of play as art, which has a fundamental meaning in our evolution as humans. I think it is no accident that Groos referred in the same text to Friedrich Schiller’s Letters Upon the Aesthetic Education of Mankind (1795) and its most famous quote: “For, to speak out once for all, man only plays when in the full meaning of the word he is a man, and he is only completely a man when he plays.”18 Groos and Schiller see our humanity as twofold, between the material and the ideal, and it is our play instinct that gives us access to the ideal sphere, for entering in this makes us part of a community (Groos, 1922, pp. 20–​21). Returning to Addams, she was acquainted not only with Groos’s essays but also with Schiller’s plays and writings. Hull House had several clubs and reading groups that were hugely popular, among them the Hull House Theater in which plays by Schiller, Shakespeare, and Molière were often read and represented (Addams, 1909, p. 47). Thus, her insight into play and its centrality to human life comes firstly from experience, and secondly from her readings and cooperation with other theorists and practitioners, as we have seen: John Dewey and George Herbert Mead, being the most accountable ones, but also Hans Luther Gulick, Friedrich Schiller, and Karl Groos. The recovery of the German tradition of play helps us to see the deep roots of culture and society in the play instinct. Addams was convinced that recreation and play can “afford the best soil for establishing genuine and democratic relation” because of their “emotional and dynamic power” (2008, p. 100). She intended to use this “great social stimulus” as she had seen that children do, since play helps them “more readily [to] overcome differences of language, tradition, and religion than adults” (Addams, 1906/​2008, p. 100). As we see, in these lines, the play spirit is necessary not only to grant individual self-​development, but also to foster a sense of community, which is a fundamental ground for a social ethics. In the next section, we explore some implications of these thoughts for college education.

Jane Addams on Play, Education, and Ethical Teaching    337

Democracy at Play: Ethical Teaching and Social Experimentation The rhetorics of play as identity is not that interested in giving an ultimate definition of play but rather in emphasizing that some forms of play, such as carnivals, festivals, and folk parties, among other activities, form bonds between people and reinforce the communal ties (Sutton-​Smith, 2001, p. 91). Addams is representative of this rhetoric in at least two moments. First, she paid special attention to socialized forms of play in The Spirit of the Youth and the City Streets, and she also did much to value folk traditions and ancestral heritages in one of her last books, The Long Road of Woman’s Memory (1916/​ 2002b). Second, she used art to create a sense of communality where social interaction is damaged and ineffective. A very successful action after the opening of Hull House was the art exhibition organized by Ellen Gates Starr in 1891 that had thousands of visitors. Addams said that she endorses a “recent definition of Art” (the original source is never quoted) according to which Art is “that which causes the spectator to lose his sense of isolation” (Addams, 1902/​2002a, p. 29). This is what popular arts offer to the public, and for this reason the arts had an overriding consideration at Hull House. In Second Twenty Years at Hull House (1930), she summarized it as follows: “The arts have, I think, always been embodied in the ultimate aims of Hull-​House” (Addams, 1960, p. 186). In Democracy and Social Ethics, Addams claims that democracy requires the “practice of a democratic experience and it implies a diversified human experience and resultant sympathy” (1902/​2002a, p. 7). It is evident that the arts and artistic expression are crucial for fostering a diversified and enriched social experience. Most of our problems are due, continues Addams, to a lack of imagination, which “prevents the realization of the experience of other people” (1902/​2002a, p. 9). Addams compares social consciousness with the curiosity of children, and she puts this principle in practice in the social experimentalism that was embodied by Hull House. She always kept this in mind: that the only thing social settlement should dread is losing its flexibility, “its power of quick adaptation, its readiness to change its methods as its environment may demand. It must be open to conviction and must have a deep and abiding sense of tolerance. It must be hospitable and ready for experiment” (Addams, 1910/​1998, p. 118). This meant finding forms of social practice that were not paternalistic and cooperative but rather involving the neighborhood in the process of producing social innovation. For instance, Nel Noddings praised Jane Addams’s model for multicultural education because she conceived this as dual. On the one hand, there was a process of adaptation, but not of assimilation to the new culture. On the other hand, she “encouraged immigrants to preserve and demonstrate the skills acquired in their homelands” (2018, p. 209). A very important action was the inauguration of the Hull House Labor Museum, in which craftwork and industrial techniques of different cultures were exhibited and honored (Branson & Robbins, 2017, p. 245). The success of the museum is a good example of the

338    Nuria Sara Miras Boronat many strategies devised by Hull House residents, which also led to the opening of new specializations within the “Hull-​House of sociology” (Deegan, 2017, p. 53).19 Social settlements and social institutions have social obligations. For this we may recover one of Jane Addams’s remarks that might seem marginal, but it is indeed of great importance for rethinking our college education. In the chapter “Filial relations,” Addams criticizes the individualistic orientation of our educational methods: The colleges have long been full of the best ethical teaching, insisting that the good of the whole must ultimately be the measure of effort, and that the individual can only secure his own rights as he labors to secure those of others. But while the teaching has included an ever-​broadening range of obligation and has insisted upon the recognition of the claims of human brotherhood, the training has been singularly individualistic; it has fostered ambitions for personal distinction and has trained the faculties almost exclusively in the direction of intellectual accumulation. (Addams, 1902/​2002a, pp. 41–​42)

It is obvious that Addams is not speaking here solely about the teaching of ethics as an academic discipline: she is pointing out the social function of universities.20 A promising way to incorporate this in the curricula would be to promote service-​learning in university degrees. Service-​learning is still a very young discipline, but it connects with the social experimentalism of Jane Addams and the Hull House residents in many ways. First, the learning process appeals to the student’s experience and puts the contents she or he has acquired in the social environment. Second, it favors the integral development of the student’s personality, attending to all the dimensions that are involved in the learning processes: the cognitive, the emotional, and the social. Third, it boosts the cooperation of the agents and institutions involved: the students, the teachers, the university, and the social environment, seen as a complex set of social interactions.21 And fourth, it empowers all the subjects and groups involved, since service-​learning is supported by the conviction that each of us can be a constructive force for social change. All subjects taught at the universities can design service-​learning activities that fit in the curriculum. For instance, students of the humanities can use their skills and knowledge to help the neighbors of a community to collect and share information of their diverse cultural heritages. Biology students can organize small workshops in schools about how to reuse or recycle domestic materials. In the process, they meet several times with members of the community to define specific needs and goals. And both sides acquire important knowledge of themselves as social agents in the community. Branson and Robbins are right in addressing the difficulties that university training programs face to implement service-​learning initiatives, the most contentious difficulty being the institutional reward systems, something that affects most public humanities scholars (2017, p. 249). In the next decades, higher-​educational institutions will be confronted with a formidable contradiction. On one hand, the quality policies and public discourse of governmental agencies are increasingly demanding that institutional research is measured beyond quantitative standards, by its social impact.

Jane Addams on Play, Education, and Ethical Teaching    339 Service-​learning is precisely the pedagogical approach that would grant that we fulfill our social duties as a privileged class. On the other hand, educational institutions are placed in a never-​ending competition for resources, visibility, and higher positions in all sorts of international rankings whose quality indicators seem be related only to quotation indexes and cooptation of external corporate funding (Berg & Seeber, 2017; Giroux, 2014). In our everyday life as citizens and educators, we have experienced how the rush and the imperative of producing is leaving less and less room for thinking, living, and caring. Branson and Robbins tell us about the benefits of including service-​learning in the curricula, particularly for liberal arts and humanities, among other reasons, for regaining the credibility of the social relevance of our disciplines, reinvigorating the field and formulating “meaningful, transformative, and imaginative answers to community engagement’s most significant challenges” (2017, p. 252). This is “the vital mission of the humanities and a key function of the university, across all its fields of action and inquiry” as the social reformers John Dewey and Jane Addams envisioned more than a century ago (Branson & Robbins, 2017, p. 252). To sum up, in this chapter we have followed the pragmatist social philosophy of Jane Addams in the reassessment of human playfulness in its multiple manifestations: from children’s games to leisure and socialized art forms. A social organization that attains the centrality of human playfulness would also give it a proper space in the modern city and a proper time in the structuring of social experience. Time for play, recreation, leisure, and rest should be preserved from the demands of productivity and work. Finally, playfulness as social experimentation can be retained and extended to meaningful service-​learning to advance in what Addams called “lateral progress,” which Hamington has identified as the key concept of her “radical meliorism”: “Progress,” writes Addams in A Modern Lear, “has been slower perpendicularly, but incomparably greater because lateral” (Hamington, 2019). After the global crisis we have experienced in 2020 and 2021, Addams’s legacy retains all its appeal. Social experimentalism is called into action to fight old and new social sufferings caused by the inflexible dynamics of capitalism. The first decades of the 21st century have shown how the dismantling of the welfare state has made social inequalities deeper. The global challenges speak of a world divided by sexism, racism, classism, and many other -​isms, and threatened by climate crises, terrorism, illnesses, and wars. Now and then the fostering of a democratic spirit and lateral progress through the bonds created by the play instinct and the political imagination might be our last hope.

Notes 1. Some of the most influential works on play and games were produced in the period 1930–​ 1960: George Herbert Mead’s Mind, Self, and Society (1934), Johan Huiginga’s Homo Ludens (1938), John von Neumann’s and Oskar Morgenstern’s Theory of Games and Economic Behaviour (1944), Ludwig Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Investigations (1953), among others.

340    Nuria Sara Miras Boronat 2. A good example of this is the series of publications on the philosophy of play that Wendy Russell, Emily Ryall, and Malcolm McLean inaugurated almost a decade ago (see the volumes published in 2013, 2016, 2018, and 2021). I have myself attempted several times to make an exhaustive presentation of the main theoretical debates concerning the definition of play; see, for instance, Miras Boronat (2016). 3. This difficulty is also related to the ways and words used to refer to play and games in the different world languages as it was assessed by Huizinga (1955). 4. See Huizinga (1955), Caillois (1994), and Salen & Zimmermann (2004). 5. Note that in his philosophical anthropology, Eugen Fink (1995) identified five fundamental elements of human existence that coincide almost entirely with the abovementioned elusive concepts: death, work, power, love, and play. 6. Original sources referred to in the third column are provided in the references list. The examples given here are only a very reduced sample of the huge amount of literature analyzed by Sutton-​Smith for each rhetoric. At the end of the book, Sutton-​Smith reconstructed the context or production for each rhetoric, identifying a history, function, form, players, main discipline, and the iconic play scholars (see whole table in Sutton-​ Smith, 2001, p. 215). My approach does not coincide totally with his solution, but it is based on his main theoretical assumptions. I endorse also Randolph Feezell’s “pluralist concept of play” (2013). In it, the multiple approaches to play are involved in the varieties of literal and figurative usages of it. 7. I use the expression “play traditions” to refer to the historical lineages that can be traced within each play rhetoric. 8. “Autotelic” is a concept used within the play scholarship to refer to the activities that have their end in themselves. The term serves to oppose play to other activities such as work, which is usually done not for its own sake but for a reward that comes after the finalization of the activity. We work for the money or for professional promotion. Children’s play is the paradigmatic case of an autotelic activity: children play just for the pleasure of playing: they do not need further justification. 9. Mary Mc Dowell (1854–​1936) published Recreation as a Fundamental Element of a Democracy in 1913. 10. This process is described in the section “Play, The Game, and The Generalized Other” in which Mead relates children’s games with the need to “hav[e]‌an attitude of all others involved in that game.” In this, the organized game reproduces the organized community, or a social group “which gives the individual his unity of self [that] may be called ‘the generalized other’. The attitude of the generalized other is the attitude of the whole community.” (Mead, 1967, p. 154). Deegan correctly identifies the gendered bias in this theoretical neglect: the “reason scholars failed to adequately assess the rôle of play in Mead’s writings is the gendered definition of play as women’s work in sociology” (1999, p. lii). See also García Dauder (2010). 11. There is no doubt that Jane Addams became at some point familiar with other European play traditions such as the advances made by Friedrich Froebl (1782–​ 1852) in the Kindergarten philosophy, the philosophy of education of Johan Henrich Pestalozzi (1746–​ 1827) or later, the pedagogic revolution due to Maria Montessori (1870–​1952). This reconstruction in this chapter is restricted to the German tradition inaugurated by Schiller and Groos for the following reasons: (a) they seem to be the strongest influence at the time in which Addams formed her own thoughts on play and education apart from Dewey and Mead; (b) the connection to the German romanticism serves to understand the extension

Jane Addams on Play, Education, and Ethical Teaching    341 of the play instinct to leisure, rest, recreation, and the arts, and Addams refers in Newer Ideals of Peace (1906) directly to Karl Groos’s ideas, as it will be explained in section 3 of this chapter; (c) after 1909, there are fewer notes on play to find in her books and public texts, as her attention was directed toward many other topics. We know she got to know Maria Montessori and her school program thanks to her correspondence, but the first mentions are around 1913, when Addams was travelling in Europe and spent some time in Tuscany (“Jane Addams to Sarah Alice Addams Haldeman,” http://​digi​tal.jan​eadd​ams .ram​apo.edu/​items/​show/​6487). I thank Marilyn Fischer for having drawn my attention to the existing occurrences of Montessori in the digital edition of the Jane Addams Papers Project. 12. “Child labor” by UNICEF: https://​www.uni​cef.org/​pro​tect​ion/​child-​lab​our. 13. “Convention on the Rights of the Child. Adopted and opened for signature, ratification and accession by General Assembly resolution 44/​25 of 20 November 1989, entry into force 2 September 1990, in accordance with article 49,” UNO: https://​www.ohchr.org/​en/​ profe​ssio​nali​nter​est/​pages/​crc.aspx. 14. “Luther H. Gulick to Jane Addams, December, 10, 1909” in The Jane Addams Papers Project. https://​digi​tal.jan​eadd​ams.ram​apo.edu/​items/​show/​3275]. 15. Interestingly, Addams had put this more radically in Newer Ideals of Peace: “[ . . . ] as the growth of juvenile crime becomes gradually understood, and as the danger of giving no legitimate and organized pleasure to the child becomes clearer, we remember that primitive man had games long before he cared for a house or regular meals” (1906/​2008, p. 23). It is also striking how many resemblances there are here between Addams and the historical analysis of play by Johan Huizinga (1955). 16. Just a note to remind the reader that Jane Addams also wrote a book on prostitution entitled A New Conscience and an Ancient Evil (1912/​2006). She was far from being a puritan: she denounced the social hypocrisy that condemned those girls in the worst situation of their lives but not the “respectable men” that took advantage of them. 17. For a synthesis of the most important debates on animal play at that time, see Sutton-​ Smith (2001). 18. https://​sour​cebo​oks.ford​ham.edu/​mod/​schil​ler-​educat​ion.asp. 19. Deegan identified 19 areas of specialization that “cover all the major areas where humanist sociologists write, conduct research and teach” (2017, p. 58). She believes that only a tiny portion of them have been studied as yet. 20. Humanities have actually been slower than other disciplines in assuming their social engagement (Branson & Robbins, 2017). 21. Although I express the points in my own words and order, the list proposed here is based on the aspects highlighted by the service-​learning group at the University of Barcelona (Grup ApS-​UB, http://​www.ub.edu/​grupap​sub/​ca/​blog/​el-​grup-​aps-​ub. See also Martín et al. (2006).

References Addams, J. (1909). The spirit of youth and the city streets. Macmillan. Addams, J. (1960). A centennial reader. Macmillan. Addams, J. (1998 [1910]). Twenty years at Hull House; with autobiographical notes. Project Gutenberg Etext. http://​www.gutenb​erg.org/​ebo​oks/​1325

342    Nuria Sara Miras Boronat Addams, J. (2002a [1902]). Democracy and social ethics. University of Illinois Press Addams, J. (2002b [1915]). The long road of woman’s memory. University of Illinois Press. Addams, J. (2006 [1912]). A new conscience and an ancient evil. Dodo Press. Addams, J. (2008 [1906]). Newer ideals of peace. Dodo Press. Baudrillard, J. (1970). La Société de consommation. Gallimard. Barthes, R. (1972). Mythologies. Hill and Wang. Bateson, G. (1972). Steps to an ecology of mind. Ballantine. Berg, M., & Seeber, B. K. (2017). The slow professor: Challenging the culture of speed in the academy. University of Toronto Press. Berne, E. (1964). Games people play. Grove Press. Boas, G. (1966). The cult of childhood. Warburg Institute. Branson, T. S., & Robbins, S. R. (2017). Going public in the humanities: Undoing myths, facing challenges. In Corey Dolgon, Tania D. Mitchell, & Timothy K. Eatman (Eds.), The Cambridge 255). Cambridge Handbook of Service Learning and Community Engagement (pp. 244–​ University Press. Caillois, R. (1994 [1958]). Los juegos y los hombres. La máscara y el vertigo. Fondo de Cultura Económica. Deegan, M. J. (1990). Jane Addams and the men and the Chicago School, 1892–​1918. Transaction. Deegan, M. J. (1999). George Herbert Mead: Play, school and society. Peter Lang. Deegan, M. J. (2017). Jane Addams, feminist pragmatism, and service learning. In Corey Dolgon, Tania D. Mitchell, and Timothy K. Eatman (Eds.), The Cambridge Handbook of Service Learning and Community Engagement (pp. 51–​63). Cambridge University Press. Derrida, J. (1970). Structure, sign and play in the discourse of the human sciences. In Richard E. Macksey and Eugenio Doanto (Eds.), The Languages of Criticism and the Sciences of Man: The Structuralist Controversy (pp. 247–​265). Johns Hopkins University. Dewey, J. (1966 [1916]). Democracy and education. The Free Press. Feezell, R. (2013). A pluralist conception of play. In Emily Ryall, Wendy Russell and Malcom MacLean (Eds.), Philosophy of Play (pp. 11–​31). Routledge. Fink, E. (1995 [1979]). Grundphänomene des menschlichen Daseins. Karl Alber. Gadamer, H.-​G. (1999 [1960]). Wahrheit und Methode. Mohr Siebeck. García Dauder, S. (2010). La historia olvidada de las mujeres de la Escuela de Chicago. Revista Española de Investigaciones Sociológicas (131), 11–​41. Giroux, H. A. (2014). Neoliberalism’s war on higher education. Haymarket Books. Groos, K. (1922). Das Spiel. Zwei Vorträge. Verlag von Gustav Fischer. Gulick, L. H. (1920/​2011). A philosophy of play. BiblioLife. Hamington, M. (2019). Jane Addams. In Edward N. Zalta (Ed), The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (summer 2019 edition). Metaphysics Research Lab, Stanford University. https://​ plato.stanf​ord.edu/​archi​ves/​sum2​019/​entr​ies/​add​ams-​jane Heidegger, M. (1961). Nietzsche, vols. 1–​4. HarperCollins. Huizinga, J. (1955 [1938]). Homo Ludens. A study of the play element in culture. The Beacon Press. Husserl, E. (1980). Phantasie, Bildbewusstsein, Erinnerung: Zur Phanomenologie Der Anschaulichen Vergegenwartigungen Texte Aus Dem Nachlass (1898–​1925), Hua XXIII. M. Nijhoff. Malinowski, B. (1944). A scientific theory of culture. Oxford University Press. Marten, J. (2018). The history of childhood: A very short introduction. Oxford University Press. Martín, X., Rubio, L., Batlle, C., & Puig, J. M. (2006). Què és l’aprenentatge servei? In Xus Martín i Garcia, & Laura Rubio i Serrano (Eds.), Experiències d’aprenentatge servei (pp. 17–​ 26). Octaedro.

Jane Addams on Play, Education, and Ethical Teaching    343 McArthur, B. (1975). The Chicago playground movement: A neglected feature of social justice. Social Service (49), 376–​395. MacLean, M., Russell, W., & Ryall, E. (2016). Philosophical perspectives on play. Routledge. MacLean, M., Russell, W., & Ryall, E., 2021. Play, philosophy, and performance. Routledge. Mead, G. H. (1967). Mind, self, and society from the standpoint of a social behaviorist. University of Chicago Press. Miras Boronat, N. S. (2016). Spiel, Selbst und Gesellschaft. Skizze einer Philosophie des Spiels. Philosophische Rundschau 63 (1), 37–​59. Monod, J. (1970). Le Hasard et la nécessité: essai sur la philosophie naturelle de la biologie moderne. Éditions du Seuil. Noddings, N. (2018). Philosophy of education. Routledge. Piaget, J. (1951). Play, dreams and imitation in childhood. Norton. Russell, E., Ryall, E., & MacLean, M. (2018). The philosophy of play as life. Routledge. Ryall, E., Russell, W., & MacLean, M. (2013). The philosophy of play. Routledge. Salen, K., & Zimmerman, E. (2004). Rules of play: Game design fundamentals. MIT Press. Seigfried, C. H. (1996). Pragmatism and feminism: Reweaving the social fabric. University of Chicago Press. Sutton-​Smith, B. (2001). The ambiguity of play. Harvard University Press. Turner, V. (1969). The ritual process. Aldine. Vygotsky, L. S. (1967). Play and its role in the mental development of child. Soviet Psychology (12), 62–​76. V.V.A.A. (2013). Hull-​House maps and papers: A presentation of nationalities and wages in a congested district of Chicago, together with comments and essays on problems growing out of the social conditions. HardPress Publishing. Weber, M. (1930). The protestant ethic and the spirit of capitalism. Allen and Unwin.

Chapter 18

Dial o gue, Li mi na l i t y, and a Spatia l Et h i c of Recipro c i t y i n Differenc e Jane Addams’s Social Ethics at the Confluence of Feminism and Pragmatism Amrita Banerjee

Jane Addams’s philosophy is an intriguing site of theoretical confluence between philosophical pragmatism and feminism. In her combined identity as pragmatist philosopher and life-​long social worker who addressed various issues concerning gender, class, and race relations in the context of the social settlement movement in north America, Addams had to constantly negotiate the theory-​praxis divide. Moreover, her pragmatist insights flow into problems of feminist import, while Addams’s feminist sensibilities influence her framing of pragmatist ideas, thus generating a unique variety of feminist pragmatism. This chapter demonstrates the cross-​fertilization of feminist and pragmatist philosophies in Jane Addams by focusing on her social ethics and her work in the social settlement movement. The contours of a unique conceptual framework for dialogue in Addams is drawn up, which is called, “dialogic reciprocity.” An associated concept, “liminal spatiality,” is also proposed as an integral aspect of Addamsian social ethics. Dialogic reciprocity emphasizes a certain responsive interplay between people across difference and calls for a framing of moral agency as interactive rather than individualistic. Liminal spatiality highlights the importance of blurred or in-​between spaces within the framework of dialogic ethics. While dialogic reciprocity is proposed as a way of conceptualizing moral agency in our relationship to the Other, the concept of liminal spatiality contributes to the formulation of a spatial ethics across difference. The chapter not only enables the reader to develop a somewhat unifying framework for reading the

346   Amrita Banerjee feminist pragmatism of Jane Addams, but also develops readings of Addams’s social ethics in relation to work on liminality in Latin American feminist philosophy, on the one hand, and philosophical work on care ethics, space, and agency in feminist philosophy from India, on the other. These engagements ultimately allow us to generate a non-​ white-​stream reading of the feminist pragmatism of Jane Addams. The chapter is divided into three sections. The first section serves as a general introduction to Feminist Pragmatism to draw up a preliminary roadmap for thinking of Addams as a feminist. In section two, I turn specifically to Addams’s work in social ethics and the social settlement movement to expose a concrete site in which this synergy can be found within her philosophical approach. Beginning with a pragmatist conception of social ethics, I argue that Addams’s feminist sensibility enables her to both complicate and enrich this understanding to yield dialogic reciprocity (a certain responsive interplay between people across difference) along with a peculiar model of moral agency, which is interactive and dual-​ended. Finally, in section three, I argue that contours of dialogic reciprocity are at play within the lived spatial formations of Hull House (the settlement house that Addams established in Chicago with Ellen Gates Starr), which is made possible due to the liminal or in-​between character of these spaces. For now, we can understand liminality in the sense of contexts that are not easily categorizable through established binaries. I argue that a conception of liminal spatiality must be developed as a central component of Addams’s dialogic social ethics to render possible the kind of interactive agency between peoples and communities she had in mind. In the course of my reading of Addams as a feminist pragmatist, I show that despite predating contemporary feminist frameworks on difference, Addams’s dialogic ethics is capable of connecting with some of the contemporary theoretical concerns in feminist philosophy on ethics, difference, space, and agency. The chapter, therefore, ends with an engagement of Addams’s feminist pragmatism with Latin American feminist philosophy and feminist philosophy from India.

Initial Thoughts on Reading Addams as a Feminist Pragmatist In the course of understanding the confluence between feminism and pragmatism in the philosophy of Jane Addams, we must first engage with dilemmas and limits to reading her as a feminist philosopher in a modern sense of the term. This caution is due to the fact that Addams does not evoke categories such as gender that are central to modern feminist analyses. Her work predates the emergence of the sex/​gender system as an analytical category within Anglo-​American feminism. So, the question arises: If feminism involves evoking gender as a fundamental category of analysis, then is it possible to read Addams as a feminist? Second, from a contemporary feminist perspective, although centering women’s voices and experiences is necessary for feminist analyses,

Dialogue, Liminality, and a Spatial Ethic of Reciprocity    347 by themselves these are not sufficient to make a theoretical framework feminist. Third, some specific ideas in Addams such as domesticity may appear to be dated from a contemporary perspective. Finally, while the project of recuperating women philosophers has clearly been a feminist project for the historian of philosophy in order to break the male-​stream self-​understanding of our discipline, it is also true, as Charlotte Witt points out, “there is a clear distinction between women philosophers and feminist philosophers” (1996). I propose that a fruitful way forward may be found if we define feminism as a cluster-​ concept. Understanding a concept as a cluster can make it multi-​dimensional and heterogenous, thus opening up the possibility of defining feminism in terms of a range of commitments and values, which show up in lesser or greater degrees in the works of individual feminist philosophers. This cluster approach acknowledges a critical insight, namely that “feminist philosophers have different understandings of what feminist philosophy is. . . .” (Witt, 1996). If we begin to understand feminism as a multi-​dimensional concept, and consequently feminist philosophy too in terms of a set of conceptual commitments, then the feminist tones of Addams’s philosophy instantly begin to become visible along with her pragmatism. These include (though are not restricted to) making visible the experiences and standpoints of women and other marginalized groups, taking oppression and privilege seriously in understanding philosophical problems and as an aspect of philosophizing itself, and evolving a philosophical vision that is committed to justice, emancipation, and social reconstruction. My analysis in the rest of the chapter aims to bring precisely these aspects of Addams’s thought to light. If feminism is understood as a cluster concept along the lines mentioned above, then the synergy between the feminist and pragmatist traditions also becomes increasingly clear. Charlene Haddock Seigfried, in her path-​breaking work on feminist pragmatism, enters into the project of articulating a feminist pragmatism by first drawing attention to certain premises that pragmatist philosophers seem to embrace. Among others, is the emphasis on the relation of theory to praxis, facts to values, experience to knowledge, and knowledge to ends-​in-​view. Moreover, pragmatism is committed to pluralism, fallibilism, and the ideals of community and social transformation. Pragmatism also understands experience as an ongoing transaction between the individual and her environment and, in fact, acknowledges that both experience and knowledge are social and historically contingent processes. (1996, 6–​7, 37). These premises, incidentally, bring pragmatism and feminism in close alliance in terms of the style of doing philosophy. Haddock Seigfried goes on to say that given various established dichotomies in the Western philosophical tradition, which both pragmatists and feminists challenge, “it is possible to see how pragmatism would be implicitly categorized with feminine rather than masculine traits, even if such a connection were not made in print or on a conscious level” (1996, 35). At the end, according to her, both “Pragmatism and feminism reject philosophizing as an intellectual game that takes purely logical analysis as its special task” (1996, 37). Some of these resonances that Haddock Seigfried highlights will also be rendered visible in the philosophy of Addams through subsequent analysis. On my part, I carry the analysis forward by highlighting how Addams’s feminist pragmatism may

348   Amrita Banerjee carry an appeal beyond White-​stream as well as Western feminist contexts, and may have significance for a feminist ethics across difference. My argument relies on developing two related ideas, namely, dialogic reciprocity and liminal spatiality. I specifically draw attention to Addams’s work across structures of oppression and privilege. Dialogic reciprocity, as will become clear, upholds the feminist commitments to self-​reflexivity, embodied conceptions of agency, and a more collaborative approach to theory-​building. This conception, in turn, inaugurates the idea of liminal spatiality, which can connect Addams’s work to contemporary work on space and agency in women of color feminist philosophy in the West as well as current work in feminist philosophy from India. With these aims in mind, I now turn towards an Addamsian reconstruction of social ethics in the next section.

Dialogic Reciprocity: Pragmatist Social Ethics through a Feminist Lens A commitment to experience, praxis, and social change are characteristic features of pragmatist social ethics as it articulates itself in the works of philosophers such as Jane Addams and John Dewey. These commitments are, incidentally, points that also bring pragmatism and feminism theoretically close together. This section begins with some of the guiding motifs of pragmatist social ethics in order to make visible the unique dimensions that Addams introduces through her philosophical approach that stands at the confluence of feminism and pragmatism. In particular, pragmatist notions of moral intelligence, moral imagination, and moral agency are transformed in radical ways within an Addamsian dialogic ethics.

From Moral Motive to a Social Motive: A Pragmatist Reconstruction From a pragmatist perspective, morals are essentially human. They give direction to human actions and enrich human experience. Morality is the result of an individual’s active engagement with the environment, where environment signifies the diverse realms of our physical, social, and cultural worlds. Ethics is framed as being a matter of “conduct,” to use Dewey’s framing from Human Nature and Conduct—​a term that Addams retains in Democracy and Social Ethics. Moreover, ethics is oriented toward action rather than being a matter of individual conscience or motive. Given that our conduct has implications for others and the social world, ethics must engage what we do with others as much as what is going on within us. Writes Addams, “To attain individual morality in an age demanding social morality, to pride one’s self on the results of personal effort when the time demands social adjustment, is utterly to fail to apprehend

Dialogue, Liminality, and a Spatial Ethic of Reciprocity    349 the situation” (2002/​1902, 6). Thus, drawing a rigid line between individual and social ethics is inherently problematic from a pragmatist perspective. Haddock Siegfried summarizes this position well when she writes, “For pragmatists, social ethics is not a subset of ethics, but ethics itself. Believing that it is a travesty to reduce ethics to the mechanisms of a formal system or to a disembodied interior monologue, they start from the fact of human interrelationship, giving equal weight to subjectivity and to objective social relations” (1996, 224). It is no wonder that a pragmatist moral theory is geared toward social reconstruction. Classical pragmatists such as Dewey begin their moral theory, unlike the bulk of the Western moral tradition, from “moral experience as it is experienced” (Pappas, 2008, 2). A point to note, however, is that while philosophers like Dewey and William James no doubt create important scholarly theory, Addams lived in Hull House for a half century, where she simultaneously develops pragmatist ethics while also weaving theory with practice. It must be borne in mind that experience according to a pragmatist understanding is not the mere content of consciousness of a neutral and passive subject. Rather experience is lived by an agent immersed in the world, that is not in the external mode of a spectator, but in a transactive mode as participants within practical situations. Experience not only is the beginning point of moral inquiry that transforms the object of inquiry, but itself changes in response to inquiry—​in short, there is a dynamic relation between the two. There is no strict demarcation between moral and non-​moral domains as in traditional Western moral theory—​certain situations have a greater moral contour than others. Drawing attention to Dewey’s contextualism for instance, Gregory Fernando Pappas writes, “he (Dewey) hoped that attention to moral experience as it is experienced would lead to a shift in ethical thought toward situations as the center of gravity of moral endeavor” (2008, 41). Morally problematic situations demand that the agent choose between competing moral demands, or ones in which the right is not very clear, and agents have to make a choice to resolve this indeterminacy. Effective engagement with the situation, therefore, demands acute moral intelligence including moral imagination on the part of the moral agent, according to Dewey.1 The role of moral intelligence is many-​fold. By allowing us to maintain a critical and reflexive stance towards habitual patterns of behavior,2 it prevents the sedimentation of habits. The need for moral intelligence perhaps becomes even more acute when we come up against obstacles in the real world, and the habitual loop of activities gets disrupted, thereby causing a great deal of tension in the organism. Its habits fail to help it in dealing with the situation, and therefore it becomes imperative for the organism to reevaluate the situation. In this moment of crisis, some impulse is called up and there ensues a process of deliberation that comes to an end with a release in the form of choice. Reconstruction of the environment is needed to facilitate survival. Deliberation demands moral intelligence—​and moral imagination is especially important in this respect. The process of deliberation involves the imagining of different possible alternatives on the part of the organism. Our imaginative exploration of different alternatives in diverse ethical situations as we try to navigate the environment as embodied beings, in turn, enables us to expand and deepen our moral horizon. The fact

350   Amrita Banerjee that an agent can play a positive role in the fashioning of her moral self-​identity is also proof of her moral agency. Addams contributes to these aspects of pragmatist ethics in novel ways by centering a dialogic understanding of ethics as subsequent analysis will show, which also focuses on various affective dimensions of experience such as perplexity and confusion as markers of indeterminacy. Taking experience seriously implies the context of experience and the situation of the experiential subject. This has a threefold implication. First, there can be no a priori foundation to moral values. Second, situation and not principles, rules, individual motives, or character is the center of gravity in any moral endeavor. Third and most importantly, experience (as opposed to a dry rationalism) provides both direction to and the litmus test for moral inquiry, thus providing new vigor to old values and the possibility of generating new values. These commitments are perhaps best encapsulated in Addams’s idea of the “social test” (2002/​1902, 6). According to her, “The advanced test must indeed include that which has already been attained; but if it includes no more, we shall fail to go forward, thinking complacently that we have “arrived” when in reality we have not yet started” (2002/​1902, 5). The question of reconstruction of values, in this manner, is squarely situated at the heart of Addamsian social ethics through its emphasis on experience. The centrality of moral experience in Addams means that moral maturity of an agent comes from living a life and engaging in creative dialogue with the Other. Through moral imagination, we also experience our agency. As Addams puts it, “We have learned as common knowledge that much of the insensibility and hardness of the world is due to the lack of imagination which prevents a realization of the experiences of other people” (2002/​1902, 8). With every new challenge that she overcomes and new choices that she makes, new alternatives and possible courses of action are revealed to the moral agent. She therefore, has the scope of gradually becoming more mature as a moral agent. We can, therefore, think of moral intelligence as a kind of practical wisdom that must be cultivated over a period of time. Moreover, since the task of ethics is not the moral perfection of the individual but development of larger social values as well, questions about moral maturity at an individual level become tied to questions about social progress. This is why, in Democracy and Social Ethics, Addams points out that our duty to others and the larger social world is as primary as the duty towards one’s self (and to one’s own closed circle as one’s family). The possibility of generating a social motive largely relies on the acquisition of moral experience, and this, as we will see, gets directly linked to moral imagination in Addams. Not only is imagination tied to one’s experience, but encountering a plurality of moral worlds in the context of our dialogue with the Other also propels moral imagination in new ways. Marilyn Fischer, in her analysis of Addams’s Newer Ideals of Peace, points out how Addams notices the prevalence of newer ideals, especially increasing cosmopolitan commitments and humanitarian values among immigrant communities, which are fueled by experience. The experience is one of being dislocated from one’s familiar roots and responding to various challenges in the course of the socio-​cultural transition into a new society. Addams notices the emergence of these humanitarian values in other

Dialogue, Liminality, and a Spatial Ethic of Reciprocity    351 contexts as well such as the labor movements. Observes Fischer, “Throughout Newer Ideals Addams claims that such a humanitarian stage is beginning to emerge . . . and she gives evidence that the poor and oppressed, particularly recent immigrants, have moved quite a ways along this trajectory” (2009, 175). Fischer’s observations can further emphasize the connection between moral experience, moral growth, and moral valuation in the context of Addams’s work, Newer Ideals of Peace. We must note it is the plurality of experiences that are catalysts for both individual moral and social change. As Addams claims, “if the latter day moral ideal is in reality that of a social morality, it is inevitable that those who desire it must be brought in contact with the moral experiences of the many in order to procure an adequate social motive” (2002/​1902, 6). We begin to see how a community moves forward, that is, a social imaginary matures through progressive individuals and conversely. On the other hand, moral failure has both individual and social dimensions. I would urge that part of moral intelligence and moral maturity for Addams involves perceiving this connection. Insights such as these also push her to emphasize democracy as part and parcel of both social and moral growth. A democratic attitude is not just a model for politics, but is a way of life guiding our social relationships. In this sense, democracy becomes a kind of moral attitude so to say, if we are to take attitude in the sense of how we open ourselves to the world and to the Other. The emphasis on intelligence in any process of inquiry including moral inquiry perhaps arises out of the need to be able to achieve such life processes with the greatest degree of success and empathy towards the Other. In fact, a crucial aspect of moral intelligence and moral imagination involves working on those affective and qualitative dimensions of human existence, which enable individuals and communities to comport themselves in a democratic spirit. Perhaps the link between democracy and ethics is expressed most poignantly by Addams when she writes, “the identification with the common lot which is the essential idea of Democracy becomes the source and expression of social ethics” (2002/​1902, 9).

From Social Ethics to a Dialogic Ethics: An Addamsian Reconstruction Developing a pragmatist social ethics through her theoretical work, Jane Addams also adds several critical dimensions to this framework through her practical work in the social settlement movement with women, children, and immigrant communities. For Addams, the concrete Other in their difference, embodied caring for the Other, and sympathetic knowledge generated in the process play a crucial and necessary role in the activation of one’s own moral agency and in the generation of the critical and reflective capacities that are integral to a moral life. She understands that moral experience can be a catalyst for individual and social transformation, and that problems of society can be subverted through a reconstruction of morals. However, from a feminist perspective that is also attuned to praxis across difference, she is acutely aware of the

352   Amrita Banerjee various quandaries around lived experience, especially in the context of difference, oppression, and privilege in any form of dialogue. These are points of conceptual and strategic contention, as we will see in Addams’s model of social ethics. Moreover, Addams demonstrates a deep awareness of differences based on race, class, and nationality, and also recognizes her own privileged location along these axes. All these features distinguish her feminism from the perspectives of many white feminists of her generation. The complex philosophical sensibility encompassing both pragmatist and feminist orientations culminates in a peculiar model of moral agency, which I call dialogic reciprocity. This is because I see Addams’s roadmap for social ethics as not only centralizing embodiment, but also lived dialogue between agents in their difference as a site of moral imagination and moral agency. Her work no doubt emphasizes how moral experience facilitates moral imagination, but it also argues that both are predicated on relating to the Other in a way that does not end up reducing the Other to a mirror of the self. Haddock Seigfried highlights the problems that Addams sees in ethical approaches that call for “autonomous decision making, based on the dictates of one’s own conscience and following one’s own ideals,” as having a tendency to lapse into “the commercial standpoint,” when the justification of values becomes one-​sided and decision-​making remains hierarchical (2009, 54). In this respect, Addams’s work directly contributes to feminist ethics in its opposition to standard male-​stream monological understandings of moral theory, along with the latter’s emphasis on a universal or impartial point of view as a site of moral agency. These tendencies are precisely what is seen, for instance, in Immanuel Kant’s “categorical imperative” or John Rawls’s “veil of ignorance.”3 Universalistic moral theories in the Western moral tradition are characterized by Seyla Benhabib as being “substitutionalist, in the sense that the universalism they defend is defined surreptitiously by identifying the experiences of a specific group of subjects as the paradigmatic case of all humans” (2008, 481). By centering the need for lived and embodied dialogue, as well as the necessity to seek out moral experience, the framework of dialogic reciprocity in Addams can provide a radical counter-​point to any kind of substitutionalist ethics. Moreover, Addams understands dialogue as a transactional relationship not just between individual agents, but also with the larger social world. I find that an Addamsian conception of dialogue is able to bring out the promises, tensions, and challenges toward ensuring dialogue, and is therefore capable of generating a conceptualization of moral agency that is interactive and dual-​ended, rather than being the subjective capacity of individual moral agents. As we look more closely at the conceptualization of dialogue within Addams’s philosophy, we realize that it is focused on the uncovering of difference (and conflicting interests at that), and their preservation wherever this is possible. This is expressed strongly by Addams when she states, “if we grow contemptuous of our fellows, and consciously limit our intercourse to certain kinds of people whom we have previously decided to respect, we not only tremendously circumscribe our range of life, but limit the scope of our ethics” (2002/​1902, 8). As is evident from the quote, the epistemic and the ethical demands of dialogue for Addams are intimately linked. We can say that epistemic ignorance concerning the Other in their specificity may result in a certain kind of moral

Dialogue, Liminality, and a Spatial Ethic of Reciprocity    353 blindness, which in turn limits the range of our ethical selves. I hope to reveal through subsequent analysis how an understanding of both oppression and privilege bearing on the theme of difference frames Addams’s understanding of dialogue, and consequently shapes her understanding of the possibilities and limits to exercising moral imagination. Moreover, Addams’s dialogic model takes the role of the concrete Other in activating one’s own moral agency and deepening moral intelligence very seriously. Here too, Addams’s alliance with feminist ethicists becomes clear. Benhabib notes, for instance, how the standpoint of the “generalized other,” which “requires us to view each and every individual as a rational being entitled to the same rights and duties we would want to ascribe to ourselves” (2008, 485), dominates most of traditional male-​stream moral theory. In contrast, feminist moral traditions often attend to the standpoint of the “concrete other,” “which requires us to view each and every rational being as an individual with a concrete history, identity, and affective-​emotional constitution” (Benhabib, 2008, 485). The latter perspective is a counterpoint to any kind of substitutionalist ethics since social difference is viewed as epistemically substantial and morally salient, both of which are asserted by Addams. In this context, I am reminded of Maurice Hamington’s analysis of Addams as being perpetually engaged in acts of embodied caring through her everyday life at Hull House and activism in national and international arenas.4 While discussing the relevance of Jane Addams’s social ethic for solving what are termed as “wicked problems,” Danielle Lake too emphasizes the role of “sympathetic understanding” and “collective action” (2014, 81). Writes Lake, “sympathetic understanding requires more than the tolerating of difference. It calls on us to actively seek out the perspective of others” (2014, 84). It is also a kind of “getting-​ beyond-​onself ” (Lake, 2014, 90). In Lake’s words, Addams “was driven to argue for the power found in operating with others in place of for or on them” (2014, 90). In this scenario, Addams’s ethics, and indeed her whole philosophy, is committed to ensuring and enhancing the possibility of dialogue across difference through very creative means so as to ultimately facilitate interactive agency. The more our moral horizons are broadened through encountering the different, we move closer to moral maturity. It is no wonder that Addams reiterates time and again that “we are under a moral obligation in choosing our experiences, since the result of those experiences must ultimately determine our understanding of life” (2002/​1902, 8). As we interrogate the idea of dialogue in Addams further, we notice that dialogue is not a dyadic relation for her. Rather, it happens amid and between agents in transactive relationship with the social world who, therefore, bring the baggage of their respective social realities to the table. As such, reciprocal relationships have to fashioned often amid asymmetries in power relations, incommensurability among perspectives, and so on; a point that is emphasized in much of women of color feminisms as well as transnational and postcolonial feminisms. These aspects also expose the politics of experience itself, thus challenging a neutral understanding of experience. Addams appears to be ahead of her time in being sensitive to these realities. She also realizes how much moral imagination is required to carve out a social ethic, which is democratic in temperament, and she works with difference rather than suppressing it. A key aspect of Addams’s

354   Amrita Banerjee philosophy is her detailed consideration of ethnic diversity and also other forms of difference among people pertaining to their age, nationality, social status, and so on in order to understand the attitudinal differences between them, and to bring these diverse groups in conversation with each other in light of this understanding. The doors of Hull House were always open to the marginalized. Addams’s insights concerning the cultural and situational diversity of the people whom the charity-​worker encounters, in turn, make her think about certain practical aspects of dialogue like the kind of language to be used for effective cross-​cultural communication, especially when a particular language is alien to one group, as was the case with the immigrant communities she was dealing with. She thus emphasizes the different aspects of language-​use like simplicity and the choice of words in her theory of dialogue. Addams’s emphasis on language-​use and its value for her dialogic theory becomes clear from an interview with Ruby who benefited immensely from the activities at Hull House when she says, “Miss Jane Addams never talked down to us. . . . She never used words you couldn’t understand. But she and the others made sure you understood.”5 While all these aspects show attentiveness to the Other’s life-​worlds in the context of an ethical mode of relating to the Other, they also highlight Addams’s epistemic honesty with respect to her own privilege, her humility in working on her ignorance instead of fleeing from it, and connecting to the Other’s point of view with empathy. Addams’s written works are also evidence of her careful attention to language and style in order to effect transformations in the moral experiences and epistemic beliefs of her readers and herself in the process. Rather than using a completely impersonal tone to state facts, she often (though not always) adopts the method of relating her experiences in the first-​person in the form of stories and narratives built around the daily lives of the immigrants as encountered by her. She is as much a participant in the process as those she is working with. Addams almost takes readers on a journey to self-​transformation by her honest confessions of the perplexities of working with those whose ethical worlds were radically different from her own, and the transformation in her moral experiences that arises as a consequence of this engagement. Addams boldly states, “Partly through this wide reading of human life, we find in ourselves a new affinity for all men, which probably never existed in the world before” (2002/​1902, 8). The use of such personal statements on the part of one who was actively involved with the settlement movement helps articulate the importance of putting oneself in a position to have diverse experiences in order to cultivate the capacity for moral imagination. It also successfully reminds the members of contemporary white middle-​class of America of their broader social commitments and thus makes a case for the moral obligation on the part of each individual to transition from an individual to a social ethic. In this sense, the use of the first person and narratives function as consciousness-​raising devices for the white middle class of Chicago to help them engage in reciprocal dialogue with the immigrant communities.6 Finally, the frequent use of the first person helps to foreground the concreteness of the emotions, struggles, and actions outlined by Addams as aspects of a situated ethics since these are now understood as having been undergone by a particular

Dialogue, Liminality, and a Spatial Ethic of Reciprocity    355 individual coming from a specific social location with its unique values. This may make it easier for those coming from the same social location to join in the dialogue.

Reciprocity in Difference: Towards an Interactive Theory of Moral Agency I find that Addams’s dialogic ethics is also predicated on developing a narrative sense of self, centering on life stories and lived encounters with the Other as part and parcel of the dialogic process. In other words, I think that narrative here (and Addams’s narrative sense of self as she relates her experiences in the context of her work in Hull House) plays a role in ethics—​it constructs the moral self and also humanizes the perspective of the Other as a concrete Other with a particular life story. While analyzing Addams’s lectures and writings about the “Devil Baby,” Marilyn Fischer argues that a uniqueness of Addams’s approach lies in the fact that she attributes epistemic and aesthetic agency to the poor immigrant women who came to witness the phenomenon and shared their stories with Addams, instead of taking these stories as evidence of superstition on the part of ignorant people. The tales are interpreted “as a form of moral instruction that had evolved and been refined through a long historical development” (2010, 83). Addams, argues Fischer, “attends to how these patterns of meaning are responses to universally shared circumstances. . . . Finally, in reciprocity, she uses her neighbors’ stories to widen, deepen, and reconstruct her own knowledge and that of her readers” (2010, 94). Although Addams’s work predates the systematic articulation of standpoint epistemology in feminist philosophy, her philosophical methodology and spirit as revealed in these moments seem to be attuned to the recognition of the situated character of knowledge (including moral knowledge). The connection she tries to work out among moral experience, moral and social growth, and democracy in the context of social ethics makes Addams a potential forerunner in bringing some of these concerns into moral epistemology from a feminist perspective. Although Addams does not offer this conception, I suggest that an idea of a moral standpoint that is both socially embedded and tied to a narrative sense of self begins to emerge as aspects of Addams’s understanding of dialogue. Addams recognizes that the material situation of the two bodies involved in a dialogic encounter has a tremendous bearing on the process and its participants, as well as the social world that they inhabit. She is deeply aware that participants in the dialogue are persons coming from different classes, age groups, and ethnic backgrounds; she also acknowledges the fact that all these factors influence their current social positions and make their needs unique, all of which must be factored into ethically relating across difference. Addams mentions, for instance, that the Italian immigrant women were trying to come to terms with a foreign tongue, and they were also trying to cope with the loss of the domestic arts and outdoor activities that were an integral part of their lives in Italy. This insight enables her to outline various suggestions for individual workers dealing

356   Amrita Banerjee with marginalized groups, and also to design diverse activities of Hull House such that they successfully addressed the unique needs of specific groups. While referring to the day nursery at Hull House, for example, Addams mentions how Hull House taught immigrant women “the things which will make life in America more possible” (1990/​ 1910, 100). Addams also mentions how lessons as simple as cooking and sewing could help the immigrants come to terms with American food and ways of cooking along with other household habits. The social clubs at Hull House like the Reading Group, the Social Science Club, the Coffee House, and other activities like music and dancing lessons responded to the need of these communities for a robust social life, and also helped keep their imaginative and intellectual faculties alive even in the most trying of circumstances. Another distinctive mark of Addams’s dialogic theory is her acknowledgment of the possibility of real conflict and failure in any instance of cross-​cultural dialogue. This is because the embodied selves that encounter each other in the context of dialogue are already embedded in innumerable relationships within their families and the values of their larger social groups. It is through the figure of the charity-​worker and the immigrant woman, that not just two different cultures, but two radically different ethical worlds confront each other according to Addams. This prompted her remark, “Because of this diversity in experience, the visitor is continually surprised to find that the safest platitude may be challenged” (Addams, 2002/​1902, 18). The charity-​worker is perplexed with the way of life of the family of the immigrant woman that she visits. The poor immigrant woman, on the other hand, fails to understand the motives of the charity-​worker, who “does not intend to give them things which are so plainly needed” (Addams, 2002/​ 1902, 18) and provides them only with “guarded care” (2002/​1902, 13). The perplexities of the charity-​worker and the resistance that often comes from the families she visits makes conflict inevitable in these encounters. Addams categorically states, “The greatest difficulty is experienced when the two standards come sharply together. . . . The difficulty of making clear one’s own ethical standpoint is at times insurmountable” (2002/​ 1902, 29). In its acknowledgment of conflict and the latter’s implications from a moral standpoint, Addams’s model gives us a very realistic picture of moral imagination in lived contexts. Not only is moral imagination both limited and rendered possible from a standpoint, but conflict and the possibility of violence is a lingering threat on the path to achieving true reciprocity with the Other in any dialogic encounter. These limitations also bring out the fact that often moral disagreement is the result of a clash between our moral worlds. Acknowledging the potential for conflict within a dialogic encounter, in turn, leads Addams to pay careful attention to the precautions that need to be taken especially by the charity-​worker to minimize such conflicts. Through her various works, she constantly reminds us of the common vulnerability of the human condition, that is, of “sorrow as the common lot” and “death as the universal experience” (1990/​1910, 32), which help us communicate across cultural and linguistic differences, and establish a relationship with the Other. Addams thinks that the universality of human suffering can provide us with the common ground for experiencing empathy toward each other,

Dialogue, Liminality, and a Spatial Ethic of Reciprocity    357 which is necessary for building any kind of community and attaining reciprocity.7 In addition to reminding the charity-​worker about the vulnerability that she shares with her client, Addams also categorically states that she often has to renounce “the luxury of personal preference” (1990/​1910, 88) in order to engage in reciprocal dialogue with the immigrant population. These claims made by Addams highlight the fact that in working toward the difficult task of cross-​cultural communication and ethics, “All one’s habits of living had to be readjusted . . . ” (1990/​1910, 88). In this respect, Addams’s adjustment of her own behavior was noteworthy. While analyzing the presence of a theory of cooperation in Addams’s reform work, Louise W. Knight writes, “As an upper-​middle-​class woman who had been raised to believe in the ethic of benevolence, she felt entitled when she first moved to Halsted Street to instruct others to do what she thought was best for them. But her belief in cooperation and in American social democracy compelled her to restrain her class-​based instinct to control” (2009, 71). Cooperation, however, for Addams, is predicated on an appreciation of diverse moral experiences. In Knight’s words, “Cooperation meant stepping back, creating space, but also connecting with others’ hopes, trusting, and moving forward on a collectively determined agenda” (2009, 78). While pragmatists such as Dewey emphasize the role of experience in moral philosophy, through her work with those on the other side of privilege, Addams emphasizes the ethical obligation to seek out experiences of the different (especially from a privileged location), the need for a critical engagement with one’s own experience, the need to interrogate one’s existing moral horizon, and the deliberative aspects of evolving collective experience. We can say that for Addams, ultimately cultivating moral intelligence lies in affirming the humanity of the Other as the concrete Other in their specificity, accepting the incommensurability between diverse moral worlds, and trying to mutually grow through this dialogic encounter by readjusting one’s basic habits of living. The task is to negotiate incommensurability without doing away with difference. Addams gives further concrete directions to charity-​workers on how to comport themselves in the face of cultural difference. In this context, she reminds the charity-​ worker of the fact that her clients are not a collection of helpless faces to whom she merely gives but from whom she never receives. Rather in her written works, Addams tells us how the charity-​worker realizes her own place within the social order while trying to “settle” the immigrants and helping the latter to overcome their feeling of being out-​of-​place. This makes Addams remark, “The daintily clad charitable visitor who steps into the little house. . . is no longer sure of her superiority to the latter; she recognizes that her hostess after all represents social value and industrial use, as over against her own parasitic cleanliness and a social standing attained only though status” (2002/​1902, 12). The emphasis that Addams places on the influence of the poor on the privileged charity-​worker and the latter’s potential to be also transformed in and through the affective relations with the former highlights the need for the charity-​worker to comport herself with humility, which incidentally is a precondition to any exercise in reciprocity. Not only does experience have the capacity to change one’s ethical orientation, but it can also expand one’s moral universe in unanticipated ways. Both moral experience and

358   Amrita Banerjee agency become deeply interactive and double-​ended rather than a one-​sided capacity of individual moral agents. Finally, moral experience imbued in dialogue (as well as a dialogic understanding of the self) orients one to achieving a kind of embodied form of reciprocity between parties that may be otherwise situated asymmetrically in terms of their material realities. Addams makes the notion of what it means to conduct oneself with humility more concrete in her speech, which was first delivered in 1895 and later published as an essay in 1912 titled “A Modern Lear” through the phrase “affectionate interpretation.” Although Addams does not provide us with a precise definition of the term, it is evident from her analysis of the tragic failures of King Lear and Pullman alike that affectionate interpretation is more a matter of trying to cooperate with someone rather than exerting power over them. Uncritically assimilating the values of the Other to one’s own value-​system constitutes a moral failure in Addams’s notion of dialogic reciprocity—​a failure that demonstrates a lack of moral imagination. The latter not only indicates the lack of moral intelligence, but practically threatens to cause a breakdown in dialogue, especially among unequally positioned parties. Addams brings these weaknesses very effectively to light. This also explains why Addams puts a great deal of emphasis on active listening and participation,8 as well as to being attentive to one’s bodily postures and gestures while communicating across difference. These highly practical dimensions of dialogue like the attention to language-​use and standards proposed for charity-​workers are devised in the context of actual moral experience, and manifest moral intelligence on Addams’s part. They also highlight what is required for fruitful moral imagination to actualize itself within complex human relations. Another significant insight on Addams’s part, as rightly pointed out by Haddock Siegfried in her introduction to the Illinois edition of Democracy and Social Ethics, is that, “In her theory of reciprocity, she (Addams) emphasized the way power distorts relationships and showed how to recognize and undo the harmful effects of privilege and disempowerment” (2002/​1902, xxi). It is worth noting at this point that a common concern on the part of contemporary feminists of color is that their voices get either lost or distorted in the context of cross-​cultural dialogue. Addams almost anticipates this concern and tries to address this in her dialogic theory. While analyzing two other papers delivered by Addams in 1892, originally called, the “The Subjective Values of Social Settlements” and “The Objective Values of Social Settlements,” Haddock Seigfried argues that Addams’s commitment to the principle of reciprocity grates against the idea of singlehanded moral authority. While the objective necessity of settlement was argued for on the basis of the adverse conditions in which the working-​class immigrant poor lived (2009, 41), Haddock Seigfried observes that the subjective necessity is predicated on the recognition that the interaction of groups on different sides of oppression and privilege is “beneficial to the caregivers as well as the caretakers” (2009, 42). In this scenario, she takes Addams as arguing “that hierarchical exchanges, no matter how well-​meant, and even when they seem to objectively remedy social problems, nonetheless demean the recipients and corrupt the upper classes. . . . the nature of the exchanges themselves, as much as the goals sought, constitute the moral worth of the

Dialogue, Liminality, and a Spatial Ethic of Reciprocity    359 engagements” (2009, 42). While acknowledging the value of Addams’s belief in the evolution of the knowledge process and the refusal to take any one viewpoint as ideologically pure, Haddock Seigfried observes that this attitude, ironically, opened Addams to the critique of being too conciliatory and as lacking conviction from various radical groups of her time. From the point of view of the moral framework of dialogic reciprocity being developed in this chapter, however, the denial of ideological loyalty indicates a resistance to notions of epistemic purity and epistemic authority with respect to a single set of moral values. Impurity is an epistemic virtue rather than a vice within the proposed dialogic ethics. Furthermore, I suggest that a fundamental way Addams tries to preserve the voices of the marginalized in a dialogic encounter and the pluralism of moral worlds is by attending to the meeting place of the radically different worlds, that is, the material space where dialogue across difference happens. I argue that the way in which a meeting place is envisioned plays a crucial role in creating the environment for and in determining the course of dialogic ethics. The space also determines whether moral authority can be dispersed in a more egalitarian manner. The experience of domination on the part of a group can make them shy away from engaging in further dialogue. The space of Hull House, to which I now turn, is a case study of how the meeting ground of diverse groups can be devised so as to facilitate an effective cross-​cultural spatial ethics in the presence of asymmetry in material circumstances and power relations. Hull House is read as the embodiment of a space, which not only activates a dialogic sense of self as stipulated above, but also a moral agency that is interactive as opposed to being self-​sufficient.

Hull House as a Liminal Space: A Spatial Ethics of Dialogic Reciprocity and Interactive Agency I propose that an awareness of the conditions and challenges to dialogue enables Addams to transform Hull House into a kind of liminal or interstitial space, which can facilitate the exercise of dual-​ended agency. Hull House does so through facilitating a series of transactions such as between the self and the Other in their specificity, the self and culture, the self and history, and so on. The liminal character of the space upholds a spatial ethics across difference. It does so by initiating the critical, reflective, and imaginative capacities that Addams appears to hold central to a fulfilling moral life. Therefore, I argue that a conceptualization of liminal spatiality ought to be developed as a central component of Addamsian dialogic social ethics and, in turn, contributes to the formulation of a spatial ethics across difference. A liminal space can be best described as an in-​ between space, a space that is fluid and dynamic. It is one that does not settle down, and refuses to give in to an either/​or dichotomy. While a liminal space is seemingly chaotic, it

360   Amrita Banerjee only appears to be so from the point of view of a binary ordering of the world. A liminal space is one of perpetual transition, embodying plurality and multiplicity as its central virtues. A conceptualization of “liminal” spaces in the work of Maria Lugones rooted in Latin American feminist philosophy and of “in-​between spaces” from our (Amrita Banerjee and Karilemla’s) work rooted in feminist philosophy from India can be useful for capturing the interstitial nature of the space that was Hull House.

In-​Between Spaces and the Ethical Self: Feminist Philosophical Perspectives from the Margins Contemporary feminists of color such as Lugones point to both the difficulties of inhabiting a fragmented, fluid, and multiple space—​but also emphasize its liberatory potential. This is because such spaces resist norms, expectations, sedimented patterns, and hierarchies embodied in established structures. Lugones’s work on antistructure and agency under oppression outlines certain conceptual aspects concerning liminality and difference in contemporary women of color feminisms. In the essay “Structure/​ Antistructure and Agency under Oppression” (1990), Lugones makes an interesting observation (taking cue from the genesis of the word “liminality” in some anthropological work), about how liminal spaces hint to the excesses from established structures, the hidden crevices and cracks that then go on to constitute an antistructure. It is in the latter that the liberatory potential of the space lies. As antistructure, they allow “the possibility of structural critique” (Lugones, 1990, 506). Inhabiting it, that is, “to experience oneself in the limen is significantly to experience oneself as multiple. As such, it is extremely threatening to any world or any aspect of a world that requires unification, either psychologically, morally, politically, or metaphysically” (Lugones, 1990, 506)—​ and, I would add, demands commensurability in moral worlds as well. Some of these features, I find, are captured in the envisioning of spaces at Hull House. As outlined in the previous section, Addams’s version of a dialogic ethics resists the attempt to assimilate the moral and epistemological worlds of the parties in dialogue even when their material circumstances are asymmetrical. The imaginative capacities of our moral selves should not only be open to the possibility of collision between ethical worlds, but must epistemically resist the urge to appropriate and assimilate other worlds. A different direction of philosophical work on ethics (especially a care-​based ethical perspective), space, and agency emerges in the context of feminist philosophical work from India. We (Banerjee and Karilemla, 2016, 2020) offer the conception of “caring space in-​between” by engaging with the world-​view of the Ao Naga tribe.9 Caring space in-​between is offered as a way of thinking about blended spaces that are oriented specifically toward realizing the ethical ideal of a caring self. Our work on the link between space and care marks a unique attempt to evolve a conception of “caring spaces” at the heart of an ethics of care, a dimension that remains under-​theorized in white-​stream articulations of feminist care ethics. We offer this concept through a philosophical

Dialogue, Liminality, and a Spatial Ethic of Reciprocity    361 reconstruction of Arju and Züki/​Tzüki, two Ao institutions. These were communal dormitories that were designed to be continuation of home spaces for boys and girls respectively in Ao society—​a space where individual and communal lives blended into each other.10 We develop a reading of these spaces as intriguing kinds of blended or in-​ between spaces, between the private and the public spheres, the home and the world, the family and the tribe, and geared toward self-​actualization of both the individual and the community (Banejee and Karilemla, 2016, 102; 2020, 236). These spaces resist mapping onto typical Western imaginations of dominantly privatized spaces in which the labor of care is carried out (Banerjee and Karilemla, 2016, 94). On the contrary, these spaces were “characterised by intimate bonds of friendship and care established through shared living and being-​with as a close-​knit network” (Banerjee and Karilemla, 2020, 237). Arju and Züki/​Tzüki stand as radical counter-​points, and thus offer the possibility of developing a radically new approach to care ethics from the margins. A philosophical reconstruction of these spaces allows us to envision novel spatial configurations to be aimed at in an ethics of care, or to imagine what may be involved in the spatialization of an ethics of care. While these spaces embody collective maternal practice and are marked by the presence of care-​givers and -​receivers, we argue that the uniqueness of these material-​symbolic spaces lies in the fact that their caring nature is not reducible to the presence of these caring figures. Rather, their structure and modalities of functioning reflect the goals of an ethic of care, and are responsible for preparing their inhabitants for the labor of care, thus cultivating a sense of caring self as an ethical ideal. The spaces imbibe various other epistemic-​moral virtues such as friendship, humility, regard for the Other and the community, and so on, which were central to the survival of the tribe as a whole (Banerjee and Karilemla, 2016, 92). We conceptualize these spaces as a “dynamic system of nested intradependence” (2016, 92), predicated on finding oneself taking on roles of care-​giver and cared-​for (2016, 99), and also read the space of Arju as a fascinating space that blends an ethic of justice with an ethic of care (2016, 99). We argue further that the caring spaces of Arju and Züki/​Tzüki also exhibit communicative and narrative intent, by establishing a deep connection between narration, truth, and virtue. “Narration (especially in the context of the exclusive oral tradition) is not just important for raising a culturally rooted individual, and a communicative sensibility. . . but can also be seen as a strategy for the tribe to write a particular reality about itself into existence” (Banerjee and Karilemla, 2016, 104). No wonder the self as relating itself to Others, to history, and to the future through stories, songs, poetry, and so on was an everyday reality in these spaces. These spaces, we think, are able to foster communicative and narrative senses of self over and above the relational sense of self that care ethics typically emphasizes. Since the narrative self connects to the past and the future, such a sense of self becomes invaluable for developing an ethically oriented caring self. The conception of caring-​space in-​between, can be used to understand the spatialization of dialogic reciprocity and interactive agency within the lived spaces of Hull House, and to understand how a caring and dialogic self emerges in the process. I have already referred to Hamington’s reading of Jane Addams’s social philosophy in relation to the feminist ethics of care. The framework of “caring space in-​between” can help us

362   Amrita Banerjee develop this link in unique ways through a philosophical engagement of spatiality or the spatialized dimension of Addams’s dialogic ethics as enacted in Hull House. This notion also helps us to understand the narrative and communicative aspects of a dialogic self in Addams. Although the space of this chapter does not provide opportunity for a detailed enumeration of these linkages, the proposal for such analysis provides a fruitful starting point for bringing Addams into conversation with feminist philosophy from India.

Hull House as a Space-​in-​Between: Towards a Spatial Ethics of Reciprocity in Difference One of the first things to note about Hull House, as far as liminality is concerned, is its location. The location appears to have something of a mediate character. Addams writes, “I think that. . . the mere foothold of a house, easily accessible, ample in space, hospitable, and tolerant in spirit, situated in the midst of the large foreign colonies which so easily isolate themselves in American cities, would be in itself a serviceable thing for Chicago” (1990/​1910, 55). Here some idea of the House as a bridge-​space between contrasting worlds begins to emerge in Addams’s characterization of the energies and motivation of the space that was Hull House. Hull House succeeded in providing a much needed bridge between the immigrant population and white middle-​class America, and more so because the poor and the needy found it non-​threatening, nurturing, open to diverse perspectives, and thus as belonging to them. The aim was to retain aspects of different worlds and yet not to reduce it to any one of them. Very importantly, Hull House provided the immigrant population with an opening onto the wider world beyond the narrow bounds of their colonies without completely uprooting them from their familiar neighborhood at the same time. In other words, while rooted within their familiar everyday worlds, the house also hints at an excess in/​of life-​worlds, in tune with Lugones’s association of liminality with the idea of excess. The characterization of Hull House as a “foothold” space is also interesting and, at this point, seems to resonate with the idea of a caring-​space in-​between. As foothold, one can envision Hull House as a space that would be familiar and personal enough in that it is characterized by bonds of care and shared living, but it is also a window into a larger unfamiliar world beyond. In this sense, it becomes a blurred or blended space that mediates between the home and the world, the familiar and the unfamiliar, and facilitates the development of those who came within its fold as individuals and as social persons at the same time. The aim was to relate the lives of the immigrants to a larger and fuller circle, without sacrificing specificity in the process. The understanding of Hull House as a bridge-​space continues through Addams’s work. For instance, Addams wanted Hull House to be able to devise “some educational enterprise, which should build a bridge between European and American experiences in such wise as to give them both more meaning and a sense of relation” (1990/​ 1910, 139). I think a direct understanding of the dialogic nature of the space emerges

Dialogue, Liminality, and a Spatial Ethic of Reciprocity    363 in this characterization; it is one aimed at achieving dialogic reciprocity. Addams suggests that the role of Hull House is to be a bridge space between the European and American worldviews. It is not merely about familiarizing the European immigrants to the American way of life, but also about American experience gaining in the process of this dialogue. We are reminded at this point of Addams’s insight for charity-​ workers discussed in the previous section about how the dialogic encounter is one where collision of social and moral worlds is bound to happen, thus destabilizing and reconstructing values for both parties anew within the dialogue. Both the charity-​ worker and the immigrant woman are agents in the process, and the re-​adjustment of habits that Addams refers to needs to happen on both ends. The aim is reciprocity in and with difference. It appears that a similar understanding of dialogic reciprocity and interactive agency is now being extrapolated to Hull House conceived as a bridge space. The call is for multiplicity in contrast to a worldview that is unified metaphysically, epistemically, and also morally. Lake, in her work on “wicked problems” and Addams, references various scholars on wicked problems to note points of affinity between the insistence of “boundary organizations” in the wicked problems literature and Hull House. According to Lake, both emphasize the need for bridging the gap between knowledge and its use (2014, 86), addressing real problems (2014, 86), and providing a balancing point for stakeholders from various sides of a problem (2014, 87). These insights can further complement our understanding of Hull House as an ontological, epistemic, and moral bridge between diverse worlds, geared toward upholding dialogic reciprocity. The organization of spaces in Hull House and activities within these spaces provide further insight into the importance of liminal spatiality in facilitating dialogic reciprocity and interactive agency. Addams took innumerable steps to foster the feelings of belongingness and relationality so as to build a more inclusive community. The art gallery, with its numerous paintings reflecting the diverse cultural traditions of the world, reassured the European immigrants of the awareness and sensitivity of the white middle-​class American population toward the histories and cultural richness of other nations. Addams refers to an Italian who “expressed great surprise when he found that we, although Americans, still liked pictures . . . ” (1990/​1910, 214). Projects like the art gallery at Hull House, in turn, helped the immigrants to overcome some of the deep feelings of uncertainty and mistrust they had toward Americans and thereby led to a reduction in the wide gap between the two communities. While Addams talks about re-​adjustment of habits for an expansion of our moral lives as part of her social ethics, Lugones reminds us of how, due to their ability to resist the norms, expectations, and sedimented patterns and hierarchies of established structures, liminal spaces can function as a kind of antistructure. This reminds me of the reading of the collective space and activities of Hull House through the lens of queer studies by Shannon Jackson. Jackson conceives of the space of Hull House as a “generative region. . . thereby allowing us to see the unsettling of terms such as family, kinship, welfare, and the state, even when such redefinition was not self-​consciously foregrounded” (2009, 153). The disruptions and fluidity of spaces within Hull House, where private spaces seamlessly stretched into public ones, where a bedroom space would be converted

364   Amrita Banerjee into receiving spaces and so on, is highlighted. The spatial redefinition and cooperative living in these spaces, argues Jackson, were supported by redefinition of relations of various kinds. These were not only embodied in non-​normative bonds of attachment with fellow settlers and a democratic distribution of tasks, but were also reflected in non-​normative notions of kinship such as forming bonds with children who were not one’s biological offsprings. Jackson’s interpretation highlights Hull House’s subversive potential and its reconstructive role in the public world of Chicago. Writes Jackson, “Hull House’s complexly shifting topography not only disrupts the available lexicons of publicity and privacy but threatens to expose the instability of that binary in apparently stable forms of family, home, kinship, and state welfare as well” (2009, 153–​154). Jackson’s analysis complements the point of emphasis in this chapter on the possibilities that the spatial formations of Hull House provided for the performance of the self in a dynamic and interactive mode with the Other, alongside being a caring-​space in-​between. Moreover, in the sense that Hull House challenged established habits of thought that might limit one’s imaginative capacities toward other worlds, it seems to be imbued with the characteristic of a space that is an antistructure, and therefore a potential site of structural critique and radical social action. In Addams’s writings, examples of such spaces abound, one of which is the stage at Hull House. Musical and theatrical activities performed the important role of fostering the feeling of community among diverse immigrant groups. Addams points out that different immigrant groups used the stage at Hull House to enact famous plays pertaining to the history and culture of their own nations, and that this helped create an appreciation for the beliefs, traditions, and epistemic worlds of others. Discussing Addams’s philosophy of art, L. Ryan Musgrave Bonomo observes that like Hull House, the practice of arts there takes on a “collective and cooperative methodology” (2010, 116). Not only were these practices engaged and collective, thus breaking the masculinist image of a lone artistic genius creating a work of art, but also witnessed immigrants shifting their conceptions of beauty and connecting it to their daily realities through collective productions. Writes Musgrave Bonomo, “Moral imagination enabled Hull House immigrants to dream and imagine collectively, not just individually . . . through group acts (some within similar ethnic groups, some within mixed groups) of both making and engaging art that seemed foreign in some way” (2010, 117). While fostering intergroup dialogue, the plurality of immigrant groups that might otherwise be homogenized from the perspective of white America, and could potentially happen within immigrant communities as well, is averted through the construction of such spaces. I suggest that both the specificity and blurring of life-​ worlds on the stage imbues the space with the dual character of an in-​between space and a caring space insofar as it is orients one toward culminating various epistemic and ethical virtues such as care, friendship, humility, and a regard for the Other. This resonates with our conception of caring-​spaces in-​between. Shannon Sullivan also remarks, “Addams’s pluralist desire for cross-​fertilization allows her both to respect the distinctiveness of different racial groups and to attempt to develop continuities across them” (2006, 171).

Dialogue, Liminality, and a Spatial Ethic of Reciprocity    365 What all these spaces within Hull House embody is also the communicative and narrative intent of a caring space, which we (Banerjee and Karilemla) identify as unique aspects of the spatialization of care in the in-​between spaces of the Ao. The Labor Museum, Addams observes, performed the important function of encouraging dialogue between the different immigrant groups because each had the opportunity to observe and learn the arts and crafts indigenous to the culture of another. The richness of some of the European crafts was also evidence that the immigrants had valuable experiences to share with the Americans. In fact, not only did such an enterprise foster intergroup communication and feelings of solidarity, but it also helped the immigrants’ children experience and understand the value of the traditional arts and crafts of their indigenous cultures, thus resulting in intergenerational dialogue within immigrant communities. The story of how Angelina, an Italian girl, came to respect her mother through witnessing other people’s admiration of her mother’s spinning skills in the Labor Museum is an interesting example given by Addams of how projects like the Labor Museum fostered intergenerational communication (1990/​1910, 142). Moreover, through the several exhibits that traced the historical development of modern factory-​ machinery from primitive tools and implements, Addams claims that the immigrants’ children learned to appreciate the value of the crafts of women that were an integral part of their mothers’ lives in Europe. The possibility of travelling into the life-​worlds of previous generations even in the context of dislocation and dispossession gave an opportunity to this new generation of immigrant children to arrive at a narrative understanding of self by establishing a relationship to their history and cultural memory. This, in turn, cultivated empathy and respect for the point of view of their parents. Writes Addams, “the thought of her mother with any other background than that of the tenement was new to Angelina and at least two things resulted; she allowed her mother to pull out of the big box under the bed the beautiful homespun garments which had been previously hidden away as uncouth; and she openly came into the Labor Museum by the same door as did her mother . . . ” (1990/​1910, 143). This is a classic example of how the capacity for moral imagination, care, and ultimately moral intelligence was propelled in novel directions in the space of Hull House. Hull House as a caring-​space in-​between provided an epistemic and moral vantage point for the self to relate not only to present Others, but also to history, and one’s cultural identity across generations. Such a narrative sense of self is not only able to connect to its past, but may be better oriented to look toward a different future with hope. Such spaces are also capable of anchoring moral imagination and individual agency to the larger public sphere. Wendy Sarvasy’s observations regarding the dining practices at Hull House drives home this point. Sarvasy argues that Hull House’s community dining room where everyone ate together and food was prepared by a unionized, professional staff played a significant role in Addams’s call for socializing and democratizing the so-​called women’s domestic duties, to which bread labor was central. The residents at Hull House also came up with different ways to provide cooked meals to its working-​class neighbors. This kind of democratic performance in the space of Hull House created a radical counter-​point to the “undemocratic mistress/​servant relationship” (Sarvasy, 2009, 195). “In calling for

366   Amrita Banerjee the socializing and democratizing of women’s domestic duty,” writes Sarvasy, “Addams emphasized the possibilities for creating new participatory spaces for global bread politics” (2009, 195). Again, worthy of note to the present analysis is how the dynamic, democratic, and communicative character of the space that is Hull House appears to play a significant role in the generation of these democratic values. More importantly, as an in-​ between space, this so-​called localized space eventually becomes the vantage point for articulating a bread politics that is more global in scope. Productive transactions between the self and the Other, and self and culture across diverse temporalities seemed to have been actualized within Hull House. The entire analysis so far also reveals that in her project of fostering dialogue between people from diverse cultural backgrounds, Addams made every attempt to avoid assimilation and preserve the richness of different epistemic and moral worlds. Hull House, as a liminal space, becomes a training ground for enacting a new kind of social ethics by propelling moral imagination in deeply transformative directions. Addams’s efforts at Hull House remind us of the significance of trying to inhabit a liminal space for developing the affective and qualitative dimensions that characterize our ethical lives. While the space provided the possibility of inhabiting multiple epistemic worlds, it also became a space for cultivating an ethic of care predicated on a relational, narrative, and communicative understanding of the self. Of course, Addams herself acknowledges that there was failure and disappointment at various points, but this only enriches our understanding of what it means to actualize moral agency in an interactive vein within lived contexts. Refusing to settle down once and for all into one worldview is a way of keeping the spirit of moral inquiry alive. It trains us to maintain a constant attitude of interrogation and accountability toward the Other and ourselves, which marks a healthy and mature moral imagination. The struggles that we encounter in this space have revolutionary potential for individual moral growth as well as social transformation along more democratic lines. By teaching us to reflect on and reevaluate our values together, the spatial ethics in this case is one of “affectionate interpretation,” to use Addams’s phrase. It also demands a certain epistemic honesty and an ethical orientation of humility to let the Other speak in their difference. Lived moral dialogue rather than formal moral agreement is the goal of dialogic reciprocity and a dual-​ended understanding of agency. To achieve this, the space of Hull House demanded engagement and engrossment. Moral imagination and ultimately moral intelligence in Addamsian dialogic ethics is not about doing the right thing in a solipsistic and detached way. It is literally about challenging, questioning, interrogating, and pushing one’s moral boundaries. Hull House becomes the prototype of a liminal space, which translates this kind of dialogic ethics into a spatial ethics across difference.

Notes 1. For more on the concepts of moral intelligence, moral imagination, and deliberation, see Dewey’s Human Nature and Conduct (1922).

Dialogue, Liminality, and a Spatial Ethic of Reciprocity    367 2. Steven Fesmire points out that a remarkable aspect of Dewey’s notion of habit is that “Dewey helpfully uses the term ‘habit’ broadly to encompass not only private behavioral patterns but also heritable interpretive structures such as symbol systems, stories, beliefs, myths, metaphors, virtues, gestures, prejudices and the like” (2003, 10). It is for these reasons that Dewey points towards the need for gradually working on and changing deeper habits in order to effect social transformation or any change in the status quo. 3. Iris Marion Young, in her book Justice and Politics of Difference (1990), offers an elaborate feminist critique of impartiality and universality, and in fact the idea of a universal moral point of view. 4. See Maurice Hamington (2001 and 2004) on Addams’s notion of embodied caring for further analysis in this direction. Hamington also establishes a connection between Addams and the feminist tradition of care ethics. 5. This claim was made by Ruby, one of the numerous people who came into personal contact with Jane Addams and who spent a significant part of her life at Hull House. She was interviewed by Jean Bethke Elshtain, who reports this in Jane Addams and the Dream of American Democracy: A Life (2002, 13). 6. The importance of stories in Addams’s scheme of writing is reiterated by Jean B. Elshtain, when she says, “With stories. . . in which we recognize our own lives’ dramas, Addams calls us into empathy, humility, and large-​heartedness of a sort that prepares us to travel into shabby rooms in decrepit buildings on a mission of discovering and ameliorating or mitigating . . . ” (2002, 31). For an analysis of Addams’s literary style and its evolution, see Katherine Joslin, “Reading Jane Addams in the Twenty-​first Century” (2010). Writes Joslin, “Addams’s literary style of advancing argument through narrative, full of the voices of various people, embodies her ethics. Listening to those most different from ourselves, we come to know our social identity, and writing in many voices, we entice readers” (2010, 40). Joslin’s focus then becomes the evolution of Addams’s literary style from early through her later works, whereas my focus is on the narrative and communicative sense of moral self that emerges in the context of the dialogic ethics that Addams puts forward. 7. Addams writes thus, “We fatuously hoped that we might pluck from the human tragedy itself a consciousness of a common destiny which should bring its own healing, that we might extract from life’s very misfortunes a power of cooperation which should be effective against them” (1990/​1910, 80). 8. Hamington gives an in-​depth analysis of the importance of active listening and participation in Addams. He writes, “Listening was how members of the Hull House community came to understand their neighbors and their needs” (2001, 111). 9. The Ao Naga tribe is one of the major tribes from northeastern India. 10. The institutions of Arju and Züki/​Tzüki, however, began to die down as a result of conversions to Christianity from the traditional Ao religion during British colonial rule in India.

References Addams, Jane. (1990 [1910]). Twenty years at Hull House. University of Illinois Press. Addams, Jane. (2002 [1902]). Democracy and social ethics. University of Illinois Press, 2002. Addams, Jane. (1912). A Modern Lear. Survey 29, 131–​137. Archives of Women’s Political Communication, Iowa State University. https://​awpc.cat​tcen​ter.iast​ate.edu/​2018/​03/​05/​the -​mod​ern-​lear-​1896/​.

368   Amrita Banerjee Banerjee, Amrita and Karilemla. (2016). Arju as “caring-​space, in-​between:” Philosophical reflections on “care” from Ao Naga, India. Philosophy in the Contemporary World 23(1, spring), 91–​105. Banerjee, Amrita and Karilemla. (2020). Reconstructing a critical ontology of education through an ethics of care: Critical pedagogy, the world view of the Ao Naga tribe, and care ethics in dialogue. In John Russon, Siby K. George, P. G. Jung (Eds.), Teaching in Unequal Societies (pp. 223–​250). Bloomsbury. Benhabib, Seyla. (2008). The generalized and the concrete other: The Kohlberg-​Gilligan controversy and Moral Theory. In Alison Bailey and Chris Cuomo (Eds.), The Feminist Philosophy Reader (pp. 478–​496). McGraw Hill. Dewey, John. (1988 [1922]). Human nature and conduct. Southern Illinois University Press. Elshtain, Jean Bethke. (2002). Jane Addams and the dream of American democracy: A life. Basic Books. Fesmire, Steven. (2003). John Dewey and moral imagination: Pragmatism in ethics. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Fischer, Marilyn. (2009). The conceptual scaffolding of Newer Ideals of Peace. In Marilyn Fischer, Carol Nackenoff, and Wendy Chmielewski (Eds.), Jane Addams and the Practice of Democracy (pp. 165–​182). University of Illinois Press. Fischer, Marilyn. (2010). Trojan women and devil baby tales: Addams on domestic violence. In Maurice Hamington (Ed.), Feminist Interpretations of Jane Addams (pp. 81–​105). Pennsylvania State University Press. Haddock Seigfried, Charlene. (1996). Pragmatism and feminism: Reweaving the social fabric. University of Chicago Press. Haddock Seigfried, Charlene. (2009). The courage of one’s convictions or the conviction of one’s courage? Jane Addams’s principled compromises. In Marilyn Fischer, Carol Nackenoff, and Wendy Chmielewski (Eds.), Jane Addams and the Practice of Democracy (pp. 40–​62). University of Illinois Press. Hamington, Maurice. (2001). Jane Addams and a politics of embodied care. The Journal of Speculative Philosophy 15(2), 105–​121. Hamington, Maurice. (2004). Embodied care: Jane Addams, Maurice Merleau-​Ponty, and feminist ethics. University of Illinois Press. Jackson, Shannon. (2009). Toward a queer social welfare studies: Unsettling Jane Addams. In Marilyn Fischer, Carol Nackenoff, and Wendy Chmielewski (Eds.), Jane Addams and the Practice of Democracy (pp. 143–​162). University of Illinois Press. Joslin, Katherine. (2010). Reading Jane Addams in the twenty-​first century. In Maurice Hamington (Ed.), Feminist Interpretations of Jane Addams (pp. 31–​53). Pennsylvania State University Press. Knight, Louise W. (2009). Jane Addams’s theory of cooperation. In Marilyn Fischer, Carol Nackenoff, and Wendy Chmielewski (Eds.), Jane Addams and the Practice of Democracy (pp. 65–​86). University of Illinois Press. Lake, Danielle. (2014). Jane Addams and wicked problems: Putting the pragmatic method to use. The Pluralist 9(3, Fall), 77–​94. Lugones, Maria C. (1990). Structure/​antistructure and agency under oppression. The Journal of Philosophy 87(10, October), 500–​507. Pappas, Gregory Fernando. (2008). John Dewey’s ethics: Democracy as experience. Indiana University Press.

Dialogue, Liminality, and a Spatial Ethic of Reciprocity    369 Musgrave Bonomo, L. Ryan. (2010). Addams’s philosophy of art: Feminist aesthetics and moral imagination at Hull House. In Maurice Hamington (Ed.), Feminist Interpretations of Jane Addams (pp. 107–​122). Pennsylvania State University Press. Sarvasy, Wendy. (2009). A global “common table”: Jane Addams’s theory of democratic cosmopolitanism and world social citizenship. In Marilyn Fischer, Carol Nackenoff, and Wendy Chmielewski (Eds.), Jane Addams and the Practice of Democracy (pp. 183–​202). University of Illinois Press. Sullivan, Shannon. (2006). Revealing whiteness: The unconscious habits of racial privilege. Indiana University Press. Witt, Charlotte. (1996). How feminism is re-​writing the philosophical canon. The Alfred P. Stiernotte Memorial Lecture in Philosophy at Quinnipiac College, October 2. Young, Iris Marion. (1990). Justice and the politics of difference. Princeton University Press.

Chapter 19

Pub lic Admin i st rat i on and So cial E qu i t y Catching Up to Jane Addams Nuri Heckler

Public administration as a field credits Woodrow Wilson with its founding (McCandless & Guy, 2013). In the field’s scholarship, Jane Addams is mostly unnoticed (Burnier, 2021). At the same time, public administrators spent much of the 20th century establishing a governance structure that enacted many of the ideals and philosophies espoused by Addams (Burnier, 2021). More recently, public administration scholars are rediscovering the relevance of Addams’s work with a turn toward “social equity” (Svara & Brunet, 2005). This chapter argues that Addams’s emphasis on the feminine aspects of public service, her adoption of the social gospel as a normative lodestone, and her activism diminished her influence on early public administration scholarship even as these same attributes amplified her impact on governance. The chapter concludes by discussing how public administration researchers are rediscovering her work in a long-​delayed attempt to catch up to Addams’s prolific scholarship and tireless service.

Weaving Together the Politics Administration Dichotomy Public administration scholars often attribute the birth of the field to an essay by Wilson (1887) advocating for dedicating a field of research to the administration of governance. One year after securing his PhD, Wilson argues that research of administration itself, disaggregated from the politics that was the primary focus of most political scientists and sociologists of the time, could strengthen the project of democratic self-​governance

372   Nuri Heckler (Stillman, 1973; Wilson, 1887). For most of the 20th century, public administration researchers referenced this article as a means of delineating the field of public administration (McCandless & Guy, 2013), a heuristic that prioritized businesslike efficiency and rule-​driven bureaucracy above social aims like mitigating inequality or creating a more socially just society (Stivers, 2000). While most scholars today recognize that administration and politics cannot successfully be divided (Stivers, 2008), the heuristic remains foundational as a means of conceptualizing and defining public administration as a field of research and practice (McCandless & Guy, 2013). Wilson would eventually put his ideas into practice as governor of the state of New Jersey and eventually the president of the United States, and the field he is credited with launching dedicated itself to uncovering efficient and normatively neutral (i.e., scientifically objective) business practices (Stillman, 1973). For public administration scholars, the neutral and scientific examination of government processes was amplified by the development of “Scientific Management” (Taylor, 1913). In the pursuit of efficiency, many of the most prominent scholars in the field focused primarily on increasing efficiency and reducing costs (Stivers, 2000). Scholars in the New York Bureau of Municipal Research advanced the theory that public administration should seek to efficiently execute the will of legislators (Waldo, 1948). Stivers (2000) points out that this normative argument did not happen in an academic vacuum, but was in fact a reaction to the settlement-​house movement, of which Addams was arguably the best-​known spokesperson (Knight, 2005). The bureau men were eager to distance themselves from the feminine municipal service of the settlement movement (Stivers, 2000), a kind of public service that Addams (1913b) herself describes in the feminine terms, “city housekeeping” (3). The bureau researchers made their rhetorical and methodological pivot by emphasizing the muscular rigidity of statistics and appealing to masculinity (Heckler, in press). Stivers (2000) makes this argument by pointing out how the bureau men found the settlement movement’s methods lacking based on social constructions of “hard science versus soft data, the rigor of natural science versus the hoped-​for relevance of social science, reasons versus intuition . . . ” (12). Because of such forces, including sexism in academia, the bureau’s normative approach came to dominate public administration research, even as Addams continued to influence the practice of American public administration (Burnier, 2008, 2021; Shields, 2017; Stivers, 2000). Addams’s thinking weaves theory, empirical research, practice, and moral philosophy so tightly together that it is impossible to disentangle. Hull House was not only a settlement house, or laboratory, or home, or daycare, or community center, or seminar space, but each and all of those at once (Addams, 1911). Addams inextricably links administration and politics throughout her work. If sanitation is poor, she runs for the office overseeing trash collection (Knight, 2005). It is not that she has to do politics to engage in her administration of public service. For Addams, there is no clear way to demarcate the two. She integrates religious expression with feminist ethics in a social gospel simultaneously practical and theoretically sophisticated (Addams, 1902, 1895; Stebner, 2010). Echoing the ability to combine classic literature with feminist

Public Administration and Social Equity    373 ethics, in her valedictory speech from Rockford Seminary, Addams (2002/​1881) uses classic Greek mythology to argue that masculine “hard research” only taps into half “the power and magnificence of knowledge,” (11) while what Addams calls “women’s intuition” develops a more profound understanding of the world. She would come to unite these two ways of knowing in a phenomenon she names “sympathetic knowledge” informed “not only by the information of the statistician, but by sympathetic understanding” (Addams, 1910a). This is not a rejection of harder science, but a weaving of masculine and feminine that is reflected in modern queer theory analyses of transgendering as transcending gender binaries rather than merely transiting between identities (Ekins & King, 2006). Addams’s expert weaving of service and philosophy places her alongside her friend and contemporary, John Dewey, as a pragmatist philosopher whose work still echoes in public administration research and practice (Shields, 2006). For Addams, research is a process of learning from her community. In Hull House, she promotes a “Working People’s Social Science Club,” where people from the community, government officials, and academics gather to share ideas and the “only possible danger from this commingling of many theories is incurred when there is an attempt at suppression” (Addams, 1893, p. 53). Even the act of charity, which she generally condemns as paternalistic, holds in it the promise of learning from those the charitable visitor seeks to save. We forget that the accumulation of knowledge and the holding of convictions must finally result in the application of that knowledge and those convictions to life itself; that the necessity for activity and a pull upon the sympathies is so severe, that all the knowledge in the possession of the visitor is constantly applied, and she has a reasonable chance for an ultimate intellectual comprehension. (Addams, 1902, p. 68)

For Addams, knowledge does not flow from expert to practitioner, nor is it most developed in quasi-​experimental objectivity. Knowledge is an ongoing act of coproduction that stems from the combining of need with the most appropriate tool. Addams’s proficient mixing of theory, practice, research, and social-​gospel normativity embedded itself deeply in US governance as one of the progenitors of the modern social-​equity movement. Addams was one of the most well-​known people in the world, with a philosophy of municipal governance that was influential throughout the United States (Shields, 2017). Most well-​known early scholars cited in public administration literature knew Addams’s work, including Charles Beard and Richard T. Ely, each of whom edited series that included her research (Addams, 1895, 1932). Several men associated with the New York Bureau had attended meetings at Addams’s Hull House, including Beard and the Bureau’s founding director, Henry Bruere (Stivers, 2000). Yet, as public administration evolved into an academic field, the New York Bureau was regularly considered in the academic literature even as Addams was conspicuously absent.

374   Nuri Heckler

Addams’s Erasure from Public Administration Literature The same complexity of thought and multitudinous influences that account for Addams’s effect on society contributed to the fact that she had had so little impact on early public administration literature. There are at least three related reasons that Addams’s writings did not carry forward to influence scholarship in the field of public administration. The first reason is proposed by Stivers (2000). Addams is not just a woman, but her philosophy of governance is remarkably feminine, to the extent that she is often claimed by feminists as a trailblazer (Shields, 2006; Mirabella, 2013). Her contributions as a voting-​rights and peace activist make it clear that she herself understood gender to be an important facet of her work (Knight, 2005; Rissler & Shields, 2019), and her writings and speeches throughout her life reveal a thinker who understood that women brought something important to governance that could not be easily replicated by the mostly men-​managed governments and charities (Addams, 2002/​1881, 1913a). These feminine aspects of Addams’s thinking, research, and practice ran in tension with the perceived need of public administration as a field to establish itself as a proper social science, especially in the minds of the elected officials and government managers who many scholars most sought to convince (Stivers, 2000; 1993). The second reason that Addams may have been overlooked by public administration research is that her work is so inextricably linked to social-​gospel and religious ideology. In the most influential US public administration journal before 1980, Public Administration Review, the only mention of the term “social gospel” can be found in a book review equating the concept to social equity (Morrow, 1973). Yet, 29.6% of charitable giving in 2016 was to religious organizations, and an unknown additional billions of dollars were spent on religiously affiliated social services (NCCS, 2020; Fulton, 2020). Just as expertise was distancing itself from femininity in the mid-​20th century, academia was also attempting to establish objectivity through positivist conceptions of scientific process, experimentation, and quasi-​experimentation (Riccucci, 2010; Hummel & Stivers, 2011). This scientificity (Xu, 2005) was no more compatible with the social gospel than femininity was. Addams’s thinking and practice are both firmly grounded in the social gospel including notions of righteousness and social justice (Addams, 1910a, 1902). Addams attends a seminary with a focus on developing missionaries, but even then she eagerly reads the humanistic philosophies of Ralph Waldo Emerson (Knight, 2005). Later, her religious views evolve, exhibiting a Universalist or Unitarian secular spirituality combined with high biblical literacy and an emphasis on good deeds in this life over preparing for the next (Stebner, 2010). Grounded thus, Addams freely and easily weaves her empirical findings with normative guidance, often making her point with biblical themes that were delegitimized in a field dominated by the Bureau Men (Stivers, 2008). In one exemplifying text, Addams (1893) makes two separate arguments for the

Public Administration and Social Equity    375 importance of the settlement movement, entitling two adjacent chapters “The Subjective Necessity for Social Settlements” and “The Objective Value of a Social Settlement.” Her writings weave together scientific “experiments” with a call to serve that is rooted in faith by referencing the Christian Bible. “It is well to remind ourselves, from time to time,” Addams (1902, p. 1) writes, “that ‘Ethics’ is but another word for ‘righteousness,’ that for which many men and women of every generation have hungered and thirsted, and without which life becomes meaningless.” This can be directly contrasted against the turn to discussing ethics in public administration without reference to religion, but rather to legal structures and personal ethical codes (e.g., Finer, 1941). Elshtain (2002) notes that Addams’s Hull House was both “the Protestant social gospel in practice” and “a lively experiment . . . ” The positivist turn has been regularly explored in public administration literature (e.g., Hummel & Stivers, 2011; Meier, 2005), but there has been little discussion of the extent to which scientific management impacted the pre-​existing social gospel ethos of many public servants and how that ethos translated into turn-​of-​the-​century welfare programs in the Anglo world (Gawthrop, 1999). Richard T. Ely is well known as a significant figure in the early decades of public administration scholarship (Hoffman, 2002). He too was a religious scholar, whose work was required reading at many seminaries for decades (Rader, 1966), yet his research on the importance of religion to governance is as invisible to the public administration cannon as Addams had been until recently. While public servants and governance systems in the United States have increasingly embraced religious nonprofits, public administration literature has all but ignored the influence of religion and the social-​gospel movement. The third reason that Addams’s work falls into obscurity within the public administration silo is related to her activism. For a field that was delineating itself by marking a separation between administration and politics, Addams’s writings presage the eventual consensus of the field about how inevitably interwoven the two concepts are (McCandless & Guy, 2013). While the bureau men were establishing themselves as neutral experts in efficient administration, Addams was an active supporter of feminism, socialism, and labor (Knight, 2005). She takes up unpopular causes, such as a peaceful resolution to World War I (Rissler & Shields, 2019) and the release of Sacco and Vanzetti during the Red Scare in 1921 (Selmi, 2001). In the Ladies Home Journal, Addams advocates for suffrage, not with the academic sociological writing for which she was so well known, but with dripping sarcasm as she envisions a world in which men were seeking suffrage from a society dominated by women. “Can we, the responsible voters, take the risk of wasting our taxes by extending the vote to those who have always been so ready to lose their heads over mere military display?” (Addams, 1913a, p. 108). The market forces that compelled the bureau men who came to occupy the field of public administration to turn to masculine scientific objectivity in response to the perception that municipalities were femininized (Stivers, 1993, 2000) are the same forces that would encourage them to distance themselves from a scholar who sided with communists (during the McCarthy era), peace activists (during the Vietnam War), or women’s rights (during Shirley Chisholm’s historic presidential candidacy).

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Addams’s Channels of Influence on Public Administration Interestingly, the reasons that public administration as a field turned away from Addams the researcher and philosopher are linked to reasons that she continues to have an outsized impact on the practice of public administration as she laid the groundwork for 21st-​century social-​equity practices. That Addams continues to influence the practice of public administration despite having had little impact in the public administration literature over the past century is less surprising when one considers the study of women’s work in another field. Much of historical analysis is conducted using documents such as newspapers and legal titles. Unfortunately, women are poorly documented, as are ethnic and racial minorities who did not own as much land and were not as often considered “newsworthy.” Therefore, archeology plays a crucial role in re-​creating the life of women and other marginalized groups, where artifacts of domestic labor and childcare help piece together lives that the official documentarians of history, often white men, did not categorize as sufficiently important for analysis (Yentsch, 2011). Similarly, identifying Addams’s influence on social equity in public administration requires piecing together various channels. Three of these channels are her influence on women who came to be prominent architects of the modern US welfare state, her influence on a nonprofit sector that remains fused with religious organizations, and her influence on activist movements including the peace movement and the women’s movement. Not only did Addams’s thinking and practice live on through the many Bureau Men she influenced, but the field of public administration is coming to consensus on the understanding that Addams’s colleagues and protégés occupied so many important offices in government, especially during the New Deal era, that her influence is almost certainly felt today. These office holders who were directly influenced by Addams are numerous (Shields, 2017), and it is notable how often their work centers around social equity. Burnier (2008, 2021) documents the connection between Addams and Frances Perkins, who ran Franklin Roosevelt’s Department of Labor. Perkins was a close personal friend with Addams, and an advocate for social justice in the highest ranked position any woman had occupied in the federal government up to that point. Mary McLeod Bethune was also close with Addams (Burnier, 2021; Hanson, 2003). Bethune, who served on several boards with Addams, founded the National Council of Negro Women and the United Negro College Fund (Hanson, 2003). Both she and Addams consulted with the Hoover administration, Bethune serving in an official capacity as a member of Hoover’s National Committee on Child Welfare, and eventually taking over the Office of Minority Affairs in Franklin Roosevelt’s National Youth Administration (Hanson, 2003). Another close connection to Addams, Florence Kelley lived at Hull House and was given credit by Frances Perkins for the secretary’s policy proposals on working conditions (Burnier, 2021). Another important colleague of Addams was Mary Anderson, the

Public Administration and Social Equity    377 director of the US Department of Labor’s Women’s Bureau for many years, a figure described as a vigorous advocate “for social justice feminism” (McGuire, 2012, p. 265). Her influence at the highest ranks of government included a powerful network (Stivers, 2002; Burnier, 2021), and her own close friendships with presidents and other influential elected officials including Hoover, T. Roosevelt, and many more (Knight, 2010). As a result of these many ways that she influenced government policy, public administration historians have repeatedly argued that Addams and women close to her have an outsized influence over the modern welfare state, including labor, child-​welfare, and work-​safety laws and policies. Notably, these connections with powerful women likely relied on the same femininity that undermined Addams’s influence in the public administration literature. Just as her influence in government is bigger than accounted for in the literature, Addams’s influence is perhaps even more pronounced throughout the nonprofit sector. While the settlement house is no longer a dominant means of providing social services to the urban poor, many service providers within the urban core reflect settlement-​house practices (Stout, 2009). Perhaps because so many settlement women guided the New Deal, the 1960s War on Poverty reflected many settlement values, including middle-​class service through AmeriCorps, an emphasis on childcare and youth education through Head Start, and the use of the professional, educated social workers as an intermediary for resources (Trolander, 1987). Even as the social-​gospel ethos evolved into a social-​service ethos in many nonprofit organizations including the Young Men’s Christian Association (YMCA) (Zald & Denton, 1963) and the National Council of Churches (Jenkins, 1977), these nonprofits kept many of the communitarian and education-​focused goals of the settlement houses close to the heart of their missions. Just as Addams foregrounded service as an expression of her faith, so have many modern religiously affiliated social-​services nonprofits shifted to liberation theology and focused on good deeds as an expression of religious devotion (Sanks, 1980). Beyond religiously affiliated nonprofits, Addams continues to impact the nonprofit sector through her mark on philanthropy and corporate social responsibility. In addition to her prolific work providing services, engaging in activism, researching, and writing, Addams engaged in the earliest efforts to structure community philanthropy in Chicago, structures that were replicated elsewhere (Schneiderhan, 2007; Hall, 1992). Among the many residents to get to know her at Hull House were Gerard Swope and Walter Gifford (Hall, 1992). Swope married a lifelong friend of settlement woman Florence Kelley and became CEO of General Electric, during which time he helped lay the groundwork for what contemporary scholars think of as corporate social responsibility (Marens, 2013). Meanwhile, Gifford took over AT&T and set about creating a “corporate image as a private company working in the public service” (Hall, 1992, p. 56). From the 1960s Great Society and the 1990s Thousand Points of Light policies leveraging nonprofits in the name of social service to the efforts of modern corporations to participate (or at least be perceived as participating) in the provision of social services, Addams’s fingerprints can be seen in every facet of the modern intersectoral social-​ services delivery system (Nickel & Eikenberry, 2006).

378   Nuri Heckler While there are still other fields in which Addams has influence that overlap with public administration including social work, sanitation, and child welfare, one more that is worth mentioning is her impact on the activism that has shaped the public administration context so profoundly during the 20th and 21st centuries. Despite tensions between militant activists like Alice Paul, Saul Alinsky, and others (McGuire, 2012; Tobin, 1988), Addams’s activism for peace, gender equality, and anti-​poverty continue to influence society. From the beginning of her career, she struggled with the difficulties of advocating for a better world while still securing the resources needed to keep Hull House and her other myriad projects going (Knight, 2010). She was a pragmatist in more than one sense who believed that moral rigidity was often a path toward immoral behavior shrouded in dogmatic ethical prescriptions (Shields, 2017). Despite her funders calling on her to condemn the labor unrest at the Pullman Plant in 1893, she defensively refused to do so (Addams, 1896). Some authors have attributed this reluctance to a kind of moral cowardice to stand up for the workers among whom she was living, while others argue that Addams obeyed her impulse to believe that positive peace was always possible regardless of the depth of the dispute (Knight, 2010; Rissler & Shields, 2019). Another possibility is that her decision was meant to walk a delicate balance between her funding sources among the wealthy Chicagoans who aligned with Pullman and the Hull House community who more often aligned with the strikers. Whatever determined her nuanced position on the 1893 Pullman Strike, Addams adopted assertive activist positions throughout her career. Even as she avoided taking sides in the Pullman Strikes, she signed her name to several aggressive communications demanding a more accountable philanthropic sector in Chicago (Schneiderhan, 2007). While traveling to Boston to give her speech about the Pullman Strike, she spoke at a reception hosted by Susan B. Anthony in an early step toward a lifelong association with women’s-​rights activism (Knight, 2010). She was a founding member of the National Child Labor Committee, an organization that would continue advocating in the interests of children until it “declared victory” in 2017 (Contrera, 2018; Knight, 2010). She joined the women’s club movement in the early 20th century as part of her efforts for suffrage, and her voice was well known as an activist for women’s rights (Knight, 2010; Scimecca & Goodwin, 2003). She was also among the co-​founders of the Women’s International League for Peace & Freedom (WILPF) and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), both organizations that continue to be active in the areas of feminism, peace activism, and racial justice (Knight, 2010; Deegan, 1988). All of this tends to understate Addams’s continued influence on political activism today. As an example of this outsized influence, despite Alinsky’s hostility toward the settlement-​house approaches, Hamington (2010, p. 265) argues that Addams’s influence over the Chicago School “places Addams as an indirect and unacknowledged mentor of Alinsky and explains much of their philosophical convergence.” From community organizing to peace to racial justice, Addams’s activism continues more than 85 years after her death. Addams’s mark on early 20th-​century public administration reverberates loudly in the 21st century. Addams influenced government through her direct connections with multiple higher office holders in the federal government, including cabinet officials

Public Administration and Social Equity    379 and presidents themselves, as well as her worldwide fame and renown as a Nobel laureate and popular public speaker. Her influence over the nonprofit sector begins with her place as a progenitor of modern social services including social work, childcare, shelters, sanitation, and more, and continues with her position as a prominent thinker in the social-​gospel movement and her clout as a leader of one of the best-​known nonprofit organizations of her time. Addams’s activism influenced even more nonprofits, including her co-​founding of the international peace organization (WILPF) and one of the most powerful civil rights organizations in the United States. (NAACP). Combined, Addams’s impression on every facet of public administration is incalculable (Shields, 2017), made all the more inscrutable by the well-​documented silence about her work in the public administration scholarly literature (Stivers, 2000). As these many channels of influence emanated from Addams’s praxis, public administration scholarship became less and less capable of understanding governance without her writing to make sense of these many practices she embedded in the field. The next section explains how social-​equity scholarship reached for Addams’s scholarship in an effort to catch up.

Addams’s Influence on Public Administration Social Equity It is not enough to say that Addams’s influence over public administration was significant, larger perhaps than any other single thinker apart from elected office holders like Wilson and Franklin Roosevelt. Addams’s influence was also fundamentally different from that of the men who came to dominate the scholarship on public administration in the middle of the 20th century. Her writing embraces social justice to mean a focus on bettering the community as well as the individual. As she often does, she weaves public administration with religion by discussing the Hebrew prophets, themselves public servants who were known for their administration of the state, as she argues, “They saw the promises of religion not for individuals but in the broad reaches of national affairs and in the establishment of social justice” (Addams, 1910b, p. 152). In another text she describes social justice as the meeting of charitable pity for the poor with the radical desire to create a more equal society (Addams, 1910a). Addams’s channels of influence are linked by one common thread. Everywhere that Addams influences public administration, she has done so in a way that implicates social equity and social justice.

Social Justice and Social Equity: Which Is Which? Modern public administration scholars primarily use several related terms, sometimes interchangeably, to describe the tension between governance being used to create

380   Nuri Heckler societies that are fair while still working to eliminate individual suffering. Active representation, social equity, and social justice are three concepts that are used to define at least a part of this tension that Addams and her contemporaries primarily refer to as social justice or, more parochially, righteousness. Active representation is a concept from the representative bureaucracy literature that refers to the implementation of government processes that are egalitarian, often through the hiring of public administrators who demographically represent those whom they serve (Selden, 1997). While many scholars focus primarily on the reasons that active representation does not appear even when public administrators are demographically diverse (Sowa & Selden, 2003), others argue that active representation is possible even without demographic representation through the deliberate management of race and gender identities (Heckler, 2017, 2019). While active representation captures some of what her contemporaries meant when they said social justice, it is incomplete, focusing on the public-​organizational makeup and processes as the interface of individual and community/​society rather than the overarching system of governance including society, governments, nonprofits, and special interests/​activists. Public administration scholars use the term social justice, but they use it differently than Addams did in 1910. Social justice is now generally used in tandem with social equity (Mason, McDougle, & Jones, 2019; Mercier, 2009; Valenzuela, 2017). It can signify a willingness to approach social-​equity issues using critical theories including critical race theory and critical gender theory (Nickels & Leach, 2021; Mason, McDougle, & Jones, 2019). When compared to Addams’s concept of social justice, modern social justice emphasizes the radical desire to focus on social change over alleviating individual suffering (Addams, 1910a). Addams sympathizes with this systemic perspective, while still pragmatically keeping tabs on the welfare of the individual. She focuses less on teaching individuals to “climb mountains” but on teaching communities “to move up a few feet higher” (Addams, 1896, p. 137). In her constant effort to weave together ideas and people to the benefit of all, Addams advocates for a concept of social justice that is simultaneously concerned with the individual and the system of oppression, acknowledges the tensions inherent in this project, and undertakes it anyway complete with all its contradictions. Social equity is the public administration term that most closely resembles Addams’s social-​justice concept. Addams (1910a) explains social justice in her 1910 essay that defines it as the balancing of social change and individual charity. Guy and McCandless (2012) identify social equity as a term that takes into account numerical sameness but goes further by including contextual inequalities and treating clients according to the difference built into the system. Rather than pushing back against the function of the charitable visitor who pities the individual, Guy and McCandless (2012; see also Gooden, 2015) are pushing back against the tendency of quantitative Bureau Man-​style public administration theory to treat dissimilar clients as though they are the same through the use of statistical analysis. The result is more similar than different. Addams (1910a) and social-​equity scholars both seek to balance the needs of communities oppressed by systems with the needs of individuals.

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Addams’s Embedded Influences on Social Equity Rediscovered Like a time-​capsule buried for public administration scholars to find, Addams’s influence on government, nonprofits, and activists operates in governance regardless of whether the leading journals take notice. Her praxis marked more and more aspects of governance until eventually it reemerged in the public administration literature when a group of scholars called on the field to respond more directly to the social changes ongoing in government in the late 1960s (Marini, 1971). Convening at a conference in Minnowbrook, New York, this group added social equity to the important considerations of public administration scholars. In doing so, they changed the field, setting on a path to explore important issues of democracy in the administrative state (Gooden, 2015). In helping the field to evolve, the Minnowbrook scholars responded to important trends ongoing in society and government, including the activism of the civil-​rights movement, the Vietnam-​era peace movement, and the feminist movement (Marini, 1971). They responded to Johnson’s Great Society, the War on Poverty, and the new laws against race and gender discrimination (Marini, 1971). Without knowing it, they were responding to the trees that had grown from the acorns Addams planted decades earlier. She planted these acorns through her colleagues who were attracted to her feminine approach to public administration imbued with social-​gospel normative sensibilities and her unabashed engagement in social activism. It was only a matter of time before scholars realized her influence on the movements that created the impetus for social equity and picked up her research and theory to help make sense of the governance she helped to create. Today, social equity is widely considered a pillar of public administration alongside Bureau Man priorities like efficiency, effectiveness, and economy (Svara & Brunet, 2005). One area where public administration scholars are using Addams to get caught up to the public administration landscape is around race and gender. As mentioned above, Shields (2006) turns to Addams (1902) to find ways to make governance more democratic and less focused on expertise. Similarly, Nickel and Eikenberry (2006) argue that Addams provides a model for weaving together public and private influences on governance by challenging “taken-​for-​granted social structures in an effort to create progressive social change” (373). The idea that Addams provides a different approach to governance is reflected in much of this research, especially in the writings of Stivers (1993, 2000), McGuire (2012), and Burnier (2008, 2023). Meanwhile, Witt (2006) argues that Addams provides a road map for understanding how race impacts public administration by fetishizing the idea of individualistic success in an essentially white-​ supremacist society. This same idea is reflected in Love’s 2008 paper entitled “The Rugged Individualist Club.”

382   Nuri Heckler Several public administration scholars argue that Addams’s thinking is particularly relevant to nonprofit work (e.g., Nickel & Eikenberry, 2006). Mirabella (2013) argues that nonprofit-​management scholars should turn to Addams to develop a new democratic feminist ethics, and Stout (2009) finds that Addams’s ideas continue to be relevant to modern community organizing devoted to the view of “the city as a home” (591) and investing in human capital first rather than hoping that economic capital will result in alleviating human suffering as a kind of byproduct. Notably, Stout (2009) argues that the impact of the settlement movement continues through community-​organizing literature in the direct lineage of Alinsky (see also Hamington, 2010). Another collection of public administration scholarship adopting Addams includes those who argue that pragmatism serves public administration ethics and practice in ways that promote effectiveness and social equity. This group of scholars includes Shields (2005, 2008), Hildebrand (2008), and D’Agostino (2008). These scholars join McGuire (2012) and Stout (2009) in acknowledging the outsized impact that Addams’s praxis has had on the field, and they argue for Addams’s thinking to be used as a primary source for understanding why and how public administration has come to be what it is. Pragmatism, they argue, is uniquely situated to managing the tensions inherent in public administration, tensions with which Addams was familiar and frequently engaged in her research. Some public administration scholars acknowledge Addams’s powerful influence over public administration and critique that influence as being delivered without adjustment for context or with unexpected negative consequences. Bernstein (1972) seizes on Addams’s comfort with conflictual concepts when he points out that Addams is one of the thinkers responsible for the idea that government can be used assertively to solve social problems even as she adopted a perspective that was critical of the kind of expertise found in government agencies. Levine (2009) critiques the use of settlement-​ woman mentalities without modification in international contexts to the detriment of women around the world. She highlights Addams’s (1911) emphasis on the assimilation of settlement residents and the assumption that many of the problems of immigration can be mitigated by the adoption of a set of universal “American” values. Her critique is valid both internationally and domestically where communities of color and immigrant communities are not necessarily better off when they align with the majoritarian narratives and processes (Heckler & Rouse, 2021). Both of these critiques reveal Addams’s ability to live in liminal spaces where moral and theoretical rigidity poorly serve her community, a reality created by her emphasis on praxis.

Conclusion When it was no longer possible to ignore the importance of social equity in government, nonprofits, and social activism, public administration scholars set about to understand how governance is dealing with what Addams called social-​justice issues.

Public Administration and Social Equity    383 Addams’s impact on social equity in governance can be traced to her close relationships to other women in government, the ongoing effect of her social gospel in nonprofit organizations, and the continued influence of her activism. It is troubling to many public administration scholars that these same factors are connected to her diminished influence over the literature on which they rely to understand governance. In response, some scholars reach for Addams to make sense of the phenomena that her praxis helped to inject into public administration in the first place. This scholarship starts in the 1970s and grows somewhat into the 2010s but has only just begun to explore the many insights provided by Addams’s copious and insightful research. When scholars look to Addams, they find that her theoretical and empirical writings are as capable of explaining social equity as her praxis is influential in having laid the groundwork. With a lot of work left to do, many public administration social-​equity scholars are turning to Addams’s writings as a guidebook in an effort to catch up.

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Chapter 20

Was Jane A dda ms a So ciol o g i st ? Kaspar Villadsen

Jane Addams has been described as a preeminent sociologist and as nothing less than the first American sociologist. Addams was, declares Mary J. Deegan, “one of the greatest sociologists who has ever lived” (2013, p. 248). Commentators arguing for Addams’s importance as an early sociologist have posited that this role has been overshadowed by sentimental portrayals of Addams as a self-​sacrificing “saint” who left the comfortable middle class to live among the immigrant poor. People tend to forget, wrote Christopher Lasch, that “Jane Addams wrote some of the most discerning studies of industrial society to be found in the literature of social criticism” (1965, p. xiii). This chapter seeks to reassess the appeals that categorize Addams as a sociologist, first, by discussing in which sense Addams’s thought could be said to be sociological, and, second, by exploring sources of inspiration that brought to her thinking other components, namely ideas from Christian ethics and social gospel theology. Hence, while recognizing Addams’s contribution to pragmatist social science practice, the chapter examines the significant Christian inspiration in her thought, which, I have argued elsewhere, constitutes a “political eschatology” (Villadsen, 2018). It is, I suggest, Addams’s artful integration of pragmatist, evolutionist, and Christian ideas that gives her thought its distinct character. In her view of society, Addams opposed legal or economic models, instead foregrounding social interaction as the principal realm where actions, motives, and values take shape and transform. However, as I will argue, for Addams, there is more at play in the social realm than earthly humans interacting from immediate, mundane, or self-​interested motives. Hopefully, such an inquiry not only brings us closer to the question of who Addams was as an intellectual but also should tell us something about the sociological tradition, more broadly, and how it might be developed today. The chapter falls in four overall sections. The first section discusses which criteria are adequate to define a thinker as a sociologist, while raising some problems related to easy alignments of past thinkers with todays’ scientific disciplines. The second section, which is the bulk of the chapter, undertakes a comparative discussion, which presents Addams

390   Kaspar Villadsen as a thinker inspired by pragmatist ideas and the Christian tradition. The discussion centers on key themes around the turn of the 19th century, namely experience, the self, and evolution. The third section returns to the question of whether Addams was a sociologist, drawing some connections to Comte and Durkheim. Finally, the fourth section considers Addams’s legacy in contemporary sociology, both as an early pragmatist researcher and as a Christian reformist social critic.

Why Addams Can Be Defined a Sociologist Addams is probably one of the most extensively studied American women in the history of welfare, charity, and sociology (Deegan, 1988, p. 4). Yet, despite the frequent assertions about Addams as an early sociologist, few scholars have sought to place her firmly within the classical sociological tradition as it emerged particularly in Europe in the late 20th century. However, Mary J. Deegan, one of Addams’s most preeminent commentators, has produced substantial inquiries that situate Addams in the nascent North American sociological tradition. Deegan, in her seminal book, Jane Addams and the Men of the Chicago School (1988), argues that Addams can be included among the first American sociologists, since her profile corresponds to the following criteria that can be used to define someone a sociologist:

• • • • •

occupy a chair of sociology and/​or teach sociology, membership of the German (changed here to the American Sociological Society), co-​authorship of sociological articles or textbooks, self-​definition as a “sociologist,” and definition by others as a “sociologist” (Deegan, 1988, p. 9).

Addams meets, concludes Deegan, “not one but all of the above criteria” (1988, p. 9). Deegan further demonstrates how Addams established personal contacts with prominent researchers on social issues of her time such as the philosopher John Dewey and the sociologist Albion Small (Deegan 1988, p. 80). Institutionally, Addams played a part in founding the North American sociological tradition, since her collaborations with Dewey, Small, and other intellectuals involved in the social settlement led to the establishment of the Chicago School of Civics and Philanthropy in 1908, which later became the School of Social Service Administration at the University of Chicago (Villadsen and Turner, 2015, p. 7). The school was strongly influenced by the values of the settlement movement, focusing on social issues such as juvenile delinquency, vocational training, and housing conditions. While Deegan’s seminal work offers groundbreaking explorations of Addams’s relationship to the emerging sociological discipline in Chicago and key figures within in

Was Jane Addams a Sociologist?     391 and around it, it is harder to find connections between Addams and early sociological figures across the Atlantic such as Émile Durkheim, Max Weber, or Karl Marx. The tangible criteria that Deegan employs are somewhat restricted in the sense that they do not necessarily involve closer scrutiny of the conceptual architecture and the intellectual frameworks that the designated sociologist develops in his or her writing. However, Marilyn Fischer (2013, 2016, 2019) has carried out detailed reconstructions of the intellectual traditions that Addams drew from, paying special attention to evolutionary theories and social gospel theology around the turn of the 19th century. Fischer emphasizes the need to locate Addams’s words within the broader discourse of her time that gave her words their specific meaning: “To follow Addams’s reasoning, readers need to take those words out of the penumbras of associations that now feel natural and relocate them within a discourse they find remote and sometimes morally objectionable” (Fischer, 2019, p. 13). In fact, argues Fischer, “Addams entered fully into the social evolutionary theorizing of her time; today’s scholars should recognize this, however uncomfortable it makes them” (2019, p. 122). Terms central to Addams’s writing such as democracy, ethics, sympathy, cooperation, perplexity, and motive do not carry the same meaning today, as they did in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Therefore, one cannot assign to them a straightforward modern sociological meaning, but one must attempt to reconstruct the signification they had in their contemporary discourse. Any straightforward identification of a past thinker with today’s well-​established theoretical disciplines runs the risk of reducing the complexity of his or her intellectual trajectory. Noting the typical eagerness for locating classic thinkers on a linear development of a tradition, Robert Alun Jones (1997) cautions against the tendency to situate classic thinkers too uniformly “on the right track” of a distinguished tradition (p. 167). Unambiguous celebrations of Addams as an “early sociologist” or a “pragmatist sociologist” who owes her main inspiration to celebrated thinkers like William James, John Dewey, and George Herbert Mead entail the risk of neglecting the multiple influences that spurred Addams’s evolving intellectual engagements. These engagements include her protestant upbringing, literary experiences, interest in contemporary science, social indignation, and her distrust of political ideologies. Addams’s writing clearly exemplifies that a thinker’s intellectual trajectory is often deeply shaped by specific social and political contexts, evolving exchanges with diverse interlocutors and traditions, and concerns for the sensibilities of the audiences that one writes for, or against. Another problem with seeking to pin down Addams to a particular theoretical tradition is that Addams did not offer any full-​fledged social theory that formalizes observations into explanatory models or general concepts (Villadsen, 2018, p. 220). She did not write in a conventional theoretical genre, explicitly quoting the thinkers or traditions that she drew from. Addams preferred to narrate by describing situations from everyday life, and she sometimes paraphrased other authors without documenting her sources. Addams chose a writing style that could appeal not only to academic readers but also to a wider audience. Fischer observes that “her rhetorical skills enabled her to communicate with different audiences simultaneously. Those attuned to scientific theorizing could find her reasoning behind the stories. For others, the stories carried the

392   Kaspar Villadsen same argument but in an accessible and engaging form” (2019, p. 121). In Addams, one thus looks in vain for Weberian ideal types or Durkheim’s typology of types of suicides. Her writing makes use of narratives centered on personal experiences, autobiographical accounts, and human encounters told by multiple voices. Addams’s texts escape the striving for formalization characteristic of most classic sociology, and, therefore, the general propositions she conveys must be reconstructed from her tales of ordinary people who face contradictions, run up against traditional doctrines, and work together to overcome social conflict. In what follows, Addams’s Christian inspirations will be brought to the foreground. From the outset, however, we note that Addams spoke quite rarely about Christian values in an explicitly religious idiom. She rarely mentioned scripture, was hesitant to affiliate denominationally, and did not announce the soul’s eternal life, God’s reign on earth, or the divine promise. A significant reason for avoiding pronounced religious discourse was that Addams probably sought to accommodate the sensibilities of people in and around the settlement movement that came from diverse denominations. She seems to have deployed, explains Rima Schultz, “a pragmatic strategy to make conversations about religion non-​threatening to the neighbors” (2015, p. 208). At the same time, we must recognize that clear-​cut divisions between religious, scientific, and political discourse are difficult to impose on Addams and others around the turn-​of-​the-​19th-​ century reformist thinkers. Instead, we must be open to exploring how pragmatist ideas, evolutionary theory, social reformist thinking, and Christian humanitarianism intermingled in the writings of Addams and her interlocutors. To understand the diverse influences on Addams’s thought, it is also necessary to keep in mind the social and political situation around 1900 in the United States. At this time, Chicago had become the site of unprecedented urban poverty and increasingly violent labor struggles that troubled Addams and like-​minded intellectuals. Addams’s writing addressed the social challenges brought about by industrialization, namely rapid urbanization, waves of migration, labor unrest, and the ongoing collapse of traditional moral codes. The growth of visible urban poverty, along with signs of what was interpreted as cultural impoverishment, were reasons of concern among the more privileged. Addams was also concerned with these aspects of the emerging industrial society. She viewed the big city as a place of moral uprooting, commercialization of pleasure for profit, and disruption of people’s cultural heritage. The impersonal character of social relations and the unbridled market forces threatened to undo the very human fabric. Addams was greatly concerned with the spiritual emptiness in the “crowded industrial districts where materialism holds undisputed sway” (1911, p. 146). In these regards, her observations display broad parallels with those of contemporary sociologist colleagues in Europe, such as Ferdinand Tönnies, Max Weber, Émile Durkheim, and George Simmel. For example, Addams recurrently voiced the view that society was transforming itself toward still greater social interdependence, a diagnosis most forcefully elaborated by Durkheim. In sum, Addams’s intellectual engagement can be described as sustained attempts to counteract what she saw as the main challenges of her time: increasingly violent class divisions, the commercialization of social life without spiritual growth, and a state

Was Jane Addams a Sociologist?     393 administration that operated in legal and punitive terms instead of securing ordinary people welfare and cultural uplift.

Pragmatist Principles and Christian Ideas A continuing stream of research has identified Addams as a pioneer in pragmatist thought and research practice, associating her with thinkers like William James, John Dewey, George H. Mead, and Richard Rorty. That Addams took a pragmatist approach to scientific practice, political processes, and the development of moral values is posited by a wide range of commentators (Greenstone, 1979; Deegan, 1988; Seigfried, 1999; Whipps, 2004; Hamington, 2007; Bonomo, 2010; Schneiderhan, 2011; Rosiek and Pratt, 2013). Greenstone (1979) emphasizes Addams’s tireless work for social reform and her inspiration from the pragmatist philosopher John Dewey as the routes by which Addams departed from transcendental doctrines. Deegan (1988) characterizes Addams as a “critical pragmatist” because of her experimental efforts to help subordinate groups on the basis of their expressed needs rather than the doctrine of deserving versus undeserving. Charlene Seigfried (1999) and Maurice Hamington (2007) label Addams a “pragmatist feminist,” suggesting that her thinking was greatly inspired by her own (female) experience. Finally, Erik Schneiderhan (2011) asserts that Addams pioneered a pragmatist social science approach in understanding social action at Hull House in purely “non-​teleological terms” (Schneiderhan, 2011, p. 613). According to this interpretive stream, Addams’s pragmatist inspiration is evident in her approach to morality (how to allow moral standards to be contested and reconstructed), to politics (how to overcome rigid political divisions), and to science (how knowledge can be generated and tested). The widespread pragmatist interpretations readily find justification in Addams’s own writing. The following section examines her approach to key themes around the turn of the 19th century, namely “experience,” “the self,” and “evolution.” It explores how both pragmatist thinking and the Christian tradition influenced Addams’s approach to these themes. The discussion of these key themes thus moves back and forth between seeing Addams as a pragmatist and recognizing her equally important Cristian inspiration.

Small Experiences and “the Great Experience” When discussing morality, Addams opposed traditions that assigned an intrinsic value to abstract ideas or doctrines, believing instead that convictions about virtue and

394   Kaspar Villadsen morality had to prove their value in concrete situations. This meant a shift from speculation to action in the sense that moral values must be confirmed in lived experience and deliberated by the community affected by them. Hence, Addams wrote in Democracy and Social Ethics that questions of morality could not be answered through theological debate or abstract philosophical speculation but must be strictly linked to action: We continually forget that the sphere of morals is the sphere of action, that speculation in regard to morality is but observation and must remain in the sphere of intellectual comment that a situation does not really become moral until we are confronted with the question of what shall be done in a concrete case. (1902, p. 273)

Addams was partly inspired by Thomas Carlyle’s (1795–​1881) dictum that a conviction is worthless unless converted into action, which she referred to on several occasions. She had read Thomas Carlyle’s work early on, while attending Rockford Seminary. Noting this inspiration, Anne Scott emphasizes Addams’s pragmatism in her 1964 introduction to Democracy and Social Ethics, foregrounding Addams’s view that moral values can only be confirmed in social practice. Scott quoted Carlyle from Sartor Resartus (1838): “Speculation is by nature endless. . . Only by a felt indubitable certainty of Experience does it find any centre to revolve around... Doubt of any sort cannot be removed except by Action” (Carlyle quoted in Scott, 1964, p. xxii). Abstract speculation is associated with doctrine, whereas the adaptive testing of ideas happens in practice and through people’s actual experiences. Indeed, the experience was a paramount term for the early pragmatists, as Scott pointed out with regard to Addams: “When she referred to ‘experience’ in this sense it was, as in the pragmatism of James and Dewey, a corrective to doctrine” (1964, p. xlvii). A link also connects Addams to Mead around the idea that the setting of values is inseparable from individuals’ lived experience, a central stance of what has been termed pragmatist ethics. Hans Joas emphasizes that Mead (1863–​1931) believed that the criteria for successful problem solving must be set by the individuals who are affected by the problem: “For Mead social order is not to be found in normative consensus, but in the capacity of a collective to successfully solve its problems” (Joas, 1993, p. 254). Mead and Addams shared the view that there could be given no criteria for tackling moral problems other than those which the involved individuals could agree upon. They had considerable epistemological overlaps, mutually influencing each other, and they made lifelong, shared commitments to social reform (Deegan, 1988, p. 121). In their reform work, Addams and Mead both saw the goals one sets as always intermeshed with the means available for achieving them. This pragmatist viewpoint was reflected in Mead’s theory of action in which “the setting of ends does not occur prior to or independently of the particular context in which the end will be pursued” (Joas, 1993, p. 252). Indeed, Addams often stressed that efforts to resolve the moral and social issues of a community should start with the needs, aspirations, and energies expressed by members of that community.

Was Jane Addams a Sociologist?     395 We should be careful, however, not to overemphasize the contextualized and atomistic nature of the reconstruction of ethical values that Addams spoke about. In Democracy and Social Ethics, Addams uses her descriptions of moral dilemmas that arise in specific situations to pronounce the coming of a “new social ethics”; one that will progressively infuse industrial society with a spirit of brotherly collaboration. Fischer hence makes this acute observation on Addams’s narrative strategy in Democracy and Social Ethics: “Although Addams never states it this way, she analyzes each situation both as it presented itself at that time and as part of a historical trajectory” (Fischer, 2019, p. 16). The situated experience of wrestling to find new ethics in specific contexts, including family life, education, charity, and industrial relations, amounts to something like a collective human learning experience. Addams spoke of a movement away from “partial experience,” marked by limited understanding, to the “Great Experience” of a more all-​encompassing understanding and forgiveness: It is akin to the assurance that the dead understand, because they have entered into the Great Experience, and therefore must comprehend all lesser ones; that all the misunderstandings we have in life are due to partial experience, and all life’s fretting comes of our limited intelligence; when the last and Great Experience comes, it is, perforce, attended by mercy and forgiveness. (Addams, 1902, pp. 276–​277)

We find here a different tone in the way Addams uses the term “experience” than todays’ pragmatist interpreters who foreground the experience of situated problem solving and continual testing of values, while leaving aside the overall message of mercy and forgiveness in Addams’s discourse. The above quote from Democracy and Social Ethics suggests that humanity progresses through learning experiences from an unconscious state through stages of increasingly higher consciousness. This idea of humanity’s progressive achievement of intelligence was prevalent at Addams’s time, and, in the mind of Protestant reformists, it connected evangelical perfectionism with scientific progress (Miller, 2012, p. 233). Addams did not invoke “the last Great Experience” in an evangelical sense, which she had been critical of since her youth. Instead, her use of the term echoes the postmillennialist message of social gospel theology regarding the Thousand Year Reign, which was assumed to precede Christ’s Second Coming (Villadsen, 2018, p. 226). Jean Quandt instructively explains the postmillennialist vision by which social gospellers believed that God’s reign would be realized in this world, insofar as Christ’s teachings of love, peace, and justice were followed: Unlike premillennialism, with its catastrophic notion of the second coming of Christ, postmillennialism believed in the gradual redemption of the world under the influence of Christ’s spirit rather than his physical presence. (Quandt, 1973, p. 391)

396   Kaspar Villadsen Parallel to the social gospellers, Addams articulated the vision of the progressive growth of humanity’s intelligence along with the idea that the uplifting of reason constitutes something akin to humankind’s revelation. This evolutionary view of history was probably most forcefully argued by Lyman Abbott (1835–​1922), a leading social gospeller, who proclaimed that “higher and more democratic ideals were immanent in the development of new forms of social, economic, and religious life” (Eisenach, 2007, p. 68). In Democracy and Social Ethics and elsewhere, Addams repeated that the times required of everyone to act to further a pervasive and progressive process that would bring about a higher intelligence in the world (e.g., 1902, p. 275). The increasingly interdependent society already carried the seeds for such learning processes, whereby individuals would develop what Addams termed “the new social ethics” and what more explicitly Christian voices described as humanity’s progressive and intelligent revelation of the world given by God.

The Socialized and the Self-​sacrificing Self From Addams’s descriptions of collective and open-​ended decision-​making practices at Hull House, contemporary scholars have often concluded that Addams took a pragmatist approach to problem-​solving and learning processes. The settlement house should be a place where viewpoints were exchanged without resort to doctrine and ideals would intersect with what was feasible. Addams wrote about the goals of Hull House: “It aims, in a measure, to develop whatever of social life its neighbourhood may afford, to focus and give form to that life, to bring to bear upon it the results of cultivation and training” (1910b, p. 125). For Addams, being concrete meant basing her written reflections on the experience of living among the people she observed. She distanced herself from the evangelical emphasis on inner conversion, bringing into view, instead, the external material and social conditions for human growth in Chicago’s slums. “A Settlement,” she wrote, “does not lay so much stress upon one set of virtues, but views man in his social aspects” (Addams, 1897, p. 2). Addams and her collaborators’ objectives for establishing Hull House were to create a venue for problem-​solving, sympathetic encounters, and exchange of ideas without the need for religious or political consensus (Rosiek and Pratt, 2013, p. 582). A social settlement, said Addams, “shares the perplexities of its times and is never too dogmatic concerning the final truth” (1910b, p. 448). Far from a place of religious mission, Hull House would constitute a forum where people could address current challenges without relying on static morality or agreeing on deep values. Again, the discussions at the settlement foregrounded the actual implications of adhering to particular values rather than their static or doctrinal content. Addams’s emphasis on the social and practical usefulness of values resonates with Dewey’s assertion that “the determination of ends-​means . . . is hypothetical until the

Was Jane Addams a Sociologist?     397 course of action indicated has been tried” (1916, p. 221). Dewey famously advanced the idea that abstract truths and morals do not serve to develop practical reasoning: “It is reasonable to believe that what holds moral knowledge back is above all the conception that there are standards of good given to knowledge apart from the work of reflection in constructing methods of action” (1916, p. 243). Dewey and Addams both wished to break with knowledge claims clothed in rigid ideology, religious doctrine, and authorities that hierarchized certain principled views over others. They also agreed that reworking inflexible structures inherited from the past is a key challenge of developing knowledge in a reflective, explorative, and situated manner. Like Dewey, Addams asserted that solving moral problems requires deliberative collective efforts, which begin from morally problematic situations. They both emphasized the need to act as situated participants in such situations, rather than as detached observers relying upon an abstract morality. Doubt and uncertainty would be permanent features of this pragmatist approach. Hence, Fischer notes: “For Dewey as for Addams, this pattern of deliberation is not a formula that guarantees the “right” answer; uncertainty cannot be eliminated” (2019, pp. 65–​66). It is possible, suggests Fischer, that Dewey’s thinking on ethics was profoundly inspired by his close contact with Addams and his exposure to her methods. Another key objective of the social settlement was the well-​known idea of bringing the privileged into contact with the working class, which was a mutual experience believed to spur personal transformation and growth. Addams viewed human progress in strictly relational terms, since she refused to accept that society was constituted by discrete individuals; instead, she saw individuals are deeply connected by bonds of kindness and capacity for affection. Here, an illustrative connection can be drawn between Addams and Mead’s (1934) idea of “the socialized self,” a notion that dissolves the distinction between the individual’s self and society. According to Mead, one is not a complete person until one has learned to incorporate the views and values of others into one’s own (1934, pp. 152–​164). Similarly, Addams believed that one should adjust oneself toward others and under the impression of changes in one’s surroundings, as anyone striving to better humanity “must also take the daily experiences of humanity for the constant correction of his process” (1902, pp. 176–​177). Pragmatist interpretations, advanced for example by Jerry Rosiek and Scott Pratt (2013), suggest that Addams’s activist experience gave shape to the view of individuals as essentially social and relational, while others, like Hans Joas (1993) emphasize her intellectual exchanges with Mead and other early pragmatists. These interpretations, however, risk overlooking that Addams’s view of the self was shaped as much by pragmatist assumptions as by ideas derived from the Christian tradition. Hence, Jean Ehlstain asserts that Addams’s beliefs evince a “Christian Anthropology.” which holds as a central value a reconciliatory community: “The vision of what is good or excellent she presented as a community of reconciliation, one in which differences are recognized and honored but do not swamp a search for fellowship” (1998, p. 349). When Addams spoke in a more religiously flavored idiom, she described how the self “expands” when humans engage in relationships based on kindness, love, and fellowship. She spoke in terms of the value of allowing oneself “to be

398   Kaspar Villadsen swallowed up” in one’s community, proclaiming that this experience leads to a “wider self,” which was a central tenet of social gospel theology (Fischer, 2013, p. 20). Appeals to adjust oneself with a view to serve a greater purpose resound across her different texts. Like the social gospellers of her day, Addams invoked an ideal image of a primordial Christianity whose followers were characterized by self-​sacrifice, humbleness, and communal courage (2017 [1893], p. 59). Social gospel theologians propagated the dictum that humans were intricately bound together, opposing the individualism they saw as regrettably gaining ground. Hence, influential social gospel theologian Josiah Strong (1913, p. 194) denounced the perverting effects of the individual contract on the social body, and Abbott (1905, p. 38) argued that the philosophy of individual industrialism was a deceitful illusion. Echoing this critique of individualism, Addams warned against the self-​assertive attitude that views one’s achievements solely as a product of “personal excellence”: “To attain individual morality in an age demanding social morality, to pride one’s self on the results of personal effort when the time demands social adjustment, is utterly to fail to apprehend the situation” (1907, p. 2–​3). At times Addams described the settlement movement as an expression of an expanding human community bound together by sympathy, striving to embody itself in the global society. She wrote: “The Settlement movement is only one manifestation of that wider humanitarian movement which throughout Christendom . . . is endeavoring to embody itself, not in a sect, but in society itself ” (2017 [1893], p. 60). This quote comes from one of the contexts where Addams spoke of the settlement movement at the same time as she spoke most explicitly about Christian values, asserting that social settlements manifest a spirit as old as Christianity itself. In the same passage, she declared that the early Christians were eager to sacrifice themselves for the weak, since “they believed in love as a cosmic force” (2017 [1893], p. 59). The belief that society comprises an intrinsic ethical demand is central to Addams’s thinking insofar as she repeatedly argued that each member is ethically bound to his or her community. Addams’s insistence on sympathy in human relations also influences her approach of how to study individuals from an interpretive understanding of personal motives. As a guideline for her research practice, Addams advocated “sympathetic understanding” (1910a, p. 70), which denotes the necessity that the researcher understands a situation from the viewpoint of the informants and their diverse social backgrounds without relying upon pre-​given theory to guide observations (Addams, 1902, p. 175). She said that her focus was individuals’ lived experiences, and she asserted that these experiences should be studied by “sympathetic understanding” as well as “the information of the statistician” (Addams, 1910a, p. 70). This idea is reminiscent of Max Weber’s methodological individualism, which implies that the study of institutions and large-​scale social developments must begin with an understanding of the meaning that individuals attach to their actions (Weber, 1968). Addams’s interpretive understanding is broadly comparable to Weber’s approach in that they both foreground subjectively purposeful action (Villadsen and Turner, 2015, p. 8). However, when Addams spoke of “sympathetic understanding,” she put an emphasis on doubt and contradiction typical of North American pragmatist thinking. According to Addams, the observer must analyze a situation from

Was Jane Addams a Sociologist?     399 the point of view of the participants, who are often faced with the problem of mediating between the values they hold and the habits prevailing in a particular context (Joas, 1993, p. 252). Taking this emphasis on the experience of such contradiction, doubt, and maladjustment, Addams articulated another key tenet of pragmatist thinking. Again, Addams’s notion of sympathetic understanding can also be connected with her Christian inspirations. Her research practice, which combined quantitative surveys of social conditions with interpretative studies of individuals’ motives, rested on the premise that just as truth can be revealed through surveys, there is a truth emanating from human interaction. The latter premise articulates an old theme of Christian charity, namely the principle of revealed truth in charity, which holds, as Philip Seed explains, that laws of human nature can be derived from the charitable encounter (1973, p. 18). For Addams, the capacity for sympathy was certainly something more than a research tool, since it can be associated with her affirmation of the human dignity that dwells in each individual and her praise of “the joy of finding the Christ which lieth in each man” (2017 [1893], p. 60). The belief that the Godly spirit dwells within each person turns humanity itself into a divine being, which reduces the need for a transcendent God-​figure. At first glance, Addams’s discourse here mirrors a key tenet in social gospel theology, which, explains Robert Handy, is the presumption of continuity between Christ and other people as well as between God and humans (1966, p. 8). Yet, on closer inspection, Addams’s discourse probably has its main link to Comtean positivism of her time, which naturalized religion by inserting it into an evolutionary process. Thereby religion gradually became scientific, and its revelations were to be driven by love for all of humankind, or “a deep enthusiasm for humanity,” to use Addams’s words (2017 [1893], p. 59). In The Subjective Necessity of Social Settlements from 1893, she wrote: That Christianity has to be revealed and embodied in the line of social progress is a corollary to the simple proposition that man’s action is found in his social relationships . . . By this simple process was created a deep enthusiasm for humanity, which regarded man as at once the organ and object of revelation. (Addams, 2017 [1893], p. 59)

In her careful examination of the essay, Fischer argues that Addams’s primary sources for her message about a Christian renaissance were writers inspired by Comtean positivism, who “removed religion from the supernatural sphere and gave it a scientific basis, centered on humanity rather than on a transcendent deity” (2019, p. 36). Comte’s program of social science entailed an imitation of the methods of the physical sciences, emphasizing empirical research and statistics. Yet, this program was dedicated to love for humankind, and Addams found in Comte’s religion of humanity a vision that aligned well with her idea of Christianity as a progressive force in modern society—​a vision of how science and religion would “culminate in a religion devoid of theology or metaphysics—​a religion of humanity” (Eddy, 2010, p. 29). Addams’s assertion of progressive change in human affairs brings us to the unavoidable theme of evolution.

400   Kaspar Villadsen

Social Evolution or Political Eschatology Around the turn of the 19th century as Addams was writing some of her most important work, evolutionary concepts and premises were very widespread in intellectual discourse. One key idea was that evolutionary change is inherent to both organic life and human culture, since both evolve through the mutual adaptations between organisms and environments. Evolutionary assumptions were evident among intellectuals at the time later identified as founding figures of the discipline of sociology such as Èmile Durkheim, Herbert Spencer, and Albion Small. Evolutionary theory came in many variations, covering multiple subjects, including animal species, human cultures, state systems, moral codes, scientific disciplines, and religious doctrines, and the question is how these evolutionary streams influenced Addams’s thought. The concept of “evolution” itself was something like an umbrella term, which carried very different meanings, being adopted by advocates of Darwin, Spencer, Christian theology, and more. We have already noted how Addams conceptualized the growing interdependence of industrial society as carrying the potential for progressive learning and human growth. At times, Addams referred to Spencer when describing how the increasing division of labor in industrial society produced greater interdependence, leading to social evolution (Quandt, 1973, p. 86). Importantly, however, she opposed the claim advanced by advocates of Spencerian evolutionist theory that social progress occurred through individualistic competition. This point displays how Addams did not embrace those parts of evolutionary thinking that most contemporary readers will probably think of, namely the principle of natural selection associated with Darwin. This is where it is useful to recall Addams’s association with the social gospel tradition. Like contemporary social gospel theologians, Addams recognized how many industrialists adopted Spencer’s interpretation of Darwinian natural selection to defend the moral worth of their exploitative capitalism. Beth Eddy thus observes: “Addams is quite aware of American industrial appropriations of ‘the evolutionary sciences’ to justify their accumulation of wealth” (2010, p. 30). This version of evolutionary discourse constituted, writes Eddy, in the “gospel of wealth, aggression, and polarization of the social classes” (2010, p. 30). Social gospellers were not foreign to evolutionary ideas, but rather than citing Darwin and Spencer, they referred to an old long tradition of Christian evolutionism, which saw evolution as humanity’s psychological and spiritual development toward perfection (McCalla, 1998). Most social gospellers employed the concept of evolution in opposition to Spencer, articulating it within Christian providentialism, which infused the term with a range of different meanings and implications. For example, influential social gospel theologian Josiah Strong challenged the Spencerian concept of evolution by insisting that not just the individual but society as a whole is an organism of purposeful evolution (1915, p. 63). Another famous gospel theologian,

Was Jane Addams a Sociologist?     401 Walter Rauschenbusch, argued that evolutionist ideas should be brought into the domain of Christianity: “Translate the evolutionary theories into religious faith and you have the doctrine of the Kingdom of God. This combination with scientific evolutionary thought has freed the Kingdom ideal . . . and adapted it to the climate of the modern world” (1912, p. 90). Describing society as an organism whose parts are increasingly interdependent, Addams also used the evolutionary vocabulary. She added an unmistakably religious tenor, when declaring that society’s movement towards interdependence necessarily “urges us toward social and individual salvation” (1993, p. 63). The claim that no individual salvation can be achieved separate from society’s regeneration was a key social gospel tenet, which some social gospellers called a “Christianization” of society. Commentators on Addams have demonstrated how values rooted in Christian social ethics merged with her other inspirations (Curti, 1961; Ehlstain, 1998; Harnish, 2011; Fischer, 2013; Schultz, 2015). I have elsewhere explored some connections between Addams’s thinking and the Christian tradition, particularly social gospel theology (Villadsen, 2018). The social gospel movement gained momentum in North America in the 1880s and 1890s, reaching its peak in the early 20th century. It was only after 1900 that the term “social gospel” came into common use (Handy, 1966). Social gospellers renewed Christian theology, arguing that Christian redemption was inseparable from social redemption. The more religious wing of the social gospel movement proclaimed that the Second Coming would happen only if humanity eradicated misery and selfishness through its own work for social progress in education, science, and reform. Social gospel theology thus gave less emphasis to religious rituals, communion with God, and inner conversion, striving for a reinvigorated Christianity under modern conditions. Like social gospellers, Addams posited a continuity between revelation and reason, and her thought can be understood, suggests Brandon Harnish, “as an attempt to synthesize Christianity and modernity” (2011, p. 93). This synthesis connects Addams with social gospel theology, which proclaimed that historical and social research would uncover laws inherent to humanity’s redemptive transformation (Eisenach, 2007, p. 58). Addams had associations with a number of prominent figures in the social gospel movement, including Josiah Strong, Washington Gladden, George Herron, Richard T. Ely, and Walter Rauschenbusch. Yet, if Addams is to be included among the social gospellers (Handy, 1966; Dorrien, 2009), she belonged to the least pronounced religious wing, and she did not exactly invoke “the Christianization of society.” Nevertheless, her writing reflects social gospel theology in a fundamental way, as she anticipated society’s imminent and total transformation into a community of loving fellowship. Through this process, humanity will advance from its lower material existence to its higher intelligence and collaborative spirit. A similar message was forcefully articulated by Lyman Abbott (1835–​1922), another leading social gospeller, who proclaimed that “higher and more democratic ideals were immanent in the development of new forms of social, economic, and religious life” (cited in Eisenach, 2007, p. 68). This promise of an impending arrival of higher ethics that would redeem society has been characterized as eschatological (Handy, 1966; Stebner, 2010), or as political eschatology (Villadsen, 2018). The social gospellers, argues Handy, advocated a new theology that “recognized the necessity of

402   Kaspar Villadsen a restatement of eschatology, the doctrine of the last things” (1966, p. 7). The concept of eschatology is central to both the Christian and Jewish traditions. Broadly, the term denotes the coming of God’s reign on earth, a state of perfection reached as the triumphal outcome of the struggle between “the forces of light and the forces of darkness” (Jones, 2004, p. 2834). Eschatology professes a divine plan inscribed in history, hence discarding views of history as cyclical or coincidental. When articulated in political discourse, the term promises a perfection of society, often through human sacrifice, where state and society finally reconcile and merge into one sublime entity: “the people” or “the nation” (Villadsen, 2016). Addams’s proclamation that a new social ethics was coming led Eleanor Stebner to define Addams’s thought as eschatological: “Addams pointed towards a spirituality of human interdependence and mutuality, an eschatological hope that could be realized on earth by people willing to work for—​and suffer for—​its fulfilment” (2010, p. 204). Although the redeemed society was supposedly already in the making, Addams and social gospellers both insisted on the need for humans to act to further its realization. For Addams, religious education should play such a role: “After all the business of religion is not only to comfort and conserve, but to prophecy and to fortify men for coming social changes” (1911, p. 150). Although Addams eschewed conventional notions of mission and conversion to advance God’s Kingdom on earth, she did declare that true religious conviction can propel social change through self-​sacrifice: “Win the good life...know the truth and attempt to live up to it and die for it if need be” (Addams cited in Stebner, 2010, p. 202). In a previous study (Villadsen, 2018), I suggested that Addams’s view of religion as an immanent force that incites individuals to participate in history’s progressive perfection amounts to a political eschatology: “If we understand Addams’s new social ethics as a political eschatology to “die for it if need be,” then it was a call to work for freedom through ethical self-​work and to take political action to realize a collaborative society already in the making” (Villadsen, 2018, p. 232). In this eschatology, the achievement of perfection was identified as the fulfillment of our human capacity for mutual love and kindness. The role of religion in Addams’s eschatological message of an imminent “Christian renaissance” is not that of an external power that orders and sustains the universe. Addams’s message of progress did not invoke a transcendent deity, understood as a sublime power at work within all finite entities, but it presaged the progressive diffusion of redemptive power, “the new social ethics,” across secular spheres like charity, education, public administration, family affairs, and industrial relations. She shared this vision with social gospel advocates, who believed that society’s secular institutions too would soon be infused by “the law of love.”

Again, Was Addams a Sociologist? It follows from the above discussions that the claim that Addams was an early sociologist stand in need of significant qualification. Contemporary readers versed in the

Was Jane Addams a Sociologist?     403 modern sociological tradition influenced by Marx, Weber, and Durkheim will find a substantial part of Addams’s language archaic and difficult to penetrate beneath its surface, where the diverse traditions she drew upon are often barely visible. To the best of my knowledge, Addams did not refer to the European sociological founders. She gave appreciative but rare references to August Comte, and she made a few scornful remarks on Karl Marx. As we have seen, the main inspirations for Addams’s “sociological theorizing” include a combination of early pragmatist thinking and evolutionary theory, as well as Christian ethics and social gospel dictums. Another difficulty with distinguishing Addams as a sociologist is that around the 19th century’s turn, sociology itself had not yet been established as a distinct form of knowledge. During the first part of the 20th century, sociology would seek to become a detached and objectivist scientific discipline by purging itself of religious ideas, normative underpinnings, and, also often, political engagement. To be sure, Addams’ profile resists any easy alignment with this sociological project. She often integrated moral appeals and political activism into social research and theorizing, and her announcement that a “new social ethics” was on the rise shows how the divisions between the descriptive and the normative often blur in early 20th-​century social thought (Villadsen, 2018, p. 236). In this chapter, I have suggested that the conclusion that Addams was an “early pragmatist sociologist” must be resisted. My discussions have centered on Democracy and Social Ethics, which has been read as the theoretical epitome that paralleled her pragmatist social practice (Scott, 1964; Seigfried, 2002; Schneiderhan, 2013). Indeed, Erik Schneiderhan has no doubt of the book’s virtue as a pragmatist text, since, he declares, it is “increasingly being recognized as part of the pragmatist effervescence of the late 19th and early 20th centuries” (2013, p. 425). On Schneiderhan’s reading, Democracy and Social Ethics theorizes the reconstructive work that must be undertaken by social agents who are struck by what Addams calls “moral perplexity” (1902, p. 172) or “all the perplexity of industrial transition” (1902, p. 103). Indicating learning processes, situated creativity, and muddling through, the concept of perplexity readily confirms a pragmatist reading of the book. The individuals that Addams portray face ruptures in convention, get struck by situational perplexity, and they hence need to “muddle through” in creative processes—​all of which, notes Schneiderhan, are “process concepts,” as opposed to teleological ones (2011, p. 590). Like other pragmatists, he concludes, Addams avoided the pitfalls of biological, cultural, and historical determinism. Instead, she locates her actors in morally problematic situations, where processual creativity is a necessary part of their action framework, as they experience doubts and engage in problem solving. Here, it is worthwhile to recall Merle Curti’s (1961, p. 244) argument that Addams’s inspiration from pragmatism did not lead to a rejection of presuppositions that she had acquired from the Christian tradition. The situational emphasis, highlighted by many scholars, needs counterbalancing, then, by Addams’s assertion of an overall ethical transition of industrial society toward loving fellowship. Her Cristian inspiration means that Addams’s emphasis on the situational intersected with ideas from Christian teachings with universal pretensions.

404   Kaspar Villadsen Similarly, the conclusion that Addams was an “evolutionary sociologist,” recently argued extensively by Fischer (2019), must be tempered too. Fisher’s assessment seems to have shifted toward a stronger claim regarding Addams’s evolutionary inspiration, insofar as she argues that evolutionary theory serves as the primary foundation for her writings. However, in an important article from 2013, Fischer gave more emphasis to Addams’s association with social gospel theology. There she wrote that when Addams uses religious language it “goes to the heart of gospel theology” (2013, p. 18). In 2019, Fischer simply notes: “Democracy and Social Ethics contains very little religious language” (2019, p. 37), although she also mentions that “Addams includes a few brief passages that social gospelers would appreciate” (2019, p. 173). Then Fischer quickly resumes her careful exposition of how Addams drew upon various evolutionary ideas. To be sure, the issue is not one of assigning Addams either to the evolutionary discourse or to the social gospel movement. Many of Addams’s interlocutors both entertained evolutionary assumptions and were influenced by Christian values, as evident, for example, in Dewey’s early work. Evolutionary thinking could intersect with social gospel theology around the basic assumption that evolution was carrying humanity toward betterment and the associated premise that human nature is malleable and subject to progressive evolutionary changes. However, we have seen that Addams, like many social gospellers, advanced an interpretation of the notion of evolution and its social implications that diverged significantly from Spencerian assumptions. Addams’s strongest link to evolutionary sociology probably runs via Auguste Comte. The French sociologist coined the conceptual dyad of “social statics” and “social dynamics” to describe social evolution, and Fischer suggests that this dyad echoes in Addams’s analysis of the geographical and historical dimensions of social problems in Chicago (2019, p. 68). Addams, however, goes further than Comte in detailing the social interdependencies of the industrial city and the inadequacy of individual ethics for overcoming these issues. She declares: “No part of society can afford to get along without the others” (Addams, 1895, p. 203). Addams also refused to conceive of society as “an agglomeration of selfish men” (1911, p. 147). At first glance, Addams would appear to articulate the influential sociological axiom that society is a system in which the constitutive parts are interdependent. On closer inspection, however, Addams’s new social ethics implies a much denser conception of society than models of functional differentiation or economic exchanges, since “the larger whole” constituted something like a sublime body transcending its individual parts. Addams’s thinking regarding friendly collaboration resonates quite closely with Durkheim’s thesis on organic solidarity and social evolution, which steer society toward a healthy equilibrium. For Addams and Durkheim alike, society constituted a transcendent and necessary source of moral obligation. Durkheim famously claimed that moral obligations can only be rooted in the dimension of social existence, which he called “sacred.” Even though moral codes have typically been nested in religion, their binding force is not derivative from religion as such. Hence, Durkheim asserts, “There remains beyond the individual one single, empirically observable moral being, that which individuals form by their association—​that is, society” (1973, pp. 60–​61).

Was Jane Addams a Sociologist?     405 While Addams believed that Christianity should be dislodged from the churches to become a regenerative force in society broadly, Durkheim identified society as such with a transcendent source of moral obligation. Moreover, Addams’s assertion that the new social ethics required novel forms of social association supported by the state parallels Durkheim’s belief in the need for “intermediary associations” in modern, interdependent society (Durkheim, 1961). Writing in times of social transformation and moral rupture, Durkheim and Addams both emphasized the need for a shared, “higher” morality bound together by new forms of collaborative association. If one were to pinpoint Addams’s relationship with the sociological discipline, it would be neither her groundbreaking efforts in social work, nor her female activism, nor even her early pragmatist thinking. Her distinct social thought, call it sociology or not, comes from her skillful merging of evolutionary thinking with Christian social ethics. The difficulty with forcing Addams “on the right track” of a distinguished tradition (Jones, 1997, p. 167) is the Christian ethical underpinnings of her seemingly secular propositions. These include her belief in the innate goodness of humankind and her acceptance of evolution as consistent with God’s plan for humanity.

Pragmatist Research and Christian Social Critique Having argued that Addams’s Christian inspirations are as significant as her pragmatist influences, I wish, in this last section, to discuss some implications of identifying her primarily with the North American pragmatist tradition. The pragmatist tradition has been an enormously important catalyst of progress in areas like education, administration, gender relations, and democratic governance. However, I will suggest, it has certain limitations with regard to its analytical focus and its critical potential that are worthwhile considering. The pragmatist focus on the situational as the key unit of inquiry has a price, as scholars within and outside of the pragmatist tradition have argued (Rochberg-​Halton, 1987; Joas, 1997; Whitford, 2002; Diken, 2015). Most importantly, by granting “the situation” analytical priority, the pragmatist risks ignoring institutional and socio-​cultural changes occurring at the macro level. Perhaps, it can be argued, foregrounding the situation poses the danger of making the local context seem to entirely constitute or determine social action. Joas thus cautions that “in adopting a non-​teleological approach, we risk moving human action from situational contingency to being fully constituted by the situation” (Joas quoted in Whitford, 2002, p. 341). The assumption that social situations are characterized by high contingency should not lead the researcher to ignore wide-​scale changes like national regimes changes, institutional reforms, or material conditions that set limits to the contingencies inherent in situations. If pragmatism neglects explanatory factors beyond the situational, it becomes a research strategy that

406   Kaspar Villadsen can only move “laterally” from situation to situation. As Whitford observes, “I wish to only recognize that the situation has acquired a very heavy explanatory lead, and if it remains a black box, pragmatist reconstruction is a lateral step at best” (2002, p. 342). These critical voices bring up the question of whether the pragmatist framework allows one to explore the meanings produced by individuals in specific situations, while maintaining the importance of broader cultural factors. One answer comes from French pragmatist sociology, represented by Luc Boltanski, Laurent Trevenot, and Eve Chiapello, who have sought to integrate reflections on the relationship between self and others with an attention to socio-​cultural contexts (Boltanski and Thévenot, 2006; Boltanski and Chiapello, 2007). These sociologists also put a more explicit emphasis on the role of hierarchy and conflict, which they see as inherent to all realms of the social world. It has recently been argued that this move in French pragmatism succeeds in solving a longstanding problem in American pragmatism, which tends to see conflict as a pathological problem that must be eliminated (Frère and Jaster, 2019, pp. 6–​7). An assessment of the merits and weaknesses of French pragmatist sociologists is beyond the scope of this chapter (however, see Diken, 2015), but their insistence on the importance of power and the broader cultural context is a promising contribution to American pragmatism. Addams, Mead, and Garfinkel were certainly not inattentive to the social context in which they were writing, but the analytical approach inherited from them has typically leaned toward the realm of situated interactions. Pragmatists like James, Dewey, and Mead agreed that it is in practice that ultimate ideals and practical consequences intersect, and that it is at this intersection that ideals may be reified for the involved individuals. However, early pragmatists differed slightly as to whether ideals are set prior to their social effectuation or are entirely immanent to concrete, problem-​solving practices. For Mead, ends are never reified independently of specific situations, since, explains Joas, “the setting of an end is intermeshed with the existence of available means for achieving the end” (1993, p. 252). Schneiderhan asserts that pragmatists share the view that the only truth that we can engage is that produced in social relations (2013, p. 434). However, it is worth noting that Schneiderhan neglects almost entirely Christian social ethics in his extensive treatment of Addams, and that Rorty largely ignored the Christian inspirations in his broader reconstruction of pragmatism (Rochberg-​Halton, 1987). The above interpretations might give the impression that pragmatists define normativity by taking what is immediately useful as criteria for evaluating human values and action, but interpretations with this emphasis over-​identify pragmatist thinking with the specific, the practical, and the useful at the expense of concerns for higher ideals. According to Joas’s critical assessment, this emphasis leaves contemporary sociology with merely a reductionist version of the pragmatist tradition’s rich legacy: I am convinced that the pragmatists tended to neglect those important forms of political and sociological analysis that lie between abstractly universal statements

Was Jane Addams a Sociologist?     407 about the origins of human communication, on the one hand, and overtly concrete comments about the social conflicts of the day, on the other. (Joas, 1997, p. 277)

This observation acutely describes how Addams’s sociological legacy has often been taken up today. While a stream of research has invoked Addams in specific and “local” research fields, including feminism, art, communitarianism, social work, and public administration (Whipps, 2004; Shields, 2006; Bonomo, 2010), much less effort has been spent on relating her broader critical thought to current social and political issues. A number of prominent commentators on Addams have noted this tendency. Deegan observed that surprisingly little attention has been paid to Addams’s ideas about the welfare state and social policy (2010, p. 221). As a result, contemporary writing on Addams has failed to give wide-​scale political and social concerns the same attention that Addams did in her own time. If Addams’s thought is identified strictly with a pragmatist research practice, her thought risks being turned uncritically into an instrument for empirical research. The critical potential of this method might be restricted to identifying solutions that emerge immanently in social communities. Hence, Rosiek and Pratt assert that Addams’s “inquiries forsook the goal of transcendence perspective, and instead sought the outcome of being swallowed up and transformed by community life” (2013, p. 586). Aligning Addams with the recent pragmatist sociology of critique, then, might come at the cost of depriving her ideas of their radical and critical substance. Indeed, it has been argued that this sociology can only understand normativity in terms of already existing values, and that it cannot ask questions regarding the value of values (Diken, 2015, p. 932). Addams’s approach risks being turned into an instrumental research method that lends itself to diverse specialisms and normative orientations. However, one who too hastily aligns Addams with recent pragmatist sociology (Schneiderhan, 2013) neglects the way that reformist Christian values shaped her broader thinking and inspired notions of universal brotherhood, associations, global peace, and the coming of new social ethics. One can certainly keep the ultimate ends in sight while being immersed in situations that require ideals to be tempered in the face of the possible. William James (1911) argued early on that pragmatism is not limited to practical, immediate concerns but is equally oriented toward ultimate ends, since human intelligence does not limit its attention to short-​term ends. Cornelius Murphy notes: “The actions of the pragmatist seem to be rooted in present problems, but, according to James, they are actually leading him towards a more worthwhile future” (2007, p. 69). Addams echoed James’ position by emphasizing both pragmatist-​reformist action and the irrefutable value of ultimate ends. She practiced a “reformist” critique that aligned existing values with the identification of gradual governmental reforms. However, Addams’s writing also revealed a more radical critical dimension, as it can be situated at the intersection between what empirically exists and the promise of a new society to come, or between the immanent and the transcendent.

408   Kaspar Villadsen Addams’s proclamation of a major transition in society, requiring that individuals become transformed into socialized selves, resonates with American turn-​of-​the-​century progressives who merged Christian values with reformist aspirations and trust in scientific progress. Indeed, this period was marked by the belief that society could be regenerated through what Arthur McGerr calls a “great work of reconstruction,” which centered on “the attempt to reconstruct the individual” (2003, p. 80). In this project, modern science was assigned an active and progressive role. Addams’s proclamation that a “new social ethics” was rising showed how the borderline between the descriptive and the normative often collapsed in early 20th-​century social thought. Producing knowledge that could influence social change was Addams’s explicit goal, and she emphasized the ever value-​laden nature of scientific knowledge (1910b). Similarly, and more broadly, it is important to recall that one of the social progressives’ major achievements was “to link the systematic pursuit of social knowledge to political reform” (Eisenach, 2007, p. 78). How Addams as a figure equally inspired by the Christian tradition, evolutionary theory, and early pragmatist thought can speak to contemporary sociology and to the present political context still deserves further consideration.

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Pa rt I V

A DDA M S , P E AC E , A N D I N T E R NAT IONA L R E L AT ION S Edited by Joseph Soeters

Chapter 21

Peace Pragm at i sm a nd the Wom en, Pe ac e , a nd Securit y Ag e nda Jacqui True

The Feminist Pragmatist Tradition and Ethics of War/​P eace World War I (WWI) was a seminal event in the emergence of international relations as a distinct field of scholarship. Struck by the pervasive devastation of war, scholars and activists across the world sought to understand the triggers of conflict and theorize the construction of a more peaceful postwar future within and between nations. Yet despite the significant engagement of women in the events that shaped the new discipline, their presence has been largely ignored in traditional histories of international relations (Schmidt, 1998; cf. Owens et al., 2022). Jane Addams was one such early academic whose scholarship and advocacy had—​and continues to have—​substantial influence on international theory and practice. As president of the Women’s Peace Party (WPP) and chair of the 1915 International Congress of Women (ICW) at The Hague during WWI, Addams championed a feminist form of pragmatism that recognized the intrinsic linkages between gender equality, social and economic justice, and peace. Within this theoretical framework, Addams’s innovative scholarship and activism explored the roots of human differences and avenues for common purpose, including international cooperation, general disarmament, national self-​determination, and women’s participation in peace. In doing so, Addams’s writings and activities constitute a feminist intellectual, pragmatist tradition that continues to influence contemporary peace and women’s movements and institutional agendas for international security today. The foundations of this tradition are most visible in the principles articulated by Addams and other women peace activists at the ICW in 1915. Bolstered by a WPP

414   Jacqui True meeting shortly prior, Addams brought to her position as chair a platform that emphasized international cooperation over balance of power politics and elevated women’s interests in the development of a global postwar consciousness (Tickner and True, 2018; Addams, 1907). Alongside more than 1,500 women from twelve countries, the congress produced twenty resolutions seeking to bring about a peaceful and constructive end to WWI. These resolutions, divided into seven sections, formed the basis of the theory and practice of feminist pragmatism for which Addams is recognized today. The first section rebuked the notion that women were a protected species in conflict, instead identifying the increased vulnerability of women civilians to “odious wrongs” and “horrible violation[s]‌” during warfare (Addams, Balch, and Hamilton, 1915). In the second and third sections, states were urged to initiate talks to bring about a just peace founded upon recognition of self-​determination and self-​government. Critically, these negotiations were to include arbitration and, where necessary, mediation between disagreeing states by neutral nations. The fourth section sought to formalize another ICW at the war’s end and encouraged international cooperation and women’s representation in the formation of a “Society of Nations” and a permanent “Council of Conciliation and Investigation.” In addition, free trade and disarmament were endorsed to reduce the likelihood of future conflict. Sections five and six called for peace to be embedded in children’s education and for equal political rights and participation for women, including international suffrage and women’s engagement in peace processes. Finally, the seventh section recommended that the ICW establish delegations of women to travel and communicate these principles to belligerent states in order to bring about “a just and lasting peace” (Addams, Balch, and Hamilton, 1915). These women peace activists did not wait for suffrage and political rights or a proven theory of conflict resolution to act for peace in the present moment of war. History tells us that these transformative resolutions are still awaiting full realization. Until then, however, the ICW resolutions operate as clear statements of feminist pragmatist theory and practice in early international relations, in that they reflect key principles of historical women’s engagement in democratic processes and the role of education in facilitating social change (Deegan, 2003, 24). Addams recognized that any “truth” surrounding conflict and peace was contingent, not absolute, and must be viewed as contextual and grounded in experience rather than assumed for all people. Consequently, she saw knowledge about how to bring peace and security to populations affected by war as an evolving process marked by trial and error in negotiating among different narratives and grievances, in which people’s own experience and voices—​often hidden, silenced, and ignored—​were the crucial elements (Tickner and True, 2018, 6). To bring belligerent states and their citizens on board with a pragmatist vision of peace, which views peace as a dialogic process as well as an outcome, Addams valued the democratic practice of attentive listening, through which a sympathetic understanding could be reached between parties (cf. Bickford, 1996; Robinson, 2011; Aggestam and Bergman-​Rosamond, 2016). We might call this practice “peace mediation” in today’s parlance. This empathetic model of advocacy continued when the WPP merged into the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF) in 1919, with

Peace Pragmatism and the Women, Peace, and Security Agenda    415 Addams serving as its first president (Confortini, 2012). There, she pursued a conception of peace and justice based on a global social ethic, adopting an expansive and experimental approach to reconfiguring international relations guided by what we refer to today as cosmopolitanism and humanitarianism (Cochran, 2017, 160). In this sense, the peace pragmatism reflected in Addams’s writings and advocacy exemplified an ongoing bottom-​up process of advocating for state support to advance core principles of equal and lasting peace. While the ICW resolutions may not have received formal acceptance by militaristic political leaders that led their countries into WWI, they were nevertheless remarkably influential in later peace and security developments. As the American chair of the congress at a time when the United States was still a neutral party, Addams led the delegation that met with President Woodrow Wilson to present the resolutions and advocate for the United States to initiate and lead mediation efforts between belligerent nations. Although ultimately unable to steer Wilson away from a policy of military preparedness, many of the ICW resolutions were later reflected in the president’s Fourteen Points statement to achieve peace in 1918 (Elshtain, 2002, 225; see also Lynch, 1999). Elshtain (2002, 255) asserts that the ICW resolutions also prefigured the establishment of the League of Nations and subsequent systems of postwar multilateralism operating today. As early as 1915, Addams and other women peace activists were advocating for a rules-​ based international system in which states would refer international disputes to arbitration and/​or neutral nations would serve as mediators between conflicting parties. This “Society of Nations” was to foster international cooperation among states and enforce “principles of justice, equity and good will” across all societies, thereby reducing the potential for conflict (Addams, Balch, and Hamilton, 1915). Indeed, as president of WILPF in the interwar period, Addams was a prominent lobbyist of the League of Nations across an expansive array of issues, in part because her globalized, democratic social ethics saw opportunities for peace and justice in social, cultural, and economic as well as political spheres (Cochran, 2017, 156). However, the League of Nations was also a critically important resource to WILPF given its support of a similar brand of democracy and liberal internationalism. Indeed, the early humanitarian work of the League of Nations and its democratic reform to improve direct representation of individuals and international organizations, including women’s organizations, is largely attributable to Addams and the advocacy of WILPF in the interwar period (Cochran, 2017, 157). Although crucial to the formation of a new perspective on peaceful international relations, Addams’s feminist pragmatism derived its essential power from community engagement with immigrant groups in the United States from many different countries and cultures. Prior to WWI, Addams explored pragmatist concepts through the establishment of a “settlement house”—​Hull House—​in a deprived urban neighborhood of Chicago, wherein predominantly privileged, women scholars could educate and live with working-​class residents, promoting a form of communal—​as opposed to top-​down—​knowledge-​sharing and learning by doing (Tickner and True, 2018, 224). Addams (1899) believed that effective problem-​solving required educated people to participate in the communities intended to be the beneficiaries of their theorizing

416   Jacqui True about social problems such as poverty, and political processes such as democracy. In this sense, a feminist form of pragmatism sought to capture the practical knowledge inherent in the activities and experiences of certain groups, rather than the clinical, specialized knowledge of traditional scientific research (Siegfried, 1996; Daynes and Longo, 2004, 78). There was no grand solution to these challenges, only experimentation to discover “what works” to improve everyday security. As Hull House was, in effect, a cosmopolitan microcosm of the world, the universality of these learnings had the potential to be translated from the local context to the global. For instance, the view of the Hull House women that justice, democracy, and peace were mutually reinforcing ideas, and non-​violence was critical to their full realization, was replicated in Addams’s international peace activism (Fischer, 2006, 1–​2). More broadly, Addams’ settlement approach at Hull House provided an early iteration of contemporary feminist international-​relations methodology, which seeks to ask questions that emanate from people’s lived experience rather than those that have “fallen within the purview of how the discipline has traditionally defined knowledge” (Ackerly and True, 2008, 704). In her departure from conventional views of international peace and security, which claimed objectivity and universality despite being predominantly derived from the experiences of elite western men, Addams recognized that true knowledge emerges from the totality of social relations. Her conception of international relations therefore developed a distinctly feminist ontological approach predicated upon social relations at all levels transcending the system-​level relations between nations (Waltz, 1979). As the residents of Hull House were both “the knowers and the known,” the multi-​perspectival knowledge arising from their engagement was understood as provisional, open, and molded by human experiences and relations (Tickner and True, 2018, 229). In imbuing her settlement work with this reflexivity, Addams recognized that engagement with all people—​from elite policymakers to victim-​survivors of violence and war—​was critical to generating meaningful peace and security. And that the achievement of inclusive peace and security processes and practices would ultimately validate the pragmatist theoretical approach, i.e., wherein “the knowing is in the doing.”

Addams’s Legacy and the International Women, Peace and Security (WPS) Agenda The feminist pragmatist vision championed by Addams during her lifetime has strong continuities with feminist scholarship and activism in international relations today. In the last century, there has been significant progress to address women’s rights and women’s participation in peace and security processes due to the radical activism of women’s social movements (Moghadam, 2005; Rupp, 1997) and normative

Peace Pragmatism and the Women, Peace, and Security Agenda    417 acceptance of gender equality as a marker of modern state progress (Towns, 2010). International developments such as the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) in 1979 and the Fourth World Conference on Women held in Beijing in 1995 contributed toward mainstream acceptance of the need for women’s participation in peace and security discussions. These milestones also foreshadowed the emergence of the UN women, peace, and security (WPS) agenda in the twenty-​first century, in which Addams’s pragmatist legacy is most strongly preserved. It can be readily seen through the advocacy of WILPF vis-​à-​vis the UN, member states, and other international institutions. Much like the principles espoused by women peace activists at The Hague in 1915, the WPS agenda, which currently comprises 10 UN Security Council (UNSC) resolutions, inter alia, that form a framework to promote and protect women’s rights and gender equality in international peace and security policies (Davies and True, 2019; Chinkin, 2019). The first, landmark resolution is UNSCR 1325, which captures the critical role of a gender perspective in situations of insecurity and emphasizes women’s meaningful engagement in security processes to prevent violence, resolve conflict, and prolong peace. These core ideas—​and the nine subsequent resolutions to date—​have evolved into four key pillars of the WPS agenda: prevention, participation, protection, and relief and recovery (UN Women, 2011). Like the earlier ICW resolutions, the WPS agenda reflects a pragmatic attempt by women’s rights groups to maintain the international focus on the disproportionate effects of violence and inequality on women and children during and after conflict and to highlight potential of inclusive peacemaking to prevent and end wars (Tickner and True, 2018, 225–​226). The scholarship and activism of the WPS agenda, however, are broader than its 1915 origins, both because they identify covert harms and backlash against women’s agency in peace and security, such as sexual and gender-​based violence, and because they recognize and act upon global developments in women’s political, economic, and social rights that have occurred since Addams’s era (Gray, Kittelson, and Sandholz, 2006). Today, feminist pragmatism, as reflected in the WPS community of practice, engages the entire international security apparatus and advocates both within and outside national and multilateral systems for conflict prevention and mediation, bringing a diverse array of women’s voices and experiences to the principles of peace largely established over a century earlier. The parallels between Addams’s work and each of the pillars of the WPS agenda are striking. A focus on prevention is visible in the ICW’s early campaigns for a rules-​based international system in which states commit to arbitration or formal mediation to resolve disagreements. Although this idea is largely captured in the UN and other multilateral dispute resolution systems, the WPS agenda has successfully argued that such legal mechanisms would be more effective in resolving conflict and sustaining peace if women were genuine participants (UNSC, 2000; Tickner and True, 2018, 226). Consequently, the WPS agenda now includes support for women as mediators and negotiators in conflict prevention through global and regional networks that raise their profiles and amplify their messages (UNSC, 2000; UNSC, 2015; Turner, 2019), the deployment of women protection advisors in peace operations (UNSC, 2009), and the establishment of

418   Jacqui True an Informal Experts Group on WPS to provide routine peace operations updates on the situation of women’s insecurity inter alia to the UNSC (UNSC, 2015). Additionally, Addams’s calls for disarmament and state control of arms manufacturing to prevent conflict during WWI resonate with the WPS agenda’s scrutiny of weapon use and the arms industry in today’s conflicts. Cognizant of the particular risks posed to women and girls, a recent UNSC resolution 2242 (2015) encourages women’s involvement in preventing the illegal transfer, stockpiling, and misuse of smaller weapons (UNSC, 2015). In addition, the gendered impact of arms proliferation is acknowledged in the 2013 Arms Trade Treaty, which requires states to disallow weapons exports where they will be used to commit or facilitate “serious acts of gender-​based violence or violence against women and children” (United Nations, 2013, art 7.4). Although WPS resolutions have not yet achieved the goal of comprehensive disarmament sought by women peace activists in 1915 and since, they nevertheless reflect the growing importance of gender perspectives in international debate on arms sales, ownership, and regulation. Disarmament, moreover, remains a focus of ongoing feminist scholarship and WPS advocacy, and in WILPF through its Reaching Critical Will program (Acheson, 2021; Acheson and Butler, 2019; Shepherd and True, 2014; WILPF, 2015). The equal and meaningful participation of women was another critical theme in Addams’s peace activism. Several ICW resolutions called for improved participation of women and civilians in post-​conflict institutions, and for foreign policy and security decision-​making to be imbued with greater democracy. It was felt that for women globally to use their combined influence to prevent conflict, they needed full political enfranchisement and equal rights with men (Addams, Balch, and Hamilton, 1915). While the WPS agenda continues this advocacy for women’s participation in peace processes and in recovery efforts (Krook and True, 2012, 119), women are still largely sidelined in peace negotiations as seen most recently in the four women on the government side among the forty-​five individuals on both sides in the failed 2020–​2021 intra-​Afghan peace talks and the 2022 Russia-​Ukraine talks, in which women were absent on either side. Bell (2015) found that in the thirty-​one UN peace processes conducted between 1990 and 2011, women comprised just two percent of chief mediators, four percent of witnesses/​ signatories, and nine percent of negotiators (see also UN Women, 2018). Globally, moreover, women are a small minority in high-​level mediation, although there is significant variation across regions with greater gender inclusion in the Nordic, African, and North American regions relative to others (Aggestam and Svensson, 2018). Across conflicts, geographies, and time, men and armed actors are provided access to and control over high-​level Track I and related Track II processes in diplomacy. However, when women’s groups have substantive influence in the process, there is emerging evidence that an agreement is more likely to be reached and sustained (O’Reilly, 2015; Paffenholz et al., 2016). To rectify this gender participation gap, both states and regional entities have made the recruitment and training of women in mediation and peacemaking a priority in their implementation of the WPS agenda. The advent of ready-​to-​deploy networks of women experts in conflict resolution in Africa (UN Women, 2015) and professional-​development

Peace Pragmatism and the Women, Peace, and Security Agenda    419 programs for women mediators and negotiators in Nordic, Mediterranean, and African Union countries (Aggestam and Bergman-​Rosamond, 2016) reflect how Addams’s calls for women’s equal participation have produced pragmatic mechanisms to increase gender equality in peace processes, although the actual appointment and deployment of women into leading mediation roles is still limited. Aligning with Addams’s recommendation for an international police force rather than national militaries to secure peace, the WPS agenda has also promoted women’s representation in frontline and leadership security sector roles and the establishment of women-​only police forces in UN peacekeeping missions (Pruitt, 2016; Karim and Beardsley, 2017). Important gains have been made in women’s peace and security participation in the ASEAN region with 304 female peacekeepers out of 4,876 total troop contributions to UN operations, for example. Indonesia led the adoption of a new Security Council resolution, UNSCR 2538, adopted on August 29, 2020, encouraging member states “to develop strategies and measures to increase the deployment of uniformed women to peacekeeping operations” by providing access to information and training and by “identifying and addressing barriers in the recruitment, deployment, and promotion of uniformed women peacekeepers.” While with regard to peace-​making, women have led and supported successful peace negotiations and peacebuilding initiatives in Indonesia, Thailand, and the Philippines. By engaging with cultural and gender sensitivity across entire communities, these police peacekeeping forces are evolving in ways that reflect Addams’s pragmatist approach to peace that listens to and acts upon the unique knowledge and experiences of conflict-​ affected groups. Like feminist activists at The Hague in 1915, WPS scholars are acutely aware of the need to protect women and civilian populations more generally from the prolonged effects of conflict, including disproportionate levels of injury, trauma, and displacement as well as loss of life (True, 2015; Enloe, 2010; Cohn, 2013). Building on early views of protection for women and children, the WPS agenda now encompasses analysis of the continuum of violence that arises before, during, and after episodes of conflict (Cockburn, 2010; Tickner and True, 2018, 227). In doing so, it has expanded beyond the limited view of vulnerability in Addams’s era to include other populations who need greater protection, including displaced women, survivors of conflict-​related sexual and gender-​based violence, minority groups, disabled people, and people identifying as LGBTQI+​(Davis and Stern, 2019). The WPS agenda has also broadened its approach to protection to recognize how the harms perpetrated against these groups can be weaponized to sustain cycles of violence and escalate conflict (Heathcote, 2012; Davies and True, 2015). Recent WPS advocacy has compelled states to both address the gendered violations of civilian rights during conflict and apply a gender perspective to post-​conflict justice mechanisms. Much like the 1915 calls for a permanent International Court of Justice, the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague is now responsible for determining individual culpability for atrocity crimes, including gender-​based war crimes, ethnic cleansing, and genocide. However, work remains to be done under this mandate given that ICC prosecutions for these gender-​based violations frequently affecting women’s human rights are rare (Harris-​Rimmer, 2010; Durbach, 2016). Documentation

420   Jacqui True and investigation protocols for sexual and gender-​based violence (SGBV) crimes have also yet to be implemented in many conflict situations. For example, in Russia’s current war in Ukraine, reports and testimonies of conflict-​related sexual violence are widespread. The international community is expected to support Ukraine’s conflict-​related SGBV response as well as its documentation and investigation strategy to ensure justice and safety for survivors. As UNSCR 1325 (2000) states in its preamble, and subsequent Security Council resolutions underscore, war not only fuels SGBV during war—​SGBV undermines the prospects “for durable peace and reconciliation.” Finally, both the 1915 congress and the WPS agenda identify a crucial role for women in relief and recovery from conflict, and in enabling post-​conflict economic justice. Although conscious of the particular suffering of women, Addams did not assume that all women were vulnerable subjects of war; instead, she drew attention to their remarkable capacity to generate economic, social, and familial prosperity on the home front to justify women’s participation in post-​conflict peace processes. In a similar vein, the WPS agenda contends that women are powerful agents of community resilience and recovery, and that their unique knowledge and experiences can be harnessed to achieve justice and peace in post-​conflict settings (Faxon, Fulong, and Sabe Phyu, 2015; True et al., 2017). As a result, practical mechanisms and participatory targets have become embedded into the WPS agenda to promote women’s participation in relief and recovery decision-​making at all levels (see Swaine, 2010). Many of these relief and recovery efforts adopt Addams’s pragmatist approach to peace by working collaboratively with post-​conflict communities to listen to their needs and amplify their voices to reach key decision-​making circles. By bringing these experiences to political leaders, both earlier ICW and WPS today activists have held states accountable for their commitment to peace and to facilitate relief and recovery processes that are sensitive to the unique circumstances of conflict-​affected communities.

Women, Peace, and Security in Practice: Learning from Jane Addams Jane Addams’s pragmatist sociology and pedagogy are not only reflected in, and relevant to, the contemporary women, peace, and security (WPS) agenda; her work provides a meaningful guide for how to understand and respond to current global conflicts that takes seriously their implications for women’s rights and security. Addams’s rejection of antagonism as a tension in the progress toward a common outcome (Menand, 2001, 314), rather than an inevitable or inherent opposition, is a helpful starting point for feminist mediation and peacebuilding. Using the analogy of the American Civil War, she pointed out the futility of antagonism or war: “We freed slaves by war and had now to free them all over again individually and pay the costs of the war and reckon with the added bitterness of the Southerner beside” (Menand, 2001, 313). In other words,

Peace Pragmatism and the Women, Peace, and Security Agenda    421 war resolves nothing with regard to people’s differences. Instead, it destroys lives and is devastating in its human consequences. These impacts of war must continue to be addressed and redressed for generations. Power politics and exaggerated nationalism, Addams argued, do not guarantee peace. She held that only people working across nations can achieve this: “A demand for a better peace must come from people themselves” (“Address at the International Peace Congress,” 1923/​2017, 158). Governments will not bring about peace because they the protection of their people is the principal obligation rather than the protection of all people. As both a response and alternative to war and conflict, therefore, Addams stressed the need for a “wider life of coordinated activity among peoples” (in Siegfried, 1996, 75). Her proposals for peace were grounded in her tangible experiences of humane organizations, including the actions of Hull House residents to improve the human condition in their surrounding community. In today’s context, transnational civic activism exemplifies the pragmatist, people-​to-​ people cooperation encouraged by Addams. Two examples of this outreach are instructive: people’s collective efforts to evacuate and resettle citizens of Afghanistan threatened by the Taliban takeover of their country, and the humanitarian and “kinning”1 voluntary responses to the citizens of Ukraine forced to flee their homes and country from war. Despite the horror of these existing conflicts and the limitations of global governance, there are foundations of humane, civic practice recognized by Addams that can be built upon toward the realization of a better peace. The chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan in August 2021 when the Taliban took over the country by force and the invasion of Ukraine by Russia in February 2022 are the “Munich” moments of our era: they recall how Chamberlain “appeased” Hitler at Munich enabling Germany to take Czechoslovakia. Hitler’s argument was quite similar to Putin’s: “This was historically our land, unjustly taken from us.” Chamberlain’s view was similar to that of the United States—​allowing the Taliban to takeover Afghanistan under the guise of a peace deal negotiated 18 months before. But these acts today are not “quarrels in a faraway country about people of whom we know nothing,” as Chamberlain once retorted. Our sense of responsibility and emotional connection to other human beings has deepened since World War I and II, as a result of unprecedented socio-​ cultural and economic globalization. In many countries, if not all, the civil society response to civilians affected by the Taliban takeover and collaboration with western governments and militaries led to the evacuation of more people—​Afghans and foreigners—​than political leaders initially thought possible. In Australia, for example, what began as a commitment to evacuate citizens and Afghan employees only eventuated in more than 4,000 Afghans being relocated to Australia. With the continual pressure of many citizen groups—​refugee and asylum-​seeker advocacy groups, human rights groups, diaspora groups, sporting groups, music groups, church groups, and defense force veterans—​under a common platform “Action for Afghanistan”—​secured 16,500 permanent refugee resettlement places for citizens of Afghanistan citizens six months after the initial evacuation. The global civil society response was immense—​with groups across countries that shared a

422   Jacqui True connection with Afghans, whether through diaspora, love of music or sports, or commitment to peace and human rights, helping to find avenues for the safe passage and protection of Afghan women, men, and children. In response to Russia’s war in Ukraine we have seen a similar outpouring of civic voluntarism—​ from citizens in neighboring countries, such as, Poland, Slovakia, Moldova, and Romania and around the world eager to provide shelter in their homes and communities and send funds directly to Ukrainian people through inventive methods to help them survive and/​or leave war zones. Through formal and informal global media and social media channels, the evils of war, including alleged war crimes, can be seen by people in real time. People are educated about these crimes and civil society groups on the ground are working to document and investigate them. People know about the risks of human trafficking, and efforts are being made by civic initiatives to prevent harm to refugees and internally displaced persons. In Poland, women have created the Women Take the Wheel initiative for Ukrainian women refugees, providing them and their families with a “bubble of safety” for safe passage. Ukrainian women civil society organizations, many of them headed by women, also have been working to respond to the everyday needs of people by delivering humanitarian aid and securing safe spaces and transit for Ukrainians. Such civic voluntarism in countries is contingent, however. It has not been present in some countries, or in other cases, for example, migrants and refugees seeking asylum from the Syrian conflict. The challenge from a feminist pragmatist perspective is to learn from peaceful resettlement experiences and expand them to benefit other groups and activities that can promote peacebuilding and inform preventative diplomacy. Recalling Jane Addam’s settlement approach—​we see the action as well as the practical experimentation to respond to human insecurity regardless of race, class, or nationality boundaries in the present. Among citizens of democracies around the world, there is respect for Ukrainian people’s national sense of belonging and their defense of democracy, demonstrating that international solidarity and cooperation are possible. As Addams put it, there is “not hopeless resignation nor violent antagonism but unceasing effort to overcome evil by doing good.” At the same time, there is still the challenge of war and conflict, the massive destruction of human life and community to contend with. Learning from Hull House, people are working to (re)build that multi-​ethnic community and cooperation in resettlements of Afghans and Ukrainians in other countries in the hope that it can be extended back to their homelands in the future. Encouraged by global trends, a number of countries have expanded the role of gender equality and/​or feminist principles in their foreign policies. Gender equality and the empowerment of women is not only a tangible expression of some states’ identity and values; it is now an explicit part of the foreign policy informing their key international alliances and relationships. Practically in the Afghan evacuation response, this meant some countries prioritized the protection of women leaders and women’s rights activists given the Taliban’s religious extremist view of women and girls. In the response to Russia’s war in Ukraine, this has meant extending social protection to women and

Peace Pragmatism and the Women, Peace, and Security Agenda    423 children, in particular, who have lost their homes, jobs, and access to services and may be without fathers, brothers, and partners, given the obligation for all Ukrainian men aged eighteen to sixty years old to stay in Ukraine (although many courageous women have joined the fight too). Inter-​and intra-​state conflict frequently reduces the diversity of human experience and identities to that of soldiers and mothers, warriors and victims, which can have the obverse, unintended effect of revitalizing masculinities primed for war. That is why for Jane Addams and the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom that she co-​founded, gender equality as well as social and economic justice are crucial preconditions for lasting peace, which states and civil societies must be encouraged to support.

Conclusion This chapter has examined the principles articulated at the 1915 Hague Peace Conference that Jane Addams chaired, and later promoted with the establishment of the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom. It has explored how Addams’s peace pragmatism exemplified a trial-​and-​error process of gaining state and civil society support to advance principles of equal and lasting peace. The legacy of these principles and the broader advocacy led by Addams can be seen in the evolution of the women, peace, and security (WPS) agenda and transnational advocacy movement almost a century later. WPS advocacy involves a pragmatic attempt on the part of women’s rights activists to address the significant gender-​based violence and gendered inequality that continues to characterize conflict and war. Like Jane Addams and the earlier work of the WPP and WILPF, WPS scholars and practitioners focus on pragmatic mechanisms to bring greater security to vulnerable populations. This concrete focus sets the agenda for their research and their advocacy. The “truth” about war and conflict or feminism arises from the “on the ground” experiences of people; and while war may bring peace in a limited way, it cannot sustain it. Addams was radical in identifying patriarchal norms at heart of the war system but like feminist activists today, she grappled with a fundamental choice: which issues can be best pursued by states or governments and which must be pursued by people’s own organizing in civil societies. In many regards, the ontologies of feminist peace and the state system are incompatible, and this was recognized by Addams. It is important to recover feminist traditions of theory and practice as we seek contemporary inspiration and resources to create the conditions for positive and enduring peace. A fundamental maxim of feminist pragmatism, as expressed through Jane Addams’s work, is that social advance depends as much on the process through which it is secured as on the result itself. Dismantling structures of social, political, and economic oppression to achieve peace, moreover, starts with ordinary acts in everyday life.

424   Jacqui True

Note 1. Anthropologists refer to “kinning” processes as the practice of incorporating adoptees into a network of kinship, which can happen transnationally. The kinning process requires a process of de-​kinning where people are expelling or removed from their previous kin homes. This process occurs for refugees and internally displaced people informally, in some ways akin to the process of adoption (see Howell, 2007).

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Chapter 22

Jane Addams, E x pa nsi v e M asculinit y, a nd t h e F r agilit y of t h e Wa r Virtue s Tadd Ruetenik

An exemplar of moral resilience during a crucial time in US and world history, the life and words of Jane Addams are at least as relevant today as during her lifetime. This moral resilience was best seen in Addams’s opposition to war, an opposition that included subtle yet often bold critiques of the war virtues we hold in especially high esteem. Perhaps her writings are even more relevant now than in the time of World War I, since humanity’s moral development has not kept pace with its development of war technology. The issue here is not just whether humans’ capabilities for destruction have increased. The issue is also that humans seem to be increasingly disassociated from the tough physical activity of war, the kind of activity that has traditionally given war and its warriors the prestige that, for better or worse, they enjoy in our popular imagination. Mechanized warfare became prevalent in World War I, and I believe Addams was among the first to consider the effects of these changes on all those involved in the creation and continuation of the war virtues. Traditionally masculine, these virtues are those which help perpetuate beliefs that war is a necessary and noble pursuit. One must take seriously the radical nature of Addams’s writings. In her introduction to Newer Ideals of Peace, she says our goal should be that of “extinguishing the possibility of battle at its very source” (Addams, 2007 [1906], p. 7). Rooting out war requires making more than just adjustments and adaptations, but making fundamental changes to human psychology, and these are found at the level of our moral sentiments. For example, as Addams realized, wars do not happen just because belligerent humans are exploited by national and economic interests. Nor do they happen just because of a lack of adequate communication between national leaders. Addams

428   Tadd Ruetenik believed that wars happen just as much because people find them meaningful in some way. Accordingly, to address the problem of war nearer its source, I will critique the virtues of war and the warrior, virtues that are tied to notions of masculinity. Yet, rather than merely condemn the masculine virtues that lead to the normalization of warlike behavior in place of, for example, nurturing behavior, we can, like Addams, work within the assumptions involved in these virtues. Doing so will show that the virtues of war and its warriors are fragile and are becoming increasingly fragile along with warfare that has become increasingly technological. Human beings, especially those in areas where war technology is more advanced, are becoming even further alienated from their nature. Addams’s critiques of the war virtues involve criticizing what I call expansive masculinity. Addams shows that self-​reliant moral resilience is more valuable than the often-​proclaimed but curiously fragile valor of the “brave men of the United States Armed Services.”1 And this is especially evident in wars produced by what has become famously known as the United States’ Military Industrial Complex.2 Addams teaches us that there is no virtue in confusing technological sophistication with true human strength, and what is more, that there is a definite vice in confusing a distorted idea of human strength with moral superiority. In short, the problem is not just that military minds operate on a notion that might makes right, but that they are also operating on a fragile notion of might. In today’s world, it is increasingly the case that this might is not related to the will and endurance of suffering soldiers putting their hearts into noble battles, but on the ability of men (and increasingly, women) to manipulate machines. Addams hated the human habit of war, of course, but she also hated the fact that this habit was becoming less human, that is, more of a mechanical task that alienates human beings from concrete moral experience by reducing their physical and directly experienced emotional investment. Although Addams herself did not have an especially hearty physical constitution, she did have the ability to endure the emotional tribulations that are involved when one takes an unpopular stance. She bravely maintained her position while enduring attacks on her character, showing us that bravery is not limited to the masculine virtue of aggressiveness, but is expressed most clearly in the human virtue of moral resilience, that is the willingness to continue to do what is right without giving in to the temptation of violence in its many forms.

Moral Resilience versus Pragmatic Compromise To explain how Addams was an exemplar of moral resilience, it is important to distinguish such a character from that of a compromising “pragmatist.” It is not inappropriate to consider Addams a pragmatist philosopher—​as Charlene Haddock Siegfried

Jane Addams, Expansive Masculinity, and the Fragility    429 most notably does—​but we should understand “pragmatism” not as being synonymous with, say, “compromise for political expediency.” If it were, then Addams would have followed along with friends and colleagues in support of US involvement in World War I. But with the advent of this war, Addams saw a moral distortion taking place. Seigfried says that Addams “sounds an early warning against the transformation of nationalism from a hopeful sign of unity in the years leading up to World War I into the hypernationalism that not only contributed to the outbreak of war but also threatened to fuel future conflicts” (Seigfried, 2004, p. 194). I add that it is not just nationalism that became hyperdeveloped. The conflicts have also been fueled by a technological transformation in the way that humans, especially men, view the virtues of war. It has been, in effect, fueled through machines that seem to increase the efficacy of the male will, and expand the potency of male body, even while lowering the investment of human energy in the act of war. To put it bluntly, because of an increase in nationalistic moral sympathies and technological sophistication, today’s US warrior is more coddled than ever before. This does not imply that being a soldier today is an easy and protected job, such as that of, say, a CEO. Nor does it mean that coddling is necessarily a bad thing. It does suggest, however, that the travails of a soldier in today’s world are different from those in Addams’s time. Instead of excessive cold or heat, food scarcity and deprivation, and the need to march long distances—​as was the case in the time of Addams—​today there is climate control, advanced modes of transportation, and a surfeit of nourishment.3 The difference here is that the resilience of the World War I soldier is not the resilience of the contemporary US soldier. And while it is certainly rational to use technology to protect a country’s own soldiers to the best of your abilities and keep them safe from dangers, this rationale works to lower their heroic virtue, since we have less reason to pity them. US Soldiers still heroically give their lives to the nation, but in the earlier days of war, they also gave more of their suffering to it. Addams did not have the opportunity to risk her life in battle, but she could risk her reputation. Regarding her role in World War I, she says that “in order to make the position of the pacifist clear, it was perhaps necessary that at least a small number of us should be forced into an unequivocal position” (2002a [1922], p. 77). As Seigfried notes, “Addams’ pacifism is absolute,” but she provides an important clarification. Addams, she says, “never wavers from the pragmatist principle that means must be continuous with ends” (Seigfried, 2004, p. 194). So Addams was indeed, in the words of biographer Louise Knight, a “self-​reliant hero.” But she was one who relied on her “wide experience carefully interpreted” (2010, p. 107) and not, for example, on acts of desperate self-​assertion. When writing about the ancient Greek heroine Cassandra, possessor of the “feminine trait of mind,” Addams says that it is important to have “an accurate perception of Truth and Justice which rests contented in itself, and will make no effort to confirm itself, or to organize through existing knowledge” (2002b, p. 10). And of course this authentic desire for truth and justice will not try to confirm itself through military power, as the United States seemed to be doing as it entered World War I.

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Appeals to Pity and Prudence: Then and Now It is important that we follow the advice of Harriet Hymn Alonso here and not try to “fit Addams into the pigeonhole of heroism” (Alonso, 2008, p. 203) or consider her “a pure role model created from a nonviolent gene pool” (p. 205), but rather continue to evaluate her words. What follows is an exploration of three main critiques that Addams makes regarding the war virtues. The first of these is her critique of the idea that the antiwar position should try to promote a sense of pity for the soldiers, the second critique focuses on the expansive military establishment in which these soldiers live, and the third critique identifies a fragility in the masculine virtues upon which a large part of this establishment depends for moral support. When Addams speaks about war and invokes the virtues of warriors I am not convinced that this is just a rhetorical accommodation of the values of those she is trying to influence. It also represents a genuine sentiment—​perhaps a nostalgia—​for more authenticity in the way that wars are fought, a consideration that seems to be aesthetic as much as anything else. For example, in Newer Ideals of Peace, Addams evaluates the writing of Leo Tolstoy. “High and searching is the preaching” of Tolstoy, she says, who drags us through the campaign of the common soldier in its sordidness and meanness and constant sense of perplexity. We see nothing of the glories we have associated with warfare, but learn of it as it appears to the untutored peasant who goes forth at the mandate of his superior to suffer hunger, cold and death for issues which he does not understand, which indeed, can have no moral significance to him. (Addams, 2007 [1906], p. 5)

Within Addams’s positive appraisal of Tolstoy are indications of what she believes to be the limits of his approach.4 In the case of his preaching about the peasant soldiers, Tolstoy was, she believed, largely making an appeal to pity. His style, which Addams acknowledges is beautiful, involves showing pathos in place of the glory of war. But it is more difficult to generate feelings of pity when thinking of today’s warrior, who, although often drawn from a poverty class, is considerably more educated, better fed, and more adequately clothed. And today’s US soldiers are neither illiterate nor uninformed. They are enticed with respectable material gains, as well as the promise—​for the most part fulfilled—​of glory and praise continually directed at them by the culture at large. They are nurtured within a culture that readily accepts that the soldiers fight and die for a lofty and searching ideal of freedom.5 The contemporary US soldier or veteran is not living in a manner equivalent—​materially or psychologically—​to the squalor and depression experienced by the peasant-​soldiers of Tolstoy’s time. So if we accept

Jane Addams, Expansive Masculinity, and the Fragility    431 that Tolstoy’s appeal to pity comes close to the “goody-​goody attitude of ineffectiveness” (Addams 2007 [1906], p. 7) that Addams ridicules, we should concede that such an appeal is even more ineffective today. Addams concludes her assessment of Tolstoy by saying that, despite how gifted his writing is, “it is still the appeal of dogma, and may be reduced to a command to cease from evil.” She adds that “when this same line of appeal is presented by less gifted men, it often results in mere sentimentality, totally unenforced by a call to righteousness” (Addams 2007 [1906], p. 6). It is important here to notice the reference to men who are “gifted” at writing. This can mean that, in addition to natural skill, Tolstoy has been gifted with male privilege, so that he can express sentiments without also seeming sentimental. In sum, Addams’s critique of Tolstoy is that as great of a writer as he is, the sense of pity he elicits depends on many things, and is thus a fragile way of making the case against war. In addition to the appeal to pity, Addams considers what she calls the appeal to prudence, which she describes as the belief that “the only way to secure eternal peace is to waste so much valuable energy and treasure in preparing for war that war becomes impossible.” After this charitable presentation of the position, Addams harshly criticizes it, saying that “certainly no theory could be devised which is more cumbersome, more roundabout, more extravagant, than the reductio ad absurdum of the peace-​secured-​by-​the-​preparation-​for-​war theory” (2007 [1906], p. 6). Addams’s forceful tone here indicates that she is not just offended at the supposed lack of simplicity in the theory, but also indignant about the men who create it. Men think of themselves as exhibiting the “pragmatic” virtue of, for example, trying to hone their activities for precise effect. But it seems that they are often caught up not only in sentimentality, but also its showiness. As Addams seems to imply, the peace-​secured-​ by-​the-​preparation-​for-​war theory is “cumbersome” in the way that women are generally seen as burdens on men’s heroic lives. The theory is “roundabout” in the way that chatty women are believed to be talking just to talk. And it is “extravagant” like women’s fashion often is.6 In using the words “cumbersome” and “extravagant,” Addams might have been remembering an awkward encounter she had with Tolstoy a few years earlier. After greeting her at his home, Tolstoy tugged at the bulging sleeves of Addams’s dress, fashionable at the time, and remarked that all the extra fabric could “make a frock for a little girl.” Addams notes her response: I was too disconcerted to make a very clear explanation, although I tried to say that as monstrous as my sleeves were they did not compare in size with those of the working girls in Chicago and that nothing would more effectively separate me from “the people” than a cotton blouse following the simple lines of the human form, even if I had wished to imitate him and “dress as a peasant,” it would have been hard to choose which peasant among the thirty-​six nationalities we had recently counted in our ward. (1911, pp. 267–​268)

432   Tadd Ruetenik Addams seems to have felt ashamed at not explaining herself well, but she probably should not have seen herself at fault. Her later articulation is indeed an appropriate response to Tolstoy and points out his privilege of dressing like he does. It is easier to be in solidarity with the peasant in the relatively homogenous context of the Russian countryside; the poor of the United States were a more motley bunch. Tolstoy’s critique of the supposed extravagance of Addams’s dress found an inappropriate target given that one of Addams’s main points regarding war and masculinity is that bigger is not necessarily better. She believed that the competition to be bigger, especially in terms of the military, is a spectacular waste of energy, and unfit for adult life. Subsequent US history has tended to confirm this thesis. Due to the persistent prominence of war virtues in the United States, most of its politicians reject self-​reliance and vote along with the crowd to support increases in military spending, especially if these increases are believed to result in more safety to the troops. In a way, this is part of a grand appeal to prudence, since the best way to protect the troops is to develop methods of war that maximize damage while minimizing risk. Developed one decade after Addams’s death, the atomic bomb is the reductio ad absurdum of the appeal to prudence. Addams had predicted that spending more money in preparing for war—​in the hope that such spending deters war—​will lead to a distorted way of thinking similar to those who thought World War I would be the war to end all wars. Again, we see Addams’s moral resilience present in her willingness to stick to the simple principle that means should be united with ends. You cannot end war with war, and you cannot end war with the preparation for war. As Addams argued, those who are already the biggest will win in any game of military accumulation. She said that the method of military build-​ups seems “impotent to influence empires which command enormous resources and which lodge the power of expenditure in officials who have nothing to do with accumulating the treasure they vote to expend” (2007 [1906], p. 6). And these officials are likely the same people who believe war is inevitable. Addams says that the “adherents of war” are those who “tell us that it is interwoven with every fibre of human growth and is at the root of all that is noble and courageous in human life, that struggle is the basis of all progress, that it is now extended from individuals and tribes to nations and races” (2007 [1906], p. 117). Addams chose the word “adherents” to describe those who were pro-​war. They were in effect adhering themselves to an ideal, that which says war is essential to being human. Addams suggests that a form of projection took place. “We slowly became aware that our affirmation was regarded as pure dogma” by the war hawks. “We were thrust into the position of the doctrinnaire, and, although, had we been permitted, we might have cited both historic and scientific tests of our so-​called doctrine of Peace, for the moment any sanction even by way of illustration was impossible” (2002 [1922], p. 86). Addams seems to be saying that she was the prudent one in that she was arguing from previous experience, and yet the war-​to-​end-​all-​wars “pragmatists” were operating on principle, namely that war is the answer.

Jane Addams, Expansive Masculinity, and the Fragility    433

The Fragility of Expansive Patriotism In a 1913 Ladies Home Journal article titled “If Men Were Seeking the Franchise,” Addams seems to provoke responses of male fragility. If women were in charge, they would be telling men that their reckless dogmatism is evidence that they should not be in control of common resources. The reason given to men would be that “you are so fond of fighting—​you always have been since you were little boys,” and because of this would waste money on extravagant military equipment (2002b, pp. 229–​230). Men would do this under the excuse of patriotism and security, another concept of which Addams believed men have limited understanding. As she explained at a 1904 Universal Peace Conference, security means “the right to demand food and shelter to the very end” and “to find a place in the social order that he may fill more adequately than anyone else” (Addams 2005 [1904], p. 305); in military minds, it often means attacking an enemy they imagine might take their resources. Patriotism was one of the controversial topics that Addams engaged in her career. She did find some use in the idea of patriotism, understood as community pride, but like many authors has seen the idea of patriotism as too vulnerable to common misunderstandings. Instead of seeing patriotism as pride in a community’s ability to nurture its own members and cooperate with other communities to help them do the same, people commonly see patriotism as siding with one’s own community in a competition to negate the interests of outsiders. Linda Schott says Addams’s idea of nurture is that “instead of competing against others for resources, people should cooperate to increase resources and improve living and working conditions for all” (Schott 1993, p. 249). Marilyn Fischer makes this more specific by saying that Addams thought of all machines as potential weapons, and “had industrial machinery been considered social rather than private property, many of the widespread industrial abuses of the day would have been avoided, such as inadequate wages, child labor, monotonous work, child labor, and dangerous workplaces” (Fischer 2008, p. 171). To understand Addams’s ideas about war and expansive masculinity, it is important to understand how this idea of nurturing one’s own is subjected to nationalistic distortions that make patriotism into an international game, infected with the puerile interest in competition. Addams says that patriotism, “although as genuine as ever before, is too much dressed in the trappings of the past and continually carries us back to its beginnings in military prowess and defence” (2007 [1906], p. 119). Again, however, Addams’s use of words is interesting. The metaphorical phrase “dressed in” suggests some kind of ostentation, and Addams seems to be encouraging the inference that men, and not only women, dress themselves up for show. For example, the US soldier of the 21st century is dressed much differently than was the US soldier of the early 20th century. The grubby foot-​soldier who endured the imminent dangers of World War I trenches contrasts with the well-​armored soldier who patrols the already bomb-​decimated

434   Tadd Ruetenik streets of relatively poorer countries, and contrasts even more with the pilot soldier who dropped the bombs on those countries. To note this difference is to risk depreciating soldiers, and depreciating soldiers has always been risky. When Addams noted that young soldiers saw war as “anachronistic,” it caused a response that Addams described carefully in her “Personal Reactions During War.” She says that this observation was my undoing, for in illustration of it I said that in practically every country we had visited, we had heard a certain type of young soldier say that it had been difficult for him to make the bayonet charge . . . unless he had been stimulated; that the English soldiers had been given rum before such a charge, the Germans ether and that the French were said to use absinthe. To those who heard the address it was quite clear that it was not because the young men flinched at the risk of death but because they had to be inflamed to do the brutal work of the bayonet, such as disembowelling, and were obliged to overcome all the inhibitions of civilization. (2002 [1922], p. 78)

Addams’s distinction—​that the soldier is not cowardly about death but rather full of legitimate moral concern about killing—​should have elicited authentic pity, but her critics were unmoved by her invoking of such existential considerations. As Addams describes it in a Carnegie Hall Address, a young man “could be ordered into the trenches; he could be ordered to go through the motions, but the final act was in his own hands and with his own conscience” (2002b, p. 333). It seems that a man risking to follow his own conscience would be considered heroic, displaying signs of masculine independence. And noting this level of moral maturity should have increased the general public’s admiration of soldiers. Instead, it only seemed to highlight the insecurity of non-​soldier men. Addams continues by explaining that her supposed moral transgression of saying that soldiers could only kill when liquored up was immediately commented upon, notably in a scathing letter written to the New York Times by Richard Harding Davis, as a most choice specimen of a woman’s sentimental nonsense. Mr. Davis himself had recently returned from Europe and at once became the defender of the heroic soldiers who were being traduced and belittled. He left the weight of his name and his very able pen to the cause, but it really needed neither, for the misstatement was repeated, usually with scathing comment, from one end of the country to the other. (2002 [1922], p. 78–​79)

Reading carefully once again, we can see in Addams’s words another subtle critique of masculinity. Addams’s mention of Davis’s “weight” and his “very able pen” can suggest a reference to his body and its male parts. Perhaps Addams was demonstrating that she was able to wield a pen as heavy and virile as Davis could. More obvious, however, is her assertion that Davis did not even need to perform this service, which insinuates that the war journalist was merely posturing, trying to further his own career by riding the wave of offense occasioned by Addams’s words.7

Jane Addams, Expansive Masculinity, and the Fragility    435 The controversy around Addams’s comments about soldiers and liquor is less likely to come up today. Perhaps this is because the use of liquor is less controversial. Addams was often thought to be connected to various supposedly subversive groups, including the Women’s Christian Temperance Union. She was linked to this group through the use of a “Spider Web Chart” of pacifist and reformist groups that was created by a New York state senator through what was known as the Lusk Committee.8 For Addams, the temperance movement was tied to women’s well-​being, and as biographer Sandra Opdycke says, Addams’s position was “strongly influenced by having lived in a neighborhood where husbands’ excessive drinking did indeed impose a terrible toll on many families—​both in terms of lost wages and domestic abuse” (Opdycke 2012, p. 123). Offense at someone talking about soldiers’ use of alcohol seems to be a specific instance of something more general, namely the fragility of the male ego, and its need to cope with threats through intoxication and violence. In the case of life in the inner cities, men’s drinking causes domestic violence; in the case of war, men’s drinking disinhibits violence against foreigners. And it is in this second sense that Addams also provoked the sensitivities of men. In her essay “Passing of the War Virtues,” Addams uses an analogy that can be read as a harsh rebuke to the US soldier of today: We may admit that the experiences of war have equipped the men of the present with pluck and energy, but to insist upon the self-​same expression for that pluck and energy would be as stupid a mistake as if we would relegate the full-​grown citizen, responding to many claims and demands upon his powers, to the school-​yard fights of his boyhood, or to the college contests of his cruder youth. The little lad who stoutly defends himself on the school-​ground may be worthy of much admiration, but if we find him, a dozen years later, the bullying leader of a street-​gang who bases his prestige on the fact that “no one can whip him,” our admiration cools amazingly, and we say that the carrying over of those puerile instincts into manhood shows arrested development which is mainly responsible for filling our prisons. (2007 [1906], p. 117)

To continue Addams’s metaphor a bit, we can imagine that the plucky schoolboy—​the ideal American soldier—​has indeed grown up, and is now much bigger than his peers. Yet at the same time he has a lingering apprehension about his power coupled with an authoritarian attitude. As a result, he acquires a weapon, which he conceals, to be used when his ordinary fighting is at risk of failing. And when discovering that this weapon has also ceased to guarantee his authority, he creates bigger and more dangerous ones. The result is an expansive masculinity. The heroic fists of the little boy, flailing away at larger threats to defend his rights, turn into the more refined movements of a grown man’s fingers initiating precise remote attacks. As Knight explains, Addams “broadened the meaning of militarism” to include “relying on physical force as the ultimate solution to every difficulty” and “admiring excessively the courage and daring that war required” (Knight 2010, p. 137). As the excess becomes greater the less daring the warrior.

436   Tadd Ruetenik To extend Addams’s metaphor, we go from the playground to world politics, and we give the boy some war machines. As Terrance MacMullan has noted, World War I was “the first large scale instance of a war where the fighting was entirely mechanized and industrialized,” a fact that made it “inexact and brutal” (2001, p. 88). I am arguing that since the end of World War I, technological developments have made war more exact and perhaps in a sense less brutal. This development results in a corresponding decrease in the courage and daring that is required. The Yankee schoolboy is caught in arrested development if he excessively admires his aggression and justifies it as self-​defense.

Conclusion Through her self-​reliance and moral resilience, Addams saw the future of violence, one that is organized and operated by men intent on valorizing war and making it seem inevitable. I have been suggesting that this involves trying to use outdated virtues of masculine strength and dedication, those that made soldiers into both pitiful and admirable subjects of our sympathy, to valorize a type of warfare increasingly reliant on a technological sophistication that makes war more a matter of intellectual activity rather than physical endurance. Addams’s assessment of the pathos of Tolstoy’s writing and pandering of Davis’s writing shows us that war virtues are not above critique. The virtue of soldiers resides in an endurance that manifests a dedicated will. However, when employing increasingly large and complicated war machines, these soldiers take on an artificial power. A suffering body can indeed display virtue, but the body’s use of soulless machines often displays that soul’s cowardice.9 Addams’ critique of masculinity is, among other things, a critique of artificial power. From her time onward, masculinity has extended itself by mechanical means, which are represented in the precise weapons and the refined skills needed to operate them. These refined skills are a luxury that can be distinguished from the noble, unrefined will of the peasant soldiers whom Tolstoy asks us to pity. In 1910—​three years after the publication of Addams’s Newer Ideals of Peace—​ philosopher and psychologist William James published a speech on “The Moral Equivalent of War.” Here he draws attention to what he calls a “highly paradoxical” situation, one in which we value war and yet at the same time disavow it. A half century after the end of the US Civil War, James speaks about this strange psychological condition. Ask all our millions, north and south, whether they would vote now (were such a thing possible) to have our war for the Union expunged from history, and the record of a peaceful transition to the present time substituted for that of its marches and battles, and probably hardly a handful of eccentrics would say yes. Those ancestors, those efforts, those memories and legends, are the most ideal part of what we now own together, a sacred spiritual possession worth more than all the blood poured

Jane Addams, Expansive Masculinity, and the Fragility    437 out. Yet ask those same people whether they would be willing, in cold blood, to start another civil war now to gain another similar possession, and not one man or woman would vote for the proposition. In modern eyes, precious though wars may be they must not be waged solely for the sake of the ideal harvest. Only when forced upon one, is a war now thought permissible. (1911, p. 268)

James seems to imply that the experience of a war causes a form of trauma bonding within a community, making it cling to the horrors of the past while simultaneously rejecting them. In the case of war, learning from the past can merely mean learning how refine the act of war. Accordingly, the war virtues have tried to adapt themselves. The “sacred spiritual possession” becomes not, for example, the suffering soldier, but rather the military machines that encounter little resistance except that which would come, for example, from its user’s own conscience. Today, we tend to envision the US soldier as one who suffers from post-​traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Any yet any recent increase in cases of PTSD among veterans could indicate, as much as anything else, that we are seeing the suffering soldier differently. Obviously, there are still plenty of wounded warriors in wheelchairs, and with missing limbs, and so on just as in Addams’s day. But the suffering today is more refined, and it resides just as much in the mind of the warrior. Any change in this respect makes the suffering of the soldier less visible, more remote—​like the wars that the United States wages in the Middle East. Jane Addams’s extraordinary combination of sympathy and intellect allowed her to see what others did not, and her extraordinary moral resilience allowed her to endure criticisms from those who preferred a state of relative ignorance. This sets a strong example. Science writer Mary Roach wrote her 2016 book Grunt: The Curious Science of Humans at War after having been embedded with the US military.10 Her descriptions and comments are revealing, and although she never mentions having read Jane Addams, she seems to be operating with Addams’s spirit when she recounts the words of one of her military sources: “In support of the operation, we have a Predator drone in the overhead, and quick access to an assault weapons team: Cobras or Hueys. If things go kinetic we can call them up for supporting fire.” Going kinetic is military shorthand for people are firing at you. (Roach 2016, p. 61)

The contrast between the psychology of war in William James and Jane Addams’s time and the psychology of war in today’s world is significant. The most obvious contrast is that the war James described was devastatingly local, while the wars of today are experienced by most US citizens as remote, foreign affairs. Yet we also see in James an important reference to blood and effort, suggesting an organic and enduring investment of will and muscle from the soldier. Roach, on the other hand, describes war as being a matter of brain going directly to machine: If things get real, they call for support from the sky, in the form of drones operated by soldiers in remote locations.

438   Tadd Ruetenik And even on the ground, the brain-​metal connection is active, requiring almost no effort to make things kinetic. The M16 rifle, for example, has a trigger that Roach describes in a poignantly: Both “squeeze” and “pull” are exaggerations of the motion applied to the trigger. It’s a trivial, tiny movement, the twitch of a dreaming child. So quick and so effortless is it that it’s hard for me to associate it with any but the most inconsequential of acts. Flipping a page. Typing an M. Scratching an itch. Ending a life wants a little more muscle. (2016, p. 68)

Roach’s observations are from a perspective that is not unsympathetic to masculine virtues, but more expansive in its sympathy. She sees things from the perspective of the often deficiently armed object of the firing, who loses their life as the result of a twitch, something far less significant than if they had experienced, for example, the results of a bayonet thrust. Addams shows us a different way to think of strength and virtue. It is not just that humans, and especially men, are wired for violence. The lesson here is that while the disposition toward violence remains activated within humanity’s collective nervous system, the connection between soul and suffering body has become more remote, while the connection between mind and machine has become increasingly intimate. Interestingly enough, in this technologically enhanced killing, women are as capable of participating as men. And while the effort involved would be that of endurance more than muscular strength, Jane Addams—​our example of moral resilience—​would still refuse to participate. What’s more, she would encourage others to refuse as well. As she notes in the introduction to Newer Ideals of Peace, our goal should be to create a “ ‘sovereign intervention’ by extinguishing the possibility of battle at its very source.” We need “newer social forces” that “are so dynamic and vigorous that the impulses to war seem by comparison cumbersome and mechanical” (p. 7). Perhaps we are finally ready to reflect on our ideals of manliness and the war virtues they create, so we can see how mechanical, cumbersome, and fragile they are.

Notes 1. This phrase has of course now been changed to “brave men and women of the United States Armed Forces.” The addition of women in the war virtues brings up issues about whether adding women to wars is truly to be considered a sign of moral progress for humanity, and although this is a topic very relevant to the study of Jane Addams, I believe it is too extensive to be treated here. 2. I do not want to suggest that the United States is the only country worthy of critique, especially when considering the long history of warfare in the world. But the existence of the United States’ mammoth military budget, so seemingly out of proportion with the more humanistic interests that have developed in many other developed countries, suggests that it indeed is the entity that most merits critique. And although Addams herself was very

Jane Addams, Expansive Masculinity, and the Fragility    439 worldly in her philosophical critiques, some of her most important writings, such as “After War Was Declared” and “Personal Reactions during War,” are focused on her experience as a citizen in the United States, an experience I share with her, though from a much different perspective. 3. These are written about in often-​amusing detail by Mary Roach (2016). Based on her experience as an embedded reporter, her book has chapters dealing, for example, with military attire and climate control in warfare. Of the former, she says that “if possible, the army would like to dress its men and women in uniforms that protect them against all that modern warfare has to throw at them: flames, explosives, bullets, lasers, bomb-​blasted dirt, blister agents, anthrax, sand fleas. They would like these same uniforms to keep soldiers cool and dry in extreme heat, to stand up to the ruthless rigors of the Army field laundry, to feel good against the skin, to look smart, and to come in under budget. It might be easier to resolve the conflicts in the Middle East” (2016, pp. 20–​21). As is evident throughout her book, the concerns of the modern soldier seem much different from those of the soldier of Addams’s time, who might have had fewer threats to consider, but also fewer expectations of, say, feeling comfy and looking smart on the battlefield. 4. According to Allan F. Davis, Addams’s initial attraction to Tolstoy was not so much his philosophy, but “his courage in acting out the logic of his ideas” (Davis 2000 [1973], p. 135). What this means is that Addams admired his courage, but also believed he was not beyond criticism. 5. In the contemporary United States, it is common for people to criticize the poor treatment of veterans, for example in terms of their healthcare. These criticisms themselves are conditioned by assumptions of the relatively high valorization of soldiers, who are believed, rightly or wrongly, to deserve more than other citizens. 6. Addams seems to choose her words carefully, for maximum impact, especially in this respect. Speaking about Addams’s address at the 1904 Universal Peace Conference, Linda Schott highlights Addams’s use of the words “childish” and “boyish” and her references to immature conceptions of manliness. “Addams’ choice of words,” Schott says, “foreshadowed the clear connection she would later draw between being male and being warlike” (Schott, 1993, p. 247), a connection evident in Addams’s 1906 Newer Ideals of Peace. 7. And Davis seems to have had help in promoting his view. As Knight suggests, Davis’s words, which involved him referring to Addams as a “complacent and self-​satisfied woman,” were promulgated rapidly, “with an efficiency that hinted at the influence of an experienced publicist’s hand” (Knight 2010, p. 204). 8. Sandra Opdycke notes that Addams did indeed belong to most of these groups, and that “on some of the versions, her name appeared first on the list of suspect individuals” (Opdycke 2012, p. 206), a fact that Opdycke makes parenthetical but that I suspect Addams herself liked to highlight. The more connectivity the better, she might have thought. 9. These distorted virtues even find their way into things such as the labor movement, in which Addams saw “demonstrated once more that a show of manliness and an appeal to arms may many times hide cowardice” (2007 [1906], p. 75). 10. Roach’s perspective is still limited by her being an embedded reporter. The idea of a civilian journalist writing freely about the military is something that ended, says Tad Bartimus, with the Vietnam War, after which “the hawks blamed the press and vowed never again to allow journalists unrestricted, uncensored access during armed conflicts” (2005, p. 141).

440   Tadd Ruetenik

References Addams, Jane. (2007 [1906]). Newer ideals of peace. University of Illinois Press. Addams, Jane. (1911). Twenty years at Hull House, with autobiographical notes. MacMillan. Addams, Jane. (2002a [1922]). Peace and bread in times of war. University of Illinois Press. Addams, Jane. (2002b [various years of publication]). The Jane Addams reader. Ed. Jean Bethke Elshtain. Basic Books. Addams, Jane. (2005 [various years of publication]). Writings on peace. Ed. Marilyn Fischer and Judy Whipps. Continuum International Publishing Group. Alonso, Harriet Hyman. (2008). “Can Jane Addams serve as a role model for us today?” In Marilyn Fischer, Carol Nackenoff, & Wendy Chmielewsky (Eds.), Jane Addams and the Practice of Democracy (pp. 203–​217). University of Illinois Press. Bartimus, Tad. (2005). “Killing the messenger with kindness.” In Medea Benjamin & Jodie Evans (Eds.), Stop the Next War Now: Effective Responses to Violence and Terrorism (pp. 141–​ 144). Inner Ocean Publishing, Inc. Davis, Allan F. (2000[1973]). American heroine: The life and legend of Jane Addams. Ivan R. Dee. Fischer, Marilyn (2008). “The Conceptual Scaffolding of Newer Ideals of Peace,” in Jane Addams and the practice of democracy. Ed. Marilyn Fischer, Carol Nackennoff, and Wendy Chmielewski. University of Illinois Press. James, William. (1911). Memories and studies. Longman, Green, & Co. Knight, L. W. (2010). Jane Addams: Spirit in action. W. W. Norton. MacMullan, Terrance. (2001). “On war as waste: Jane Addams’s pragmatic pacifism.” The Journal of Speculative Philosophy 15 (2), 86–​104. Opdycke, Sandra. (2012). Jane Addams and her vision for America. Prentice Hall. Schott, Linda. (1993). “Jane Addams and William James on alternatives to war.” Journal of the History of Ideas 54 (2), 241–​254. Seigfried, Charlene Haddock. (2004). “Jane Addams: 1860–​1935.” In Armen Marsoobian & John Ryder (Eds.), The Blackwell Guide to American Philosophy (pp. 186–​198). Blackwell Publishing. Roach, Mary. (2016). Grunt: The curious science of humans at war. W. W. Norton & Co.

Chapter 23

Jane Adda ms a nd the Noble A rt of Peacewe av i ng Patricia M. Shields and Joseph Soeters

Introduction At the end of her life, Jane Addams regained the recognition denied to her after she began criticizing US participation in World War I, advocating instead for peaceful solutions to end that war. Based on her Hull House settlement work, she became a national heroine with a reputation as an advocate for social justice and community development (Addams, 1911). She began her criticisms of war efforts and imperialist ambitions before World War I, particularly in regard to America’s conflicts with Spain. As WWI began, she helped establish the first successful international effort to organize women for peace. She and leaders of this new movement met with Europe’s leaders with the goal of resolving conflict and achieving peace without bloodshed. As the combat escalated and the United States joined the war efforts, her peace work was regarded as traitorous. For a brief period during and after WWI, she became one of the most criticized and even hated people in her country (Addams, 1917, 1922; Shields, 2017a). Jane Addams ceaselessly sought positive peace instead of negative peace, the latter referring to the absence, negation, or inverse of war (Shields, 2017b). Good government aiming at positive peace is more than that—​much more, Addams claimed. Good government seeks to foster reciprocal solidarity and lateral development rather than supporting win-​lose rivalries among people. In her early years, she had criticized military ways of thinking—​focusing on criminals, thugs, and other wrongdoers such as the vicious and the lazy ones—​that still dominated city government in her home country (Addams, 1905, 1906). All of this made her come to the conclusion that solutions to conflicts, even real violent enmities, are too often approached with blunt military means. She asked for instance why the problem of warm water harbors for Russia should

442    Patricia M. Shields and Joseph Soeters result in war (Addams, 1917, p. 354)1—​an issue that still instills international troubles and the threat of war. What she accomplished resonates in the current vibrant status of the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF), now more than 100 years after its foundation by Addams and her associates. For her pacifist activism, Jane Addams was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1931, several years before she passed away. She was preceded by Austrian Bertha von Suttner, who was the first woman to earn the Nobel Peace Prize (von Suttner, 1889). Other women, such as Emily Green Balch and Jody Williams, founder of the International Campaign to Ban Landmines (ICBL), followed in Addams’s footsteps, also receiving the Nobel Peace Prize (Whipps, 2006; Enloe, 2016). In Jane Addams’s war-​and peace-​related work, various components associated with pragmatism flow together. They play a role in efforts to build and preserve peace via so-​called peace missions, mostly under the aegis of the United Nations but sometimes delegated to other international institutions such as the African Union. Although denounced because of three notorious fiascoes in the 1990s, in Somalia, Rwanda, and Bosnia, UN peace missions make a difference, and not a small one. According to large-​sized statistical studies, peace missions contribute to bringing, building, and maintaining peace, despite the fact those operations are usually deployed to the most demanding, complex situations in the world (Walter, Howard, & Fortna, 2021). The connection between the United Nations and Jane Addams’s peace efforts is not coincidental. Her work and that of the WILPF can be seen as conceptually guiding the formulation of the goals and ambitions for which the UN and comparable institutions such as the International Court of Justice have been founded (Mueller, 2011, p. 95; Hamington, 2009, p. 105). In this chapter, we focus on how various features of pragmatist philosophy—​ practicality, pluralism, participatory, and provisional—​work in consonance in the domain of war and peace. We argue that Jane Addams’ insights are still relevant in today’s efforts to improve the impact of peace missions, that is, the operations to prevent, control, and solve large-​sized violence wherever in the world. This assertion is based on the very Addams-​esque idea that war and conflict can only be resolved—​in the long term and harmoniously—​via mundane but interconnected policies that touch people’s everyday lives. In this view, the larger and the smaller, the political and the personal, as well as theory and practice, need to be aligned. She showed how these efforts could break down contentious, rigid belief systems and promote positive relationships through sympathetic understanding. Pursuing Addams’s emphasis on the importance of household work (e.g., Addams, 1896), we could state that peace needs to be woven, making use of the strings from all segments and components of societies—​hence the noble art of peaceweaving (Shields & Soeters, 2017). Peaceweaving, as we see it, is a process that aims at achieving positive peace based on the involvement and participation of all citizens in a society, not of specific stakeholders, power brokers, or financial elites only.2 In the first part of this chapter, we list a number of the ideas and concepts that Addams—​and others in her footsteps—​coined and used to explain her work. Next, we relate her thinking to military doctrines; in this, two archetypes of military doctrines

Jane Addams and the Noble Art of Peaceweaving    443 may be distinguished, one of which may be associated with the idea of peaceweaving. Thereafter, we dive into this chapter’s core—​the relation between Addams’s thinking on pragmatism and the dynamics of peace missions, in particular their failings and opportunities to advance, including their connection with the idea of peaceweaving. We close with a number of considerations concerning future challenges.

Addams’s Pragmatic Ideas of Use in Apprehending War, Conflict, and Peace In an exposé on Addams’s pragmatic pacifism during WWI and its aftermath, Terrance MacMullan (2001) explained how Jane Addams doubted the perception of the inevitability of war as a political instrument, a conviction that was so dominant in her time. Contrary to many of her countrymen, she thought warfare was an outdated and frankly rather primitive means to solve conflictual matters (Addams, 1906, 1917). Addams saw that the Clausewitzian3 (1984/​1832, p. 87) idea as “war is the continuation of politics by other means” essentially is a nightmare for humanity, which will grow only worse when the development of military technology seems to have no limits, a process that accelerated in WWI and has not stopped (MacMullan, 2001, p. 88). MacMullan also observed that Addams’s work was predominantly oriented toward women. In Addams’s view, women’s experiences led them to have a stronger feeling for the value of human life. Hence, women, more than men, tend to see the wider context of conditions and concerns that surround and are, in fact, prerequisite to proper human life. These views align with her thinking on cultural and feminist pragmatism (Seigfried, 1996). Pragmatism stresses the importance of education, democracy, and the achievement of social and economic equalities including concerns about minority groups such as the aged and youth, immigrants, blacks, and women—​in brief, the ones at the bottom of society (Addams, 1911; Deegan, 1988: 248; MacMullan, 2001, p. 93). Given these emphases, Addams deemed warfare to be detrimental to securing social goals and progress and caring for human needs. While she argued that war is fundamentally incompatible with the ideals of democracy and justice (MacMullan, 2001, p. 94), she also thought war is “inexcusably inefficient” (Hamington, 2009, p. 91). Therefore, Addams, pursuing her pacifism, called for the end of World War I, and in fact, of any war (Addams, 1922; Schott, 1993). In MacMullan’s words (2001, p. 102), Addams did not think war would “make boys men, but (would) make men mad, miserable and dead.” Addams argued that it is a political obligation and part of a moral perspective to seek peace (Mueller, 2011). But how? Here, a set of concepts that are related to and expressed in Addams’s thinking may be useful. Basically, these concepts pertain to social development and progress in general, but can easily be related to Addams’s thinking about war and peace (e.g., Shields & Soeters, 2017). The core of these concepts is based on American pragmatism, a

444    Patricia M. Shields and Joseph Soeters theoretical strand with which Jane Addams, together with others such as John Dewey, has been connected since the early 1900s; as a matter of fact, Dewey and Addams helped shape American pragmatism (e.g., Wright Mills, 1969, pp. 307–​324). The first pair of concepts that play a role in her pragmatic theorizing refers to perplexity and sympathetic understanding.4 Perplexity is the mental ability to be open to surprise and to accept the questioning of fixated belief systems; it is a mindset that allows oneself to be “baffled and confused” in encounters with others. It is similar to the “doubt” Peirce (1877) and Dewey (1938) discuss in the early stages of inquiry. Perplexity encompasses the capacity to be open to and learn from others. True perplexity may culminate in sympathetic understanding. This does not necessarily entail adopting the position of another, let alone an adversary. Yet, it does imply the openness for productive dialogue, relationship building, and creative problem-​solving (Shields, 2017b, p. 10). Sympathetic knowledge also contains the ability to “at least see the size of another’s burdens” (Addams, 1902, p. 6). It “emphasizes actively knowing other people for the purpose of understanding them with some degree of depth” (Hamington, 2009, p. 71). Sympathetic knowledge will lead people into more meaningful relationships, in which sincere caring about each other and the ambition to resolve rather than to win, or, “for once and for all,” solve conflicts, are guiding ideas (Hamington, 2009; Shields and Soeters, 2017).5 Sympathetic knowledge will also lead people to avoid rigid moralism and moral chauvinism that dictates clear-​cut distinctions between what is perceived as right or wrong. Particularly, in periods of tensions, such rigid moralism tends to escalate and further escalate, not allowing any space to comprehend the other’s interests and views—​or “take” the other’s position, as sociologists would say. This attitude also implies a lack of trust vis-​à-​vis the other. The irony is that strong moralism and moral chauvinism may lead to moral blindness, which occurs when people have become insensitive to the suffering of others or are unable or refuse to understand the others (Bauman, 2013). Moral blindness is seen as a feature of modern society with its differentiation and segregation between high-​income and low-​income earners, between rich and poor neighborhoods, and between urban and rural areas—​realities with oftentimes dire consequences (Pitter, 2020). Obviously, moral blindness will become more intense, from indifference to adversity, when tensions between groups of people or nations rise. Taken a bit broader, rigid moralism links to the tendency toward hostilization. Hostilization refers to the process by which someone else is caused to become an enemy6 or to become labeled as such. This pervasive phenomenon pertains to the response toward an act that is, or is seen, as antagonistic, fearful, and dangerous to one’s own survival and welfare. Such a response may be legitimate and real if the other invades or attacks one’s country and its citizens, but maybe less legitimate and even exaggerated if the adversary’s acts would only compete with one’s own striving for domination, superiority, and profit. For example, hostilization may be less appropriate and acceptable in labor disputes, as Jane Addams demonstrated in her famous analysis of the Pullman strike in her hometown (Addams, 1912). In international relations, the degree to which another country is seen as hostile may also be dependent on one’s own reaction in a

Jane Addams and the Noble Art of Peaceweaving    445 given situation. Russia, and its predecessor the Soviet Union, have been the favorite enemy in the Anglo-​Saxon world for a long time—​and Russia still is (Snyder, 2018). Yet, Jane Addams had no problems in interacting with Russia’s famous author Tolstoy and discussing the implications of the Russian Revolution (Addams, 1911). She certainly did not accept all of it, but at least she was open—​and perhaps “baffled and confused”—​to see the intricate impact that home affairs in Russia had on the Russian immigrant and refugee community that participated in community events at Hull House in Chicago. Unsurprisingly, her inclusion of the Russian immigrant voices was opposed with indignation and annoyance by others who were previously frantic supporters of her work in Chicago (Addams, 1911, pp. 155–​165, 165). Another concept that typifies Addams’s theorizing is lateral progress (Shields, 2017b; Shields & Soeters, 2017). Lateral progress refers to assessing progress by the welfare of the most vulnerable or poorest segments of society. This idea was inclusive of “all” because the least well-​off were also included. Addams first applied this to her work among the poor in urban Chicago. As her vision grew, she extended this vision outside of her own local hemisphere, hence she developed what has been called “widening circles of identification” (de Swaan, 1995). Yet, it may already be an extraordinary achievement to ensure that all groups with lesser means in one’s own neighborhood and society are truly enabled to live a proper life. Here, the idea of propinquity emerges as an important element in Jane Addams’s thinking and doing (Fischer, 2019, pp. 45ff.). Referring to her work in the Settlement House, Addams stated that the “soul” of the settlement is its “neighborhood point of view” (Fischer, 2019, p. 46). Cooperating with neighbors is a prerequisite in settlement work, and it is crucial to “work with initiatives already adopted by the neighbors or ones that the neighbors would like to undertake” (Fischer, 2019, p. 46). The local community is the alpha and omega of settlement work. Lastly, it is important to notice that lateral progress can best be achieved in an atmosphere of action, cooperation, inquiry, and experimentation (Shields and Soeters, 2017). Such orientation toward action, cooperation, and experimentation—​the opposite of merely theorizing—​is a core element of pragmatism. “Doing” has always been one of Addams’s particular strengths. She excelled at moving beyond talking into doing and acting. It characterized her work from the first day she founded Hull House (Gross, 2009). In summary, Addams’s theorizing stresses the importance of perplexity, sympathetic understanding, the avoidance of rigid moralism, and moral chauvinism (with its implications vis-​à-​vis moral blindness and hostilization), the striving for lateral, or broad, progress, and working bottom-​up in cooperation with the ones who live closest to you; and all of this emerging in an atmosphere of action and experimentation. The idea here is that these concepts are useful in comprehending the dynamics of war and peace, and are likely to be conducive to ameliorating ways to resolve violence and conflict and improving peace missions’ effectiveness. Although prudence is required in making comparisons between places and times, it might be argued that the social, economic, and political fabric in Chicago at the turn of the 19th century was comparable to today’s

446    Patricia M. Shields and Joseph Soeters troubled areas, where peace, let alone positive peace, is far from being an everyday reality. This includes the relatively powerless position of women. But before coming to this, it is important to relate Addams’s thinking to military doctrines.

Addams’s Pragmatism and Military Doctrines Where does Addams’s thinking lead us in terms of the military, in particular the military’s thinking and acting? Here, it makes sense to delve a bit deeper into Western war doctrines. Based on the work of famous military sociologist Morris Janowitz (1960), Donald Travis (2020) elaborated the distinction between the so-​called absolutist and the pragmatic way of military thinking (also: Shields and Soeters, 2013). In the absolutist military doctrine, the weight lies on victories in battle, punitive actions, and retaliation; on the defeat, destruction, and expelling of the enemy; and on the decisive ending of hostile deeds and occupation. It intends to “solve” matters, once and for all. To do this the enemy is often objectified and considered almost subhuman. Normally military operations culminate in the liberation of, but also the domination over, other nations or peoples. This doctrine aims at total supremacy and show of strength to deter the Other. Force may be used in a preemptive manner to eschew any possible hostile action. Uncommitted nations are potential enemies (Travis, 2020, p. 80). In this view, warfare—​actual or threatened—​is the fundamental basis of international relations. Because this doctrine knows “fixed ends,” there is little concern about what will happen after the action, when the fighting stops. In particular, there is little interest in what will happen in the area of operations in the long term. In general, absolutist missions are not designed to consider the destiny and interests of the defeated enemy or host population in the area of action. In the other, the pragmatist military doctrine, social and economic tools alongside warfare are seen as proper instruments of dealing with international conflicts (Travis, 2020). There is no particular ambition to dominate; instead, this doctrine accepts that there is competition in the world. Uncommitted nations are potential allies. This doctrine is also open to the idea that the ending of the operations is conditioned by what proves to be attainable, hence ends may be flexible to a certain degree. This is the approach that ambitions to “resolve” matters, implying that one is fully aware that the steps taken work for the moment and do not necessarily lead directly to the end state of affairs. This doctrine requires inquiry, fact-​finding, assessments, and reappraisal to close the gaps between the original plans and the experiences resulting from “on the spot” observations and interventions (Travis, 2020, pp. 75–​76). The pragmatist orientation is open to stop the action as soon as possible to prevent further destruction and to allow remaining conflicts to be settled peacefully. Patient diplomacy is a key element in the pragmatic doctrine (Travis, 2020, p. 80). The pragmatist approach is broader

Jane Addams and the Noble Art of Peaceweaving    447 because it accepts that military means and solutions are not sufficient to bring an end to conflict and violence. Societal and economic development, emerging for instance through civil-​military cooperation with host nationals from all sectors and layers in society, is needed at least as much. This approach is closer to what we have indicated as peaceweaving. Whereas the absolutist view seems something from the past, it remains powerful in the thinking of many military officers, in particular of Air Force commanders who, with their “God’s-​eye perspective” up in the clouds, may think they have the full solution to the problems at hand. Army personnel with their “boots on the ground” tend to be more pragmatist, as they see the often-​messy consequences of the operations from nearby. Problems are more chaotic and disorderly on the ground, whereas it is perhaps simpler to believe that one sees the truth from above (Shields and Soeters, 2013, p. 90). Unsurprisingly, Air Force generals are more often closer to ideas that may result in total war and devastation than other military personnel tend to be (e.g., Rhodes, 1995; Gladwell, 2021). Next to differences between services, it is possible to distinguish nations for being either more absolutist or pragmatist in their military strategies, cultures, and practices (Soeters, 2021). Even though she was critical about virtually everything related to the military (e.g., Addams, 1906, 1917), it does not require a lot of imagination to see that Jane Addams would stand on the pragmatist, the peaceweaving side of military thinking. She would certainly disapprove of the idea that military engagements are the first and most important policies needed to disentangle today’s problems on the globe. She denounced thinking in dualisms, which the military almost naturally does, as they need foes and enemies as a raison d’être. But her emphasis on sympathetic understanding, the avoidance of rigid moralism, and the importance of broad, lateral progress in the context of community work fits quite more easily with the pragmatist military approach, as it ideally unfolds in UN peace missions.

Peacekeeping, Peaceweaving, and the 4Ps of Pragmatism Peace missions are important instruments to bring and keep the peace to many places in the world. Simulations and large statistical studies demonstrate the missions’ value (Hegre, Hultman, & Mokleiv Nugård, 2019; Walter, Howard, & Fortna, 2021). Peace missions reduce civilian and military deaths, prevent the spread of (further) violence, help belligerents achieve peace, and help countries to maintain durable post-​conflict peace. One may conclude that if peace missions did not exist, they would need to be invented. Despite major criticism, a current decline in humanpower deployed to such missions, and recent policies creating budget deficits (Coleman, 2020), the phenomenon is here to stay (de Coning, 2021), simply because it dampens violence and conflict

448    Patricia M. Shields and Joseph Soeters in the most complicated situations in the world. Yet, a lot remains to be improved, and adaptations will need to be initiated. Qualitative studies have revealed flaws and failures that ask for further advances in the theory and practice of peacekeeping. In particular, it is still unknown how political and economic inducements in interaction with military force work to create and maintain peace in conflictual areas. Additionally, peace missions sometimes contain negative, unintended consequences such as the emergence of crime, the increase of the general price level, the growth of income disparities connected to brain drain, the rise of a dual economy, troubled gender relations, and sexual violence (prostitution, sexual harassment), as well as the spread of diseases and even human trafficking in the area of operations (Aoi, de Coning, & Thakur, 2007). Also, the lack of “local ownership”—​that is, the almost nonexistent practice of making use of host-​nationals’ input—​and the issue of local legitimacy are seen as problematic in peace missions (Walter, Howard, & Fortna, 2021). Hence, in contrast to the positive impact of peace missions seen at the macro level, a number of harmful dynamics are observed at the micro-​level. Here is where Jane Addams’s views may prove valuable (e.g., Shields & Soeters, 2013, 2017; Soeters, 2018). Addams’s stressing of pragmatism in the context of peace missions is important. Pragmatism has proven to be of value in all kinds of situations, including the management of crises, conflicts, and the ambition to deal with risks and insecurity (e.g., Farjoun, Ansell, & Boin, 2015; Ansell & Boin, 2019; Klockner et al., 2021). Pragmatism in crisis management—​such as most recently in response to the COVID-​ 19 pandemic—​is important for several reasons. It emphasizes the idea that knowledge remains fallible; that self-​imposed dichotomies (“right or wrong”) hide, and in fact aggravate, the complexities of situations; that inquiry and fact-​finding are continuously needed; that a “probe-​and-​learn” strategy, as well as incremental, reversible steps, should be stressed; that caution and the attitude of seeing through other people’s eyes are valuable; and that overconfidence and strong, inflexible public statements should be avoided at all times (Ansell and Boin, 2019, p. 1101). For sure, these elements overlap to a large extent with the essentials of Jane Addams’s approach as we distinguished them earlier: perplexity and sympathetic understanding, the avoidance of rigid moralism and chauvinism, the striving for lateral progress, working bottom-​up, and all of this in an atmosphere of action and experimentation. In a more structured manner, elements of pragmatism have been categorized with the help of 4Ps indicating four adjectives: practical, participatory, pluralistic, and provisional (Brendel, 2006; Shields, 2008). It is possible to connect these 4Ps to elements of peace missions that are in need of improvement (Shields & Soeters, 2013, 2017; Van Osch & Soeters, 2010).

Practical Being practical implies that one does not stick to theoretical, technical, or thematic knowledge. Instead, one should engage in concrete solutions to cope with basic needs and requirements, foster cooperation, and resolve tensions and conflicts. Theories must

Jane Addams and the Noble Art of Peaceweaving    449 be linked to experience or practice; what counts is what works (Shields, 1996, 2008). This has implications for peace missions. It has been observed oftentimes that personnel with a “Western” background—​either by origin or a Western-​type education—​dominate UN missions’ workforce and determine the logic and content of the chosen strategy and actions (e.g., Autessere, 2014, pp. 249ff.). Such cosmopolitan expatriates are either experts in universal knowledge, such as computing, agriculture, health, hygiene, or project management, or they are specialists in humanitarian affairs, such as educating human/​women’s rights, freedom of speech, and good governance that would, for instance, stand up against the illegal exploitation of natural resources (Autessere, 2014). Generally, this work has a short time horizon. It follows universal templates, and its activities are easy to quantify. Such “top-​down” contributions are seen as useful and inspirational (Autessere, 2014, pp. 70–​71). Yet, often these expatriates are not familiar with local conditions, histories, and intricacies as they usually stay for a relatively short period in the area. Regularly they do not master a language other than English or French, let alone any indigenous language. They do not hear “bottom-​up stories,” let alone appreciate and understand them well enough. Therefore, contributions by Western-​ type personnel may be at odds with host nationals’ real needs and practices. Instead of being “lectured,” host nationals would prefer to receive concrete help for core necessities. What is more, they would prefer to see their own local expertise valued as a source of solutions to the problems at hand. In fieldwork conducted in the Democratic Republic of Congo, some host nationals compared the UN contribution to local needs with the activities Chinese organizations performed in their country: “At least the Chinese fill our potholes” (Van Osch and Soeters, 2010, p. 89). Surely, the downside can be that such practical projects may lead local people to remain stuck in their dependency. Hence, such projects need to be connected to broader training and capacity building in the host area. This should not be a matter of either. . . or . . . ; this should not be another “self-​imposed dichotomy,” doing one thing while being negligent about the other. Yet, the UN mission in DR Congo is unlikely to be the only peace operation that is criticized for lacking the capacity to bring practical solace to everyday needs. Following Jane Addams’s very practical work in the Settlement House in Chicago—​even building public baths for the people in the neighborhood—​larger chunks of the mission budget and attention would need to be spent on practical needs of the people in the area. Now, too much of the mission’s large budget goes to the mission itself, not to the people it serves. Where peace missions are capable of showing their practical contribution to the host-​national communities, the credibility of the mission and its local legitimacy are likely to increase. UNIFIL in Lebanon is an example of a mission that seems somewhat successful in this particular sense (Newby, 2018).

Participatory Being participatory implies genuine two-​way interaction between the server and the served, between the instructor and the instructed, between the helper and the helped,

450    Patricia M. Shields and Joseph Soeters between the peace mission and the host-​national community. Solutions to challenges are best achieved by cooperation with the citizens involved, in particular with the people who live in the same or close to one’s own neighborhood. Only then can participatory democracy work as American pragmatists, Jane Addams in particular, would never cease to contend. Peace missions are usually not so good at this (e.g., Pouligny, 2006). In many peacekeeping missions, the experience of isolation displaces any goal of participatory interaction between peacekeepers and locals. For example, the military component of UN peace missions is segregated in gated and protected camps that cannot be accessed without permission (e.g., Soeters, 2018). Military personnel generally cannot leave the camps without specific permission and instructions as to where, when, and how to travel outside of the camp. Sometimes, the mission contingents issue warnings to their personnel as to how to approach and speak with host nationals, sometimes with a bend of hygienic concern (e.g., Hedlund, Weibull, & Soeters, 2008). Civilian personnel are not housed in these military camps but they live and work among themselves in designated, secured, and sometimes even bunkered, areas (Autessere, 2014, pp. 249ff.). Also, due to language problems, socialization takes place among the international experts themselves, not in interaction with host nationals. A peace mission’s workforce usually lives in a bubble, so to speak. The spatial and consequential social boundaries between peacekeepers and host nationals are pervasive and nearly impenetrable. Added to this spatial segregation, the peace mission workforce includes only a few host-​ national people. If locals are hired to work within the mission, they generally perform mundane jobs, such as laundry and janitor chores, or they are only hired for communication and outreach purposes because they know the indigenous languages (e.g., Van Osch & Soeters, 2010). Only rarely are host nationals involved in the mission’s strategic decision-​ making. Jane Addams would disapprove of all of this. She always stressed the importance of acting together with the neighbors as, again and again, she saw the value of their perspective and the futility of top-​down actions or mandates (Hamington, 2009, p. 79). Simply pursuing the work Jane Addams and her friends did in Hull House and how they did it could be a source of inspiration for today’s peace missions. The fact that peace missions are usually deployed to dangerous situations does not make this idea any less valuable. In Addams’s days, Chicago, with all its rivalries between immigrant groups and nasty people (Shields, 2008, p. 213), was not a very safe place either. The consequence of these boundaries, this segregation, this lack of genuine interaction does more than lessen a mission’s credibility and local legitimacy, as we saw before. It also places the “internationals” in a disadvantaged position as they try to acquire information needed to understand what is and will be going on in the area of operations. Christia (2012) has made clear how volatile the views and movements of factions among the host-​national population in times of conflict often are. Information about these fluctuating views, preferences, and allying with others is fundamental to understanding the dynamics within a mission area. Understanding or sympathetic understanding as articulated by Jane Addams helps guide fruitful discourse and action in such complex circumstances.

Jane Addams and the Noble Art of Peaceweaving    451

Pluralistic We live in a pluralistic world, as Jane Addams never ceased to stress (Shields, 2008, p. 212). Acknowledging this, pluralism underlines the impossibility of binding the multitude of human experiences into a single explanation or approach. Pluralism in connection to peace work refers first and for all to the composition of the peace mission’s workforce, in particular, the nationality and the gender of the mission’s personnel. In a recent, highly valued volume, Bove, Ruffa, and Ruggeri (2020) studied the impact of workforce diversity on peace missions’ results. In a series of quantitative and qualitative studies, they found out that the more diverse a mission’s workforce in terms of nationalities is, the more positive its performance is likely to be. A UN mission composed of personnel drawn from diverse backgrounds improves the protection of civilians and reduces violence (Bove et al., 2020, p. 189). This is not difficult to grasp, as a plurality of views and operational styles entails the possibility to prevent mission myopia—​the odds that things turn out bad because the one and only chosen view, approach, or style is inappropriate. Diversity of perspectives may lead to more apt solutions to problems at hand, which is a conclusion Jane Addams would undoubtedly agree with. Of note, the profit of missions’ diversity relates not only to multinational diversity but also to diversity inside a nation’s contribution to a peace mission. It has been shown that cultural, and particularly religious, diversity in Dutch and American military contingents helped to better those contingents’ performance in far-​away areas of operation. For example, Dutch Muslim soldiers clearly brought extra value when deployed to missions in Muslim societies (e.g., Bosman, Soeters, & Ait-​Bari, 2008; also Hajjar, 2010). Fully in line with this type of reasoning is the importance of women in peace missions’ workforce. Peace missions require working among the people, no matter how difficult this may be, as we saw before. Given the fact that half of the host population is female, it is not surprising that the presence of women in the missions’ workforce is seen as conducive to peace missions’ performance (Bridgess & Horsfall, 2009). More than anything else, this is in alignment with Jane Addams’s thinking, derived from the paternalistic society she lived in that, much to her regret, left few options for women to operate outside the home. Women, in her eyes, know the value of human life and the importance of household work (still considered to be mainly the domain of women), but more importantly, equal-​gender interaction is likely to be of higher quality (also Higate & Henry, 2004). In addition, potentially problematic interactions between men and women occur in many spots of the globe. These types of male-​female interaction refer to sexual anxieties possibly leading to transgressions. Furthermore, these interactions can lead to a lack of trust, intimacy, and general comfort resulting in a decline in the quality of the experience for all. These psychosocial dynamics are likely to have an impact on the missions’ actions and, consequentially, their outcomes, if the mission’s workforce consists, predominantly or only, of male personnel. Therefore, feminist scholars, pursuing the thinking of predecessors such as Jane Addams, have advocated that a more

452    Patricia M. Shields and Joseph Soeters gender-​balanced workforce in peace missions will enhance the missions’ credibility, effectiveness, reputation, and general performance (Bridgess & Horsfall, 2009). An Israeli study demonstrated that women—​in this case, women ex-​soldiers—​ are more critical of violence. A number of them assembled in a group called Women Breaking the Silence (WBS). These ex-​soldiers had, more than other women, the legitimacy to voice criticism vis-​à-​vis the military, advocate anti-​war views, and criticize the atmosphere of combat masculinity in the force (Sasson-​Levy, Levy, & Lomsky-​Feder, 2011). Perhaps without knowing, they pursued Jane Addams’s views almost to perfection. Maybe, this is simply the essence of how women feel about violence and being dominated by the “Other” (e.g., Schott, 1993). Therefore, having more women in a peace mission’s workforce makes sense if one wants the mission to be more effective and credible.

Provisional Being provisional contrasts with the idea of the all-​knowing expert from outside who has the one best solution. Pragmatism implies actions that are not based on unquestioned truths but rather on reflective experiences, experimental projects, and working hypotheses (Shields, 2008, p. 215). This is what Addams and her colleagues, such as Dewey, always advocated and practiced. A provisional perspective aligns with the ideas coined by the American scholar James Scott (1998), who scrutinized large-​scale state projects such as the collectivization in the former Soviet Union, compulsory villagization in Tanzania, the creation of new and modernist cities such as Brasilia, and the scientific “taming” of nature in many places in the world. The many fiascoes that came along with such projects can be attributed to the centralized, arrogant, and authoritarian approach to problems such as making use of abstract technical knowledge of presumed universal application. Instead, Scott supports the idea of relying on more local experience, practical knowledge, more reversibility, and modesty in bringing about major projects. Scott did not connect this criticism to military operations, but his line of thinking can easily be applied to past longstanding military operational approaches such as Iraq, Afghanistan, and Libya, not to mention Vietnam in earlier times (Soeters, 2013). This analysis does not directly pertain to peace missions, the operations we discuss in this chapter. Still, this phenomenon plays a role here as well, as it relates to the element of organizational learning in peace missions. The importance of this aspect has been brought forward by Howard (2008), in her analysis of 14 UN peace missions. She revealed that UN missions, which were good at organizational learning, both inside the mission as well as via UN headquarters in New York, were also most successful in ending the hostilities and bringing durable peace to the region. Organizational learning via UN headquarters related to learning from one mission to another and to the improvement of more general doctrines and practices that were pertinent to all peace missions. Organizational learning within the mission referred to the gathering and analysis of information from the field, coordination among the different segments of

Jane Addams and the Noble Art of Peaceweaving    453 the mission, wide distribution of staff on the ground, and the ability to evaluate and possibly alter prior task priorities and plans; in general, it denoted making use of—​and indeed also influencing—​host-​national perspectives in the region. Howard (2008) indicated the missions in Namibia, El Salvador, Cambodia, Mozambique, Eastern Slavonia, and East Timor as successes or mixed successes due to their capability for organizational learning within the mission. In quite a number of other peace missions, this aspect was not elaborated well enough, which became, and often still is, manifest in a lack of “institutional memory” in the peace mission because of the continuously rotating contingents and individual contract workers. Without making this specific connection, Howard’s analysis (2008) points at the relevance of approaches that accept the provisional character of knowledge. Peace missions can simply not be steered on the basis of one plan that has been developed outside of the mission area and has no room for adaptation according to the emergence of new experiences and insights. In fact, the ideal approach is quite the opposite. Jane Addams could not have agreed more. In summary, we have argued that Jane Addams’s actions, working style, and thinking are relevant for today’s peace missions, and perhaps now even more than in times before. In general, her actions and thinking align with the recent prominence attached to local actors in conflictual regions (MacGinty & Richmond, 2013). Furthermore, her work is likely to be pertinent to adjacent spheres of action, such as developmental work and international humanitarian assistance. Taking all these elements together, one will come close to Jane Addams’s vision of peaceweaving.

Challenges Ahead Ours is a world that perhaps is not doing as poorly as many people are inclined to think. There are enough indications demonstrating that there is less violence and war than in previous times, that technology brings people closer to one another, that international laws and global civilization push for repairs of older and the prevention of newer misconduct, and that even today’s concerns about the environment and climate change may lead people to adjust their behavior in a way that is unprecedented in human history (Pinker, 2018). Yet, a number of severe challenges remain. Continuously, immigrants from the so-​called developing world, in particular from areas that suffer from worsening climate conditions, natural disasters, wars, and other emergencies, want to move to the wealthier and more prosperous parts of the word, in particular the United States, Canada, Australia, and Europe (e.g., Purkayastha, 2018). This is not always met with great enthusiasm in these affluent parts of the world, where people fear for their stability, cultural identity, and economic fortune. Such negative emotions, often translated into strong nationalist politics, contrast with Jane Addams’s ceaseless pleas to reach a sympathetic understanding of immigrants’ backgrounds and to make better use of their capacities (e.g., Addams, 1906). One of Addams’s

454    Patricia M. Shields and Joseph Soeters major concerns pertained to immigrants, and her pleas to improve their destiny and opportunities are still fresh and relevant today. Even though the military approach to solve international tensions seems to be losing part of its fascination, its attraction is still very much alive. The expenditures for security matters worldwide are not seriously declining, and more than a few pundits and decision-​makers on different sides of the globe are still convinced of the inevitability of future wars between the world’s larger powers. Jane Addams’s thinking, therefore, is still needed to show a different perspective, in which others are not necessarily seen as actors that need to be dominated. There is a need for another outlook, through which it may become clear there are more ways than permanent war readiness to create a healthy, less stressful, and steady balance in international relations, as Charles Wright Mills (1958) argued decades ago. In this connection, it needs to be acknowledged that huge expenditures for the military contain a lot of (opportunity and sunk) costs as well as considerable waste on the ground, in the oceans, and in orbit, which are consequences that people tend not be aware of (Reno, 2019). This latter point becomes more specific if one regards the environmental inequality endured by Native Americans at the hand of the US military (Hooks & Smith, 2004). It turns out that throughout US history, military bases were built and expanded on and near lands that had been ceded to Indian nations. Many of these bases have been closed but remain dangerous due to unexploded ordnance and weapons of unprecedented toxicity. Here we turn to one of the largest conundrums in Jane Addams’s life and thinking: her almost complete lack of attention vis-​à-​vis the destiny of indigenous peoples, the Native Americans, the first Americans. During Jane Addams’s lifetime, these people were still suffering from political projects, military engagements, and informal violence in the western and southern parts of the nation—​Texas and New Mexico, for instance. No concern about them surfaced in her work, which may be understandable because these conflicts hardly played a role in the urban environment of her hometown, Chicago. Yet, on the other hand, nationwide news was available in such cities, and it would not have been impossible for Addams to have taken a stance in regard to these tensions and sufferings. Like most of her American progressive contemporaries, she did not. Overall, the problem was met with indifference and carelessness. But applying her thoughts and ideas on social democracy, peace, and lateral progress may be helpful in repairing the damage done.7 A nation that wants to play a stabilizing role in the world, first and foremost, must take note of its own history and be willing to investigate and acknowledge what went wrong in good faith (Neiman, 2019). Next to these three trials, there are more challenges the world will see in the coming decades—​economic crises, climate change, and pandemics represent probably the most significant among them. As said, the thinking and views of Jane Addams are relevant as ever before to be able to cope with these imminent tasks. “Taking” the position of others, perplexity, sympathetic understanding, refraining from rigid moralism and moral blindness, ceasing to strive for domination and superiority, the ambition to achieve broad and worldwide lateral progress in active cooperation with all people

Jane Addams and the Noble Art of Peaceweaving    455 concerned—​and all of this in an atmosphere of action and experimentation—​will prove to be a recipe for successful response. Jane Addams is still alive.

Notes 1. Undoubtedly but without being explicit, Addams must have referred with these words to the Crimea, a region that has been disputed between Western nations and Russia for long. It still is a highly contested area. 2. Shields and Soeters (2017, p. 331) view peaceweaving as a way to build “the fabric of peace by emphasizing relationships. Peaceweaving builds these positive relationships by working on practical problems, and engaging people widely with sympathetic understanding while recognizing that progress is measured by the welfare of the vulnerable.” 3. Carl von Clausewitz, a Prussian general, wrote On War, one of the most influential books ever written on the dynamics of war and military operations. This book was published in 1832 after his death. 4. See Hamington, 2009, pp. 71ff.; Shields, 2017b; Shields & Soeters, 2017 5. We argue that there is a distinction between solve and resolve. Solve is suggestive of an answer that ends the problem, once and for all. Resolve suggests that the problem is evolutionary and steps taken work for now. There is no expectation that the resolution is the last say on the problem. We will turn to this distinction in our discussion of military doctrines. 6. The first part of this definition is derived from the verb “hostilize” as described in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, G&C Merriam Company, 1913. The second part has been added by us. There is a link between processes of hostilization and criminalization, as both processes can be explained by means of sociological labeling theory. 7. Shannon Sullivan reaches a similar conclusion stating that her analysis of Jane Addams’s strengths and weaknesses on the issue of racial difference does not claim “that Addams should have been able to lift herself out of her times to realize something that few of her contemporaries did.” Nowadays, however, it is possible “that we can improve upon some of her ideas” (Sullivan, 2003, p. 55).

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Chapter 24

St range Enc ou nt e rs ? Contemporary Field Researchers and Six Lessons from Jane Addams Chiara Ruffa and Chiara Tulp

Introduction A growing body of research devotes attention to the work by Jane Addams as a founding figure of the social sciences (see for example Hamington, 2004; Lake, 2014; Lengermann & Niebrugge, 2014; Shields, 2017). It may seem odd that Addams’s work from the late 19th and early 20th century comes to the fore only 100 years after she was active. Yet, it is hardly surprising. The intellectual contributions of women in various academic disciplines were obscured throughout much of recent history: “Often women thought and wrote about international relations from outside the academy—​as social workers, journalists, and members of the anticolonial, pan-​African, pan-​Arab, and women’s suffrage movements” (Owen, 2018, p. 2). As Shields (2017) states, Addams herself was more prominently considered a social worker or activist, rather than a philosopher or scholar. Hutchings and Owens (2021) argue that the absence of women from academic disciplines, including international relations (IR), is due to gendered and racialized selection criteria, which determine(d) who was considered influential and worthy of admission to the IR canon. Nonetheless, as Tickner and True (2018) demonstrate, women activists, like Addams, made significant contributions to IR as a discipline. Moreover, Addams created bridges between the universities and political and educational institutions—​domestically and abroad—​through her research, social work, and activism (Lake, 2014). In an effort to uncover women’s contributions to social-​ science disciplines, this past decade has seen many researchers explore the influence Addams has had on their respective fields of research, including sociology, pragmatism, and peace research (see for example, Misheva & Blasko, 2018; Shields, 2017; Shields & Soeters, 2017; Rosiek & Scott, 2013; Lake, 2014). In line with their efforts, we investigate

460    Chiara Ruffa and Chiara Tulp how Addams’s thinking can be of relevance to modern day field researchers.1 To do so, we first identify multiple tensions and challenges in contemporary field research. We then turn to Addams for inspiration and draw out six lessons for the contemporary field researcher on how to navigate risks and opportunities in the field.

Jane Addams and the Challenges for the Contemporary Field Researcher Drawing from anthropology (Bray, 2008), field research is often associated with qualitative methods of data collection, including interviews, focus groups, and observations, but it can also include conducting surveys and experiments. In many ways, Addams can be considered a pioneer of field research in the social sciences. Addams and fellow Hull House residents contributed to, and collaborated with, scholars in creating a population census, and in collecting data on various Chicago households, later published in Hull House Maps and Papers (Residents of Hull House, 1895). In contrast to many of her contemporaries, Addams took field research a step further. In addition to collecting data through questionnaires, Addams lived at Hull House for almost half a century. Over time, Addams thoroughly immersed herself in the Chicago community she lived in—​an effort she believed indispensable for properly understanding the context of her studies and the social issues arising within the immigrant neighborhood. In addition, she extensively and systematically documented her observations and the stories she collected from inhabitants of the immigrant neighborhood surrounding Hull House. In contemporary research this practice is akin to keeping thorough field notes during field research. Addams published her observations and stories in various books and newspaper outlets (Addams, 1912/​2005, 1912, 1907/​2007), frequently using them as a foundation for her arguments for social reform. Similarly, Addams carefully documented her travels through Europe, both before and during World War I. In addition, Addams and her peers at the International Women’s League carried out extensive interviews with politicians, soldiers, and soldiers’ families. The modern-​day fieldworker—​a researcher who immerses themselves in a research site to observe, deeply understand, and analyze a topic of interest—​has gained growing attention in recent years as have the ethical, moral, and theoretical implications of field research (Irgil et al., 2021).2 The knowledge gained from studying conflict or peace-​building dynamics in the field are invaluable contributions to our field of study. However, researching security dynamics and peace and conflict in the field often confronts the researcher with volatile, insecure research sites; requires engagement with vulnerable populations; and is time intensive. In a highly competitive academic discipline, researchers need to navigate difficult research sites with integrity, and in an ethical and professional manner. However, in rapidly changing security settings, or in conversation with short-​term acquaintances in the field, unforeseen situations are bound to

Strange Encounters?   461 arise, and often, at least in disciplines such as security studies and peace and conflict, we lack guidance on how to navigate such ad hoc events ethically and professionally (Irgil et al., 2021; Cronin-​Furman & Lake, 2018). Addams dealt with and negotiated several of these tensions conducting research and social work in Chicago’s Hull House settlement, as well as in the United States and Europe during World War I. Therefore, as two fieldworkers—​one less and the other a bit more experienced—​we engage in a conversation with Jane Addams to tease out some key lessons for the modern field researcher. We particularly re-​emphasize the importance of immersion in a field of study that, because of its structure, leaves little time and space for immersion or to discuss questions of human interactions, ethics, and professional conduct in the field (MacGinty et al., 2021; Krause & Szeleky, 2020). We find that Addams’s approach to immersion, in particular her notion of humanity, implicit empathy, and courage, reflects important cornerstones of fieldwork in security studies and peace and conflict research and, therefore, warrants more recognition. The authors of this chapter both work in the field of security studies and peace and conflict research, which means our fieldwork commonly entails travelling to vulnerable, conflict-​affected areas. We travelled to Lebanon, Afghanistan, Mali, the Central African Republic, and Kosovo to conduct observations and interviews with people who experienced conflict, peacekeeping, and peace building firsthand. We spoke to hundreds of service people deployed, local civilians and activists, civilian UN personnel, and politicians to gain a deeper understanding of the local context and experience of the conflict. Field researchers today have to meet professional standards as they set up, gain access, and conduct field research that is thorough, valid, and ethically sound, and advances policy and academic debates, as well as the researcher’s career. A wealth of women researchers have embarked on this kind of field research over the past twenty years (Autesserre, 2014, 2010; Olonisakin, 2004; Pouligny, 2006; Campbell, 2018; Verweijen, 2017; Newby, 2018). A growing body of literature is investigating how this can be done when researching vulnerable communities or volatile research sites, for instance, by proposing common ethical standards and debates (Eck & Cohen, 2021a, b); addressing issues of transparency (Moravcsik, 2014; Jacobs et al., 2021); and the researcher’s positionality, reflexivity and identity (Krause, 2021; Hedström & Phyo, 2020; Hedström 2019; Chilmeran & Hedström, 2020). We complement these ongoing debates by focusing on six lessons that we extrapolate from Jane Addams’s work. Key challenges facing contemporary fieldworkers bear similarities with Addams’s experience. First, field research requires time and space to develop and let the field speak to us, when the “field” for security studies and peace and conflict researchers is often marked by instability and violence. For this reason, “doing” field research requires substantial investments of time and energy and exposes researchers and the researched to risks for their physical and mental wellbeing. Even with thorough preparation and risk analysis pre-​fieldwork, unforeseen events remain a factor in volatile security settings like war zones. Moreover, even anticipated events can have unforeseen effects on the fieldworker. For example, Ruffa conducted field research in Afghanistan in 2008. While she was mostly fine during the trip, she only noticed ways in which the experience

462    Chiara Ruffa and Chiara Tulp was traumatizing after her return. In Afghanistan, she had remained in what were considered to be safe spaces, such as compounds of humanitarian organizations and well-​secured military bases. Nonetheless, the constant high-​threat perception and proximity to life danger she was surrounded by left a mark that only emerged months later. Within minutes of her arrival at Kabul airport, the 2008 terrorist attack at the Indian embassy happened, killing several dozen people, followed by another deadly attack at the Serena hotel. Ruffa remembers people talking about the incidents when she disembarked from the plane. While, at first, she did not feel too scared or affected, once back home she experienced nightmares, anxieties, and other post-​traumatic symptoms. Second, such traumatic experiences in the field can be further exacerbated by the fact that fieldwork is often a lonely endeavor, meaning researchers can feel isolated when conducting field research. While peace and conflict research frequently involves direct contact “in the field,” that is, personal engagement with vulnerable populations in fragile and rapidly shifting security contexts, the researcher is also far away from her, his or their trusted network of family, friends, and colleagues. Ruffa, for instance, travelled to countries where she could not move freely and was largely isolated. She had underestimated the impact of constantly feeling alone under threat, paired with lacking opportunities to reflect, share experiences, and manage traumas of listening to others’ devastating experiences. No matter how prepared one might be before entering such research environments, unexpected situations arise and one never fully knows the effect isolation and lack of security might have on one’s mental and physical wellbeing in advance. Researcher need to be able to think on their feet as problems arise, and find ways to manage physical, mental, and/​or emotional traumas of fieldwork. Third, the time-​consuming, high-​paced, and often draining nature of fieldwork can be at odds with the desire to remain competitive and to advance career prospects, paired with the perception that we, as researchers, are required to produce constantly and at high pace. Consequently, researchers can feel pressed to meet competing obligations of teaching, research, and administration as well as frequently publishing in so-​called top-​outlets. The impact of our work is often measured by standardized metrics—​such as the number of publications or citations—​which leave little room for diversity in professional and personal profiles. As a way to stand out and remain competitive, researchers often perceive the pressure to produce unique, perhaps adventurous (field) research to increase relevance, and ensure publication. These views have fortunately received powerful critiques from a wealth of perspectives, including critical and feminist scholars (Mohanty, 2003; Smith, 2021). This might push them to unnecessarily seek out high-​ risk or volatile field sites (Krause, 2021; Routley & Wright, 2021), with potential adverse effects on their own and other’s wellbeing. Fourth, particularly when working with vulnerable populations, researchers are required to uphold professional and ethical standards of conduct in the field—​to safeguard themselves and the researched. However, these guidelines are largely universal, and often gendered and racialized (Routley & Wright, 2021). Hence, they sometimes leave little room to take the individual researcher’s identity and positionality into account. Women, people of color, first-​generation researchers, simply insecure people,

Strange Encounters?   463 or those who are just getting socialized may struggle to find their space and place in this high-​paced, hyper-​competitive environment (Wibben, 2020; Wibben, 2016). This may hold even more true for field researchers navigating environments and structures that have been particularly male dominated, such as military organizations, or contexts that are particularly sensitive, like war zones. For instance, Ruffa and Tulp both have faced concerns about how they would be received when interviewing high-​rank male members of the military. Experiences have shown such hesitations might be justified in some, but not in other, cases. Our own anticipation alone, however, can affect how well we establish rapport with an interviewee, and, ultimately, the success of the research endeavor. Unfortunately, restrictive word counts for journal submissions make it challenging to discuss reflexivity and examine all the difficult choices or trade-​offs during fieldwork that we make to minimize harm to ourselves and our respondents, based on our identity and positionality in the field. Fifth, our ability to connect and to listen, of course, always needs to be within the boundaries of professional behavior, upholding ethical and moral standards. Aside from the researchers’ own moral judgment, field research commonly requires approval from ethical review boards. The value and need for ethics guidelines and review boards are crucial and foremost for the protection of the researcher and the researched, at least in theory. However, going into the field will inevitably lead the researcher—​no matter how prepared—​into unexpected situations, which can blur the line between professional behavior and unprofessional interaction with respondents. When might there be too much connection and closeness? Is objectivity always the best approach for the research, the researcher, and the researched? Establishing an emotional, inter-​human connection with respondents is commonly viewed as an essential element of getting to know the field, gaining access, and producing novel and unique insights into the field of study. In building these connections, professional standards dictate that the researcher should not let his or her personal connections, emotions, and values affect how they interpret what respondents share with them. Thus, they need to stay emotionally detached, “at a distance,” while also immersing themselves into the field. In practice, this balance is not so easy to strike, and, as our own experience suggests, staying objective and distanced might not always be appropriate. Moreover, it is often not the most effective way to get information, which is at odds with the demand for knowledge-​production to meet the academy’s pressures to perform. Sixth, researchers might face conflicting imperatives to meet the demands of the academy while also trying to maintain personal integrity and meet a desire to give meaning to one’s work. In reality, the two identities, as a researcher and as a person with one’s own beliefs, values, and norms may not be separated so easily. For example, as feminist researchers with an interest in military organizations, we are additionally confronted with the challenges of putting our personal believes aside—​at least to some extent—​as we immerse ourselves in male-​dominated military environments, or local cultures. For instance, Ruffa, as a researcher, self-​defined pacifist, and feminist, had underestimated the culture shock she would experience when she travelled to Afghanistan to interview peacekeepers, in particular due to the—​in her view—​inhumane treatment of women

464    Chiara Ruffa and Chiara Tulp in several parts of Afghanistan. Ruffa was torn between her desire to be open and respectful to local culture and her very strong commitment to gender equality. Some of these issues could have been mitigated through better preparation. However, no training can eliminate a researcher’s identity, nor the more or less hidden biases and personal values. As a result, many peace and security researchers face conflicting or even traumatic experiences while conducting fieldwork. Lastly, dilemmas in the field might arise due to unequal power relations between the researcher and the researched. For example, members of vulnerable, conflict-​affected populations might not have a full understanding of what academic research entails, and what the researcher may offer them in return for their cooperation. Some researchers have described that they were understood to be journalists, or NGO-​or church workers (e.g., Wood, 2006; Krause, 2021). When Ruffa was in Lebanon, she was contacted by a military attaché of the Italian embassy, who wanted to know what Ruffa was doing in Lebanon. He wanted to know more about Ruffa’s intentions and kept calling her occasionally trying to get information. Ruffa kept explaining that she was a doctoral researcher studying the peacekeeping mission and that she was not going to share any information with him. She also explained that she had a duty to protect her informants. In practice, researchers can feel torn between the need to establish rapport and trust with the researched, while having to demarcate the boundaries of what they can and, perhaps more importantly, cannot offer them in return. Professional and ethical standards, rightfully so, expect the researcher to engage in ethical and professional conduct at all times when immersed in the field. In reality, this can require the researcher to juggle personal, professional and ethical concerns ad hoc and on their own merit. Despite the fact that Addams operated somewhat outside of the parameters of academic research, we argue that her work demonstrates many good practices that researchers might apply when entering the field today. Specifically, we draw out six key lessons that may help address some of the dilemmas and tensions we outlined above.

Lesson #1:  The Importance of Collaborative Practices In academic research, immersion might entail long-​term stays and engagement with the field site, observing participants, and/​or a series of conversations, interviews, and focus groups. Immersion is of crucial importance in contemporary fieldwork because it “allows for developing ethnographic sensibility beyond face-​to-​face encounters and interview settings. It necessitates emotional engagement to glean meanings that people attribute to their social and political reality and to understand people’s narratives in the context of their everyday lives” (Krause, 2021, p. 1). Moreover, immersion can foster better understanding of the local context. For instance, Ruffa remembers with fondness when travelling to Lebanon that a local taxi driver invited her to stay for several days

Strange Encounters?   465 with him and his family. Not only did they enjoy the most delicious Labneh, and visited the mosque, the parents also shared with Ruffa their worries that their son might get recruited by Hezbollah. Even though Ruffa’s research was specifically about international interventions and not so much about Lebanese dynamics, that week spent with this Lebanese family, the evening conversations talking about Hezbollah’s role in their lives, and the memories from the Israeli occupation and about the peacekeeping force, shed a more nuanced light over her field of research and a much better contextual understanding of the role of Hezbollah in the area (see Ruffa, 2018). It enabled Ruffa to better understand not only the perceptions and impact of peacekeepers on the ground, but also the fundamental components of the Southern Lebanese culture that shape these perceptions. Field research has become more common in security studies and peace and conflict research because it allows the researcher to observe social interactions and develop knowledge in situ. However, with a growing appreciation of what immersion can contribute to questions of peace and security, also comes an obligation to carefully deliberate its limitations—​ranging from risks to the researcher and the researched, expected or unexpected ethical dilemmas, to more or less explicit power structures in both the field and in the academy. For instance, when interviewing peacekeepers on a military base in Afghanistan, one might consider the implications of being a female researcher in a highly male-​dominated, at times sexist, environment. On a personal level, such dynamics can be frustrating or draining. From a research perspective, our identity vis-​à-​ vis the research context can determine whether immersion is successful or not because it carries implications for connections the researcher can establish in the field, and which places he or she may or may not be able to access. Notwithstanding the potential cost and dilemmas of doing fieldwork, Addams reminds us of its importance. Reading Addams’s memoires, notably Twenty Years at Hull House, one realizes that, to Addams, perspectives “from the field” were an invaluable source of information. Addams founded Hull House in Chicago as a social settlement where she would provide educational and other social services, as well as conduct research on topics ranging from education and garbage collection to working conditions in the surrounding, largely immigrant, neighborhood (Addams, 1912, 1907/​ 2007; Hamington, 2004). Descriptions of her time as an inhabitant, researcher, and activist at Hull House underline how important it was to her to consult locals on all endeavors. For instance, Addams stated: I never addressed a Chicago audience on the subject of the Settlement and its vicinity without inviting a neighbor to go with me, that I might curb any hasty generalizations by the consciousness that I had an auditor who knew the conditions more intimately than I could hope to do. (Addams, 1912, p. 94)

Hamington (2004) also highlights that it was not only listening, but also physical presence, that was important to Addams, and her grasp on social issues. It was Addams’s

466    Chiara Ruffa and Chiara Tulp objective to truly understand the impact of public policy on the livelihood of different segments of American society (Hamington, 2004). Similarly, during World War I, Addams spoke to and interacted with many US soldiers and surveyed soldiers’ mothers and wives at length (Addams, 1930, 1916). She also travelled extensively through Europe, where she connected with many like-​minded women and men from all countries involved in the war, including wounded soldiers, soldiers’ families, and politicians, in an effort to understand their perceptions of the war (Addams, 1930). Anecdotes from these encounters underpin Addams writings, speeches, and activism. In other words, Addams took contextual knowledge gained from immersion exceptionally seriously, and she took her time to immerse herself into the different communities she researched to maximize her contextual understanding. We note that modern researchers face many simultaneous obligations, from fast-​paced production of output to family obligations, which limit their ability to engage in extensive immersion like Addams. Nonetheless, we encourage fellow researchers to prioritize and maximize the time they allocate to immersive research. We believe this to not only strengthen contextual understanding of our research sites, but, ultimately, our theoretical arguments and contributions to the wider field of security studies and peace and conflict research. Moreover, the humility she practiced of being accompanied by someone who knew the context better than her is also something we should practice more. The underlying idea of research as a collaborative practice is a precious take away from Addams.

Lesson #2:  Insider or Outsider? Though Hull House was known for its close cooperation with the University of Chicago, Addams, alongside other women, taught sociology through an Extension Division at the university, so not in mainstream courses. As Deegan (1988) emphasizes, even those female contemporaries of Addams who were affiliated with the University of Chicago “held gendered, less prestigious positions than the men” (p. 250). Being an “outsider” is a common sentiment that we find among contemporary scholars as well—​particularly feminists, who are both activists and academics. In this section, we engage with Addams’s work to explore both benefits and drawbacks of inhabiting an outsider position in the field. Here we consider the example of being an outsider due to not belonging to the organization one is set to study. On the one hand, being an outsider may spark curiosity in a topic. When Ruffa realized she wanted to study military organizations she knew close to nothing about the military. The experience of the 1943–​45 civil war in Italy was a common conversation in her family since half of the family had been an active part of the resistance and the other half aligned to the Fascist dictatorship. Even though she knew little about the military, those conversations certainly made her curious about armed groups and war and pushed her in the direction of studying military organizations. On the other hand, without a military background, establishing an insider or outsider status during interviews with military officials can be challenging. In a recent

Strange Encounters?   467 round of interviews with American military officers, Ruffa recalled her own experiences in the field, like having been in Afghanistan with NATO troops, while also stressing how new she is to studying the US Army. In other words, she tried to establish her authority (through accounts of previous experiences) and at the same time her ingenuity and openness (through accounts of not knowing something). With US officers, Ruffa could tell the difference between presenting herself as someone with inside knowledge, or as someone external, or foreign, to her research target group. So, she felt she had to connect via common past experiences, while still portraying herself as different. Many peace and conflict researchers, at one point or another, struggle with fitting in but have found creative ways to combine their identities. Nonetheless, being a female civilian researcher specializing on the study of the military made Ruffa question her choices time and again. Early on at her career, at conferences, she would get asked why she chose to study the military and that she did not have any legitimacy to do that. Several people told her on different occasions: “you are a woman, you should not work on the military.” Being her usual rebellious self, Ruffa thought that was an excellent reason not to give up. Being aware of such encounters through female research mentors, Tulp herself anticipated being questioned when attending conferences or interviewing military personnel. While she experienced that particularly male conversation-​partners showed some surprise in her interest in studying the military, the overall reaction was rather positive and friendly. More so, when interviewing women in the military, there was general excitement and encouragement. So, perhaps, we are beginning to observe some change in how women are perceived and when and where we find ourselves questioned, due to our outsider position. Nonetheless, balancing the insider-​outsider scale, can be a daunting and exhausting prospect, particularly for junior researchers. Overall it may be both an advantage and a disadvantage to study male-​dominated institutions. Sexism and difficulty in navigating toxic gender dynamics may coexist with also being perceived ultimately innocuous and “innocent.” Addams herself was quite an unusual woman, who navigated an outsider status in a number of ways, not only with regard to the university, but also in “the field.” For one, she challenged traditional gender roles of her time. Certainly, for a young woman of the late 19th century, to open a settlement house in the poorer neighborhoods was a novelty, and not necessarily well received (Addams, 1912). Undoubtedly, this was in part due to Addams’s own identity as a fairly wealthy, educated, white American woman—​a background that few of the inhabitants of the Hull House neighborhood shared. In Europe and the United States, Addams spoke to numerous soldiers, despite not having any military background. Given that anti-​war sentiments were not popular during World War I, Addams and her (female) allies in the peace movement faced anxiety about speaking out from a feminist, pacifist point of view and were confronted with skepticism, if not hostility, by media, politicians, and even friends. The section below describes Addams’s sentiments on this period during WW I. We were constantly told by our friends that to stand aside from the war mood of the country was to surrender all possibility of future influence, that we were committing

468    Chiara Ruffa and Chiara Tulp intellectual suicide, and would never again be trusted as responsible people or judicious advisers. Who were we to differ with able statesmen, with men of sensitive conscience who also absolutely abhorred war, but were convinced that this war for the preservation of democracy would make all future wars impossible, that the priceless value of civilization a contradiction of terms, whoever said it or however often it was repeated? Then too, we were always afraid of fanaticism, of preferring a consistency of theory to the conscientious recognition of the social situation, of a failure to meet life in the temper of a practical person. (Addams, 1922, pp. 81–​82)

In short, Addams was no stranger to occupying an outsider position, or feeling out of place, yet she dealt with this in remarkable ways. Two things stand out. First, Addams and her contemporary pacifists never wavered from their path, despite excessive skepticism and criticism. Second, Addams displayed a lot of courage to carve her own path in social work, pacifism, and research. At the very least, studying Addams’s writings is a good reminder that (with a lot of patience) change can be accomplished, even from an outsider perspective. We are starting to witness a growing influence of critical or feminist approaches on security and peace and conflict studies (Chilmeran & Hedström, 2020). These contributions challenge underlying assumptions of the discipline, and try to bring more diversity to the table—​much like Addams did in her time.

Lesson #3:  A Peace Researcher and an Activist? Addams also reminds us how intertwined being a fieldworker, a pacifist, and a feminist can be. Notably, Addams had a pragmatist research agenda (see also Shields, 2017; Hamington, 2004). Deegan (1988) describes the Hull House School of Sociology as akin to “Feminist pragmatism,” which is an American theory uniting liberal values and a belief in a rational public with a cooperative, nurturing, and liberating model of the self, the other, and the community . . . Feminist pragmatists study “social behavior” and believe each “individual” is born with rudimentary, flexible instincts, or “impulses.” (Deegan, 1988, p. 249)

Moreover, a pragmatist approach to research implies that data is collected with a (social) goal or purpose in mind—​like addressing poverty and poor living conditions in Chicago (Shields, 2017). In other words, the knowledge Addams gained through collecting stories and observing everyday interactions in the neighborhood or while travelling through countries participating in WWI, formed the basis of her research, as well as her social work and pacifism. Addams shared her insights on a variety of

Strange Encounters?   469 platforms, including books, newspapers, journals, and through lectures and speeches in an effort to provoke social change.3 As pragmatist, Addams’s experience contrasts sharply with the contemporary peace researcher, who often finds him-​or herself walking a fine line between listening to the field, while not letting personal ideals of a more peaceful world color their theory and analysis. It requires active efforts to remain impartial in the field, as well as during data analysis back at home, particularly when conducting interviews that reveal personal experiences of war, military operations, and the like. Addams understood well how to present her findings to different audiences. Importantly, she was always careful not to overstate what she had learned during interviews. For example, when speaking to soldiers who had been wounded during the war, Addams learned that some of the soldiers were hoping for an end to the war—​thus contradicting the then prevalent pro-​war rhetoric in America—​and that women would become more active in the peace movement (Addams, 1915). At the same time, she was careful to state that it was unclear how common or prevalent those sentiments were. She emphasized that it was sufficient to know those sentiments were out there, and to make sure they were heard in addition to the war propaganda and narrative of brave, aggressive soldiers at the front (Hamington, 2009; Addams, 1915). Researchers today have a plethora of platforms to publish their findings on. Many publish policy advice, write newspaper articles or blog posts, or give other lectures, which have a much broader impact beyond the academic community. Perhaps drawing from Addams, learning to use different publication platforms can be one way of living out our identities as researchers, and as activists.

Lesson #4:  Researcher Identity and Positionality Professional paradigms of detachment and objectivity are commonly thought to be at odds with building personal connections and being empathetic in the field. In reality, remaining emotionally and intellectually detached from the stories we hear or events we see unfold in the field is simply not a realistic expectation. Addams teaches us that, perhaps, rather than striving for impartiality, we should strive for deeper and systematic reflections on our positionalities. With a growing body of literature striving to imitate the quantitative methods and striving to observe reality as it is, embracing one’s own positionality, reflexivity, and subjectivity is more important than ever. Addams and a large body of feminist knowledge have acknowledged the importance of positionality and reflecting on one’s own understanding of it. It is important to remember that researchers never enter the field as blank slate. The researcher him/​herself always enters the field with a “particular body, characteristics, personal history and political worldviews” (Krause, 2021, p. 2; see also Fujii, 2017). At best, the researcher’s identity, shaped by personal markers such as race, gender, age,

470    Chiara Ruffa and Chiara Tulp nationality, and the like, positively affects the connections (s)he is able to form in the field and facilitates access to the research site (Fujii, 2017). The effects of identity markers on the researcher’s ability to conduct fieldwork can often be anticipated. For instance, familiarizing oneself with the local culture in advance may provide the researcher with some insight into how their gender or ethnicity might affect his or her ability to access certain parts of a population, or which geographical areas might be safe or dangerous to visit. Even with the most thorough preparation, however, researchers may find unexpected identity markers stand out, or matter less than expected. Tulp, for instance, noted that while in Kosovo, many of the locals in the capital Pristina were eager to strike up a conversation when they realized that she spoke German. Because many of the locals had lived in German-​speaking countries after the Kosovo war, the German language was an easy ground to connect and establish a friendly relation on. By contrast, some identity markers can exacerbate physical and emotional threats to the researcher—​particularly when working in sensitive or violent contexts. For instance, when Ruffa conducted field research in Lebanon, some Southern Lebanese thought she might be from Israel and met her with suspicion at first. At other times, the mere anticipation of how positionality might affect our research is sufficient to shape how we approach respondents. Addams can be a role model as she demonstrates that, at times, we need to overcome our concerns vis-​à-​vis positionality, and might be positively surprised by how we are received in the field. Because she received much criticism for speaking out against the war, Addams anticipated an adverse reaction by politicians, and that she and the other women would likely not be taken seriously: Now of course we often felt rather foolish as we went about from one country to another talking about things which certainly in the minds of some countries did not belong to women –​yet I assure you that in almost every one of these places. . . this is what they all said: it seemed to them quite pre-​eminently a woman’s part. One said he had wondered many times why women had kept silent so long, because, as he said, women are not expected to fight and why could not they long ago have made some protest against war, which is denied to men? (Addams, 1915, n.p.)

However, as became apparent, Addams and her contemporaries were positively surprised by their reception. Contrary to what they had expected, many of the politicians leading WWI were open and willing to speak to the women who lobbied for mediation (Addams, 1915). Along somewhat similar lines, Ruffa and Tulp have been positively surprised time and again by how open service members have been to talk to and engage with them. What we learn from Addams is that, irrespective of who we are, our own identity and positionality will impede full objectivity and detachment in the field. Much like Addams, all we can do is try and be as aware of how our positionality affects both us, and the communities we research, as we enter the field; and stay open to the idea that we might be positively surprised.

Strange Encounters?   471

Lesson #5:  Human to Human In addition to understanding and addressing our own positionality in the field, Addams also can teach us about how we view and treat the communities we research. As security and peace researchers (and pacifists), we seek to interview soldiers, rebels, peacekeepers, and civilians affected by war. Sometimes this can entail interactions with persons who engaged in active combat, or even the commission of crimes against humanity, even though many of us have rather pacifist inclinations ourselves. We argue that we can draw from Addams’s notion of humanity and empathy to bridge our identities as researchers, pacifists, and feminists when engaging with participants in the field. Addams fervently argued that human nature is inherently good and that humans generally prefer cooperation over conflict. To Addams, social divisions and tensions were a consequence of war, and not a result of human nature or instinct to mistrust others. In other words, the natural human inclination is to come together in friendly ties and cooperation (Addams, 1922/​2002, p. 52). Perhaps it was this belief in the inherent human ability to form friendly relations that enabled Addams to approach individuals from all walks of life with open-​mindedness and empathy—​whether she shared their social status, religion, or norms and values or not. Her work may remind us that everyone, in principle, should be considered worthy of respect and of being listened to. Addams wonderfully shows how one can feel a commonality and empathy even when engaging with people that do not share the same ideals and values. It is particularly noteworthy how Addams strove to approach everyone, from politicians to mothers to soldiers, with a degree of empathy. Addams engaged actively with members of the military, both before they were deployed from the United States, and after they had served during the war, even though Addams herself had no military background, and was a fervent opponent of militarism and war (Addams et al., 1907/​2007). In short, Addams was able to overcome the gap in presumed values and beliefs. The modern researcher, as (s)he immerses herself in sensitive and often vulnerable communities, marked by conflict, can learn much from Addams’s empathetic approach to immersion. One might be surprised with the empathy one can find, even for those we believe we could not relate to. For instance, Ruffa remembers when boarding a C-​130 bound to Kabul with the Italian contingent about to be deployed in the NATO mission. Several young soldiers were taking their seats and she distinctly remembered wondering among herself “why would anyone like to go and do this kind of job?” Several hours later, she listened to their stories, fears, and vulnerabilities and found herself empathizing with them. These were young men (and a few women) worried to be killed, not to return home. She could not but feel compassion. Along similar lines, in a recent Zoom interview, Ruffa listened to the story of a former US Army officer. She had served for several months in Bosnia and when her contingent returned home, all other veterans got off the plane and could greet their family. She could not because she could

472    Chiara Ruffa and Chiara Tulp not be seen with her (female) partner as a result of the US Don’t Ask Don’t Tell policy. Ruffa—​notwithstanding her reticence toward military personnel—​perceived her account as heart breaking, and they both cried. These encounters underline that, even as a professional researcher, one should never forget that the interactions in the field are, ultimately, interactions with other humans, and that sometimes, being in the field requires researchers to traverse professional, normative, or value-​based differences. Particularly the second example shows that an emotional connection can be of fundamental importance, and perhaps unavoidable, when establishing rapport and trust with the respondents. The foundation of being two human beings, two women sympathizing might have played an important role in fostering the trust and safe space needed to share this personal story and listen to and share stories that would otherwise go unheard. What we take away from Addams is her ability to separate the individual she spoke to, whether it be a politician or soldier, from what they represented—​like the army, the political elite—​and to listen to them as human beings worthy of respect and empathy. This approach allows Addams to locate many of the issues she identifies and observes not as individual behavior, but in the larger social structures that enable behavior. We argue that this approach can help contemporary researchers similarly to engage with individuals and see beyond differences of opinion or values, and to listen. Rather than agree or disagree with the individual, we might focus on tracing where certain attitudes or believes originated.

Lesson #6:  On Courage (or Lack Thereof) Lastly, we suggest that researchers seek inspiration in and draw courage from Addams’s efforts to engage multiple perspectives, and seek out groups of people who are frequently overlooked, yet deserve to be paid attention and heard. Whichever topic Addams concerned herself with, be it education, women’s voting rights, labor strikes, or world peace, she listened to members of all affected communities so that she would be able to articulate their wants and needs to (elite) political institutions (Deegan, 1988; Addams, 1922/​2002). Like Addams, contemporary (field) researchers bear the responsibility to pay attention to those on the margins and to include them in our understanding of peace and security (Wibben, 2020), even if the results of such work might not lead to popular policy-​advice or topics for publication. It took Ruffa a long time to start seeing those invisible patterns and start writing about them. But once she saw them, she could not unsee them and she felt she needed to write about them. Those under-​represented groups still face particular struggles in everyday life with the military, ranging from a lack of women’s or gender-​neutral bathrooms, to women and other minorities being disproportionately victims of sexual harassment and abuse reports (Wood & Toppelberg, 2017). Interviews, focus groups, and observations have been critical in bringing such

Strange Encounters?   473 issues to the fore, both in institution-​based investigations, and in academia. If Addams’s work can teach us one thing, it is to actively seek out conversations with people from all different walks of life, and to not let personal or professional prejudices determine who we listen to, and who we do not. A related point is that those at the margins are not as far away as some might be tempted to think. Performance/​career pressures often push researchers to particularly fragile contexts, and to engage with vulnerable populations, perhaps taking more risks than are strictly necessary to produce an interesting, unique piece of research (Cronin-​ Furman & Lake, 2018). However, while exotic, adventurous, and unique field research may be rewarded, it is not automatically the most interesting, necessary, or even ethical approach to one’s study. As Routley and Wright (2021) point out, such “Indiana Jones” notions of the successful researcher are often outdated, and rooted in gendered and colonialist ideals. In line with Routley and Wright, we suggest that researchers take a page from Addams’s book and consider research sites closer to home; to stand up and move outside the traditional notions of “exotic” fieldwork only taking place in far-​away and/​or dangerous research sites—​frequently in the Global South. Perhaps we should ask ourselves more if we can learn the same or even more staying in the safety of our own four walls? Even when travelling to conflict zones sometimes the courageous and, perhaps more importantly, the ethical thing to do is not seek out dangerous sites, but to work from safe offices, or even the hotel room. For instance, when Ruffa was in Afghanistan she would have had more opportunities to go out in the field to conduct interviews. However, because doing so posed a credible security risk to herself and to the humanitarian organization that was hosting her, Ruffa decided to refrain from visiting the military sites, because doing so risked putting in danger the organizations that was generously hosting her. Especially when alone in the field, venturing into unsafe or vulnerable spaces for the mere sake of getting results, can be unsafe and irresponsible. The issue remains, however, that professional expectations of the modern field researcher have yet to catch up, and particularly junior or mid-​career scholars might be concerned that without elaborate, exotic field research they will fail to compete in their fields. We turn to Addams for inspiration in taking such steps away from the professional metrics of security studies and peace and conflict fieldwork, and have the courage to step out of the researcher’s comfort zone. Knight (2010) wrote that [a]‌t seventy-​two Addams was willing to be blunt. She told her audience, ( . . . ) that it was dangerous when people clung to old ideas, whether they did so out of loyalty to tradition or fear of appearing radical. What people needed to do now, she said, was imagine new possibilities while also seeing life as it was. Such “free and vigorous thinking,” she promised, would “liberate new sources of human energy” and make it possible to build “a bridge between those things which we desire and those things which are possible.” (pp. xiii–​xiv)

Addams was extraordinarily courageous: she fought and argued strenuously for her ideas, and we have a lot to learn from her about this. As we mentioned earlier, women

474    Chiara Ruffa and Chiara Tulp peace and conflict researchers today still face skepticism from colleagues about their interest in the field, and at times even their qualification. Perhaps it is time to more actively challenge outdated norms of fieldwork and step out of our comfort zones by prioritizing safety and ethics over adventure and pressure to publish exotic, unique papers. Addams reminds us that, perhaps, we should pay less mind to those who question our interest and work in relation to the military.

Conclusions: What Can We Learn from Addams? Jane Addams was a pioneer along many dimensions. As fieldworkers, we find her work particularly useful for the six lessons that we draw from her work, ranging from the importance of immersion and contextual knowledge to her ability to connect human-​ to-​human beyond identity differences. Addams’s lessons for all fieldworkers also go beyond fieldwork itself—​which was the main focus of our chapter. In addition to these six lessons, we identify three dimensions that deserve future exploration and that are important for us fieldworkers within the context of the contemporary academy. First, Addams was adamant on how we are not alone in pushing for social change both within and outside the academy. We need to work harder to support each other, to think together about how we would like academia to look like and how to change it, rather than accept the status quo. At a time where great conformism meets increased specialization, it is particularly important to understand how one can make a contribution and, at the same time, push the frontiers further. As David Epstein (2019) reminds us, in academia, we specialize methodologically, but there remains a need to be generalist and devote ourselves to theorizing. In contemporary academia, specialization is more important than ever with methodological techniques that are very difficult to put up with. At the same time, one should remain interested in academic research, and Addams reminds us of the importance of openness and curiosity. The increased specialization has created boundaries and a certain inability to engage in a dialogue across methodological specialization. Overcoming these boundaries is a battle that need not be fought alone. We can find solace, support, and strength in building a community that shares our vision. Second, Addams reminds us that we have to claim space and authority—​alone and together as a way to survive in academia and be better activists. We have to stand up for ourselves, and trust ourselves. Addams was heavily criticized, and when speaking out against WWI, silenced. For instance, publishers encouraged Addams to publish anonymously or under a pseudonym (Addams, 1922). She refused because she had the courage to stand up for her opinions. Addams carved out a new space for herself by becoming a social worker at Hull House, and by co-​founding an international women’s peace movement.

Strange Encounters?   475 Third, we should normalize feelings of being lost, slowness, and not quite fitting in—​especially in contemporary publish-​or-​perish culture that drives academia. It is okay to find your way and explore. In fact, it can be rewarding and lead to exciting new projects. Addams herself describes feeling lost, perplexed, and direction-​ less when she travelled to Europe and those travels and years were key to Addams’s future work (Addams, 1912; Cromie, 2015). She was also not afraid to admit she made mistakes. Oftentimes, Addams did not yet know how the collected data, the interviews, or even her observations would be used. Instead, she immersed herself in the field, set to better understand local dynamics and identify social issues based on her observations. We should allow ourselves to be slow and work to create structures that support our exploration, such as incubation times for junior researchers. Fieldwork-​as all site-​intensive methods require some degree of slowness (Millar 2014) and a very lucid engagement to the field to resist the temptation to embark on a project mainly for its “exoticism.” Addams was surprisingly close to being a field researcher in a sense that fits into today’s matrix of what constitutes a field researcher in security studies and peace and conflict research. Addams’s notion of scientific inquiry is of great relevance to researchers who seek to engage with the reflective turn in the social sciences—​a practice that is finally beginning to gain traction in peace research and security studies as well. Addams continues to provide key guidance to decide where to push the boundaries of the field further.

Notes 1. Our aim is to talk and engage with a wealth of approaches, ranging from positivist to interpretivist and lying on a spectrum. See, for instance, Ruffa & Evangelista, 2021. 2. In this chapter, we make use of the terms field researchers and fieldworker interchangeably. 3. In addition to Addams’s published books, a comprehensive collection of her speeches, letters, journal-​and newspaper publications can be found at the Jane Addams Digital Edition webpage, available here: https://​digi​tal.jan​eadd​ams.ram​apo.edu/​.

References Addams, J. (1912). Twenty years at Hull-​House with autobiographical notes. The MacMillan Company. https://​digi​tal.libr​ary.upenn.edu/​women/​add​ams/​hullho​use/​hullho​use.html. Addams, J. (1912/​2005). A new conscience and an ancient evil. The MacMillan Company. Addams, J. (1915, July 22). Address at the Chicago Auditorium. http://​digi​tal.jan​eadd​ams.ram​ apo.edu/​items/​show/​10150. Addams, J. (1916). War times challenging woman’s traditions. Survey 36, 475–​478. http://​jfr​ edma​cdon​ald.com/​worl​dwar​one1​914-​1918/​women-​16war-​times-​chal​leng​ing.html. Addams, J. (1930). The second twenty years at Hull-​House: September 1909 to September 1929. The MacMillan Company. https://​arch​ive.org/​deta​ils/​secon​dtwe​ntyy​ear0​000a​dda/​page/​ n5/​mode/​2up.

476    Chiara Ruffa and Chiara Tulp Addams, J., Carroll, B. A., & Fink, C. F. (1907/​2007). Newer ideals of peace (1st Illinois ed). University of Illinois Press. Addams, J. (1922). Peace and bread in time of war. University of Illinois Press. http://​ebook​cent​ ral.proqu​est.com/​lib/​uu/​det​ail.act​ion?docID=​3414​275. Addams, J. (1895). Hull-​House maps and papers. Boston: Thomas Crowell and Co. Autesserre, S. (2010). The Trouble with the Congo: Local Violence and the Failure of International Peacebuilding. Cambridge University Press. Autesserre, S. (2014). Peaceland: Conflict resolution and the everyday politics of international intervention. Cambridge University Press. Bray, Z. (2008). Ethnographic approaches. In Donatella Della Porta and Michael Keating (Eds.), Approaches and Methodologies in the Social Sciences: A Pluralist Perspective (pp. 296–​ 315). Cambridge University Press. Campbell, S. P. (2018). Global governance and local peace: Accountability and performance in international peacebuilding. Cambridge University Press. https://​doi.org/​10.1017/​978110​ 8290​630. Chilmeran, Y., & J. Hedström. (2020). In Oliver Richmond and Gëzim Visoka (Eds.), Reflexivity and fieldwork in feminist peace research. In The Palgrave Encyclopedia of Peace and Conflict Studies (pp. 1–​7). Springer International Publishing. https://​doi.org/​10.1007/​ 978-​3-​030-​11795-​5_​181-​1. Cromie, T. R. (2015). Jane Addams and the “devil baby tales”: The usefulness of perplexity in “sympathetic understanding,” a tool in learning empathy. Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association 63(1), 101–​136. https://​doi.org/​10.1177/​00030​6511​4568​723. Cronin-​Furman, K., & Lake, M. (2018). Ethics abroad: Fieldwork in fragile and violent contexts. PS: Political Science & Politics 51(03), 607–​614. https://​doi.org/​10.1017/​S10490​9651​ 8000​379. Deegan, M. J. (1988). Jane Addams and the Men of the Chicago School, 1892–​1918. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Books. Eck, K., & Cohen, D. K. (2021a). Who says yes or no? Models of ethical and safety oversight for student-​led political violence research. PS: Political Science & Politics 54(4), 761–​766. https://​ doi.org/​10.1017/​S10490​9652​1000​627. Eck, K., & Cohen, D. K. (2021b). Time for a change: The ethics of student-​led human subjects research on political violence. Third World Quarterly 42(4), 855–​866. https://​doi.org/​ 10.1080/​01436​597.2020.1864​215. Epstein, D. J. (2019). Range: Why generalists triumph in a specialized world. Riverhead Books. Fujii, L. A. (2017). Interviewing in social science research: A relational approach (1st ed.). Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group. https://​doi.org/​10.1057/​ejis.2011.54. Hamington, M. (2004). Embodied care: Jane Addams, Maurice Merleau-​Ponty, and Feminist Ethics. University of Illinois Press. http://​ebook​cent​ral.proqu​est.com/​lib/​uu/​det​ail.act​ ion?docID=​3413​945. Hamington, M. (2009). The social philosophy of Jane Addams. University of Illinois Press. https://​www.press.uillin​ois.edu/​books/​cata​log/​88wty3​yx97​8025​2034​763.html. Hedström, J. (2019). Confusion, seduction, failure: Emotions as reflexive knowledge in conflict settings. International Studies Review 21(4): 662–​677. https://​doi.org/​10.1093/​isr/​viy​063. Hedström, J., & Z. M. Phyo. (2020). Friendship, intimacy, and power in research on conflict: Implications for feminist ethics. International Feminist Journal of Politics 22(5), 765–​777. https://​doi.org/​10.1080/​14616​742.2020.1846​579.

Strange Encounters?   477 Hutchings, K., & Owens, P. (2021). Women thinkers and the canon of international thought: Recovery, rejection, and reconstitution. American Political Science Review 115(2), 347–​359. https://​doi.org/​10.1017/​S00030​5542​0000​969. Irgil, E., Kreft, A.-​K., Lee, M., Willis, C. N., & Zvobgo, K. (2021). Field research: A graduate student’s guide. International Studies Review 23(4), 1495–​1517. https://​doi.org/​10.1093/​isr/​ viab​023. Jacobs, A. M., Büthe, T., Arjona, A., Arriola, L. R., Bellin, E., Bennett, A., Björkman, L., Bleich, E., Elkins, Z., Fairfield, T., Gaikwad, N., Greitens, S. C., Hawkesworth, M., Herrera, V., Herrera, Y. M., Johnson, K. S., Karakoç, E., Koivu, K., Kreuzer, M., . . . Yashar, D. J. (2021). The qualitative transparency deliberations: Insights and implications. Perspectives on Politics 19(1), 171–​208. https://​doi.org/​10.1017/​S15375​9272​0001​164. Knight, L. W. (2010). Jane Addams: Spirit in action (1st ed.). W.W. Norton. Krause, J. (2021). The ethics of ethnographic methods in conflict zones. Journal of Peace Research 58(3), 329–​341. https://​doi.org/​10.1177/​00223​4332​0971​021. Krause, P., & Szekely, O. (2020). Stories from the field: A guide to navigating fieldwork in political science. New York: Columbia University Press. Lake, D. L. (2014). Jane Addams and wicked problems: Putting the pragmatic method to us. Faculty Peer Reviewed Articles. 5. https://​schol​arwo​rks.gvsu.edu/​lib_​a​rtic​les/​5. Lengermann P., & Niebrugge, G. (2014). The explanatory power of ethics: The sociology of Jane Addams. In V. Jeffries (Eds.), The Palgrave Handbook of Altruism, Morality, and Social Solidarity. New York. https://​doi.org/​10.1057/​9781​1373​9186​5_​5. MacGinty, R., Brett, R., & Vogel, B. (2021). The companion to peace and conflict fieldwork. Springer International Publishing: Palgrave Macmillan. https://​link.sprin​ger.com/​10.1007/​ 978-​3-​030-​46433-​2. Millar, G. (2014). Ethnographic peace research: The underappreciated benefits of long-​ term fieldwork. International Peacekeeping 25(5), 663–​688. https://​doi.org/​10.1080/​13533​ 312.2017.1421​860. Misheva, V., & Blasko, A. (eds.). (2018). Jane Addams’ sociology and the spirit of social entrepreneurship. Uppsala Universitet. Mohanty, C. T. (2003). Feminism without borders: Decolonizing theory, practicing solidarity. Duke University Press. Moravcsik, A. (2014). Trust, but verify: The transparency revolution and qualitative international relations. Security Studies 23(4), 663–​688. https://​doi.org/​10.1080/​09636​ 412.2014.970​846. Newby, V. (2018). Peacekeeping in South Lebanon: Credibility and local cooperation. Syracuse University Press. Olonisakin, O. (2004). African peacekeeping and the impact on African military personnel. In Amy Adler and Thomas W. Britt (Eds.), The Psychology of the Peacekeeper (pp. 291–​310). Greenwood Publishers. Owens, P. (2018). Women and the history of international thought. International Studies Quarterly 62(3), 467–​481. Pouligny, B. (2006). Peace operations seen from below: UN missions and local people. Hurst & Company. Rosiek, J. L., & Pratt, S. (2013). Jane Addams as a resource for developing a reflexively realist social science practice. Qualitative Inquiry 19(8), 578–​588. https://​doi.org/​10.1177/​10778​0041​ 3494​345.

478    Chiara Ruffa and Chiara Tulp Routley, L., & Wright, K. A. M. (2021). Being Indiana Jones in IR: The pressure to do “real” fieldwork. In R. MacGinty, R. Brett, & B. Vogel (Eds.), The Companion to Peace and Conflict Fieldwork (pp. 85–​100). London: Palgrave Macmillan. Ruffa, C., & Evangelista, M. (2021). Searching for a middle ground? A spectrum of views of causality in qualitative research. Italian Political Science Review/​Rivista Italiana Di Scienza Politica, 51(2), 164–​181. https://​doi.org/​10.1017/​ipo.2021.10. Ruffa, C. (2018). Military cultures in peace and stability operations. University of Pennsylvania Press. Shields, P. (ed.). (2017). Jane Addams: Progressive pioneer of peace, philosophy, sociology, social work and public administration. Springer. Shields, P. M., & Soeters, J. (2017). Peaceweaving: Jane Addams, positive peace, and public Administration. The American Review of Public Administration 47(3), 323–​339. https://​doi .org/​10.1177/​02750​7401​5589​629. Smith, P. L. T. (2021). Decolonizing methodologies: Research and indigenous peoples. Zed Books. Tickner, J. A., & True, J. (2018). A century of international relations feminism: From World War I women’s peace pragmatism to the women, peace and security agenda. International Studies Quarterly, 62(2), 221–​233. https://​doi.org/​10.1093/​isq/​sqx​091. Verweijen, J. (2017). Strange battlefield fellows: The diagonal interoperability between blue helmets and the Congolese Army. International Peacekeeping 24(3), 363–​387. https://​doi.org/​ 10.1080/​13533​312.2017.1294​486. Wibben, A. T. R. (2016). Researching war: Feminist methods, ethics and politics. Taylor & Francis. Wibben, A. T. R. (2020, April 15). We already know what to do –​duck of Minerva. Duck of Minerva. https://​www.duckof​mine​rva.com/​2020/​04/​we-​alre​ady-​know-​what-​to-​do.html. Wood, E. J. (2006). The ethical challenges of field research in conflict zones. Qualitative Sociology 29(3), 373–​386. https://​doi.org/​10.1007/​s11​133-​006-​9027-​8. Wood, E. J., & Toppelberg, N. (2017). The persistence of sexual assault within the US military. Journal of Peace Research 54(5), 620–​633. https://​doi.org/​10.1177/​00223​4331​7720​487.

Chapter 25

Jane Adda ms a nd T w ent y -​First ​C e nt u ry Ref ugee Reset t l e me nt Toward the Substitution of Nurture for Warfare Tess Varner My daughter wouldn’t hurt a spider That had nested Between her bicycle handles For two weeks She waited Until it left of its own accord. If you tear down the web I said It will simply know This isn’t a place to call home And you’d get to go biking She said that’s how others Become refugees isn’t it? ~ Fady Joudah1

Introduction Even a brief glimpse at the news of the day quickly reveals increasing nationalism, xenophobia, and anti-​immigrant fervor. The situation is growing progressively dire, with fewer nation-​states maintaining previously held reputations as hospitable places for those seeking asylum or refugee status. And yet, despite this increasing hostility across the globe, every year—​and with no decline evident—​hundreds of thousands of people flee their home countries for reasons ranging from religious, ethnic, and race-​based

480   Tess Varner persecution to human trafficking and climate change. Only some of these reasons for seeking asylum are recognized as legitimate, and even those vary and are administered inconsistently from place to place and over time, and relatively small numbers of people looking for a place of refuge will actually find a place willing to accept them. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, occurring just before the publication of this chapter, makes the immediacy of the asylum problem especially striking. The conflict is expected to result in the largest refugee crisis since World War II. This influx of people seeking asylum comes in a moment characterized by growing anti-​immigrant hostility—​hostility intensified by the rise of populist movements such as Brexit and exacerbated by populist leaders such as Donald J. Trump Jr. and his followers. Joseph R. Biden’s declaration that the United States will welcome 100,000 Ukrainian refugees may be commendable, but that number is disproportionately low compared to neighboring countries, such as Poland and Slovakia, and even compared to western European countries that are still in close proximity. These countries face a heavier burden, and yet, the disproportionate anti-​immigration fervor in the United States and the United Kingdom is alarmingly high. The field of scholarship addressing the refugee crisis in the twenty-​first century is expansive. Political scientists, legal experts, sociologists, and international affairs scholars puzzle over what nation-​states owe to those who seek asylum within their borders. Given the turbulent and dynamic nature of the international situation, one might wonder what contribution Jane Addams would make to the list of relevant thinkers today. Prior to World War I, there were very few restrictions on migration in the United States and Europe. The 1924 Immigration Restriction Act instantiated a dramatic shift with the first wide implementation of border controls. Given the stark difference between her context and ours in the present day, what can a late nineteenth/​early twentieth-​century public figure add to a conversation about twenty-​first century-​refugee resettlement? A public philosopher, activist, and peacebuilder, Addams was deeply committed to supporting and engaging with displaced people, and this chapter works to demonstrate the continued relevance of her feminist-​pragmatist orientation, including her concept of cosmic patriotism and her practices of hospitality, to twenty-​first century refugee resettlement. Both in Chicago at Hull House and in her later international peace work, Addams’s engagement with uprooted people informed and was informed by her philosophical orientation. Considering the contemporary ways in which we engage with displaced peoples and design refugee resettlement efforts, this chapter explores how Addams’s legacy remains relevant and we can continue to work toward her humanitarian aim of ultimately “substituting nurture for warfare” (Addams, 1907). I suggest that moral obligations involve but are not exhausted by nation-​states alone as they meet or fail to meet expectations and agreements for refugee resettlement. Communities and individuals alike have opportunities to engage in significant moral care work as they encounter refugees and asylum seekers, tending to their well-​being and ultimately sharing in and shaping community life together. Addams’s legacy demonstrates this potential profoundly.

Jane Addams and Twenty-First Century Refugee Resettlement     481 Considering what kinds of care can and should be offered to individuals who are fleeing persecution, during both informal and formal phases of asylum seeking and refugee resettlement, the chapter begins by examining the kinds of experiences individuals face in their journey to find a place to belong. The following section attends to the moral obligations of ordinary citizens to extend care to displaced people, rather than exclusively focusing on the obligations of the nation-​state. The next section offers resources from Addams, in her writing and in her lived engagement with uprooted people, that may be useful in today’s context. Finally, I look at several contemporary aid efforts that embody what Addams worked toward in her own time. Throughout the paper, I raise concerns about the circumstances of all kinds of people fleeing well-​founded persecution and harm, not only refugees and those seeking refugee status. These statuses involve formal, legal designations—​designations that did not exist in Addams’s day. Although she explicitly speaks about her involvement with immigrants, many of the people she worked with would likely have qualified as refugees today.2 Nevertheless, the claims drawn from Addams should be applied much more widely to various kinds of migrants, given the sorts of hostilities and harms they face in the current climate.

Militarism, Nationalism, and Today’s International Refugee Crisis Certainly, a twenty-​first-​century refugee crisis exists. But the contemporary rhetoric of Western news outlets and international political discourse is often reductive about what exactly that crisis is. In one way of thinking, the refugee crisis is that hundreds of thousands of people are fleeing their home countries every year, crossing borders and trying to come to communities that feel as if their resources are already stretched thin and their safety and ways of life are already under threat. Immigrants, refugees, and asylum seekers—​people “constructed as ‘the other’ ”—​are often blamed “for everything from individual economic hardship and rising crime rates to the decline of local communities and the erosion of Western values” (Burnier, 2021a, 42). But these claims are contestable, and many scholars argue that they cannot be supported by data: “In countries like the United States that have historically resettled refugees, refugees are decisively a net economic gain” (Parekh, 2020, xvii). While the upfront costs can be high, resettlement efforts often prove to be a “smart long-​term economic strategy” (xvii). Furthermore, in a report published by the Organisation for Economic Co-​ Operation and Development, data show that “immigrants contribute more in taxes and contributions than governments spend on their social protection, health and education” (OECD, 2021). Yet despite all of this evidence, the dominant narrative about the refugee crisis is most often understood as a political and economic crisis.

482   Tess Varner Another understanding of the refugee crisis, however, is to see it as an ethical crisis—​a crisis of human rights and human dignity. In this way of thinking, the crisis is that some of the world’s most vulnerable people see no reasonable choice to stay where they are and, facing torture, imprisonment, death, and other atrocities, choose to leave, in turn finding themselves in situations that fail to meet a basic threshold of human dignity. Instead of refuge, they are met with militarism at the borders and within the legal process of seeking refuge. I offer two illustrations, different in scope but each demonstrating opportunity for nurture.

Two Cases Case One –​It would be difficult to describe much of the experience of two asylum seekers, whom I will call Marielos and Inès, refuge in any meaningful sense. They fled one tragic situation and found another, and while the latter may offer some protections denied to them by their home country, securing those protections in the United States has been an ongoing and painful battle. Marielos and Inès are trans women who fled their homes in Honduras, hoping to find a place where they would not be killed on the basis of their identities. Upon arrival in the United States, they were placed in detention centers where they faced daily abuse and degradation, and then were put into an “Alternatives to Detention” program while they awaited their court hearings. For the last several years, they have lived with meager resources near Boulder, ankle monitors tracking their movements, subject to sexual harassment and dehumanizing language and treatment, unable to secure employment, and with exorbitant court and monitoring fees owed to a for-​profit company that also runs the largest private prison system. Their case managers “made it clear that they are in complete control over [these women’s] lives when/​if they get their work permits, when they get their ankle bracelets removed and whether or not they get deported” (Fauver, 2021). The alternatives to detention programs are unnecessarily punitive. Brian, a humanitarian volunteer who has been closely involved with the cases of Marielos and Inès, describes his initial confusion about these militaristic practices, wondering why people seeking safety are treated this way. He writes: “Now I understand that the cruelty is the point” (Fauver, 2021). The policies are characteristic of a racist and ethnocentric migration system, meant to serve as a deterrent, but ultimately “subjecting our long-​ term neighbors and recently arrived siblings to one more humiliation” (Fauver, 2021). Regrettably, the circumstances these women encountered may still be preferable to the near certain death they faced had they remained in their home countries. By some measures, and according to some scholars, moral obligations have been met in the case of Marielos and Inès, because the United States has fulfilled its commitments to the United Nations, providing a legal system for resettlement and certain protections and resources during the process.3 But this is hardly a picture of refuge. Are we to believe that simply by accepting these vulnerable women into the United States’ borders

Jane Addams and Twenty-First Century Refugee Resettlement     483 all moral obligations have been exhausted? Or that the dehumanizing treatment these women face is justifiable, so long as the state has met its own commitments? Case Two —​In 2020, thousands of migrants from places such as Syria, Palestine, and Afghanistan attempted to ford the Evros River, which serves as a natural border between Turkey and Greece and has long been a site of migrant border crossing. Early that year, the Turkish government had opened its own borders, no longer blocking migrants from entering. Many chose or, according to some accounts, were pushed to go further, attempting to cross into Greece. Swimming, wading, or piling into inflatable dinghies and other overcrowded watercrafts, people entered the freezing waters, believing that life on the other side of the river would be more livable than their current circumstances, trusting that the European Union would offer some sort of protection upon their arrival. Instead, tragically, many met their death before reaching the other side. It is estimated that since 2000, more than a thousand bodies have been recovered from the Evros (Pavlidis and Karakasi, 2019). Even successful crossings, however, did not mark the end of the struggle. Those who made it across would face a number of possible scenarios. Some would immediately be forced to return, sent back into the dangerous waters from which they had just emerged. But others would be met by Greek security forces with heavy weaponry and without identification and without uniforms; one asylee noted “they were dressed like ninjas” (Human Rights Watch, 2020). The asylum seekers would be hit with rubber bullets and tear gas, gathered into official and unofficial detention centers where their scant belongings were taken from them and never returned, and stripped and searched in degrading and violent ways by men wearing all black, their faces covered by balaclavas (Human Rights Watch, 2020). The scene described above reveals a crisis. But although some view the crisis primarily as the massive influx of migrants that Greece cannot feasibly accommodate, I argue for a more expansive view that, at minimum, recognizes a second crisis ongoing simultaneously (Parekh, 2020)—​one in which already broken and beaten people are treated like war criminals and prisoners for trying to preserve their own lives and the lives of their children. The contemporary scene echoes ones Addams describes. She paints a vivid picture of those who came to Hull House from the 1905 Russian Revolution—​“a forlorn family of little children whose parents have been massacred at Kishinev. . . .a Russian woman, her face streaming with tears of indignation and pity, asks you to look at the scarred back of her sister, a young girl, who has escaped with her life from the whips of the Cossack soldiers; or a studious young woman suddenly disappears from the Hull-​House classes because she has returned to Kiev to be near her brother while he is in prison, that she may earn money for the nourishing food which alone will keep him from contracting tuberculosis” (Addams, 1990/​1911, 229). These two contemporary cases, alongside those Addams shared and many others, demonstrate the urgent need for deeper attention to the treatment of displaced people. Although the current global context is quite different from the “vexed problem of immigration” (Addams, 1909, 214) Addams faced in her own lifetime, her insights remain powerful and applicable, and her criticisms sharp, calling people’s attitudes toward

484   Tess Varner immigrants “too barren and chilly to induce any really zealous or beneficent activity on behalf of the immigrants” (Addams, 1907, 41).

Refuge, Refugees, and Reframing Responsibility States, communities, and individuals alike need to understand the circumstances from which people flee and the brutal journeys they undertake in order someday to have the possibility of resettlement—​of refuge. Notably, few people who seek resettlement will be granted it—​less than 1 percent of 20 million refugees worldwide (UNHCR). The overwhelming majority will be turned away, forced to remain in or be returned to their home country, and great numbers will remain in camps awaiting opportunities that will not come. In general, displaced people face three options: crowd into slums and urban centers of neighboring countries, acquiesce to live in dangerously overcrowded and unsafe refugee camps, or make the perilous journeys to countries they believe might allow them entry (Parekh, 2020; Betts and Collier, 2017). In No Refuge: Ethics and the Global Refugee Crisis, Serena Parekh details the stark realities for most refugees: “[They] are spending their lives ‘in a permanent state of temporary living’ ” (Parekh, 2020, 5). On average, refugees spend seventeen to twenty-​six years being a refugee: “Being a refugee is how most refugees will spend their lives” (Parekh, 2020, 6). So, for the majority of refugees and asylum seekers, there are simply no good options. Refugee camps, Parekh explains, “produce a loss of autonomy and hope for the future; urban settlements mean greater freedom, but even less security, access to food, and education for children; and asylum often means risking everything, including life itself. Each choice exposes refugees to a different kind of deprivation” (Parekh, 2020, 19). These most vulnerable human beings’ lives must be protected by the international community. Scholarship—​particularly philosophical scholarship—​about the refugee crisis tends to center on questions about responsibilities of countries and of the international community: To whom does a nation-​state owe aid? How can nation-​states control their own borders and exercise self-​determination and show concern for human rights at the same time? How should burdens of refugees be distributed among nation-​states, taking into consideration those that are directly and indirectly responsible for the conditions of the country from which people are fleeing? Should all resettlement be public, or might private sponsorship be a just way forward? (Duarte et al., 2018; Parekh, 2020, Betts and Collier, 2017). These questions are ethically complex and politically necessary, but they situate the state itself or its representatives as the primary relevant ethical actors.4 Such an approach is inadequate. While nation-​states and the international community bear the lion’s share of the responsibility for establishing and enforcing political arrangements through which displaced people and those forced to flee their home countries can find safety, it is clear that state actors do not and cannot meet all moral obligations by themselves. Even just political arrangements will always fall short of providing the minimum conditions of human dignity for the world’s most vulnerable populations. Nations fulfilling their

Jane Addams and Twenty-First Century Refugee Resettlement     485 agreements to admit refugees meets one sense of a right to belong, but not a second, more deeply communal sense (Lowe, 2019). Fulfilling that second sense will require effort on multiple fronts, including appropriate and sustainable political arrangements on a global scale, social programs and supports at the community level, and individual citizens building and maintaining relationships with those who reside and resettle in their communities. Along the lines of Martha Nussbaum’s prioritization of the central human entitlements over duties in her capabilities approach (Nussbaum, 2006), I argue that we ought to think about what refugees and asylum seekers—​these most vulnerable human beings—​need in order to be safe and secure and to be treated with dignity. Rather than thinking primarily about when a moral agent—​whether the state or an individual—​has or has not fulfilled their duty, the needs of the displaced person, in a moment where their options are so greatly limited, should be the focus of our moral attention. This is especially critical when failing to extend such care is quite literally often a matter of life or death. This reframing does not provide easy answers, but neither does it assign blame or praise to international actors and governments alone and thereby relieve citizens and local communities of a meaningful and active role in the ethical treatment of refugees. Instead, it calls upon people from various stations and positions of power to mobilize to ameliorate social problems. For instance, in the case of the asylum seekers crossing the Evros, legal efforts must be undertaken to resolve the tensions producing the mass influx of people into Greece while other European nations enforce heavy restrictions. Nation-​states must be held accountable for failing to respect the human dignity of those who attempt to claim their right to seek asylum from persecution in another country. But, of course, these legal processes—​including those that deal with inhumane actions and human rights violations—​are complex and take time. In the meantime, there is an urgent need for moral care for those seeking protections outside their own countries that cannot be met by legal processes alone. Meeting the needs of stateless people requires efforts of individuals and communities, as well. Addams understood that a collective, experimental, and iterative response is the way to progress: “Our protest may be feeble but the world progresses, in the slow and halting manner in which it does progress, only in proportion to the moral energy exerted by the men and women living in it; social advance must be pushed forward by the human will and understanding united for conscious ends” (Addams, 2005/​1915, 77). Although Addams worked tirelessly to meet the needs of European immigrants in her neighborhood, her efforts were, of course, not above reproach. There is relative silence from Addams on the oppression of indigenous people at the time, and her criticism of militarism does not appear to explicitly condemn American-​Indian wars. Furthermore, there is far less engagement with African Americans than one might have expected, even taking into consideration that she was a founder of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). Marilyn Fischer explains: “It is true that Addams did not have the fine-​grained knowledge of African American culture that comes from living directly among them. Nonetheless, she was not without resources” (Fischer, 2014, 48). While Addams offers us a great deal in terms

486   Tess Varner of understanding the needs of those seeking asylum and refugee status, the scope of those whom she considered in the context of displaced peoples is limited, and there is more work to be done to address this omission. Her work was forward thinking in many respects, but lagged behind in others. Recognition of Addams’s tendency to focus on direct care toward a certain demographic to the exclusion of another is also an occasion to look for that tendency in our own responses to the refugee crisis, as can be seen with the public attention across the world to the vulnerable fleeing Ukraine—​which has thus far largely been warm reception—​in contrast to the reception of those fleeing such places as Syria and Afghanistan, who are often met with much more suspicion and hostility. Despite clear imperfections and oversights, Addams nevertheless dedicated her efforts to addressing the needs of the vulnerable in her community through a grounded, person-​centered approach, finding ways to meet those needs by motivating conscientious citizens to mobilize for the cause and persuading resistant others that the cause was critical. Addams’s approach was distinctly feminist-​pragmatist in that it started from concrete, tangible experiences of the vulnerable themselves rather than idealist moral frameworks or disinterested legal processes, which she said were abstractions decidedly “remote from actual living” (Addams, 1898, 309). In what follows, I highlight other features of Addams’s social and political philosophy that may help shape a richer response to the needs of refugees.

Addams’s Feminist-​P ragmatist Orientation: Care, Common Needs, and Civic Belonging One of the consistent themes in Addams’s long and impressive life of activism was her deep engagement with uprooted people. From her work in Chicago’s Hull House to her postwar international peace efforts, Addams was always building relationships with and supporting those whose circumstances, voluntarily or forcibly, had positioned them as at once aliens and neighbors. Aiming to foster a spirit of civic belonging, Addams worked side by side with people from widely varying social situations, navigating cultural and language barriers, limited resources, political divisions, and racist and ethnocentric hostilities, endeavoring to uncover mutual interests and shared solidarity among disparate groups of newcomers and those among whom they reside. I am using the term “newcomers” here, along with other general terms such as displaced or uprooted others, because although today the terminology matters significantly, people’s status does not always factor in to the ways in which they are treated, particularly by strangers who affiliate them with minoritized populations they are already hostile to or wary of. Many people do not separate in their minds the distinctions in the way that the law does. Whether we deem it a border crisis, an immigration crisis,

Jane Addams and Twenty-First Century Refugee Resettlement     487 or a refugee crisis, the takeaway is the same: there is a crisis in the treatment of vulnerable human beings who, for whatever reason, are seeking refuge. Furthermore, the nuanced distinctions commonly used today such as asylum seekers, refugees, economic migrants, legal and illegal immigrants, and so forth were not used in the same ways in Addams’s time. But the antipathy and dehumanizing attitudes we see in today’s context would have been as just as familiar in Addams’s.5 A 1920 headline in the Muncie Star Press declares “America Stupid Toward Aliens, says J. Addams.” This brash headline calls attention to Addams’s serious concern about pernicious militaristic and nationalistic attitudes that continued to suppress marginalized voices after the war, particularly voices of immigrants and new Americans. In a speech made at the first reunion of the American Friends’ Service Committee, Addams described the changing attitude—​an attitude still clearly evident in the United States and across the world today: “Whereas nationalism had formerly stressed likenesses and pulling together of people, it now seemed dogmatic and effective in pushing them apart” (Americans, 1920). Describing the challenge ahead, she goes on, saying that “the task before us is to utilize properly the enthusiastic patriotism engendered by the war by making it more inclusive” (Americans, 1920). “The constant cry that American institutions are in danger betrays a spiritual waste,” Addams argues, “not due to our infidelity to national ideals, but arising from the fact that we fail to enlarge those in accord with our faithful experience of life; and that our political machinery, devised for quite other conditions, has not been readjusted and adapted to successive changes” (Addams, 1905b, 274). Addams’s writing and legacy offer a clear and consistent condemnation of the militaristic and nationalist attitudes that we still see today as forces push migrants away from borders, sending them back into treacherous terrain at their own peril, and underlying the hostility extended to newcomers as they navigate the immigration system. The same attitudes underlie the local citizens’ ambivalence when their communities become sanctuary cities or adopt refugee-​friendly policies, regardless of the fact that refugees are known to be a net economic gain and pose no measurable safety threat (Parekh, 2020, Betts and Collier, 2017). The energy behind those attitudes should be channeled in a different direction, extended outward in a spirit of nurture. Addams insists that the conditions uprooted people face will be resolved by those people of “public spirit,” those who share “a larger, more general social impulse” (Addams, 1905a, 12). Acts of generosity and kindness that come about through personal interactions with stateless and other displaced people are life affirming. They do not replace the necessity of state action and policies that afford possibilities for resettlement or safe return to one’s homeland, nor do they begin to address the problems that occasion mass migration in the first place. These need to be urgently addressed as well. But it is insufficient to leave the treatment of some of the world’s most vulnerable people to the realm of policy and law. After all, Addams famously stated, “Action is the sole medium of expression for ethics” (Addams, 1902, 273). The lives and dignity of these humans must be actively nurtured on multiple levels, “through the settlements, through the churches, through the schools, by individual contact, and the method must be individual effort” (Addams, quoted in “We Must Go Man-​Hunting,”

488   Tess Varner 1908, 11). Two distinctive yet overlapping features emerging from Addams—​cosmic patriotism and hospitality—​illustrate her relevance to today’s ongoing “vexed problem(s)” of refugee resettlement.

Cosmic Patriotism Nationalism and militarism are mutually reinforcing ideologies, and their connection is unambiguous both in the treatment of displaced people, as seen in the case of border-​ crossers into Greece who faced unidentified security forces using warlike tactics to deter entry, and in divisive rhetoric about migrants common today. At border-​crossing points and in protests in the United States and in Europe, signs bear far-​right slogans such as “Stop Invaders,” “No to National Suicide,” “Rapefugees Not Welcome,” and “Pro Border—​Pro Nation—​Stop Immigration.” Anti-​refugee sentiments range from fear-​ based messaging to explicit hate and vilification, but these sentiments are often veiled by appeals for protection of national identity and heritage and by national pride. Encountering similar antagonism toward immigrants in her own time, Addams endeavored to shift virtues associated with nationalism and militarism—​virtues such as patriotic pride, sacrifice, and selflessness—​toward a wider cosmopolitan patriotism (Fischer 2006; Boronat 2019). The spirit of patriotism may be honorable, but too often it is misguided and narrowly focused, arising out of “boyish ideas of adventure” and “childish notions of power” (Addams qtd. in Schott, 1993, 247). Addams envisions an evolution away from war virtues and toward virtues such as empathy, fallibility, and humility. A cosmopolitan internationalism, or cosmic patriotism, which she admits is a “rather absurd phrase,” extends narrowly-​focused national interest toward “new reaches of human effort and affection” (Addams, 1907, 237). It is a step toward substituting nurture for warfare. Marilyn Fischer explains how cosmic patriotism supplants national patriotism: She was searching for terms that would incorporate the ties of affection and action, as well as of intellect, through which people could transcend national boundaries. Addams admired patriotic virtues of courage, self-​sacrifice, and high enthusiasm. However, she wanted these virtues detached from a militaristic nationalism, and attached to humanitarian commitments on an international scale. Addams projects that if these newer, humanitarian commitments of nurture and social justice are deepened and made more active throughout the world, the strictures of nationalism would be transformed into a peaceful, spiritual internationalism and the scope of our patriotism could then sensibly be called “cosmic.” (Fischer, 2006, 6)

Addams conjectures about what it will take to “unlock the latent fellowship between man and man” (Addams, 1907, 236). What it will take are practices through which people can come to recognize common humanity with their neighbors, whatever their

Jane Addams and Twenty-First Century Refugee Resettlement     489 origins or status may be, revealing shared interests which open up opportunities for collective action. In Addams’s view, the immigrant community itself served as a model for social life together, a glimpse into cosmic patriotism in practice. In immigrant communities that contained people from dozens of nationalities differing in language, cultural practices, and religious orientations, people had already learned to navigate difference and plurality while maintaining ties and affinities for their own cultures and home countries. Although quarrels and tensions arose, they learned to live and work together. Of these mixed immigrant neighborhoods, she writes: “Because of their difference in all external matters, in all of the non-​essentials of life, [they] are forced to found their community of interests upon the basic and essential likenesses of their common human nature” (Addams, 1907, 17). The cultural pluralism Addams envisioned—​and the conditions she worked to create so that such pluralism could thrive—​relied on a spirit of reciprocity: “When Americans and immigrants meet in a spirit of reciprocity, their repertoire of social, political, and economic patterns of life is greatly enhanced” (Fischer, 2014, 45). Addams was not alone in her advocacy for wider fellowship as civic duty. Jonathan Hansen locates Addams alongside her fellow pragmatists William James, John Dewey, and W. E. B. Du Bois, as well as labor activist and politician Eugene V. Debs, as prominent advocates of cosmopolitan patriotism and public intellectuals calling on citizens to repudiate war and militarism in the service of country and patriotism. Although the description below is specifically focused on the United States, the reframing of patriotism is more widely applicable: “While celebrating individual autonomy and cultural diversity, the cosmopolitan patriots exhorted Americans to embrace a social-​democratic ethic that reflected the interconnected and mutually dependent nature of life in the modern world. From their perspectives, Americans could best secure the blessings of liberty and property by ensuring their universal distribution” (Hansen, 2010, xiv). Cosmic patriotism calls people to demonstrate their loyalty not through exclusion and tightly patrolled borders, but through inclusion and openness: “Loving their country, they vowed to extend its privileges and immunities to all Americans regardless of gender, class, ethnicity, or race. Exalting public duty in the interest of private right, they summoned fellow citizens to assist individuals whose political, economic, or social circumstances compromised their pursuit of happiness” (Hansen, 2010, xv.) Cosmic patriotism may appear to be just the sort of philosophical abstraction Addams typically rejected. Indeed, this criticism is often levied against various iterations of cosmopolitanism. But Addams saw it differently. It is the average, uncritical patriotism, characterized by narrow allegiance to country and tightly closed circles of political insiders and outsiders, that does not align with lived experience. What Addams learned from her own diverse, vibrant neighborhood was that the lines between citizens and noncitizens, native and foreign-​born community members are not as stark as nationalist rhetoric suggests. Hansen explains: “Most people do not or cannot strive for theoretical coherence in their workaday lives. Rather, individuals maintain dynamic equilibrium between their public and private, local and national, national and

490   Tess Varner international affiliations—​precisely the pragmatic response [associated] with cosmopolitan patriotism” (Hansen, 2010, xvi). Addams’s distinctively feminist approach to antimilitarism becomes evident in cosmic patriotism. Addams saw feminism and militarism as incompatible, but women’s caregiving experiences reveal alternatives to this dominant mode. We can draw on women’s caregiving experiences in “responding to international need” (Fischer, 2006, 14). Unlike masculinist, militarist ideologies that tend to assume that loyalty to one thing necessitates the rejection of others, Addams insists that our capacity for moral concern is not so limited. Addams writes: “A wise woman would never, if it could possibly be avoided, pit the strength of the old loyalty against the new, knowing very well that [human] affections are not carried in separate compartments and that the loosening of one bond makes it much easier to loosen another, that to put a man into the position of divided allegiance is to make him question the foundation of all allegiance” (Addams, 1917, 3). Through cosmic patriotism, allegiance and the special concern demonstrated for the well-​being of one’s own nation in ordinary patriotism are enlarged to include fellowship “between those who all belong to the same great human family” (Addams, 1919, 1). Through sympathetic understanding, people come to recognize how their own interests intertwine with the interests of all other. Cosmic patriotism consists “above all of sympathy, the compassion derived from common political and social activities. By personalizing the public, sympathy eradicated outworn stereotypes and age-​old animosities” (Hansen, 2010, 156). Along with her contemporaries who shared this cosmopolitan vision, Addams saw interactions with newcomer neighbors not merely as charity or aid, but as opportunity for deep engagement and collective growth, based on shared needs and solidarity, an opportunity for “self-​reflection, not self-​assertion” (Hansen, 2010, xviii). Openness to difference, in everything from spiritual practices, cultural foodways, and political vision, affords the potential for growth. Scott Pratt explains that growth, for Addams, requires variation. Growth requires “ideas that diverge from the accepted framework. If a society is so homogenous in its commitments that it can never be mistaken, or if its laws and practices are such as to permit no variation, it also never has an opportunity to challenge its principles of meaning and action” (Pratt, 2004, 104–​105). Basically, a society unwilling to grow and change is a dead society. Addams put it even more starkly: “This idolatry of nationalism is not patriotic; it is suicidal” (Addams, 1932, 347). Patriotism is doomed if it requires sameness and permits stagnancy. War and the militarism that allows war virtues to persist even in the absence of war suppress the possibility of growth. Pratt writes: “For Addams, growth depends on a world in which there is always something more just beyond the present circumstance that can nourish individuals and societies and renew them. A society at war—​either engaged in battle or preparing for it—​is a closed society in which dissenters are silenced and those who are outside are faced with the clear choice of defining themselves as either allies or enemies, as either right or wrong” (Pratt, 2004, 105).

Jane Addams and Twenty-First Century Refugee Resettlement     491 Addams understood that cosmic patriotism and sympathetic understanding were imperfect and limited. She continued to advocate for international cooperation and policy changes, but pressed, at the same time, for local, collective action to meet immediate needs through relationship. Regrettable as it is that the cosmic patriotism Addams envisioned never enveloped the international community, the concept itself remains pertinent today. Bringing it down from what seems to be an abstraction into a grounded practice, however, can make it resonate more. As an outgrowth of cosmic patriotism, hospitality is particularly useful in extending moral care to refugees and displaced others.

Hospitality “If giving water to someone dying of thirst is illegal, what humanity is left in the law of this country?” (No More Deaths, 2019). So asks Catherine Gaffney, a volunteer for No More Deaths/​No Más Muertes, in the organization’s 2019 statement criticizing a court ruling which determined that four volunteers for the aid organization had broken the law by leaving water and canned food along the migrant corridor in the Sonoran Desert where thousands of border crossers have been known to die of thirst and starvation (AP, 2018). The geographical region of the Sonoran is a prominent migrant corridor and a notoriously dangerous one. The rugged, parched land and harsh temperatures that cause heat stroke in the summer and hypothermia in the winter make the journey from Northern Mexico into California or Arizona treacherous, exacerbated by the ever-​ present threat of violence at the hands of other migrants, border patrol, drug cartels, and home-​grown vigilante groups like Arizona Border Recon (Carranza, n.d.; Human Rights Watch, 2021). The placement of cisterns of water or re-​used milk jugs along a corridor where people are known to be severely weakened from dehydration, facing the possibility of death, may seem uncontroversial. But not only can such basic gestures of aid now be punished by law, as was the case for the volunteers for No More Deaths, they are also frequently sabotaged by border control agents and border “defenders.” Bullets shot through the containers empty them, markers indicating the containers’ whereabouts removed or misplaced, and animal carcasses have been placed in or nearby the containers, either as a threatening symbol or to contaminate their contents (Blust, 2016). Those who justify interference with life-​saving water and similar kinds of behaviors do so in the name of national defense, citing the illegality of the border crossing to begin with. The border militarism is not limited to federal agents, military forces, or law enforcement. It includes civilians and self-​proclaimed defenders—​much like the United States saw at the insurrection at the capitol on January 6, 2021, and as can be seen in civilian, volunteer border-​guard units in places such as Slovakia, Bulgaria, and Hungary. To Addams, these kinds of attitudes indicated arrested development and immaturity, and “primitive methods” should be abolished along with “primitive weapons” (Addams, 1907, 212).

492   Tess Varner In place of primitive, militaristic attitudes and their machinery, Addams offers, should be nurture—​methods and approaches to human life based on care and support for growth and development. Although the care extended to others in need may, at times, appear unidirectional, the resulting growth and development are mutually beneficial. One of the ways that Addams embodied her philosophical commitment to nurture was through hospitality (Hamington, 2010; Orosco, 2011; Pratt, 2002; Varner, 2021). Hospitality at Hull House, which ranged from providing childcare and offering classes to serving meals to hosting meetings for political coalitions and social clubs, was distinct from mere charity. Although Hull House helped marginalized, impoverished people meet basic needs, it was, perhaps more importantly, a place for growth for all involved. At Hull House, Addams developed a space where people from different backgrounds came together to learn from and with each other. Even though services such as English classes and childcare education were offered, the aim was not to teach immigrants how to become Americans but to shape, together, what it meant to be an American (Varner, 2021). Similar activities went on at the headquarters for the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF) in Geneva, Switzerland. Evolving out of the Women’s Peace Party, which Addams had co-​founded, and as a result of the activities of the 1915 International Congress of Women at The Hague, WILPF developed into a worldwide non-​profit organization for peace, its work and influence remaining strong today (Whipps, 2003, x). The fellowship and opportunities for relationship created through WILPF in Geneva—​a “women’s space for social justice activism” (Whipps, 2006, 126)—​allowed for scaled-​up collaboration beyond the social ills of the neighborhood. Women gathered to address international peace issues widely, from food security to disarmament, but always adopting a “with, not for” approach to relationships, understanding that “carefully listening to multiple perspectives and working with others is the essence of a democratic social ethic. . . .and that hegemonic relations, whether they be political, economic, or cultural are at the core of imperialism and are in opposition to democracy” (Whipps, 2006, 127). Through her hospitality, Addams afforded people opportunities to co-​create their experience in their new community.6 Each participant was understood to be a meaningful contributor to shared life together and as valuable to the amelioration of their shared social problems. Hers was a pragmatic, political hospitality—​one that saw the transformative potential of shared activities, meals, and care. Its value was determined by its efficacy, and when something was not meeting needs, input and collaboration would be harnessed to make necessary changes. In Addams’s view, hospitality is a civic practice (Orosco, 2011). It involves the “offering of food, shelter, and protection, but also companionship and service. . . .[It is] an ethical principle at the foundation of a well-​ordered and peaceful society” (Orosco, 2011, 209). Rather than withdrawing from difference or seeing it as a threat, Addams invited it in. Through hospitality, Addams promoted a counternarrative to the dominant idea that immigrants are a threat to national identity. National self-​righteousness “makes us incapable of understanding how hospitality can better our political community,” Orosco notes (Orosco, 2011, 210). Addams’s prioritization of immigrant stories and experiences

Jane Addams and Twenty-First Century Refugee Resettlement     493 (Fenton, 2021), and of creating spaces conducive to sharing them, critically shifted the narratives from “state-​centered” discourse, where focus tended to rest on relationships between individuals and the state, to relationships that are “ ‘informal, day-​to-​day, and ongoing’ between individuals living together in community” (Orosco, 2011, 210). Hospitality resists the tendency of the migration discourse to “ignore almost completely the thick horizontal relationships in civil society that the undocumented share with citizens” (Orosco, 2011, 212). Failing to recognize these relationships is a failure to see ways in which uprooted people, New Americans, refugees, and asylum seekers are “already our neighbors in vital interconnections and not . . . dangerous strangers” (Orosco, 2011, 212). Hospitality, like that demonstrated at Hull House and at the WILPF headquarters, afforded people the space to connect with others and begin ameliorative work together on their shared problems. But, of course, the disparities among the various parties involved sometimes caused tensions. While Addams insisted that Hull House was not a charity but a cosmopolitan, democratic community, she admittedly struggled with navigating class divisions. Hull House was a “social laboratory for experimenting with and gradually working out” how disparate groups—​from educated, upper-​middle-​ class residents to the Hull House volunteers, many of whom were immigrants, and from politicians and thought leaders to the impoverished, multi-​ethnic community members—​could address common problems (Moskop, 2018, 402). Working out those class divisions was not always an easy undertaking. Yet rather than overlooking or diminishing the significance of the tensions, Addams acknowledged them and used them to motivate social progress. What we see in the case of Hull House is that these parties come together to “build cosmopolitan democratic communities—​despite their economic inequality and, actually in the context of that inequality,” Wynne Walker Moskop explains (Moskop, 2018, 401). Hospitality affords the possibility of intimate friendships, but it also allows for deep connections through political friendships—​“civically oriented collaborative friendships” (Moskop, 2018, 401). These are sociable relationships that are friendly and collegial, but they are occasioned by mutual goals rather than primarily through affection or affinity. Cross-​class collaborative relationships can form in response to common needs and problems, and, critically, though everyone involved recognizes their shared interests, they need not presume to have shared stakes in their outcomes. Individuals’ status as “moral equals does not mean that their benefits and burdens are, or should be, the same” (Moskop, 2018, 404). Openness and clarity about people’s lived experience and actual social circumstances, including the disparities among them, can foster trust across those differences. Grounded in political projects, the kinds of friendships that can be formed through “direct personal interaction,” like those opportunities presented through Addams’s hospitality practices, does not depend on agreement beyond particular shared and agreed-​upon aims, and it has both epistemic and pragmatic benefits. Through conversations and shared activity, dominant, privileged parties come to recognize the partiality of their perspectives, revealing the ways in which they are “ignorant of the

494   Tess Varner conditions that face the neighborhood” and how they can learn “only by listening to the neighbors who actually experience the conditions” (Moskop, 2018, 409). The humility that comes from such realizations can lead to deepened trust and to the democratization of relations. Ideally, even though resources and power remain uneven, deepened trust opens up the possibility of friendships “oriented toward alleviating specific distress” (Moskop, 2018, 423). Another kind of caring relationship that can work to alleviate specific distress, particularly economic distress, might be an employment relationship. Hull House established an employment bureau, and Addams and the Hull House residents were heavily involved with issues related to fair labor laws. Addams recognized the need for people to have opportunities for paid work and the dignity and independence that can come from financial stability. Likewise, today, those involved in refugee resettlement efforts understand that while generosity is paramount, it can come in many forms, and one of those includes mutually beneficial employment relationships.

Twenty-​First-​C entury Efforts: Addams’s Legacy Continuing Addams’s legacy lives on in refugee efforts undertaken by public-​spirited people. Some connections to Addams in ongoing efforts are explicit and well documented, such as her influence on the work of WILPF, which remains a powerful voice against militarism today. Others, such as the American Friends Service Committee (ASFC), may recognize a historic connection to Addams without overtly claiming persisting influence. Nevertheless, echoes of Addams persist, as can be seen in one of AFSC’s values: “We accept that our understanding of truth is incomplete and seek ever deeper insights from lived experience” (Vision, Mission, and Values, 2020). Certainly, there are others who engage in peacebuilding and refugee-​supporting activities whose efforts are impacted by Addams even though they may not even know her by name or be familiar with her work, including more informal networks of supporters, such as church organizations, university groups, and service clubs. Addams has left an indelible mark, and more explicit awareness of her influence can continue to transform twenty-​first-​century efforts. Although attention in philosophical literature to refugee and migration issues has been top heavy, state centered, and policy oriented, ongoing activism related to these same issues—​in the spirit of Addams—​tends to be more person centered and place based. Describing the work of the Humanitarian Respite Center (HRC) in the Rio Grande Valley, which provides food, clothing, showers, and a place to rest for travelers who have just crossed the border checkpoint in McAllen, Texas, Marianna Alessandri identifies a kind of spiritual activism consistent with the feminist-​pragmatist approach of Addams. Under the leadership of Sister Norma at the HRC, the goal is not for saintly do-​gooders to help the poor and oppressed, but rather, to create space for people to be with each

Jane Addams and Twenty-First Century Refugee Resettlement     495 other. “Being alongside one another offers . . . an opportunity to foster sympathetic understanding, which in turn inspires . . . the larger social impulse Addams was suggesting we adopt” (Alessandri, 2021, 381). Simply being together, even temporarily, as people are passing through—​performing often mundane or menial tasks of life together, such as making sandwiches or stacking cans—​can allow “those human beings whose humanity is jettisoned when they become the concept ‘immigrant’ ” to be seen in their humanity and their dignity (Alessandri, 2021, 381). For Addams as for Sister Norma, being-​with, Alessandri explains, really means just being-​with: “It goes a long way to be in the physical presence of human beings who are read, instead, as headlines” (Alessandri, 2021, 381). It is some of the simplest acts that make all the difference. In Greece, stories of philotimo and philoxenia abound. There is not a word in English that captures the concept of philotimo, but it is something like a sense of honor that motivates generosity to strangers. The term philoxenia invokes the idea of hospitality to strangers. The Greeks may be unhappy with the crisis that is unfolding in their midst, especially in light of the asymmetry of immigration burden on other EU countries, but there are still numerous stories of extending care to the most vulnerable. A Greek fisherman, for example, regularly drops his nets to save drowning people: “I’m out fishing, I can see people shouting for help. What can I do? Pretend I can’t see? Pretend I can’t hear?. . . .We may not return with nets full of fish, but our hearts are warm” (Dimitropoulos, 2017). Three women, grandmothers in their eighties and nineties, offer clothing from their own closets and handmade cheese pies to women and children as they come across the waters, exhausted, wet, and seasick. Questioned why they would help these strangers, one woman said “we were just behaving like human beings” (Kakissis, 2016). Marielos and Inès, the Central American asylum seekers who had to navigate the Alternatives to Detention system in Aurora County, Colorado, faced unthinkable, dehumanizing treatment and abuse. Countering that punitive treatment, however, was a network of asylum hosts affiliated with the American Friends’ Service Committee (AFSC)—​in fact, the same organization on behalf of which Addams went to Germany in 1918 to aid malnourished children postwar. The network of asylum hosts set up these women with hosts that housed them, helped them find services in the community, from mental health care and medical treatment to legal assistance and language lessons. Even further, hosts helped these women find gender-​affirming clothing and cosmetics—​ things that were completely out of reach in the detention center. Such services are life giving when life for these women has been so precarious up to this point. Forming friendships and finding community, they ultimately experienced something akin to refuge. This is the legacy that Jane Addams leaves that can still be harnessed today.

Notes 1. Fady Joudah, “Mimesis” from Alight. Copyright © 2013 by Fady Joudah. Reprinted with the permission of The Permissions Company, LLC on behalf of Copper Canyon Press, coppercanyonpress.org.

496   Tess Varner 2. For historical background on Addams’s confrontation of the migration crisis, see Fischer’s contribution to this volume, “Jane Addams’s Methodologies.” 3. According to the Office of Refugee Resettlement of the Department of Health and Human Services, this includes providing “short-​term cash and medical assistance to new arrivals, as well as case management services, English as a Foreign Language classes, and job readiness and employment services —​all designed to facilitate refugees’ successful transition in the U.S., and help them to attain self-​sufficiency” (“The US Refugee Resettlement Program—​ An Overview,” 2015). 4. Worth noting is that much of the philosophical scholarship begins inquiry about responsibility from the perspective of the receiving nation-​states rather than focusing primarily on the countries and regions people flee from, who need to take responsibility for creating the conditions that force people to flee in the first place, and on the complex geopolitical and economic relationships among nation-​states that exacerbate these untenable conditions. Enhanced international peace efforts are urgent and necessary in order to meaningfully address the flows of people between countries. 5. Skilled at navigating conflicts, Addams engaged as much with those hostile to the influx of immigrants as with the immigrants themselves, mediating disputes and bringing people into dialogue to ameliorate the tensions. Frances Perkins described how Addams skillfully wove all kinds of stakeholders into potential solutions to social problems: “She taught us to take all the elements of the community into conference or the solution of any human problem—​the grasping landlord, the corner saloonkeeper, the policeman on the beat, the president of the university, the head of the railroad, the labor leader—​all cooperating through the latent desire for association” (Perkins qtd. in Burnier, 2021b, 401). 6. Danielle Lake, in this volume, situates Addams as a social designer whose efforts provided community members “opportunities to cocreate situated responses to each unique situation” (Lake, 2022). Hull House was a prime example of collaborative efforts “among diverse residents, neighbors, various city organizations, and surrounding locations.”

References Addams, J. 1898. “Christmas Fellowship.” Unity 42 (17): 307–​328. Addams, J. 1902. Democracy and Social Ethics. New York: Macmillan and Co. Addams, J. 1905a. “The Immigrants and American Charities.” Proceedings of the Illinois Conference on Charities, 11–​18. Accessed June 7, 2021, https://​digi​tal.jan​eadd​ams.ram​apo .edu/​items/​show/​3813. Addams, J. 1905b. “Recent Immigration: A Field Neglected by the Scholar.” University Record IX(9): 274–​284. Addams, J. 1907. Newer Ideals of Peace. Syracuse, NY: Mason Henry Press. Addams, J. 1919. Official Report of Jane Addams and Dr. Alice Hamilton to the American Society of Friends Service Committee, Philadelphia. Nebraska Branch “American Relief Fund for Central Europe.” Addams, J. 1917. “Patriotism and Pacifists in War Time (fragment).” Jane Addams Digital Edition. Accessed June 3, 2021, https://​digi​tal.jan​eadd​ams.ram​apo.edu/​items/​show/​10364. Addams, J. 1909. “Report of the Committee.” In Proceedings of the National Conference of Charities and Correction, edited by Alexander Johnson, 213–​215. Fort Wayne, IN: Fort Wayne Printing Co.

Jane Addams and Twenty-First Century Refugee Resettlement     497 Addams, J. 1932. “The Social Deterrent of Our National Self-​righteousness: With Correctives Suggested by the Courageous Life of William Penn.” In Jane Addams’s Writings on Peace: Addams’s Essays and Speeches, edited by M. Fischer and J. Whipps, 339–​348. London: Continuum Press. Addams, J. 1990/​1911. Twenty Years at Hull-​House with Autobiographical Notes. Chicago: University of Illinois Press. Addams, J. 2005/​1915. “Women and War.” In Jane Addams’s Writings on Peace: Addams’s Essays and Speeches, edited by M. Fischer and J. Whipps, 75–​82. Continuum Press. Alessandri, M. (2021). “Place-​based Philosophical Activism on the U.S.-​Mexico Border.” Hypatia 36 (2): 350–​383. “Americans Stupid Toward Aliens, Says J. Addams.” June 25, 1920. Muncie Star Press. Accessed June 7, 2021, http://​digi​tal.jan​eadd​ams.ram​apo.edu/​items/​show/​28181. Associated Press. January 18, 2018. “Group Accusing US Border Patrol of Water Sabotage Sees Member Aarrested.” Guardian. https://​www.theg​uard​ian.com/​us-​news/​2018/​jan/​22/​arr​est -​no-​more-​dea​ths-​bor​der-​pat​rol-​water-​sabot​age-​migra​nts. Betts, A., and P. Collier. 2017. Refuge: Rethinking Refugee Policy in a Changing World. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Blust, K. August 12, 2016. “Border Volunteers Find ‘Gory’ Vandalism at Water Stations.” Arizona Daily Star. https://​tuc​son.com/​news/​local/​bor​der/​bor​der-​vol​unte​ers-​f ind-​ gory- ​ v andal ​ i sm- ​ a t- ​ w ater- ​ s tati ​ o ns/ ​ a rtic​ l e_ ​ 6 ​ 6 600​ 3 52- ​ b 0d0- ​ 5 df4- ​ 8 727- ​ 4 9533 ​ f 4ec​ 55b.html. Boronat, N. S. M. 2019. “Peace, Bread, and Ideas for a Cosmopolitan World: Addams’ Unknown Pragmatist Legacy Today.” Nordic Studies in Pragmatism 4: 307–​326. Burnier, D. 2021a. “Embracing Others with ‘Sympathetic Understanding’ and ‘Affectionate Interpretation’: Creating a Relational Care-​Centered Public Administration.” Administrative Theory & Praxis 43 (1): 42–​57. Burnier, D. 2021b. “Hiding in Plain Sight: Recovering Public Administration’s Lost Legacy of Social Justice.” Administrative Theory & Praxis 43 (4): 395–​411. Carranza, R. n.d. “Border Vigilantes, and the Wall They Might Be Watching.” USA Today. https://​www.usato​day.com/​bor​der-​wall/​story/​vigila​nte-​mili​tia-​pat​rol-​us-​mex​ico-​bor​der/​ 559753​001/​. Dimitropoulos, S. June 7, 2017. “The Greek Word That Can’t Be Translated.” BBC. http://​www .bbc.com/​tra​vel/​story/​20170​605-​the-​greek-​word-​that-​cant-​be-​tra​nsla​ted. Duarte, M., K. Lippert-​Rasmussen, S. Parekh, and A. Vitikainen. 2018. Refugee Crisis: The Borders of Human Mobility. London: Routledge Press. Fauver, B. 2021. “Asylum Seekers Need Compassion, Not Surveillance.” Boulder Weekly. https://​ www.boulde​r wee​kly.com/​opin​ion/​guest-​colu​mns/​asy​lum-​seek​ers-​need-​com​pass​ion-​not -​surve​illa​nce/​. Fenton, J. 2021. “Storied Social Change: Recovering Jane Addams’s Early Model of Constituent Storytelling to Navigate the Practical Challenges of Speaking for Others.” Hypatia 36 (2): 391–​409. Fischer, M. 2006. “Addams’s Internationalist Pacifism and the Rhetoric of Maternalism.” NWSA Journal 18 (3): 1–​19. Fischer, M. 2014. “Addams on Cultural Pluralism, European Immigrants, and African Americans.” The Pluralist 9 (3): 38–​58. Hamington, M. 2010. Feminism and Hospitality: Gender in the Host/​Guest Relationships. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books.

498   Tess Varner Hansen, J. 2010. The Lost Promise of Patriotism: Debating American Identity, 1890-​1920. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Kakissis, J. April 15, 2016. “For These Greek Grandmas, Helping Migrants Brings Back Their Own Past.” NPR: Morning Edition. https://​www.npr.org/​secti​ons/​parall​els/​2016/​04/​15/​ 474240​695/​for-​these-​greek-​grand​mas-​help​ing-​migra​nts-​bri​ngs-​back-​their-​own-​past. Lake, D. 2022. “Designing in, with, and across: Jane Addams’s Approach to Wicked Problems.” In The Oxford Handbook on Jane Addams. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Lowe, B. 2019. “The Right to Belong: A Feminist Pragmatist Analysis.” Contemporary Pragmatism (16): 268–​285. “Mexico: Abuses against Asylum Seekers at the Border.” March 5, 2021. Human Rights Watch. https://​www.hrw.org/​news/​2021/​03/​05/​mex​ico-​abu​ses-​agai​nst-​asy​lum-​seek​ers-​us-​bor​der#. Joudah, F. 2013. “Mimesis.” Alight. Port Townsend, WA: Copper Canyon Press, p. 14. Moskop, M. M. 2018. “Jane Addams and Possibilities for Transnational Political Friendship.” American Political Thought: A Journal of Ideas, Institutions, and Culture 7 (3): 400–​431. “No More Deaths.” January 18, 2019. Guilty verdict in first #Cabeza9 case [Press Release]. https://​nomor​edea​ths.org/​gui​lty-​verd​ict-​in-​first-​cabe​za9-​case/​. Nussbaum, M. 2006. Frontiers of Justice: Disability, Nationality, Species Membership. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press. OECD (2021). International Migration Outlook 2021. Paris: OECD Publishing. https://​doi.org/​ 10.1787/​29f23​e9d-​en. Orosco, J. A. 2011. “Aliens and Neighbors: Jane Addams and the Reframing of ‘Illegal’ Immigration.” Radical Philosophy Association 14 (2): 207–​215. Parekh, S. 2020. No Refuge: Ethics and the Global Refugee Crisis. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Pavlidis, P., and M. Karakasi. 2019. “Greek Land Borders and Migration Fatalities: Humanitarian Disaster Described from the Standpoint of Evros.” Forensic Science International 302 (September): 1–​5. Pratt, S. 2002. Native Pragmatism: Rethinking the Roots of American Philosophy. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Pratt, S. 2004). “Jane Addams: Patriotism in a Time of War.” Midwest Studies in Philosophy 28: 102–​118. “Greece: Violence against Asylum Seekers at Border.” March 17, 2020. Human Rights Watch. https://​www.hrw.org/​news/​2020/​03/​17/​gre​ece-​viole​nce-​agai​nst-​asy​lum-​seek​ers-​bor​der#. Schott, L. 1993. “Jane Addams and William James on Alternatives to War.” Journal of the History of Ideas 54 (2): 241–​254. “The U.S. Refugee Resettlement Program—​An Overview.” 2015. Office of Refugee Resettlement. Accessed March 7, 2022. https://​www.acf.hhs.gov/​orr/​pol​icy-​guida​nce/​us-​refu​gee-​reset​ tlem​ent-​prog​ram-​overv​iew. Varner, T. 2021. “Transformative Hospitality: A Feminist-​Pragmatist Perspective of Radical Welcome as Resistance.” Pluralist 16 (1): 41–​48. “Vision, Mission, and Values.” 2020. American Friends Service Committee. Accessed July 29, 2022. https://​www.afsc.org/​vis​ion-​miss​ion-​and-​val​ues. “We Must Go Man-​Hunting.” April 26, 1908. The Washington Herald. Accessed June 7, 2021. https://​digi​tal.jan​eadd​ams.ram​apo.edu/​items/​show/​9294. Whipps, J. 2006. “The Feminist Pacifism of Emily Greene Balch, Nobel Peace Laureate.: NWSA 18 (3): 122–​132. Whipps, J. 2003. “Jane Addams’s Life and Thought.” In Jane Addams’s Writings on Peace, volume 2. Bristol, UK: Thoemmes Press.

Pa rt V

A DDA M S ON K N OW L E D G E A N D M E T HOD S Edited by Maurice Hamington

Chapter 26

Adda ms’s Meth od ol o g i e s of Writing, Th i nk i ng , and Act i v i sm Marilyn Fischer

It is a joy to read Jane Addams’s writings because of the beauty and suggestiveness of her prose. As readers and scholars mix their own imaginations and methodological assumptions with Addams’s words, fruitful trains of thought are generated. Scholars studying Addams’s texts are richly rewarded. My aim in this chapter is to uncover Addams’s own methodologies, that is, to come as close as a twenty-​first scholar can to uncovering what Addams and intellectuals of her era would have identified as her methodologies. Her writings contain complexities that become apparent only when they are read as participating in the prevailing compositional styles, the scientific theorizing, and the literary sensibilities of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. By reading Addams’s texts accordingly, Addams emerges as a far more sophisticated, erudite, and creative thinker than commonly supposed. Addams does not make the task easy. She drew deeply from the intellectual resources available to her, although she rarely names the many theorists with whom she engages in her writings. Addams wrote the way highly skilled musicians improvise. Her methodologies are akin to the tunes that structure their music but are rarely stated. Out of their vast repertoires of musical materials, these musicians, like Addams, bring out ideas, phrases, and harmonies as the audience responds. One uncovers Addams’s methodologies by excavating her texts until one can identify patterns of thought that are rarely repeated in the same way. By reading Addams as a participant in the inquiries and debates of her own time, the fruits of her vast knowledge, fierce intellect, and imaginative powers are revealed. The first section of this chapter gives historical and demographic background that provides context for interpreting Addams’s writings. Because Addams’s readers were immersed in these contexts, Addams could refer to them with the slightest nod. Section II lays out Addams’s methodology of writing. Section III lays out her

502   Marilyn Fischer evolutionary-​historical method of analysis. Although rarely recognized today, the evolutionary-​historical method was the dominant methodology in virtually all late nineteenth and early twentieth century domains of thought, and Addams wielded it with subtle skill. The fourth section illustrates how Addams enriched her readers’ understanding by juxtaposing literature and evolutionary science. A fifth section offers suggestions for how Addams’s methodologies can be helpful for scholars and activists today.

Historical and demographic background When Addams founded Hull House in 1889, previous waves of immigration to the U.S. from northwestern Europe had largely subsided, while immigration from southern and eastern Europe was increasing to historic proportions. Scholars, political figures, and the popular press debated this demographic shift vigorously. The main point of contention in these debates centered explicitly on the racial character of these recent immigrants. The U.S. Senate’s Commission on Immigration identified forty-​five racial groups among immigrants, thirty-​six of which were from Europe.1 Europeans who were not of northwestern European heritage were considered racially inferior to Anglo-​Americans and a threat to the stability and well-​being of the nation.2 These debates were particularly fierce in the northeast and midwest where most of the recent immigrants from Europe settled to labor in the factories and mines. Immigrants from Asia to the western U.S. and Mexicans in the southwest brought their own complications to these debates. Relatively few immigrants settled in the southern states.3 When Harvard-​educated attorney Prescott Hall asked if Americans “want this country to be peopled by British, German, and Scandinavian stock, historically free, energetic, progressive, or by Slav, Latin, and Asiatic races, historically down-​trodden, atavistic, and stagnant,” his language was stark, but his sentiment was widely shared.4 Evidence for this view was thoroughly documented in the forty-​one volumes of the Dillingham Commission report, issued in 1911, and established by Congress to investigate immigration. The conclusion of the Commission’s report is succinctly summarized by historian Roger Daniels, “namely that the immigrants then coming to America, chiefly from Eastern and Southern Europe, were inferior in education, ability, and genetic makeup to most of those who had come previously.”5 The report, as well as most Anglo-​Americans, presumed the existence of a racial hierarchy, with people of Anglo-​ Saxon descent at the top and Native Americans and people of African descent at the bottom. Races from Southern and Eastern Europe were placed variably in between. (Recent scholarship has documented the racist and imperialist assumptions the term, “Anglo-​Saxon,” carried in the nineteenth century and its current resuscitation by white

Addams’s Methodologies of Writing, Thinking, and Activism    503 supremist groups.6 I discuss below how Addams correctly identified “Anglo-​Saxon” as racially exclusionary and imperialist.) The crucial issue in these debates was whether these recent European immigrants were “fit for self-​ government.” Anglo-​ Americans considered themselves undeniably fit, while they considered Native Americans and African Americans undeniably unfit.7 Whether southern and eastern Europeans could become fit for self-​government was fiercely debated. In response to these debates, with evidence documented by the Dillingham Commission, Congress adopted increasingly harsh restrictions on immigration. These culminated in the draconian Johnson-​Reed Act of 1924 that established a national quota system for immigration, eliminating virtually all immigration to the U.S. except from northwestern Europe. These restrictions were not fully lifted until the Immigration Act of 1965.8 When Addams founded Hull House in 1889, immigrants and their children, largely from southern and eastern Europe, constituted 78% of Chicago’s population.9 This was typical of industrializing cities in the United States, in which the working-​class and the urban poor were largely recent immigrants and their families.10 Before World War I the black population of Chicago was at or below two percent and the city was not yet as segregated as it would become.11 The northern migration of African Americans and Mexicans did not begin until a quarter century after Hull House’s founding. These facts are critical for interpreting Addams’s texts. When Addams writes about immigrants, about the poor, and about the urban working class, she is writing about race, that is, about people many of her readers assumed were racially inferior to themselves.

Addams’s methodology of writing Addams shaped her speeches and writings with her audiences firmly in mind. Her audiences were largely composed of reasonably educated lay people and intellectuals. For the most part, they were middle-​and upper-​class Anglo-​Americans, that is, of Anglo-​Saxon and northern European descent. Addams’s motivation in writing was to shift her audiences’ moral perceptions of those they considered inferior, as well as to advocate for social reforms. She wanted her audiences to become willing to listen to and learn from them, to welcome them in fellowship, and work with them on needed social reforms for the good of the whole community. Toward this end, Addams employed classical rhetoric’s tools of logos, ethos, and pathos to create evocative presentations that appealed to her audiences’ emotions as well as their reason. Addams wrote her books by cutting her speeches and essays into pieces and reassembling them, adding enough text to glue the pieces together. Her texts were intended as much for the ear as for the eye. Addams’s writings are dense. Her sentences are dense, constructed with the Victorian rhetorical and compositional conventions she had studied in college.12 Writers and readers of the era delighted in the nuances that long sentences with complex clauses and syntax could convey. Addams’s paragraphs are dense. They often contain several strands

504   Marilyn Fischer of material from the sciences, literature, sociological data, and personal experiences. Also, Addams’s writings are dense because of what she could leave out. Because she wrote about contemporary social issues, she could assume her audiences already knew much of what scholars today must acquire through historical study. Addams achieves coherence, not by presenting her thoughts in linear fashion, but by weaving these strands over many paragraphs. For example, consider this sentence from Twenty Years at Hull House: Possibly the South Italians more than any other immigrants represent the pathetic stupidity of agricultural people crowded into city tenements, and we were much gratified when thirty peasant families were induced to move upon the land which they knew so well how to cultivate.13

Today’s readers may stumble over Addams’s syntax, unsure what “pathetic stupidity” is meant to modify. Addams could have inserted “being” before “crowded,” but I doubt her initial readers were confused. Addams is not attributing pathetic stupidity to agricultural people from Italy, as some commentators have claimed.14 Instead, she is objecting to manufacturers’ and steamship companies’ practice of funneling skilled European peasant farmers into crowded city tenements to work in dangerous urban factories. It is this policy that Addams calls pathetically stupid. Immigration practices were widely covered in the daily press, and Addams could assume her readers were familiar with them.15 The sentence is located in the middle of a four-​paragraph passage that is itself woven into a chapter about cultural clashes between adult immigrants and their children. The parents’ values, tastes, and dreams were shaped by long-​standing traditional ways of life in pre-​modern, rural landscapes. Their children’s formative experiences were being shaped in American industrial cityscapes full of peoples of many nations, cultures, religions, and languages. Instead of organizing these clashes one by one and then drawing her conclusions, Addams weaves the chapter’s many threads all throughout and intersperses bits of her conclusions along the way. She did not consider it compositionally unruly to tuck a critique of U.S. immigration practices between stories of Italian and German social nights at Hull House.

Addams’s evolutionary-​historical methodology Among the many kinds of materials Addams incorporated, the most important methodologically is the evolutionary-​historical pattern of theorizing. This is the most difficult dimension of Addams’s thought for contemporary scholars to identify. Although the pattern was widely used in Addams’s era, it is rarely studied today. Key terms such as

Addams’s Methodologies of Writing, Thinking, and Activism    505 evolution, history, sociology, and even science carried quite different connotations than at present. Addams used this pattern extensively, although rarely in an explicit way. I devote most of this essay to this dimension of her thought. The evolutionary-​ historical method: In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries the vast majority of intellectuals from every discipline used the evolutionary-​ historical method to frame their analyses.16 Charles Darwin is the evolutionary method’s most famous representative, and biology its paradigm science. Darwin studied organisms within their natural habitats, and mostly importantly, traced their evolutionary histories. Note that this pattern of examining habitats and reconstructing evolutionary histories is broad enough to include a wide range of evolutionary scientists. Questions regarding how natural selection worked, whether acquired traits could become heritable, and whether competition or cooperation best ensured fitness to survive, were all vigorously debated. It wasn’t until the 1930s that the link between natural selection and genetics was fully forged.17 English legal scholar and jurist Frederick Pollock wrote, “The doctrine of evolution is nothing else than the historical method applied to the facts of nature; the historical method is nothing else than the doctrine of evolution applied to human societies and institutions.”18 Thus, “history” and “evolution” functioned as interchangeable terms. Theorists who adapted the image of a biological habitat to human societies thought of society as a social organism with its parts in continuous interaction. To survive over time, societies need to adapt as conditions change. As one historical era undergoes transitions to a new one, some social practices may lag behind as survivals of previous eras. Addams, like her peers, used the evolutionary-​historical method to diagnose social ills by identifying which social practices lagged behind as others moved ahead. Addams as a sociologist: Addams was considered a sociologist, as confirmed in countless reviews and news reports.19 During Addams’s era, sociology, economics, psychology, and anthropology were just becoming identified as separate disciplines. Their methodologies were quite different from those employed today. These scientists, including Addams, analyzed empirical data using the evolutionary or historical method of evolutionary biology, and they considered ethical prescriptions and activism as within their purview as scientists. In the 1920s these methodologies were dropped and the historicist sensibility was replaced with a mathematical, analytic empiricism.20 The term, “sociology,” was coined by French philosopher and social theorist Auguste Comte. To him, sociology represented the culmination of the sciences. Sociology’s task was to reveal the laws of social progress and thus serve as a basis for social reorganization.21 Comte named one sub-​discipline “social statics,” or the study of how social institutions such as the family, economy, religion, and government structure society at a given time. The other sub-​discipline, “social dynamics,” traces qualitative changes in social structures throughout history. When social institutions become too maladapted to sustain a healthy equilibrium, qualitative or social dynamic changes in structure and function are required to establish a new equilibrium.22

506   Marilyn Fischer This pattern of analysis employing social statics and social dynamics was common in Addams’s era. Social theorists often began their texts with long historical accounts of the issue under discussion. For example, the first volume of German psychologist and physiologist Wilhelm Wundt’s three volumes on Ethics, and the first third of John Dewey and James Tufts’ Ethics give anthropological histories of ethical customs and beliefs from the earliest human cultures up to the present. To these thinkers, the evolutionary-​ historical method entailed a rejection of Enlightenment thinking. The Enlightenment paradigm was patterned on Newtonian physics, with eternal, fixed laws of motion governing the natural world. Classical liberalism in economics and politics was based on this image of nature. Enlightenment thinkers proposed that human society should be governed by natural moral laws, natural moral rights, political relations based on social contract, and economic relations governed by the laws of supply and demand. Evolutionary thinkers regarded Enlightenment claims as mere abstractions that arose within a particular era of social evolutionary history, now past. Addams refers to this paradigm as “eighteenth century philosophy.” A reviewer of Newer Ideals of Peace commented, not unfairly, “[Addams] seldom loses an opportunity to take a whack at the democratic idealists of the eighteenth century.”23 Addams, like many intellectuals of her day, evaluated past and present social practices in terms of their fit within the evolving patterns of social organization. However, because she wrote for lay audiences rather than academic ones, Addams did not give sustained anthropological histories. She dealt directly with the social issues at hand and tucked fragmentary references to social evolutionary history and theorizing throughout her writings. A good illustration of Addams’s use of the evolutionary-​historical method is her assessments of women’s roles in society. When Addams insists that women need “to fulfill [their] traditional obligations,” she does not have Victorian era gender stereotypes in mind. Addams defines “traditional” in terms of early tribal history; her account matches ethnologist Otis Mason’s in Woman’s Share in Primitive Culture. In early tribal groups women were in charge of textile production, sanitation, education, health care, gathering and preparing foodstuffs, and bearing children. Men were in charge of hunting and protecting the tribe from attack. Men’s and women’s responsibilities, though different, were both essential for the tribe’s survival.24 Addams locates the Victorian image of the lady as a hold-​over from feudalism. “The dogma of the lady,” Addams declares, is “an archaism.”25 She chides the Victorian lady for turning her domestic responsibilities over to servants and ignoring her obligations to those outside her door.26 Addams regards calls for equal rights for women an outdated survival of the Enlightenment era. She writes that now, “an address setting forth our human right to [the vote] is clearly an anachronism; such an address should have been made fifty years ago when men still used the grandiloquent phrases of the eighteenth century with solemn conviction.”27 As discussed below, Addams strongly advocated for women’s suffrage, but not on the basis of equal rights.

Addams’s Methodologies of Writing, Thinking, and Activism    507 In urban, industrial societies, Addams observes, women’s traditional obligations had largely moved out of the household and into factories, schools, and hospitals.28 She praises German male municipal workers for assuming such “unmanly” tasks as sanitation, health care, and education. Her point is that under modern urban conditions, men’s roles have shifted. She had no objection to men performing women’s traditional roles, but she did not want women to give them up just because they were now being performed outside the home.29 It was time, Addams contended, to regard women’s traditional tasks as basic responsibilities of all adult citizens, to be performed by both men and women. Throughout her forty-​five-​year writing career, Addams stayed up-​to-​date with the latest scientific research. She read widely and participated in and hosted many conferences on sociological topics. Like a good improvisatory musician whose ears are always absorbing new sounds, Addams’s writings changed over time as she encountered new materials to use as tools with which to analyze social questions. Throughout her lifetime, Addams emphasized the obligations of citizenship, rather than the rights of citizenship. This reflects her evolutionary orientation. Addams regards individuals as interdependent, whose ability to flourish depends on the well-​being of the entire habitat. She understands democratic governance as a historical turn from sovereignty as concentrated in a monarch or small elite, to a democracy in which sovereignty is distributed among the people. This transfers responsibility for the well-​being of society from the rulers to the people themselves. Addams’s approach to women’s suffrage illustrates this point. While she supported universal adult suffrage, she regarded it as only one of the tools citizens need to employ in order to carry out their responsibilities. In an address Addams told her audience, “Citizenship carries with it social obligations. Citizenship that is shown only in the vote is barren.”30 There is no set of ideas or ideals that can serve as an enduring pattern for what democracy is or should be. As historical events altered environmental conditions, and as new scientific theorizing brought new tools to the fore, Addams reformulated her conceptions of democracy accordingly. Here I review the evolutionary-​historical theories Addams used in her first two books, Democracy and Social Ethics (1902), and in Newer Ideals of Peace 1907). To assess social issues in the 1890s, Addams selected an account of nineteenth century British economic history to serve as the relevant time-​fragment of evolutionary history. British economists Arnold Toynbee, Sidney and Beatrice Webb, and historian Thomas Kirkup tell how the century began with much of Britain’s economy still under the feudal system of hierarchical, aristocratic control. As the century neared its end, Britain was moving into an era of democratic association as labor unions formed and municipalities exerted control over industries and utilities. Late eighteenth-​century political revolutions in the United States and France had brought democracy into the political realm, but did not end feudal patterns of aristocratic control in industrial, social, or familial relations. Toynbee and the Webbs called for “industrial democracy,” so that owners and workers would share control of industry.31

508   Marilyn Fischer In “The Subjective Necessity for Social Settlements” (1892) Addams also calls for industrial democracy and adds a call for “social democracy” in communities and families. She chides middle-​and upper-​class Anglo-​American women for not inviting African-​ Americans and recent immigrants in their homes, and instead entertaining only those of their own social class. In doing so, they were following an ethics of feudal hierarchy rather than participating in the new era of social democracy.32 Note that Addams does not separate society into a public and a private sphere, but declares that social decisions made within the family also need to be democratized. When Addams in “A Modern Tragedy” (1896) compares Shakespeare’s feudal King Lear to industrialist George Pullman, she is being more literal than one might think.33 Both Lear and Pullman practiced the feudal code of ethics. They believed it was within their moral purview to decide what was good for those under their control and they could rightfully expect their subjects or workers to respond with gratitude. It is telling that Addams does not refer to Pullman as a capitalist. Her British counterparts did not consider “capitalism” a distinct stage of social development, as Marx had claimed. Instead, they saw industrialists as attempting to occupy the role of their feudal aristocratic predecessors. This resulted in a temporary manifestation of anarchic disequilibrium, as their workers, by unionizing, attempted to move their society into the era of democratic association. Addams agrees with this account; when she calls for “lateral progress,” she echoes a similar statement by Sidney Webb, that all people should be included in moving social evolution forward.34 Addams revised a number of essays written in the 1890s as chapters in Democracy and Social Ethics. Three of the preliminary essays used the historical evolution from feudalism to social democracy; others adapted German psychologist and physiologist Wilhelm Wundt’s anthropological account of the evolution of morals from the earliest tribal cultures to the present. In revising these essays for Democracy and Social Ethics, Addams superimposed a third evolutionary framework, one that moves from “individual ethics” to “social ethics.”35 These terms come from German historicism, and particularly from the German historical school of economics. “Individual ethics” refers to an ethics of obligation to family and close associates, sufficient for simpler societies of the past. Now that societies are becoming urban and industrialized, a new ethics, “social ethics,” is required as it extends one’s ethical obligations to the whole of society.36 Addams identifies social ethics with democracy. In one of her most stirring statements, she declares that to attain social democracy, people must encounter “that diversified human experience and resultant sympathy which are the foundation and guarantee of Democracy.”37 Contemporary scholars have rightly identified “sympathetic understanding” as a central concept for Addams.38 For Addams, democracy is dependent upon sympathy, and sympathy has its roots in evolutionary psychology. Charles Darwin, Herbert Spencer, William James, and other evolutionary scientists considered sympathy a basic instinct that humans inherited from their gregarious animal ancestors. Direct contact with others is required to activate the sympathetic instincts.39 To generate the sympathetic connections that are democracy’s foundation, direct contact with the experiences of the

Addams’s Methodologies of Writing, Thinking, and Activism    509 full range of peoples in a given society is required. Because Pullman and the women who entertained only their social equals avoided interactions with those they considered beneath them, they remain trapped in their outdated, feudal ethics and are thus excluding themselves from the sympathetic embrace of democratic relations. In her next book, Newer Ideals of Peace, Addams calls for the U.S. to replace the ideals of the nation’s founding with those of a “genuine evolutionary democracy.”40 The theoretical frameworks she had used in Democracy and Social Ethics were inadequate for a world of ever-​increasing global connections. Addams replaces them with Comte’s sequence of militarism and industrialism, and detects tentative developments toward a new, cosmopolitan humanitarianism arising among recent immigrant communities. Comte divided human history into an earlier stage of militarism and his own era’s well-​developed stage of industrialism. He predicted a harmonious future when altruism would replace egoism. English polymath Herbert Spencer recast these stages through an evolutionary lens and defined militarism and industrialism as types of social organization rather than a strictly historical sequence. Intellectuals, including Addams, adopted Spencer’s definitions, which are far broader in scope than the words suggest today. In a militaristic society, social institutions are organized hierarchically and the moral code exalts military virtues of courage and discipline; whether the society engages in military ventures is not a defining characteristic. An industrial society functions according to voluntary contractual relations, whether or not machinery is used in production.41 Laissez-​faire capitalism was considered “industrial” because production and distribution of goods were carried out through voluntary contracts. Democracy was considered “industrial” by definition, as it was based on the consent of the governed.42 The standard view before World War I was that civilized nations, now well into the industrial era, had entered an era of peaceful, commercial trade and they were too highly civilized to engage in war. Imperial incursions into uncivilized lands were considered internal affairs of the imperial nation. They did not count as “wars,” regardless of the military hardware used or the blood spilled. Most theorists defended such incursions as bringing civilization to those in darkness.43 It is crucial to realize that while the image of the hierarchy of civilizations was ubiquitous, it did not function as a straightjacket on theorists’ moral imaginations. Its basic terms and assumptions were at times vigorously debated. Addams wielded its methodologies to lift up the oppressed and give cutting critiques of the powerful. In Democracy and Social Ethics Addams describes the ethics of some recent immigrants as primitive, noting that they followed what Darwin had called a “rude rule of right and wrong.”44 Following this rule, they spontaneously helped those in need without the weary requirement of first determining whether the recipients “deserved” help. In this they were well in advance of reformers who acted on their own hypocrisies.45 In Newer Ideals of Peace Addams uses Comte’s pattern to place these “primitive” immigrants at the forefront of movement toward a truly democratic international ethic. Addams’s intellectual moves are easier to see when compared with the writings of a small group of Comte-​inspired British intellectuals, including Frederic Harrison, John Hobson, L.T. Hobhouse, and John Morley, all outspoken opponents of British

510   Marilyn Fischer imperialism. Addams knew them personally; the flavor of their writings is present in Addams’s own. Addams and her British counterparts adopted militarism, industrialism, and a projected Comtean humanitarian ethic as key terms. Their critiques took the form of showing that ostensibly “industrial” practices were in fact drenched in militarism. As the twentieth century dawned, the race for empire among European powers intensified. The U.S. joined the race with its territorial acquisitions from the Spanish-​ American War. At rallies in Chicago to protest the U.S. invasion in the Philippines and the British war against the Boers in southern Africa, Addams asserted the need to reformulate democracy for the international arena, stating, “Unless the present situation extends our nationalism into internationalism, unless it has thrust forward our patriotism into humanitarianism we cannot meet it.”46 By its actions, Addams declares, the U.S. government is “establish[ing] the ethics of dominion . . . as the accepted national ethics of the Anglo-​Saxon.” In a quick phrase, Addams identifies the government’s actions with its militaristic predecessors, stating that “to ‘protect the weak’ has always been the excuse of the ruler and tax-​gatherer, the chief, the king, the baron, and now, at last of ‘the white man.’ ”47 By such actions, the “white man” demonstrates his lack of civilization. Technological advance and imperial reach do not define civilization. Instead, Addams asserts, “Civilization is an idea, a method of living, an attitude of respect toward all men.”48 Stressing there are many paths to civilization, Addams notes, “All progress must come from native soil,” while imperial incursions destroy new growth.49 Addams’s line of reasoning is close to Hobson’s; while one form of civilization may be more advanced at a given moment, another that grows more slowly may have greater potential in the long-​ term.50 By interrupting organic growth in native soils, imperialism risks impoverishing civilization’s future evolution. In Newer Ideals of Peace Addams brings her critique of U.S. imperialism inward and accuses U.S. institutions of imposing a regime of internal imperialism against recent immigrants. As evidence, Addams points to the housing conditions under which immigrants lived. The wealthy could locate at the city’s edge, but immigrants were crowded into tenements on muddy, garbage filled streets without access to clean water or untainted food. They experienced municipal government’s inability to provide these basic services as hostile and life-​threatening, and not as democratic expressions of their will. The immigrants’ most direct interaction with government was in their encounters with the police, whom Addams calls “the most vigorous survival of militarism to be found in American cities.”51 The employment conditions under which recent immigrants suffered were also indications of militarism. Employers who refuse to pay their workers a living wage, Addams contends, are “relic[s]‌of the mediaeval baron issuing forth to seize the merchants’ boats as they passed his castle on the Rhine. It has logically lent itself to warfare, and is, indeed, the modern representative of conquest.”52 Staying true to her evolutionary methodology, Addams does not talk about “capitalism,” an abstract label for an Enlightenment concept. Had she been willing to do so, she would have defined capitalism as industrialism militarized. Whether directed

Addams’s Methodologies of Writing, Thinking, and Activism    511 against other nations, or against foreigners within, militarism and industrialism both enact “the spirit of the conqueror toward an inferior people.”53 Addams gives the same analysis to another group that Anglo-​Americans treated as foreigners within, namely, African Americans. In an essay commemorating the fiftieth anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation Addams drew inspiration from English philosopher L.T. Hobhouse’s fierce critique of how Britain’s race for empire had degraded the moral sensibilities of the British people themselves. Imperialism, Hobhouse declares, stands for “a hard assertion of racial supremacy and material force.” While the vocabulary of liberty, democracy, and humanity persisted, these stirring words had become “a moral slang in which all the best thought of the world . . . gets clipped and chopped up and debased till all the strength has evaporated from it.”54 The people’s indifference was a sign of their moral impoverishment. Echoing W. E. B. Du Bois, Addams adapts Hobhouse’s critique of British imperialism to examine “the souls of white folks.” The souls of southern white folks, Addams claims, are in “spiritual bondage.” Their “loyalty to a lost cause” led them to sanctify memories of Confederate soldiers and distort memories of slavery into ones of warm affection between slave and master. They had become indifferent to the caste system they ruthlessly imposed on one-​third of the South’s population, those of darker skin. “The white north,” Addams continues, “submits to the chains forged . . . by its own indifference.” Northern whites had become indifferent to their inheritance from abolitionists and humanitarian reformers, indifferent to the obligations this inheritance imposes on them to carry on the work. They had impoverished their own souls by allowing racial antagonism to force fellow Americans “behind the veil.”55 Thus, in Addams’s mind, militarism, industrialism, imperialism, and racism were all of the same character. Democracy could not co-​exist while these were operative. Using the lens of evolutionary movement toward internationalism gave Addams a way to conceptualize the experiences of recent immigrants as signaling movement toward an international ethic of humanitarianism. At the time, scholars of morality’s evolution traced how groups, be they families, tribes, or nations, had always held one moral code for insiders and a different code for outsiders. The code for insiders called for cooperation and prohibited lying and killing within the group. By contrast, because outsiders were potential enemies, suspicion, deceit, and violence against them were morally acceptable.56 In a truly international ethic, the category of outsiders disappears and the ethics of insiders becomes universal.57 Most scholars thought this would happen over time through expansion from family to community to nation, and finally to all of humanity. Addams’s analysis of how this projected international ethic might come about is original, with recent immigrants in the city playing the crucial role. The industrializing city with its densely packed multinational populations constitutes a new geographical habitat, never before seen in human evolutionary history. Among themselves, the new immigrants representing dozens of nationalities faced the daily task of learning to cohabit with peoples whose languages, religions, and customs differed widely from their own. Addams reports catching glimpses of a new international morality beginning to

512   Marilyn Fischer emerge within the immigrants’ daily interactions in workplaces and unions, on the streets and in the tenements. She admits, though, “It is no easy task to detect and to follow the tiny paths of progress which the unencumbered proletarian with nothing but his life and capacity for labor, is pointing out for us.”58 Why could impoverished, often illiterate immigrants newly arrived in the city lead the way? Quite simply, because evolutionary pressures on them were so great.59 The act of emigrating had rendered many of the immigrants’ former daily habits inoperative. They had to find ways to co-​exist with peoples of many nationalities as a matter of daily survival. That is, they were forced by circumstance to overcome the distinction between insider and outsider codes of ethics. The Anglo-​Saxon traits of competitive striving and rigid individualism were maladaptive for life in a dense industrializing habitat. The new immigrants however, because they came from many cultures with varied histories, brought with them a wide range of political ideals and social practices with which to adapt. Immigrants from southern Italy, for example, had long lived in densely packed rural villages. Their elaborate forms of sociability were more useful to city dwelling than Anglo-​Saxon individualism. Russian Jews with minds trained by Talmudic study were well-​prepared to assess U.S. labor practices in terms of justice and righteousness.60 Their tiny paths of progress pointed toward a new cosmopolitan humanitarianism, akin in spirit to that of Comte’s Religion of Humanity. Addams’s observations match those of Hobhouse who notes, “This stage is only at its beginning. The organic union of humanity is still an ideal embodied in mere filaments of actuality.”61 The immigrants’ tiny paths of progress were as yet “mere filaments,” but Addams had reasons to hope these tiny paths, aided by other social reforms, would continue to grow. Belief in history’s forward movement, evident in theorists’ writings in the 1890s and nineteen-​aughts, collapsed in 1914 as war broke out in Europe. Immigration to the U.S. from southern and eastern Europe virtually stopped during the war. After the war laws were adopted that came close to eliminating all immigration except from northwestern Europe.62 Addams began again to rebuild an ethic of cooperation and sympathy from humanity’s very biological roots, its need for food. During the war she worked with Herbert Hoover’s Food Administration, encouraging women to conserve food so it could be shipped to those starving in Europe.63 Addams had an evolutionary basis for her actions, as she explains, “In race history the tribal feeding of children antedated mass fighting by perhaps a million years. Anthropologists insist that war has not been in the world for more than 20,000 years.”64 Addams does not name the scholars she had in mind, but many of the scientists whose writings she refers to had made this observation, including German biologist Gustav Nicolai and American physicist and internationalist George Nasmyth.65 Addams hoped to build chains of sympathetic connection stretching from women’s concrete daily habits of feeding their own families to providing the food of life for those far distant.66 Addams hoped that as women in the U.S. planted victory gardens and observed “meatless Mondays and wheatless Wednesdays,” their simple actions might grow into a new international ethic that could counteract the impulse to war.67

Addams’s Methodologies of Writing, Thinking, and Activism    513 After the war Addams continued to work toward this goal domestically and internationally. She raised funds on behalf of civilians in the lands of the Central Powers as well as in Russia.68 Much of her work was through the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom, which she served as president until 1929. However dimmed, the flame of hope continued to flicker.

Literature and Evolutionary Science Addams often employed literary techniques and embedded literary allusions within her evolutionary-​historical analyses.69 At the time, literature was considered particularly valuable in increasing people’s capacity to extend sympathy to others and to appreciate the complex particularities of all of life. Addams knew well the writings of English novelist, George Eliot, who made this point explicitly, writing, “The greatest benefit we owe to the artist, whether painter, poet, or novelist, is the extension of our sympathies.” Walter Pater, another author Addams favored, noted that “the faculty for truth” is “a power of distinguishing and fixing delicate and fugitive detail,” and that what this power reveals is “a world of fine gradations and subtly linked conditions.”70 Addams had also learned from her study of rhetoric that reason alone is not persuasive.71 In employing literary techniques, Addams aimed to change her readers’ moral perceptions so they would come to view as kin those they had considered as threatening their way of life. By using a range of literary forms, Addams gave communicative power to her evolutionary methodology. A good illustration of how Addams wove literary and scientific sources comes from The Spirit of Youth and the City Streets. Many Anglo-​Americans held the view that urban, immigrant youth were criminally inclined.72 Addams wanted to replace this stereotype with the view that urban children were normal children confronting an unfriendly environment. To remind her adult readers of their own youthful impulsiveness, Addams quotes “a veteran educator” who wrote, “It is almost impossible for an adult to realize the boy’s irresponsibility and even moral neurasthenia.” To make this statement by evolutionary psychologist G. Stanley Hall more vivid, Addams quotes from Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s “My Lost Youth,” “A boy’s will is the wind’s will.” All children crave adventure. Her readers’ children gathered sticks from nearby fields to build forts; city children appropriated railroad ties to do the same. Both are following the impulse “which excites the coast-​dwelling lad to dream of ‘the beauty and mystery of the ships/​ And the magic of the sea.’ ”73 Readers who might puzzle over “moral neurasthenia” would identify quickly with poetry their own children likely recited.74 Addams’s writings abound with stories, some captured in just a sentence or two, others threaded through many pages. Stories are among the most powerful ways to change moral perceptions. One of Addams’s most striking stories is that of the devil baby, with

514   Marilyn Fischer which Addams opens The Long Road of Woman’s Memory. When it was rumored that Hull-​House was housing the devil incarnated in a badly disfigured infant, immigrant women of many nationalities demanded to see it. The Chicago Tribune opined that if many Chicagoans believed such a tale, “Chicago and civilization would shake hands and say ‘good night.’ ”75 Addams does not opine on the tale’s factual status, but instead gives poetic expression to how it had functioned throughout generations of folk life. Those who clung to the story most fiercely were old, old, women, long victims of domestic violence, whose own younger family members no longer had use for them. These women, like generations before them, had used such tales as a form of moral power over recreant husbands. To them, such tales were “a literature of their own.” They served the same function of giving consolation and companionship to them as Tolstoy’s great works gave to her readers.76 In this story Addams is giving literary expression to the theory of “race memory.” Although she doesn’t mention the term in Long Road of Woman’s Memory, her reviewers identified race memory as the evolutionary underpinnings of the story.77 It was not uncommon for scientists to refer to biological inheritances as a kind of memory.78 Addams alludes to the idea in “The Subjective Necessity for Social Settlements,” writing, “Our very organism holds memories and glimpses of that long life of our ancestors.”79 Addams’s story of the devil baby is powerful enough on its own; realizing its scientific significance gave it even more power for its initial readers. One of Addams’s most complex juxtapositions of literature with evolutionary science is in “Personal Reactions During the War,” a chapter in Peace and Bread in Time of War (1922). Addams’s biographers generally read the chapter as an autobiographical account of the psychological costs Addams suffered as a pacifist during World War I.80 Addams begins the chapter by recounting the newspapers’ “concerted and deliberate” distortions of her views and the many “bitter and abusive” letters she received. Compounded by three years of poor health, Addams writes that the pacifist “finds it possible to travel from the mire of self-​pity straight to the barren hills of self-​righteousness and to hate himself equally in both places.”81 In this touching meditation Addams invokes an array of literary figures. She joins the exiled French pacifist, Romain Rolland, in scanning the fields from “Above the Battle.” From there, the war assumed the dimensions of tragedy, with heroic young soldiers on both sides as war’s “most touching victims,” sacrificed to their leaders’ dusty gods of honor and glory.82 She names French writer Henri Barbusse, whose account of trench warfare revealed that official reports of the war’s progress were rank lies.83 Addams finds additional support from philosopher John Stuart Mill. Joseph Conrad gives her a statement to disprove.84 Addams borrows words from Swiss writer Henri Frédéric Amiel to express her longing for reconciliation with estranged friends and colleagues, adding, “Solitude has always had its demons.”85 These demons, though, had a solid evolutionary basis. Addams quickly turns to English psychologist Wilfred Trotter’s account of how the same evolutionary processes that gave rise to the three basic instincts of self-​preservation, nutrition, and reproduction, also gave rise to a fourth instinct in

Addams’s Methodologies of Writing, Thinking, and Activism    515 gregarious species, the instinct of the herd. To survive, herd animals must seek companionship and become responsive to others’ cues. For those who remain isolated from their fellows, Trotter writes, “Loneliness will be a real terror, insurmountable by reason.”86 Following Trotter, Addams comments that the herd instinct had “enabled the man-​pack to survive.”87 Addams uses this scientific explanation to soften the divide between pacifists and war-​enthusiasts. All are subject to the instinctual longing to be at one with their fellows. Many at the time embraced the view that throughout history war had advanced social evolutionary progress.88 Addams lines up her own list of evolutionary scientists to rebut this view. She cites Nasmyth, who argued that Darwin had envisioned the struggle for existence primarily as a struggle to adapt to the environment, rather than a struggle for supremacy over others of one’s species.89 She paraphrases Nicolai, whose banned manuscript, The Biology of War, was smuggled out of Germany for publication.90 Nicolai demonstrated that throughout evolution, cooperation had done far more than organized combat to further social progress.91 To these scientific accounts, Addams adds the writings of English social theorists H.N. Brailsford, John Hobson, and G. Lowes Dickinson, among the most outspoken members of Addams’s network of those opposed to the war.92 What to make of this array of voices? Perhaps Addams summoned these writers and scientists to exorcise her own demons of solitude, but her account goes far beyond personal soul-​searching. She chose personal meditation as a form through which to give her most stunning account of how war cuts against all that is human. Addams’s use of the evolutionary-​historical method embedded in literary and rhetorical practices of her day, demonstrates Addams’s intellectual prowess. It also demonstrates how she used these resources creatively in the service of justice for the oppressed. However, given that the scientific theories and literary conventions she relied upon are now outdated, can Addams’s writings be of use to scholars today?

Can Addams’s Methodologies be of Use? Other scholars in this volume discuss at length how Addams’s writings and her activism remain useful for scholars and activists today. In her writings, Addams wrote little about how she actually went about the work of reform. The research tools of historians and social movement scholars are needed to identify the innumerable meetings she attended and the networks of social reformers she participated in. The digital Jane Addams Papers Project, described in this volume by Dr. Cathy Moran Hajo, will facilitate this work enormously. To these I add a few comments on how even today, the evolutionary methodology and dusty evolutionary theories Addams employed can be of use. First, Addams’s mode of

516   Marilyn Fischer thinking is deeply ecological. Even though she doesn’t use the vocabulary of ecology, the pattern of society as an organism, of individuals as interdependent, of individual well-​ being as dependent upon the well-​being of the whole, of citizenship defined in terms of obligations, and freedom defined as flourishing within a flourishing habitat, is a pattern we need today. Examining how Addams constructs her vision by drawing on every discipline may lead to creative responses to our own ecological crises. Also, many scholars today want to speak to a wider public outside the academy and want to make activism an intrinsic part of their scholarship. For these purposes, Addams is a superb model. Her writings themselves were forms of activism; most began as speeches in protest of specific injustices or on behalf of specific social reforms. Studying how she shaped her rhetoric to communicate with specific audiences may provide patterns to adapt. Addams questioned whether radical change in the short-​term was even possible. This is not because she was of moderate temperament or because she thought the social system needed only minor adjustments, but because she was an evolutionary thinker. For Addams this was not a happy conclusion, but an acknowledgement of “the grief of things as they are.”93 Darwin had observed that evolution takes place through innumerable minute adjustments in organisms and habitats; Addams saw social change replicating this pattern.94 Likewise, to be effective, political and structural reforms need to be supported by changes in deep-​seated habits of living and entrenched social customs. Rapid revolutionary changes are apt to denude the habitat rather than bring it into healthy equilibrium. They are apt to provoke hatred and violence rather than comity. Addams’s focus on changing moral perceptions was a necessary correlate of her social activism. While Addams acknowledged that creedal commitments bring comfort, she refused to commit herself to any creedal doctrine.95 To do so is to leave the realm of human experience within ever changing evolutionary habitats, and hide in the comfort of abstractions. Responding to those who required purity in creedal commitments, Addams invokes George Eliot, writing, “Right does not dazzle our eyes with its radiant shining, but has to be found by exerting patience, discrimination, and impartiality.”96 Addams adopted the slogan of the Society for Ethical Culture: “Diversity in the Creed, Unanimity in the Deed.”97 She sided with Russian naturalist Peter Kropotkin, who documented that the species best fit to survive are those that work out methods of cooperation, rather than conflict.98 Addams worked with conservatives and radicals who offered very different reasons for supporting the same goal. For example, both the anti-​sin reformers and those committed to fighting the exploitation of women and girls shared the goal of eliminating commercialized sex trafficking of adolescents. Addams worked with them both.99 In her tribute to Canon Samuel Barnett, founder of Toynbee Hall, Addams said, “There is an inherent danger in continuing to follow the advice of those who are no longer in touch with the living world.” Addams is no longer in touch with today’s living world and we ought not replicate the solutions she found fitting for her time and place. But she goes on to say that as the problems to which Barnett devoted his life continue

Addams’s Methodologies of Writing, Thinking, and Activism    517 to arise in new form, “his advice is still sane and vital.”100 Addams cannot tell us what to think or do in any concrete situation. But her patterns of thought and action are richly suggestive, and useful as we do our own work.

Notes 1. See Reports of the Immigration Commission, 2. 2. See Jacobson, Whiteness of a Different Color, introduction and ­chapter 2. For a discussion of the complicated relation between “color” and “race” between 1840 and the 1920s see Jacobson, c­ hapter 2, and Guglielmo, White on Arrival, 5–​9. On naturalization documents Italians had to indicate their color as white, and then identify their race as either Northern Italian or Southern Italian (Guglielmo, 8–​9). 3. King, Making Americans, 59–​60. For Asian immigration see Daniels, Guarding the Golden Door, 12–​26. For immigration at the U.S. southwest border see Ngai, Impossible Subjects, 50–​55. 4. Hall, “Immigration,” 395. 5. Daniels, Guarding the Golden Door, 45. 6. Jacobson, Whiteness of a Different Color, ­chapter 2. For background on how “Anglo-​ Saxon” was adopted as a term in the United States and its racialist roots, see Mora et al. “The Study of Old English in America”; See also Wilton, D. “What Do We Mean by Anglo-​ Saxon?”; also see the three part series by Rambaran-​Olm, “History Bites: Resources on the Problematic Term ‘Anglo-​Saxon.’ ” 7. Jacobson, Whiteness of a Different Color, ­chapter 3. 8. Daniels, Guarding the Golden Door, 132–​140. 9. Knight, Citizen, 179. 10. Chinn, Inventing Modern Adolescence, 15; Barrett, “Americanization.” 11. Spear, Black Chicago, 4, 11–​15, 20–​21. 12. Knight Citizen, 94–​95, 98–​99. 13. Addams, Twenty Years, 137. 14. Elshtain, Jane Addams, 145; Guglielmo, White on Arrival, 24; and Philpott, The Slum and the Ghetto, 91–​92. 15. For a point-​by-​point description, see Addams, “The Settlement as a Factor,” 27–​28. 16. For a succinct discussion of this point, see Fischer, Jane Addams’s Evolutionary Theorizing, 5–​9. For how this was true in what are now called the social sciences, see Bevir, “Historicism and the Human Sciences.” 17. See Bowler, The Non-​Darwinian Revolution, 3. 18. Pollock, Oxford Lectures, 41. 19. Shields, Jane Addams, 51–​56. 20. Bevir, “Historicism,” 1–​20. 21. Comte, Positive Philosophy, vol. 1, 33, 183–​84; Bourdeau, “Auguste Comte.” 22. Comte, Positive Philosophy, vol. 2, ­chapters 5, 6. 23. “Review of Newer Ideals of Peace,” 92. 24. Addams, “Philanthropy and Politics”; Addams, Newer Ideals, 102; Mason, Woman’s Share. 25. Addams, “Woman and the State,” 23. 26. Addams, “Woman and the State,” 5–​6. 27. Addams, “Woman and the State,” 22.

518   Marilyn Fischer 28. Addams, “The Progressive Party and Woman Suffrage,” 1–​2. 29. Addams, “Woman and the State,” 6–​9. 30. “Jane Addams in Kansas City,” 1897. 31. See a thorough discussion of Addams’s use of these theorists see Fischer, Jane Addams Evolutionary Theorizing, ­chapter 3. 32. Addams, “Subjective Necessity,” 3. 33. See Addams, “A Modern Tragedy.” The manuscript was published as “A Modern Lear” in 1912. 34. Addams, “A Modern Tragedy”; Webb, Socialism in England, 7, 9. 35. See Fischer, Jane Addams Evolutionary Theorizing, ­chapter 7. 36. See Fischer, Jane Addams Evolutionary Theorizing, 170. 37. Addams, Democracy and Social Ethics, 7. 38. See, for example, Hamington, Social Philosophy, ­chapter 4. 39. See McDougall, An Introduction, 92–​96; James, Principles of Psychology, vol. 2, 410–​11. 40. Addams, Newer Ideals, 35. 41. Spencer, Principles of Sociology, vol. 2, ­chapters 17–​18. 42. See for example, Atkinson, “Address,” 107–​9. 43. Barclay, “War.” 44. Darwin, Descent of Man, vol. 1, 99. Addams, Democracy and Social Ethics, 14. 45. Addams, Democracy and Social Ethics, 114–​115. 46. Addams, “Democracy or Militarism,” 35–​36. 47. Addams, “Democracy or Militarism,” 38. 48. Addams, “Commercialism.” 49. Addams, “Address,” 121. 50. Hobson, “Ethics of Empire,” 454. 51. Addams, Newer Ideals of Peace, 32–​33. 52. Addams, Newer Ideals of Peace, 64. 53. Addams, Newer Ideals of Peace, 29. 54. Hobhouse, Democracy and Reaction, 72, 45. 55. “Addams, “Emancipation Act,” 565–​66. 56. See Hobhouse, Morals in Evolution, ­chapter 7; Dewey & Tufts, Ethics, ­chapter 5. 57. Hobhouse, Morals in Evolution, 72. 58. Addams, Newer Ideals of Peace, 19. 59. Addams, Newer Ideals of Peace, 10–​13; Hobhouse, Democracy and Reaction, 112. 60. Addams, Newer Ideals of Peace, 38–​40. 61. Hobhouse, Development and Purpose, 283. 62. Daniels, Coming to America, ­chapter 10. 63. Addams, Peace and Bread, 44, 50. 64. Addams, Peace and Bread, 44. 65. Nicolai, Biology of War, 15–​19; Nasmyth, Social Progress, 168–​70. 66. Addams, Peace and Bread, ­chapter 4. 67. Addams, Peace and Bread, 49. 68. Knight, Jane Addams, 221, 233, 236. 69. Many scholars have discussed Addams’s use of literature. See, for example, Joslin, Jane Addams, 5, 89–​90; Knight, Jane Addams, 157. 70. Eliot, Selected Critical Writings, 263; Pater, Appreciation, 66, 67. 71. Hill, Principles of Rhetoric, 394.

Addams’s Methodologies of Writing, Thinking, and Activism    519 72. Addams, Spirit of Youth, 55–​7 1; Chinn, Inventing Modern Adolescence, 14–​18. 73. Addams, Spirit of Youth, 53, 55; Longfellow, “My Lost Youth,” 164–​169. 74. For a discussion of the prominence of poetry in schools and homes at the time, see Sicherman, Well-​Read Lives, 51–​54. 75. “Devil Child” (1913). 76. Addams, Long Road, 19, 16, 43. 77. See for example, “The Long Road . . .” 78. See Darwin’s approving comment on Spencer’s theory of racial memories in Descent of Man, 101–​2. 79. Addams, “Subjective Necessity, 10. 80. Davis, American Heroine, 247; Elshtain, Jane Addams, 222, 232–​33; Knight, Jane Addams, 20–​208, 218–​19. 81. Addams, Peace and Bread, 76–​80. 82. Addams, Peace and Bread, 79; Rolland, Above the Battle, 37. 83. Addams, Peace and Bread, 83; Barbusse, Under Fire. 84. Addams, Peace and Bread, 82, 86; Mill, Autobiography, 228; Conrad, “Preface,” vi. 85. Addams, Peace and Bread, 82. 86. The quotation is from Trotter, Instincts of the Herd, 31. The preceding summary is from Trotter, Instincts of the Herd, 16–​17, 32–​33, 97, 140, 143. 87. Addams, Peace and Bread, 84, 81. 88. Addams, Peace and Bread, 84. 89. Addams, Peace and Bread, 84; Nasmyth, Social Progress, ­chapter 3. 90. See Addams, Peace and Bread, 80–​81; Nicolai, Biology of War, 335–​336. For Nicolai’s experiences in Germany during the war see Zuelzer, Nicolai Case, 13–​18. 91. Addams, Peace and Bread, 83–​84; Nicolai, Biology of War, 58–​59. 92. Addams, Peace and Bread, 84. 93. Addams, Twenty Years, 17. 94. See Darwin, Origin of Species, 84, 95, 314; Addams, Twenty Years, 109. 95. Addams, Twenty Years, 110–​11. 96. Addams, “The Settlement as a Factor,” 146; Eliot, Mill on the Floss, 532. 97. Adler, Creed and Deed, 171–​72. 98. There are striking parallels between Addams’s account of what immigrants with their cultural traditions from southern and Eastern Europe could contribute to municipalities (New Conscience, c­ hapters 2–​3), and Kropotkin’s account of Slavic folkmotes’ formation and governance, Mutual Aid, ­chapter 4. 99. Addams, Twenty Years, 258. As an example of Addams’s willingness to address the “anti-​ sin” crowd, see Addams, “The Church and the Social Evil,” an address Addams gave to the Christian Conservation Congress of the Men and Religion Forward Movement. 100. Addams, Excellent Becomes Permanent, 131–​32.

References Addams, Jane. “Address of Miss Jane Addams.” Official Report of the Thirteenth Universal Peace Congress, pp. 120–​23. Boston: Peace Congress Committee, 1904. Addams, Jane. “The Church and the Social Evil.” In Messages of the Men and Religion Movement, Volume 2: Social Service, pp. 130–​41. New York: Association Press., 1912.

520   Marilyn Fischer Addams, Jane. “Commercialism Disguised as Patriotism and Duty.” St. Louis Post-​Dispatch. section 4, p. 4, February 18, 1900. Jane Addams Papers Microfilm, reel 46, frame 990. Addams, Jane. Democracy and Social Ethics. 1902. Reprint, Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2002. Addams, Jane. “Democracy or Militarism.” The Chicago Liberty Meeting Held at Central Music Hall, April 30, 1899, pp. 35–​39. Chicago, IL: Central Anti-​Imperialist League, 1899. Addams, Jane. The Excellent Becomes the Permanent. 1932. Reprint, Freeport, NY: Books for Libraries Press, 1970. Addams, Jane. “Has the Emancipation Act been Nullified by National Indifference.” Survey 29 (February 1, 1913): 565–​66. Addams, Jane. The Long Road of Woman’s Memory. 1916. Reprint, Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2002. Addams, Jane. “A Modern Lear.” Survey 29 (November 2, 1912): 131–​37. Addams, Jane. “A Modern Tragedy: An Analysis of the Pullman Strike.” Typed manuscript. 1896? [sic]. Jane Addams Papers Microfilm, reel 46, frame 722. Addams, Jane. A New Conscience and an Ancient Evil. 1912. Reprint, Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2002. Addams, Jane. Newer Ideals of Peace. 1907. Reprint, Urbana: University of Illinois Press. 2007. Addams, Jane. Peace and Bread in Time of War. 1922. Reprint, Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2002. Addams, Jane. (September 18, 1912). “Philanthropy and Politics.” September 18, 1912. Typed Manuscript. https://​digi​tal.jan​eadd​ams.ram​apo.edu/​items/​show/​8867. Addams, Jane. (September 1912). “The Progressive Party and Woman Suffrage.” September 1912. Typed Manuscript. https://​digi​tal.jan​eadd​ams.ram​apo.edu/​items/​show/​8863. Addams, Jane. “The Settlement as a Factor in the Labor Movement.” 1895. In Hull-​House Maps and Papers, by Residents of Hull-​House (Rima Lunin Schultz, ed.), pp. 138–​49. Reprint, Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2007. Addams, Jane. The Spirit of Youth and the City Streets. 1909. Reprint, Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1972. Addams, Jane. “The Subjective Necessity for Social Settlements.” In Philanthropy and Social Progress, edited by Henry C. Adams, pp. 1–​26. New York: Crowell, 1893. Addams, Jane. “Woman and the State.” February 2, 1911. Typed manuscript. https://​digi​tal.jan​ eadd​ams.ram​apo.edu/​items/​show/​7270. Addams, Jane. Twenty Years at Hull-​House. 1910. Reprint, Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1990. Adler, Felix. Creed and Deed: A Series of Discourses. New York: Putnam, 1880. Atkinson, Edward. “Address of Edward Atkinson.” Official Report of the Thirteenth Universal Peace Congress, edited by Benjamin F. Trueblood, pp. 107–​9. Boston: Peace Congress Committee, 1904. Barbusse, Henri. Under Fire: The Story of a Squad. Translated by F. Wray. London: J.M. Dent, 1917. Barclay, Thomas. “War.” In Encyclopedia Britannica, Volume 28, pp. 305–​16. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1911. Barrett, James R. “Americanization from the Bottom Up: Immigration and the Remaking of the Working Class in the United States, 1880–​1930.” Journal of American History 79 (December 1992): 996–​1020. Bevir, Mark. “Historicism and the Human Sciences in Victorian Britain.” In Historicism and the Human Sciences in Victorian Britain, edited by Mark Bevir, pp. 1–​20. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2017.

Addams’s Methodologies of Writing, Thinking, and Activism    521 Bourdeau, M. (2018). “Auguste Comte.” The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. https://​plato .stanf​ord.edu/​archi​ves/​sum2​018/​entr​ies/​comte/​. Bowler, Peter J. The Non-​Darwinian Revolution: Reinterpreting a Historical Myth. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1988. Chinn, Sarah. E. Inventing Modern Adolescence: The Children of Immigrants in Turn-​of-​the-​ Century America. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2009. Comte, Auguste. The Positive Philosophy of Auguste Comte. 2 Volumes. Translated by H. Martineau. London: John Chapman, 1853. Conrad, Joseph. “Preface.” In Yvette and Other Stories, edited by Guy de Maupassant, pp. v–​xiv. Translated by A. G. Galsworthy, (Mrs. Jon Galsworthy). London: Duckworth, 1915. Daniels, Roger. Coming to America: A History of Immigration and Ethnicity in American Life. 2nd ed. New York: Perennial, 2002. Daniels, Roger. Guarding the Golden Door: American Immigration Policy and Immigrants since 1882. New York: Hill and Wang, 2004. Darwin, Charles. The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex. 2 volumes. New York: D. Appleton, 1871. Darwin, Charles. The Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection. 1st ed. London: John Murray, 1859. Davis, Allen F. American Heroine: The Life and Legend of Jane Addams. Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 2000. “Devil Child.” Tribune. Chicago, IL. Jane Addams Papers Microfilm, reel 60, frame 1072. November 1, 1913. Dewey, John, and James Tufts. Ethics. 1908. John Dewey: The Middle Works, 1899–​1924, volume 5, edited by Jo Ann Boydston. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1978. Eliot, George. The Mill on the Floss. 1860. Reprint, New York: Penguin Books, 2002. Eliot, George. Selected Critical Writings. Edited by Rosemary Ashton. New York: Oxford University Press, 1992. Elshtain, Jean Bethke. Jane Addams and the Dream of American Democracy: A Life. New York: Basic Books, 2002. Fischer, Marilyn. Jane Addams’s Evolutionary Theorizing: Constructing Democracy and Social Ethics. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2019. Guglielmo, Thomas A. White on Arrival: Italians, Race, Color, and Power in Chicago. New York: Oxford University Press, 2003. Hall, Prescott F. (1897). “Immigration and the Educational Test.” North American Review 165 (1897): 393–​402. Hamington, Maurice. The Social Philosophy of Jane Addams. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2009. Hill, Adams Sherman. The Principles of Rhetoric. Rev. ed. New York: American Book Company, 1895. Hobhouse, L. T. Democracy and Reaction. London: T. F. Unwin, 1904. Hobhouse, L. T. Morals in Evolution: A Study in Comparative Ethics. Volume 1. New York: Henry Holt, 1906. Hobhouse, L. T. Development and Purpose: An Essay Towards a Philosophy of Evolution. London: Macmillan, 1913. Hobson, John A. “Ethics of Empire.” Progressive Review 2 (August 1897): 448–​462. Jacobson, Matthew Frye. Whiteness of a Different Color: European Immigrants and the Alchemy of Race. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1998.

522   Marilyn Fischer James, William. The Principles of Psychology. 2 volumes. New York: Henry Holt, 1890. “Jane Addams in Kansas City.” Eight-​Hour Herald. (Chicago). December 2, 1897. Jane Addams Papers Microfilm, reel 5, frame 377. Joslin, Katherine. Jane Addams: A Writer’s Life. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2004. King, Desmond. Making Americans: Immigration, Race, and the Origins of the Diverse Democracy. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2000. Knight, Louise W. Citizen: Jane Addams and the Struggle for Democracy. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005. Knight, Louise W. Jane Addams: Spirit in Action. New York: W. W. Norton, 2010. Kropotkin, P. Mutual Aid: A Factor of Evolution. New York: McClure Phillips, 1902. “The Long Road of Woman’s Memory.” Los Angeles Times, Jan. 28, 1917, 49. Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth. (1859). “My Lost Youth.” In The Courtship of Miles Standish and other Poems, edited by Henry W. Longfellow, pp. 164–​169. Boston: Ticknor & Fields, 1859. Mason, Otis T. Woman’s Share in Primitive Culture. New York: D. Appleton, 1894. McDougall, William. An Introduction to Social Psychology. Boston: J. W. Luce, 1909. Mill, John Stuart. Autobiography. New York: Henry Holt, 1873. Mora, María José, and María José Gómez-​Calderón. “The Study of Old English in America (1776–​1850): National Uses of the Saxon Past.” The Journal of English and Germanic Philology 97 (1998): 322–​336. Nasmyth, George. Social Progress and the Darwinian Theory. New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1916. Ngai, Mae M. Impossible Subjects: Illegal Aliens and the Making of Modern America. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2004. Nicolai, Georg F. The Biology of War. Translated by C. A. Grande and J. Grande. New York: Century, 1918. Pater, Walter. Appreciation: With an Essay on Style. New York: Macmillan, 1901. Philpott, Thomas Lee. The Slum and the Ghetto: Immigrants, Blacks, and Reformers in Chicago, 1880–1930. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth, 1991. Pollock, Frederick. Oxford Lectures and Other Discourses. London: Macmillan, 1890. Rambaran-​Olm, Mary. “History Bites: Resources on the Problematic Term ‘Anglo-​Saxon.’ ” https://​mramb​aran​olm.med​ium.com/​hist​ory-​bites-​resour​ces-​on-​the-​prob​lema​tic-​term -​anglo-​saxon-​part-​1-​9320b​6a09​eb7. September 7, 2020. Reports of the Immigration Commission (also known as the Dillingham Commission). Dictionary of Races or Peoples, volume 5. Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1911. “Review of Newer Ideals of Peace.” The Public 10. Chicago. (April 27, 1907): 92–​94. Rolland, Romain. Above the Battle. Translated by C. K. Ogden. London: Open Court, 1916. Sicherman, Barbara. Well-​Read Lives: How Books Inspired a Generation of American Women. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2010. Shields, Patricia M. Jane Addams: Progressive Pioneer of Peace, Philosophy, Sociology, Social Work and Public Administration. Cham, Switzerland: Springer, 2017. Spear, A. H. Black Chicago: The Making of a Negro Ghetto: 1890–​1920. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1967. Spencer, Herbert. Principles of Sociology. 2 volumes. New York: D. Appleton, 1881. “This Is the Way that ‘Devil-​Child’ Story Is Rumored.” The Day Book 3, Chicago. (October 31, 1913): 7. Trotter, Wilfred. Instincts of the Herd in Peace and War. London: T. Fisher Unwin, 1916. Webb, Sidney. Socialism in England. 2nd ed. London: S. Sonnenschein, 1893.

Addams’s Methodologies of Writing, Thinking, and Activism    523 Wilton, David. “What Do We Mean by Anglo-​Saxon? Pre-​Conquest to the Present.” Journal of English & Germanic Philology 119 (2020): 425–​54. Wundt, Wilhelm. Ethics: An Investigation of the Facts and Laws of the Moral Life. 3 volumes. Translated by Edward Bradford Titchener, Julia Henrietta Gulliver, and Margaret Floy Washburn. New York: Macmillan, 1897–​1901. Zuelzer, Wolf W. The Nicolai Case: A Biography. Detroit, MI: Wayne State University Press, 1982.

Chapter 27

Hull Hou se Ma ps a nd Papers, 18 9 5 A Feminist Research Approach to Urban Inequalities by Jane Addams and Florence Kelley Núria Font-​C asaseca

Introduction In the second half of the 19th century, industrialization transformed cities into privileged settings from which to observe the impact of large-​scale urbanization in western Europe and North America. London, Manchester, and Chicago became laboratories from which poverty and labor exploitation arose as issues of debate, study, and concern among scholars and social reformers. One such study was developed by the residents of Hull House in Chicago. The industrial city was a relatively new phenomenon in Addams’s day, and the concentration of poverty, unsanitary spaces, and new socio-​ spatial inequalities challenged existing approaches to urban problems. The strategy developed in Chicago by Hull House residents advocated for improved urban services but also used social research to challenge corruption and propose a different way to manage public administrations (Parker, 2012). One of the most relevant characteristics of the Hull House was its dual role. On the one hand, the settlement provided a variety of social services and assistance to the varied communities that had settled in one of the poorest neighborhoods of the city; many of the immigrant newcomers worked in sweatshops for very low wages. On the other hand, through the use of different research methods and strategies, the residents themselves became gradually involved in transforming the settlement into a site for experimentation where it was possible to try out new ideas in action. This chapter analyzes the elements that facilitated the social study developed by some Hull House residents between 1892 and 1895: the settlement project itself, with its

526   Núria Font-Casaseca capacity to attract a number of young, educated women with the knowledge and energy to carry out the task; the emergence of social surveys for the collection of new statistical data; and the use of maps and other visual materials as a method of studying the consequences of the industrial system in the urban context. I will also examine the work of the Hull House residents through a discussion of the volume itself, the maps that revealed the nationalities and wages of the families of the 19th Ward, and other related investigations. Finally, I will highlight some of the contributions that Addams, together with the other residents, offers with this example to researchers working in a cosmopolitan urban space today. Addams claimed the value of the diversity of nationalities present in the neighborhood and Hull House Maps and Papers (hereafter Maps & Papers) became an opportunity to visualize Hull House area as a “cosmopolitan community,” as Addams often referred to the place where the house was settled (Fischer, 2008). Maps were able to display the physical dimension of the social problems in industrial cities, which exposed them more concretely—​and more convincingly—​than statistical charts or written descriptions alone. The residents developed a sophisticated graphic method that could present a detailed picture of everyone in the area and the different conditions and problems they faced. Maps & Papers is considered to be the single most important work by American women social scientists before 1900 (Bulmer et al., 1991). Moreover, this Hull House experience resonates with contemporary attempts to develop a feminist approach to urban spaces, advancing some of the issues, concerns, and proposals that feminist scholars have been raising for decades.

The Arrival of Florence Kelley to the Hull House Settlement in 1891 Through the years, Hull House attracted a remarkable array of highly educated, experienced, and skilled researchers—​mostly women—​who were committed to investigating and improving the conditions of those living in one of the poorest districts of Chicago. At that time, women found themselves excluded from faculty positions in universities, and settlement houses had become places where women could use their college training in a socially acceptable way: by helping others (Knight, 2008). Residency at Hull House offered a space in which women’s professional careers were encouraged and promoted, especially by Addams. The importance and influence of this group of women—​as residents and also once they left the house to pursue their careers within social-​welfare agencies or in university departments—​derived significantly from the freedom they found there to decide what they wanted to be involved with and how they would participate. Addams’s openness to new ideas helped to establish the practice of collective decision-​making in the settlement with respect and creativity, and visitors and residents alike actively exchanged and discussed ideas (Schneiderhan, 2011).

Hull House Maps and Papers, 1895    527 Although Hull House was already involved in helping others, the arrival of Florence Kelley (1859–​1932) in 1891, who stayed for more than eight years, contributed to the gradual transformation of Addams’s research methods and her involvement with labor rights. At the time of her arrival, Kelley was already recognized as one of the most distinguished social reformers in the area of women’s and children’s labor exploitation (Waugh, 1982). Like Addams, she came from a distinguished background and had led a comfortable life as a child. She had also gone to college—​Cornell University—​and had spent some time in her early twenties travelling in Europe. She finished her studies in law and economics at the University of Zurich, the only European university that admitted women for graduate study. But her background and trajectory also differed from those of the other residents. Her father was a judge who had taught Kelley the importance of legislative reform in ending labor exploitation (Sklar, 1995). In Europe, she had become active in the socialist movement, and in 1884 she married a young socialist medical student from Russia; they returned to New York shortly after. Kelley was 32 years old when she arrived in Chicago with her three children to escape her abusive husband. She planned to hide there until she could get a divorce, change her name, and gain legal custody of her children under Illinois law. Meanwhile, she needed a place to stay and a way to earn a living. Addams helped her from the moment they met; she offered her a bed and a job at Hull House and arranged a safe place in Winnetka for her children to stay. Addams also created a new job for Kelley, hiring her to train unemployed girls and women in domestic work (Knight, 2008). When Kelley arrived in Chicago, she had already published many articles and pamphlets in national and international publications, mostly on the subject of children’s and women’s labor issues in New York and Philadelphia (Knight, 2008). She was closely involved with the socialist movement, and she maintained a long-​distance alliance with Friedrich Engels after having translated his work, The Condition of the Working Class in England (1887). The facts and statistics about Manchester’s population conditions that were included in the book had impressed her; she called it “a museum specimen of painstaking, laborious, precise observation” (Kelley, 1986, p. 69). Kelley’s impatience and energy sometimes created tensions in the settlement. As Francis Perkins (1954) wrote about Kelley, “explosive, hot-​tempered, determined, she was no gentle saint. She spoke accusingly and passionate when moved by the sight of what she thought of as social injustice or callous concern” (p. 18). Kelley never gave up her socialist political convictions, which became a point of intellectual tension with Addams and the other residents. As she explained to Richard T. Ely during the process of publishing the book, “I personally participate in the work of social reform because part of it develops along Socialist lines. . . . Not because our Hull House work alone would satisfy me” (Kelley, 2009, p. 74). In fact, discussions between Kelley and Lathrop were frequent in the house, but Addams enjoyed them as the exchange of ideas remained for her a favorite method of connecting with others (Knight, 2008). Despite their different characters, Addams was also inspired and challenged by her initiative and determination, and she found Kelley’s decisiveness appealing. Addams recalled Kelley’s first winter in Hull House, how “we all felt the stimulus of her magnetic

528   Núria Font-Casaseca personality” (Knight, 2008, p. 236). Kelley, meanwhile, admired and loved Addams all her life, in particular for a quality Kelley felt was lacking in herself—​her “steady, generous-​spirited unflappability” (Knight, 2008, p. 237). Julia Lathrop reported that Kelley and Addams “understood each other’s powers” instantly and that they worked together in a “wonderfully effective way” (Sklar, 1995, p. 183). They developed a strong long-​term friendship and helped each other with their projects and drafts. When Paul Kellogg of Charities asked Addams, some years after, to review Kelley’s Some Ethical Gains through Legislation, published ten years after Maps & Papers, Addams stated how “[r]‌eviewing Mrs. Kelley’s book is almost like reviewing a book of my own, so closely do I feel identified with her undertakings and her ideas” (Fischer 2019, p. 45). In fact, publication of Maps & Papers was possible thanks to the direct involvement of Addams into the editorial work. There were some moments in which the book’s publication was at risk, especially considering the high cost incurred from publishing the maps. When publisher Thomas Crowell suggested to reduce the size of the maps, after a long delay, Kelley responded furiously to Ely. A conciliatory Addams took control and offered to waive the book’s royalties in order to reduce the maps’ expenses. She also justified Kelley’s anger by external causes from her work as factory inspector (Bulmer et al., 1991). Both Addams and Kelley were clear, however, about the importance of publishing the maps with enough quality and in time. Addams wrote to Ely in 1895, who was overseeing the edition, worried as “the Jewish population is rapidly moving Northward, and all the conditions are of course, more or less, unlike they were July 1, 1893 when the data for the maps was finished” (Sklar, 1991, p. 137). With Kelley’s involvement in the settlement’s activities, Hull House became more deeply engaged in supporting the labor movement; it also began to attract other women who were interested in these issues (Sklar, 1991). Although Addams, Starr, and Lathrop had been shocked in the beginning by the poverty, density, and working conditions of the people living in the neighborhood, Kelley’s energy and determination helped to transform Hull House into a place that would aim not only to alleviate some of the experiences of their neighbors, but also to fight for causes that could bring change. As Addams pointed out (1935), Kelley “galvanized us all into [a]‌more intelligent interest in the industrial conditions all around us. She was especially concerned for the abolition of child labor and the sweating system” (p. 116). On the other hand, Addams used her influence to discuss in public the importance of the laws against the sweating system and how legislation could benefit the workers, in particular children and women. As she recalled in 1910, referring to the child labor law passed in 1903, “I addressed as many mother’s meetings and clubs among working women as I could, in order to make clear the object of the law and the ultimate benefit to themselves, as well as to their children” (Addams, 1910, 347). Maps & Papers helped Addams to discover the effectiveness of using data and maps as a strategic political tool to address the problems of the people living in the area, although for Addams action and applicability would remain more important than scientific accuracy to test the value of information (Hamington, 2010). The next few years, the residents continued producing a series of surveys, maps, and reports that laid a

Hull House Maps and Papers, 1895    529 solid foundation for compelling case for municipal reform while revealing how money, power, and corruption worked together in the construction of a social geography of inequality in Chicago (Platt, 2000).

Data Collection and Maps to Study Urban Poverty and Labor Exploitation During the last decades of the 19th century, the social survey became a major tool for social investigation, closely linked with public policy and social reform and carried out by both public administrations and individuals or groups who held a common desire to investigate society on a more systematic basis (Bulmer et al., 1991). These studies complemented other official data sources; they used statistics and other methods, such as photography, maps, interviews, and descriptions, to increase public awareness around the negative effects of urban industrialization and to pressure governments to promote social change and legislation for the reduction of inequality and exploitation. Although they involved a great diversity of motivations and scales of analysis, most social surveys focused on the importance of fieldwork and the collection of firsthand data by each investigator, as well as a focus on individual, rather than aggregated, data. For this reason, these studies were often conducted in specific areas rather than attempting to cover entire cities or regions. Kelley’s arrival at Hull House coincided with an increase in public concern regarding unregulated industrial working conditions in the United States. With Addams’s help she obtained employment outside the settlement, an appointment with the Illinois Bureau of Labor Statistics that required her to collect data about the working conditions in sweatshops and gave the residents the opportunity to gain deeper knowledge about labor exploitation in Chicago. As Kelley wrote to Engels a few months after her arrival at Hull House, “I am living in the colony . . . conducting a bureau of women’s labour and learning more in a week, of the actual conditions of proletarian life in America than in any previous year” (Kelley, 2009, p. 58). Kelley used some of the data she collected through this work to prepare a report for the Illinois Bureau of Labor Statistics (1893), in which she argued that sweatshop working conditions where the result of an unregulated industrial process that focused on the benefits of the subdivision of labor. She identified three types of clothing industry shops: “inside” shops or factories, in which garment manufacturing took place in a building under supervision; “outside” shops, in which small spaces were contracted to do the manufacturing; and finally “tenement” or “finishers” workers, who sewed garments in their homes—​those in this last group endured the worst working conditions. While American-​born and English-​speaking workers had been able to improve conditions in the larger clothing factories, the introduction of the sweating system for some parts of the manufacturing process had worsened conditions for unorganized

530   Núria Font-Casaseca workers, especially those who were less skilled, foreign born, or not fluent in English. Sweaters rented cheap spaces in tenements and employed immigrant workers, mostly women and children, to do piecework for very low wages. Her report was used by some unions to stir public interest in the problem and to pressure politicians for legislative change. The public pressure resulted in the first Illinois Factory and Inspection Act, which was drafted by Kelley and was passed in 1893 (Schultz, 2007). The act required a separation between workshops and living areas, prohibited the employment of children below age 14, limited daily working hours for women to 8 per day and 48 per week, and increased the enforcement powers of factory inspectors; it remained active until 1895, when the Illinois Association of Manufacturers succeeded in having the law repealed. During those months, the residents also worked to persuade the City Council and the Chicago Board of Education to build a new school for the 19th Ward. They had a relational understanding of labor exploitation: children worked because they were cheap workers, but also because there was no place in the schools for them. Using data from the census to compare the figures for school-​aged children in the ward and the schools’ enrollment capacities, the Illinois Woman’s Alliance prepared a report titled The Condition of Public Schools in Chicago to pressure public opinion and politicians about the issue (Knight, 2008, p. 243). Addams continued advocating in the following years for public education and claimed the importance of having reliable statistics on child labor and attendance in schools in a short article titled The operation of the Illinois Child Labor Law, where she proposed how one way to overcome the missing statistics was to analyze the educational tests required in all schools by the same law (Addams, 1906a). Kelley was recommended in 1893 to be appointed the first factory inspector in the state of Illinois. She had a staff of 11 women and men, which included two Hull House residents. Alzina Stevens (1849–​1900), who wrote a chapter of the Maps & Papers with Kelley, had started working in a local textile company at the age of 13 and lost a finger in a factory accident. An active trade unionist, Stevens became a resident of Hull House in 1892; she was one of the few residents who had firsthand experience of working-​class life. The other resident with such a background was Mary Kenney (1864–​1943), who had experience in factory work and had been a committed trade-​union organizer before her arrival at Hull House in Chicago. Kenney had helped Addams in 1891 to establish the Jane Club, a cooperative house for working girls where they shared food, quarters, and services. With secure homes and social networks, these young workers were more likely to hold firm with their strike requests. Before taking her position as factory inspector, however, the commissioner of labor named Kelley as the head of a team of “schedule men” (government investigators) as part of a national study of slum areas in selected American cities. Originally, the appointment called for to investigate all cities that had more than 200,000 residents, but due to the effort involved in the data collection, the scope of the work was narrowed to four small areas in Baltimore, Philadelphia, New York, and Chicago (Wright et al., 1894). Kelley was asked to select the area of Chicago to be studied, and she proposed Chicago’s 19th Ward. Kelley’s choice was not by chance; the residents of Hull House took

Hull House Maps and Papers, 1895    531 advantage of their direct knowledge of the area to be analyzed, while also gaining access to data that aided them in improving their knowledge of the ward and its problems. For Kelley, it was a golden opportunity. It offered her the chance to continue her campaign against sweatshops and labor exploitation, while providing her with an income to support herself and her children. Data were compiled by four agents from the Bureau of Labor who worked under Kelley’s supervision; the agents examined “each house, tenement, and room” in the district and submitted all tenement and family schedules to Kelley on a daily basis (Holbrook, 1895, p. 7). The Hull House residents decided to make copies of the data before they were forwarded to the commissioner of labor in Washington. It was a clever strategy. The data collected by the agents was detailed and offered the residents enough information to prepare two sets of maps that demonstrated the spatial distribution of wages and nationalities in the district. The residents had also planned to prepare a third map showing unemployment data, because they knew how one of the main problems of the people living on the Ward was how to save money for the unemployed weeks they faced every year (Bulmer et al., 1991). The idea of the maps was directly inspired by the Charles Booth’s social survey of London. Booth, an English businessman, was concerned about the inadequacy of the statistical data available to contribute to an understanding of the scope of the problem, and he carried out an exhaustive social survey in London that employed both secondary data sources and direct observation. One of the methods he used were maps, which he published, divided into four sheets, as part of his study Life and Labour of the People in London (Booth, 1889). He used color to classify each street according to the social class or income of their inhabitants, and areas with high concentrations of poverty were seen as a risk for the whole society. Besides Booth’s maps and the Hull House maps, another notable early social survey that was directly connected and inspired by the one in Chicago was W. E. B. Du Bois’s study, The Philadelphia Negro, in 1899. These initial social cartographies offered a detailed picture of the complexities of the living spaces of industrial cities, and they were a direct influence for the University of Chicago’s Sociology Department, which borrowed their mapping techniques (Deegan, 1990). These three cartographic experiences remain interesting today because they recorded data at the scale of buildings or streets rather than using the now most frequently used choropleth map. Choropleth maps shade geographical or administrative areas according to data averages, obscuring the internal diversity in each area.

Maps of Nationalities and Wages in the Nineteenth Ward of Chicago Several weeks after the study of Chicago’s “slum” was completed, the residents began preparing the maps. While Florence Kelley was responsible for collecting the data, much

532   Núria Font-Casaseca of the design and drawing work for the maps was done by a recent college graduate from Wellesley College named Agnes Sinclair Holbrook, who became a resident of Hull House in February 1893 (Lohr, 2020). Shortly after finishing the volume, she moved to California and earned a master’s degree in education from Stanford University, but due to health problems, she passed away on October 31, 1896, only six days after her 29th birthday. Hull House gave Holbrook the freedom to “learn as well as to teach, to follow as well as to lead, to accept and develop new ideas as well as test one’s own” (Holbrook 1894, p. 174). Holbrook’s background in mathematics, science, and visual arts equipped her to translate the social statistics collected for the study into a visual form through the maps, and Kelley recounted her “accuracy, patience and deftness,” which “rendered feasible what had seemed an impossible task” (Schultz, 2007, p. 7). Although she took no public credit for designing or constructing the maps, her introductory chapter in the book, titled “Map Notes and Comments,” explains in detail the complex choices behind the data displays and other relevant information that was needed to present the maps and the reality they were intended to represent. The elaboration of the maps represented a major volunteer effort on the part of the Hull House residents. The statistical data for each map was transferred, in color, to outline cadastral maps that had been prepared by the Greeley-​Carlson Company “for the present purpose” (Holbrook, 1895, p. 8). The base map showed the combination of multiple land uses in the district, while the street names and house numbers helped to identify the location of each building. Only the dwellings were presented in color, while the rest of the buildings were left blank (factories, stores, etc.). The maps revealed that most of the people who lived in the area resided within about 30 small blocks between Halsted and the river; east of the river were five residential blocks adjacent to the vice (or brothel) district. The residents choose to construct two sets of maps divided in four parts: the first on nationalities (Figure 27.1) and the second on wages (Figure 27.2). The nationality of adults was recorded by their place of birth, while children under 10 only took the nationality of their parents if they did not attend public schools. They classified the nationality of each individual into 14 different groups and colors. They blended diverse nationalities according to similarities by race, language group, or religion. For the wage maps, they established five separate classes to represent the total earnings per week per family. The poorest category (black) represented an average weekly family income of $5 or less and included paupers and elderly people living “with their friends” (Holbrook, 1895, pp. 22–​23). For the wage maps, they used brown to represent missing data and white to indicate brothels (only present in the wage map number 4); these were mainly located east of the river. The residents classified these activities separately “both because their numbers and whereabouts are of importance,” and because it would be “unfortunate” to “confuse them with labouring-​people by estimating their incomes in the same way” (Holbrook, 1895, p. 23). They used the comparison of both maps to explain some details about their origin: “Few of the girls are entered on the schedules as Chicago-​born, and the great majority come from the central-​eastern States. There are many colored women among them, and in some houses the whites and blacks are mixed” (Holbrook, 1895, p. 23). In 1912, Addams published A New Conscience and Ancient Evil, where she continued

Hull House Maps and Papers, 1895    533

Figure 27.1.  Nationalities map showing Polk to 12th Street and Halsted to Jefferson Source: p. 1, HH_​Nat_​Ma_​01, Seven Settlement Houses digital image collection. Special Collections and University Archives, University of Illinois at Chicago.

Figure 27.2.  Wage map showing Polk to 12th Street and Halsted to Jefferson Source: p. 1, HH_​Wage_​Ma_​01, Seven Settlement Houses digital image collection. Special Collections and University Archives, University of Illinois at Chicago.

534   Núria Font-Casaseca addressing the issue of prostitution in Chicago and describing the struggles of young women in the big cities. Despite the similarities between the Hull House maps and the ones prepared by Booth in London, some of the choices the residents made in representing the district’s distribution of wages and nationalities are worthy of mention. Although the wages maps were clearly inspired by Booth’s maps, the nationalities map was an innovation that represents one of the first cartographic attempts to represent immigration spatial patterns in the United States (Vaughan, 2018). Through a great level of detail, the maps provided an astonishing picture of an “immigrant quarter” in an industrial city, preceding and inspiring the mapping efforts made by the School of Chicago of Sociology in the following years to study, from an ecological approach, the establishment of the different communities along the different areas of the city (Owens, 2012). The decision to represent the nationalities of the district derived from the population growth the city had experienced during those years. In 1890, nearly 80% of Chicago’s population had been born in a foreign country or were children of immigrants, and many of them suffered low wages and labor exploitation due to their nationality and, in particular, their lack of English skills (Lohr, 2020). When combined, the two maps offer a relational view of which ethnic groups were obtaining the lowest wages. They also revealed when people of different nationalities or wage classes lived in the same building, as the map proportionally represented all the values, not “to the size of their houses or rooms, but (in the birthplace map) to the number of individuals, and (in the wage map) to the number of families” (Holbrook, 1895, p. 8). The use of building lots rather than streets as basic units made it possible for Kelley and Holbrook to proportionally represent the data in much finer geographic detail than in Booth’s maps. They were able to show the distribution and proportion of each nationality as well as the average wages of the people living in each building, though they could not express the overall population density of the Ward. As Holbrook explained, the exact figures could be read in their report on the slums, but the value of the maps for “suggesting just how members of various nationalities are grouped and disposed, and just what rates of wages are received in the different streets and sections’ was clear and it was a great help in ‘furnishing points for and against the restriction of immigration” (Holbrook, 1895, p. 9). Their direct knowledge of the difficult conditions faced by those living in poor neighborhoods helped them understand the causes and potential solutions for the problems they observed. It also allowed them to go beyond their preconceptions regarding life in and the problems of the area that were hidden behind the street façades.

Hull House Maps and Papers, by the Residents of Hull House Maps & Papers was conceived as a way to publicize and denounce the social and economic conditions of the people living in the 19th Ward (Schultz, 2007). The volume was

Hull House Maps and Papers, 1895    535 published as part of a book series, Library on Economics and Politics, edited by Richard Ely of the University of Wisconsin. The residents decided to prepare the two sets of maps that would correlate the nationalities and wages in a part of the 19th Ward, and they tried to decide what else to include in the volume. The notes from a residents’ meeting held in August 1893 recorded the question, “What is to go with the maps?” (Knight, 2008, p. 275). In the end, the volume comprised ten essays that addressed different topics. Some of them drew from expanded versions of the research papers presented by Kelley, Addams, Lathrop, Stevens, and Starr at the Chicago Congress on Social Settlements the previous year, as well as others that had been prepared for the occasion by residents or representatives of some of the nationalities living in the ward. The inclusion of some of these texts, especially those that had no relation to the research or the approaches developed by the residents, demonstrated the group’s interest in including other perspectives and to allow some of the ethnic groups living in the area to speak for themselves (Bulmer et al., 1991). Addams was the overseer of the entire project. She edited the essays and wrote the introduction and the appendix. She also decided on the title of the resulting volume, Hull-​House Maps and Papers: A Presentation of Nationalities and Wages in a Congested District of Chicago, Together with Comments and Essays on Problems Growing Out of the Social Conditions. She was “very proud of the appearance of the child,” as she wrote to those to whom she sent copies after the volume was published (Knight, 2008, p. 327). The volume was a collaborative work, and they decided to author it as the “residents of Hull House”; each author, however, was responsible for the statements that appeared over their own signature. Although the residents were aware of the interest the maps and essays could represent for the “constantly increasing body of sociological students more widely scattered” (Holbrook, 1895, p. 11), the volume was focused on social action rather than academic scholarship. As Addams (1895) wrote in the prefatory note, the value of their contribution was the “immediacy” and “long acquaintance” they all had after having resided for more than five years at Hull House, and therefore, their efforts were directed “to constructive work” (p. vii). One of the main interests for the publication was to support Kelley’s efforts in the anti-​sweatshop campaign, which can be clearly deduced by the way the different ethnic groups were represented in the book and by the group’s decision to combine two sets of maps that demonstrated the correlation between nationalities and wages. Of the ten contributors to the volume, all but two were female, and the resulting volume offers a partial overview of the neighborhood that takes advantage of the diverse talents and previous experience of the authors: Kelley’s knowledge of statistics, law, and labor conditions; Holbrook’s interest in data display and design; and Addams’s and other residents’ availabilities and interests (Sklar, 1991). The first chapter describes how the maps had been prepared, the problems they faced, and the main characteristics of the districts each map represented. The other essays addressed topics that included the district’s sweatshops, wage-​earning children, cloak-​makers, and immigrants’ groups in the vicinity of the social settlement or Cook County Charities. Starr and Addams prepared Maps & Papers’ final chapters, which included photographs of the settlement and provided a summary of Hull House’s

536   Núria Font-Casaseca accomplishments since its opening. Both of Kelley’s chapters, “The Sweating System” and “Wage-​Earning Children”—​the latter having been written with Alzina Stevens—​ dealt with sweatshop working conditions and their effects on the workers’ health. Their first essay was written shortly after the Workshop and Factories Act went into effect, and Kelley described some of the results of the act and its enforcement, in which she had played a major role. Although she highlighted the reduction of children working in shops and the partially successful separation of homes from work spaces, she also pointed out the act’s limitations in improving the working conditions of garment-​ industry employees in general, as well as the reasons industrials continued to overlook the harmful effects of the shops’ working conditions (Kelley, 1895). While sweatshops were found in all parts of the city, the chapter focused on the 19th Ward, where it reported 162 shops that employed men, women, and children under unsanitary conditions and were located in the worst and most crowded tenement houses in the ward. In their essay on “Wage-​ Earning Children,” Kelley and Stevens (1895) offered arguments against the possible benefits of tenement workshops, in particular for women and children. Some defenders of the sweating workshops argued that tenement work was a great aid for widows with children, as such work allowed them to earn an income without leaving their young children alone and that the children could learn a useful skill for their future (Schultz, 2007). Through their experience as inspectors, they discuss the effects of work on children’s health, especially as they tended to be employed in occupations that entailed dangerous and toxic conditions. They also made a case for the need for better data on the issue, pointing out that the 1890 census was missing data on child labor due to false return figures from both employers and parents who were ashamed of the practice. Kelley and Steven’s chapter demolishes any argument for the potential value of children’s work and denounces the effects of such work on children, using graphic comparisons of children’s measurements working in diverse industries.

A Mixed-​Methods Approach to Fight Labor Exploitation and Urban Inequalities The settlement movement in Chicago enabled a generation of college-​trained women to explore their limits as researchers and professionals in diverse areas. Addams and Kelley were protagonists, not only in the spread of new forms of analysis in the study of labor exploitation and urban inequality in industrial cities, but also in employing them as a social reform tool. Working alongside the district’s people, as well as with citizen organizations committed to social change and urban justice, the residents found in Hull House the opportunity to practice and develop new methodologies and approaches more independently than would have been possible within universities’ political climates at the time (Sklar, 1991).

Hull House Maps and Papers, 1895    537 One important lesson from the residents’ experience is their purposeful attitude toward the production and collection of data. They used external sources of data when it was available, but they also worked to produce new data if it could be useful to their reform agenda. They took advantage of their proximity to the problems, which gave them, as Lathrop explained, “the power to obtain information upon any specific matter, when it is needed, which a stranger could hardly gain” (Stuart, 2018, p. 383). A substantial amount of Kelley’s time as a Chicago public employee was dedicated to collecting data on the working conditions of children, women, and workers in general, and in many cases, she took the initiative to propose the type of research and data to pursue, as well as the areas of study (Sklar, 1995). As Addams (1910) explained, “there was at that time no statistical information on Chicago industrial conditions, and Mrs. Florence Kelley, an early resident of Hull House, suggested to the Illinois State Bureau of Labor that they investigate the sweating system in Chicago with its attendant child labor” (p. 150). Maps & Papers was also one of the first attempts to systematically study urban problems using a mixed-​methods approach, and they used a combination of statistics, graphics, maps, photography, descriptions, or theoretical essays (Cersosimo, 2021). They also used triangulation as a strategy to compensate the weakness of each single method by the strengths of another (Rose, 1993). Not only did they have data about each individual house and person, instead of just a sample, but also in many cases “the reports obtained from one person were corroborated by many others and statements from different workers at the same trades and occupations, as to wages and unemployed seasons, served as mutual confirmation” (Holbrook, 1895, pp. 11–​12). Their approach was capable of going beyond the quantitative/​qualitative dualism that has been prevalent in social research (Kwan, 2002). As present feminist geographers claim, the rigid nature of the categories used in research to represent society may fail to reflect the complex reality of human experiences. Differing phenomena and circumstances could be lumped together in statistics and maps as if they were equal, and databases have difficulties reflecting informal activities, such as things outside the norm or changes over time (Kwan, 2002). Hull House residents were well aware of these problems when they were preparing the maps and the volume, particularly when they tried to explain the complexity of defining what constitutes a family in an industrial district of Chicago. They understood their research to be a compromise, and therefore, they complemented the maps with descriptions that outlined the ambiguity inherent to their classification scheme. They defined each household as “head, wife, children, and such parents, brothers, cousins and other relatives as live in the same dwelling” (Holbrook, 1895, p. 20). It was not easy, however, to identify independent households, as in many cases, several families used a common cooking stove, and the only constant factor, beyond the “tie of kinship,” seemed to be the occupancy of the same tenement at night. Even this aspect was not always clear, as a large proportion of families on the west side of the district kept boarders, who were ranked on the survey as self-​supporting individuals. Holbrook (1895) clarified how everyone in the district participated according to their capability in the familiar economy, and the concept of household in relation to productive work in the district should consider the role played by each member as both “sources

538   Núria Font-Casaseca of income as well as avenues of expense” (p. 21). If we understand work to be all of the contributions made toward household survival, as the residents did, we could overcome the dichotomy that often excludes and divides work into private and public spheres. The use of the household as the basic unit of analysis where both production and consumption take place provides an important context in understanding how the domestic scale is connected to broader social and economic structures (Samamsinghe, 1997). Accurate data and statistics were crucial tools for the Hull House residents, because they provided useful knowledge to influence public opinion and public policy makers. In 1892, while Kelley was collecting data about sweatshops for the Bureau of Labor, the residents also directed their efforts toward the collection of new data regarding garbage removal or Chicago’s schools. The lack of funding for public services in rapidly growing cities like Chicago, together with some contract irregularities, had led to inadequate garbage removal from the streets. In the summer of 1892, some of the citizens decided to address the problem, and they organized women’s ward clubs all over the city to collect written complaints about poor garbage removal and forwarded them to the city health department; they reported 1,037 complaints in the 19th Ward alone (Knight, 2008). Some months later, Addams would be appointed the city’s first female garbage inspector and become directly involved in the improvement of the garbage-​removal contracts. Addams used different kinds of data to transform social science into her political weapon. Shortly after the publication of Maps & Papers, she started a systematic approach to improve the conditions of the people living on the area and the housing problems in Chicago and prepared a report on the tenement house conditions in Chicago (Addams, 1902). The research, prepared together with some professors and civic leaders in 1901, used statistics, maps, and pictures to demonstrate how nearly 40% of the city’s inhabitants lived in substandard conditions and also revealed the strategies used by the landlords and municipal authorities to construct a social geography of inequality in some parts of Chicago. When shortly after a typhoid epidemic clustered mysteriously in the ward, Addams undertook another door-​to-​door survey and prepared a map showing the distribution of the typhoid fever deaths, in an effort to link the incidence of the disease with the sanitary and environmental situation of the city’s water supply (Platt, 2000).

Concluding Remarks: Addams’s Strategies for a Feminist Approach to Urban Research In the introduction of Maps & Papers, Addams rejects the idea of understanding the settlement as a sociological laboratory. Instead of the detached view of knowledge that was gaining strength in the universities, Hull House became a site for experimentation, a place to try out ideas in action favored by Addams’s willingness to accept failure

Hull House Maps and Papers, 1895    539 while testing new approaches (Shields, 2006). As contemporary urban researchers have denounced, cities have often been built, theorized, and narrated by non-​feminists (Kwan, 2002). In many aspects, Maps & Papers exemplifies how social researchers can enrich their own methods when they use a feminist approach to social research, especially their reflexive approach toward their own methods and data collection. The inclusion of reflexivity as a research strategy has played a central role in the work of feminist researchers (England, 1994); it recognizes the partiality of scientific knowledge; problematizes the power relationships between researchers and the object of study; focuses on introducing diversity, difference, and intersectionality in debates (Valentine, 2007); and denounces the socially constructed character of social categories and their effects (Kobayashi, 1997). A key contribution of feminist thinking has been to recognize how a multiplicity of voices, rather than one single scientific or technical voice, often results in a more complete picture of the issue at hand. Addams was a precursor to contemporary “feminist standpoint epistemology,” acknowledging how her philosophy derived from her social, political, and historical position (Strobel, 2015). Although she recognized the value of living and experiencing the same conditions of the people they were trying to help, she was careful about speaking for others and recognized the importance of using education to give voice to those oppressed and exploited. As she explained, “I never addressed a Chicago audience on the subject of the Settlement and its vicinity without inviting a neighbour to go with me, that I might curb my hasty generalization by the consciousness that I had an auditor who knew the conditions more intimately than I could hope to do” (Addams, 1910, p. 82). Addams argued that the construction of a robust democracy required community members willing to learn and care for others, and her ethical philosophy was guided by the notion of “sympathetic knowledge,” an inclusive approach that reassesses the relationship between knowledge and ethics (Hamington, 2009). She understood the role of the settlement as a dynamic and open project that needed flexibility and “readiness to change its methods as its environment may demand” (Addams, 1938, p. 126). Her proposal was to be ready to experiment and test different solutions, but always with a deep sense of tolerance and a “sympathetic” approach to knowledge. Addams was skeptical about municipal reformers that held firm to the correctness of their solutions while at the same time being disconnected from the citizens and their experiences (Shields, 2006). She proposed to understand the role of public administration in industrial cities incorporating a civic housekeeping perspective, a perspective that used the abilities women have developed caring for the home. Public health was threatened not only by inadequate sanitation or corrupt garbage-​collection systems, but also by a limited understanding of city-​management duties. In her poster titled Women and Public Housekeeping, written by Addams and distributed in 1913 to promote women’s suffrage, Addams contrasted her notion of the city as household with the male militant view of city as citadel and claimed the value of including women in public life (Haslanger, 2016). She argued that if the city were conceived as a household in need of continuous

540   Núria Font-Casaseca housekeeping, cleanliness, and caring, many of its problems would be coherently addressed and rectified (Shields, 2006). Early women reformers, like Addams and the other residents, lobbied for working rights and solutions to public-​health issues, shedding light on unsanitary working and living conditions—​especially for immigrants (Spain 2001). They also revealed one possible path to transform cities into safe, sanitary, caring, and domesticated environments through the provision of basic infrastructure and social services that enabled social reproduction at multiple sites and scales (Morrow & Parker, 2020). Hayden (1982) labelled their type of approach “material feminism,” because they addressed women’s material needs, reimagining cities built upon creativity, collectivity, and care. Addams advocated what might be called “socializing care,” systemically instantiating the habits and practices of care in social institutions (Hamington, 2004). Moreover, their research exemplifies the value of relationality for urban research. One of the key points of recent feminist urban research has been to uncover the dangers of the reification of scale that can lead us to see the national or the global as somehow exogenous to the local and the personal (Fincher & Jacobs, 1998). On the contrary, we need to increase our awareness of the complexity of causal processes, as inequalities are locally as well as globally constructed across different temporal and spatial scales (Massey, 2005; Parker, 2016). Maps & Papers reflected Addams’s proposal to consider the dependence of classes as “reciprocal” (Addams, 1893). She saw the industrialized city as a complex organic whole where each inhabitant, despite their role, origin, or characteristics, was completely interdependent (Fischer, 2008). At the same time, the focus on the local scale helped Addams to understand concepts and abstractions as embedded manifestations from where to observe the effects that global dynamics had on individual lives (Dorstewitz, 2016). For example, the study of working conditions in sweatshops helped them to understand the hidden aspects of the entire industrial society and also to overcome the disconnections created by class and race in cities (Hamington, 2004). For Kelley (1914) assessing the conditions and dangers of industrial production demanded constant vigilance, as the “characteristic of modern industry is incessant change” (p. 55). Their dissection of the sweating system demonstrated not only that sweatshop workers were being exploited, but also how the spread of these practices as a method of reducing manufacturing costs also weakened the position of all skilled factory workers (Clark & Foster, 2006). Accordingly, the fight against the consequences of this type of work required measures at different scales and levels, including legislative, social, and educational, as problems were not “confined” to any one portion of a city (Addams, 1910). As a research document, Maps & Papers has its own limitations. As Addams explained, some residents referred to it as the “First Jumble Book,” because it concerned itself with so many different matters (Addams, 1906b, p. 12). Overall, however, it represents a pioneer research experience in urban sociology, although not always recognized as such (Deegan, 1988). The volume and the maps were conceived as a way of exposing both the problems and the efforts needed to improve the situation. They also offered the opportunity to listen different points of view and recognize the partiality of scientific knowledge.

Hull House Maps and Papers, 1895    541 Their approach is an inspiration for those who research social urban spaces from the perspective of reflecting the complexity and richness of city life. The methods used by the Hull House residents along the years constitute an inspiring pioneer example of the use of maps and statistics to understand and solve social problems. Maps & Papers exemplifies how Addams approached 19th-​century urban problems, through a scientific attitude, a sympathetic understanding, and an openness to test different solutions in community. Her approach to urban social research can be an inspiration to rethink our strategies toward urban problematics and their effectiveness in transforming our cities into safe and inclusive spaces.

References Addams, J. (1893). The subjective necessity for social settlements. In Henry C. Adams (Ed.), Philanthropy and Social Progress (pp. 1–​26). Thomas Y. Crowell & Company. Addams, J. (1895). Prefatory note. In Residents of Hull-​House (Eds.), Hull-​House Maps and Papers (pp. vii–​viii). Thomas Y. Crowell & Co. Addams, J. (1902). The housing problem in Chicago. The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 20 (1), 99–​107. Addams, J. (1906a). The operation of the Illinois child labor law. The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 27 (2), 69–​72. Addams, J (1906b). Jane Addams’s own story of her work: The first fifteen years at Hull-​House. Ladies’ Home Journal (April 23), 11–​12. Addams, J. (1938/​1910). Twenty Years at Hull House. New York Macmillan. Addams, J. (1910b). “Autobiographical Notes Upon Twenty Years at Hull-​House: Problems of Poverty,” American Magazine 70, July, 338–​348. Addams, J. (1912). A new conscience and an ancient evil. Macmillan. Addams, J. (1935). My friend, Julia Lathrop. Macmillan. Booth, C. (1889). Labour and life of the people, Vol. 1: East London (2nd ed). Williams and Norgate. Bulmer, M., Bales, K., & Sklar, K. K. (Eds.). (1991). The social survey in historical perspective, 1880–​1940. Cambridge University Press. Cersosimo, G. (2021). Women, research and methods. A short reflection on the Chicago social reformers. Italian Sociological Review, 11 (3), 951–​966. http://​dx.doi.org/​10.13136/​isr .v11i3.503 Clark, B., & Foster, J. B. (2006). Florence Kelley and the struggle against the degradation of life: An introduction to a selection from modern industry. Organization & Environment, 19 (2), 251–​263. https://​doi.org/​10.1177/​10860​2660​6288​224 Deegan, M. J. (1988). Jane Addams and the men of the Chicago School, 1892–​1918. Transaction Books. Deegan, M. J. (1990). Jane Addams and the men of the Chicago School, 1892–​1918. Transaction Books. Dorstewitz, P. (2016). Imagining social transformations: Territory making and the project of radical pragmatism. Contemporary Pragmatism 13 (4), 361–​381. https://​doi.org/​10.1163/​18758​ 185-​01304​002 Du Bois, W. E. B. (1899). The Philadelphia negro. Ginn & Co.

542   Núria Font-Casaseca Engels, F. (1887). The condition of the working-​class in England in 1844. English translation by F. K. W. John W. Lovell. England, K. V. L. (1994). Getting personal: Reflexivity, positionality, and feminist research. The Professional Geographer 46, 80–​89. https://​doi.org/​10.1111/​j.0033-​0124.1994.00080.x Fincher, R., & Jacobs, V. (Eds.). (1998). Cities of difference. Guilford Press. Fischer, M. (2008). Jane Addams. In J. R. Shook & J. Margolis (Eds.), A Companion to Pragmatism (pp. 79–​86). John Wiley & Sons. Fischer, M. (2019). Jane Addams’s evolutionary theorizing. University of Chicago Press. Haslanger, S. (2016). Epistemic housekeeping and the philosophical canon: A reflection on Jane Addams’ “Women and Public Housekeeping.” In E. Schliesser (Ed.), Ten Neglected Philosophical Classics (pp. 148–​176). Oxford University Press. Hamington, M. (2004). Embodied care: Jane Addams, Maurice Merleau-​Ponty, and feminist ethics. University of Illinois Press. Hamington, M. (2009). The social philosophy of Jane Addams. University of Illinois Press. Hamington, M. (2010). Feminist interpretations of Jane Addams. Penn State Press. Holbrook, Agnes Sinclair. (1894). Hull House. The Wellesley Magazine 2 (4), 171–​180. Hayden, Dolores. (1982). The grand domestic revolution: A history of feminist designs for American homes, neighborhoods, and cities. MIT Press. Holbrook, Agnes Sinclair. (1895). Map notes and comments. In residents of Hull-​House (Eds.), Hull-​House Maps and Papers (pp. 3–​23). Thomas Y. Crowell & Co. Illinois Bureau of Labor Statistics. (1893). Seventh biennial report of the Bureau of Labor Statistics. H. W. Rokker. Kelley, F. (1895). The sweating-​system. In Residents of Hull-​House (Eds.), Hull-​House Maps and Papers (pp. 27–​49). Thomas Y. Crowell & Co. Kelley, F. (1914). Modern industry: In relation to the family, health, education, morality. Longmans, Green, and Co. Kelley, F. (1986). The autobiography of Florence Kelley: Notes of sixty years. Edited and introduced by Kathryn Kish Sklar. Published for the Illinois Labor History Society. Charles H. Kerr Publishing Company. Kelley, F. (2009). The selected letters of Florence Kelley, 1869–​1931. University of Illinois Press. Kelley, F., & Stevens, A. P (1895). Wage-​earning children. In residents of Hull-​House (Eds.), Hull-​House Maps and Papers (pp. 49–​79). Thomas Y. Crowell & Co. Knight, L. W. (2008). Citizen: Jane Addams and the struggle for democracy. University of Chicago Press. Kobayashi, A. (1997). The paradox of difference and diversity (or, why the threshold keeps moving). In John Paul Jones, Heidi J. Nast, & Susan M. Roberts (Eds.), Thresholds in Feminist Geography: Difference, Methodology, and Representation (pp. 3–​9). Rowman & Littlefield Publishers. Kwan, M. P. (2002). Quantitative methods and feminist geographic research. In John Paul Jones, Heidi J. Nast, & Susan M. Roberts (Eds.), Thresholds in Feminist Geography: Difference, Methodology, and Representation (pp. 160–​173). Blackwell. Lohr, S. (2020). Data and display decisions for the Hull-​House maps: Part 4. https://​www.sha​ ronl​ohr.com/​blog/​2020/​7/​10/​hull-​house-​maps-​data-​decisi​ons Massey, D. (2005). For space. SAGE. Morrow, O., & Parker, B. (2020). Care, commoning and collectivity: From grand domestic revolution to urban transformation. Urban Geography 41 (4), 607–​624.

Hull House Maps and Papers, 1895    543 Owens, B. R. (2012). Mapping the city: Innovation and continuity in the Chicago School of Sociology, 1920–​1934. The American Sociologist 43 (3), 264–​293. https://​doi.org/​10.1007/​s12​ 108-​012-​9160-​7 Parker, B. (2012). Gender, cities, and planning. In R. Crane & R. Weber (Eds.), Oxford Handbook of Urban Planning. Oxford University Press. Parker, B. (2016). Feminist forays in the city: Imbalance and intervention in urban research methods. Antipode 48 (5), 1337–​1358. https://​doi.org/​10.1111/​anti.12241 Perkins, F. (1954). My recollections of Florence Kelley. Social Service Review 28 (1), 12–​19. Platt, H. L. (2000). Jane Addams and the ward boss revisited: Class, politics, and public health in Chicago, 1890–​1930. Environmental History 5 (2), 194–​222. Residents of Hull-​House (1895). Hull-​House maps and papers: A presentation of nationalities and wages in a congested district of Chicago, together with comments and essays on problems growing out of the social conditions. Thomas Y. Crowell & Co. Rose, G. (1993). Feminism and geography: The limits of geographical knowledge. Polity Press. Samamsinghe, V. (1997). Counting women’s work: The intersection of time and space. In John Paul Jones, Heidi J. Nast, & Susan M. Roberts (Eds.), Thresholds in Feminist Geography: Difference, Methodology, and Representation (pp. 129–​144). Rowman & Littlefield Publishers. Sklar, K. K. (1991). Hull-​House maps and papers: Social science as women’s work in the 1890s. In M. Bulmer, K. Bales, & K. K. Sklar (Eds.), The Social Survey in Historical Perspective, 1880–​ 1940 (pp. 111–​147). Cambridge University Press. Sklar, K. K. (1995). Florence Kelley and the nation’s work: The rise of women’s political culture, 1830–​1900 (Vol. 1). Yale University Press. Schultz, R. L. (2007). Introduction. In Residents of Hull House (Eds.), Hull-​House Maps and Papers, 1895 (pp. 1–​42). Republished in 2007, with an introduction by Rima Lunin Schultz, by University of Illinois Press. Shields, P. M. (2006). Democracy and the social feminist ethics of Jane Addams: A vision for public administration. Administrative Theory & Praxis 28 (3), 418–​443. Schneiderhan, E. (2011). Pragmatism and empirical sociology: the case of Jane Addams and Hull-​House, 1889–​1895. Theory and Society 40 (6), 589–​617. https://​doi.org/​10.1007/​s11​ 186-​011-​9156-​2 Spain, D. (2001). How women saved the city. University of Minnesota Press. Strobel, M. (2015). Hull-​House and women’s studies: Parallel approaches for first-​and second-​ wave feminists. Women’s Studies Quarterly 30 (3), 52–​59. http://​www.jstor.org/​sta​ble/​40003​242. Stuart, P. H. (2018). Community-​based participatory research at Hull House in the 1890s. Journal of Community Practice 26 (3), 377–​386. https://​doi.org/​10.1080/​10705​422.2018.1474​417 Valentine, G. (2007). Theorizing and researching intersectionality: A challenge for feminist geography. Professional Geographer 59 (1), 10–​21. https://​doi.org/​10.1111/​j.1467-​9272.2007.00587.x Vaughan, L. (2018). Mapping society: The spatial dimensions of social cartography. UCL Press. Waugh, J. (1982). Florence Kelley and the anti-​sweatshop campaign of 1892–​1893. UCLA Historical Journal 3. Wright, C. D., Hugo, V., & Houghton, A. S. (1894). The slums of Baltimore, Chicago, New York and Philadelphia. Government Printing Office.

Chapter 28

Jane Addam s , S o c ia l Design, and W i c k e d Problems Designing In, With, and Across Danielle Lake

“In the design world of wicked problems, the aim is not to find the truth but to design systems that enhance human betterment and improve human quality.” —Banathy, 1996, 30

As I write, the design world is calling for a “fundamental rethinking of its philosophies and approaches” (Vink, 2021, 10).1 In order to inclusively and systematically design for the complex social challenges we face, many are demanding not only that designers rethink the theories and assumptions undergirding their work, but also that they explore and integrate approaches and knowledge from other domains. Jane Addams is one figure being studied among others. For example, the Vitra Design Museum in Switzerland has opened an exhibit addressing the role Jane Addams and other women played in design history. “Here We Are! Women in Design 1900 –​Today” seeks to reveal the histories of women and their role in the field of design by highlighting both the designs and the conditions under which women design. Addams’s design efforts are one of the first to be acknowledged as critical just when design was beginning to emerge as a field of expertise (Inexhibit, 2021). The exhibit situates Addams’s work as social design (i.e., designs intended to direct and shape society) and focuses on her role in the suffrage movement and across Hull House. Although design today encompasses a broad array of professional fields, it is also—​ in its simplest form—​an intentional action aimed at changing current situations into preferred ones (Simon, 1969). When defined this way, all humans design. Given the

546   Danielle Lake suffering emerging from many of our current situations and the need to transform these situations through more participatory design methods, this broad understanding of design is critical. As instructors or students, government officials or activists, public health providers or patients, we can design alternative futures: We can critically interrogate and reconsider current realities, imagine anew and seek to create systems based on more inclusive visions of what the world should be; we can seek to transform ideas into realities through action (Churchman, 1971). This chapter seeks to add to this call for more inclusive and effective participatory design processes by examining the work of Jane Addams through the lens of social design. She authored (i.e., designed) narratives, speeches, and books; generated (i.e., designed) a swath of alternative institutional arrangements; and cultivated (i.e., designed) local, national, and international networks that sought to respond to the social challenges of her time and place. Her efforts to redesign social systems opened opportunities for situated, relational responses that addressed the needs of diverse communities. While her work has been broadly and consistently studied across a diverse array of fields,2 it has only recently been examined through the lens of design intended to respond to complex social challenges (Hamington, 2019; Lake, 2021, 2015, 2014; Vink, 2021; Whipps, 2019).3 In particular, the following pages argue Addams’s social design processes supported more inclusive and responsive social changes to “wicked problems” by exploring and leveraging key intervention points. Her efforts not only sought to shift social practices and influence governmental policies, they also often influenced resource flows. She consistently designed opportunities to generate and sustain diverse relationships, shift power dynamics, and disrupt mindsets.4 Alongside a host of other examples, Addams’s social design responses to the sewage and garbage crisis are explored as a fruitful illustration. The chapter highlights her efforts to cultivate social designs through processes of framing and reframing, exploring, generating, and prototyping interventions. Three social design strategies are noted as especially valuable, including historic and geographic mapping, relational immersion, and iterative, incremental activism. In order to visualize the value of her approach, however, the chapter first briefly situates wicked problems and documents the role of social design in these challenges.

What Are Wicked Problems? And What Is the Role of Design? Addams’s social design efforts were centered upon addressing issues that are today categorized as “wicked” (e.g., immigration issues, public health, labor rights, food injustice). HullHouse was designed to be a place for prompting and sustaining collaborative designs that responded to issues as they emerged. As the Hull House Museum noted in its June 5, 2020 newsletter, “the original Hull-​House Settlement fought to break down

Jane Addams, Social Design, and Wicked Problems    547 race, class and gender barriers, eliminate injustices and to empower full democratic participation especially for marginalized communities.” Formally coined in the 1970’s, the term “wicked problems” defines seemingly intractable, high stakes, interconnected social crises (Rittel & Weber, 1973). Persistent and systemic oppression, global pandemics and epidemics, and limitless environmental crises serve as examples of wicked problems. Such situations are not amenable to simple definition and cannot be studied in the abstract. Since such social messes and crises are in constant flux, cannot be clearly bounded, and are interpreted through divergent and conflicting worldviews, they cannot be ‘solved’ in any standard sense (Rittel & Webber, 1973; Brown & Lambert, 2013; Lake, 2014). For instance, interventions aimed at addressing one dimension of the problem often have unforeseen and far-​reaching impacts across interlocking systems. A solution for one stakeholder group can and often does cause harm for another group. The term was originally outlined in connection to city planning and systems thinking. Its relevance for visualizing the nature of many of our social situations has led to its proliferation across fields, including (among many others) education, health, politics, design, economics, and the environment. Many wicked problems have resulted from the ways in which humans design (Buchanan, 1992). Short-​sighted, narrowly framed designs generate practices, policies, and institutions that exacerbate these situations (Scott, 1998). Consider, for instance, the harm our food and transportation systems have caused (desertification, the hunger-​ obesity paradox, climate change, etc.). These systems were designed to meet narrowly framed needs (abundant and cheap food; speedy and direct travel). The design and impact of our current social technologies (i.e., Twitter and Facebook) are additional examples of the powerful role design plays in shaping not just our outer world, but also our inner world. These innovations, originally lauded for their value, have led to much harm.5 In large measure, they were designed without including the perspectives of intersecting communities and systems. Their designers did not take into account the situated embodiment of diverse communities, the complex histories leading to the situation, or the long-​term potential costs (Akama, Hagen, & Whaanga-​Schollum, 2019; Escobar, 2017; Monteiro, 2019; Wetter-​Edman et al., 2018). While design interventions into such situations are high risk and non-​ideal and although many of these interventions have gotten us into such messes, design—​framed as a “creative, disciplined, and decision-​oriented inquiry, carried out in iterative cycles” (Banathy, 1996, 16)—​can create pathways through the mess.6 As George Romme (2004) has pointed out, we need to support more design processes that link knowledge-​to-​action by bringing together practitioners and researchers to address our social challenges. Scholars across numerous fields suggest that energy be shifted toward social design practices that map the complexities and require inclusive processes of making, testing, and remaking (Vink et al. 2020, Dixon, 2020; Logue, 2020; Diethelm, 2016).7 In contrast to expert and technoscientific design interventions, social design methods aimed at addressing wicked problems are backed by an ethical commitment to critically situate issues within their historical and geographic complexities; such efforts also commit to reflexively remake situations across diverse relationships (Bailey et al., 2021; Tonkinwise,

548   Danielle Lake 2019). They require situated, relational, and melioristic prototyping, the kind of philosophic activism Jane Addams embodied throughout her life. This form of design can provide diverse communities with opportunities to cocreate responses to each unique situation (Vink, 2022; Costanza-​Chock, 2020; Duan et al., 2020; Fry, 2017; Ansari, 2016). The example explored next aptly illustrates both the challenge and the potential.

A Case in Point: Jane Addams and the Sewage Crisis Addams’s recounting of the garbage and sewage crisis within Chicago and across urban spaces illustrates her awareness of social problems as “wicked.” Her response also highlights the potential value of a number of social design strategies. In explicating the crisis, Addams recounts the scene and smells, along with the suffering and resistance, painting a multifaceted picture of the devastating impacts and banality of the situation. As seen in figure one below, she links the high levels of debris along the streets with the horrifying death rate, noting that such conditions not only fueled the high death rate in the ward, but also familial abuse, addiction, and crime. The garbage boxes were a site of horror and disgust to outside visitors. They were also “the first objects a toddling child learned to climb” and “the seats upon which entwined lovers sat.” Indeed, for longtime residents, it was all too easy to “forget the smells” and the scene (1961/​1910, 186). Figure 28.1. She also documents the barriers she and fellow ward residents confronted because of gender discrimination, inadequate infrastructure, cultural norms, ineffective laws, inept services, and corruption. Social norms at the time, for instance, discouraged women from advocating for matters outside of the house and exacerbated their efforts to engage in inclusive change-​making. She links these challenges to systemic barriers emerging from housing and tenement practices, public health regulations and norms, transportation failures, educational practices, and labor policies, noting that it is the collection of these “subtle evils” that are “often most disastrous” (Addams, 1961/​1910, 195). Her explanation of the crisis also highlights the role of social and psychological habits. She notes human tendencies to deny, simplify, and blame others. In “Public Activities and Investigations,” she maps the attitudes of city officials (resistance), diverse residents (a mixture of outrage, apathy, and loss), service providers (defensiveness), and those far removed from the daily realities (judgment, disdain, and indifference). In this explication, the reader can see her awareness of the role of narrowly framed, short-​sighted solutions, a lack of transparency and oversight, indifference, resistance, and ineffective regulations (Alpaslan & Mitroff, 2011, 30–​33). In sum, her recounting visualizes the way in which various institutional arrangements—​including policies, practices, power, resource flows, and relationships—​operate to exacerbate the suffering.

Jane Addams, Social Design, and Wicked Problems    549

Figure 28.1  Garbage littering an alley close to Hull House16 Source: Off-​The-​Street Club Records. 1940. Seven Settlement Houses-​Database of Photos (University of Illinois at Chicago), University of Illinois at Chicago. Library. Special Collections and University Archives. http://​n2t.net/​ark:/​81984/​c8z​33s

In her recounting the reader can also see a commitment to not only frame and explore the problem, but to design and test situated interventions intended to disrupt practices and policies, reform relationships, and shift power dynamics. In the first two months of investigating the issue in the ward, they found 1,037 violations of the law, helped to oust three city inspectors, moved violations into the court system for review, and successfully advocated for significant increases to garbage removal services (Addams, 1961/​ 1910, 187–​188). Yet, after three years and many more “successful” interventions, the situation was still dire and in many ways unchanged. Addams clearly lays bare the iterative struggle to transform. Addams’s historian Louise K. Knight (2006) traces this history in detail and confirms Addams’s interpretation of the situation. She writes that Addams and colleagues were ultimately unable to mobilize many residents because they did not do enough to come to know and design with them (Knight, 2006). She highlights how their struggles were largely to be expected since most residents were unable to engage in the written debates, were leery of government officials, held very different expectations for government services, and were often economically bound to corrupt aldermen (Knight, 2006, 10; Lowe, 2022).

550   Danielle Lake While just one example, her efforts to map the challenges of garbage collection demonstrate her awareness of wicked problems, and, as shown in what follows, they also provide insights into the value and role of historic and geographic mapping, place-​ based, relational immersion, and incremental activism for social design efforts. If her approach to such challenges is so valuable, however, why has her approach to social design not been more widely studied and adopted?

Why Haven’t We Studied Addams’s Approach to Design and What Might We Learn? Addams’s approach to design was informed by her varied social identities and a diverse set of experiences. As a white, wealthy, and educated US citizen holding marginalized identities through her gender, sexuality, and ability status, Addams moved between many segregated worlds, held an incredible array of privileges, and confronted systemic oppression on a daily basis. For instance, she lived and designed with neighborhood children, workers across the United States, immigrants, and the elderly while she simultaneously lived alongside and designed with local, national, and global political leaders and public intellectuals. How did Addams, and how might we, design and sustain places that foster relationships across borders and maintain plural ways of being? Addams’s design “successes” and “failures” offer cues. In general, her very different lived realities from those of the oft-​referenced designers offer a vastly different vantage point for readers thinking through how their own social identities and experiences impact and should impact their design practices. Addams’s design efforts were essential to many political movements, including the international peace movement and the feminist/​suffrage movements. Yet, she has consistently been misread and misinterpreted (Fischer, 2019; Lake & Whipps, 2021). She has also been overlooked by design practitioners, overshadowed by the work of pragmatists John Dewey and George Herbert Mead. John Dewey is especially given credit across design fields (Buchanan, 1992, 2009; Dixon, 2019; Schön, 1992; Vink, 2021; Wetter-​Edman et al., 2018). While Dewey’s value to the design world should not be dismissed, Addams’s influence on his approach is worth closer study. Indeed, historians, biographers, and philosophers studying Addams and Dewey have long noted that much of Dewey’s philosophy was informed by his relationship with Addams and his partnership with Hull House. Studying Hull House’s design efforts, Dewey came to see democracy as a continuous process of “social and political reconstruction.” He argued that we must begin in and through experience. He emphasized the role of aesthetic experience in imagining and designing our world and committed to iterative, melioristic interventions. As community-​based design scholar Brian Dixon notes (2020), Dewey understood inquiry as “the identification and

Jane Addams, Social Design, and Wicked Problems    551 resolution of problems” through actions that transform “the world in which we find ourselves” (25). Dewey’s private correspondence explicitly reveals how his philosophy was cogenerated in dialogue with Addams. Scholars also note that much of his philosophy emerged from studying Hull House’s innovative social experiments (Knight, 2005; Pratt, 2002; Siegfried, 1999; Stengel, 2007). Whipps, in particular, has argued for the need to examine their contributions to social change in tandem, arguing this is necessary for uncovering the value of their “innovative methods of democratic change” (2019, 314). Histories of exclusion have obscured Addams’s contributions. To be fair, however, unraveling the role of design in Addams’s work is complicated. Her writings consistently and vividly convey her awareness of wicked problems (Lake, 2014). They do not, however, clearly reveal systematic explanations of her approaches to addressing them. Thankfully, scholars across fields have been studying Addams’s pragmatist social change methods and exploring their relevance to current issues (Deegan, 2000, 20; Fischer, 2019; Knight, 2005; Rosiek & Pratt, 2013; Whipps, 2019). The following sections document some of the ways in which Addams acted as a social designer to ameliorate the wicked problems of her time and place. I describe how she framed social situations through historic and geographic mapping, while exploring their complexities in and through diverse relationships in order to co-​generate situated responses. I also show how she cultivated opportunities for change that operated along varying scales by prototyping those visions in relationship with others. Documenting some of these processes reveals the potential for situationally addressing wicked problems.

Frame and Reframe Addams’s constantly and critically framed and reframed wicked problems by both scrutinizing the social complexities and her intervention efforts. “Framing” requires reckoning with how we see the situation and how our positionality impacts our perception. “Reframing” captures the commitment to return to the initial frame, critically interrogate its limitations, and revise as the situation evolves and design interventions are tested. These practices embody Addams’s reflection that “life. . . teaches us nothing more inevitable than that right and wrong are most confusedly mixed. . . that right does not dazzle our eyes with its radiant shining, but has to be found by exerting patience, discrimination, and impartiality” (1961/​1910, 57). These practices also require a strong dose of humility, flexibility, and tenacity. We can see these commitments throughout Addams’s social design efforts. For instance, one frame Addams was deeply committed to was labor reform. She played a critical role in reshaping labor practices and she also took great pains to understand the impact these reforms would have on others (reframe). She emphasized the suffering labor laws would cause to families desperately trying to make ends meet, saying

552   Danielle Lake the potential impact was “never absent” from her mind (1961, 11). To trace the impact she immersed herself in the situation, attending “as many mother’s meetings and clubs among working women as” she could. She emphasized how such immersion was essential for generating situated understanding.8 When we immerse ourselves across systems we have the opportunity to create and sustain more inclusive and responsive designs. Immersion supports a keen awareness of the situation and a willingness to return and redo. The goal is to work with, in, and across communities. Returning to the example of sewage and public health, for instance, she was able to see and experience the challenges women in the neighborhood faced in mapping the garbage and sewage violations. The work was physically grueling, culturally frowned upon, and an addition to their already heavy labor and familial commitments. She documents how these efforts transformed daily practices, created new policies, upended unjust power dynamics, and shifted resource flows. Her efforts highlight the value and the need to commit to social designs that support building relationships across constituencies and shifting mindsets. In this instance, this meant working with residents of the ward, city officials, citizen-​researchers, policy makers, and outside constituents.9 Addams encouraged her readers to frame and reframe as well. She designed her writings and speeches with the goal to visualize and unsettle limiting perspectives. For example, Addams sought to shift the dominant tropes around political corruption in Chicago by reframing the issue. The narrative of the time centered blame for corruption on the willingness of many to receive bribes. Addams pointed out how privilege isolated a few from the need to accept bribes and made it all too easy to assign blame (1961/​1910, 110). By prompting privileged community members to situate themselves, explore the complexities, and then reconsider their position, she was attempting to disrupt dominant frames, to “reconceptualize and relocate” the problem (1961, 111). These examples show that Addams engaged in design practices that encouraged iterative framing and that she created design artifacts intended to encourage this practice in others. Such practices offer opportunities for design interventions that are more responsive, inclusive, and resilient. For current examples, readers can look to the work of service and systems designer Josina Vink. Her team’s design efforts have sought to frame and reframe perspectives through designing placed and relational opportunities to be-​ with across diverse positionalities. In one initiative, her team designed opportunities for primary care professionals to engage patients in their homes. Moving into the space of patients, seeing their lives in context, and actively listening to them disrupted mindsets and shifted perceptions. While this shift can be seen as a small intervention, it challenged many of the assumptions that providers and patients were holding. Providers awareness and responsiveness to patients needs expanded. Patients’ sense of agency also increased, shifting the way they interacted with their providers and their healthcare plan. Over time they were together “altering the entrenched rules around how patient and provider interactions should be carried out” (2017, 18). These relational-​placed disruptions prompted a reframing that led to a “groundswell of actors working to disrupt the existing

Jane Addams, Social Design, and Wicked Problems    553 role of the patient and change widespread norms concerning decision-​making during care” (Vink et al., 2017, 18).10 These design practices can clearly transform, but they require a willingness to explore the relational, historic, and geographic dimensions of the situation.

Explore Efforts to design responses to wicked problems must commit to framing and reframing the complexities through exploring the situation across space and time and in relationship with diverse others. Addams was a master at this. She worked and lived at the edge of social change. Her food for thought came from her experiences at Hull-​House and her unique bottom-​up experimental approach. The design processes Addams applied to wicked problems were infused with a deep commitment to engage across political, institutional, and regional boundaries. She was willing to situate herself within the “mess,” to see and listen, and to foster relationships across differences. Her responses were also critically informed by a commitment to uncover the historical roots and geographic complexities of the situation. When her efforts are examined through this lens, two social design strategies valuable for readers seeking to address wicked problems emerge: relational immersion and historic and geographic mapping. Both strategies are detailed next. Addams’s design efforts were informed by an abiding commitment to be in relationships across diverse communities. She spent most of her days attending meeting after meeting across coalitions. According to Addams we cannot design effective responses to social challenges until we figure out “what the people want and how they want it” (1961/​1910, 22). To take but one example, she responded to the Chicago cloakmakers labor dispute by bringing the two factions together. In this instance, she designed a path forward with these communities, bringing trained Russian-​Jewish cloakmakers and untrained American-​Irish young women who usurped their positions for less wages to Hull House. She emphasizes the strong separations between the two groups, the devastation to their livelihoods, and the very real need for employment as well as their opposing commitments to individualism and socialism. She writes that “these two sets of people were separated by strong racial differences, by language, by nationality, by religion, by mode of life, by every possible social distinction.” The only thread of connection between the groups was the enormous “pressure upon their trade” (2002/​1895, 51). She saw Hull House as a place from which each group could come to explore the situation from the other’s perspective. Addams not only took this approach in her own philosophic-​activist commitments, she also consistently warns readers about the dangers of designing in isolation from others. She writes about the Pullman Strike of 1894, for instance, noting that Pullman’s efforts to build an entire town for his employees fueled “cruel misunderstandings,” drove even greater divides, and generated unnecessary suffering (1980/​1902, 68–​70). She

554   Danielle Lake combines a focus on being with and coming to know others with the need for a “humility of spirit and a willingness to reconsider existing institutions,” arguing this is essential for designs that move us towards justice (Addams, 2003/​1932, 339).11 Her focus was not simply upon generating brief moments of connection, but on a sustained being-​with. The design of Hull House was informed by this commitment. It was intended to be a place for moving beyond moments of interaction, a place for diverse communities to come together in fellowship. Placed between Italian, German, Polish, Russian, Canadian-​French, and Irish immigrant communities, she describes Hull House as the creation of a place for sustained dialogues between diverse residents in the neighborhood (1961/​1910).12 By situating itself along dividing lines, Hull House enacted a key social design practice now being advocated for; it created “an ongoing space for cultivating humility and reflexivity across difference” (Vink, 2021, 14). It sustained opportunities for what I have called relational immersion. Addams believed relational immersion (being-​together-​in-​place) was essential, writing that such embedded “daily living. . . is of infinitely more value than many talks on civics for, after all, we credit most easily that which we see” (Addams, 1961/​1910, 190). This commitment to visualizing the complexities filtered into her efforts to map the historic and geographic dimensions of these situations. In addition to initiating co-​design efforts between constituencies, Hull House played a primary role in mapping the complexities of its surrounding region (Sklar, 1991). These efforts included careful study, data collection, analysis, and photography. Hull House residents created social surveys that visualized the conditions of the communities around the settlement, and prompted timely policy changes. As historians have shown, these mapping efforts were essential to implementing reform (Knight, 2006). According to Whipps’s chapter in this volume, many successful reform initiatives at the time were undergirded by these participatory mapping efforts. Addams’s commitment to mapping included tracing the complex histories that led to the current situation. To trace the city’s garbage and sewage challenges, she documents the cultural traditions and practices residents brought to an incredibly congested housing crisis. Outside visitors were appalled that residents were permitted to sustain cultural traditions that exacerbated the situation. Although outsiders felt such cultural practices should be immediately outlawed, Addams documents how such efforts to enact designs on others “strained relations” and exacerbated suffering (1961/​1910, 195). She employs this same approach when addressing the problems of domestic service: she maps the histories and complexities of these institutional arrangements alongside the lived realities in order to disrupt current frameworks. She argued that these issues belonged “to the community as a whole” and thus must be addressed by “members of the community together” (Fischer, 2019, 76). This relational and sustained form of social design presses back against any professional design frameworks that dismiss the designs of indigenous communities, women, and other historically marginalized groups (Tunstall, 2013; Vink, 2022). It requires a commitment to move beyond scientific research to generate “a unique,

Jane Addams, Social Design, and Wicked Problems    555 socially constructed, culturally complex perception” (Diethelm, 2016, 169). These design processes align with current advocacy work across design fields to generate ethical and viable designs that respond to the complexities by first situating oneself in place and time. It enacts the first principle within equity design initiatives to listen to and engage with those most affected by a problem (Constanza-​Chock, 2020, 183). Readers interested in exploring an example of current social design practices that align with these efforts might turn to the Civic Design Studio at MIT. The studio supports the co-​design and implementation of community-​led projects. It is “a space for shared inquiry into the theory, history, best practices, and critiques of various approaches to community inclusion in iterative stages of project ideation, design, implementation, testing, and evaluation.” And it “approaches communities not as (solely) consumers, test subjects, “test beds,” or objects of study, but instead imagines them as co-​designers and coauthors of shared knowledge, technologies, narratives, and social practices” (Costanza-​Chock, 2020, 175). Among a host of design responses, these participatory and activist-​oriented processes of cocreation have led to the reimagining of carnival games that visualize the gentrification occurring across local communities. Explored next, Addams’s approach to social design harnessed relational, historic, and geographic immersion in order to generate alternative social realities and learn-​by-​ doing within the constraints of nonideal conditions (i.e., to prototype).

Generate and Prototype Scholars of Addams emphasize both her efforts towards creative synthesis and her willingness to iteratively design and test alternative possibilities. In the context of social design, these efforts are captured through the commitment to generate more inclusive, responsive, and imaginative possibilities and prototype those possibilities. Speaking to this commitment to generate, Addams’s scholar Marilyn Fischer carefully documents how Addams operated “as a prophetic visionary of future possibilities” by intentionally positioning “herself as an interpreter across divisions of misunderstanding” (2019, 45). Knight similarly references this skill, writing that synthesis was one of her greatest gifts (2010, 93). Prototyping, within the context of social design, moves ideas into reality to test their value and viability. According to Addams scholar Judy Whipps, “putting ideas into action” (emphasis mine) was in truth Addams’s primary commitment (2019, 314). Hull House is a powerful example of Addams’s efforts to generate and prototype imaginative alternative realities. Opening in 1889, it was an institutional arrangement committed to relational and situated knowledge creation aimed toward addressing emerging problems (Addams, 1910, 348). With neighborhood residents, Hull House co-​designed astonishingly experimental and more common institutional arrangements. In Addams’s own words, Hull House was a place for generating “unexpected” and “romantic. . . discoveries in actual life” (1961/​1910, 202).13

556   Danielle Lake The plethora of social designs emerging from Hull House is staggering. In collaboration with newly arrived immigrants they created structures and processes to operate as a type of interpretation bureau. In response to the lack of bathtubs in the ward, they created a bath house. In response to the lack of fun and recreation for young adults, they helped to co-​design and facilitate theater and art performances as well as game, sports, and league opportunities. Shown in figure two below, in response to intercultural and intergenerational labor challenges and misunderstandings, they designed an interactive labor museum. The list could go on. Figure 28.2. A cursory review of some of these smaller-​scale, more mundane, or seemingly frivolous social designs, like Hull House dance classes visualized in figure three below, may lead the reader to dismiss their value for supporting interventions into wicked problems. However, Hull House’s theater and art series and their labor museum were especially valuable design responses to a number of systemic social challenges of the time. They were also often incredibly innovative, breaking cultural tropes around sports and gender, women and labor, and standard educational practices. The labor museum was intentionally designed to encourage intergenerational and cross-​cultural understanding, offering opportunities for demonstrations, classes, and dialogues. Hull House’s theater and art performances ranged widely from dance, play, and storytelling classes to

Figure 28.2  Demonstrations in Hull House’s labor museum Source: Luther, J. “The Labor Museum at Hull House” The Commons 70, no. 7 (May 1902): 8. Collection Seven Settlement. University of Illinois at Chicago. Library. Special Collections and University Archives. http://​n2t.net/​ark:/​81984/​c8b​w34

Jane Addams, Social Design, and Wicked Problems    557

Figure 28.3  Dance class at Hull House Source: Hull-​House Photograph Collection (formerly known as the Jane Addams Memorial Collection). Finding aid: http://​n2t.net/​ark:/​81984/​c8b​w34

improvisational groups. These social designs resourced alternative institutions, shifted practices, and built relationships. They have also had lasting impacts.14 Figure 28.3. For an example particularly relevant to the challenges of the COVID-​19 pandemic, the reader can explore Hull House’s response to the challenges of tuberculosis. One of the most rampant infectious diseases of the time, tuberculosis not only prevented children from receiving an education, it was a leading cause of death (Fischer, 2021; Knight, 2005; Linn, 2000). Hull House designed and prototyped a range of responses, ultimately reimagining where and how school functioned. They designed opportunities for teachers to go into children’s homes and created open-​air classrooms. This later innovation disrupted educational policies of the time and removed many of the institutional arrangements enforced by classroom spaces; the open-​air classes, for instance, ran throughout both the summer and winter months, emphasized embodied, playful learning, and sparked a movement (Kingsley, 1917). It is important to note that Hull House’s social designs were emergent, incredibly synergistic, and constantly evolving. It was a place from which to collaboratively conduct “small but careful investigations” intended to “guide” actions (Addams, 1961, 198). While

558   Danielle Lake the approach was experimental, the commitment to situated, emergent design led Addams to reject attempts to label Hull House a laboratory. Reflecting on the need for this approach, Addams wrote that “the only thing to be dreaded in a Settlement is that it loses its flexibility, its power of quick adaptation, its readiness to change its methods as its environment may demand. It must be open to conviction and must have a deep abiding sense of tolerance. It must be hospitable and ready for experimentation” (1961, 22–​23). The goal was to provide opportunities for diverse communities to imagine and act together, while not yielding to the desire for certainty, unity, or permanence. Hull House is a clear exemplar of social designs that generate and prototype more embodied and imaginative “habits of caring” across differences to cocreate a better society (Hamington, 2004, 92–​93). Interested readers can turn to Twenty Years at Hull House to uncover additional examples of collaborative efforts among diverse residents, neighbors, various city organizations, and surrounding locations. Learning from Addams, readers might also value exploring how they situate themselves in place and harness narrative to inform their design process and their outcomes. They might find hope in her consistent reminders that co-​design processes are slow, that the impacts of those designs cannot be seen fully in advance and are often non-​ideal. She writes that she and Hull House residents were consistently aware that their “best efforts were most inadequate” (1961/​1910, 259). She designed with what Fischer describes as “human capabilities and frailties” in mind, believing that “incremental alterations in moral sensibilities and imagination” were essential for prompting and sustaining valued change (Fischer, 2019, 12–​13). Given that design research is showing that prototyping, testing, and iterating are underutilized aspects of the process, this aspect of her work is particularly worthy of closer analysis (Lake, et al., 2021; Liedtka & Bahr, 2019). This approach reminds us that inclusive and sustainable innovation tends to come from the “adjacent possible,” from creative, but also viable, possible futures that hover at the edge of the present situation (Johnson, 2010, 31). Her efforts to design with others and across diverse constituencies through iterative prototyping are also essential for addressing the limitations of implicit bias, cultural tropes, and individual habits (Liedtka, Eldridge, & Hold, 2021). They are essential for cultivating systemic change.

Cultivate: Emergent Strategies from Micro to Macro Level Change Returning to Hull House’s efforts to get the garbage collected illustrates the value of iterative prototyping, testing, and revising for cultivating valuable social design responses. Iterative and relational engagement led Hull House to conduct systematic investigations across the ward and with diverse stakeholders. Their iterative prototyping in the community led them to understand that resident motivation to redesign required first seeing

Jane Addams, Social Design, and Wicked Problems    559 the connection between sewage crisis and the health of their loved ones (Addams, 1910). They launched a swath of prototypes over a decade in order to disrupt and create institutional arrangements that improved conditions; they cultivated relationships both across the ward and from farther afield; they also successfully shifted power structures; and designed and prototyped new positions, mapped housing and sewage challenges, generated resource flows, and shifted mindsets, launching a swath of reforms. Their designs ultimately helped to lower the death rate of the ward from third in the city to seventh (Addams, 1961/​1910, 190). These processes provided opportunities for diverse individuals to come together and “work out in practice the difficult questions of. . . citizen action, democracy, and the state” (10). It required and nurtured community “determination and creativity” (Knight, 2006, 10). Speaking to shifts in power and mindset, Knight documents how neighborhood women came to see themselves “as citizens of a ward who could influence their city government, and as activists who could be models for other citizens” (2006, 23). Emphasizing how these efforts cultivated a movement, she goes on to say “they were organizing an international community” whether they “realized it or not” (9). This example illustrates how cultivation creates tangible, iterative changes and builds capacities for sustained engagement. Addams (1961/​1910) writing about the creation of the juvenile justice system also highlights the value of the strategies outlined above for cultivating systemic change. Hull House efforts to redesign more just policies and practices for youth were collaborative, but led by Hull House resident Julia C. Lathrop. While Lathrop ultimately became one of the primary designers of the United States juvenile justice system, she began her efforts through simply visiting with families and local agencies across the ward (Cohen, 2017). Framing, exploring, and reframing, she prepared reports that captured residents’ goals for the community and the effectiveness of agency processes. Her initial outreach as a state inspector was modest and the potential for change unknown; her efforts were so valuable she was quickly re-​appointed. She became the first woman director of a federal agency, the Children’s Bureau. According to Addams, the redesign of the charitable institutions and state processes at that time emerged through Lathrop’s willingness to generate and prototype possibilities with those most closely impacted. She wrote that cultivation emerged through “intimate knowledge of the experiences of the beneficiaries,” requiring a “long residence among” (Addams, 1910, 10). Whipps’s chapter in this volume documents how relationships, extensive mapping, and a willingness to synthesize and iteratively prototype ultimately led to the design of new social systems that have had a lasting impact. She chronicles how these efforts inspired and supported “the second-​generation women’s networks” to successfully implement “Social Security, child labor laws, limits on working hours and industrial safety reform.” Whipps also shows how these efforts had an “enduring impact” not only on the systems of the time, but also on the next generation of women activists. “This next generation built on the work of the early pioneers and created and expanded new networks that saw an unprecedented number of women appointed to federal positions” (Whipps, 2023, 224).

560   Danielle Lake While it is true that early Hull House efforts were more philanthropic and ameliorative, they quickly refocused towards generating systems-​ wide, long-​ term transformations, “changing laws, governmental structures, and cultural institutions.” Fischer’s chapter in this volume highlights how Hull House “functioned as a node in a vast, interlocking network of reform activity in and beyond Chicago.” Residents engaged with social service agencies, judges, lawyers, municipal workers, business leaders, and scholars. The brief vignettes highlighted above demonstrate that cultivation requires boundary spanning designers and institutions. Designers and changemakers are searching for and stretching toward similar participatory social design strategies. For examples in education, readers can turn to Sasha Constanza-​Chock (2020) and Leslie-​Ann Noel (2016); for examples in racial and health equity, we can turn to Creative Reaction lab (2018); for examples in technology studies, we can turn to M, Wagoner (2017); for examples in service fields and public health, we can turn to Josina Vink and colleagues’ work.15 Each of their social design efforts seek to transform internal and institutional structures and processes so they more fully support the diverse situated needs of all actors. To varying degrees, they are working to create and test liberatory, equity-​centered, social design approaches that map current, complex situated realities alongside the histories and complexities; they are also trying to iteratively co-​design interventions in relationship with others.

Conclusion So what do we have to learn from these efforts? Where and how might the interested reader choose to design in response to complex social challenges? According to social design scholars (Banathy, 1996; Vink, 2021) and researchers of systems change (Burns et al., 2015; Cattani et al., 2015; Centola, 2021; Johnson, 2010), social designs that more effectively respond to wicked problems require awareness of our interrelatedness, respect for thresholds, and a commitment to prototype. As we have seen, Addams, Hull House, and its residents consistently designed institutional arrangements meant to support these practices. Rereading Addams as a social designer relevant to our design efforts today visualizes a thread of design activism emerging from the last 150 years that has not yet been fully explored. As designers and changemakers seek to design interventions to wicked problems, they might value exploring both Addams’s social design processes (historic and geographic mapping, relational immersion, and iterative activism) and her design artifacts (i.e., Hull House, its programs, and her published writings). She harnessed social design processes that sought to frame and reframe social issues through historic, geographic, and relational exploration; she generated and prototyped alternative possibilities through a commitment to iterative action. In contrast to dominant design efforts, she was also very much aware of the limitations of her social designs.

Jane Addams, Social Design, and Wicked Problems    561 These practices helped to cultivate design artifacts (i.e., institutional arrangements, including places, processes, and opportunities) that prompt situated social design interventions. In the end, these design processes and artifacts are not only valuable “for the project of redesigning design” (Vink, 2021, 9); they are also valuable for anyone seeking to design responses to intractable, high-​stakes social messes (i.e., wicked problems). This is because her approach is focused on cocreating flexible, enduring structures and processes that prompt iterative design opportunities with diverse communities. It seeks to move “beyond critique towards community coauthorship,” and it seeks to do so “within the constraints of any given project” (Constanza-​Chock, 2020, 175). Researchers of creativity, social change, and innovation have been confirming the value of such strategies (Farrell, 2008; Liedtka & Bahr, 2019; Menger, 2014; Parker & Hackett, 2012). Creative action requires a willingness to wade into uncertainty, engage in conflict, collaborate across difference, step outside of dominant norms, risk making mistakes, and adjust decisions based on the outcomes of such actions. Addams offers emergent, situated, and relational social design strategies for those seeking to cultivate participatory, capacity-​building responses to systemic crises.

Acknowledgment The ideas within emerged in relationship with many others over the course of years. I want to especially thank the Feminist Pragmatist Scholars Circle, including Marilyn Fischer, Judy Whipps, Tess Varner, Barb Lowe, and Jen Fenton. I also want to thank Dr. Josina Vink, the Systemic Design Association, the Society for the Advancement of American Philosophy, the Organization Studies Research Gate Community, and the editors of this volume for sparking these insights and helping me to sustain these threads.

Notes 1. The design world is a contested place, but often encompasses commercial design industries, and professional designers spanning sectors and disciplines (industrial, product, architecture, service, health, tech, etc.). To explore these collective challenges to the dominant mode of design further, see also Anaissie, Cary, Cliffoer, Malarkey, and Wise, 2020; Ansari, 2016; Costanza-​Chock, 2020; Escobar, 2017. 2. She is, for instance, studied across the fields of sociology, philosophy, education, political science, and a diverse array of service fields. 3. She is most often remembered for her community organizing work in Chicago across the early 20th century and for shaping the field of sociology (Fischer, 2019; Knight, 2010; Seigfried, 1999). She was the first American woman to win the Nobel Peace Prize and an advisor to three US presidents. 4. Interested readers can read Kania, Kramer, and Senge’s 2018 “Waters of Systems Change” to learn more.

562   Danielle Lake 5. What is designed, what is not designed, and who is involved in the design has had, and continues to have, significant impact on internal and external forces, individuals, and institutions, as well as the hyper-​local and global world (Monteiro, 2019, 11). 6. Design, through this framework, emphasizes the need for reflexive, embodied practices (Schon, 1983) that yield valuable and viable design responses to wicked problems (Buchanan, 1992). 7. Indeed, across design fields we see movement toward more liberatory, equity-​centered, and systems-​aware design practices (Anaissie et al., 2020; Banathy, 1996; Culver et al., 2021; Creative Reaction Lab, 2018; Costanza-​Chock, 2020; Escobar, 2017; Vink, 2022). 8. Addams and Hull House were “nested in realms of experience,” able to perceive the challenges from “the inside out,” and thus reframe them (Diethelm, 2016, 169). 9. Addams’s recounting of Hull House’s journey through the garbage and sewage crisis demonstrates that iterative interventions across decades of design are often needed to transform systems. After encountering a year’s worth of setbacks, we see her partner with local businesses in order to generate a bid to oversee the garbage removal in the ward. The bid is thrown out on a technicality (failure). Yet, it draws further attention to their work, prompting the mayor to appoint Addams the “garbage inspector of the ward” (1961/​1910, 188). 10. For instance, providers had previously felt more confident that their suggested interventions would completely solve patients’ problems and, only after this experience, did they realize that suggested interventions played “a small supporting role in patients’ lives” (Vink et al., 2017, 16). Providers also started viewing patients as “colleagues, friends and partners” (2017, 16). Some went on to initiate “a variety of large-​scale processes of practice and policy change to help realize a new role for patients as healthcare partners” (Vink et al., 2017, 18). The burgeoning relationships fostered by these interactions shifted patients’ perspectives as well. 11. Jamal et al. call this conative empathy, arguing it is essential for more just design practices (Jamal et al., 2021). 12. Her commitment to relational, immersive design brings with it the dangers of invading, coopting, and assimilating (Sullivan, 2003). Critics of Addams are concerned her approach does not account for racial and ethnic oppression. Creating and supporting spaces for separate ways of being and designing is needed. 13. J. Luther, The Labor Museum at Hull House, The Commons 70 (May 7, 1902), 8. Collection Seven Settlement. University of Illinois at Chicago. Library. Special Collections and University Archives. http://​n2t.net/​ark:/​81984/​c8b​w34. 14. Recent research on the birth of improv traces its origins back to Hull House’s theater and improvisational group games. See https://​www.hull​hous​emus​eum.org/​resea​rch for further details. 15. The interested reader might turn to K. Wetter-​Edman, J. Vink, and J. Blomkvist. (2018). Staging Aesthetic Disruption Through Design Methods for Service Innovation. Design Studies; J. Vink, K. Wetter-​Edman, and M. Aguirre. (2017). Designing for aesthetic disruption: Altering mental models in social systems through designerly practices. The Design Journal 20(1), S2168-​S2177; J. Vink, K. Koskela-​Huotari, B. Tronvoll, B. Edvardsson, and K. Wetter-​Edman. (2020). Service ecosystem design: Propositions, process model, and future research agenda. Journal of Service Research, 1–​19. 16. Off-​ The-​ Street Club Records. 1940. Seven Settlement Houses-​ Database of Photos (University of Illinois at Chicago), University of Illinois at Chicago. Library. Special Collections and University Archives. http://​n2t.net/​ark:/​81984/​c8z​33s.

Jane Addams, Social Design, and Wicked Problems    563

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564   Danielle Lake Deegan, M. J. (2000). Jane Addams and the men of the Chicago school: 1892–​1918. Transaction Books. Diethelm, J. (2016). De-​colonizing design thinking. She Ji: The Journal of Design, Economics, and Innovation 2(2), 166–​172. https://​doi.org/​10.1016/​j.sheji.2016.08.001. Dixon, B. S. (2019). Experiments in experience: towards an alignment of research through design and John Dewey’s pragmatism. Design Issues 35(2), 5–​16. https://​doi.org/​10.1162/​ desi_​a_​00​531. Dixon, B. S. (2020). Dewey and design: A pragmatist perspective for design research. SpringerLink. https://​doi.org/​10.1007/​978-​3-​030-​47471-​3. Duan, Z., J. Vink, and S. Clatworthy. (2020). Moving towards plurality: Unpacking the role of service design in relation to culture. In the proceedings of the ServDes 2020 conference -​ Tensions, Paradox and Plurality 173(27), (pp. 263–​276). https://​serv​des2​020.s3.amazon​aws .com/​uplo​ads/​event/​paper/​31/​55_​Zhi​peng​_​Vin​k_​Cl​atwo​rthy​_​SP.pdf Escobar, A. (2017). Designs for the pluriverse: Radical interdependence, autonomy, and the making of worlds. Duke University Press. Farrell, M. (2008). Comment on Niel McLaughlin: Types of creativity and types of collaborative circles: new directions for research. Sociologica 2(2), 10.2383/​27716. Fischer, M. (2019). Jane Addams’s evolutionary Theorizing: Constructing democracy and social ethics. University of Chicago Press. Fischer, M. (2021). Addams on pandemics, public health, prostitution, and democracy. Society for the Advancement of American Philosophy Annual Conference, March 11, 2021. Free to Experience: Viola Spolin and the Invention of Improvisation. Wttw. https://​inte​ract​ive.wttw .com/​chic​ago-​stor​ies/​invent​ing-​imp​rov/​free-​to-​exp​erie​nce-​viola-​spo​lin-​and-​the-​invention -​of-​improv​isat​ion. Fry, T. (2017). Design for/​by “The Global South.” Design Philosophy Papers 15(1), 3–​37. Hamington, M. (2004). Embodied care: Jane Addams, Maurice Merleau-​Ponty, and feminist ethics. University of Illinois Press. Hamington, M. (2019). Integrating care ethics and design thinking. J Bus Ethics 155(1), 91–​103. Hull-​House e-​newsletter. (2020, June 5). https://​www.hull​hous​emus​eum.org/​cont​act. Inexhibit. (2021, September 21). Here we are! Women in design at the Vitra Design Museum. https://​www.inexhi​bit.com/​mar​ker/​here-​we-​are-​women-​in-​des​ign-​at-​the-​vitra-​des​ign -​mus​eum/​. Jamal, T., J. Kircher, and J. P. Donaldson. (2021). Re-​visiting design thinking for learning and practice: Critical pedagogy, cognitive empathy. Sustainability 13(2), 964. 10.3390/​su13020964. Johnson, S. (2010). Where good ideas come from: The Natural History of Innovation. Penguin Group. Kania, J., M. Kramer, and P. Senge. (2018). The water of systems of change. Reimagining social change, 1–​20. http://​efc.issue​lab.org/​resour​ces/​30855/​30855.pdf. Kingsley, S. C. (1917). Open-​air schools. US Government Printing Office. Knight, L. K. (2005). Citizen: Jane Addams and the struggle for democracy. University of Chicago Press. Knight, L. W. (2006). Garbage and democracy: The Chicago community organizing campaign of the 1890s. Journal of Community Practice 14(3), 7–​27. Knight, L. W. (2010). Jane Addams: Spirit in action. W. W. Norton. Lake, D. (2014). Jane Addams and wicked problems: Putting the pragmatic method to use. The Pluralist 9(3), 77–​94. https://​doi.org/​10.5406/​plural​ist.9.3.0077.

Jane Addams, Social Design, and Wicked Problems    565 Lake, D. (2015). Dewey, Addams, and beyond: A context-​sensitive, dialogue-​driven, action-​ based pedagogy for preparing students to confront local wicked problems. Contemporary Pragmatism 12(2), 251–​274. Lake, D., K. Flannery, and M. Kearns. (2021). A cross-​disciplines and cross-​sector mixed-​ methods examination of design thinking practices and outcome. Innov High Educ 46, 337–​ 356. https://​doi.org/​10.1007/​s10​755-​020-​09539-​1. Lake, D. (2021). Emergent, relational revolution: What more do we have to learn from Jane Addams? Hypatia 36(3), 410–​424. Lake, D., and J. Whipps. (2021). Introduction: Relational activism in and through pragmatist feminism. Hypatia 36(3), 360–​369. Liedtka, J. and K. J. Bahr. (2019). Assessing design thinking’s impact: Report on the development of a new instrument. Darden Working Paper Series, pp. 1–​48. https://​des​igna​tdar​den.org/​app/​ uplo​ads/​2018/​01/​Work​ing-​paper-​Lied​tka-​Eva​luat​ing-​the-​Imp​act-​of-​Des​ign-​Think​ing.pdf Liedtka, J., J. Eldridge, and K. Hold. (2021). Experiencing Design: The Innovator’s Journey. Columbia University Press. Linn, J. W. (2000). Jane Addams: A biography. University of Illinois Press. Logue, D. (2020). Theories of Social Innovation. Edward Elgar Publishing. Lowe, B. (2022). Philosophical pragmatism & Knight’s “Garbage & Democracy.” Pramata: Revue d’etudes Pragmatistes, 5(1), 306–​330. Menger, P. (2014). The economics of creativity. Harvard University Press. Monteiro, M. (2019). Ruined by design: How designers destroyed the world, and what we can do to fix it. Mule Design. Noel, L. A. (2016). Promoting an emancipatory research paradigm in design education and practice. https://​www.ama​zon.com/​Rui​ned-​Des​ign-​Design​ers-​Destro​yed-​World-​ebook/​ dp/​B07​PS16​XY9 Parker, J., and E. Hackett. (2012). Hot spots and hot moments in scientific collaborations and social movements. American Sociological Review 77(1), 21–​44. https://​doi.org/​10.1177/​00031​ 2241​1433​763 Pratt, S. (2002). Native pragmatism: Rethinking the roots of American philosophy. Indiana University Press. Rittel, H. W. J., and M. M.Webber. (1973). Dilemmas in a general theory of planning. Policy Sciences 4, 155–​169. https://​doi.org/​10.1007/​BF0​1405​730. Romme, G. (2004). Action research, emancipation and design thinking. Journal of Community & Applied Social Psychology 14, 495–​499. Rosiek, J. L., and S. Pratt. (2013). Jane Addams as a resource for developing a reflexively realist social science practice. Qualitative Inquiry 19, 578–​588. Schön, D. A. (1983). The reflective practitioner: How professionals think in action. Basic Books. Schön, D. A. (1992). Designing as reflective conversation with the materials of a design situation. Research in Engineering Design53(1), 3–​14. https://​doi.org/​10.1016/​0950-​7051(92)90020-​G. Scott, J. C. (1998). Seeing like a state: how certain schemes to improve the human condition have failed. Yale University Press. Seigfried, C. H. (1999). Socializing democracy: Jane Addams and John Dewey. Philosophy of the Social Sciences, 29(2):207–​230. https://​doi.org/​10.1177/​004​8393​1990​2900​203. Shields, P. M., M. Hamington, and J. Soeters. (Eds.). (2021). The oxford handbook of Jane Addams. Oxford University Press. Simon, H. (1969). The science of the artificial. MIT Press.

566   Danielle Lake Sklar, K. K. (1991). Hull House maps and papers: Social science as women’s work in the 1890s. In Bulmer, M., Bales, K., and Sklar, K. K., The Social Survey in Historical Perspective, 1880-​ 1940 (pp. 111–​147). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Stengel, B. (2007). Dewey’s pragmatic poet: Reconstructing Jane Addams’s philosophical impact. Education and Culture 23(2), 29–​39. https://​doi.org/​10.1353/​eac.0.0008. Sullivan, S. (2003). Reciprocal relations between races: Jane Addams’s ambiguous legacy. Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society 39(1), 43–​60. http://​www.jstor.org/​sta​ble/​ 40321​056. Tonkinwise, C. (2019). Is social design a thing? In E. Resnick (Ed), The Social Design Reader (pp. 9–​16). Bloomsbury. Tunstall, E. (2013). Decolonizing design innovation: Design anthropology, critical anthropology and indigenous knowledge. In Design Anthropology: Theory and Practice (pp. 232–​ 250). Routledge. http://​dx.doi.org/​10.5040/​978147​4214​698.ch-​013. Vink, J., K. Wetter-​Edman, and M. Aguirre. (2017). Designing for aesthetic disruption: altering mental models in social systems through designerly practices. The Design Journal 20(1), S2168–​S2177. Vink, J., K. Koskela-​Huotari, B. Tronvoll, B. Edvardsson, and K. Wetter-​Edman. (2020). Service ecosystem design: Propositions, process model, and future research agenda. Journal of Service Research, 24(2): 168–186. Vink, J. (2021). Service design and systems thinking. Touchpoint: The Journal of Service Design, 12(2), 10–​11. Vink, J. (2022). Designing for Plurality in Democracy by Building Reflexivity. The Pluralist 17(1): 52–​76. https://​doi.org/​10.5406/​19446​489.17.1.06 Wagoner., M. (2017). Technology against technocracy: Toward design strategies for critical community technology. Graduate Thesis, Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Wetter-​Edman, K., J. Vink, and J. Blomkvist. (2018). Staging aesthetic disruption through design methods for service innovation. Design Studies, 55(1), 5–​26. https://​doi.org/​10.1016/​j.des​ tud.2017.11.007 Whipps, J. (2019). Dewey, Addams, and design thinking: Pragmatist feminist innovation for democratic change. In S. Fesmire (Ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Dewey. Oxford University Press.

Chapter 29

Jane Addam s ’ s U se of Narrat i v e i n So ciol o gical Re se a rc h “As no one but a neighbor can see” Patricia Madoo Lengermann and Gillian Niebrugge

A discussion of Jane Addams’s research methodology may seem a secondary topic for a career so varied and significant in its accomplishments as to merit the praise Samuel Johnson accorded Oliver Goldsmith “who left scarcely any style of writing untouched, and touched nothing that he did not adorn”;1 for Addams was in many ways the “compleat” sociologist, leaving few areas of sociological investigation unexplored and moving forward the areas that she attempted—​from research to theory to public sociology. Choice of method always hinges on the fundamental question one has in view—​ as Earl Babbie (1995, 83) writes in his classic text on social research: “First, you must specify precisely what you want to find out. Second, you must determine the best way to do that.” Addams’s narrative turn emerges from the convergence of three questions: the question of what role the first generation of college-​educated women could play in a world that had both nurtured them with aspirations to duty and denied them paths to fulfilling that duty, the question of what kind of world was being produced by the growing material and social divide between rich and poor in the industrializing nations, and the question of what form the emerging discipline of sociology should take in the United States. She eventually arrives at three answers—​Hull House, the social settlement she started with Ellen Gates Starr in Chicago in 1889, as a way to begin to both bring about and model social change; the social theory Hull House gave rise to, a theory of democracy as the practice of social ethics that aimed to resolve the problem of disconnection between

568    Patricia Madoo Lengermann and Gillian Niebrugge classes that the new capitalist industrial order was creating; and narrative as a way both to offer a sociological analysis of that problem and to establish the authority of women as speakers on that problem. Addams’s use of narrative as her major research strategy gives a compelling quality to her work for contemporary sociologists seeking to participate in “the narrative turn.” This is particularly true for those wishing to practice “storytelling sociology” and those wishing to engage in “narrative analysis” or study “narrative realities” (Hyvärinen, 2016) or other patterns in the general field of narrative sociology. But the unifying insight of that developing field and of this chapter is in the fundamental significance of storytelling—​a significance increasingly realized in social science today (Loseke, 2007) and the subject of centuries of literary and rhetorical analysis. The remainder of this chapter is organized into two sections: a discussion of the social context that frames Addams’s turn to narrative, and, in the longer section, an exploration of five propositions about her narratives in terms of both the technical choices she makes in creating them and the end she intended to achieve as she crafted them. Finally, a conclusion revisits Addams’s relation to the narrative turn in modern sociology.

Context When Addams founded Hull House, with her college friend Ellen Gates Starr in Chicago’s poorest ward in 1889, she was part of a path breaking effort by the first generation of college-​educated women to find after graduation a way to translate the high goals expressed in their education into meaningful action in the public sphere. That problem in Addams’s life, and the life of other women, might be seen as beginning in a moment pragmatist philosophers would understand as “perplexity”—​“an epistemic emotion. . . the phenomenological sense of lacking immersion in the world, a state of puzzlement and alienation from one’s everyday surroundings” (de Cruz 2021, para. 1)—​that arose from having been told repeatedly during their education that they represented a new force in the world, as Wellesley founder Henry Fowle Durant, urged in a sermon to the student body in about 1870: You mistake altogether the significance of the movement of which you are a part if [for] you this is simply the question of a College education for I believe that God’s hand is in it;. . . that He is calling to womanhood to come up higher, to prepare for great conflicts, for vast reforms in social life, for noblest usefulness. The higher education is but putting on God’s armor for the contest. (cited in Kingsley, 1924, 239)

In 1881, in her valedictory essay, at Rockford Female Seminary, Addams reflected both this sense of mission and the difficulties and uncertainties that women faced. Using the narrative of Cassandra the prophetess who foresaw the doom of Troy, Addams identifies a problem for all women: “to be in the right and always to be disbelieved and rejected.”

Jane Addams’s Use of Narrative in Sociological Research    569 She sees Cassandra as representing in her very being what Addams calls “a feminine trait of mind—​an accurate perception of Truth and Justice which rests contented in itself, and will make no effort to confirm itself,. . . Permit me to repeat my subject; a mighty intuitive perception of Truth which yet counts nothing in the force of the world.” Addams, then, argues that women must find a way to attain “what the ancients called auctoritas, right of the speaker to make themselves heard” (Addams, 1881, 37). Hull House was a way that she as a woman in a patriarchal world could act and speak with auctoritas—​ with dignity, influence, and consequence. The intensity of this need can be gauged in part by the response among young college graduates, especially women graduates, to the Settlement Movement in the United States which followed the lead of Toynbee Hall founded in London in 1883, as an attempt to bridge class differences by having privileged class young people live among the working poor. The American Settlement Movement grew from one settlement in 1886, the Neighborhood Guild started by Stanton Coit in New York City; to two openings in September 1889—​Hull House and the College Settlement headed by Jean Fine at 95 Rivington Street in New York City, to 413 settlements in 33 states and the territory of Hawaii by 1910 (Woods and Kennedy 1911). These settlements, two-​thirds of which were headed by women, attempted to answer what the last decades of the 19th century called “the social problem,” the growing material and social divide between rich and poor in the industrializing nations, a divide sociologist Beatrice Webb recalled the Victorians discussing as the problem of “poverty amidst riches.” Addams’s best statement of her original relationship to this problem is given in “The Subjective Necessity of Social Settlements,” an address she delivered in July 1892 at the School of Applied Ethics, Plymouth, MA, summer session—​aptly described as “a pivotal moment in the life of Jane Addams [that] provided [her] with a major platform from which to share her rationale and vision” (Bryan, De Angury, and Skerrett, 2019, 347–​348). In that address, Addams diagnosed the social problem as one of maldistribution: “at the same time, the over-​accumulation at one end of society and the destitution at the other” and locates it in a more general and challenging condition, that of social disconnection between individuals and groups in the large industrial cities: The social organism has broken down through large districts of our great cities. Many of the people living there are very poor. . . without leisure or energy for anything but the gain of subsistence. . . . They live . . . without social organization of any kind. . . . The people who might [remedy this], who have the social tact and training, the large houses,. . . live in other parts of the city. The club-​houses, libraries, galleries, and semi-​public conveniences . . . are also blocks away. We find working-​men organized into armies of producers . . . without a corresponding social contact. (1893, 4–​5)

She explains this breakdown in terms of the cultural failure to fully implement the most basic American ethic, democracy, arguing that “the view of democracy has been partial,” centered on the franchise—​which is granted “to the negro” even as “we are quite unmoved by the fact that he lives among us in a practical social ostracism” and to the

570    Patricia Madoo Lengermann and Gillian Niebrugge immigrant who meets a similar fate of derision and exclusion (1893, 2–​3) but fails to provide a democratic “ideal in social intercourse. . . There is not even a theory [of social democracy] in the social order.” She points to the social danger posed by this undemocratic structure of relating: “The good we secure for ourselves is precarious and uncertain until it is secured for all of us and incorporated into our common life.”(9) (italics ours). Part of Addams’s project was to provide a theory of social democracy and to convince others of its utility. “Hull House,” she wrote, “endeavors to make social intercourse express the growing sense of the economic unity of society. It is an effort to add the social function to democracy” (1893, 1–​2). Addams’s place in American sociology is anchored in Hull House. For in the period between 1889 and 1910, when American sociology was being invented—​it was practiced in four major locations: (1) voluntary citizen organizations, of which the premier was the American Social Science Association (hereafter ASSA) founded in 1865; (2) charitable organizations, such as the NCCC organized by ASSA members who were battling poverty at the local level around the country and the Charity Organization Societies (aka COS) begun in Buffalo in 1877; (3) colleges and universities, usually in the form of courses in social problems; and (4) the social settlements as much a base for sociological work as were the universities (Deegan, 1988, 2002; Lengermann and Niebrugge, 1998/​ 2007, 2002, 2014). In these early years, there were few agreed-​upon prescriptions about how to do research and no prescribed voice for writing theory, which meant that early sociologists had a freedom to do and write sociology that contrasts dramatically with the contemporary pattern of adherence to norms of academic presentation. For those excluded from even the possibility of academic positions, as most early women sociologists were, narrative served as an effective communication method for speaking directly to the public; Addams is the chief example of this, but it must be understood that her interest is not in narrative as a feature of social science, but rather as an appealing and accessible means to communicate her call for a more just society.

Addams’s Use of Narrative This section is organized rather like the shuffle of a deck of cards—​in one hand, we present the uses Addams had for and made of narrative so that this partially literary, partially social form, becomes the lynchpin of her sociological achievement; in the other hand, we give a summary of the formal qualities of the narrative; bringing these two accounts together illuminates Addams’s achievements as a qualitative sociologist. But first a general statement: The choice of narrative as a way to do social science, that is, to use storytelling as a way to convey social science principles and information, is always a daring one, because the demands of a successful narrative resist the techniques of argument. The successful narrative, whether in literature or social science, depends on its audience to complete its meaning from conclusions it draws from the story that

Jane Addams’s Use of Narrative in Sociological Research    571 is told to it (Booth, 1961; Iser, 1974). For a sociologist seeking to convince an audience of the validity of an account of social life, this can be a risky venture and exposition is the mode more usually chosen. Yet Addams quite successfully uses narrative as a primary way of testing her arguments, using her audience’s response, especially, their emotional understandings, as confirmations of her claims. In Addams’s case, narrative becomes the basis for data collection, data analysis, and the presentation of findings. To understand why narrative works so well for Addams, we need to consider its basic form. Both social scientists and literary critics agree that narrative is a work “understood to organize a sequence of events into a whole so that the significance of each event can be understood through its relation to that whole” (Elliot, 2005, 16–​17) or, as classically described by Aristotle, “that which has a beginning, a middle and an end.” In the “Ur” text of the turn to narrative in modern social science, “Narrative Analysis: Oral Versions of Personal Experience,” William Labov and Joshua Waletzky (1967) study narratives constructed by people in everyday life as part of ordinary conversation and argue that these narratives follow a pattern of relating events in a sequence of up to six parts: [1]‌“a ‘fully formed’ narrative begins with a plot summary (abstract), [2] contains orientation information (to place, time, characters and situation), [3] a statement of the sequence of events (complicating action) and [4]the attitude of the narrator toward them (evaluation), [5] a resolution of the action and [6] a coda, or ending, which returns the speaker to the present” (Reissmann, 1989, 744). Especially important is the “evaluation”; Labov and Waletzky judge a narrative lacking an evaluation as “empty.” Literary scholars add to this social science analysis, the vocabulary of point of view, the angle of vision or “eyes” from the story is presented to the reader; plot, the way actions are interconnected by the author; texture the details left in a story after the plot has been paraphrased, and theme the general meaning or the significance of the story (what Labov and Waletzky name “evaluation”). We turn now to a presentation of five propositions about Addams’s use of narrative expressed in terms of what narrative makes possible and what Addams seeks to achieve. 1. Point of View and the Claim for Auctoritas. To make her claim for auctoritas, “the right of the speaker to make himself heard,” Addams uses a basic tool of written narrative, the point of view from which the story is told. Narrative, as a general form, requires the writer to give the audience some sense of through whose eyes the story unfolds. Despite the fact that Addams nearly always uses (or implies) the first-​ person point of view, that is, we are being told the story by an “I” who we know as “Jane Addams of Hull House,” there is still variation in point of view depending on the role “Jane Addams of Hull House” is playing. In her autobiographical statements, she typically is the first-​person narrator and the major actor. But in her “autoethnographic” writings, which center on the experiences of the Hull House neighborhood, she is more frequently a member of a group or a listener. Each time Addams recounts one of the stories of the Hull House neighborhood from her standpoint as a neighbor, she contributes to the creation of the persona “Jane Addams of Hull House,” thus laying claim to the right, that is, “the authority,” to speak on complex public problems at a moment when women were still fighting for the vote.

572    Patricia Madoo Lengermann and Gillian Niebrugge Those of us who have come to know her through this persona may see her rising above these structural impediments and claiming by sheer ability and accomplishment her right to speak and be heard. But, in point of fact, as Knight (2005) describes, the lack of the vote seemed, early on, to make Addams doubt her “right to” to speak on political issues—​or perhaps the wisdom of so doing. The narrative we look at here is from Twenty Years at Hull-​House and is a recollection of a moment that Knight sees as pivotal in Addams coming to feel that she could enter the political arena—​an occasion in 1893 when Hull House, urged by Florence Kelley, entered the battle to pass legislation regulating the conditions of “sweated labor.” Addams chooses to set this narrative in “Chapter II Influence of Lincoln,” which is one of four autobiographical chapters that open Twenty Years at Hull-​House rather than in a later (from ch. V on) autoethnographic chapter where she is the narrator of the life of the Hull House neighborhood. So placed, the story emerges not as a narrative of the struggle for workers’ rights but as an autobiographical note about Addams. Addams introduces this story, in which she is really the main actor as a story about her father (who had served in the Illinois State Legislature with Abraham Lincoln). This early placement of what is really a very flattering story—​though one does not feel as one reads this that Addams is being self-​ promoting—​effectively establishes in the reader’s mind the sense of a reliable narrator. The “reliable narrator” is a choice (as opposed to “the naïve” or “unreliable” possibilities) in fiction but is essential to the use of narrative in social science where the reader needs to feel that the narrator is a trustworthy presence. Addams moves to the narrative from a recollection of a letter she received at the time of her father’s death in which the writer said of John Huy Addams: “that while there were doubtless many members of the Illinois legislature who . . . had never accepted a bribe, he wished to bear testimony that he personally had known but this one man who had never been offered a bribe because bad men were instinctively afraid of him”—​that was of course Addams’s father. She transitions then from “bad men were instinctively afraid of him” to a new paragraph beginning, “I feel now the hot chagrin with which I recalled this statement during those early efforts of Illinois in which Hull-​House joined, to secure the passage of the first factory legislation.” The movement brings the reader back to the present, Addams is remembering the incident she will tell as she writes about her father—​and the association is the idea of “a bribe.” I was told by the representatives of an informal association of manufacturers that if the residents of Hull-​House would drop this nonsense about a sweatshop bill, of which they knew nothing, certain business men would agree to give fifty thousand dollars within two years to be used for any of the philanthropic activities of the Settlement. As the fact broke upon me that I was being offered a bribe, the shame was enormously increased by the memory of this statement. What had befallen the daughter of my father that such a thing could happen to her? The salutary reflection that it could not have occurred unless a weakness in myself had permitted it, withheld me at least from an heroic display of indignation before the two men making the

Jane Addams’s Use of Narrative in Sociological Research    573 offer, and I explained as gently as I could that we had no ambition to make Hull-​ House “the largest institution on the West Side,” but that we were much concerned that our neighbors should be protected from untoward conditions of work, and—​ so much heroics, youth must permit itself—​if to accomplish this the destruction of Hull-​House was necessary, that we would cheerfully sing a Te Deum on its ruins. The good friend who had invited me to lunch at the Union League Club to meet two of his friends who wanted to talk over the sweat shop bill here kindly intervened, and we all hastened to cover the awkward situation by that scurrying away from ugly morality which seems to be an obligation of social intercourse. (1910, 33–​34)

In recounting this incident in this fashion, Addams subtly ascribes several qualities to herself: one, she is related to the heroic father and whatever good may be in her is attributable to his tutoring of her; two, she, our narrator, has been involved on occasion in rather high stakes games involving Illinois State politics and workers’ rights; three, she must have in some way let her anxiety about Hull House finances make her seem vulnerable to a bribe; four, she is shocked at how things have come to this pass; five, she is also on the very edge of indignation but pulls herself back—​almost but not quite, recalling from age the energy of youth and her willingness to stand on principle, workers’ rights even if it should meant the destruction of Hull House; and six, she understands how the game is played at allows it to wind down—​that is, she is principled but not a crank. Looking at this short but revealing paragraph in terms of narrative structure, we can see two ways the story could be read. In one reading the key complication of the plot is Addams’s being offered the bribe. But in another, it is possible to see Addams’s being offered the bribe as part of the orientation, the introduction of the action, the complication, then is in Addams’s responses, her internal struggles (all admittedly taking place within a few minutes)—​and if we look closely we see that this is where the bulk of our attention is directed from the climactic internal cry, “What had befallen the daughter of my father that such a thing could happen to her?” to the slightly indignant conclusion, “sing Te Deum on its ruins.” If we go with this second reading, we see that Addams has given us a portrait of an ethically engaged young woman, careful not to claim too much credit for herself, deferring to father’s memory, but also feisty enough to protest what is being done with some vigor. And always a person with a sense of humor, able to observe herself engaged in a polite avoidance of what has just happened. In other words, a thoroughly likeable narrator. 2. The Point of View of the Neighborly Relation. Addams’s most frequent point of view is from the position of the neighborly relation. Her narratives were constructed out of the data she collected from the most readily available resource, the people who lived in the neighborhood around Hull House. For Addams and other settlement workers, the method of the settlement was above all going to live as a neighbor among people different from themselves, people disadvantaged by economic circumstance whom they would not meet or know in the ordinary course of events. Settlement residents, and settlement sociology, were particularly concerned with how a neighborly relation could be constructed in a situation that could seem as artificial as that of the

574    Patricia Madoo Lengermann and Gillian Niebrugge residents trying to relate as neighbors across enormous divisions of class and culture—​a point Addams recognizes and frequently remarks on. Making this same point and also arguing the settlement’s duty to be activist on the part of its neighbors, Addams writes that the settlement “by virtue of its very locality . . . has put itself into a position to see, as no one but a neighbor can see, the stress and need of those who bear the brunt of the social injury” (1895, 183). As we imply in Proposition 1, the neighborly relation is sometimes seen as a version of ethnography, the practice popularized especially by anthropologists of going as a stranger to live with a culturally distinct group of people and by immersion over time in their activities to arrive at an understanding of that culture. But Addams and many other settlement residents would point out that the neighborly relation was distinguished from ethnography by the fact that the settlement residents sought genuinely to be neighbors, to develop a shared identity with their neighbors, an identification that would ideally involve them in emotions of sociability and affection and actions of mutual support. Addams seems to understand narrative as a “natural” complement to the neighborly relation, that the way for a neighbor to do a sociology of their neighborhood is through narrative. Neighbors hear each other’s stories, are willing to listen to what is going on in the other’s life, and over time come to have experiences that form shared memories, shared stories, in which the voice of the narrator often speaks as “we.” Addams converted this neighborly activity of sharing stories into an ongoing process of data collection. She chooses to do so not as part of a formal research design but as a by-​product of her attempts to be a good neighbor—​a relation that is not solely the result of location but depends on a commitment of time, the assumption of a workable equality of status, and a relaxed atmosphere where the storyteller does not feel interrogated but free to unwind the story in their own way. This method of data collection demands a good memory, perhaps born of genuine interest in the story one is hearing or witnessing or the activity one becomes involved in. Addams freely relied on her own memory of what people had told her, of phrases used and of the environment in which the telling occurred. Joslin (2004, 208–​209) in her discussion of The Second Twenty Years at Hull House gives an insightful analysis of part of Addams’s working style: “When Jane Addams presented social and political history as what she called ‘honest reminiscence’ in The Second Twenty Years, she echoed both [William] James and [Virginia] Woolf. A writer ought to think herself free to record seemingly disconnected impressions, images, and narratives that flow through her mind, confident that what emerges will be an accurate accounting of experience.” Addams is at ease feeling that she has the sense of the conversation. Further, the neighborly relation gives a kind of intimacy that lets Addams see the cultural objects significant in people’s life experience and convert these in her narratives to the texture that preserves the story in the memory of the reader. In what follows we see Addams in her perhaps most characteristic role: the point of view of the neighbor called to help. [S]‌ome frightened women had bidden me come quickly to the house of an old German woman, whom two men from the county agent’s office were attempting to

Jane Addams’s Use of Narrative in Sociological Research    575 remove to the County Infirmary. The poor old creature had thrown herself bodily upon a small and battered chest of drawers and clung there, clutching it so firmly that it would have been impossible to remove her without also taking the piece of furniture. She did not weep nor moan nor indeed make any human sound, but between her broken gasps for breath she squealed shrilly like a frightened animal caught in a trap. The little group of women and children gathered at her door stood aghast at this realization of the black dread which always clouds the lives of the very poor, but which constantly grows more imminent and threatening as old age approaches. The neighborhood women and I hastened to make all sorts of promises as to the support of the old woman and the county officials, only too glad to be rid of their unhappy duty, left her to our ministrations. (1910, 155)

The plot is fairly easily summarized: an impoverished old lady is saved from being taken to the poorhouse by the intervention of her neighbors. Addams, our first-​person narrator, is a neighbor summoned by other neighbors to figure out how to help the old woman. But what transforms the story into a narrative that may move people to the understandings Addams wishes to achieve is the texture, the images of sight and sound and touch: “the battered chest of drawers”; the “shrill” sounds like “a frightened animal caught in a trap”; the picture in words of “The little group of women and children gathered at her door. . . aghast at this realization of the black dread which always clouds the lives of the very poor.” Then Addams moves to give a sense of significance, to state her “evaluation” of what has transpired, answering the reader’s unspoken query, “what am I to do with this?” One of Addams’s major successes is her ability to give two or more evaluations in a story: the sense various subjects make of what is happening and how she herself, our reliable narrator, makes sense, and even, sometimes, to suggest the sense you the reader would make of all this. After describing the neighbors’ horror at the scene, Addams adds her own evaluation: This dread of the poorhouse . . . seemed to me not without some justification . . . . To take away from an old woman whose life has been spent in household cares all the foolish little belongings to which her affections cling and to which her very fingers have become accustomed, is to take away her last incentive to activity, almost to life itself. To give an old woman only a chair and a bed, to leave her no cupboard in which her treasures may be stowed, not only that she may take them out when she desires occupation, but that her mind may dwell upon them in moments of revery, is to reduce living almost beyond the limit of human endurance. The poor creature who clung so desperately to her chest of drawers was really clinging to the last remnant of normal living—​a symbol of all she was asked to renounce. (1910, 155–​156)

In this “evaluative statement,” Addams answers in part what this has to do with the reader—​she calls for a respect for the small things that make up “normal” living, suggests a need to confront the county about their stringent policies, and in a “coda,” tells of helping some old women get short vacations from the poorhouse in summer by paying for their return to their old Hull House neighborhood.

576    Patricia Madoo Lengermann and Gillian Niebrugge 3. Emotion as a Test of Theory. Narrative allows Addams to make an appeal to emotion, using it to validate theoretical principles and to argue the principle that emotion is fundamental to human social life. From the beginning of her serious academic study, Addams was concerned with ways of knowing and with the possibility of emotion as a source of truth. In “Cassandra” (1881, 37–​39) she moves from the opening story of the Trojan prophetess to a concern with the loss of “intuition” in modern culture: “[W]‌hile men with hard research into science . . . have shown the power and magnificence of knowledge . . ., the old beautiful force which Plato taught is treated with contempt. Intuition is not telling on the world.” But intuition, which Addams defines as “the promptings which come from . . . sympathies,” is much needed, because “Justice must be established in the world by trained intelligence; by broadened sympathies toward the individual man and woman who crosses one’s path, only an intuitive mind has a grasp comprehensive enough to embrace the opposing facts and forces.” The importance of emotion undergirds all of Addams’s social theory. Her argument is that fundamental emotions like sociability—​the desire on the part of people to be in contact with each other for the sake of being in contact—​lead to the development of codes of ethics to regulate human relations and channel impulses. She notes in support that “The evolutionists tell us that the instinct to pity, the impulse to aid his fellows, served man at a very early period, as a rude rule of right and wrong” (1902, 22). Addams’s theory presents ethics as being as significant in individual decisions and the shape of social structures as are material interests or what she understands as the organization of material production. The foundational importance of emotion in social life is a belief she never relinquishes. In “The Subjective Necessity for Social Settlements,” she uses narrative as a way to get her audience to understand on their own and to join her in endorsing a central principle, that people have an innate need for experience of sociability. You may remember the forlorn feeling which occasionally seizes you when you arrive early in the morning a stranger in a great city. The stream of laboring people goes past you as you gaze through the plate-​glass window of your hotel. You see hard-​ working men lifting great burdens; you hear the driving and jostling of huge carts. Your heart sinks with a sudden sense of futility. The door opens behind you and you turn to the man who brings you in your breakfast with a quick sense of human fellowship. You find yourself praying that you may never lose your hold on it all. . . . You turn helplessly to the waiter. You feel that it would be almost grotesque to claim from him the sympathy you crave. (1893, 11–​12)

When we look at what happens here in terms of narrative, we see that Addams has made a significant gamble on the form. Addams tells us a story with a beginning, a middle, and an end: a stranger arrives in a city, the stranger experiences a sense of isolation, the stranger recognizes this aloneness, the waiter enters the hotel room, the stranger is redeemed back into the social circle and wishes to hold on to that connectedness to his or her fellows. And, amazingly, that stranger is you. Here Addams uses the very form of the narrative to make her argument: in the “second person” point of view, the reader becomes in memory and imagination the person in the hotel room. “You,” now claimed

Jane Addams’s Use of Narrative in Sociological Research    577 as our audience as well as Addams’s, can see that this argument will only advance if the reader emotionally participates and the reader can emotionally participate only if the thesis of sociability has some validity. Thus, the choice of point of view tests the validity of the theoretical point. (We can attest from having taught this many times, that Addams does not always win; some readers are deeply moved by the story, but others find the fact that we are spending time on it baffling and uncompelling.) The general point here is the convergence for Addams of the significance of emotion in her social theory with the possibilities for arousing, expressing, and experiencing emotion given by the narrative form. In plot and in texture, the reader is affectively engaged in Addams’s theoretical arguments not through their exposition but through their presentation in narrative. Storytelling carries with it as an activity a permission to affectively engage that is not there for exposition. Addams’s use of it allows the reader, even demands of the reader, that they should not only intellectually understand but should emotionally enter into, feel, the argument of the theory. This emotional component invites the reader really to interrogate their own beliefs, how do they really feel about the ideas being presented. And this is critically important in a theory that has as a major tenet an implied call to action the abstract statement: “The good we secure for ourselves is precarious and uncertain until it is secured for all of us and incorporated into our common life.” 4. Situated Vantage Point and Interpretation. In many of the narratives she shares, Addams is simply the recipient of a neighbor’s story and this position presents particular challenges in reporting that story to her readers. In passing on a neighbor’s narrative to a broader audience, Addams must do some summarizing in the written account, a need that may not have been present in the environment in which the story is originally told, perhaps over several cups of tea. In these retellings and summaries, Addams reflects on the meaning the story has for the teller, on her (Addams’s) own sense of the meaning of the story, and, then, sometimes, on how the person telling the story is using it to achieve a particular outcome. So we have the situation that is true for all researchers seeking to use other people’s narratives, that the stories all come out of memory, the narrative is a recitation of past experience. One of the key issues Addams pursues most penetratingly is the question of what work the memory is doing for the teller. This is the subject of one of Addams’s later books, The Long Road of Woman’s Memory (1916), in which her focus is always twofold, one, on the story told and the other on the mental, emotional, spiritual processes in operation as the person reconstructs these past events as a narrative. The handling of this material requires of Addams, as of any researcher, a skillful hand with plot, the telling of the action in such a way as to suggest how one event relates to another as they unfold in a sequence; this needs to be reported to the reader in a way that maintains the integrity of the teller’s sense of the story, avoiding the temptation to add more continuity in a summary than the teller offered in the tale. In one account from The Long Road of Woman’s Memory, Addams, in the role of listener, is reporting to the reader a tale of sadness and defeat told by a neighborhood woman she has known for many years. The old woman has come to say goodbye to

578    Patricia Madoo Lengermann and Gillian Niebrugge Addams under what Addams calls “the shadow of a tragic surrender”—​for over 50 years the woman has supported her decrepit mother and her imbecile sister but the mother has now become demented, and they were all going to the county poorhouse. The woman had kept this precarious household afloat by working in a box factory where she was hated by the other employees for being a “pace setter.” She had refused to join the union the other employees were trying to build. “She was seventy years old when the legality of the Illinois Ten Hour Law was contested, and her employer wanted her to testify in court that she was opposed to the law because she could not have supported her old mother all those years unless she had been allowed to work nights.” Addams reports, She found herself at last dimly conscious of what it was that her longtime enemies, the union girls, had been trying to do, and a subconscious loyalty to her own made it impossible for her to bear testimony against them. She did not analyze her motives but told me that, fearing she might yield to her employer’s request, in sheer panic she had abruptly left his factory and moved her helpless household to another part of the city on the very day she was expected to appear in court. In her haste she left four days unpaid wages behind her, . . . She had unknowingly moved into a neighborhood of cheap restaurants, and from that time on she worked in any of them which would employ her until now at last she was too feeble to be of much use to anybody. (88)

One evening near the end of her struggles, a union organizer knocked on her door and came in for a cup of tea. The old woman told the union organizer about her experience at the box factory—​the first time she had told anyone, explaining that she had never joined the union but she had run away rather than testify. The old woman, then, tells Addams with tremendous pride about her conversation with the union organizer: “She smiled at me and nodded her head over my old cracked cup, ‘You are a Union woman all right,’ she said. ‘You have the true spirit whether you carry a card or not.’ ” . . . The old woman repeated the words as one who solemnly recalls the great phrase which raised him into a knightly order, revealing a secret pride in her unavowed fellowship with Trades Unions, for she had vaguely known at the time of the Ten Hour trial that powerful federations of them had paid for the lawyers and gathered the witnesses. . . . (91)

But Addams, now, adds her own evaluation of this story: When the simple story of a lifetime of sacrifice to family obligations and of one supreme effort to respond to a social claim came to an end, I reflected how the narrator had freely given all her time, all her earnings, all her affections, and yet during the long period had developed no habit of self-​pity. At a crucial moment she had been able to estimate life, not in terms of her self-​immolation but in relation to a hard pressed multitude of fellow workers. (1916, 92)

Jane Addams’s Use of Narrative in Sociological Research    579 But Addams is also interested in how the woman has repackaged her life: “In some of the reminiscences related by working women I was surprised, not so much by the fact that memory could integrate the individual experience into a sense of relation with the more impersonal aspects of life, as that the larger meaning had been obtained when the fructifying memory had had nothing to feed upon but the harshest and most monotonous of industrial experiences” (85). Addams in her evaluation of the incident, ties it to her social theory: an illustration of an ordinary woman coming to the social ethic, to identification with a social movement, the union, as a way of expressing her solidarity with her co-​workers and of her committing to collective action—​even if largely in memory. The woman had in the moment of crisis participated in the only way she could grasp as available to her—​to withdraw her participation in protest, it was that action that made her participation matter, that she refused to act as a pawn. Addams turns her—​ and the reader’s—​attention to the woman’s capacity for resistance, even in the somewhat ignominious form of flight, of cruel and unjust power. 5. Economy of Structure. Addams finds in narrative a way to handle one of the ongoing challenges to the qualitative researcher—​taking charge of a large and complex body of data; that way is by creating a structure that allows for a maximum of economy in presentation. Economy—​the quality celebrated by Addams’s contemporary, novelist Henry James’s aphorism, “In art, economy is always beauty”—​is often conceived as an avoidance of superfluity, but we would argue that James intended something more than writing tightly. Looking at Addams’s use of narrative, we apply “economy” to structure, “the planned framework of a piece of literature” (Thrall, Hibbard, and Holman, 1960). In the use of narrative in social science, structure is more than plot, structure is also the plan of topics to be taken up. Nowhere does Addams better exercise “economy of structure” than in A Modern Lear, her response to the Pullman Strike of 1894, a major and complex event in US labor history, in Addams’s career, in Addams’s personal life (which intersected dramatically at one point with the strike), in Addams’s emerging social theory, and in her internal balancing of ethics and emotions. The strike focused US attention on underlying tensions among workers and employers and consumers, raising concerns about “model employers,” unions in American life, the burgeoning railway system, government intervention in labor disputes, consumer rights—​and the press as an “influencer.” The strike was a response to actions by “model owner” George Pullman, who, when the Panic of 1893 reduced orders for Pullman cars, cut wages by 30% but did not cut rents and prices at the company town, Pullman, Illinois, a widely recognized “model town” (water, sewers, paved and lighted streets, rental housing, parks, libraries, schools, stores, medical services, a theater). George Pullman had overseen its development and took tremendous pride in the praise he received. On June 11, 1894, the workers undertook a wildcat strike that was joined by the American Railway Union (ARU) under the leadership of Eugene V. Debs, in a sympathetic strike that came to involve 200,000 workers in 27 states, and, to disrupt transportation of goods and people for the United States west of Detroit. By July President Grover Cleveland, under pressure from business, called out the federal military, strikers massed to show opposition, a striker was shot by rail company agents, and

580    Patricia Madoo Lengermann and Gillian Niebrugge massive rioting ensued with strikers destroying railcars; more troops arrived and the strike ended July 20, 1894. Addams was involved throughout the strike in the arbitration effort of the Civic Federation of Chicago’s especially appointed Conciliation Board. Interested in arbitration, Addams was frustrated by lack of support from other committee members and by the Pullman Company’s intransigent response, “there is nothing to arbitrate.” As a member of the board, Addams visited Pullman workers, “learn[ing] that the company houses that looked so pretty on the outside were crowded with families who took in boarders to pay the rent, that the management of the Pullman Company had taken no cut in salary during the depression, and that the stockholders had received their full dividend payment” (Brown, 2004, 282–​283). The general public unrest spread to Hull House as residents and neighbors debated all sides of the strike, union members felt Addams should be more clearly supportive, business groups defined her as pro-​labor, and some donors withheld support (Knight, 2005, 319). The rail disruption personally affected Addams’s family as her oldest sibling, Mary (who had effectively raised her after their mother’s death in 1863 when Jane two), was ill and dying in July, and her children and husband struggled to reach the hospital near Chicago where Mary was—​Addams would manage to get them passage on a mail train so the family was reunited before Mary’s death (Brown, 2004). Grieving her sister’s death, caught up in trying to arbitrate, seeing the actual conditions of the workers, depressed by Pullman’s intransigence and then the failure of both arbitration efforts and the strike, surrounded by conflicting opinions about the strike and accusations against her own stance, finding the fledgling social theory she was creating threatened and her own ethical positions with it, Addams, “deeply perplexed,” felt an urgent need to impose a pattern. She does this, as she has done most of her life, by writing and, especially, by writing a story. In August 1894 she begins a first draft of “A Modern Lear.” This urgency shapes Addams’s economical decisions for “A Modern Lear.” She opens with an unencumbered introduction: “Those of us who lived In Chicago during the summer of 1894 were confronted by a drama” that has left us all perplexed, says the narrator, identified only as one of “those of us” or “the writer,” a universal voice of concern (Addams 1912/​1994). Quickly summarizing debates around the strike—​employees guilty of ingratitude versus an employer who denied them basic rights, “the writer” tells us, “Her attention was caught by the similarity of ingratitude suffered by an indulgent employer and an indulgent parent. King Lear came often to her mind.” She then explains her rationale for what she feels may seem at first an eccentric comparison—​Pullman and King Lear: “We have all shared the family relationship and our code of ethics concerning it is somewhat settled. We also bear a part in the industrial relationship, but our ethics concerning that are still uncertain. A comparative study of these two relationships presents an advantage, in that it enables us to consider the situation from the known experience toward the unknown” (6) (italics ours). Moving to the comparison allows Addams, then, to turn as she pleases—​that is, gives her command over the massive details of the

Jane Addams’s Use of Narrative in Sociological Research    581 Pullman Strike—​by letting her select as she needs from them. Her purpose is not chronological but topical as points of comparison between Pullman and Lear arise according to her narrative needs rather than the demands of chronology. The story she is telling is of the way “one of us,” “a writer” faced the strike’s residue of “distrust and bitterness [that can only] be endured [through the learning of] a great ethical lesson” (5). Addams proceeds to draw that lesson by making comparisons between Lear and Pullman that resonate with her own emerging theoretical vision. From the standpoint of her work as a sociologist, what Addams achieves in A Modern Lear is to take this real life experience and work out what comes to be—​almost in the course of writing and delivering this speech—​a pragmatist sense of ethics, that is, ethics understood as a truth about social relations derived from the experience of people trying to live together and meet both material and emotional/​spiritual needs of being human. Addams will make a coherent presentation of this theory, as theory, some seven years later in Democracy and Social Ethics 1902; but in 1894–​1896, as she works on A Modern Lear, she is shaping three key ideas—​the new social ethics and the belated ethics of the family claim and the individual ethic, the latter of which she comes to see undergirding both philanthropic action and corporate business practice. For now, in A Modern Lear, she has, by the structural device of comparison, given herself flexibility to explore the Pullman strike for what it can teach about concepts central to her thinking. Comparing Lear and Pullman, she finds two men, wealthy, powerful, willful, and generous to dependents but intolerant of their claims to any autonomy—​both exemplars of the individual ethic, an ethic a modern industrial society cannot afford to indulge. A Modern Lear is a seminal piece in the progression of her thought. It was also an important piece of public commentary on an event that had shaken American understandings and her own about the relations between classes, not only as facts but as possibilities.

Conclusion In this conclusion, we discuss Addams’s relevance for “narrative sociology” described correctly as “a field in formation” (Irvine, Pierce, and Zussman, 2019, 1) and a field as we said in our introduction patterned by three concerns—​narrative analysis, narrative realities, and storytelling. Addams’s work provides a history, even in many cases a beginning point, for all three of these concerns.

Narrative Analysis The most widely practiced form of narrative sociology today, narrative analysis requires the sociologist to collect people’s stories about their lives and then analyze those stories using models of narrative form to interpret them. One such model traces “connections among individual agency, historically and socially embedded processes

582    Patricia Madoo Lengermann and Gillian Niebrugge of self-​construction, and the culturally specific narrative forms in . . . [individuals’] life stories” (Maynes, Pierce, and Laslett, 2007, 15). Another form of narrative analysis looks at the way narratives are used to create identities within cultures, institutions, formal organizations and face-​to-​face interactions (Loseke, 2007). Addams gives significant early examples of both types of narrative analysis. In The Long Road of Woman’s Memory (1916), she explores the ways elderly women “use” memory to reconfigure the significance of their lives as so far lived. Addams’s interest in memory is, above all, in how it can help the individual achieve identification with the society in which she or he lives and, hence, with the social ethic (Proposition 4). What Addams offers contemporary researchers is an example of how to share another person’s narrative so that one witnesses this reconfiguration process in the making—​as we show in Proposition 4 or as Addams does in the chapter entitled “Women’s Memories as Transmuting the Past, as Illustrated by the Story of the Devil Baby.” In this chapter Addams explores how a particular narrative—​“the Devil Baby”—​appears in different versions across different cultures but is used in all to explain women’s suffering and the workings of justice in these varying cultures. In Democracy and Social Ethics, Addams offers a narrative of “the charity worker,” designed by Addams to produce an understanding of the constraints and problems with the institution of “organized charity.” Her narrative follows the charity worker in her contact with one particular “case,” allowing the reader to see the variance in points of view between the charity worker and her clients on issues of right conduct.

Narrative Realities In narrative realities scholarship, the work of the sociologist is to study the effects of the environment in which the narrative is told on the form, content, and uses of the narrative. In “the Devil Baby” story above, Addams gives contemporary researchers a model for considering how they become part of the narrative environment—​a facet she has solved through “the neighborly relation.” Addams’s research does not depend on interviews but rather on creating a space suitable for chatting and sharing stories where people could gather to talk with “Miss Addams” whenever she was in the settlement. This view of the Hull House environment is confirmed in immigrant Hilda Satt Polacheck’s detailed memoir, I Came a Stranger (1989), a remarkably useful study offering commentary by a Hull House neighbor.

Storytelling Sociology Addams’s largest contribution is to storytelling sociology—​that branch of narrative that focuses on encouraging sociologists to explore presenting their data from whatever sources through their own personal narratives. This is what Addams does across eleven books and hundreds of articles. Here her work is particularly interesting for

Jane Addams’s Use of Narrative in Sociological Research    583 today’s sociological researcher into narrative because the researcher is working with the stories told by a self-​identified sociologist trained to observe her surroundings in disciplinary terms as well as in the understanding of the neighbor. One approach to storytelling sociology recommended by Hyvärinen (2016, 49) is Tami Spry’s “criteria for ‘effective autoethnography’:. . . first, and most demanding . . . the quality of writing . . . should be respectable equally for social scientists and critics of literature; second, [it] should be ‘emotionally engaging’ and ‘critically self-​reflexive’; third, [it] use[s]‌relational language’. . . invit[ing] ‘dialogue between the reader and the author.’ . . . [it requires]’a provocative weave of story and theory’ ” (2001, 713). Though these criteria would aptly describe Addams’s narrative, we have resisted in this handbook entry labeling Addams’s work as “autoethnography” because that name suggests a more introspective purpose than Addams’s. She ultimately writes to contribute to the amelioration of social problems and the development of social ethics. And she writes ultimately as a neighbor—​a challenge for modern researchers to replicate. Ultimately Addams’s relationship to sociology is less important to her legacy than it is to sociology’s attempts to understand its own past. One understanding of that past rightly sees Addams as the major sociologist in the reform tradition that was—​ and remains—​central to the American social science endeavor. The incorporation of Addams’s work on narrative asserts and affirms the significance of this reform tradition in a factor as basic to the discipline as method itself.

Note 1. The phrase is translated by Samuel Johnson (1709–​1784) from his Latin epitaph for writer Oliver Goldsmith (1728–​1774) composed for the latter’s memorial in the Poets’ Corner of Westminster Abbey.

References Addams, J. (1881). Cassandra. In Essays of class of 1881, Rockford Seminary (pp. 36–​39). “News” SteamPress. Addams, J. (1893). The subjective necessity for social settlements. In H. C. Adams (Ed.), Philanthropy and Social Progress (pp. 1–​26). Thomas Y. Crowell & Company. Addams, J. (1895). The settlement as a factor in the labor movement. In Residents of Hull-​ House (Eds.), Hull-​House Maps and Papers: A Presentation of Nationalities and Wages in a Congested District of Chicago, Together with Comments and Essays on Problems of the Social Conditions (pp. 183–​204). Thomas Y. Crowell & Company. Addams, J. (1902/​1907). Democracy and social ethics. Macmillan. Addams, J. (1910). Twenty years at Hull-​House. Macmillan. Addams, J. (1912/​1994). A modern Lear. Survey (November 2), 131–​135. Reprinted In A modern Lear—​Jane Addams’s response to the Pullman strike of 1894. Jane Addams’ Hull-​House Museum 1994. Addams, J. (1916). The long of woman’s memory. Macmillan.

584    Patricia Madoo Lengermann and Gillian Niebrugge Babbie, E. (1995). The practice of social research. Wadsworth. Booth, W. C. (1961). The rhetoric of fiction. University of Chicago Brown, Victoria. (2004). The education of Jane Addams. University of Pennsylvania Press. Bryan, M. L. M., M. de Angury, and E. Skerrett. (2019). The selected papers of Jane Addams, vol. 3: Creating Hull-​House. University of Illinois. De Cruz, H. (2021). Perplexity and philosophic progress. Midwest Studies in Philosophy, 45, 209–​221. https://​doi.org/​10.5840/​msp2​0219​166. Deegan, M. J. (1988). Jane Addams and the men of the Chicago School, 1892-​1918. Transaction Books. Deegan, M. J. (2002). Race, Hull-​House, and the University of Chicago. Praeger. Elliott, J. (2005). Using narrative in social research—​qualitative and quantitative approaches. SAGE. Hyvärinen, M. (2016). Narrative sociology. Narrative Works: Issues, Investigations, & Interventions 6(1), 38–​62. Irvine, L. J., J. L. Pierce, and R. Zussman (Eds.). (2019). Narrative sociology. Vanderbilt University Press. Iser, W. (1974). The implied reader: Patterns of communication in prose fiction from Bunyan to Beckett. Johns Hopkins University Press. Joslin, K. (2004). Jane Addams, a writer’s life. University of Illinois Press. Kingsley, F. M. (1924). The life of Henry Fowle Durant: Founder of Wellesley College. Century Company. Knight, L. W. (2005). Citizen: Jane Addams and the struggle for democracy. University of Chicago Press. Labov, W., and J. Waletzky. (1967). Narrative analysis: Oral versions of personal experience1. Journal of Narrative and Life History 7(1–​4), 3–​38. Lengermann, P. M., and G. Niebrugge. (1998/​2007). The women founders: Sociology and social theory, 1830–​1930. Waveland Press. Lengermann, P. M., and G. Niebrugge. (2002). Back to the future: Settlement sociology, 1885–1930. The American Sociologist 33, 5–​15. Lengermann, P. M., and G. Niebrugge. (2014). The explanatory power of ethics: The sociology of Jane Addams. In V. Jeffries (Ed.), The Palgrave Handbook of Altriusm, Morality, and Social Solidarity: Formulating a Field of Study (Ch. 5, pp. 99–​123). Palgrave Macmillan. Loseke, D. (2007). The study of identity as cultural, institutional, organizational, and personal narratives: Theoretical and empirical integrations. The Sociological Quarterly 48(4), 661–​688. Maynes, M. J., J. L. Pierce, and B. Laslett (2007). The use of personal narratives in the social sciences and history. Cornell University Press. Reissmann, C. K. (1989). Life events, meaning and narrative: The case of infidelity and divorce. Social Science Medicine 29(6), 743–​751. Thrall, W.F., A. Hibbard, and C. H. Holman. (1960). A handbook to literature. The Odyssey Press. Woods, R. A., and A. J. Kennedy, eds. [1911] 1970. Handbook of settlements. Arno Press.

Chapter 30

Jane Addams a nd t h e Retu rn to Set t l e me nt So ciol o g y Inspiration for How to Help Others in the Digital Age Erik Schneiderhan and Kaitlyn Quinn

Introduction Sociology in North America emerged in large part as a response to the massive social problems of the Industrial Revolution. The structural shifts brought about by capitalism and massive immigration caused a generation of thinkers to turn their attention to how we might mitigate suffering and enable people to realize their full potential as human beings. Academics worked closely with those working in the trenches to try and understand what was happening and what could be done about it. The earliest issues of the American Journal of Sociology are full of articles about municipal reform, voluntary associations, civic federations, child labor, the rise of business, and settlement houses. And those on the front lines of charitable efforts looked to this scholarship to inform their work and improve their ability to help others. How we helped each other and how we did sociology were dynamically intertwined. Sociologists and charitable workers together were focused on the business of helping people and always moving toward what John Dewey (1988/​1920, p. 181) called “social growth.” With the advent of the internet and the proliferation of social media in the early 21st century, how we help each other has changed dramatically. The process of neighbors helping neighbors has increasingly shifted to the digital realm, with e-​transfers, social media posts, likes, and shares replacing handshakes, bake sales, and conversations on the front porch. How we do sociology has changed as well. Big data scrapes of online data have begun to edge out more traditional forms of data collection such as interviews and ethnography.

586    Erik Schneiderhan and Kaitlyn Quinn There is a lot to like about these changes. In some ways we are more connected than ever. It is easier to get the word out if one needs help. It is easier to mobilize people to help others. A social media post on a Friday can lead to thousands of dollars pouring into a crowdfunding page that same evening. We are not bowling alone anymore; we are browsing alone. In the realm of sociology, we can take a look at the big picture in new ways, and make more generalizable claims about the social world. Rather than focus on 50 people from a convenience sample, we can scrape a sitemap and consider all people in a sample frame. With this shift come trade-​offs. More time on our devices communing in the virtual realm means less time coming together in person. In the realm of sociology, more attention to the big picture has at times obscured practice on the ground. And it was those on-​the-​ground and face-​to-​face encounters that formed the foundation of settlement sociology in the time of Jane Addams and her celebrated Hull House. Settlement sociology, which can be generally understood as a twin effort to help people and understand their social challenges, emerged out of close social connections, what Addams (1912, p. 216) called “propinquity” or nearness. What would Addams have to say about these changes in helping others and doing sociology? And what would she say we ought to do about them? This is the entry point for our chapter. In what follows, we will argue that Addams might take issue with some aspects of where we have landed. In privileging the digital over in-​person social relations, we have lost a precious and important part of the fabric of society. We will show that some of our current best practices, celebrated as transparent, democratic, and technologically advanced, are in fact not very different from the inequitable and haphazard pre-​welfare state methods of helping in the 19th century that Addams worked so hard to mitigate and replace through settlement houses, charity organization reform, and eventually the profession of social work. Finally, we will discuss how we might move forward, informed by Addams’s settlement sociological theory and practice and grounded in the dynamism and propinquity of in-​person social relations.

Addams and Settlement Sociology This edited volume is full of discussion about Jane Addams, and by extension the history of the settlement movement. And more generally, there is a significant body of work on the emergence of the settlement house and its practices, particularly in the United States (Carson, 1990; Crocker, 1992; Davis, 1984, 2000; Deegan, 2017; Trattner, 1999; Williams and MacLean, 2015). Settlements were typically located in poor urban neighborhoods and were home to young men and women called “residents.” These residents provided services to those in the neighborhood, serving as visiting nurses, educators, childcare providers, and advocates. The settlement-​house space was also available for use by people in the neighborhood. In addition, the settlement was a research center; residents gathered data on

Jane Addams and the Return to Settlement Sociology    587 social problems with the goal of bringing about social change, earning them the label “spearheads for reform” (Davis, 1984). Many of the reforms that they initiated were geared toward improving the lives of working-​class immigrants who shouldered the bulk of the burden of capitalism’s explosion. Addams sums up what she viewed as the overall logic of the settlement: “It aims, in a measure, to develop whatever of social life its neighborhood may afford, to focus and give form to that life, to bring to bear upon it the results of cultivation and training” (1961/​1910, p. 83). Jane Addams’s Hull House, founded in 1889, was the crown jewel of the settlement movement. It was not just a place for helping others. It was also a crucible for the emerging discipline of sociology.1 In fact, Addams wrote an article for the first volume of the American Journal of Sociology in 1896, on the matter of domestic labor and helping. And her colleague Dorothea Moore (1897) wrote an article for the second AJS volume titled “A Day at Hull House.” Albion Small and John Dewey were just a few of the noted intellectuals who regularly visited Hull House, were involved in thinking through its operations, and were influenced by what happened there. There is not enough space in this entire edited volume to give a full sense of what happened at Hull House. We will briefly sketch a picture of what social practice was like at the settlement house.2 When Addams and her friend Ellen Gates Starr moved to Chicago in 1889, they had little idea of what to do. They knew they wanted to help people, and they wanted a space in which to make it happen. They found a large house to rent on Halsted Street in an immigrant neighborhood. They named it Hull House after the owner’s uncle Charles Hull. When they opened the house to the neighborhood on September 18, 1889, they knew virtually no one in the neighborhood. Their principle was trying to get to know their neighbors, pursuing what Addams would later call “propinquity,” in her lectures comprising Democracy and Social Ethics. Jenny Dow, who ran the Hull House kindergarten, wrote of the importance of connecting with the neighbors: “The most interesting part of the work cannot be written about. It is the simple and natural way in which the neighbors bring their joys and sorrows to this hospitable home.”3 Addams (2002/​1902, p. 7) often talked of the community as a road traveled together: We are learning that a standard of social ethics is not attained by travelling a sequestered byway, but by mixing on the thronged and common road where all must turn out for one another, and at least see the size of one another’s burdens.

Whatever the metaphor, relations among neighbors and connections to other community members are the crucible for helping others. There are pragmatist theoretical undertones to this notion that are worth unpacking because they hold what we believe to be the key to understanding settlement sociology. The fundamental normative and theoretical assumptions underpinning pragmatism are at the heart of what Addams did at Hull House, and they form a cornerstone of settlement sociology. By pragmatism, we are referring to the distinctly American philosophy that emerged during the second half of the 19th century and is commonly associated

588    Erik Schneiderhan and Kaitlyn Quinn with scholars such as John Dewey, William James, W. E. B. Du Bois, Charles Peirce, and Jane Addams herself.4 Pragmatism begins with a fundamental question, formulated by William James (1907, p. 43): “What difference would it practically make to anyone if this notion rather than that notion were true?” This is a powerful question for both sociologists and practitioners trying to help people. It narrows the focus, and asks about what James called the “cash value” of practice. What’s the difference that makes a difference? This normative orientation provided a compass heading for Addams. There is also a fundamental theoretical position at the heart of pragmatism: a rejection of the Cartesian mind-​body dualism (“I think therefore I am”). Instead, social action is understood as continuous, having no beginning or end. John Dewey (1991/​1939), a colleague and contemporary of Addams, talked about ends-​in-​view that emerge out of experiences. Thinking and doing are intertwined and reinforce each other in a back-​ and-​forth process. Why is this important? It shifts the way we think about the social world and places emphasis on the emergent and creative dimensions of what we do outside of habit. When our habits and routines break down, we experiment. It is a moment of what Addams (2002/​1902, p. 31) called “perplexity,” and we move forward by taking advantage of our social connections. For pragmatists, and particularly for Addams, neighborhood connections provide us with potential lines of action that help us move forward, toward a reconstructed understanding of our current situation. We connect, we learn, and we act in a continual, mutually reinforcing process. This is how Addams and her colleagues at Hull House helped others; it is the engine of settlement sociology. The point is that for sociologists and practitioners, pragmatism provides both a compass orientation and a way to move forward in helping others. Pragmatism and settlement sociology go hand in glove. What did settlement sociology look like on the ground, at Hull House? This is a book-​ length subject, but a few examples will suffice to illustrate.5 When Addams and Starr opened Hull House, they found it difficult to meet adults, but children flocked to Hull House. They were curious. They were also hungry and malnourished. So the Hull House team developed a meal program to feed them, with tickets that were only given to children who attended school. Children too young for school were permitted to spend the day at the newly created Hull House daycare. Through the children, Addams and her colleagues began to meet parents, and focused in particular on the needs of mothers, most of whom were working for wages during the day and doing all the housework in the evening. What they learned during their encounters with these mothers was that they needed laundry facilities. So, Hull House opened up its own laundry to the neighborhood. And the daycare was expanded to keep up with demand. Deeper understanding of the unique plight of working women also led to the establishment of the Jane Club in 1892, a subsidized boarding house that provided one free month of rent for women. And there was Addams and others’ attempt to offer nutritious, affordable meals and cooking classes to those in their neighborhood in the form of a “Diet Kitchen.” This effort ultimately failed because “nobody liked the food” (Schneiderhan, 2011, p. 609). They had not considered what kinds of food their community wanted to eat, instead

Jane Addams and the Return to Settlement Sociology    589 relying only on what they thought would be best for the neighborhood. But, this was not the end of this story. Addams and others adjusted their approach and went on to develop a coffee house that provided meals for local residents in a manner that was welcomed by their community (Brown, 2004). Instead of fixating on their failure to create positive change in their neighborhood the first time, they “learned from their failure and the perplexity it engendered” (Schneiderhan, 2011, p. 609). They saw the Diet Kitchen as a provisional step—​an end-​in-​view—​within their larger project of trying to solve problems by making connections with those in their neighborhood. With the coffeehouse, Addams and others created something good for their community, but only because they were willing to give it a try and revise their approach in response to what they were learning through “natural and reciprocal social relations” within their community (Addams, 1894, p. 99). There are dozens of examples like these. What they all show is that Hull House was what Follett (1924, p. 85) would term a “dynamo station” where reciprocal social relations led to the emergence of experimental and creative ways of moving forward when faced with challenges and “perplexities.” And Addams wrote about these kinds of encounters in her landmark sociological work Democracy and Social Ethics. How to help others without compromising dignity was a significant social problem in Addams’s time (and still is today). Unpacking the relationship between those who want to help and those who need help was only made possible through Addams’s deep understanding of the relationships among her neighborhood. Her sociological insights emerged from propinquity. And these sociological insights led to significant social change, influencing the practice of social work and inspiring the actions of a legion of volunteers at settlement houses across the globe.

Changes and Implications The close ties of neighborhoods gradually gave way to a more systematized way of helping others. In large part this was due to necessity. The challenges of the Industrial Revolution and the pressures of immigration on American cities were too much for settlements to manage. Even with the help of the charity organization movement, an effort to organize charitable work and eliminate fraud and duplication, it was impossible to keep up with demand. Noted biographer Henry Commager described Addams’s situation as similar to that of Alice in Lewis Carroll’s Through the Looking Glass: “More and more [Addams] came to feel like Alice with the Red Queen: no matter how fast she ran, she was still in the same place; the poverty, the slums, the crime and vice, the misgovernment, the illiteracy, the exploitation, the inhumanity of man to man—​all these were still there.” As Addams (1961/​1910, pp. 181–​182) described it, “the whole scheme seemed to me as utterly preposterous as it doubtless was.” At the time, she could not see the big picture and understand the massive change she had brought about; she had changed the way helping was done in Chicago and across the world. But more was needed. The rise of

590    Erik Schneiderhan and Kaitlyn Quinn social work and the emergence of the broader welfare state systematized and organized the process of helping and shifted much of the burden from individuals to the state. As the welfare state became entrenched, our ways of helping evolved as well. There was less of a need to draw on social ties to help others, because people were getting help from local, state, and federal governments. And this was a good thing, too, because our social ties were eroding, at least according to scholars like Robert Putnam (2015), who famously characterized Americans as “bowling alone.” Gone were the bowling leagues and other organizations that brought us together and facilitated helping and supporting each other. Instead, Putnam tells us, we watched more television. Skocpol (1996), joining the conversation, pointed out that instead of getting involved directly, we wrote checks to causes that moved us, believing that organizations were best positioned to lobby governments and spend our funds helping others. Mass-​mailings fueled this kind of activity at the start, as well as advertisements by celebrities like Sally Struthers, whose narrations accompanied shocking images of famine in far-​away places. With the advent of the internet, it became even easier to get information about those who needed help, and to give money right away. Millions of people could be reached with a few lines of code, and dollars poured in to causes across the globe. Crowdfunding is the apotheosis of such efforts, with billions of dollars going via electronic transfers to individuals and organizations who need help. And since it is out there for all the world to see, it offers a semblance of transparency that can be mistaken for democracy and positive social change. In fact, crowdfunding is replicating inequalities on a massive scale through an unregulated, privately owned system. Research shows that the majority of those seeking help through crowdfunding do not reach their goals. And young, tech-​savvy white people do much better than all others in raising money via crowdfunding. Our latest and greatest method for helping others is not so different from that of Addams’s time; instead of knocking on doors, people put up crowdfunding pages. Despite the breadth, reach, and potential of the internet, those most in need typically do not get help through digital means.6 Sociology, too, has broadened its focus, opening up to the application of statistical methods. Dustbowl empiricism vied with microsociology for command of the discipline in the mid-​20th century, and demographers began to dominate departments of sociology across the United States. And to a certain degree, it made sense. Social programs with tens of thousands, or even millions, of participants were made legible by statistical analysis. And the rise of the internet as the space for public sphere activity, social connections, and commerce made it possible to count and track the social behavior of millions of people without leaving one’s office. For example, a sitemap scrape of a web page today can provide a million cases of crowdfunding activity in a few short hours, including dollars raised, donor counts, story updates, and images. In our view, and to paraphrase Daniel Bell (2000), these approaches are close to exhausted and may have reached their limits. Inequality in the United States is worse than ever. The COVID-​19 pandemic has shown the cracks in our welfare system. Crowdfunding and other recent techniques that are basically an updated way of writing checks have not made a major dent in the numbers of those who are asking for help. And

Jane Addams and the Return to Settlement Sociology    591 most sociologists are not much closer to figuring out how we might make things better for people who need help. Rather than put more of our shoulder to the wheel in an effort to do more, we suggest we should think about doing things differently in some cases. This is not a call to stop making online donations. Nor is it a call to scrap big data sociology. We need all this. But it is not enough, and may have distracted us from the core tenets of both the practice of helping and the ways in which we understand it through a sociological lens. We need to count less and connect more.

A Return to Settlement Sociology There is a broad impulse to change the way we do sociology. As sociologists, we seem to know that we can do better. Between Burawoy’s (2005) public sociology, Feagin and Vera’s (2008) liberation sociology, Treviño’s (2012) service sociology, Morris’s (2017) emancipatory sociology, Watts’s (2017) solution-​oriented sociology, and Prasad’s (2021) focus on problem solving, there is a growing group of scholars calling for a revival of the early reformist orientations of the discipline, and they have gained traction in the wider discipline. (We ourselves have participated in these calls.) And sociologists are answering. Recently, the Canadian Sociological Association created a “Committing Sociology” section in their journal, the Canadian Review of Sociology, that seeks to highlight “the research practices of Canadian sociologists who do research aimed at facilitating social change” (Doucet and Siltanen, 2017, p. 361). Amplifying these perspectives, in this chapter we return to the settlement sociology of Jane Addams as a guide for scholarship and action as we collectively grapple with social problems in our increasingly digital age. Lengermann and Niebrugge (2018) suggest that any contemporary manifestation of settlement sociology must offer at least two things: (i) a material response to witnessing human suffering, and (ii) the development of theory, research, and activism that seeks to understand and reform the social structures responsible for this suffering. Yet, Addams’s approach offers a unique set of problems for the contemporary moment. Her ethics were grounded in the ideal of the neighborly relation, which, for some, may invoke the quaint nostalgia of a different time that has long since given way to rugged individualism (Rosenblum, 2016). In some sense, sociologists are a bit like Alice and the Red Queen today, running to stand still in our efforts to address the shifting social problems of the 21st century.7 We just cannot keep up. But we also know that Addams and her settlement sociology met their limits in the late 19th century. It just was not possible, with existing methods, to address the entirety of the problems facing them. So, the idea of a “return” might not be the best way to think about settlement sociology and what it can offer us today. Perhaps a better term would be “reconstruction.” Habermas (1979, p. 95) thought of reconstruction as “taking a theory apart and putting it back together again in a new form in order to attain more fully the goal it has set for itself. This is the normal way . . . of dealing with a theory that needs revision in many respects but whose potential for stimulation has

592    Erik Schneiderhan and Kaitlyn Quinn still not been exhausted.” In other words, let us take settlement sociology apart and put it back together. We keep the best of what settlement sociology had to offer, and leave the anachronistic rest behind. For us, Addams’s work is critically relevant to the task at hand. In short, Addams can help us with the impulse to change sociology. To be clear, we are not advocating for building new social settlements. Settlement sociology was never wholly contained within these buildings: “the relations, not the structure, were what mattered” (Schneiderhan, 2011, p. 602). Addams’s approach does not straightforwardly lend itself to a set of “best practices.” Indeed, such an approach would undercut the dynamic and locally attuned nature of this paradigm. Instead, we must ask, what would settlement sociology look like today? How would it reckon with the perplexities of the current moment? What do “right relations” with our neighbors look like today? How should we, as sociologists and social citizens, seek to “make a difference”? So what are we advocating for? Well, at an abstract level, it means breaking down barriers between thinking and doing. As we mentioned above, pragmatist social theory rejects the Cartesian mind-​ body dualism. We suggest applying this to the space of helping others. As we saw at Hull House, thinking about helping and the practice of helping work best when they are intertwined.

Relations with Neighbors Attempting to re-​create the ethos and practice of Hull House today might begin as Addams did, by trying to meet our neighbors. It is, following Hamington (2004), an attempt to recenter care in actual bodies that relate to one another. Getting out and getting to know people helped Addams build her understanding of how to help on the basis of what her community cared about and what those who lived alongside her needed. This mode of community engagement enjoyed a kind of popular resurgence in the mutual aid efforts that sprung up in response to the COVID-​19 pandemic (Arnold, 2020). And if this pandemic has taught us nothing else, we have learned the importance and value of face-​to-​face connections. You do not know what you have got until it is gone. One approach that has gained particular traction and has deep resonance with the neighborly relation is the neighborhood pod. Neighborhood pods seek to offer a support network, typically one in close geographic proximity. A pod might be formed for a neighborhood, block, or even just one apartment building. As a website supporting mutual-​aid societies tells us, building relationships with pod members means first asking questions: What are your hobbies and interests? What do you need help with? What resources and skills can you share with the pod? How regularly do you want to check in?8 These questions ensure that the focus of the pod is tailored to neighborhood needs. Some in the community may need help with childcare, someone to pick up their groceries or medication, while others may want emotional support or an opportunity to socialize safely.

Jane Addams and the Return to Settlement Sociology    593 In Addams’s time, the close proximity of neighbors was one of the only ways to gain information about what people needed. There were very few avenues through which she could learn about the troubles of others. Indeed, part of the project of the settlements was creating records of the everyday experiences and concerns of marginalized people for the purpose of encouraging reform. We have a lot more information at our fingertips today. Social media platforms have offered a new window into the troubles of those around us. If the power was to go out in our homes right now, our first instinct may no longer be to go out into the street to see what is happening, but rather to check to see if there is anyone tweeting about it. If there are sirens outside we may check an online news site to see if there has been an accident. This can be a great thing. We have the ability to learn about the experiences of others, both near and far, in a way that those in Addams’s time scarcely could. For instance, the recent volunteer initiative, Vaccine Hunters Canada, quickly picked up on the concerns that many Canadians were expressing online around how, when, and where to get their COVID-​19 vaccine. Vaccine Hunters used this confusion to drive the creation of an online information platform and social media campaign designed to connect people with vaccination appointments. The success of this initiative was grounded in its connectedness to local concerns—​it reflected what people actually needed—​as evidenced by their more than 280,000 followers on Twitter at the time of this chapter’s writing. This effort was grounded in a motto Addams would find familiar: “neighbours helping neighbours, coast to coast” (Vaccine Hunters Canada website). In this case, however, the online medium was essential for this endeavor’s success—​vaccine appointment availability can change in a matter of minutes. The efforts of Vaccine Hunters Canada have not only made a difference to the lives of individual people, but are increasingly being scaled up through strategic partnerships with municipal governments and local public-​health units. Vaccine Hunters Canada is also deeply committed to public education. They seek to take an active part in “combat[ting] misinformation and vaccine hesitancy” through various forms of community engagement including town halls (Vaccine Hunters Canada website). So far this has been actualized in the hosting of virtual information sessions with physicians, healthcare professionals, and professors to provide expert perspectives about the safety of the AstraZeneca vaccine, changes to dosage timing, COVID-​19 variants, and possibilities of vaccine mixing. These efforts resonate with Treviño’s vision for service sociology in which academics participate in the alleviation of social problems by offering sociologically informed interventions as a “vital check and balance to erroneous or ill-​informed conventional wisdom, common sense, and organizational policy” (2012, p. 12). Creating spaces where academics, practitioners, and communities can come together in these types of conversations is a core part of the sociological vision we seek to advance in this chapter (see also Lengermann and Niebrugge, 2014). In doing so, however, we must remain mindful that “the connection between practitioners and academics is not an easy or seamless one” (Posner, 2009, p. 22).9 There are also new responsibilities that come with the mass consumption of information about human suffering. Because we know far more than ever, we should also

594    Erik Schneiderhan and Kaitlyn Quinn take greater responsibility for trying to do something about it—​just like the volunteers at Vaccine Hunters Canada did. Yet information saturation risks apathy. At almost any time we can be confronted by the suffering of near and distant others. Right now, for instance, a frighteningly brief scroll on Facebook might highlight that nearly half of Toronto’s population went hungry at least once a week, the plethora of sick and abandoned animals needing families to adopt them, the struggles of living with chronic pain, the challenges parents are facing during the COVID-​19 pandemic, and the ongoing trauma and grief of Indigenous communities as a result of the Canadian residential schools. What are we to do about the tremendous range of suffering we encounter in these online spaces? For most of us, the answer is likely not much. But, by looking to Addams’s notion of the neighborly relation, it is our hope that we can work to change that. The neighborly relation today might, in part, involve taking the information we have access to about suffering and inequality and reinscribing it within our local realities. What good is being able to dutifully recite the contours of unequal societies if we have no understanding of how these facts inform the daily lives of those around us and no impulse to try to ease the challenges our neighbors face? In his Pulitzer Prize–​winning book on eviction in the United States, Matthew Desmond grapples with this very challenge, suggesting that it is only when we begin to understand social problems as part of our own realities, envisioning “a street as our street, a public park as our park, a school as our school that we can become engaged citizens, dedicating our time and resources for worthwhile causes” (2016, pp. 548–​549, emphasis in original). Actualizing this perspective within his own research, Desmond closes his book with an actionable plan to ameliorate some of the harms he documented, proposing an expanded housing voucher program that would ensure no family must spend more than 30% of their income to rent a safe, modest home. To accompany this commitment to creating change within and beyond the Milwaukee community where he conducted this research, he founded a nonprofit organization called Just Shelter. This organization seeks to “raise awareness of the human cost of the lack of affordable housing in America and to amplify the work of community organizations working to preserve affordable housing, prevent eviction, and reduce family homelessness” (Just Shelter, 2016, no pagination).

Knowledge Translation There are other examples of scholars engaging in similar processes of knowledge translation by partnering with communities and practitioners to solve social problems on the ground. Scholarly work grounded in these commitments seeks to create relationships “between researchers and the people for whom the research is ultimately meant to be of use” (Jull et al., 2017, p. 2). Philippa Tomczak, for instance, has partnered with Sue McAllister, the prison and probation ombudsman in England and Wales, in an effort to apply her existing research about suicide in prisons (see: Tomczak, 2018) toward

Jane Addams and the Return to Settlement Sociology    595 tangible improvements in how this office conducts its fatal incident reports (Tomczak and McAllister, 2021). Rather than simply documenting or explaining the increasing number of deaths in prisons, Tomczak and her team are trying to do something about it. As a result of her community partnership—​with the prison and probation ombudsman, but also a number of voluntary organizations, former prisoners, and bereaved families—​ changes to fatal incident reports are currently being piloted with the expressed aim of “creating safer prisons and fewer preventable deaths” (SAFESOC, 2020, no pagination). In Canada, Vicki Chartrand founded the Centre for Justice Exchange—​a nonprofit organization which offers resources, support, and information about the criminal justice system and seeks to raise awareness of injustices through public education. One of the ongoing projects within this organization is a list of grassroots initiatives being undertaken by Indigenous communities in the face of ongoing settler-​colonial violence against Indigenous women, girls, and two-​spirit people. By participating in this project, Chartrand seeks to translate her research about settler-​colonialism in the criminal justice context (see: Chartrand, 2019) toward alternate practices of justice that are grounded in anti-​colonial commitments and that honor the existing justice, accountability, and support structures present in Indigenous communities (Justice Exchange, n.d.). Though the social problems Desmond, Tomczak, and Chartrand seek to intervene in are quite different, they each responded to the suffering documented in their research by initiating relationships within their communities and working to translate their research findings to better outcomes for marginalized people. More often than not, sociological research stops short of this kind of engagement. Our research is often judged by the quality, elegance, and robustness of our social explanations, not on whether or not our findings might contribute to better societies (Prasad, 2021). This style of arm’s-​ length scholarly engagement has a long history in the discipline of sociology. Yet, Prasad (2021) argues that trying to solve problems should be central to the process of knowledge production. This is not to say that we must individually take on the burden of offering a final solution to social problems—​this would scarcely be possible. At the heart of the sociological discipline are a cluster of “big issues” (Head, 2008, p. 107): poverty, inequality, racism, crime, violence, and environmental degradation, to name but a few examples. These problems are often considered so intractable and complex that scholars conceptualize them as wicked (for summary see Quinn et al., 2022). Attempts to “tame” or “tackle” wicked problems invariably spiral off, often manifesting as new unintended problems (Ritchey, 2013). The challenges of actualizing positive change for wicked problems with any measure of certainty has discouraged many from even attempting to do so (Termeer and Dewulf, 2019). Yet, if we are to approach these problems as neighbors, there is an ethical imperative that we try to do something—​however partial these attempts may be. With this in mind, the pragmatism of Addams and others might be envisioned as a guide for research and problem solving that is oriented towards offering “provisional conclusions” (Prasad, 2021, p. 5)—​or what we might think of as Dewey’s ends-​in-​view, mentioned above. The point is finding ways to move forward without being able to see or articulate our ultimate endpoints and without being discouraged by the possibility, or inevitability, of making mistakes. Desmond’s plan for a housing voucher program

596    Erik Schneiderhan and Kaitlyn Quinn may run into problems of implementation. Tomczak’s first revision of fatal incident reports may not result in fewer deaths in prisons. Chartrand’s efforts to bring together Indigenous voices and resources may not tangibly undo some of the harms of settler-​ colonialism. But these possibilities are not the point of what we are advocating for in this chapter. We make progress by trying things out and seeing what happens, and by formulating new plans and goals in the process of taking action. The hope is that we will collectively whittle away social problems by offering provisional conclusions, facing challenges in their implementation, and revising in light of these experiences. Something very similar was at the heart of the work occurring in the social settlements.

Social Problems and Social Relations Let’s return to the Diet Kitchen at Hull House as a classic example. Prasad (2021) envisions the process of learning and adjusting we saw there as occurring on a larger scale, suggesting the value of a new kind of scholarly engagement premised upon a strong orientation toward social problem solving and a willingness to revise our understandings in light of the challenges of actualizing change in real communities. When done collectively, the research and problem solving of other scholars act as a continuous interrogation, comparison, and correction of the provisional solutions advanced by our own work (Prasad, 2021). An approach to social problem solving premised on the ideal of the neighborly relation requires more than simply offering a set of recommendations in the final paragraphs of our scholarly work. It asks us to initiate a foundational reorientation of how we see ourselves as scholars and how we approach our research. This starts with research design that is grounded in relationships with those in our communities and activated by our responsibility to others as neighbors. There are scholars, practitioners, and activists already working toward these ideals from whom we can learn in this process. For instance, the community-​based participatory research tradition highlights the importance of praxis: the cycle of theory and practice, of reflection and action, wherein research findings and practice continually inform one another in and through community partnerships (Freire, 1970; Wallerstein and Auerbach, 2004). Yet, oftentimes these partnerships are not implemented to the extent aspired to within the social settlements. For instance, only 26% of the 251 community-​engaged research projects examined by Vaughn et al. (2018) were classified as true partnerships, wherein community members were involved throughout the entirety of the project. The more common mode of engagement was offering temporary employment for select community members to conduct a designated task (e.g., participant recruitment, data collection). There is a significant risk that these latter attempts to engage the community risk being performative or transactional, as they remain almost entirely driven by academics and there is “little to no long-​term benefit to either the peers themselves or the sustainability of the project” (Vaughn et al., 2018, p. 780). In turning to

Jane Addams and the Return to Settlement Sociology    597 the neighborly relations of the social settlements, we might find an alternative mode of community-​engaged scholarship that prioritizes the creation of enduring spaces for reciprocal relations and problem solving between academics, practitioners, and community members—​much like Desmond, Tomczak, and Chartrand have initiated in their work. Envisioning sociology through the lens of the neighborly relation creates opportunities for reciprocity and solidarity that are often felt to be absent from both charitable or philanthropic efforts and scholarly knowledge production. It is crucial to note, however, that the “capacity for reciprocity is not evenly distributed across society” (Parsell and Clarke, 2020, p. 1). There are significant differences in power and resources between academics who are curious about and upset by social inequality and those who suffer acutely because of these realities. This was also true of the relations between Addams and those she sought to help in the social settlements (Schneiderhan, 2016). When individuals with divergent life experiences and different amounts of power and status are brought into close proximity, opportunities arise for misunderstandings that may reinforce existing barriers, stereotypes, and prejudices between them (Raymond and Hall, 2008; Guttentag, 2009). We must remain aware of these risks as we undertake research and community engagement that seeks to improve the lives of marginalized people. In navigating the complexities of helping others as scholars, we might look to what Minas et al. (2019) call diagonal trajectories as a model for relationship formation. Diagonal trajectories are connections in which power differences are explicitly acknowledged, and every conscious effort is made to diminish these inequalities (Minas et al., 2019). Under this model, reciprocity within relationships between scholars and communities requires that we help those we seek to create change for to build confidence and agency and offer meaningful opportunities for community members to contribute to knowledge production, agenda setting, and problem solving. Engaging with others as neighbors is, most fundamentally, about “building new social relations that are more survivable” (Spade, 2020, p. 136). We began by asking what Addams might have to say about these changes in helping others and doing sociology? And what would she say we ought to do about them? Well, we think that she might say that in privileging the digital over in-​person social relations, we have lost a precious and important part of the fabric of society. The stuff of neighborhoods, the propinquity of social ties, has been eclipsed by the sheer speed and volume of data that we can count with ease. These counts are diagnostic tools, showing us where we might help and directing funds and energy in a targeted fashion. But these data should not exist in the ether, untethered from the local, on-​the-​ground situations that vary across contexts. Our understanding will only be improved by putting macro-​ level information into dialogue with local understandings. And not all work can be solved by sending money. Much of the work of helping involves emotional support and personal time, provided face-​to-​face between people. We imagine that Addams would celebrate the internet as a tool for education, connection, and awareness. But it would never have served as a substitute for holding a child in your arms as you listen to a mother describe her struggles to earn a wage, keep the

598    Erik Schneiderhan and Kaitlyn Quinn household running, and find time for herself. As Addams (2002/​1902, p. 5) wrote, “Each generation has its own test.” Our test is perhaps learning how to take advantage of the wealth of knowledge and information that has come with the internet, without permitting it to cage us and restrict creativity and experimentation in our praxis. Returning to and reconstructing the settlement sociology of Jane Addams is a possible road. What does this mean in concrete terms, both for sociologists and those wanting to help? We have to challenge sociologists to articulate their work and its value in different terms. It is about sitting and struggling in the perplexities of everyday life, not only the perplexities of theory or literature. It is more than just being conscious of the “so what” of our research; it is about moving from understanding to action and back again. A reconstructed settlement sociology asks us to celebrate perplexity and mess, not shy away from it. In moving forward, we might draw further inspiration from feminist geographers J. K. Gibson-​Graham,10 who positioned academic writing as providing an ethical opening in which scholars may “uncover or excavate the possible” (2008, p. 623). Normative commitments, whether implicit or explicit, are inevitable in designing and presenting a research project: “research does not reflect a fixed world, it writes one, and writing is a practice of choices” (Griffiths and Brown, 2017, p. 680). So, following Law and Urry (2004, p. 404), we agree that in conducting research we must ask: “which [realities] do we want to help to make more real, and which less real? How do we want to interfere (because interfere we will, one way or another)?” In doing so, it is our hope that our scholarship may “contribute to the very process it seeks to explore: more even relations on an otherwise uneven planet” (Griffiths and Brown, 2017, p. 680). As people who want to help others, we need to move away from one-​off efforts and transactional ways of engaging with those who are in need. And we should not confuse instant connectivity and the improved flow of information with effective helping. The former can facilitate the latter, but it is not a given. And donating money with a few clicks of a mouse can be part of what we do, but it should not be all that we do. Initiating meaningful and lasting relationships will ask much more of our time than simply liking a post or contributing to a GoFundMe. It is hard work, particularly as we face the competing dilemmas of our lives. Work, family, and friendships vie for attention as we also try to stay healthy, and make a difference in our communities. As we move forward and navigate the pressures of these dilemmas, as sociologists and as citizens, we might look to Addams and her settlement sociology for inspiration, rather than pinning our hopes solely on the latest and greatest technological innovations. As Addams (2002/​1902, p. 7) reminded us, making a difference and helping others successfully will not occur unless we come together and travel in common cause.

Notes 1. For those interested in reading more on Addams, start with Schneiderhan (2011, 2015) for historical background and comprehensive reviews of the literature, then turn to Knight (2005) for a deep treatment of Addams’s life and work.

Jane Addams and the Return to Settlement Sociology    599 2. What follows is informed by Schneiderhan (2015) ­chapters 2 and 3. 3. Jenny Dow, “The Chicago Toynbee Hall,” Unity, March 15, 1890, Hull House Scrapbook I, JAMC, University of Illinois at Chicago. 4. See Schneiderhan (2011) for more on the origins of pragmatism and connections to Jane Addams and Chicago sociology. 5. See Schneiderhan (2015) ­chapter 3 for details on these and other examples. 6. See Schneiderhan and Lukk (2023) for more detail on crowdfunding’s inequalities, and how it has taken the place of face-​to-​face helping in the United States. 7. This reference comes from Henry Steele Commager, originally published in the Saturday Review, but also years later in the foreword to the 1961 Signet edition of 20 Years at Hull-​ House (xvi). 8. Mutual Aid 101, n.d. 9. See Ancira et al. (2021) for more on these difficulties and a summary of some practical strategies used to bridge the academic-​practitioner divide within the field of public administration. See Vaccine Hunters (n.d.) for more on locating vaccines during the pandemic. 10. J. K. Gibson-​Graham is the pen name used by Julie Graham and Katherine Gibson in their publications together.

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Chapter 31

Jan e Addams’S Prag mat i st F em inist Thou g h ts a nd Actions For and With I l l and Disable d Wome n Claudia Gillberg

Introduction This chapter begins where Jane Addams concluded Democracy and Social Ethics (Addams, 1905) with thoughts on political reform, concentrating on issues of “righteousness” as synonymous with ethics (see pp. 221–​277). Addams states, “Action is indeed the sole medium of expression for ethics” (p. 273), referring to the impossibility of meaningful ethics without aspiration for changes to improve the lives of those at the receiving end of punitive measures and institutionalized moral judgment. Addams was adamant that people’s living conditions and circumstances be fully and compassionately investigated and understood prior to making decisions, let alone developing social reform. She was particularly concerned by the lack or absence of the voices of those affected by poverty, inadequate housing, disease, and other specific misfortunes where mere data collection would only produce fragmented pictures of experiencing enduring misfortune. This chapter draws on Addams’ work as pragmatically transcending academic disciplines’ boundaries and restrictive remits to widen the debate on chronic disease and disabilities. Having lived experience of severe disease and lifelong disability and as an educator and critical disability researcher, I am well placed to present data created from lived experiences of penury, pain, social ostracism, and lowered status participation in society. I present my thoughts and research together with such voices. Addams held that we Continually forget that the sphere of morals is the sphere of action, that speculation in regard to morality is but observation and must remain in the sphere of

604   Claudia Gillberg intellectual comment, that a situation does not really become moral until we are confronted with a question of what shall be done in a concrete case and are obliged to act upon our theory. (Addams, 1905, p. 273)

I do not claim to represent anyone, but I believe in the strength of utilizing concrete cases as reliably gauging the “righteousness” of our theories and practices. My “knowing with” disadvantaged and underprivileged people leads me continually to Addams’s insistence on lived experience as a valid form of knowledge building in a democratic society (Addams, 1905; Gillberg, 2012; see also “power-​with,” Whipps, 2010, 2012). Critical disability scholars and feminist disability scholars from several disciplines, such as philosophy, sociology, social work, law, and education, provide a lens in this chapter, asking readers to see and take seriously the lived experiences of women who are chronically ill and sometimes severely disabled (Campbell, 2009; Shakespeare, 2013; Tremain, 2013). Addams never shied away from unfathomable hardships, sometimes caused by social policy itself, political and moral prejudice, and other social “evils” (Timmins, 2001; Addams, 2006; Day, 2017). She illuminated such social injustices because exclusion from society made no sense to her and her Hull House peers (Addams, 1905).

Employing Addams to Connect Thought and Action Addams always connected intellectual forays with her daily social-​justice work. This chapter provides examples and instances of injustices that have been largely missing from public discourse. The absence of chronic disease and disability from the public discourse is problematic because where there are absences there cannot be ethical considerations. It is impossible to consider anything ethically that is absent from the collective imagination. Partial absences are similarly problematic if disabilities are presented one-​dimensionally by professional bodies as personal tragedies, abnormal medical cases, or personal failings. In such one-​dimensional imaginings, flawed reasoning thrives, even among ill and disabled people. The latter lack automatic access to different ways of reasoning, often missing the tools required for critically examining widely held beliefs about them (Campbell, 2009). After all, disabled people are embedded in societies that raise them. Even well-​meaning families can be persuaded by certain professionals, doctors, social workers, and teachers that their disabled children are tragic burdens or might be “fixed,” and they may resort to actions whose detrimental, sometimes long-​term, effects are as undeniable as they remain uncontested. With this caveat, “lived experience” and “knowledge with” must also be considered. Disabled people’s many paths to liberation, if they embark on such an arduous endeavor at all, are fraught with complications including self-​doubt and sometimes a deep-​seated

Jane Addams’s Pragmatist Feminist Thoughts and Actions    605 sense of worthlessness, and alienation from whatever might constitute the norm and normality in a given societal context (Kennedy, 2012; Campbell, 2009). For the above reasons, it is all the more urgent and justified to ask: where are the allies, the feminist scholars and critical thinkers, the policy makers, the sociologists, social workers, and medical doctors who, within their professional remit, might contribute to positive social change for the millions of absent (from society) citizens? Honeyman (2017) expresses the repeated and demoralizing experience of potential allies’ absences, the self-​experienced betrayal of chronically ill and disabled children by the teaching profession, family doctors, and psychologists, narrated from the perspective of her sympathetic-​knowledge platform and ontological standpoint of “knowledge with” (Addams, 1905; Gillberg, 2012, 2016). Mainstream white feminism, in a similar vein, has not proved the natural ally one might have expected for chronically ill and disabled women, which can constitute a particularly lonely and isolating discovery (Morris, 1993; Wendell, 1996; Kafer, 2013; Eddo-​Lodge, 2017; Tremain, 2018). Alison Kafer (2013) expresses her critique of such omissions from the perspective of a feminist critical disability scholar, asking, What does it mean that disability appears in Piercy’s utopia only as an unwanted characteristic in a debate over genetic engineering a debate itself used to illustrate her ideas about democratic science? What does it mean that feminists writing and teaching about the US in the 1990s and 2000s used this novel, and specifically the mixers-​shapers debate, as an example of ideal democratic decision making and public critique, of a political community grounded in feminist principles of egalitarianism and democracy? What can be inferred about disability from the fact that contemporary feminists highlight a debate in which both parties assume from the beginning that ‘negative’ traits are self-​evident, natural, and therefore outside the scope of discussion? What can a feminist disabilities’ studies reader learn from the fact that feminist theorists have offered no critique of a debate in which disabled people do not participate because they have already been removed from this supposedly diverse, multicultural, egalitarian landscape? (Kafer, 2013, p. 74)

Kafer concludes that disability is often considered an irredeemable difference. Chronic illness is a material reality in which lived experiences accurately align with statistics about reduced access to the labor market, increased divorce rates, abuse, loss of income and support networks, disbelieving medical staff, poverty, dependence on disability benefits (if granted), and, often, premature death (Kennedy, 2012; Eddo-​Lodge, 2017; Honeyman, 2017; Gillberg & Jones, 2019; Ryan, 2019; Cleghorn, 2021). The United Nations reported that disabled people have been dealt a harsh hand in the United Kingdom and worldwide (Price, 2011; Duffy & Gillberg, 2018; Menze, 2019; United Nations, 2019). Jane Addams did her work and philosophizing alongside wording her visions for global peace and against the backdrop of constant health crises (Addams, 1905, 2006, 2020; Fischer et al., 2009; Fischer, 2021). While this chapter is not about the COVID-​19

606   Claudia Gillberg pandemic, some age-​old complex issues of social ills being compounded by, for example, sexually transmitted infections, tuberculosis, and currently COVID-​19 (Ryan 1992; Dormandy, 2001; Murray, 2004; Szreter, 2014; Butler, 2020; Fischer, 2021), raise numerous urgent questions concerning systemic injustices, the perpetual construction of vulnerabilities, and “vulnerable’ people’s (social) citizenship. Fischer certainly appears to be connecting dots between the greatest public health crisis of the 21st century so far and the public health crises faced by Addams and her peers (Addams 2006, 2020; Fischer 2021), pointing at something quite different from prudish talk of sexual promiscuity in the often misunderstood An Ancient Evil and A New Conscience (Addams, 2006). She argues that Addams’ concerns were tied to her thoughts about democracy, dignity, and participation in society, analyzed from an angle of constructed vulnerabilities during rampant public health crises. In raising vulnerability-​related questions about the connection between public health issues and democracy and in reflecting upon ethically viable actions, we may do well to ask ourselves how Addams and her peers managed to organize their ideas and actions, domestically, and internationally. Might there not be valuable lessons to be relearned in the 21st century?

Social Practice in Service of Social Amelioration The American pragmatist Mary Parker Follett attended the London School of Economics when William Beveridge (1879–​1963) was at its helm (Timmins, 2001; Oakley, 2018). Oakley (2018) wonders what Follett thought of his talk on reform and social policy. Beveridge was a civil servant and social economist who in November 1942 published a report titled “Social Insurance and Allied Services” (Timmins, 2001; Day, 2017) in which he outlined his vision for society and social-​care policies in Great Britain after World War II. Familiar with the social settlement of Toynbee Hall—​as a 24-​year-​old Oxford graduate, he had been a sub-​warden there, where “he learned the meaning of poverty and saw the consequences of unemployment” (Timmins, 2001; Bew, 2017). Toynbee Hall was where Jane Addams also found her inspiration and path in life. Beveridge, much like Addams before him, realized that philanthropy would not suffice in post-​war Britain; for there to be genuine peace, he argued for a coherent government plan as the only viable way out of deep crisis. Beveridge’s vision was to battle against what he called “the five giant evils”: Idleness Ignorance Disease Squalor Want (Timmins, 2001)

Jane Addams’s Pragmatist Feminist Thoughts and Actions    607 The “cradle to the grave” social program Beveridge devised included proposals calling for unemployment benefits and state pensions for all and a “free at the point of use” universal healthcare system (Timmins, 2001; Day, 2017): it proved popular among the British public (Bew, 2017). Clement Attlee (UK Labour Prime Minister from 1945 to 1951), who had also worked as a sub-​warden at Toynbee Hall (Bew, 2017), proceeded to implement Beveridge’s ideas via an “expansive system of welfare and social insurance,” following his election as Prime Minister at the end of WWII (Timmins, 2001; Bew, 2017). Though Beveridge’s social-​policy vision was progressive, it was not new; Jane Addams and her Hull House peers were decades ahead of Beveridge—​in fact, they went much further, in theory and practice (Oakley, 2018). This, again, raises questions as to where our societies have gone astray; why did Beveridge have to reinvent the wheel following WWII when so many formidably talented social workers, philosophers, doctors, and many others had gone before him? Oakley (2018) claims the answer is clear: because they were women, sociology subsumed the progress social work had made. These women were almost all rendered invisible, and with them disappeared social advances and innovations they had devised and practiced, not only in the United States and United Kingdom but also globally. The aftershock of that epistemological and ontological erasure can still be felt today. Feminist pragmatists had an overarching agenda based on visions of citizenship as togetherness rather than a fragmented system. Oakley (2018) explains how such progressive women reformers’ ideas, despite the aforementioned erasures, reverberate today in the UN’s peace-​making policy and some of the transnational thinking about welfare and peace. Oakley states that the time between 1880 and 1920 was perhaps, or could have been, one of the most courageous and pivotal for Western societies, owing to formidable women whose theorizing and intellectual as well as reformist achievements were both innovative and sustainable. For example, Mary Parker Follett (1868–​1933) maintained that “the process of democracy is one that can only be engaged through concrete experience” (Whipps, 2012; Oakley, 2018), and she was far ahead of anyone in producing organizational and leadership theories. Her “concrete experience’ ” argument sounds very much like Addams’s “concrete case” action as the ultimate expression of ethics. Without such concrete experiences and cases, social justice remains empty rhetoric and meaningless (Addams, 1905). Much has happened in the years since the Beveridge report was published (Timmins, 2001), one of the most decisive changes occurring due to the austerity regime imposed by many governments following the 2008 financial crisis. In the United Kingdom, “austerity,” enacted by the 2010–​2015 Conservative-​Liberal Democrat Coalition government, created a hostile environment toward the chronically ill and disabled that did not lend itself to pluralistic citizenship, ideas of reciprocity, and other ideals that the early feminist pragmatists like Addams, and others including Beveridge, embraced (Addams, 1905, 2020; Timmins, 2001; Fischer, 2002; Fischer, 2019). Considering the United Kingdom as the Welfare State it became after WWII and its ideological foundation, and the fact that so many chronically ill and disabled women fare so badly today, it is justified

608   Claudia Gillberg to insist on asking again: what went wrong? (Timmins, 2001; Cherney, 2011; Garthwaite, 2012; Ryan, 2014, 2019; Duffy, 2017; Beresford, 2019; Human Rights Watch, 2019).

Feminist Pragmatist Reciprocity Does feminist pragmatism today sufficiently explain how reciprocity might be enacted, for example given the response to the COVID-​19 pandemic? In the rush to return to normality (for certain wealthy Western nations at least; globally, the pandemic is far from over at the time of writing) the ways in which Western societies are emerging from it are disturbing from a disability perspective. Little if any thought is given to chronically ill and disabled people, not even in the sense that access to and improvements in generic care would also protect non-​disabled people. Addams’s reciprocity and sympathetic knowledge alongside with, for example, Parker Follett’s integrative processes are, philosophically speaking, not only plausible but also necessary to apply unless we want weak systems with built-​in alienating parallel processes for those artificial constructs of vulnerability, as discussed previously. It is not only justified to expect robust structures for societal, participative organizing with reciprocity as a moral and democratic imperative at the center, but it is also a viable way forward out of a major public-​health crisis, especially with regard to evolutionary democracy and social ethics (see Fischer, 2019). However, given that anti-​welfare state models have existed for at least as long as the democratic-​welfare state model and considering that the average member of the medical profession, to name only one profession, may not be the most politically informed social reformer, it is unsurprising that some developments have passed unexamined or even unknown. In 2021, the five giant evils still represent tightly interwoven constructions arising from a failure to critically examine diseases’ many meanings and, for example, misinterpreting idleness as a character flaw, thereby individualizing a societal ill. This chapter examines the experiences of chronically ill women and their construction of citizenship, investigating the multifactorial processes leading to their exclusion or even vilification in recent decades. Fischer shines a feminist pragmatist light on the compounding of societal failings by arguing that Addams’ social ethics must be understood in the context of the constant public-​health crises during the latter’s lifetime (Fischer, 2021). Consequently, viewing social citizenship through the lens of chronic disease and disability, especially when chronic entails complexities of precarities (not least the “unintended consequences” of social policies and other practices, initially devised with good intentions but sparse sympathetic knowledge), may help revive methodological questions because, as argued by Gillberg (2012), feminist participatory-​action research shares ethical values with feminist pragmatism, especially because of its “power-​with,” which Whipps persistently highlights throughout her work. Feminist participatory action research insists on reciprocity as a validity criterion.

Jane Addams’s Pragmatist Feminist Thoughts and Actions    609 Where reciprocity takes center stage, recognition, logically, should not be problematic. This is an important reason to argue in favor of feminist pragmatism entering the field of disability studies. Neither disability scholars or critical disability scholars have succeeded in problematizing the lack of recognition for women as carers, let alone achieved any transformative change toward better pay and increased social security. Despite ethics of care being a well-​established field (Engster & Hamington, 2015), feminism, generally speaking, appears partially culpable of and possibly complicit in upholding epistemic injustices (Fricker, 2009) by engaging in ontological gerrymandering (Woolgar & Pawluch, 1985; Kennedy, 2012; Tremain, 2018), placing an explanatory burden on severely ill and disabled individuals. Repeatedly, disabled and chronically ill people must explain why they will not recover, be cured, be rehabilitated, or become less of a societal burden, while their opportunities for earning an acceptable income, let alone gaining job security and acceptable workplace conditions, dwindle or disappear. Many carers (predominantly women) are unpaid, and many among those unpaid carers are themselves disabled. Again, neither disability studies nor any other field has satisfactorily addressed or contributed toward change (Kennedy, 2012; Beresford, 2019). So-​called second-​wave feminism (Gillberg, 2014; Delap, 2020) was as white as it was middle-​class and fundamentally ableist in the sense that it dismissed racism and disability (Crenshaw, 1989; Hooks, 2000; Mohanty, 2003; Wolbring, 2008; Campbell, 2009; Davis, 2011; Smith, 2012; Eddo-​Lodge, 2017). Black feminists have repeatedly told white feminists to listen to them (Crenshaw, 1989; hooks, 2000; Davis, 2011; Eddo-​Lodge, 2017). When calls for solidarity and suggestions for “power-​with” are ignored, the obvious conclusion for this lack of interest and unwillingness to change the status quo for women is that a certain type of feminist is not interested or invested in change for every woman despite the historical facts, and the contemporary politics and material realities of the aftermath of colonialism, imperialism, and racism are difficult to redress (Hall, 2017). Societies live through aftermaths of decisions by people with no interest in subjugated groups, sometimes creating absurd notions of postcolonial strength and national identities, as Kim (2017) demonstrates with her concept of curative violence. Rediscovering in the 21st century the type of participatory democracy and social ethics of which Addams and her peers spoke is illuminating because of the plethora of solution-​focused suggestions and creative ideas Mary Parker Follett and Addams disseminated locally, nationally, and globally. Their vision was no less than world peace; in fact, “Peace is too small a word for all this’ “meaning that it is impossible to convey the greatness of their individual and combined work, intellectual incisiveness, and deep commitment to social citizenship and participation for all (Oakley, 2018). Sometimes, the early feminist pragmatists’ ideas are referred to as Utopian, but as Eddo-​ Lodge (2017) puts it, “Utopian ideas are the essence of feminist imagination.” Feminism without grand ideas and bold suggestions for better societies is pointless, and as such feminism is not disruptive, creative, or imaginative. However, for there to exist “power-​with” in the 21st century, knowledge tied to lived experience and subjective knowers requires a form of validation to legitimate

610   Claudia Gillberg their claims to truth and legal rights. Being disruptive in today’s more market-​driven universities, regardless of country, is rarely compatible with legitimizing collaborations toward recognition. For disabled activists’ knowledge to flow into academia, complicated, informal, unofficial negotiations take place that may or may not lead to the inclusion of lived experiences as knowledge or any other input from people living on the margins. Some academics try changing disability-​related knowledge from within, some from without, at considerable risk to their well-​being, job security, or potentially deepening marginalization (Benson et al., 2007; Gillberg, 2020). As Addams stated, The economist who treats individual cases as mere data and the social reformer who labours to make such cases impossible solely because of the appeal to his reason, may have to share these perplexities before they feel themselves within the grasp of a principle of growth ( . . . ) But it has to be transferred from the region of perception to that of emotion before it is really apprehended. The mass of men seldom move together without an emotional incentive. (pp. 272–​273)

Drawing on such an argument, it becomes clear that the field of critical disability studies could become key to apprehending the necessity for such perceptions and the recognition of lived experience. Pain, in particular, is hard to convey to the public (“we all experience pain” is often an argument with which to dismiss the unrelenting pain of chronic diseases). Critical disability scholars will have to find ways that render it possible to comprehend pain so that this particular problem receives the sympathetic knowledge-​building required toward ethical action taking.

Chronically Ill and Disabled Women in Difficult Times Tom Shakespeare (2013) offers a viable definition for understanding disability because it is fundamentally pragmatist, honoring the materialist realities in which chronically ill people are located. He emphasizes the necessity for pluralism, drawing on several theories that contribute toward a better understanding of participation in society for all disabled people including chronically ill people, a group that has been rejected by some disability scholars and activists as “not disabled” (Mallett & Runswick-​Cole, 2014). Susan Wendell (1996) endured years of silence before expressing her outrage at such ontological gerrymandering and dismissed such hierarchy-​building within the field of disability as unacceptable. In the context of establishing a framework for disabled women’s participation in society based on their disability rights, for example, if they do not consider themselves as disabled, new difficulties arise. Objectively speaking, chronically ill people can be isolated from all societal contexts in that they are bound to their homes, sometimes bedridden for days, weeks, months, or years due to the nature of their disease. Women may suffer significant economic loss (alongside numerous other losses),

Jane Addams’s Pragmatist Feminist Thoughts and Actions    611 rendering them entitled to benefit payments, having rights enshrined in law irrespective of personal identity choices. Various disabled feminist scholars have chosen subjective disclosures of their own process toward realizing and accepting that they were disabled, and how the various models of disability have helped them understand themselves in order to educate others (Wendell, 1996; Morris, 2009; Garland-​Thomson, 2011; Brown & Leigh, 2020). Non-​disabled academics sometimes refer to such disclosures and descriptions as “confessional stories,” illustrating the need for knowledge paradigms that are remote from mainstream feminism and academia. Of late, “power-​with” appears to have become more difficult not only because of a general hesitance to accept disabled people as people and full citizens but also because of limiting epistemic understandings of the human experience (Wendell, 1996; McKenna, 2001; Minnich, 2005; Honeyman 2017). By the same token, the heated intra-​scholastic debates around the various models of disability have fragmented the field of disability studies and created pockets of ignorance regarding some disabilities while detracting from the various models’ usefulness. The Social Model of Disability and its liberating effects are well documented (Abberley, 1987; Campbell & Oliver, 1996; Morris, 2009; Young, 2014). In the United States, this model is often referred to as the British Social Model (BSM); Garland-​Thomson (2010), Wendell (1996), Honeyman (2017), and others dislike it due to its conveying a degree of dogma that British disability activists may not notice and acknowledge due to the aforementioned liberating effects it can have for some disabled people. Most disabled persons are not academics or disability activists, so commonalities or a widely shared experience of disability—​let alone liberation, understanding, and agreement on how to proceed on various points—​do not exist. Disability activism, especially for those with chronic disease, is splintered, contested, polarized, and generally speaking in a poor state. Mainly, this can be explained by chronic diseases’ “invisibility” and a physical lack of meeting points in so-​called real life (Honeyman, 2017). Chronically ill people, especially during the pandemic, cannot easily meet in public, where they might conduct workshops, devise seminars, and give or attend lectures. Neither can they march in the streets, visibly and audibly demanding that politicians address social-​justice issues. When disability scholars and activists argue against naming specificities of disabilities or when they reject chronic disease as a recognized, legitimate disability, they can brutalize a group of disabled people already being targeted. When feminists show no interest in theorizing such specificities of some women’s lives, when the limbo chronically ill women endure contains increased violence, risk of suicide, unsafe housing, penury, homelessness, and caring duties (Morris & Nott, 2002; Mays, 2007; Garthwaite, 2012; Dusenbery, 2019; Raj, 2019; Ryan, 2019; Booker et al., 2020; Butler, 2020; Lyngbäck et al., 2020; Cincurova, 2021; Ensler, 2021), when there is no redress for any of those specificities because some reject them as irrelevant to the field of disability studies, then it is time for feminist pragmatists to revisit some of those social ills with which Jane Addams and her peers dealt intelligently, insightfully, and driven by a vision of societies as peaceful places of participation and meaningfulness.

612   Claudia Gillberg

Disease, Public-​Health Crises, and the Construction of Chronically Ill Women As mentioned earlier, several epidemics occurred in the United States during Addams’s lifetime, such as cholera, diphtheria, typhoid fever, as did the influenza pandemic of 1918, perhaps the most comparable to the current coronavirus situation (Robinson & Battenfield, 2020). In addition, tuberculosis was a constant (Ryan, 1992; Dormandy, 2001; Murray, 2004) and a leading cause of death in the United States at the turn of the 20th century (Murray, 2004) with many sufferers experiencing chronic illness due to TB infection (Dormandy, 2001). Addams herself experienced chronic ill health from its effects, though this is rarely explored in the literature (Fischer, 2021). There was also the perpetual presence of venereal disease in the form of both syphilis and gonorrhea, which was prevalent in (particularly) the male populations of both the United States and United Kingdom (Szreter, 2014; Fischer, 2021). The often long delay in diagnosing severe diseases that either solely affect women (such as endometriosis) or affect them in higher numbers than men (such as MS, ME, lupus; Broster, 2020; MS International Federation, 2021), and the common administering of inappropriate, inadequate medical treatment (Goldin, 2016; Smith, 2016a, 2016b; Wilshire et al., 2018; Gillberg & Jones, 2019) contribute directly to women being pushed onto society’s margins. Furthermore, chronically ill women have the added burden of disbelief toward them and their claims of ill health (Frances & Chapman, 2013; Dusenbery, 2019; Broster, 2020; Cleghorn, 2021; Geddes, 2021; Stanley, 2021). The medical profession both creates and fuels such disbelief by frequently dismissing women’s symptoms as psychosomatic, something as old as medicine itself and which has had many permutations over the centuries, depending on the society, and religious and other overtones, involving controlling and punishing women (Wendell, 1996; Kennedy, 2012; Tremain, 2013, 2020; Goldin, 2016; Gillberg & Jones, 2019; Khakpour, 2018; Bailey & Mobley, 2018; Wilshire et al., 2018; Dusenbery, 2019; Cleghorn, 2021; Stanley, 2021). Wendell details initial “psychosomatic” diagnoses of patients subsequently discovered to have recognized physical conditions—​for example, of 35 patients (21 female, 14 male) with multiple sclerosis, 22.8% were told their symptoms were psychological (7 of the women were given this diagnosis against only one of the men, Wendell, 1996). The individualizing of disease has taken extreme forms in the case of women in the healthcare system. In 1972 Irving Zola warned of the reintroduction of this viewpoint via psychosomatic diagnoses: At the same time as the label “illness” is being used to attribute “diminished responsibility” to a whole host of phenomena, the issue of “personal responsibility” seems to be re-​emerging within medicine itself. Regardless of the truth and insights of the

Jane Addams’s Pragmatist Feminist Thoughts and Actions    613 concepts of stress and the perspective of psychosomatics, whatever else they do, they bring man, not bacteria, to the centre of the stage and lead thereby to a re-​examination of the individuals’ role in his own demise, disability and even recovery. (Zola, 1972, in Wendell, 1996, “The Rejected Body,” pp. 98–​99)

Nothing adequately explains the disbelief, the ensuing ascriptions of laziness, vilification, and, ultimately, systemic ostracization of chronically ill women in feminist theory. The material realities of girls and women with chronic disease are mostly overlooked, with significant race differences making life even worse for black chronically ill women (Crenshaw, 1989; Davis, 2011; Hoffman et al., 2016; Yoshida, 2021). Black women’s biggest health issue is the system; deep-​seated structural and systemic racism are not just obstacles to addressing black women’s health issues: they are the health issue (Crenshaw, 1989; Davis, 2011; Hoffman et al., 2016; Robinson & Battenfield, 2020; Simpson & Porter, 2020;; Yoshida, 2021). Myths about female bodies and illnesses have enormous cultural and historical persistence. Healthcare providers and healthcare systems are failing women in their responses to/​and treatment of pain, especially chronic pain (Stanley, 2021). Women are the predominant sufferers of diseases involving chronic pain (Scarry, 1987; Goldberg & McGee, 2011; Jones, 2016; Couser & Mintz, 2019; Geddes, 2021; Stanley, 2021, Nuffield Department of Women’s and Reproductive Health, 2021), but before pain is taken seriously as a symptom of possible disease, it has first to be validated by a medical professional. Thus, the pervasive aura of distrust around women’s accounts of pain has been absorbed into medical attitudes over centuries (Wendell, 1996; Garland-​Thomson, 2011; Hoffman et al., 2016; Gillberg & Jones, 2019; Saini, 2019; Perez, 2020). What is ignored by medicine is its own societal and political power as a historically revered profession. There are murky sides to the medical profession that have remained largely unexamined when fostering new medical professionals, such as its willingness to construct women whose bodies and therefore lives are in limbo, as inferior to men (Wendell, 1996; Gillberg & Jones, 2019; Dusenbery, 2019; Perez, 2020; Cleghorn, 2021). Such murky sides include colonialism and slavery proponents among medical practitioners, such as James Marion Sims, someone respectfully designated the “father of modern gynecology,” who operated on black enslaved women without anesthetic, justifying it with wild hypotheses concerning pain thresholds (Hoffman et al., 2016; Holland, 2017). Dialogue about historical atrocities and present-​day reverberations is not forthcoming. As a result, the discrepancy between women’s experiences of healthcare and the medical profession’s view on what they offer, and how, remains almost unaddressed. While waiting for a diagnosis, women and men are at risk of losing their economic and social status along with their health. Even if initially supportive, employers will, if no diagnosis is forthcoming, become intolerant of irregular working hours or prolonged sick leave and, probably, make the employee redundant. Women on average wait

614   Claudia Gillberg longer for a diagnosis (Dusenbery, 2019; Gillberg & Jones, 2019; Broster, 2020; Geddes, 2021), and the years of uncertainty can be life changing, explaining why those waiting for a diagnosis are often relieved when finally diagnosed, even if with a serious disease. Divorce, social isolation, and economic loss (Morris, 1993, 2009; Wendell, 1996; Kennedy, 2012) remain unproblematized, unrecognized, dismissed, and consequently ungrieved because these women are gradually becoming those “others,” construed as worthless. There is no “with” the moment it becomes evident that a disease is chronic instead of acute—​the fleeting disturbance it is allowed to be. Readily available are the many statistics of women’s exclusion from society due to chronic disease, with descriptions of how some members of the medical profession are complicit. Regardless of cultural or geopolitical context, the medical profession clads itself in a paternalistic approach, which, in its mildest form, can be comforting for patients because it conveys professional competence and sound knowledge. Unfortunately, extreme paternalism in medicine can lead to coercive measures such as incarceration, stripping those affected of all agency (Wendell, 1996; Smith, 2016a, 2016b; Gillberg & Jones, 2019). In Towards a Feminist Pragmatist Model of Healthcare, Gillberg and Jones (2019) maintain that paternalism in the medical profession can take extreme forms as exemplified by the case of Karina Hansen (Kennedy, 2012; Smith, 2016a, 2016b; Gillberg & Jones 2019). Severely and chronically ill Hansen, a 24-​year-​old Danish citizen, was incarcerated by the Danish state because (middle-​aged, male) Danish psychiatrists claimed her disease, the neurological condition myalgic encephalomyelitis (ME) (Frances & Chapman, 2013; Wilshire et al., 2018; World Health Organization, 2019), was a “functional disorder” and that they could cure her (Smith, 2016a, 2016b). The police, accompanied by social services, forced entry into her house and removed her to Hammel Neurocenter at Aarhus University Hospital, against both her wishes and the wishes of her family (Smith, 2016a, 2016b). Hansen was not cured, and it was several years before she was to regain her freedom through a lengthy legal process, during which time her health deteriorated (Smith, 2016a, 2016b; Hughes, 2018). Chronically ill women like Hansen provide an example of assumed curative measures that have minimal/​zero efficacy or scientific basis, effectively punishing women for purporting to be ill (Kim, 2017). Nowhere is the curative violence and the demand for a curative arc more visible than in cases of incarceration. The society that Beveridge envisaged in his report (Timmins, 2001; Day, 2017) has taken concepts such as idleness and disease and repeatedly redefined their meaning beyond the original intent, something that has proved especially damaging for chronically ill women. It has constructed chronically ill people into idlers: “cannot” has become “will not” (Quarmby, 2011; Garthwaite, 2012; Ryan, 2014, 2019; Tihelkova, 2015; Spartacus Network, 2015; Duffy & Gillberg, 2018; United Nations, 2019). When Beveridge mentioned idleness, he meant the societal ills that come from high unemployment rates, not the “idle sick.”

Jane Addams’s Pragmatist Feminist Thoughts and Actions    615

Ignorance That disabled or ill people should either inspire the healthy and non-​disabled or serve as cautionary tales is a trope that has remained unchanged in recent decades. The late Stella Young rejected aspirational myths attached to her disability (Young, 2014). She questioned why she was brave merely for getting out of bed, whereas chronically ill women are decried for failing to perform as required (Quarmby, 2011; Garthwaite, 2012; Tihelkova, 2015). Such ignorance of specificities further fuels constructs of chronically ill people as idlers. Participation in society is a radically inclusive tenet of pragmatist knowledge production that requires integrative processes along the lines of Mary Parker Follett’s and Jane Addams’s reasoning (Addams, 1905, 2020; Fischer et al., 2009; Hamington 2010; Whipps, 2010, 2012; Fischer, 2019). Few people realize that such integrative processes demand hard, dedicated work, not merely jargon with which to impress market forces (Benson et al., 2007). In the field of higher education, certain universities and academics misuse disability and social-​justice terminology for their own purposes, the disabled applicant becoming designated as unproductive in institutional frameworks that demand full-​time participation. The ableism that permeates academic institutions is steeped in non-​disabled privilege, incapable of identifying factors which prevent disabled students and disabled academics from full participation in academic knowledge production (Brown & Leigh, 2020). The stigmatization of those who are not in employment can, however unintentionally, be created by an education sector that is a large employer and a societal bearer of norms. Thus, universities can perpetuate societal division, contributing toward impoverishing disabled scholars and signaling to their students that university teachers are healthy and non-​disabled as a matter of normativity and normality. Dewey and Addams thought of such practices as undemocratic, and it is clear on studying Ableism in Academia and other recent analyses on the state of education and disabilities that not much has changed (Benson et al., 2007; Addams, 2009; Gillberg & Vo, 2014; Slee, 2019; Slee et al., 2019; Brown & Leigh, 2020). Simultaneously, caring is an empirical example of how unremunerated work is not only unrecognized but may end up being punished just like undiagnosed disease. The role of disabled carers, most of whom are women, is under-​researched, and the multiple social and economic losses they suffer for looking after their ill and disabled children, a complex yet not uncommon situation, seems impossible for British society to adequately handle (Beresford, 2019). Disabled carers are at risk of becoming increasingly unwell, and their disabilities tend to be made worse by heavy caring duties. Shakespeare (2013) insists that material circumstances in disability studies must be a primary concern, echoing Jane Addams’s and John Dewey’s shared view on theories as being pointless if they fail to help in transforming practices.

616   Claudia Gillberg

Thoughts on Squalor and Want Squalor and want, as defined by Beveridge, are rarely understood in the context of, for instance, chronic pain and interdependent relationships, such as a disabled mother caring for an adult chronically ill child living at home with no income, relegated to the realm of mythologizing underpinned by medical, and often dubious, hypotheses (Wendell, 1996; Timmins, 2001; Goldberg & McGee, 2011; Kennedy, 2012; Tihelkova, 2015; Day, 2017; Gillberg & Jones, 2019; Saini, 2019; Cleghorn, 2021). Equally, economic loss is rarely discussed as a serious, often inevitable, consequence for disabled and chronically ill people, who lack recourse to meaningful action against the possible loss of property, social status, and support systems, a situation exacerbated by recent welfare reforms (Duffy & Gillberg, 2018; Ryan, 2014, 2019; Benstead, 2019). As soon as the slightest suspicion arises of the historic idleness described by Beveridge and others (Duffy, 2017; Benstead, 2019), of being “undeserving” of sympathy and support, the wheels toward poverty are set in motion, and the safeguards theoretically in place are found to be flawed at the institutional level (Duffy & Gillberg, 2018; Benstead, 2019; Ryan, 2019). Western societies’ various welfare systems and disability acts, work capability assessments, and measures to assess rehabilitative possibilities will come into effect (Garthwaite, 2012; Ryan, 2014, 2019; Stewart, 2016; Duffy, 2017; Duffy & Gillberg, 2018) and, in some cases, prove lethal for those affected (Ryan, 2014; Spartacus Network, 2015).

Evolutionary Theorizing, Evolving Societal Values? Exclusion and excluding are arguably as innate in human nature as caring and learning from mistakes toward more intelligent actions (Slee, 2019). Chronically ill women’s subjugation and dismissal are not enough, for example, to prompt the medical profession to want to consider self-​criticism; on the contrary, it seems to be used by some as an example of how ungrateful some patients are when they attempt to exercise agency (Wendell, 1996; Kennedy, 2012; Honeyman, 2017; Dusenberg, 2019; Gillberg & Jones, 2019; Cleghorn, 2021). Medical failings are merely part of the disease-​as-​evil problem. Squalor and want celebrate revivals in disaster capitalism and disaster patriarchies. The situation is dire for those on the margins, possibly more dire than in any decade since WWII. Arguably, Jane Addams’s welfare state would have been built on transnational visions of peace. She suggested that peacetime be used for nurture, and the more nurture the less the need for war (Addams, 1905, 2006, 2020). This is logical and not utopian. It seems merely utopian in the sense that humanity appears to be firmly embedded in a state of war, discord, conquering and punishment, ontological

Jane Addams’s Pragmatist Feminist Thoughts and Actions    617 gerrymandering, othering, distrust, and “inalienable individual rights” (Woolgar & Pawluch, 1985; McKenna, 2001; Cherney, 2011; Ryan, 2014, 2019; Beresford, 2019; Slee, 2019; Butler, 2020; Ensler, 2021; Gavin, 2021). Severely disabled women, especially those in chronically ill and “idle,” as well as punished bodies, are profoundly alone and isolated. They need support and reciprocally minded solidarity with people who can carry the struggle to a wider public, including the medical professions, social workers, policy makers, and others who might hold partial solutions in terms of both identifying aspects of the complex problematic and being able to suggest relevant actions—​for it is the latter that are urgently required.

Conclusion That chronically ill people are gradually stripped of their cultural and social belonging is made clear through the concept of curative violence, introduced in this chapter. Curative violence calls into doubt humanity’s willingness to imagine Addams’s peaceful, participative futures. Considering how brutalized and traumatized severely ill and disabled women, men, and children often are by our welfare systems and despite our collective, perhaps superficial and unreflected, impression that this cannot be true, these facts deserve scrutiny. Such scrutiny must focus on large-​scale studies of lived experiences. Where are the feminist thinkers and activists of Addams’ and her peers’ caliber capable of not only seeking out differences in people’s backgrounds and living conditions as a necessity toward participatory society building, but also with the courage to act as an ethical imperative? Where, indeed, are new and promising sites for Addams’ theories and practices of imaginative, perceptive knowledge collaborations toward futures that would facilitate participation by those with disabilities and chronic diseases as they move from human-​made margins to the center of human activity and interconnectedness? Reflections on Addams’s and her peers’ vision of world peace seen through situated knowers, and constant public health crises, squalor, want, and ignorance, raise valid questions as to societies’ collective abilities to evolve. It seems that the nurturing of societies during peacetime, as proposed by Addams, has been neglected to an extent where internal wars against the most vulnerable citizens have been waged instead. Austerity as a “social reform” provides an example of a senseless, cynical war unleashed on the lives of chronically ill and disabled people condemned as idle. The absence of focused feminist activism is scary and probably occurs due to chronic disease occupying the bottom rung of human experiences and concerns, even during and despite a 21st-​century pandemic. Sites for collaborative processes that may lead to positive social transformation for the most vulnerable are lacking or absent, as are the feminist activists and thinkers needed to help organize, enthuse, connect, and lead. The feminist pluralism-​embracing futures of Addams and her peers are far removed from anything discernible in 2022.

618   Claudia Gillberg Against squalor, want, and ignorance, the early feminist pragmatists offered a coherent, peaceful, and sustainable theory of democracy and collaboration whose ethical dimensions and realistic intentions provide a robust framework for all citizens, rejecting punitive exclusion as unacceptable in a pluralistic democracy. Moreover, systemic reciprocity and Addams’s proposal of sympathetic knowledge arguably transcend the reductionist, antagonistic systems of market-​driven societies. How to build inclusive, ethically sustainable societies is indeed a question for feminist pragmatists. A perpetual test cycle of applied, Addams-​inspired ethics—​power-​with no less—​is required to meet the perplexities of the 21st century, exacerbated by a pandemic that would have been no surprise to Addams (see Fischer, 2021). Perhaps feminist pragmatists must now make a conscious effort to shift towards collective action-​taking, for example, by looking into sites of social activism. Allyship, collaborative knowledge production, and methodological development toward feminist action research (see Gillberg, 2012) are only a few of the plethora of terms for the same ambition and, in fact, human need, namely the improvement of the lives of those less fortunate—​together with them—​those who at this point in history are more negatively affected by callous policy-​making and cynical politics than since the end of WWII, and the carefully worded ambitions for, in the United Kingdom, a welfare state with a free national health service at its center. To call recipients of benefit payments “lazy scroungers” is a pervasive, dehumanizing narrative that existed over a hundred years ago. Humanity moved away from such ontologies and epistemologies during a short window of time following the much greater horrors of WWII. Literature drawn on in this chapter provides examples of lived experiences of systemic regimes of abuse here and now. Ill and disabled women are not negligible sub-​groups whose lives are collateral damage during a pandemic or at any other time. Sympathetic knowledge, practically applied to alleviate pain and suffering, should become the guiding star for feminist pragmatists who feel inspired by Addams.

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622   Claudia Gillberg Pain in women. (2021). Nuffield department of women’s and reproductive health. https://​www .wrh.ox.ac.uk/​resea​rch/​endome​trio​sis-​care-​pain Perez, C. C. (2020). Invisible women: Exposing data bias in a world designed for men. Vintage. Price, J. (2011). The seeds of a movement-​disabled women and their struggle to organise. Association for Women’s Rights in Development. https://​www.awid.org/​sites/​defa​ult/​files/​ atoms/​files/​chan​ging​_​the​ir_​w​orld​_​2_​-​_​disabled_​women_​and​_​the​ir_​s​trug​gle_​to_​o​rgan​ ize.pdf Quarmby, K. (2011). Scapegoat: We are failing disabled people. Portobello. Quarmby, K. (2019). Report of the special rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights. United Nations. https://​www.early​help​part​ners​hip.org.uk/​conta​cts/​Docume​nts/​UK.-​Rep​ ort-​of-​the-​Spec​ial-​Rap​port​eur-​on-​extr​eme-​pove​rty-​and-​human.pdf Raj, K. (2019). Nothing left in the cupboards. Human Rights Watch (May 20). https://​www.hrw .org/​rep​ort/​2019/​05/​20/​noth​ing-​left-​cupboa​rds/​auster​ity-​welf​are-​cuts-​and-​right-​food-​uk Robinson, D., & Battenfield, A. (2020). The worst outbreaks in US history. Healthline. (April 9). https://​www.hea​lthl​ine.com/​hea​lth/​worst-​dise​ase-​outbre​aks-​hist​ory Ryan, F. (1992). Tuberculosis: The greatest story never told. Swift Publishers. Ryan, F. (2014). David Clapson’s awful death was the result of grotesque government policies. The Guardian (September 9). https://​www.theg​uard​ian.com/​commen​tisf​ree/​2014/​sep/​09/​ david-​clap​son-​bene​fit-​sancti​ons-​death-​gov​ernm​ent-​polic​ies Ryan, F. (2019). Crippled: Austerity and the demonisation of disabled people. Verso Books. Saini, A. (2019). Superior, the return of race science. 4th Estate. Scarry, E. (1987). The body in pain: The making and unmaking of the world. Oxford University Press. Shakespeare, T. (2013). Disability rights and wrongs (2nd ed.). Routledge. Signs of MS may start five years before diagnosis’ (2021). MS International Federation (January 27). https://​www.msif.org/​news/​2018/​08/​26/​signs-​of-​ms-​may-​start-​five-​years -​bef​ore-​diagno​sis/​ Simpson, B. W., & Porter, K. P. (2020). How structural racism harms black Americans’ health. Hopkins Bloomberg Public Health. https://​magaz​ine.jhsph.edu/​2020/​how-​str​uctu​ral-​rac​ ism-​harms-​black-​americ​ans-​hea​lth Slee, R. (2019). Belonging in an age of exclusion. International Journal of Inclusive Education 23 (9), 909–​922. https://​doi.org/​10.1080/​13603​116.2019.1602​366 Slee, R., Corcoran, T., & Best, M. (2019). Disability studies in education: Building platforms to reclaim disability and recognise disablement. Journal of Disability Studies in Education. https://​doi.org/​10.1163/​25888​803-​00101​002 Smith, L. T. (2012). Decolonizing methodologies: Research and indigenous peoples. Zed Books Ltd. Smith, V. E. (2016a). Karina Hansen 4: Timeline, torture and tragedy. Law and Health: Due Process and Civil Society (April 4) https://​valeri​eeli​otsm​ith.com/​2016/​04/​04/​kar​ina-​han​sen -​4-​timel​ine-​tort​ure-​trag​edy/​ Smith, V. E. (2016b). Karina Hansen 6: The homecoming. Law and Health: Due Process and Civil Society (October 26). https://​valeri​eeli​otsm​ith.com/​2016/​10/​26/​kar​ina-​han​sen-​6-​hom​ ecom​ing/​ Stanley, K. (2021). Instead of believing my reports of pain, experts told me to have a baby or see a psychiatrist. The Guardian (June 2). https://​www.theg​uard​ian.com/​commen​tisf​ree/​2021/​ jun/​02/​inst​ead-​of-​believ​ing-​my-​repo​rts-​of-​pain-​expe​rts-​told-​me-​to-​have-​a-​baby-​or-​see -​a-​psych​iatr​ist

Jane Addams’s Pragmatist Feminist Thoughts and Actions    623 Stewart, M. (2016). Cash not care: the planned demolition of the UK welfare state. New Generation Publishing. Szreter, S. (2014). The prevalence of syphilis in England and Wales on the eve of the Great War: Revisiting the estimates of the Royal Commission on venereal diseases 1913–​1916. Social History of Medicine 27 (3), 508–​529. https://​doi.org/​10.1093/​shm/​hkt​123 Tihelkova, A. (2015). Framing the “scroungers”: The re-​emergence of the undeserving poor and its reflection in the British Press. Brno Studies in English 41 (2), 121–​139. http://​hdl.han​ dle.net/​11222.digi​lib/​135​030 Timmins, N. (2001). The five giants: A biography of the welfare state. Harper Collins. Tremain, S. L. (2013). Introducing feminist philosophy of disability. Disability Studies Quarterly. https://​phi​lpap​ers.org/​arch​ive/​TRE​IFP.pdf Tremain, S. L. (2018). Foucault and feminist philosophy of disability. University of Michigan Press. Tremain, S. L. (2020). Field notes on the naturalization and denaturalization of disability in (feminist) philosophy: What they do and how they do it. Disability Studies Quarterly 6 (3), 1–​23. https://​ojs.lib.uwo.ca/​index.php/​fpq/​arti​cle/​view/​9395 Wendell, S. (1996). The rejected body: Feminist philosophical reflections on disability. Routledge. Whipps, J. D. (2010). Examining Addams’ democratic theory through a post-​colonial feminist lens. In Maurice Hamington (Ed.), Feminist interpretations of Jane Addams (pp. 275–​292). Pennsylvania State University Press. Whipps, J. D. (2012). Feminist-​pragmatist democratic practice and contemporary sustainability movements: Mary Parker Follett, Jane Addams, Emily Greene Balch, Vandana Shiva. In M. Hamington & C. Bardwell-​Jones (Eds.), Contemporary Feminist Pragmatism (pp. 115–​ 127). Routledge. Wilshire, C. et al. (2018). Rethinking the treatment of chronic fatigue syndrome, a reanalysis and evaluation of findings from a recent major trial of graded exercise and CBT. BMC Psychology 6 (6). https://​bmcpsy​chol​ogy.biomed​cent​ral.com/​artic​les/​10.1186/​s40​359-​018-​0218-​3 Wolbring, G. (2008). The politics of ableism. Development 51 (2), 252–​258. https://​doi.org/​ 10.1057/​dev.2008.17 Woolgar, S., & Pawluch, D. (1985). Ontological gerrymandering: The anatomy of social problems explanations. Social Problems 32 (3), 214–​227. https://​doi.org/​10.2307/​800​680 Work capability assessment, deaths and suicides. (2015). Spartacus Network (April 28). https://​ www.cen​tref​orwe​lfar​eref​orm.org/​uplo​ads/​att​achm​ent/​456/​work-​cap​abil​ity-​ass​essm​ent -​dea​ths-​and-​suici​des.pdf World Health Organization. (2019). ICD-​10, c­ hapter 4: Diseases of the nervous system: G93.3, Post viral fatigue syndrome, myalgic encephalomyelitis. https://​icd.who.int/​brows​e10/​2019/​ en#/​G93.3 Yoshida, K. K. (2021). Covid-​ 19 simplifies the complexity of disability and race. The Conversation (April 7). https://​thec​onve​rsat​ion.com/​covid-​19-​amplif​i es-​the-​com​plex​ity-​of -​dis​abil​ity-​and-​race-​157​933 Young, S. (2014). Inspiration porn and the objectification of disability. Ted Talk (April 26). https://​ted​xsyd​ney.com/​talk/​insp​irat​ion-​porn-​and-​the-​obje​ctif​i cat​ion-​of-​dis​abil​ity-​ste​ lla-​young/​

Chapter 32

M aking the Jane A dda ms Papers Ac ces si bl e to New Audi e nc e s Cathy Moran Hajo

Primary sources are the foundation of most humanistic research. They are the best way to get to know a historical figure because they speak directly, without the medium of interpretation. Without the large body of writings she left behind, Jane Addams would remain enigmatic, a person revered by some as a saint and called by others a dangerous radical. But Addams produced a mass of writings, speeches, testimonies, and letters, thousands of them written to and received by people great and small. In these documents we see her thought processes, her relations with family and friends, and her role in social movements with worldwide reach. In the almost 90 years since her death, people have gathered them, protected them, organized them, and published them, and in that time made them more accessible to scholars as well as to teachers, students, and the general public. No matter what the discipline, this collection of papers is crucial to understanding Jane Addams.

The Jane Addams Papers Jane Addams’s Archives The founding editor of the Jane Addams Papers Project, Mary Lynn Bryan, likened Addams’s papers to “a giant jigsaw puzzle . . . not without missing pieces” (Bryan, 1996, p. 45). At her death in 1935, Addams sent portions of her papers to Swarthmore College’s Peace Collection, to Rockford College, and to her nephew James Weber Linn. More documents remained at Hull House and her family home, and among the records of organizations like the Woman’s Peace Party, the International Committee of Women

626   Cathy Moran Hajo for Permanent Peace, and the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom. Addams did not regularly keep carbon copies of letters typed on her behalf, and perhaps most painful for historians, Addams burned letters—​a lot of letters. The story goes that sometime around 1929, Addams was visited, likely by peace activist and Swarthmore board member Lucy Biddle Lewis, while she was burning personal correspondence in the fireplace at Hull House. Lewis interceded with Addams and convinced her of the historic value of the collection. Addams began sending peace-​ related materials to Swarthmore in 1930, founding what would become a major archive on peace and pacifism (Bryan, 1996, pp. 65, 69). But Addams did not stop burning. Linn noted that she regularly destroyed letters once she had responded to them, and in 1934, she destroyed countless “family letters” that she considered “too intimate to be used,” and she sent others on to Linn with the admonition “Please read-​destroy” (Linn, 1935, p. 256; Addams, 1935). The fireplace at Hull House also likely consumed some of Addams’s letters to Hull House’s cofounder, Ellen Gates Starr, and Addams’s companion, Mary Rozet Smith. Addams biographer Louise W. Knight (2019) surmises that it might have been Smith, an even more private a person than Addams, who destroyed the letters that she wrote to Addams before her death in 1934. The heroic work done by archivist Ellen Starr Brinton (1947) and others at the Swarthmore Peace Collection to locate, gather, and preserve Addams’s documents brought many more pieces of Addams’s puzzle together, despite uncooperative heirs and wrecking crews that demolished many Hull House buildings in 1963 before they were emptied of records (Bryan, 2011, p. 84). Addams’s personal papers settled in two main repositories, the Swarthmore Peace Collection and the Jane Addams Memorial Collection at the University of Illinois at Chicago. Addams’s family and colleagues added to these collections over the years, but due to the nature of archival collections, they could never be complete. Many of her international peace papers from the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom reside at the University of Colorado Boulder, while others are at Swarthmore. Also, some of Addams’s letters remain in the archives of the individuals and organizations who received them, as well as in private hands. No doubt there are still some undiscovered in attics. Up until the 1980s, Addams scholars who ventured forth to undertake comprehensive research had to plan on considerable travel. As early as 1954, archivists proposed publishing Addams’s papers to make them more widely accessible (NHPRC, 1954, p. 39), and by the 1970s, with broad interest in women’s history growing, the National Historical Publications and Records Commission recommended the publication of the papers of 75 influential American women, with Addams at the top of the list. Plans were already underway to start an editorial project (Women’s Advisory Committee, 1974).

The Jane Addams Papers Microfilm Edition (JAPM) In 1976, the Jane Addams Papers Project was formed with the goal of recovering Addams’s archive—​gathering all known Addams documents together in one place

Making the Jane Addams Papers Accessible to New Audiences     627 where they could be microfilmed to permit wider distribution. Eastman Kodak introduced the Recordak, a 35mm scanning device to preserve documents in 1935, the same year that Jane Addams died. More long lasting and compact than paper, it was both a preservation tool and one that afforded increased access. Scholarly editors used microfilm to create comprehensive, integrated editions of papers taken from a wide range of archives and collections. Editor Mary Lynn Bryan and her staff did not know how many documents they would find, nor how long it would take. Starting in the main collection at Swarthmore, they built lists of Addams’s main correspondents, then queried archives, traced descendants, and followed leads in monographs about Addams and her work. They wrote to archives in the United States and abroad, seeking information about Addams’s correspondents, where their papers might be, and whether there were Addams letters within them. They searched the houses where Addams lived and where she visited. They traveled to Great Britain and Canada to search collections in person and worked with archives in the United States and overseas to gather photocopies for microfilming. The search lasted until 1981. By the end, they collected documents from more than one thousand collections in repositories throughout the United States and Europe (Bryan, 1996, 2011). The Jane Addams Microfilm Edition is an 82-​reel collection of documents drawn from hundreds of archives and personal collections. Some archives contributed one or two documents, while others housed hundreds or thousands. Editors organized the collection into five series: Correspondence, Documents, Writings, Hull House Association Records, and Clippings. Within each section documents are organized by date. For the first time, one could read letters in chronological order. The editing team also prepared a massive name index and guide, published in 1996, that included limited subject access to the collection (Bryan, 1996). As an analog format, microfilm has limitations. It is a physical publication, which means that as more documents are found, there is no easy way to add them. After initial microfilming, the editors added ten additional reels of documents that had been found after filming. Splicing them into the existing microfilm would not be practical, so quite early on the strict chronological order was broken. The editors knew that at the time of filming there were “still Addams papers in private hands and in repositories and collections that are unknown” (Bryan, 1996), but eventually they had to complete the search and publish. Microfilm has become less accessible as time has passed. It was always cumbersome, requiring temperamental machines for reading, and often required juggling reels to get all the documents needed. As the format has aged and newer technologies emerged, access to both microfilm and microfilm readers, once ubiquitous, is now rare. Despite the limitations of the medium, the JAPM vastly broadened access to Addams’s papers. Scholars in a wide range of disciplines were able to consult the reels. The index to the microfilm allowed users to locate not only authors and recipients, but also the people mentioned in the texts and limited subject access. The JAPM is still available in about 30 research universities around the country.

628   Cathy Moran Hajo

The Selected Papers of Jane Addams (SPJA) The Jane Addams Papers was designed from the start as a microfilm-​plus-​print edition. The Selected Papers of Jane Addams, published by the University of Illinois Press, was conceived as a six-​volume edition that would let Addams “tell her life story through her own letters and writings” (Bryan, 2011, p. 83). In the print edition, editors select a small group of historically relevant texts, then transcribe and annotate them, providing a highly curated experience of Addams’s life and work. The first three volumes, edited by Mary Lynn Bryan, cover the first 40 years of her life, from 1860 to 1900. They include almost 400 documents, each richly annotated with identifications of people, events, places, and subjects that immerse the reader in Addams’s life. The volumes also include interpretive and biographical essays on the more important figures. The research required to create these volumes is enormous, but they provide unparalleled access to Addams’s life, offering rich contextual details that provide readers with deep understanding.1 Work on the remaining volumes, covering the years 1901–​1935 is currently underway. In the second half of her life, the number of documents grew dramatically, which means that the remaining volume will have to select a smaller percentage of the whole, possibly as low as two percent of documents. The publication of The Selected Papers of Jane Addams again increased accessibility to Addams’s life and work. It is available in over 1,000 libraries and is affordable enough that individual scholars can purchase their own copies. The Selected Papers also broadened accessibility because the documents within it are transcribed and annotated. This makes them more accessible to students because the contextual annotation situates each document in its time and place. They provide a complete narrative, albeit in a kind of “greatest hits” format, telling a first-​person story carefully curated by scholars. The SPJA works in concert with the JAPM by pointing readers to letters not included that provide more detail and nuance.

The Jane Addams Digital Edition (JADE) Times change and technology does not stand still. With the advent of the Internet as a primary tool for scholarly and educational research, our ideas about accessibility had to change. As more and more materials are accessible online, those not online run the risk of becoming irrelevant. In 2015, with the retirement of Mary Lynn Bryan, the Jane Addams Papers relaunched at Ramapo College of New Jersey with a new team of editors including Cathy Moran Hajo, Stacy Pratt McDermott, and Victoria Sciancalepore working with a team of undergraduate students. Our goal remains consistent since the start of the project in 1976—​to gather Addams’s papers, make them available, and encourage scholarship. But the methods are changing. The Jane Addams Digital Edition (https://​digi​tal.jan​eadd​ams.ram​apo.edu/​) is a freely accessible web-​based resource that provides access to document images and

Making the Jane Addams Papers Accessible to New Audiences     629 transcriptions. In designing the edition, we thought about not only scholarly access to the papers but also accessibility to a wider audience—​students, teachers, and the general public. We surveyed digitally accessible collections of primary sources, seeking ideas to remove barriers to using primary sources and trying to build tools to encourage the use of Addams documents.

Reaching New Audiences Broadening Accessibility The main users of the Jane Addams Papers have historically been scholars. Whether consulting documents in archives or via microfilm, scholars use Addams’s papers and the records of Hull House to craft monographs, dissertations, articles, and conference papers. But for most people, Jane Addams’s papers are inaccessible. Students and teachers do not have access to the research libraries which own the microfilm, nor can they easily travel to multiple archives to consult the papers in person. A student, genealogist, or casual researcher would have to expend serious effort and funds to access them. Digitizing Addams’s papers, therefore, is the first step to truly broadening access. But what do we mean by digitizing them, and how does that help build a broader audience for Addams’s work? By the simple virtue of being online, the Jane Addams Digital Edition (JADE) (http://​ digi​tal.jan​eadd​ams.ram​apo.edu/​) has increased availability. In its first few years, almost 150,000 users have visited the site, showing the power of digital media. While early analytics show that around 86% of the users are American, JADE has also reached users from almost 200 countries and every continent. The digital edition’s users also come from a broad range of ages and split about 60-​40 between women and men. Most users come to the digital edition through organic searches rather than links from other sites or from advertising.2 In building the JADE, we wanted to do more than just make the documents available to the public: we wanted to make the accessible. To do that we thought carefully about how different audiences might want to use the texts.

Transcriptions Jane Addams’s handwriting is terrible. Even scholars find it daunting. Biographer Victoria Bissell Brown (2007, p. 7) noted: “The first time I tried to read Addams’s adult scrawl, I tearfully despaired of ever deciphering, much less analyzing, her correspondence.” Other scholars describe it as “nearly impossible to read,” or “atrociously difficult to decipher” (Joslin, 2009, p. 38; Elshtain, 2002, p. 252). When I first undertook the project

630   Cathy Moran Hajo and scanned the microfilm, I, too, felt a pit of doubt forming in my stomach. Seven years in, our team can read most of what Addams wrote. Some words, due to image and penmanship issues, still elude us (Hajo, 2018). And Addams’s hand is not the only difficult one in her archive. Reading cursive handwriting, whether the penmanship is good or poor, is a rapidly disappearing skill. Many undergraduate students learn it for only a short period of time in elementary school before making the switch to keyboarding their assignments and papers. When you add in the challenge of older archaic words, styles of writing, and even letter forms, the cursive text in the Addams Papers is a major barrier to broad access. Merely digitizing images of the Addams documents is not enough. We realized that we needed to transcribe the texts so that all members of our audience could read them. We questioned whether we should bother to include the images of the documents. Since we digitized from microfilm, most of our images are black and white, and some are not as high quality as one would want. But images, even from microfilm, convey a sense of the original, and the time in which it was created. Scholars want to see the image of a document, especially in cases where the source material is difficult to read. They are more experienced in using primary-​source materials and want to see the complexities and nuance that transcriptions can sometimes smooth over. They may not trust our transcripts, especially when images are poor, or when we transcribe a difficult text that was not written by Jane Addams. We therefore decided to include images, and in instances where they are too poor to read, we seek out new scans from the archives. To meet the needs of both audiences, we chose to create a tabbed screen view. The default view is the image of the text, and the user can tab to the transcription (and translation if provided) view. Creating transcriptions is painstaking and time-​consuming work, but it is one of the best tools for increasing accessibility. It opens up access to the texts by allowing text searching, so that a user can find every instance of a word or phrase. It also allows us to repurpose the texts in more creative ways. Transcription is more complicated than just typing what it says. While in our print publications we render documents as written, with misspellings and other errors intact, we decided that for the digital edition, we would take a different tactic. We decided to use a more streamlined transcription style that regularized misspellings, archaic spellings, British spellings, and punctuation errors, marked with brackets. The reasons for doing this were twofold. First, it ensures that text searching will find every instance of a word, not just those that are properly spelled. Second, the brackets will clue more advanced readers to check the image of the document, which is just a tab away. We feel that this meets the needs of all our users.

Metadata The JADE is built using the Omeka Classic control management system developed by the Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media at George Mason University and uses the Dublin Core metadata standard. This means that we describe each document

Making the Jane Addams Papers Accessible to New Audiences     631 using a series of data-​entry fields that allow users to search and combine terms to narrow their results.

Subject Access When Jane Addams set about writing Twenty Years at Hull House in 1910, she was daunted by the sheer volume of the project. As James Weber Linn recalled: “One difficulty in preparing the book was the mass of her material—​the mass of her recollections, the mass of her experience, the mass of her records and clippings” (Linn, 1935, p. 236). Just as Addams’s sister Alice Addams Haldeman organized the immense clippings file to help Addams complete the task, our editors use subject fields to guide our readers through the thickets. We developed over 500 subject terms to describe the documents in the digital edition, and the list keeps growing as we move through the years of her life. A group of these terms relate specifically to events and themes in Addams’s life, focusing on her relations with the government, with her family, or with the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom. Other terms are broader, dealing with issues like disarmament, woman suffrage, or Hull House residents. Users can scan the subject list like they would a book index to get a sense of the terms used and how many documents each subject contains. Or when reading a text, users can click on a subject term to reveal a list of the other documents with the same term. They can also use subject terms in conjunction with other metadata, like finding documents related to Jane Addams and the peace movement written in 1914, or speeches that discuss Hull House activities. Documents can have as many or as few subjects as needed, depending on content.

Identifications of People, Organizations, and Events The Jane Addams Papers has always been about more than just Jane Addams. Addams was a part of many networks, including peace activists, woman suffragists, social workers, settlement-​house residents, and progressive thinkers. Hull House was a case in point. Addams was its most recognizable figure, but the settlement hummed along on the energy and drive of its residents with the support of hundreds of volunteers, participants, and donors. Some of Addams’s networks overlapped, notably those for peace and suffrage. Some were local and focused on work in Chicago, while others spanned the globe. Trying to re-​create all those that Addams knew is impossible. “In a course of a day at Hull House she would often listen to the pitiful or defiant experiences of dozens and scores of people, and her acquaintance among the neighbors ran up into the thousands” (Linn, 1935, p. 242). Most of these interactions were in person, leaving no trace behind. Nor were the conversations held each night in the dining room at Hull House recorded

632   Cathy Moran Hajo for posterity. We can never fully know how Addams interacted with the residents who inspired her work. But we use what we have to reconstruct as much as possible. Rebuilding her networks helps us learn more about Addams and the world she lived in. We want to know about her correspondents, whether it is philosopher John Dewey or Emma Marie Campen, a German music teacher who came to the United States in 1907, but was accused of espionage in 1918. We want to know more when Addams mentions organizations like the American Friends Service Commission, or the less well-​known Alta House, a day nursery and settlement in Cleveland. When she mentions historical figures like Alexis de Tocqueville or Martin Luther, we want to know something about what they did and how she used their experiences in her writings. These people, organizations, and events all combine to form Addams’s world, and for us they are an essential part of the digital edition. With 25,000 documents planned, we cannot annotate them at the level we do for the SPJA, but instead we are building a biographical directory for people, organizations, and events. Documents are linked to the entries so that the reader can look up information about the person or organization when reading a document, or they can look up a person, event, or organization, and get a brief biographical identification and links to all the documents in the edition that relate to that person. These are distinguished by whether the person or organization was mentioned in the text, wrote the text, or received it. For organizations, we link the people who were known members. For events, we link not only the mentions in documents, but also the people and organizations that participated in it. As the research on the people, events, and organizations is completed, this resource will grow ever mora valuable. Excavating Addams’s networks also helps to decenter Addams. Jane Addams gets credit, in popular media, for the work of Hull House, the American and international peace movement, and the creation of social work as a field of practice. All of these efforts were the work of many people, which becomes abundantly clear when you read the documents. Highlighting the efforts of Addams’s colleagues—​like Emily Greene Balch’s work for peace or Alice Hamilton’s pioneering efforts for industrial medicine and occupational health—​brings their efforts to the fore and provides a more realistic understanding of how Addams, Hull House, and peace organizations really operated. This focus on Addams’s network also helps bring new users to the JADE. Researchers looking into the peace movement in Japan, for example, will find Addams through searches for early activist Tomi Wada Kōra or Marian Irwin. A scholar interested in the myth of George Washington in American society will find our Washington biography with links to the many instances where Addams and others used his life to make a point. A stream of genealogists and family-​history enthusiasts can find their ancestors within our edition. In some cases they have supplied us with additional biographical information and family photographs. By treating all the people in the edition with this care, we are able to draw more attention to Jane Addams and her central role in 19th-​and 20th-​ century society.

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Thematic Tags The JADE uses almost 300 thematic tags to describe not just the documents, but also the people, organizations, and events in the edition. Tags are a quick way to get an overview of everything we have on a large topic. Unlike subjects, which are only used for documents and make distinctions between whether the topic relates specifically to Jane Addams, thematic tags are simpler—​big topics like social work, Hull House, peace, or child welfare. Clicking on the child-​welfare tag, for example, lets users see everything, from letters, speeches, and child-​welfare workers, to organizations and conferences. We also use tags for references to countries, so that you can see documents, activists, organizations, and events related to places like Norway or China. Thematic tags lower the bar for using the edition, and the graphic presentation also allows for a visual sense of the contents of the edition.

Maps Digital technology enables us to map the documents, people, organizations, and events on a responsive map. We track the place where each document was written, the addresses where people lived or were born, and the places where events were held and organizations and businesses were located. In many cases we have only a city name, but whenever possible, we include street addresses. In so doing we can provide users with a map-​based guide to the Addams Papers, where they can zoom in on the streets of Chicago, New York, or London to see where our letters originated and where things were in relation to each other. You can look at a state or country to get a sense of where the activity is, and on our biographical entries, you can see the various places where the person lived. We hope to use this data to drive visualizations that can track different movements and people in the edition. See Figure 32.1.

Educational Resources The Field of Dreams pop-​culture saying that “if you build it, they will come” argues that simply creating the JADE is all that we need to do to expand the audience for Jane Addams’s papers. And that is true to some extent, but it is also true that if what you build is not what they want, they will leave. How do we know who our audience is, what our audience wants, and how we can deliver it to them? When Jane Addams and Ellen Gates Starr first established Hull House, they had ideas about developing art courses and educational programming, but soon found themselves immersed in the needs of the neighborhood, caring for children while mothers worked, and creating space for dancing, social clubs, meetings on labor, and playgrounds (Addams, 1910). What made

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Figure 32.1.  Documents plotted on an interactive map of Chicago. Source: Jane Addams Digital Edition.

Hull House special is that it adapted and grew by listening to its audience. Our goal is to do the same with the JADE. For researchers and scholars, the metadata-​based searches provide the flexibility they want and offer the ability to dig deep into the collection for their own research topics. Making JADE more accessible means that we need to go beyond this small but influential audience.

National History Day Middle and high school students in the United States participate in a national contest called National History Day (https://​www.nhd.org/​), often as an extracurricular experience. In these projects, students build historical products—​papers, documentary films, performances, exhibits, and websites—​that revolve around a general annual theme. These are usually broad based, like “Conflict and Compromise in History,” “Breaking Boundaries in History,” or “The Individual in History.” Students who participate need to select a relevant topic, use primary sources, interview experts, and undertake considerable research for their projects. They compete at regional, state, and national contests, judged by history professionals and enthusiasts. At editing projects across the country, History Day students regularly reach out for help, making them a clearly defined audience for the digital edition.

Making the Jane Addams Papers Accessible to New Audiences     635 The Jane Addams Papers secured funding from the New Jersey Council for the Humanities to build resources to help students and their teachers with these projects. We thought students would benefit from additional guidance to use the digital edition effectively. The grant funded the work of several teacher-​education students led by Renee De Lora, who worked with project editors to create guides for students interested in researching Jane Addams. The guides, arranged around the annual theme, offer simple introductions to the theme, a brief biography of Jane Addams, a guide to navigating the JADE, and some suggestions for topics within Jane Addams’s life that work with that theme. The guides highlight a few exceptional documents, but mostly provide students with suggested search terms. This means that they are automatically updated as we publish more content. We also point the students to other places with Addams materials, including documents, photographs, film, and other Addams-​ related content. The response that we had from these resources has been outstanding. The guides are the most viewed pages on JADE. We have added more guides as new themes are introduced and plan to update the existing ones when themes are reused.

High School Curriculum The National History Day project encouraged us to look for other opportunities to expand classroom use of the JADE. With the onset of the COVID-​19 pandemic, digital resources for teachers became a more integral part of all educational efforts. The New Jersey Council for the Humanities also funded our work with high school history teachers and the educators at the Jane Addams-​Hull House Museum. The project seeks to build resources for Advanced Placement (AP) courses. The AP program is an advanced one for high school students who, after completing a national exam, can earn college credit. We have found that the main challenge for AP teachers is finding space in the curriculum for Addams. She spans two AP units—​the Gilded Age and the Progressive Era, which provides an opportunity to use her as a transitional figure. This project is ongoing, and we will share the work that comes from it on JADE.

College Curriculum As the Jane Addams Papers expands to include more materials, college professors are using it in their courses as well. Assignments in such courses might ask a student to locate a document on a social problem and either annotate it or relate it to current events. These primary-​source documents also serve as a resource for research papers and capstone projects. The JADE has also been used in courses in social work, psychology, digital history, and historiography at Ramapo College, and we hope to promote its use at other institutions. A sample of texts from JADE has been used at the Institute for Editing Historical Documents, an intensive week-​long workshop for training scholarly editors.

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Crowdsourcing Hull House’s programs and activities were not the work of a single woman or even a small team. One way that we can increase the audience for Addams’s papers is to engage the public in the work that we do. Crowdsourcing—​building a resource through the contributions of volunteers—​is a popular way to engage the public in humanities efforts. Volunteers transcribe, tag, sort, and analyze historical documents on platforms like Zooniverse or the US National Archives’ Citizen Archivist portals. Each of these sites lets people read and interact with primary sources in a way that adds to our understanding of them. While work gets done, the main reason for crowdsourcing is to bring attention to a series of documents and to build a community of practice around them. At the Addams Papers our crowdsourcing portal is called “Participate!” Among the offerings, we let users try their hand at transcribing Jane Addams’s handwriting, help us to look for additional Addams documents, or research and write draft biographies and descriptions of events and organizations.

Digital Humanities Applications The use of digital tools to enhance the understanding of the humanities and humanities research is an exciting field that constantly evolves and changes. We have designed the JADE to take advantage of the data that underlies the digital edition in order to make it accessible to digital humanists, students, and scholars. We hope that the DH Labs portal on JADE, still in the early stages, will grow, serving as a place where students and scholars can access data, create visualizations, and publish their results.

Textual Analysis An exciting field within digital humanities is textual analysis, which involves the in-​ depth study of specific texts or a body of work. JADE’s transcriptions enable digital humanists to look at specific texts, such as Addams’s speeches on peace or woman suffrage, and compare the use of words and the arguments made. Practitioners can investigate the mass of Addams’s correspondence and use visualization to explore the most prevalent topics. We have worked with students in the University of Michigan’s Library and Information Science program to develop proof-​of-​concept examples of the work that can be done. In 2019, Catie Olson built a visualization that displays the most common words employed in each year, counting frequencies in all documents (Olson, 2019A). Words like “Chicago,” “women,” “Hull House,” and “children” are generally commonly

Making the Jane Addams Papers Accessible to New Audiences     637 employed, but in 1912, words like “progressive,” “national,” and “party” turned up, showing Addams’s work for Theodore Roosevelt’s Progressive Party during the presidential election of 1912. In 1915, “peace,” “war,” “international,” and “conference” become more common, demonstrating the dramatic shift in Addams’s interests during World War I. Another visualization built by Olson used ngram technology (Olson, 2019B). This also looks at the frequency of word use, but instead of focusing on the year and what words were commonly used, looks instead to the word, tracking its popularity over time. Olson built a chart that displays the top 50 words used in the Addams texts and plots the number of instances per year. These graphs provide instantly understandable information about the documents, showing, for example, the increase of the use of the word “peace” in the years leading up to and into World War I. See Figure 32.2. While these initial efforts are simple and the results might appear obvious, fine tuning the searches by selecting which documents to analyze can provide scholars with new ways of looking at Addams’s interests and the world in which she lived. Our aim, after completing the transcription portion of the JADE, is to develop a query structure whereby users can select the texts they want to analyze (whether only written by Addams, speeches rather than letters, or documents written in a specific time frame), download the texts, and then run their analysis. We will then invite them to share what they built in the digital edition and offer a place to discuss the findings.

peace peace

012

Relative Frequency of Use

0.01 0.008 0.006 0.004 0.002 0 1900

1905

1910

1915

Year

Figure 32.2.  The frequency of the word “peace” from 1901 to 1919. Source: Jane Addams Digital Edition.

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Social Network Analysis Our focus on the people and organizations mentioned in the texts also opens the possibility of conducting social-​network analysis on our data. In this case we focus on the relationships found between people, texts, and organizations. Much as we do for the frequency of a word, network-​analysis software looks at the number of times that a name is mentioned in Addams’s letters or the relationships between authors and recipients. Once our biographical entries are completed, new dimensions can be added, where we use data about where a person lived, what organizations they joined, and in what events they participated. Taylor Lundeen, a student at the University of Michigan School of Information, worked with our data in 2019. Because our data was not (and is not yet) complete, she focused on some of the metadata associated with people, building maps that displayed the geographical breadth of Addams’s associates and correspondents. She built a series of maps that looked at child-​labor activists, peace-​movement advocates, socialists, woman-​suffrage activists, and social workers (http://​digi​tal.jan​eadd​ams.ram​apo.edu/​ soc​ialn​etwo​rks). Most of the maps showed a strong United States focus, but those for peace and socialism showed a much further-​flung network. See Figure 32.3. I built a visualization of the people most frequently mentioned in Addams’s correspondence, hoping to see which men and women were most central to Addams’s life

Figure 32.3.  Peace activists plotted across the globe. Source: Jane Addams Digital Edition.

Making the Jane Addams Papers Accessible to New Audiences     639 in the years 1901–​1920 (Hajo, 2020). Again, this shows us things that we already knew from working on her papers, a list of peace workers, suffragists, family members, and a few of Addams’s secretaries. While there are no complete surprises now, as we add more documents and expand the network to more people, we should be able to see connections between the individuals and places where different groups within Addams’s world connect. As we complete our biographies, we can use network analysis to visualize Addams’s allies and look for connections between them. See Figure 32.4. There was a great overlap between Addams’s cohort from the woman-​suffrage movement and the peace movement, but can we dig deeper? If we look not just as the broad topic tab “Woman Suffrage” but trace the actual suffrage organizations that the women joined, will we find that some were more attracted to peace work than others? If we factor in whether a woman worked for the Red Cross work during World War I, will we find that women involved in war work were more or less likely to become peace activists? There are a lot of wonderful research questions out there begging investigation. There are caveats to using visualizations based on the JADE content, which go back to the very start of this chapter—​not every document was preserved, and not every person in Addams’s orbit was mentioned in a text that was preserved. Basing our understanding of Addams’s life solely on what remains in her papers can never tell a complete story. But this kind of analysis can provide us with new ways of looking at what has been saved.

Figure 32.4.  A network analysis of the names of people most often mentioned in Addams correspondence. Source: Hajo, 2020.

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Tips for Researching Jane Addams using JADE For those just starting research on Jane Addams, the JADE may appear daunting. It is a very different resource than an autobiography or a biography, and not one that most people will read in its entirety. If you are looking for an overview of Addams’s early life, reading her draft chapters for Twenty Years at Hull House, published in the American Magazine as “Autobiographical Notes Upon Twenty Years at Hull-​House” between May and September 1910 will provide a wonderful introduction to the reasons for her work and to her personality and philosophy. The subject term “Addams, Jane, autobiographical views” also will provide access to writings that focus on her story. Many of her other books appear in full or in part as articles that were published just before the book was released. For the researcher interested in a more specific aspect of Addams’s life, tags and subjects can help you narrow the search. Read through the subject index and the tag cloud to get a general sense not only of the content, but also of the terminology that we have used. Remember that subjects describe just the documents, while tags include documents and people, events, and organizations. For many topics, subjects include both an Addams-​specific version, such as “Addams, Jane, and child labor,” and a broader category of “child labor.” In the former, you will find texts that focus on Addams’s opinions and her activities, while the latter category includes writings by others, and general descriptions of the topic. You can see the counts next to each subject or tag to get a sense of how many records there are. If you are interested in the relationship between Addams and another figure, your search should start with the biographical page for that figure—​there you will find links to the letters written from and to that person, and the documents that they are mentioned in. There may be a lot of results for some individuals, but combing through these will give you the best understanding of how that person fits into Jane Addams’s world. For Theodore Roosevelt, whose relationship with Addams changed dramatically over the years, you can read the 26 letters he wrote, and the 19 he received, but among the more than 250 mentions, you will find Addams’s 1912 nomination of Roosevelt for the Progressive Party, her 1916 disavowal of Roosevelt, her tributes after his death in 1919 and a 1925 reminiscence she sent to the Theodore Roosevelt Association. Using the advanced search feature to narrow your focus is another powerful search tool. The advanced search lets you narrow the search using the metadata fields. If you are interested in Addams’s work after World War I for European relief, you will find over 100 documents. To narrow those results, you might decide to look only at speeches with the subject “Addams, Jane, and European relief,” for a more manageable 25 results. You can also use the advanced search to limit the search to documents written in a specific year, or documents that mention a specific word. We designed JADE to help locate texts in a fluid way, offering subject access as well as plentiful links and search capabilities. The ability to choose your path through the edition is one of the benefits to digital publication over print.

Making the Jane Addams Papers Accessible to New Audiences     641

Conclusion Sometimes I wonder what Jane Addams would think about the JADE, and indeed the whole purpose of the Jane Addams Papers Project. Would she agree to make her life and her words widely accessible to the public? I think she might cringe in mortification! There was a reason that she destroyed so much of her private and family correspondence. Scholars pore over what is left to learn more about her inner thoughts and feelings, trying to answer very personal questions about her relationships, her sexuality, and her role in the social movements that she led, the very topics that she clearly did not want as part of public debate. But for the rest of her writings, she may have been less averse. Her nephew and biographer, James Weber Linn, wrote that Addams “turned over to me all files of her own manuscripts, published and unpublished: all letters, records, and clippings which she had preserved from her first valentine to her last round-​the-​world speech in Washington on May 1, 1935. ‘Do what you will with them’, she said” (Linn, 1935, p. vii). I like to think that if she could see the digital edition and the way that it preserves her networks and the people who worked with her, and how it treats the great and small with the same attention to detail, she might actually like it.3

Notes 1. The first three volumes of the Selected papers of Jane Addams are: Vol. 1: Preparing to lead, 1860–​1881 (University of Illinois Press, 2003), eds. Mary Lynn McCree Bryan, Barbara Bair, and Maree de Angury; Vol. 2: Venturing into usefulness, 1881–​1888 (University of Illinois Press, 2009), eds. Mary Lynn McCree Bryan, Barbara Bair, and Maree de Angury; and Vol. 3: Creating Hull-​House and an international presence, 1889–​1900 (University of Illinois Press, 2019), eds. Mary Lynn McCree Bryan, Maree de Angury and Ellen Skerrett. Current plans are to publish four more volumes. 2. Statistics are based on Google Analytics reporting from 2017 to 2021. Google Analytics does not record searches made by people under 18 years of age. 3. The Jane Addams Papers Project is made possible by the generous support of Ramapo College of New Jersey, the National Historical Publication and Records Commission, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Gladys Krieble Delmas Foundation, the New Jersey Council for the Humanities, the Ruth McCormick Tankersley Charitable Trust, and many individual donors.

References Addams, J. (1910). Autobiographical notes upon twenty years at Hull-​ House: Early undertakings at Hull-​House. American Magazine 70 (June), 192–​202. https://​digi​tal.jan​eadd​ ams.ram​apo.edu/​items/​show/​6264 Addams, J. (1935). J. Addams to J. Linn, March 8, 1935. JAPM 26, 1128. Brinton, E. (1947). The Swarthmore peace collection: A memorial to Jane Addams. The American Archivist 10 (1), 35–​39.

642   Cathy Moran Hajo Brown, Victoria Bissel. (2007). The education of Jane Addams. University of Pennsylvania Press. Bryan, M. L. (1996). Provenance of the Jane Addams papers. In The Jane Addams Papers: A Comprehensive Guide (p. 45). Indiana University Press. Bryan, M. L. (2011). The Jane Addams Papers: A project in scholarly reconstruction. Peace and Change 36 (1), 80–​89. Elshtain, J. B. (2002). Jane Addams and the dream of American democracy. Basic Books. Hajo, C. M. (2018). Reading Jane Addams’s handwriting. Jane Addams Digital Edition. https://​ digi​tal.jan​eadd​ams.ram​apo.edu/​exhib​its/​show/​read​ingj​ane Hajo, C. M. (2020). Visualizing Jane Addams’s social networks. Jane Addams Papers Project. https://​jan​eadd​ams.ram​apo.edu/​2020/​07/​visu​aliz​ing-​jane-​add​ams-​soc​ial-​netwo​rks/​ Joslin, K. (2009). Jane Addams: A writer’s life. University of Illinois Press. Linn, J. W. (1935). Jane Addams: A biography. D. Appleton-​Century Company. Lundeen, Taylor. (2019). Jane Addams’ social networks. Jane Addams Digital Edition. http://​ digi​tal.jan​eadd​ams.ram​apo.edu/​soc​ialn​etwo​rks Knight. L. (2019). See comment on “S. P. McDermott’s Jane Addams, Mary Rozet Smith, and the Disappointments of One-​Sided Correspondence.” Jane Addams Papers Project. July 1, 2019. https://​jan​eadd​ams.ram​apo.edu/​2019/​07/​jane-​add​ams-​mary-​rozet-​smith-​and-​the -​disa​ppoi​ntme​nts-​of-​one-​sided-​cor​resp​onde​nce NHPRC. (1954). A national program for the publication of historical documents: A report to the president. US Government Printing Office. Olson, Catie. (2019A). Word frequency by year. Jane Addams Digital Edition. http://​digi​tal.jan​ eadd​ams.ram​apo.edu/​wor​dfre​qbyy​ear Olson, Catie. (2019B). N-​gram relative word frequencies over time. Jane Addams Digital Edition. http://​digi​tal.jan​eadd​ams.ram​apo.edu/​ngram Women’s Advisory Committee. (1974). The women’s advisory committee submits recommen­ dations. Annotation (spring).

Pa rt V I

A DDA M S A N D S O C IA L P R AC T IC E Edited by Patricia M. Shields

Chapter 33

Jane Adda ms a nd Set tlement S o c i ol o g y Ann Oakley

Introduction The focus of this chapter is on Jane Addams’s place in the development of what has become known as “settlement sociology.” This movement owes its name to a particular kind of institutional base that was rooted in late nineteenth-​and early twentieth-​century culture. But settlement sociology was enmeshed in a much wider international initiative created by researchers and campaigners in Europe and North America whose work brought together the objectives of welfare reform, the development of social science as an empirical discipline, and, in many cases, the promotion of pacifism as a sine qua non of human well-​being (see Oakley, 2018a). Much of the recent scholarship on settlement sociology has neglected this wider context, focusing narrowly on the United States, and paying little attention to developments in, and linkages with, the evolution of sociology and social research methods in the United Kingdom and other European countries. In this chapter I look at how Jane Addams’s work fits into the broader cross-​national picture of settlement sociology. I consider what is distinctive about it, how Addams herself defined it, and where further research is needed on the international nature of the move to establish a democratic, community-​based social science.

Origin Myths Disciplinary histories tend to serve the function of “origin myths” rather than providing accurate accounts of people, processes, and events. The sociologist Jennifer Platt has used the case of the participant observation method in social research to illustrate this particularly well, arguing that most of the histories in the methods textbooks are written

646   Ann Oakley from the standpoint of the present and therefore incorporate its biases (Platt, 1983). They are less an account of events as they happened than reconstructions of meaning from particular standpoints. Many historical accounts of how sociology as a discipline developed follow this pattern. This predominance of origin myths helps to account for the marginalization of women, of qualitative methods, and of policy-​focused work. It also yields a narrow view of Jane Addams’s own role in the evolution of settlement sociology. The founding of Hull House by Jane Addams and Ellen Starr in 1889 has itself become something of an origin myth, often appearing as an isolated enterprise that was conjured up out of thin air by two particularly motivated individuals. Similarly, the history of Britain’s best-​known social settlement, Toynbee Hall in London’s East End, founded in 1884 and the model for Hull House, is referred to as a singular enterprise invented by Canon Samuel Barnett and his wife Henrietta (see Roivainen, 2002). To view these enterprises as literally “extraordinary” runs counter to what we know about how any form of science develops: on the contrary, similar ideas and initiatives tend to arise around the same time in different places. Hull House and Toynbee Hall were certainly celebrity settlements in their own countries, but their rise, popularity, and contribution to social science cannot be understood in isolation from parallel developments in both their own countries and cross-​nationally. The same is true of the work that was done in and by these settlements.

The Settlement Movement The first settlements were founded in Britain in the early 1880s as part of an evolving middle-​class interest in the condition of the urban poor; eleven British settlements were set up in the 1880s, and by 1914 this had risen to forty-​five (Picht, 1914). The settlement movement united several significant developments in late nineteenth-​and early twentieth-​century society: the growth of poverty on a massive scale, as unregulated capitalism created appalling living and working conditions; increasing middle-​class awareness of working-​class poverty as a social and economic problem rather than a character defect; the expansion of philanthropy as an occupation; the increasing independence of women; and a focus on research and the new tools of social science as a methodology for understanding all this cultural change. The rationale at the time was that settlements would enable an experiment in cooperative living and volunteer work for a core group of residents (“settlers”) who would then engage in a process of mutual learning about, and with, the poor that would result in the amelioration of poverty and its consequences. The radical elements in early settlement philosophy were about dissolving class inequalities, while the more conservative ones could be seen less charitably as reflecting a middle-​ class “mania for slumming” (Koven, 2004, 11). Since the social and economic problems that helped to generate the settlement movement were generic to many industrializing countries in this period, it is not surprising that the model of combined “learning about” and “learning with” caught on in a number

Jane Addams and Settlement Sociology    647 of countries around the same time. Jane Addams’s own “conversion moment” occurred four years before the visit to Toynbee Hall which directly preceded the founding of Hull House. On a tourist trip to London’s East End in 1883, Addams had been exposed to the pain of urban poverty when she witnessed, from the top of a bus, poor people clamoring to get their hands on cheap spoiled food. “During the following two years on the Continent,” she wrote in her Twenty Years at Hull-​House, “nothing . . . carried with it the same conviction of human wretchedness which was conveyed by this momentary glimpse of an East London street” (Addams, 1910, 62–​63). The “direct institutional transfer” from Britain to other countries of the settlement model was facilitated by the constant flow of overseas visitors through Toynbee Hall and other British settlements, especially the Robert Browning Settlement in South East London. The Browning Settlement was one of several in London mentioned by Addams in her account of the 1896 trip. She was impressed by the union of research, scholarship, and “organized public spirit” she found in these English settlements (Addams, 1910, 191). Other settlements in the United States inspired by visits to Toynbee Hall include the Neighbourhood Guild (later renamed the University Settlement) started by Stanton Coit in New York in 1886, and economic historian Katherine Coman’s role in the founding of Denison House in Boston in 1892. Japan’s first settlement in 1897, Kingsley Hall in Tokyo, was founded by Katayama Sen, who had studied both in the United States and at Toynbee Hall. In 1892 the Ons Huis was established in Amsterdam, and Toynbee Associations were started in 1893–​1896 in Groningen, The Hague, and Rotterdam in the Netherlands. The first Nordic settlements (known as hemgårdar) started in Stockholm and Copenhagen in 1912, with a strong emphasis on practical research (Soydan, 1993). In 1890 a workers’ home was set up in a working-​class area of Helsinki by Alli Trygg-​ Helenius. By 1900, the settlement movement had spread across western Europe, Japan, China, India, and Canada and throughout the British Empire (Imai, 2012; James, 2002; Johnson, 1995). A Handbook of Settlements published in 1911 listed a total of 479 then in existence, including 413 in the United States and 46 in England (Woods and Kennedy, 1911). International contacts were important, not only at the beginning of the settlement movement, but generally in the missions, values, and work undertaken by settlements. For example, at the end of Hull House’s second year, there was a visit from the Barnetts, who were shocked to find no copies of Britain’s famous blue books and governmental reports in the Hull House library (and who presumably took practical steps to change this). In a European visit a few years after Hull House was established—​the famous one that took Addams and her partner Mary Rozet Smith to Tolstoy’s remote Russian village—​Jane Addams recorded meeting a range of other players in the social welfare/​ social science field. These included members of the newly formed London County Council, the trade unionist John Burns, the labor politician Keir Hardie, Karl Marx’s daughter Eleanor, the housing reformer Octavia Hill, the economist John Hobson, writer and settlement founder Mrs. Humphry Ward, and Beatrice and Sidney Webb. Addams also visited a number of settlements in London and Oxford. A similar pattern of connectedness to an international network is evident in the history of British

648   Ann Oakley settlements. In 1900, for example, St Hilda’s East Settlement in London received visitors from Belgium, Egypt, France, Germany, Japan, Sweden, Switzerland, and the United States (St Hilda’s East, 1989). Using three case studies of settlements in the United States, Germany, and Canada, Koengeter and Schroeer (2013) have shown how common this pattern of cultural exchange was. For example, the founding in 1913 of a Berlin settlement, the Soziale Arbeitsgemeinschaft Berlin-​ Ost, by the protestant minister Friedrich Siegmund-​ Schultze, followed his visits to Toynbee Hall in 1908 and to Hull House in 1911. In Toronto, the St Christopher Settlement founded in 1912 was run by Sara Carson, who had been responsible for establishing the first Canadian settlement, Evangelica House, in 1902, and who was also a co-​founder of New York’s Christadora House. Carson was “a transnational professional” who moved easily between the United States and Canada and was associated with a total of ten settlements in the two countries (Koengeter and Schroeer, 2013, 7). In the early years of the settlement movement, Jane Addams may have been just one among many, but as Hull House became a central hub of social action and investigation, Addams and Hull House rapidly rose to prominence. After Canon Barnett’s death in 1913, she was widely acknowledged as the movement’s leader. It is interesting to note that Barnett himself opposed women starting settlements. He was afraid that they would take over the movement and drive out the “best men,” as was their habit whenever they entered any field in large numbers (Vicinus, 1985, 217–​218).) The first international conference of settlement workers, attracting 300 delegates from twenty-​ one countries, was held at Toynbee Hall in July 1922. The International Association of Settlements (today the International Federation of Settlements and Neighbourhood Centres) was founded at the second international conference in the summer of 1926 in Paris. The conference was chaired by Addams and the French minister of labor, Justin Godart (Wagner, 2006, 5). By the 1920s, Jane Addams was acknowledged as the leader and main theorist of the settlement movement. The role of the Barnetts, Toynbee Hall, and other British settlements had been eclipsed by the breadth of vision and scholarship emerging from the American settlements centered on Hull House. Hull House itself had acquired a solid reputation for fact-​based social research, as well as for many community-​based initiatives and local resources, and the writings of Jane Addams were seen to provide an overarching philosophy and sociology of settlement work.

Settlements and Social Research Settlements varied in their visions and activities, as would be expected, given the emphasis on responsiveness to the needs of local communities. In some, the strands of empirical research and evidence-​based intervention were more pronounced than in others. There was no textbook guiding settlers through the nuts and bolts of establishing their

Jane Addams and Settlement Sociology    649 initiatives. Rather, descriptions of both the practical strategies and the theoretical and methodological procedures were post hoc developments, written as practitioners looked back in an effort to record and understand the details of what had taken place. Thus, Jane Addams, in both her Twenty Years at Hull-​House (1910) and her The Second Twenty Years at Hull-​House (1930), set out both to capture the flavor of Hull House’s multifaceted work, and to evaluate its meaning and effectiveness. Her chapter on “Activities and Investigations” in the first of these two volumes is notable for the range of initiatives it covers: from “a systematic investigation of the city system of garbage collection” and an investigation into plumbing methods and the spread of typhoid cases, through to studies of midwifery and truancy, children’s reading, and the incidence of tuberculosis among schoolchildren. Interestingly, Addams is alert to the dangers of not reporting studies with negative results—​an important methodological issue in all scientific work that only came to be highlighted many decades later. Among the many “small but careful investigations” conducted by Hull House was one of fatigue among factory girls. For this the investigators were lent a complex instrument by the University of Chicago physiological laboratory. The finding, that the girls were less fatigued at the end than at the beginning of the day, was clearly at odds with their subjective experiences and the observations of investigators. The machine was faulty (Addams, 1910, 200–​213). The enormous contribution to social research made by the community at Hull House has been extensively acknowledged, both in this volume and elsewhere. The most famous product, Hull-​House Maps and Papers, provided detailed empirical and analytic accounts of topics such as the sweating-​system of wage labor, the lives of wage-​ earning children, the culture of the Bohemian people in Chicago, and the relationship between settlements and the trade union movement (Residents of Hull-​House, 1895). The famous color-​coded maps were created by Hull House residents sitting in Jane Addams’s office, on the basis of data produced by extensive house-​to-​house inquiries and interviews. The maps, modeled on those created by Charles Booth in his famous London poverty inquiry, were a startling visual display of cultural diversity and economic inequality, and the methods used to create them were startlingly creative (Holbrook, 1895). Lengermann and Niebrugge-​Brantley (2002, 11) identify seventeen major research projects carried out by American settlements between 1895 and 1917, as well as thousands of smaller studies described in settlement reports, journal publications, and so forth. This wealth of empirical research is one of the most striking features of settlement sociology. Equally striking is the way in which the research grew in a symbiotic relationship with social and political activism: the provision of educational, childcare, leisure, artistic and other facilities for local communities, and direct engagement in campaigns for health and welfare improvement. This pattern of what we might call “connected social research” prefigured the evidence-​based policy movement that was to develop much later, in the 1990s (see Stoker and Evans, 2016). Settlement sociology’s emphasis on the active participation of local communities in the research process also anticipated the later development of “participatory” social research (see Stokes and Oliver, 2017). Both these characteristics—​the relationship between research and activism and the focus

650   Ann Oakley on participatory methods—​were central to Jane Addams’s own vision of the rationale driving settlement work. As noted above, settlement-​based research carried out in other settlements and other countries has received considerably less attention than the Hull House enterprise. For example, the British social reformer, politician, and family-​allowance campaigner Eleanor Rathbone began working at the Victoria Women’s Settlement in Liverpool in 1903. This settlement had been opened in 1898 by Lillias Hamilton (a pioneering doctor) and Edith Sing (from a prominent Liverpool family), who adopted as a guiding principle something that sounds very like Addams’s mission for Hull House: “cross-​class friendship” and the obligation to share as “good citizens and neighbours” in community life (Pedersen, 2004, 88, 90). Rathbone became de facto head of the social investigation department at the Victoria Women’s Settlement. Her 1909 report How the Casual Labourer Lives was an early analysis of the credit arrangements of the poor, and one of the first systematic studies of family budgets. This, and other research, alerted Rathbone to the disadvantages of the family wage system, with its built-​in disregard for the household and childcare work of women. On the basis of her research, Rathbone produced a theory of the family that contested dominant economic and political ideas by locating poverty and inequality as much in the relations of marriage and parenthood as in those of production (Rathbone, 1924). This settlement sociology effectively reinterpreted the economy from the standpoint of working-​class women’s experiences. It led to a long campaign for family allowances, which were finally introduced in Britain in 1942 as a direct result of welfare state architect William Beveridge’s earlier conversion to the idea by Rathbone (Land, 1980). The general extent to which these British women were in touch with women settlement sociologists in the United States has not been the subject of any serious study. The London-​based researcher Varvara De Vesselitsky spent a period teaching in the United States, so she is likely to have been familiar with some of them and their work. The British economist Clara Collet, whose careful statistical and analytic work on women’s labor is still used today, corresponded regularly with Edith Abbott at Hull House, and also with Sophonisba Breckinridge and Julia Lathrop. These women exchanged books and papers, wrote reviews of one another’s books, discussed the evidence they put forward to policymakers, visited one another and met one another’s families.

Jane Addams and the Theory of Settlement Sociology The seamless relationship between social needs, research, and policy, exemplified by Hull House work and by Rathbone’s project on family welfare, was a key feature of the way in which settlements interpreted their commitment to advance sociological work. As Addams’s colleague Florence Kelley phrased it in her Some Ethical Gains through

Jane Addams and Settlement Sociology    651 Legislation (1905), an ethically informed public empowered by social science research should be able, through direct political and legal action, to reform oppressive undemocratic structures. Addams spelt out her own understanding of the purpose and practice of settlement sociology in a series of papers published in the 1890s. Her “The Subjective Necessity for Social Settlements” was delivered as an address to the School of Applied Ethics at Plymouth, Massachusetts, in 1892. Settlements were inspired by three motives, said Addams: the first was “the desire to make the entire social organism democratic,” the second, “the impulse to. . . bring as much as possible of social energy and the accumulation of civilisation to those portions of the race which have little,” and the third, general humanitarianism, a general renaissance of spiritual Christianity (Addams, 1893a, 2). Addams placed most emphasis on the first motive: “The social and educational activities of a Settlement are but differing manifestations of the attempt to socialize democracy, as is the existence of the Settlement itself ” (Addams, 1893a, 10). Democracy is here reinterpreted as a description of social relations. For Addams, the location of Hull House, in the midst of an ethnically diverse area, was an intentional strategy for a cross-​ class sharing of social energy and civilied culture. She had more difficulty defining what she meant by the second motive, calling it “The desire for action, the wish to right wrong and alleviate suffering,” the “social obligation” to do something to help others (Addams, 1893a, 13). Young people, she said, and especially young women, needed an active outlet for their altruistic impulses. This was essentially a matter of class: of the middle and upper classes focusing on the needs and disadvantages of the working classes. Addams observes, significantly, that this is why the settlement movement originated in England with its more rigid class distinctions. The two main rationales for settlements—​the extension of political to social democracy, and attentiveness to the needs of working-​class communities—​called, above all, for a commitment to the collection of social scientific evidence. A settlement, said Addams in her paper on “The Subjective Necessity for Social Settlements,” “must be hospitable and ready for experiment. It should demand from its residents a scientific patience in the accumulation of facts and the steady holding of their sympathies as one of the best instruments for that accumulation. . . .Its residents must be emptied of all conceit of opinion and all self-​assertion” (Addams, 1893a, 23). Social science knowledge, in order to be authentic, must be derived from civic participation across class, race, and ethnic divisions and involve the systematic and rigorous collection of data through direct engagement with the subject. Settlement sociology was, for Addams, thus essentially a system or theory of social relations, and its guiding project was the reconstruction of social contact as a means of better understanding the way society works. Knowledge here is conceptualized as both a democratic right and a route to power. In her further paper on “The Objective Value of a Social Settlement,” Jane Addams recorded the more straightforward philanthropic aims of settlements in exposing and ameliorating social problems. The material issues of poor housing, filth, lack of sanitation and education, and deplorable working conditions in the area around Hull House were exposed as needing to be tackled directly. Much of this paper was given over to

652   Ann Oakley describing the work of Hull House residents, and particularly to the provision of services to recent immigrants. Addams divides activities into four categories—​social, educational, humanitarian, and civic—​emphasizing that these activities “spring from no preconceived notion of what a Social Settlement should be, but have increased gradually on demand” (Addams, 1893b, 33). Flexibility was crucial. Addams gives two examples of Hull House’s civic work. The first is a piece of research done by one resident into local public school provision. This revealed that only 2,957 “public-​school sittings” were available for the 6,976 school-​children in the area. This research directly influenced the Board of Education to purchase a further site and refit a schoolhouse that had been due to be turned into a warehouse. The second example related to Hull House’s function as a meeting place and organizing station for women trade unionists. As a result of its involvement in this issue, two of the five citizen representatives appointed to the sweating system investigation committee of the Trades and Labor Assembly were Hull House residents. Addams’s 1899 paper “A Function of the Social Settlement” spelled out in more detail the relationship between settlement research work and theories or definitions of knowledge. She quoted the philosopher John Dewey’s instruction that knowledge is not its own justification, but valuable only in its application to life. Settlements are therefore about the effective application of knowledge to improve human welfare: “This, then, will be my definition of the Settlement: that it is an attempt to express the meaning of life in terms of life itself, in forms of activity.” Such an approach requires a radically different definition of knowledge: “Just as we do not know a fact until we can play with it, so we do not possess knowledge until we have an impulse to bring it into use; not the didactic impulse, not the propagandist impulse, but that which would throw into the stream of common human experience one bit of important or historic knowledge, however small, which before belonged to a few” (Addams, 1899, 33, 38). Settlement sociology is “applied knowledge” but in a much broader sense than that in which this term is commonly used. Some of what Addams says here sounds very much like later approaches to qualitative methods by feminist sociologists: “The settlement stands for application as opposed to research; for emotion as opposed to abstraction, for universal interest as opposed to specialization” (Addams, 1899, 36). The application of knowledge cannot be measured by its money-​making value: “I have in mind an application to a given neighborhood of the solace of literature, of the uplift of the imagination, and of the historic consciousness which gives its possessor a sense of connection with the men of the past who have thought and acted, an application of the stern mandates of science, not only to the conditions of sewers and the care of alleys, but to the methods of life and thought; the application of the metaphysic not only to the speculations of the philosopher, but to the events of the passing moment; the application of the moral code to the material life, the transforming of the economic relation into an ethical relation until the sense that religion itself embraces all relations, including the ungodly industrial relation, has become common property” (Addams, 1899, 40). Addams’s underlying postulate, that there is, or should be, no contradiction between lived experience and science, is in line

Jane Addams and Settlement Sociology    653 with later twentieth-​century developments in standpoint theory (see, e.g., Harding, 1991; Smith, 1987). Addams’s settlement sociology also anticipated modern feminist epistemology in using lived experience to create new concepts or definitions of accepted terms. The concern with environmental conditions, for example, led to the novel idea of “civic” or “municipal” housekeeping as an activity required for public welfare, just as domestic housekeeping is needed for clean, safe, and efficiently run homes. Most famously, Addams took on the role of garbage inspector for the area round Hull House. She was desperate that nothing had been done by the authorities in response to a survey of waste disposal violations carried out by Hull House residents and neighborhood women (itself a nice example of what today we would term “participatory research”). Addams worked closely with Mary McDowell, whose tireless work at a neighboring settlement earned her the title of “the Garbage Lady” (Hill, 2015). Making garbage a respectable topic for political activism and research invoked a new union between private issues and public concerns. It was also a brave attempt at de-​gendering the whole concept of housekeeping. Another example of conceptual advance is to be found in Jane Addams’s most curious and probably least understood work, The Long Road of Woman’s Memory (1916). In this book, Addams turns to the memories of older working-​class immigrant women to expound the theory that memory is not just a simple matter of recall, but a dynamic method of bringing sense to experience, in the course of which core values and beliefs may very well be revised. Memory remains oddly understudied within sociology, despite the fact that all data collected directly from people depend on it (see Oakley, 2016).

Settlement Sociology and Methods The sociology pioneered by Jane Addams and other settlement workers in the United States and elsewhere was an evolving experiment in new ways of understanding social issues. As such, it had to be, and was, extremely inventive in its methodological approaches. The theory of settlement sociology was what produced its methodology. As Addams outlined the central approach, this was about making social problems concrete as empirical experiences of human pain. Settlement research demonstrated that pain occurs, not randomly, but in a pattern caused by social structure. Documenting this pattern calls for multiple methods: not just counting deaths, injuries, diseases, educational failures, and so forth, but understanding experiences from the inside. This requires sensitivity, openness, and careful systematic recording. Many methodological strategies commonly considered to be much later developments appear in this record of methodological development. Take, for example, the following comment by Agnes Sinclair Holbrook, who worked on the color-​ coded maps in Hull-​House Maps and Papers: “The manner of investigation has been

654   Ann Oakley painstaking, and the facts set forth are as trustworthy as personal inquiry and intelligent effort could make them. Not only was each house, tenement, and room visited and inspected, but in many cases the reports obtained from one person were corroborated by many others, and statements from different workers at the same trades and occupations, as to wages and unemployed seasons, served as mutual confirmation” (Holbrook, 1895, 57). They did not call it “triangulation,” but that is what it was. A settlement, said Addams, “brings to its aid all possible methods to reveal and make common its conception of life” (Addams, 1899, 36). Thus, settlement sociologists used many data-​gathering strategies that are taken for granted by sociologists today, including surveys, interviews, questionnaires, personal budget-​ keeping, participant observation, key informants, and secondary data analysis (a category that included censuses, legislation, memoirs and diaries, wage-​and cost-​of-​living records, court reports, social-​worker reports, tax records, nursery rhymes, and industrial accident reports). They were early users of different formats for presenting data: photographs, maps, tables, graphs, bar charts, and extended quotations from research participants. Much of this eclectic and creative approach to research methodology also appears in the contemporaneous work of British women researchers (see Oakley, 2020). The methodological inventiveness of American settlement sociologists is part of a wider history that tends to be excluded from mainstream narratives: that of the ways in which women researchers on both sides of the Atlantic approached the study of social problems. Settlement sociology and the practices of these women researchers shared a commitment to the need for social facts that embraced “citizen experience.” In the United Kingdom an extensive network of women researchers contributed many insightful sociological studies of economic and social issues in the years spanning the end of the nineteenth century and the early decades of the twentieth century. They had strong links with other reform and research organizations such as the Women’s Industrial Council, the Women’s Trade Union League, the Fabian Society, and the Sociological Society. Their connections to settlements tended to be weaker, as the British Settlements, for the most part, did not share the research energy of their American counterparts. A significant aspect of settlement sociology’s broader context is the provision of opportunities for educated middle-​class women to engage in social research as an alternative to, or in combination with, traditional philanthropy. The activities of the women researcher network in the United Kingdom that ran in parallel to settlement sociology in the United States are described in detail elsewhere (Oakley, 2017, 2018a, 2018b, 2020). Women such as Clementina Black (1853–​1922), Mildred Bulkley (1881–​1968), Clara Collet (1860–​1948), Maud Davies (1876–​1913), Margaret Harkness (1854–​ 1923), Bessie Hutchins (1858–​ 1935), and Varvara De Vesselitsky (1873–​1927) carried out systematic and detailed empirical research on the social and economic conditions of industrial labor, on women’s employment, family life, and urban and rural poverty—​many of the same topics chosen by researchers at Hull House and other American settlements. These were studies that meshed quantitative data together with case studies that took the lived experiences of communities seriously, and that provided an analytic and policy-​relevant perspective on the issues

Jane Addams and Settlement Sociology    655 studied—​all in a manner that would have resonated well with Jane Addams. For example, Mildred Bulkley’s study of box-​making, an industry dominated by sweated female labor, used both documentary and qualitative evidence; it drew on access to Trade Board papers, and on personal interviews with employers, workers, Trade Board inspectors, and others, deploying the same logic of triangulation as used by Hull House researchers (Bulkley, 1915). Varvara De Vesselitsky’s two studies of working-​class family budgets, one co-​authored with Bulkley, exposed patterns of working-​class money management and spending, and documented the networks of mutual aid among poor women who tried to compensate for a fragile male wage-​based economy (De Vesselitsky, 1917; De Vesselitsky and Bulkley, 1917). These studies are typical examples of the approach common to settlement sociology whereby a single policy question expands into a broader sociological study that in turn calls for innovative methods: it is only by intensive study of particular cases in their local context that the irrelevance of imposed categories of experience can be revealed. At the center of the British women researcher network was the well-​known social scientist Beatrice Webb, herself the architect of a developed framework for the scientific study of social life. She had built this up partly on the basis of her own research using covert ethnography and informal interviewing, and partly through reading the works of Britain’s first social science methodologist, Harriet Martineau (who, not incidentally, had provided an earlier and more thorough analysis of American culture than the much more famous study by Alexis De Tocqueville) (Martineau, 1838; see Martineau 1837; De Tocqueville, 1835–​1840). A defining element of Webb’s framework, which she taught in a series of lectures on methods of investigation at the London School of Economics, was her advocacy of “a subtle combination of quantitative and qualitative analysis” (Webb, 1926, 263). The economist and Hull House resident Edith Abbott spent a year living in a London settlement and taking this course; she later launched a similar course in Chicago.

Settlement Sociology and the Universities A critical feature of settlement sociology was its non-​academic location. Freedom from academic structures and strictures allowed settlement researchers to develop their enterprises as they saw fit, and in accordance with settlement values. Jane Addams’s own initial impulse had been to restore a balance between academic knowledge and understanding of community relations, especially for the first generation of university-​ educated women. In her Twenty Years at Hull-​House, talking of the moment when she was first seized with the idea of founding a settlement in Chicago, she wrote: “I gradually became convinced that it would be a good thing to rent a house in a part of the city where many primitive and actual needs are found, in which young women who had

656   Ann Oakley been given over too exclusively to study might restore a balance of activity among traditional lines and learn of life from life itself; where they might try out some of the things they had been taught” (Addams, 1910, 72). Hull House itself never had any formal links to universities, although some of its residents did hold university posts. Addams herself turned down the offer of a university position (Wilkinson, 2014, 93). She was opposed to study for study’s sake, believing that authentic knowledge could only be based on the understanding of real social situations. Indeed, she could be quite uncompromising in her description of universities as devoted to making “a little inner circle of illuminated space beyond which there stretched a region of darkness” (Addams, 1930, 404–​405). At its heart the opposition between settlement and academic sociology exposed differences in the theory of knowledge, in the definition of what knowledge is and how it is arrived at, and what its purposes are. Universities are driven by “the analytical motive,” by the notion of communities as sociological laboratories, whereas settlement knowledge is motivated by “a reaction from that motive, with a desire to use synthetically and directly whatever knowledge they, as a group, may possess, to test its validity and to discover the conditions under which this knowledge may be employed” (Addams, 1899, 35). Addams pointed out that much classical learning and many scientific discoveries happened outside universities. She also took the school system to task for relying more on book learning than on learning from life. Educators, she said, believe “that it is not possible for the mass of mankind to have experiences which are of themselves worth anything, and that accordingly, if a neighborhood is to receive valuable ideas at all, they must be brought in from the outside, and almost exclusively in the form of books” (Addams, 1899, 45). In her The Need of Theoretical Preparation for Philanthropic Work, published in 1887, the radical reformer and Hull House resident Florence Kelley provided a parallel analysis of academia as a class-​based system dedicated to the training of the ruling class. This meant, said Kelley, that academic sociological research and teaching were always likely to be biased by “class interest”: university professors tended to act “as mere apologists for the social system, the law of whose development few of them attempt to investigate”; thus what should have been “unprejudiced investigation” was often only “dogmatic apology” for the status quo (Kelley, 1887, 99, 101; Sklar 1986). As Addams’s own thinking developed, the contrast between settlement sociology and university-​based work became even more stark. She worried that the university might swallow the settlement and turn it into yet another laboratory: “another place in which to analyze and depict, to observe and record. A Settlement which performs but this function is merely an imitative and unendowed university, as a Settlement which gives all its energies to classes and lectures and athletics is merely an imitative college.” Her aversion to the term “laboratory” was shared by many other settlers (Owens, 2014). Significantly, Addams viewed the settlement’s research function as putting it on a par with “state and national bureaus,” since all three types of institutions devoted their efforts to collecting and analyzing information on the assumption that such information would go on to form the basis for welfare-​promoting legislation.

Jane Addams and Settlement Sociology    657

The Complicated History of “the Social” As many scholars have noted, another crucial origin myth in relation to Jane Addams and sociology is her construction as a philanthropist or a social worker rather than a sociologist. This myth plays to the complex origins of social science, and especially to the historical division between community-​and university-​based work. There is, as Lengermann and Niebrugge have pointed out, actually no sociological history of sociology: “sociologists have allowed the history of the discipline and profession to be taught solely as a history of the field’s ascendant ideas” (Lengermann and Niebrugge, 2007, 71; see Goudsblom and Heilbron, 2015; McDonald, 2004). Most histories of sociology are selective narratives composed by, and for, the academy, and they perform the function of achieving professional group solidarity. Sociology is unproblematically identified with academic teaching and with the university as its natural home. This history privileges theory and sidelines the whole terrain of research, methodological innovation, and the role of empirical sociological work in changing society. It is thus prejudiced against settlement sociology and the other institutional settings which in the late nineteenth century practiced reformist social science. In contrast to this dominant and skewed history, a critical narrative of sociology and its relation to social work establishes settlement sociology as a “science of reform” with its own coherent theory and methodology. Settlement sociology developed at a time before the hardening of our current distinctions between social work, policy research, and sociology. The first academic sociology department in the United States was formed in 1892 at the University of Chicago, and the first in Britain in 1904 at the London School of Economics. “A nineteenth century contemporary looking at ‘sociology’ would have as easily turned to the Settlement as to the university” (Lengermann and Niebrugge-​Brantley, 2002, 6). The focus of settlement sociology on “practical” or “applied” work was one feature that enabled mainstream histories to position it at the margins of sociology. The charge that it also lacked objectivity, because of its concern with rootedness in everyday human experience, was equally damning. This distancing of settlement sociology from academic social science was furthered by the repudiation of the social reform function of knowledge. In the United States, the story of how the women settlement sociologists in Chicago were sidelined by academic men, who preferred to see women sociologists corralled in a Department of Household Administration, is an especially grueling lesson in the politics of institutional sexism (see Deegan, 1990; Maclean and Williams, 2012). The erasure of women researchers’ work in the development of British sociology and narratives about it was somewhat less florid, although it also depended heavily on the gendered notion that only men can be professionals (see Oakley, 2014). Settlement sociologists were, however, not afraid of private funding, and there are many moments in their history where important initiatives were taken up by wealthy charities and other independent funders. It was funds provided by the Russell Sage

658   Ann Oakley Foundation that enabled Jane Addams and other settlement leaders in Chicago to set up an independent organization called the Chicago Institute of Social Science in 1906 that provided a public sociology base for the activities of Hull House investigators and others. It became the Chicago School of Civics and Philanthropy in 1908, with a social investigation program run by Julia Lathrop and then by Edith Abbott.

The Fate of Settlement Sociology By definition—​in its original aims—​the settlement movement was about responsiveness to local context and need: it was both revolutionary and evolutionary. Thus, its flexibility naturally caused it to move with the times. In industrial capitalist economies, various factors combined to render the model of a community-​based transformative and innovative social science less relevant and certainly less powerful as a policy-​making tool. As some of the original settlers had envisaged, the state took over many of the social services provided by settlements; research into service needs also became the province of many other enterprises. Much settlement energy was redirected into the professionalization of social work, a mixed development so far as settlements themselves were concerned, since the label of “social work” constricted what settlements would henceforth be seen as offering the policy world. The institutionalized divergence between sociology and social work left the kind of research-​based grassroots social reform in which settlements specialized in an uncomfortable and ill-​defined space. In addition, the women who had dominated settlement work increasingly found other opportunities for professional advancement and influence opening up. Of the two “iconic” settlement houses, Hull House itself declared bankruptcy and closed in 2012. It had become very reliant on government funding and therefore subject to cutbacks in welfare spending (Knight, 2012). Toynbee Hall in London survives on its original East End site offering multiple services for people suffering poverty and injustice; its rhetoric still stresses the ethic of working with people rather than for them. In the revised format of community centers, settlements undertake a range of functions round the world today. In the United States, the National Federation of Settlements and Neighborhood Centers, founded by Jane Addams and her friends in 1911, continues as the United Neighbourhood Centers Association. There is also an International Federation of Settlement and Neighborhood Centers with more than 11,000 member associations globally (Blank, 1998). In the United Kingdom, the Federation of Residential Settlements, founded in 1920, evolved into the British Association of Settlements and Social Action Centres in 1974, including in its remit some sixty large urban community centers established from the 1960s on. The achievement most associated with such centers is innovative social work practice, rather than the enterprise fostered by Jane Addams and her colleagues of generating, together with local communities, facts about need and workable policies to address that need. The residential character of settlements has mostly disappeared, leaving many as simply government-​funded multi-​service agencies with paid workers.

Jane Addams and Settlement Sociology    659

Conclusion Academic histories of social science are prejudiced against the centrality of the community-​based settlement sociology movement in generating valid knowledge to inform public policy. The extrapolation backward in time of current intellectual and social categories falsifies history, and it applies very strikingly to the landscape of social science research and policy work that was carried out in social settlements across the world in the period from the 1880s to the 1930s. Jane Addams is a key figure in this landscape, although she would probably be the first to argue that her settlement sociology developed as a collaborative venture involving many other “settlers” and the communities with whom they worked. Nonetheless, she was the major theorist of settlement sociology, providing her contemporaries with a rich store of epistemological observations and empirical practices relating to the incorporation of “citizen experience” in the understanding and reform of welfare-​damaging social systems. Settlement sociology was a transnational movement, but its historiography is heavily dominated by Hull House and Toynbee Hall and the research undertaken under the rubric of these settlements. This focus downplays the important pioneering work emanating from other settlements and other locations, especially from a diversity of those in the United Kingdom. We know relatively little about transnational practices in the development and dissemination of settlement sociology’s guiding concepts and methods. This is a substantial challenge for the future. It is likely to involve painstaking archaeological investigation of many archives spanning both the private and public lives of the researchers and reformers who made up the settlement sociology movement. At the same time we perhaps need to consider the relevance of settlement sociology today. If the original movement arose during a period when the contradictions inherent in capitalism were first recognized as social problems, then the case for subjecting such problems to a similar treatment must remain compelling. Many communities across the industrial world live in conditions of appalling poverty and distress and are subject to the discomforting divisions of class, ethnicity, and gender; in so-​called developing nations, the very idea of “development” can be a threat to the community solidarity which lay at the heart of the settlement social vision. In such circumstances, Addams’s notion of settlement sociology as a theory of social relations surely cannot have passed its sell-​ by date. Professionalization—​either of social work or sociology—​is not necessarily the most effective way of creating and ensuring influential participatory knowledge.

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662   Ann Oakley Stokes, G., and S. Oliver. 2017. “Public and Consumer Participation in Policy and Research.” In The International Encyclopedia of Public Health, edited by S. R. Quah and W. C. Cockerham, 2nd edition, volume 6, pp. 148–​157. Oxford: Academic Press. Vicinus, M. 1985. Independent Women. London: Virago. Wagner, A. R. 2006. “The International Federation of Settlements and Neighbourhood Centres: Celebrating 80 Years and Committing to a New Future.” Keynote Address IFS International Conference, Berlin, October 8. https://​web11.fcny.org/​ifs/​about/​FY16_​IFS​ _​His​tory​_​80t​hAnn​iver​sary​_​10-​08-​2006.pdf. Webb, B. 1926. My Apprenticeship. London: Longmans and Co. Wilkinson, I. 2014. “On the Task of Making Social Inquiry Aligned to Caregiving: An Invitation to Debate.” Anthropology & Medicine 21 (1): 87–​99. Woods, R. A., and A. J. Kennedy. 1911. Handbook of Settlements. New York: Russell Sage Foundation.

Chapter 34

S o cial Eth i c s for Ec ol o gical a nd C omm u nit y Re si l i e nc e Jane Addams and the Environment Heather E. Keith

“That wise old dame, Nature, has always shown an anxious care that men should reveal themselves to each other, and she did this apparently ages before the scientists discovered it or realized the important of social intercourse in developing and humanizing the race. It is, in fact, the foundation of all the great human relationships, political as well as social.” —Jane Addams, 1912

As much as, or perhaps more than, any other American pragmatist, Jane Addams was committed to using her work to enhance the quality of life of local and global stakeholders and to solve the great problems of her time. Her positionality as a sociologist, philosopher, social worker, feminist, activist, and even sanitation inspector makes her work uniquely situated to influence and strengthen approaches to public problem solving. Perhaps the most wide-​reaching, and insidious, problems of our time are the global and local effects, often inequitably distributed, on social and natural communities of climate change and other environmental disasters. Solutions to these problems, to the extent that mitigation is possible, will rely on personal commitments, broad social movements, and national and international policy. We need an ethical discourse that privileges the relationship between human and natural communities and views each individual always as a person situated within social and ecological systems. We also need to strengthen our practices to promote environmental justice and empower people and organizations to act, as activist Greta Thunburg suggests, as though “our house is on fire” (Thunberg, 2019).

664   Heather E. Keith This chapter examines how Addams’s social ethics and community activism can be used to influence and strengthen contemporary environmental values and practice. Though Addams was not as much in the center of environmental thinking as some of the more famous conservationists of the progressive era, I argue that we can apply her theoretical work to reimagining our connection and commitment to the more than human world, and use her social work and community-​organizing experiences to inspire the prevention and mitigation of environmental catastrophes such as the effects of climate change. An Addamsian re-​envisioning of humans as inextricably within the environment can be influential in four ways. First, Addams’s social ethics is relational—​ moral activity is born out of the social environment, not imposed from without. Second, Addams’s pragmatist feminism (arguably ecofeminism) is contextual and intersectional—​its focus is not on the individual, but always on the person in her environment: human connectedness to and within a diverse wider circle of ecosystems with their myriad identities and situations. Third, Addams notes the relevance of the natural environment to the well-​being of humans, especially in strengthening social and political relationships. Fourth, Addams was as much an activist as a philosopher—​her theoretical work was always tied to concrete actions and habits aimed at mitigating suffering, including devastation caused by environmental hazards; and improving quality of life, including supporting environmental health. We could use her influence today for strengthening our social and ecological communities and creating philosophies of sustainability and resilience. This chapter is organized around the potential influence of Addams’s theory and practice on contemporary sustainability thinking and action. First, I argue that her unique social ethics, which is steeped in pragmatist thought and informed by her own experience, contributes to an environmental ethics that is better suited than more traditional approaches to making sense of our relationship to the more-​than-​human world. I then examine how this theoretical foundation influenced Addams’s own activism in making the natural world more accessible and healthier. I expand on Addams’s thinking and experience to show how a social ethics can contribute to community and ecological resilience in light of the potentially catastrophic effects of climate change and other environmental dangers. Finally, true to Addams’s pragmatist values, I offer examples of social environmental ethics at work in both contemporary theoretical and practical movements.

Environmental Ethics in the Anthropocene To understand how we can better act for common environmental goods, we must understand our relationship to both human and natural systems. Though there has been discussion of the human connection to nature throughout the history of philosophy

Social Ethics for Ecological and Community Resilience    665 globally (such as in ancient Chinese and Presocratic philosophers) and in American thought (such as in George Perkins Marsh and Henry David Thoreau), the 1962 publication of Rachel Carson’s seminal call to action Silent Spring intensified the consideration by Western ethicists and policy makers of the ruinous anthropogenic impact on the environment. As a response, the first articles and full courses in environmental ethics emerged in the 1970s (Rolston, 2020). Fifty years later, it is easy to find journals, policy papers, books, articles, websites, podcasts, and other resources for studying environmental ethics, and a university without an environmental studies program or a philosophy department without a course on the environment would be an anomaly. In spite of all this activity, American policy does not always reflect our environmental philosophies and values. Just one US president in a handful of years has the power to overturn decades of progress in sustainable policy making (Gibbens, 2019). Meanwhile, the effects of climate change are becoming more apparent and dramatic, and our policies and procedures are not secure enough to prevent disasters from continuing to happen, such as the Deepwater Horizon oil spill and increasingly volatile hurricane and typhoon seasons. Until our collective values change enough to inform our local and global actions, whether at the level of individual households or the United Nations, environmental policy will be inadequate and ineffective at making real change. What we need is a social environmental ethics that will offer contextual guidance in navigating personal, local, and eventually global decision-​making that will fully root concern for the more than human environment into our values, practices, and policies. Environmental philosophers have offered many ways of thinking about the human interaction with nature with the hope of altering practice that will better allow humans to live more ethically within the natural world. Most ethical theories operate on the assumption that who (or what) has moral standing is central to decision making. If the computer on which I am typing this sentence does not have moral standing, then it is not considerable in decision making, even if I choose to destroy it. However, if I have moral standing and you choose to destroy my computer, a useful piece of my property, then we have an ethical problem. But is the fact that this object is useful to, owned by, or even precious to me the only consideration? Perhaps when it comes to my computer, that is the furthest we ought to take moral standing. But what about nonhuman animals or even the ecosystems upon which they, and we, depend? Much of Western environmental ethics has wrangled with the question of whether the natural world has some sort of moral standing, and what that standing might mean when it comes to moral deliberation and action. Arguing that many traditional views of moral considerability are too limited in advocating only for rational creatures (in the ethics of Aristotle, Kant, or Mill, for example), environmental philosophers explore ethical views that advance the moral standing of nonhuman nature. Moral considerability in environmental ethics ranges from duties to future generations of humans to duties to nonhuman animals and even to the land itself. Some theories, such as Gifford Pinchot’s conservation movement, rest on the instrumental value of nature to humans (Des Jardins, 1997). Much American environmental policy would seem to be based on an anthropocentric approach that

666   Heather E. Keith encourages environmental values and policies that benefit individual humans, such as clean water and air. Ethicists such as Tom Regan and Peter Singer go beyond an anthropocentric approach to a biocentric view that puts moral standing at the level of individual organisms, human and nonhuman, with inherent rights (Regan) and capacity for suffering (Singer). Coining the term “speciesism,” similar to racism or sexism, Singer uses a utilitarian approach to argue that we are morally required to maximize pleasure and minimize pain regardless of whether an individual is human, thus extending moral standing to nonhuman animals (1990). Regan rejects Singer’s utilitarianism, preferring instead an approach that posits the inherent value of individuals who experience themselves as “subjects of a life” (1983)—​a category that includes many or most nonhuman animals in addition to humans. In both cases, individuals are privileged over ecosystems, but traditional qualities of human moral standing (such as rationality) are deemed problematic. Though biocentric approaches enlarge the moral community, the often inflexible rules and principles create conflicts among individuals and make democratic policy making difficult. As well, biocentrism does not immediately lend itself to the consideration of the broader systems which sustain individual lives and well-​being. Other theories note the interconnection of individuals within the environment and take a more systemic approach, such as in ecocentrism. In his Sand County Almanac, for example, Aldo Leopold argued that “A thing is right when it tends to preserve the integrity, stability, and beauty of the biotic community. It is wrong when it tends otherwise” (1949/​1986, p. 262). In his ecocentric “land ethic,” Leopold suggested that the kind of ethical deliberation that affords moral standing to human communities should be extended to natural communities for the enrichment of both: “the land ethic changes the role of Homo sapiens from conqueror of the land-​community to plain member and citizen of it. It implies respect for his fellow-​members, and also respect for the community as such” (1949/​1986, p. 240). In ecocentrism, the interconnection between individuals and the environment is the basis for ethical deliberation. As Holmes Rolston writes: Perhaps ecosystems will prove to count more than any of the component organisms, because the systemic processes have generated, continue to support, and integrate tens of thousands of member organisms. The appropriate unit for moral concern is the fundamental unit of development and survival. (2012/​2020, p. 179)

Some environmental ethicists similarly posit that the connection between organisms within a system should be the foundation of our environmental values. Ecofeminism grounds environmentalism in battling the same “logic of domination” that has historically oppressed women, stating that if we view nature (or women) as inferior (less rational, etc.), then we are more likely to degrade it (Warren, 1996). Ecofeminists also celebrate the positive relationship of women and nature in many cultures and movements, especially within local agriculture and food systems, and fight against social and environmental injustices that threaten the well-​being of historically marginalized populations, such as women and children. On a more political level regarding the

Social Ethics for Ecological and Community Resilience    667 negative effects of globalization, Paul Hawken also stresses that there is an inherent connection between environmental and social-​justice movements, and that any attempt to solve the problems of the world must involve the work of a diversity of human-​rights and environmental activists, especially indigenous peoples, all rooted in a “deep sense of connection to the living world” (2007, p. 5). As a sociological and philosophical theorist, Addams was an avid supporter of women’s rights and values. In light of this, her pragmatist feminist ethics was an important precursor to ecofeminism and other ethical theories that seek to elevate marginalized human and nonhuman communities. She would concur with a moral approach that privileges caring relationships that grow out of systems and protect them, especially the disenfranchised and marginalized, rather than ones that impose doctrinal rules that have historically advantaged the powerful. Though steeped in the pragmatist ethics of her male colleagues, such as John Dewey and George Herbert Mead, Addams, unlike Dewey, who was “notably insensitive and unresponsive to the environmental discourse of his own time” (Thompson & Piso, 2019, p. 717), was interested in human interactions within the more-​than-​human world. Addams’s ethics was born out of her activism, and to fully understand how her work may be better suited than other environmental ethics in influencing and strengthening environmental philosophies and policies, we first need to explore how she incorporated an interest in the natural world into her social work and community organizing.

Addams’s Influence on Recreation, Leisure, and Environmental Health In tandem with her pivotal legacy in social work, ethics, philosophy, and education, Addams was a pioneer in recreation and leisure, “one of the first people to articulate a philosophy of recreation applicable to the emerging industrialized society in the United States” (Henderson, 1982, p. 43). An early proponent of public recreation spaces, Addams believed that the imagination and sense of adventure unleashed during sports and play could at least partly alleviate the likelihood of young people getting involved in alcohol, crime, and corruption, especially in cities (1909/​1972). Recreating together also, Addams believed, facilitated intercultural understanding and an appreciation of the variety of human experiences leading to empathy and neighborly relationships (Addams, 1912), while just living together “in the midst of the crowd” cultivated “habits of solitude and great secretiveness just because people are deceived by the simulacrum of companionship” (Addams, 1912, p. 615). Unstructured and disconnected urban life tended to foster antisocial and morally corrupt behavior, while “play, beyond any other human activity fulfills this function of revelation of character and is therefore most useful in modern cities which are full of devices for keeping men apart and holding them ignorant of each other” (Addams, 1907, p. 24). At Hull House, immigrants came together

668   Heather E. Keith to share crafts, games, music, art, dance, sports, and other creative and active elements of diverse cultures. Addams worked to provide spaces such as playgrounds, parks, and gymnasiums outside of Hull House, as well (Reynolds, 2017). Indoor sports, such as basketball, were an important part of life at Hull House, noticed even by the very founder of basketball, James Naismith (Reynolds, 2017). However, Addams believed that there was something about outdoor recreation that was also essential to resilient communities. While closed-​in spaces may have facilitated habits that are more likely to require secrecy and that fostered cultural sameness, recreating in the “open air” prevented corruption and equalized the playing field among people from diverse cultural backgrounds who could easily come together in public spaces, while still providing the spirit of adventure young people desired: we cannot imagine a boy who by walking three blocks can secure for himself the delicious sensation to be found in a swimming pool preferring to play craps in a foul and stuffy alley, even with the unnatural excitement which gambling offers. (Addams, 1907, p. 24)

As with all of her theoretical work, Addams lived her values. She was involved with, and Hull House administered, the first public playground in Chicago, and she helped found the Playground Association of America (Henderson, 1982). Outdoor space and recreation were an expression of how Addams addressed challenges in her community by incorporating the perspective that a person was always situated within an environment: “People, physical places, and programs had mutual influence upon the well-​being of those served by recreation and sport programming at Hull House” (Reynolds, 2017, p. 16). Now, children and adults can recreate at Addams Park in Chicago (Chicago Park District, n.d.) or bike the Jane Addams Recreation Trail near her hometown of Cedarville, IL (Freeport Park District, n.d.). Students in recreation studies and outdoor education programs today learn about Addams’s influence on recreation and leisure in America. Similarly, in his popular book Last Child in the Woods, Richard Louv (2005) explores the effects of nature on physical and emotional well-​being, citing Wells and Evans (2003), who assessed the degree and effect of nature around the homes of rural children. They found that children with more access to nature had fewer problems with behavior, had less anxiety and depression, and rated themselves higher on a global measure of self-​worth. Some studies even suggest that kids with access to nature have more friends. In addition to her work toward maintaining healthy outdoor spaces for recreation and cultural exchange, Addams was also an early pioneer of environmental health policy. As a result of her advocacy for improved working and living conditions in the overcrowded city of Chicago, she was the first woman to be appointed as a municipal sanitation inspector (Ryerson, 2020). Addams was also one of the earliest activists to shed light on environmental hazards in the workplace, primarily a problem for already disenfranchised and marginalized workers such as immigrants and women, making her an important precursor to today’s ecofeminists and environmental-​justice activists.

Social Ethics for Ecological and Community Resilience    669 Susan Mann writes of Addams and other women of her time working for environmental justice: “Their everyday lives, work experiences, and socially lived knowledges rendered them better able to grasp the vantage points and environmental concerns of marginalized peoples, thereby giving them more critical insights into addressing social injustices” (2011, p. 20). Though support of outdoor recreation and protection of environmental health do not necessarily make an environmental ethic, these practices exemplify Addams’s emphasis on the interconnection of humans and nature, albeit primarily for anthropocentric reasons (such as health and well-​being of humans and communities). However, in her social ethics and the values that grounded her social work, we find a foundation for fruitful moral consideration of the natural world and future opportunities to cultivate values that foster sustainable and resilience-​focused practices and policies that contest ethical structures built solely for human use.

Social Ethics for Community and Ecological Resilience For Addams, social work and recreation were both a function of the “person in environment” (Reynolds, 2017), an idea that has influenced both social work and recreation studies. This core concept stemming from Addams’s social ethics means that individuals, though morally considerable, are not the solitary concern for moral theory or practice. The person in environment is always emerging from and contributing to her context, both human and natural. This sea change in moral psychology in Addams’s pragmatist ethics can underscore and strengthen contemporary environmental approaches that prioritize neither humans nor the natural world alone, but see our actions as always in context, always evolving, and based in ecological and psychological sciences. Another hallmark of pragmatist ethics is that values emerge out of concrete situations and, therefore, can be adapted to novel problems. Charlene Seigfried notes this in her discussion of pragmatism and feminism: Pragmatists developed their theories of ethics in response to the great social, cultural, economic, and political upheavals of their time. They were not simply reactive, however, but developed their own complex and coherent ethical theories because none of the traditional ones were found adequate for dealing with new findings on individual developmental processes within a dynamic social situation and the changing conditions of life. (1996, p. 233)

To adequately deal with the great problems of our time, such as climate change, we require such ethical theories that emerge from the concrete situations of their complex social and ecological contexts and can themselves adapt and evolve to meet new

670   Heather E. Keith challenges. “For pragmatists, social ethics was not a subset of ethics, but ethics itself ” (Seigfried, 1996, p. 224). Unlike most ethical systems based on rationality, Addams’s social ethics is grounded in relationality through and through. And unlike other relational ethical theories, such as the ethics of care, social ethics may better accommodate the moral standing of both human and natural communities (Keith, 2012). In her seminal work Democracy and Social Ethics, Addams advances her vision of an emergent pragmatist proto-​ethics of care in which pro-​social values emerged from what she termed “filial relations” and culminated in strong community (1902). Unlike rule-​or principle-​based frameworks (such as Kant or Mill), social ethics is not primarily about serving the isolated interests of rational individuals. Using the psychology of her time, Addams, with Dewey, Mead, and other pragmatists, argued that individuals are by nature social creatures and therefore our values ought to be based on relationships and communal living. M. Regina Leffers notes that for Addams, “it would not make sense to talk about having an ethical position independent of relationship to self, other, or community. At this within-​ relationship-​matrix of her position we find a dynamic principle of respect for self and others” (1993, p. 73). A precursor to the contemporary ethics of care as developed by Nel Noddings, Addams noted that natural relationships within families served as the foundation for ethical relationships that grew to include neighbors and community, and that this was especially true of the hardscrabble immigrants in Chicago: A very little familiarity with the poor districts of any city is sufficient to show how primitive and genuine are the neighborly relations. There is the greatest willingness to lend or borrow anything, and all the residents of the given tenement know the most intimate affairs of all the others. The fact that the economic condition of all alike is on a most precarious level makes the ready outflow of sympathy and material assistance the most natural thing in the world. (1902, p. 20)

This natural sympathy for others in need broadens to charitable feelings and actions that grow from a larger sense of relatedness toward others and not primarily from a position of duty or principle, as in Kant and Mill. Since we are, by nature, social as we grow out of families, neighborhoods, and communities, to broaden the family claim to include the social claim (or the state or democratic claim) is to fully embrace our social nature: “The era of private family ethics is over; the era of social ethics is upon us. Addams insists that we must acknowledge that our homes are already social, and urges us to create a social ethics that can accommodate this reality” (Heldke, 2012, p. 132). In Addams’s world of rapid population growth and increasingly crowded urban areas such as Chicago, she came to see social ethics as both a natural consummation of human interaction and an imperative mode of conduct. To live resiliently and successfully in close association and diverse communities, to live socially, means to cultivate and enact shared ends and values. Addams argued in Democracy and Social Ethics that only those

Social Ethics for Ecological and Community Resilience    671 oblivious to actual circumstances fill themselves with pride in their personal morality in the face of the pressing need for a social morality in which we join forces for practical reform of social structures (1902, p. 6). For Addams, this natural moral community starts with “organic wholes” that are always intersecting with others: Jane Addams had the distinctive ability to see individuals as wholes that are also interconnected and interrelated parts of ever-​larger wholes: Italian (or Irish, or Russian . . . ) families, within the context of that country’s part of the city, within the context of the larger group of culturally diverse communities, within the context of the economic, legislative, and social city, and so on. (Leffers, 1993, p. 69)

This allowed Addams to assume a “universalized caring standpoint, one that extends beyond the realm of personal relationships . . . ” (Leffers, 1993, p. 70). And Marilyn Fischer adds that “These references were consistent with leading psychological and sociological theories of the day, which did not assume that instincts were biologically dictated or unalterably fixed” (2006, p. 11). The universalized caring standpoint enables democratic thinking among many different standpoints, an attitude that can constructively shape political life. Maurice Hamington notes Addams’s emphasis on the inclusion of many and diverse standpoints intersecting in a political whole: “Members of a vibrant democracy not only recognize diverse standpoints, they must use empathy and effort to understand these diverse standpoints. For Addams, standpoint theory was integrated with feminist action and reflection” (2009, p. 55). According to Hamington, “feminist standpoint theorists valorize perspectives and theories derived from marginalized positions” (2009, p. 53), which is consistent with Addams’s commitment to the empathetic understanding for, with, and among the immigrant communities and women she served and served with for so many years, and can be fruitfully extended to broader ecological communities. The values of relationships born out of empathizing with the standpoints of diverse others, first in families and then in communities, and ultimately put to work for the broader common good, are later expressed by other feminist standpoint theories such as care ethics; and the intersection between the work of women (at home and in the community), immigrants, and other marginalized groups with environmental health and recreation is consistent with ecofeminism. Just like Addams’s idea that immigrants might be more likely to extend a hand to others because of their ready sympathy, women, people of color, and other historically disenfranchised people might be quicker to contest environmental injustice because of their intersectional identity-​based experience of domination, as well as the fact that marginalized people are already bearing the brunt of the effects of climate change (Miranda et al., 2011). Not only is Addams’s pragmatist social ethics amenable to ecofeminism, Addams and other pragmatist feminists, such as Caroline Bartlett Crane and Charlotte Perkins Gilman, were influential precursors to ecofeminist theory and activism. Rynbrandt

672   Heather E. Keith and Deegan (2002) noted that Addams and her contemporaries were steeped in social movements, such as the women’s movement, the early civil-​rights movement, the workers’ movement, and the animal-​protection movement, and that all of these “posited a link between the exploitation of subordinate members of a society and the degradation of nature in Western cultural values,” and that these progressive movements “attempted to use political action to end the exploitation and destruction of both the natural world and vulnerable members of society” (p. 60). This is consistent with contemporary ecofeminist thought that directly links the exploitation of women and the natural world by patriarchal capitalist systems. Further, ecofeminists also highlight the connection between environmental degradation and its effects on women and children, resulting in women’s influence over reform, a concept central to Addams’s work in Chicago, as she “maintained that women were especially suited to social reform as they turned social housekeeping into social reform” (Rynbrandt and Deegan, 2002, p. 61). An Addamsian pragmatist ecofeminist ethics allows us to think beyond dichotomized individual and human interests to the communities that sustain us, both human and natural. Solving the great problems of our time must involve the insights of standpoints of diverse others. As Erin McKenna says of Addams, “For her, ethics and politics both needed to move beyond a focus on individual rights and responsibilities to embrace a social perspective” (2021, p. 15). This perspective is substantially different than much of the history of environmental ethics. Addamsian social ethics is powerful in that it incorporates the individual and her context, her unique needs and the systems that make her possible. An example of this can be found in Addams’s pacifist philosophy. Using a weaving metaphor, “which does not homogenize the combined, often colorful, strings but lets them work together,” Shields and Soeters (2017) apply Addams’s ethics to a concept of positive peace, arguing that “peaceweaving,” with its focus on relationships and emphasis on “an expansive interconnected democratic community” (p. 329), can be applied to contemporary peacekeeping operations. A reexamination of social ethics and its relational approach would serve us well in battling other public problems such as climate change. Addams posits a human ecosystem that is alive, is dynamic, weaves together diverse strands, and can better express our connectedness to the more than human world than ethical systems that primarily privilege individuals. It is also notable that contemporary thinking about how natural systems work, in addition to weaving, would allow Addams to expand her views of the person in environment more explicitly to the wider natural context.

What Does Addams Offer to Environmental Thinking and Activism? For a pragmatists and activists such as Addams, our ethical ponderings and theoretical frameworks are only as good as the tests that we put them to. Pragmatist values

Social Ethics for Ecological and Community Resilience    673 such as empathy, democratic deliberation, and experimentalism are values shared by today’s design thinking movement, which is often employed to suss out potential solutions for complex problems such as climate change (Andrews, 2015). Even though climate change and environmental devastation affect natural and human communities at a rising rate, values-​based practices, from non-​profits to global movements, aimed at environmental justice are growing and strengthening. While global and national policy seem to lag behind what we actually need to be doing to prevent the catastrophic effects of a warming planet (Sommer, 2021), marches, such as the 100,000 people outside the COP26 summer in Glasgow (BBC, 2021), are growing in strength and number. Could a discourse in environmental social ethics both encourage activism and inform better policy? In addition to the obvious role Addams played in the development of ecofeminist and intersectional thought about humans and the environment, here are a few examples of movements, both activist and philosophic, that showcase opportunities for an Addamsian approach to living sustainably, meeting the challenges of climate change and environmental injustice, and further developing our philosophies to support resilient communities and ecosystems. As in “peaceweaving,” in which a social ethics-​inspired positive peace is a “latent concept silently working—​waiting to be unearthed” (Shields & Soeters, p. 335), Addams’s ecofeminism is ready to reframe the environmental ethics discourse to better support diverse movements that are grounded in connectedness and systems thinking, and to influence global policies so that they can match the energy and interests of the people.

Recreation and Inclusive Outdoor Education In light of Addams’s idea that social and environmental situatedness is the locus of ethical activity, getting more humans to experience the natural world in a way that bolsters both human and ecosystem health is an obvious aim for an Addams-​ influenced environmental ethic. Organizations such as Leave No Trace (https://​lnt.org/​) and the National Outdoor Leadership School (https://​www.nols.edu/​en/​) offer education and experiences that support the safe interaction of humans in the wilderness aimed to foster both the appreciation and moral considerability of the natural world. Organizations such as Soul Trak (https://​soult​rak.com/​) help historically marginalized populations find community in the outdoors, working against our racist environmental history and promoting the positive effects of responsible outdoor adventures for previously disenfranchised communities. Similar to Addams’s idea that outdoor recreation provides an unparalleled space for communities to experience diversity in a way that builds and grows connections, Soul Trak seeks to empower outdoor leaders of color to broaden access to the benefits of the human-​environment connection. In all of her work with immigrants, Addams maintained that people should form close communities while still exploring their own cultures, creating a scenario, especially in recreation settings,

674   Heather E. Keith where young people could learn from and empower each other. Today, the intersections between race, gender, socioeconomics, and the environment are central to justice, and organizations that create opportunities to explore these intersections inclusively from a variety of standpoints can help to strengthen human and natural communities. Addams would celebrate the benefits for both human well-​being and environmental health of having more kids together in the woods learning cultural competency and inclusion as well as sustainability values and skills.

Sustainability in Higher Education A growing number of institutions are thinking of education as inextricably linked to sustainability values. For example, several small colleges comprise the “Ecoleague,” which aims to offer a values-​based, experiential education in order to prepare students to tackle climate change and other problems of our time (https://​ecolea​gue.org/​). Research suggests that “self-​transcendent” values, such as sustainability, are not only good for our ecosystems and communities, but they are more motivating for student learners (Yaeger et al., 2014). At the same time, more students are expressing interest in sustainability as they choose colleges and universities (Princeton Review, 2021). Colleges and universities can express earth-​centered and place-​based values and offer sustainability skills in a variety of ways, from infrastructure remediation to interdisciplinary undergraduate and graduate programs in environmental studies to general education programs that integrate sustainability through an entire curriculum (Mauhs-​ Pugh & Brooks, 2013). Some institutions, such as Sterling College in Vermont, infuse skills such as sustainable agriculture and climate justice throughout students’ education (Sterling College, n.d.). A proponent of sustainable higher education and former president of Oberlin College, David Orr calls universities to action. What he said in 1995 about cultivating a student constituency capable of facing environmental concerns still rings true today: A constituency able and willing to do these things must be educated into existence. That constituency must be smarter, better informed, more creative, and wiser than earlier generations. It must comprehend systems and patterns. It must be far-​sighted, yet practical. It must be able to tell the difference between ecological sense and nonsense. And it must be politically effective . . . Much of the current debate about educational standards and reforms, however, is driven by an overarching belief that we must prepare the young only to compete effectively in the global economy; that done, all will be well, or so it is assumed. But there are better reasons to reform education that have to do with the rapid decline in the habitability of the Earth. (Orr, 1995, p. 43)

Addams would agree that the great problems of our time offer an opportunity to rethink our systems, especially education.

Social Ethics for Ecological and Community Resilience    675

Sustainable Food Systems In her exploration of community gardens and the work of Jane Addams, Heldke (2012) describes the Intercultural Gardens Project, started in Germany in 1995, in which immigrant women work together in gardens across the country: “Begun as an effort to give Bosnian women something to do besides ‘drink tea,’ the gardens have become important staging areas and jumping-​off points for all manner of cross-​cultural dialogue, debate, education, organizing, and activism” (p. 129). Similar to Addams’s Chicago playgrounds and the Hull House basketball court, “Gardening together opens the door to all sorts of exchanges and cooperative ventures, both formal and informal . . .” And, “Expanding, extending, and deepening the connections initially formed over gardening is what Addams had in mind when she suggested that the capacity for social intercourse could best be developed in a recreational atmosphere” (p. 138). Further, local agriculture movements, in addition to being opportunities for human association, deepen the connection between humans and the environment. Community gardening, though not the only solution, can also help lessen the social and environmental impacts of our global food system. Ethicists have argued for decades over the anthropogenic ills of our increasingly global food system; from labor injustices to environmental and public health concerns, people are starting to pay more attention to where food comes from and how it gets to us. Local and community agriculture has the potential to strengthen our food systems in a way that prioritizes food security, health, justice, and community. Philip Ackerman-​Leist writes that “. . . we have the opportunity—​indeed the privilege and responsibility—​to completely reimagine our community food systems in such a way that they connect people not just to their food but also to one another” (2013, p. xxxi). The kind of food we eat has an impact on our ecological footprint, as well. In addition to questions about our ethical responsibility to nonhuman animals, the consumption of meat has well-​evidenced effects on a warming planet, including increased emissions such as carbon dioxide and methane. Many studies suggest that a vegetarian or vegan diet has a markedly smaller carbon footprint than carnivorous diets (González et al., 2020).

Nonhuman Animals Consider all the Thanksgiving conversations around meat-​eating brought to families everywhere by college classes on environmental and animal ethics. And rightly so—​we should be discussing our moral relationships to animals, and philosophers such as Peter Singer and Tom Regan give us much to consider. However, rules and principles (such as deontological and utilitarian approaches), though straightforward, may not be adequate to the complexity of our questions about the moral standing of animals. Erin McKenna takes a pragmatist approach, inspired by Addams and her contemporaries, to living

676   Heather E. Keith with and thinking about animals, stating that none of the other approaches “can arrive at an all-​encompassing directive for such relationships” (2021, p. 78), though a pragmatist approach can incorporate them as tools for deliberation. For example, McKenna discusses the ethical questions of testing vaccines on animals, noting that most people in the United States are reliant on a variety of medications to support their health and well-​being (certainly the availability of vaccines is of paramount interest during a pandemic!), most of which were tested on nonhuman animals incapable of offering their consent. While all-​or-​nothing straightforward approaches might not be able to accommodate the complexity of the vaccine question, a highly contextual social ethics can facilitate empathetic insights into the experiences of others (including nonhumans) and direct ongoing inquiry into the problem using a wide variety of ethical tools available to us. “This is where the pragmatist commitment to pluralistic, inclusive, and democratic inquiry is important, as is the commitment to holding ideas tentatively and being willing to revise beliefs and work to change habits as the need arises” (McKenna, 2021, p. 155).

Transition Towns Addams today would likely have been at the forefront of local and grassroots movements to create more resilient food systems, as well as to build community more generally around environmental health and human well-​being, especially as these movements have the potential to affect local, national, and global policies. The Transition Town movement was conceptualized as a response to the twin crises of peak oil and climate change, advocating for a way of associated living that would mitigate the environmental devastation of a fossil-​fuel energy system and economy. Similar in many ways with Addams’s settlement-​house movement, transition towns think intentionally about how to restructure economies, agriculture, recreation, transportation, energy systems, and even individual lifestyles in order to create more resilient and healthy communities with smaller ecological footprints. Like Hull House, the transition movement is based on neighbors organizing themselves and creating better, more ecologically sensitive systems: “The transition process offers a positive, solutions-​focused approach that draws together the various elements of a community to address this common challenge and sees much of the solution as coming from within . . . ” (Hopkins, 2008, p. 136). Addams would likely agree with transition founder Rob Hopkins’s idea that living in an ethically minded community is better and more meaningful than living a dissociated, individualistic existence: There is no reason why a lower-​energy, more resilient future needs to have a lower quality of life than the present. Indeed, a future with a revitalized local economy would have many advantages over the present, including a happier and less stressed population, an improved environment and increased stability. (Hopkins, 2008, p. 135)

Social Ethics for Ecological and Community Resilience    677

Wicked Problems In battling large-​scale issues such as climate change, the “wicked problems” approach is fast appearing in literature and in college courses. First coined by Rittel and Webber (1973), “wicked” problems are those which are loosely formulated, dependent on individual perspectives, lacking a clear endpoint, wide reaching, persistent, and whose solutions must also be contextual. “There is no ultimate test of the validity of a solution to a wicked problem. The testing of solutions takes place in some practical context, and the solutions are not easily undone” (Coyne, 2005). In short, wicked problems are muddy, difficult, highly contextual, intersectional, and dependent on the varied standpoints of diverse stakeholders. Examples include climate change, persistent inequality, environmental injustice, pandemics, gun violence, and the like. In thinking about human well-​being from the perspective of environmental health, recreation, education, ethics, politics, and culture, Addams arguably employed a wicked problems approach at Hull House: Addams’s life provides us with a long list of on-​the-​ground efforts to cope with wicked problems situations. Addams realized early on that work toward meliorating communal problems that began without much community support or initial involvement tended to fail quickly. From these failures, she quickly learned to operate through cooperative action. (Lake, 2014, p. 79)

A pragmatist ecofeminist social ethics, with its emphasis on emergent standpoints and democratic thinking, is better suited for tackling wicked problems such as climate change than standardized ethical theories that depend on one factor, such as rationality or rules. Democratic and contextual thinking, cooperative action, diverse standpoints, and a wide range of multifaceted solutions can be seen in the United Nation’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), for example. In addition to clean water, affordable clean energy, and climate action, the SDGs include goals on education, equity, and zero hunger (United Nations, n.d.). All of these goals are part of the solution to each because they are interconnected and intersectional—​ending world hunger has as much to do with biodiversity and climate justice as it has to do with food security because sustainable food systems depend on resilient ecosystems and communities, just as Hawken argues that human rights and environmental sustainability are inherently connected. As Lake notes, the complexities of wicked problems require an ethical standpoint that embraces “moral perplexity” as part of the process (2014). While most ethical systems eschew perplexity, Addams acknowledged and accepted it as part of the reality of a complicated moral landscape.

A New Land Ethic In 2020, Holmes Rolston revisited Leopold’s concept of the “land ethic” (1949/​1986). He writes that critics of the holistic idea of ecosystems and communities as morally

678   Heather E. Keith considerable will be concerned that “ecosystems exist in too loose a way” for ethicists to take them seriously because their locus of concern will remain on individuals—​the trees, but not the forest; humans, but not communities (p. 186). “Such a perspective begins to naturalize ethics, generating an ethic for what Leopold called ‘the land’ ” (Rolston, 2020, p. 187). Rolston defends Leopold’s idea that the land itself should be part of our moral community by arguing that ecosystems are more complex and creative than individual organisms (such as humans, of course) and even species: “Species increase their kinds, but ecosystems increase kinds, and increase the integration of kinds” (p. 187). Ecosystems are responsible for biodiversity and the integration of “the know-​how of many diverse organisms and species . . . Seen systemically, humans ought to respect and protect such systemic nature” (p. 187). Bryan Norton points out the practical problem of thinking exclusively at the individual level, such as applying just an economic model to land use, which “often causes decision makers to ignore the resilience of ecological systems, a characteristic that is not easily incorporated into a model based on individual preferences” (2015, p. 49). An Addamsian account of social ethics can both influence and benefit from an interaction with Leopold and Rolston. Their descriptions of ecosystems are strikingly similar to Addams’s descriptions of human communities, and the role they play in quality of life and the very survival of their constituents. While Addams’s social ethics can help reinforce the argument that relationality is both the “is” and the “ought” of ethics, the land ethic can extend this notion more explicitly to the natural world.

Peace Environmental issues are inherently intersectional, wicked problems. As such, they require multiple, diverse solutions. Addams was a founding mother of the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom, which notes that “Although climate activism and discussions on the environment have increased globally, one element is often missed out –​the impact of militarism on environmental degradation” (WILPF, n.d.). While some military-​inspired technology, such as GPS and drones, provide important tools to climate researchers, the destruction of war is not just to human communities. The existing and potential effects on the global environment due to nuclear testing and warfare are well known. However, other forms of militarization also affect ecosystems. For example, the global movement of war ships and planes has increased invasive species, biodiversity is negatively affected by armed conflicts of all kinds, and the infrastructure necessary for war complexes (such as airstrips and naval bases) displaces and destroys farmland and natural ecosystems (Lawrence et al., 2015). Considering “peaceweaving” (Shields & Soeters, 2017) along with a social-​ethics approach to sustainability seems essential in solving the twin wicked problems of war and climate change.

Social Ethics for Ecological and Community Resilience    679

Resilience Finally, Addamsian scholarship and practice can underscore work being done in ecosystem and community resilience. Defined by Walker and Salt (2006) as “the capacity of a system to absorb disturbance and still retain its basic function and structure” (p. xiii), the concept of resilience is increasingly an integral part of sustainability studies and climate action. If resilient communities are those that can hold together and improve in the face of disturbance, then Addams’s work at Hull House, in her neighborhood, in Chicago, and on a global scale certainly can be categorized as resilience work. Jessica Hejny writes about how the philosophies of Addams’s pragmatist contemporaries John Dewey and Mary Parker Follett can be utilized to advance resilience movements such as transition town, adaptive management, and collaborative environmental governance. For each of these movements: resilience is a property of systems—​human, ecological, or socioecological. Each recognizes that change and uncertainty are intrinsic characteristics of these systems, but cautions that rather than viewing change as paralyzing, we should proactively embrace our agency to channel change in favored directions. (Hejny, 2020, p. 121)

Addams’s community-​based social ethics, as well as her examples of supporting individuals’ and communities’ positive adaptation, supports resilience work. Philip Ackerman-​Leist argues that “Resilience theory dissuades us from dichotomizing humans and ecological systems and encourages us to adapt to changes, even when they come in the form of disturbances and shocks, in constructive ways” (2013, p. xxvii). While rationality and rule-​based ethical systems tend toward this dichotomizing, social ethics allows us to see that human are enmeshed in the natural world. Resilience work was important in Addams’s Chicago, but is essential now worldwide as the effects of climate change on ecological and human communities will be increasingly felt: “Environmental philosophy and policy cannot now rest easy focusing only on the comforting vision of sustainable practices, though these remain essential. We must simultaneously come to terms with the prospect of catastrophe . . . ” (Parker, 2020, p. xiv). In times when resilience is most needed, what better role model could we hope for than Jane Addams? Reframing our environmental ethics discourse in terms of social ethics, as well as using Addams’s own work in civic engagement, public service, and activism, could change the landscape of how we interact in communities in the face of climate challenges.

Conclusion The philosophy and activism of Jane Addams can contribute to the literature and practice of environmental ethics in important ways. Her social ethics can help us to

680   Heather E. Keith re-​envision our connection to each other and to the more-​than-​human world in order to act more responsibly and create more sustainable policies; and her social work and community organizing can provide an inspiration and model for doing the kind of resilience and social-​justice work that are increasingly part of living well with the effects of climate change and limited resources. This chapter discussed the inadequacies of environmental ethics based on traditional philosophic approaches, explored a reframing of our environmental discourse to acknowledge the connectedness of humans to each other and the natural world, and argued that this reframing could support and influence ideas and movements aimed at preventing the potentially devastating impact of climate change and building more resilient social and natural ecosystems. Jane Addams’s theoretical and practical work is ready to be unearthed to help us to reconnect to our communities and world. Arm in arm with other pragmatists and ecofeminists, we can imagine Addams taking kids into the woods to learn how to better live sustainably and responsibly within both human and natural communities, stopping by community gardens to support the work of women in local food systems, calling out corruption and environmental injustice that are hardest on our marginalized communities, advising policy makers on thinking beyond individual and human interests to the ecosystems that sustain us, and writing hopeful ethics tomes that reimagine and reinvigorate our commitment to each other and to the land.

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682   Heather E. Keith Regan, T. (1983). The case for animal rights. University of California Press. Reynolds, J. (2017). Jane Addams’ forgotten legacy: Recreation and sport. Journal of Issues in Intercollegiate Athletics, Special Issue, pp. 11–​18. Rittel, H., & Webber, M. 1973. Dilemmas in a general theory of planning. Policy Sciences 4, 155–​169. Rolston, H. (2012/​2020). A new environmental ethics. 2nd ed. Routledge. Ryerson, J. (2020). Hull House and the garbage ladies of Chicago. https://​www.nps.gov/​artic​les/​ 000/​hull-​house-​and-​the-​garb​age-​lad​ies-​of-​chic​ago.htm Rynbrandt, L. & Deegan, M. (2002). The ecofeminist pragmatism of Caroline Bartlett Crane, 1896–​1935. American Sociologist 33, 58–​68. Shields, P., & Soeters, J. (2017). Peaceweaving: Jane Addams, positive peace, and public administration. American Review of Public Administration, 47(3), 323–​339. Seigfried, C. (1996). Pragmatism and feminism: Reweaving the social fabric. University of Chicago Press. Singer, P. (1990). Animal liberation. 2nd ed. Random House. Sommer, L. (2021). Experts say pledges at COP26 won’t be enough to stop extreme climate change. NPR, November 2. https://​www.npr.org/​2021/​11/​02/​105​1577​617/​expe​rts-​say-​pled​ges-​at -​cop26-​wont-​be-​eno​ugh-​to-​stop-​extr​eme-​clim​ate-​cha​nge Sterling College. (n.d.). https://​www.ster​ling​coll​ege.edu/​academ​ics/​ Thunberg, G. (2019). Address to the World Economic Forum, Davos, Switzerland. https://​ www.yout​ube.com/​watch?v=​M7dV​F9xy​law Thompson, P., & Piso, Z. (2019). Dewey and environmental philosophy. In S. Fesmire (Ed.), The Oxford Handbook of John Dewey (pp. 713–​732). Oxford University Press. United Nations. (n.d.). Sustainable development goals. https://​sdgs.un.org/​ Walker, B., & Salt, D. (2006). Resilience thinking: Sustaining ecosystems and people in a changing world. Island Press. Warren, K. (1996). Ecological feminist philosophies: An overview of the issues. In K. Warren (Ed.), Ecological Feminist Philosophies (pp. ix–​xxvi). Indiana University Press. Wells, N., & Evans, G. (2003). Nearby nature: A buffer of life stress among rural children. Environment and Behavior, 35(3), 311–​330. Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom. (n.d.). Peace, gender, and environment. https://​www.wilpf.org/​peace-​gen​der-​envi​ronm​ent/​ Yeager, D., Henderson, M., Paunesku, D., Walton, G., D'Mello, S., Spitzer, B., & Duckworth, A. (2014). Boring but important: A self-​transcendent purpose for learning fosters academic self-​regulation. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 107(4), 559–​580.

Chapter 35

Jan e Addam s’s E du c at i on, Hull House , a nd Cu rrent-​Day Ci vic-​Engag e me nt Practices in H i g h e r Edu cati on Coming Full Circle Belinda M. Wholeben and Mary Weaks-​B axter

Hung alongside portraits of Rockford University presidents in a stately, wood-​paneled room overlooking campus, a portrait of Anna Peck Sill, the university’s founder, encapsulates key elements that defined her views of women’s education and shaped Jane Addams’s education at Rockford Female Seminary, precursor of Rockford College and now Rockford University. Sill is represented in the 1852 portrait seated beside an open window looking out on the river alongside which the seminary was established in 1847. In the middle ground, suggesting an influence coming out of this newly settled land, is an architectural drawing of the central building complex of the seminary, beside a stack of books. In the foreground is a globe suggesting not that students will be sheltered away in domestic roles after graduation, but that they will be going out into the world. While Sill represented her central purpose at the seminary as preparing young women for a Christian life, she, in fact, took the greatest pride in the number of students who graduated from the seminary and became missionaries or wives of missionaries. Essentially, her highest goal was seeing that education thus filled a public purpose for women. Likewise, her own life was for the time outside the norm for a woman as she made her work at the seminary her life-​long career.

684    Belinda M. Wholeben and Mary Weaks-Baxter By the time Addams started as a first-​year student at Rockford Female Seminary in 1877, Sill had headed up the institution for over 30 years. While Addams resisted the religious pressures at the seminary, she also took from and shaped out of her seminary education a secular version of Sill’s model. Although Addams described those years as a “period of mere passive receptivity” and part of a seemingly “everlasting ‘preparation for life’ ” (1961/​1910, p. 57), they were critical in her development as a community activist and social reformer. According to Victoria Bissell Brown (2004), in Twenty Years at Hull-​House, Addams “created a picture of a happy, egalitarian collective of female scholars” at the seminary, “one that evoked the settlement-​house world her autobiography was intended to publicize” (pp. 106–​107). But, in fact, the influence of Addams’s education and experiences at Rockford Female Seminary was even more far-​reaching and became firmly embedded in programs and services offered at Hull House. Those same practices and values ultimately laid the groundwork for higher education curricula of today through civic and community engaged learning.

Jane Addams’s Education at Rockford Female Seminary From Cedarville to Rockford Although Addams hoped to attend Smith College and had taken placement exams, her father insisted she attend Rockford. From a Quaker background, John Addams did not raise his children in a particular church, and even though Sill’s religious views sharply influenced a Rockford education, John Addams was more impressed that Sill was able to carve out an institution of higher learning for young women in the Midwest. When Sill arrived in Rockford in 1849, the area was newly settled by whites who held on to what they viewed as the values of a frontier spirit. Only five years earlier, Jane Addams’s parents, John and Sarah, had settled in the small town of Cedarville, just west of Rockford, with John first building a small two-​room house for the family, but quickly becoming prosperous as a mill owner and building a much larger, stately home. John Addams became an important businessman, serving as president of a bank, director of two railroad companies, and trustee at Rockford Female Seminary. Entering Illinois politics, he served in the state legislature for 16 years and became friends with Abraham Lincoln. John Addams’s life of civic responsibility and public service was an important model for Jane, who dedicated Twenty Years at Hull-​House to him. She wrote of him after his death, “He was a leader as well as a safe and fearless advocate of right things in public life” (Brown, 2004, p. 14). John Addams’s skill as a politician had a significant impact on his daughter. At 17, Jane Addams “enjoyed politics ‘very much’ ” (Brown, 2004, p. 49), and this influence carried through her interest in debate and leadership roles as a student

Education, Hull House, and Civic-Engagement Practices    685 at Rockford Female Seminary into her work at Hull House and in Chicago as a keen negotiator and lobbyist. Jane also was impacted by Gilded Age notions of stewardship and charity as a means to rid the wealthy of a sense of guilt. At Rockford, Addams was, as Louise Knight explains, “committed . . . to being a doctor who served the poor.” Even after she made the decision not to pursue a career in medicine, and as she toured Europe post-​graduation, she had a “continuing interest in poor people’s daily lives . . . she had a duty to humanity that she could not ignore.” Yet, by 1910, Knight claims, Addams had a “strong distaste for benevolence” (2010, p. 153). As a girl in Cedarville and as a student at the seminary, Addams was also introduced to models of female charity. Her mother, Sarah, was known for her role as a community steward and fell ill and died after going into premature labor after caring for another woman who was giving birth. Jane’s stepmother Anna commented in a letter to her son, “To do good for our fellow beings . . . is all the religion worth one Christian thought” (Brown, 2004, p. 32). At Rockford, the model of female charity was Sill. Born in 1816, in Burlington, New York, Sill started teaching in New York state and opened a female seminary there. Interested especially in the intersection of teaching and foreign missionary work, she accepted an invitation from a group of Congregationalist pastors and laypersons to open a girls’ school in Rockford with the plan of the school ultimately becoming a seminary. Sill started her school in an abandoned courthouse, with the 53 girls who first attended mostly under the age of 10. Within 35 years, the school had become a college with an endowment, dorms, lecture halls, 2,000-​volume library, and chapel, and offered the BA degree. Although Sill did not attend college, she modelled Rockford Female Seminary after Mt. Holyoke College, and for many years, Rockford Female Seminary and ultimately Rockford College was known as the Mt. Holyoke of the West (Addams, 1961/​1910). Sill remained in her role as principal throughout Addams’s time at the school, but retired in 1884, not long after Addams’s graduation in 1881. Sill died in 1889, in Rockford.

Struggles with a Seminary Education Despite progress in the growing numbers of seminary and college-​educated women and the work of educators like Sill, societal expectations continued to influence heavily the nature of women’s education. For example, the attitude was held by many that women were “not strong enough physically to withstand the pressures” of dormitory living (Townsend, 1985, p. 2). Even though Rockford Female Seminary was progressive in offering women educational opportunities they had not had before, Sill seemed conflicted in the exact nature of what that education should be. Sill valued the domestic role of the woman as the center of the family, and she saw the school as educating future wives and mothers, but she herself moved as a single woman from the east to establish a school in the west. For Sill, the “chief aim of women’s education was to elevate, purify, and adorn the home” (Brown, 2004, p. 58), yet there were no courses in domestic science in the curriculum.

686    Belinda M. Wholeben and Mary Weaks-Baxter The goals of female seminaries and Sill’s own mission-​driven attitude about women’s education also emphasized a public purpose for education that was new for women. Addams witnessed Sill’s drive and passion, describing Sill as an “unselfish spirit” and a “humble spirit” that would help Addams achieve her goals. Townsend (1986) points to similar terms used to describe Addams and says, “she would use her spiritual image to carry forth her own mission to Chicago and to the world” (p. 235). Yet despite Sill’s lofty goals for her students, Addams also was continually frustrated by the ivory tower of higher education and the stagnation she felt in remaining “cloistered” at the seminary. What Addams craved was to “do something,” and it was this attitude that she carried on to Hull House in aiming to show how learning and the liberal arts could be a means to elevate immigrants and work against the destructive nature of industrialization. At Rockford, Addams also experienced intense religious pressures, but Addams was known for holding steadfast. Brown (2004), in examining the Sill-​Addams relationship, states that “Addams probably knew at seventeen that she was no more likely to take a husband in matrimony than to take Jesus Christ as her personal savior” (p. 62). One classmate wrote of Addams, “Whenever difficulties with Miss Sill came up for settlement, most of us ‘let Jane do it’ in representing them” (Townsend, 1986, p. 230). In effect, she was honing those negotiation skills she used to establish and run Hull House. Although Addams’s aim for Hull House was that it not be a religious institution, in her reflections she recognized the relationship between the practices at Rockford and what settlement houses did. In Twenty Years (1961/​1910), she explains that “various forms of social effort, and curiously enough, the actual activities of a missionary school are not unlike many that are carried on in a Settlement” (p. 31). Additionally, she comments that “Certainly the most sympathetic and comprehending visitors we have ever had at Hull-​ House have been returned missionaries” (p. 31). Although Rockford produced many graduates who were models of domesticity and motherhood, the ones that Addams highlights in Twenty Years are classmates who used their educations to undertake public work, although oftentimes alongside a husband. Graduates did go out into the world to make their mark: one founded a school in Japan, another became a medical missionary and court physician to the queen of Korea, another was a teacher of the blind, and another a “pioneer librarian in that early effort to bring ‘books to the people’ ” (p. 31). Still within the realm of acceptable work for women, her classmates also pushed those boundaries much as Sill herself had done.

“The Snare of Preparation” It was at Rockford that Addams seems also to have struggled with the need for education and for her life’s work to take theory into practice. Expressing the frustrations she felt, she laid claim to Tolstoy’s phrase “the snare of preparation” to describe this time in young people’s lives when the educational system is “hopelessly entangling them in a curious inactivity . . . when they are longing to construct the world anew” (Twenty Years, 1961/​1910, p. 44). Addams’s story of an experiment by her and four of her classmates

Education, Hull House, and Civic-Engagement Practices    687 sums up this view of education as something that can leave students without any practical application. Poking fun at the idealism of youth, Addams points to her own and her classmates’ aspirations to cultivate a “sympathetic understanding of all human experience” by delving into Thomas De Quincey’s writings about dreams and experimenting with opium. After they “solemnly consumed small white powders at intervals during an entire long holiday,” they discovered that “no mental reorientation took place” (pp. 29–​ 30). One of the young woman faculty members was taken into their confidence, and she ended the experiment and sent them to their rooms (p. 27). Despite Addams’s conclusion that De Quincey’s experience reflected what she and the class of educated women that she belonged to “were all doing, lumbering our minds with literature” (p. 45), Addams recognized at Rockford the ways in which literary texts can promote action and the powerful models literature might be for marginalized peoples. Most of these experiences came as she sat in classes taught by Caroline Potter, one of the most popular teachers at Rockford, a Margaret Fuller “disciple,” and the personal favorite of Addams. Louise Knight (2005) comments on Addams reading Fuller, meeting “the divinely wise Egyptian-​Greek goddess Isis, Shakespeare’s assertive Portia, the brilliant French novelist George Sand, and the truth-​telling Greek priestess Cassandra,” and writing about them all (p. 24). Potter saw education as not “simply for its own sake,” for “action, including creative thought, was required.” Knight concludes that “Fuller’s book and others [Addams] read in Potter’s classes touched some part of her that her father’s example and the male heroes in books had not; she was discovering that women could be great” (p. 24). Such an understanding of the importance of validating human experience through literary texts also played a powerful role in Addams’s work at Hull House. Melvin G. Holli (1989) notes, for example, that “To reach the immigrants, Jane Addams worked through the matrix of an old-​world culture to win their confidence and make the newcomers receptive to advice from Hull-​House. Italians might be invited to. . . readings from Mazzini’s works or to celebrate a folk holiday; Germans might be treated to folk lieder [folk songs] or Schiller” (p. 8). Yet while the seminary offered an education embedded in traditional academic studies and framed by religious fundamentalism, the educational experience at Rockford was influenced by the fact that Sill was among the most ardent supporters of seeing that the seminary become a college. Students were also part of that effort. According to Robbins (1994), for Addams and her classmates, “learning at Rockford became a shared, reciprocally-​nurturing and outward-​reaching experience, partly because they mounted a collaborative effort to change the seminary’s identity and purpose” (p. 31). Robbins describes Rockford Female Seminary not as “a restrictive environment forcing rigid conceptions of female middle-​class identity on passive students,” but instead a place that “promoted the early shaping of the author’s sense of herself as a social being.” Addams’s years at Rockford Female Seminary had an abiding influence on her educational philosophy by giving her opportunities for experimenting with what Robbins identifies as “cooperative teaching and learning strategies” that Addams would integrate into her work at Hull House (p. 31). Linking this collaborative learning experience to gender, Robbins notes that Addams and her classmates “found Rockford

688    Belinda M. Wholeben and Mary Weaks-Baxter a learning environment somewhat receptive to challenge and change—​supportive, in fact, of collaborative, or, more specifically, sororal social learning” (p. 42). Essentially, such teaching and learning practices formed a base for what Addams described as the social relation fundamental in the founding of Hull House. The push to claim college status for Rockford also opened up new opportunities for students to speak in public settings. Sill recognized that if Rockford Female Seminary were to become a college, experiences for young women needed to be ones that took them into the public realm. The seminary opened up opportunities for Addams to test her own voice, to understand what it means to speak out as a woman and from the perspective of a member of a community that is aiming to gain the rights of full citizenship. “Bread Givers,” Addams’s speech (2002/​1880) for the junior exposition, was her first public speech and her first attempt as an orator. Junior expositions were taking place at colleges around the country, especially at men’s colleges, and at Rockford, the exposition was meant to strengthen the claim of equality with men’s schools. The exposition was open to the town community and to parents, teachers, and the rest of the student body and was intended to showcase the talents of the students and give the community a chance to see the strength of seminary instruction. Each class had their own motto, and the motto of the class of ’81 was “bread givers.” To be a bread giver was to do good works not only in the home, but out in the world. In the speech, Addams claims that an educated woman “wishes not to be a man, nor like a man”; rather, “she claims the same right to independent thought and action.” Addams used the bread givers metaphor as the framework of her speech while at the same time foreshadowing two themes that were to become important in her later life: service to the poor and women’s rights (Brown, 2004, p. 70).

Finding a Public, Civic Voice Perhaps the most well-​known story from Addams’s college years of her claim to a public platform is one she tells about losing a debate to William Jennings Bryan. According to Addams’s telling of the story, seminary students applied to compete at an intercollegiate oratorical competition in Jacksonville, Illinois, during Adams’s senior year. Their successful application made Rockford the first women’s college to be admitted to the competition (Addams, 1961/​1910, p. 35). Addams claims she was the hope of her class. She and her classmates practiced endlessly, and Addams was ruthlessly critiqued by her peers. Assured that Addams would be victorious, she was sent off to the contest while her fellow students prepared a hero’s welcome for her return. Bryan came in second, and Addams came in fifth. Upon her return to campus, Addams was greeted with wilted garlands and a teasing scolding that she had “dealt the cause of women’s advancement a staggering blow” (p. 36). There is some doubt, however, that the events Addams describes actually took place. A letter that Addams wrote to her father suggests she and her fellow student were instead in Jacksonville for a meeting

Education, Hull House, and Civic-Engagement Practices    689 of college publications (Brown, 2004). Addams was most probably mixing the story of her participation in another competition, and Bryan’s participation there, with the Jacksonville competition she attended as a part of an editorial team. In embellishing the story, Addams offers readers of Twenty Years an opportunity to see a model of young womanhood fully engaged (albeit losing) in an exchange on equal footing with a young man who would become renowned for his debating abilities. Essentially, she claims for herself and other women the right to be heard as a fully engaged voice that spoke from a position of authority. At graduation in 1881, Sill selected Jane Addams as valedictorian. Addams used the story of Cassandra, priestess of Troy, as the focus of her speech. Suddenly gaining prophetic powers, Cassandra “fearlessly received the power, with clear judgment and unerring instinct,” and “predicted the victory of the Greeks and the destruction of her father’s city” (Addams, 2002/​1881, p. 10). Her prophecy was met with laughter and mockery by her father’s army, and she was labelled mad. The “frail girl,” Addams explained in her speech, “stood conscious of Truth but she had no logic to convince the impatient defeated warriors, and no facts to gain their confidence . . . This was the tragic fate of Cassandra—​always to be in the right, and always to be disbelieved and rejected” (p. 10). Using the speech to discuss women’s intuition, Addams argued that women could not take their place in public life without gaining knowledge through reason, logic, and facts. As part of the push for Rockford Female Seminary to become a college, she argued for an increased emphasis on the sciences, and that through the combination of intuition and the study of science, women would gain authoritas, the right to be heard. The Cassandra speech also emphasized the differences between men and women, with women bringing to public service the strength of intuition, which, in combination with factual knowledge, can foster wisdom. In the speech Addams gave voice to the marginalized, but perhaps even more clearly, she asserted the value of women’s intellectual development and abilities, which would ultimately be a centerpiece of her work at Hull House.

Continuing Ties to Rockford and the Search for a Raison d’Etre Although Addams’s relationship to her alma mater is often described as a conflicted, complex one, and she lamented in Twenty Years (1961/​1910) that she did not want to face the prospect of spending four years in “humdrum Rockford” (p. 25), after her graduation, she remained committed to the seminary and to Rockford College, the institution the seminary would evolve into in part because of her efforts. Addams served on the college’s board of trustees from 1887 to 1908. One of the college’s most active alumna, she donated $1,000 toward a collection of books on the sciences (Phillips, 1974) so that the institution could solidify its claim to a program worthy of the designation of college, and she gave the commencement address three times. For ten years, the Hull House Summer

690    Belinda M. Wholeben and Mary Weaks-Baxter School was offered at Rockford College, with a curriculum much like the one Addams had experienced as a student. Despite the strong relationship with her alma mater that would grow over the years, as a new graduate of Rockford in 1882, Addams struggled. After her return to Cedarville after graduation, continuing back problems, the assassination of President Garfield by the son of a family friend, and the death of John Addams from appendicitis threw Jane Addams’s life into turmoil. Moving to Philadelphia that fall to pursue a medical degree, her continued health problems resulted in her withdrawing from the program. In 1883 she began the period of travels in Europe that would have a significant impact on her work at Hull House, inspired by Toynbee Hall in London. There Addams saw male university students living alongside the poor in the East End, responding to urbanization, industrialization, and class inequality. In Madrid, after watching a bullfight and realizing she was numb to the violence of the scene, she says, “It was suddenly made quite clear to me that I was lulling my conscience by a dreamer’s scheme, that a mere paper reform had become a defense for continued idleness, and that I was making it a raison d’etre for going on indefinitely with study and travel” (1961/​1910, pp. 55–​56).

The Hull House Years Rockford Influences on Hull House and the “Belief in a Female Principle” Addams’s raison d’etre became Hull House, and the social setting of a female-​empowered community at Rockford was a strong influence. It was at Rockford that Addams met and developed a close relationship with Ellen Gates Starr. Both had started in the collegiate department at Rockford Female Seminary in 1877, but financial difficulties in Starr’s family forced her to leave after one year to work as a school teacher. Ultimately, they traveled in Europe and later founded Hull House in 1889. Townsend describes the community setting at Rockford as one with strong equivalents at Hull House. “At mealtimes,” Townsend (1986) explains, “Addams would serve as hostess, dishing out food much as she had received it at Rockford” (p. 232). She and other Hull House residents would hold receptions and teas, organize club activities, conduct classes frequently taught by university professors, and give lectures on art and literature. Women ran the household, but they also were the ones who raised the funds to support the household. An essential part of 19th-​century feminism was the aim for women to have more control over money, and female benefactors of Hull House including Jane Addams, Mary Rozet Smith, and a network of Chicago club women were able to take control of the funds that built and sustained Hull House. The same network of women’s clubs and organizations was also a driving force in moving forward political and social activism. Addams received support from wealthy

Education, Hull House, and Civic-Engagement Practices    691 clubwomen to lobby for anti-​sweatshop legislation, for example, noting that the staff at Hull House had “insisted that well-​known Chicago women should accompany this first little group of Settlement folk who with trade-​unionists moved upon the state capitol in behalf of factory legislation” (1961/​1910, p. 135). It is clear that early on, Addams recognized the value of the feminine and the power that the feminine can hold. At Rockford Female Seminary, in January 1880, she was writing in a personal essay entitled “The Nebular Hypothesis” of her “belief in a female principle operating in the universe” (Brown, 2004, p. 88).

An Evolving Perspective on Addressing Community Need In the early years at Hull House, Addams struggled with understanding the best ways to navigate the relationship between benefactor and beneficiary. At the time, attitudes toward charity were heavily influenced by the belief that because all men have free will, they can control whether or not they are poor through their choices. Assisting the poor was seen as a matter of reforming a person’s character rather than a matter of reforming society. Thus, the prosperous dispensed charity with a sense of moral superiority. Addams believed that equating financial standing with moral standing was untenable. A more democratic view was that the poor could be as socially virtuous and as public spirited as the rich. Addams developed these concepts in her book Democracy and Social Ethics (Addams & Seigfried, 2002/​1902), through the viewpoint of the “charity visitor” whom she portrays as a young female college student assigned to assist a family coping with poverty. The charity visitor sees the incongruity of judging her assigned family solely on their financial situation. “The charity visitor who goes from a family living upon a most precarious industrial level to her own home in a prosperous part of the city, if she is sensitive at all, is never free from perplexities which our growing democracy forces upon her” (p. 31). She wonders if she has the right to advise “her” family when she might be capable of doing no better if she were in a similar financial situation. The distance between the experiences of the charity visitor and the family to which she has been assigned may cause feelings of discomfort, misunderstanding, and lack of connection. The charity visitor and the recipients of her charity both experience cognitive dissonance as they try to reconcile their worlds. The democratic ideal that all are worthy of help based upon need, rather than situation and behavior, is difficult to attain. In addition, Addams understood that our conceptualizations of morality are developmental and that there is often a lag between our intellectual understanding of morality and our behaviors. Fundamental to work at Hull House was the assumption that expressed community need should be the driving force for providing care, a core value of today’s service-​ learning practices. Addams (1961/​1910) recognized that settlement houses, in giving aid, must be flexible and adaptable. Such agility and openness lay the groundwork for those serving to be open to the needs of those being served. To better understand those

692    Belinda M. Wholeben and Mary Weaks-Baxter needs, Addams and the residents of Hull House used both quantitative and qualitative research methodologies in their study of the surrounding neighborhood. Surveys were conducted to understand wages, housing, food use, and other topics. Among the qualitative methods used were interviews, participant observation, and examination of lived experiences. The Hull-​House Maps and Papers examined census data to map ethnic and social patterns within the neighborhood. Addams’s concept of sympathetic understanding played a role here as well. “Life cannot be administered by definite rules and regulations,” she wrote in Twenty Years, “that wisdom to deal with a man’s difficulties comes only through some knowledge of his life and habits as a whole; and that to treat an isolated episode is almost sure to invite blundering” (1961/​1910, p. 108). The coffee-​ house experience that Addams relates in Twenty Years demonstrates that preconceived notions of what the neighborhood “ought to” have, that is, better nutrition, may not be as well received as what the neighborhood is ready to accept, for example, a coffee house as a place for social gathering. Perhaps one of the most heart-​wrenching stories Addams relates in illustration is that of the shipping clerk. Addams suggested to a man that to keep receiving aid, he needed to find work at a place she knew was hiring. The job was outdoor work in the winter. He took the job, even though he knew he would be endangering his health. He died from the worsening of his health conditions. Because of the guilt Addams felt over her lack of response to the man’s awareness of his fragile health situation and her failure to acknowledge his ability to understand his own personal struggles, Addams says she was reminded again and again of the shipping clerk and her inability to truly recognize his needs.

The Social Function in a Democracy At the heart of sympathetic understanding and ultimately of taking action to help others is the social relationship that must be built. For Addams, the necessity of crossing social boundaries between classes, races, and genders was clear, and especially because of her time and place in industrialized America, she saw it as a necessity for the survival of democracy. Hull House was not simply an act of charity in the traditional 19th-​century views of charity that Addams inherited from her father and from Sill. As Longo (2005) notes, Hull House was “an effort to add the social function to democracy . . . . It was opened on the theory that the dependence of classes on each other is reciprocal; and that ‘the social relationship is essentially a reciprocal relation’ ” (p. 13). The necessity of the social relationship created a framework for Hull House residents who “must be content to live quietly side by side with their neighbors, until they grow into a sense of relationship and mutual interests” (Addams, 1961/​1910, p. 85). As “emissar[ies] from the middle class” (Morton & Saltmarsh, 1997, p. 140), Hull House residents were there to listen sympathetically and then to act. Not only did Addams recognize the plight of immigrants and the working class who were impacted by industrialization, consumerism, and capitalism, but she also recognized that impact on educated young people of her day, especially those who were

Education, Hull House, and Civic-Engagement Practices    693 college educated. In looking back to her own experience at Rockford Female Seminary, Addams reflected even more broadly in Twenty Years, on the vast impact on her generation and those that followed. “We have in America a fast-​growing number of cultivated young people who have no recognized outlet for their active faculties,” she wrote. “They hear constantly of the great social maladjustment, but no way is provided for them to change it, and their uselessness hangs about them heavily” (1961/​1910, p. 79). The settlement “form of activity,” as she called it, was something that college-​educated young people responded to as a way of “putting theory into action” (p. 80). The settlement gives residents a purpose, by “provid[ing] a creative, educational ‘subjective’ outlet for college-​educated people by putting their idealism into action” to address the “objective” needs of those they serve (1961/​1910, p. 83). Addams, in effect, saw the problems of the industrialized city as ones that impacted all classes—​not just the working class. The settlement was “an attempt to relieve, at the same time, the overaccumulation at one end of society and the destitution at the other” (p. 83). Such a reciprocal relationship is needed for the survival of human societies in the modern world, and the urgency of this reciprocal relationship is one Addams reflects upon in one of her most quoted statements: “The good we secure for ourselves is precarious and uncertain, is floating in mid-​air, until it is secured for all of us, and incorporated into our common life” (p. 76).

Learning as a Reciprocal, Democratic Ideal Addams suggests in Twenty Years that at Rockford Female Seminary she was observing and coming to understand the necessity of the social effort that would become the focus of her work at Hull House. Hamington (2009) points specifically to the influence of Rockford Female Seminary on the educational programs offered at Hull House and the relationship Addams saw between education and social effort, noting that “The intellectual environment at Hull House recreated much of what she enjoyed at Rockford Seminary” (p. 149). At the focal point of that relationship between the seminary and Hull House is what Hamington explains is the role of education in her social philosophy. Education for the child and for the citizen, according to Addams, must go beyond reading and writing, and a job that secures a paycheck in order to reach the democratic ideal of preparing the learner for social relations. Addams recognized the potential of education as a means of self-​actualization and personal development for the working class. Critical of the polytechnical schools of her time for not addressing the real needs of the masses, Addams argues that “[t]‌hey graduate machine builders, but not educated machine tenders” (Addams & Seigfried, 2002/​1902, p. 90). The goal of the educator should instead be to focus on the personhood of the factory worker, “to insist that he shall be a cultivated member of society with a consciousness of his industrial and social value” (p. 93). Such an understanding of what Addams saw as the ideal education for working classes also held commonalities with her own liberal arts education at Rockford Female Seminary. In effect, Addams would, in our present day, be a strong proponent of the

694    Belinda M. Wholeben and Mary Weaks-Baxter humanities and of the role of arts, theatre, and literature, echoing the attitudes of other progressives of her day who saw the American worker distanced from creative outlets and cultural experiences. One example that Addams (1961/​1910) points to in “Arts at Hull-​House” is that of the Greek community living near Hull House. Feeling displaced as recent immigrants and without a connection to their heritage, they felt, Addams writes, “that their history and classic background are completely ignored by Americans.” As part of the Hull House theatre, and with the coaching of local theater professionals, members of the Greek community staged a production of Sophocles’ Ajax on the Hull House stage. As a means of self-​validation, the production was, Addams explains, “a genuine triumph to the actors who felt that they were ‘showing forth the glory of Greece’ ” (p. 254). She makes a similar case in Democracy and Social Ethics, stating the need of places like Hull House to cultivate and encourage such self-​actualization: “As the poet bathes the outer world for us in the hues of human feeling, so the workman needs some one to bathe his surroundings with a human significance” (Addams & Seigfried, 2002/​1902, p. 96). In many ways, Hull House was re-​creating some of Addams’s own experiences at Rockford. Learning itself was a reciprocal arrangement that cultivated meaning and relevance. Narratives—​not only in the stories of strong women Addams read as a student in the classroom or the Greek community performed on the stage—​became a strategy for making learning relevant. Gaining insights through experiences, Addams, according to Longo (2005), wrote reflective narratives that contextualized learning to make it relevant. Debates and discussions sponsored by the Castalian Society at Rockford Female Seminary became models for the social study clubs at Hull House (Robbins, 1994, p. 38). Addams also relates the story of the Italian immigrant who learns English in her kitchen while she teaches her instructor how to cook macaroni and espouses the importance of creating opportunities like this one for exchange and growth (Addams, 1994/​1904).

Feminist Pragmatism as an Approach to Community Problem-​Solving Universities were often valued partners in the settlement house movement. Toynbee Hall, for example, partnered with Oxford University. John Ruskin and other Oxford faculty members offered lectures in the neighborhood around Toynbee Hall, often on egalitarian ideals, and Oxford’s ministerial students lived at Toynbee and worked among the poor of St. Jude’s Parish during their breaks from the university. Oxford students offered educational and cultural programs that Horowitz (1974) describes as “attempting . . . to infuse an impoverished urban neighborhood with the fruits of their cultivation” (p. 71). Seeing this settlement house-​university partnership at Toynbee Hall, Addams was encouraged to create similar connections in Chicago, and she found in John Dewey a kindred spirit. Both Addams and Dewey were interested in how people learn and in pragmatist philosophy, and Dewey, even before his move to the University of Chicago,

Education, Hull House, and Civic-Engagement Practices    695 was intrigued by Hull House. Once he joined the University of Chicago faculty, he lectured regularly at Hull House and served as a member of the Hull House board from 1897 to 1904. Addams and Dewey were pragmatists who believed that knowledge and action work together as one process (Deegan, 2017). Addams’s work at Hull House helped develop three core tenets of pragmatism: the role of experience, continual growth, and diversity (Sayles, 2005). Addams believed that all truth comes from interaction with others in the community. Interaction transforms both the teacher and the student, the Hull House resident and the neighbor. Continual growth and adaptation occur as we reflect on our lived experiences, and diversity of voices and viewpoints, especially those of the underrepresented, is necessary in order to know truth and to take right action. In contrast to Dewey, Addams was a feminist pragmatist. Deegan (2017) defines feminist pragmatism as “uniting liberal values and a belief in a rational public with a cooperative, nurturing, nonviolent, and liberating model of the self, the other, and the community” (p. 51). In comparison to more traditional male pragmatists, feminist pragmatists focus on issues facing marginalized communities, and they see “struggles for democracy as pervasive, driving forces in everyday life and politics” (p. 53). The early evolution of these concepts for Addams can be traced back to the adoption of “bread givers” as the class motto for her and her fellow Rockford Female Seminary classmates. Later, Addams and the residents of Hull House studied their community through participatory-​action research, a cooperative process in which scientific experts and community members form mutual goals in the study of community problems. This democratic approach to research aligns well with the philosophy of feminist pragmatism in which community members are the experts in identifying problems to be addressed and are empowered to examine their lived experiences in the pursuit of bettering their neighborhoods and addressing broader systemic issues. Women teaching in the University of Chicago sociology department were feminist pragmatists; however, they were relegated to less prestigious positions than were the men on faculty. Around 1904, the university established the Department of Household Administration, “a special intellectual province for women” (Harkavy & Puckett, 1994, p. 305). Sophonisba Breckinridge, with Doctor of Philosophy and Doctor of Jurisprudence degrees, held a position in this department. She left the university to take the position of dean of the Chicago School of Civics and Philanthropy, a privately funded, independent social-​work and research training center. Breckinridge and a colleague at the school, Edith Abbott, resided at Hull House for about a decade and conducted surveys of public importance in areas such as juvenile courts, truancy, housing, and working conditions in the Chicago stockyards. The School of Civics and Philanthropy merged with the University of Chicago in 1920, and the School of Social Service Administration was created. Addams chose a different path when, in 1895, William Rainey Harper, president of the University of Chicago, offered to absorb Hull House into the university. She chose independence for Hull House, its residents, and herself. Although she taught sociology for the Extension Division of the University of Chicago, Addams was critical of the abstract

696    Belinda M. Wholeben and Mary Weaks-Baxter approach to education at the University of Chicago (Benson et al., 2017). As a feminist pragmatist, she believed that Hull House offered more experiential, community-​focused educational opportunities. Addams’s sociological theory and practice were institutionalized in what Deegan (2017) calls the Hull House “school of sociology.” At Hull House, research and teaching were not isolated events but, instead, were combined with social action aimed at bettering the living conditions in the Hull House neighborhood. The scholarly activism of the residents and friends of Hull House was prolific and productive during this era of a “golden age of women in sociology” (p. 54). In the public setting, Addams asserted the importance of civic housekeeping, that is, of recognizing that cities need the nurturing and caretaking roles of women to care for and to sustain a healthy, productive, and value-​driven citizenry. Recognition and validation of the diversity in communities, whether gender or race or class, became a hallmark of Hull House. “Navigating divisive and diverse communities with an appreciation for various perspectives is an important democratic skill and democratic value learned in settings such as Hull House” (Longo, 2005, p. 12) that would be carried forward in later progressive social movements. In fact, the legacy of Jane Addams remains woven through much of the fabric of our society.

Current-​Day Civic-​E ngagement Practices in Higher Education Civic Engagement as an Indicator of Quality Words and phrases such as “collaboration,” “mutually beneficial exchange of knowledge,” “partnership,” “reciprocity,” “solving community problems,” “meaningful, measurable outcomes,” “communities in which they serve,” and “community involvement” are as associated with civic engagement practices in higher education today as they are with Addams’s work at Hull House. For example, there is an observable parallel between the language and spirit of Addams’s writings about her work at Hull House and the wording of the Carnegie Foundation’s definition of civic engagement, the criteria for the President’s Higher Education Community Service Honor Roll, and the Colleges with a Conscience designation. The Carnegie Foundation defines civic engagement as “the collaboration between institutions of higher education and their larger communities (local, regional/​state, national, global) for the mutually beneficial exchange of knowledge and resources in a context of partnership and reciprocity” (Public Purpose Institute, 2021). The Carnegie Foundation offers colleges and universities an elective classification for community engagement based on documentation of institutional community-​engagement practices. The former Corporation for National and Community Service’s President’s Higher Education Community Service Honor Roll also offered recognition to colleges and universities that met criteria for promoting civic

Education, Hull House, and Civic-Engagement Practices    697 engagement “by involving students and faculty in solving community problems using meaningful, measurable outcomes in the communities they serve” (Welch & Saltmarsh, 2013, p. 26). Princeton Review’s College with a Conscience is an additional designation that recognizes colleges with outstanding community involvement and service-​learning programs. Many higher education institutions, including Rockford University, recognize, validate, and even promote themselves using these designations that have a clear connection to the work and legacy of Jane Addams. Rockford University has held all three designations: the Carnegie Foundation’s 2015 Community Engagement Classification (valid through 2025), the Corporation for National and Community Service’s President’s Higher Education Community Service Honor Roll, and Princeton Review’s College with a Conscience. Rockford University’s Jane Addams Center for Civic Engagement is the office responsible for guiding the university in fulfilling its civic-​engagement mission. Grounded in the ideals and life of Rockford University alumna Jane Addams, the center acts as a link between campus and community, between ethical thought and responsible action, and between service and learning.

The Practice of Campus-​Community Partnerships Addams’s Hull House provides a model for other urban universities striving to live their civic missions. Harkavy and Puckett (1994) outline three ways in which Hull House has inspired community-​engaged work at colleges and universities. First, Hull House residents worked to improve the quality of life in their neighborhood, often through social reform and by collaborating to empower community residents to address neighborhood issues. Second, exemplified by the Hull-​House Maps and Papers project, Hull House residents implemented an approach to social-​science research that linked the production and the application of knowledge. Third, Addams and her colleagues at Hull House “recognized that the social problems of the city are complex, deeply rooted, interdependent phenomena that require holistic ameliorative strategies and support mechanisms” (p. 309). Colleges and universities have responded to lessons learned from Hull House by integrating their teaching, research, and service mission, by acknowledging participatory action research as an effective methodology for community-​based research, and by forming coalitions among departments within the university and with other organizations in the community to address complex community issues. The key challenge is to “have universities function as deeply rooted settlements, providing illuminated space for their communities as they conduct their mission of producing and transmitting knowledge to advance human welfare and to develop theories that have broad utility and application” (p. 312). Many colleges and universities have met this challenge by becoming anchor institutions within their communities. Hull House, with Addams as its guide, is a predecessor to the anchor-​institution concept, and colleges, universities, and other non-​profits aspiring to be anchor institutions

698    Belinda M. Wholeben and Mary Weaks-Baxter can look to Hull House as a model. Anchor institutions are place-​based, non-​profit institutions that are economically influential in their communities, often being colleges and universities, hospitals, K–​12 schools, community foundations, performing arts centers, and churches (Community-​ Wealth.org, n.d.). According to the Anchor Institutions Task Force (Taylor & Luter, 2013), an anchor institution should have a social-​purpose mission with core values such as democracy, equity, and social and racial justice, along with a lasting commitment to remain in place and to serve its local community. These values “enable an anchor to build democratic, mutually beneficial and sustainable relationships with its host community, thereby enabling it to become a change agent and engine of socioeconomic development” (p. 7). Many urban, civically engaged colleges and universities across the nation have been designated as anchor institutions. The location of Hull House was purposely chosen, with Addams having no intention of ever moving her settlement to another community, and the operations and activities of Hull House are credited as creating a model for social service non-​profit organizations (Morton & Saltmarsh, 1997). Through its reciprocal, sustained relationships with its community, Hull House was a change agent and engine of socioeconomic development as exemplified by its community-​based services (for example, kindergarten and daycare facilities, an employment bureau, English and citizenship classes) as well as its advocacy activities (for example, immigration issues, labor reform, and public health and safety). Colleges and universities seeking to formulate and enact a mission of civic engagement, and to build the support structures to actualize that mission, turn for guidance to the national and state offices of Campus Compact, which has a central mission clearly tied to the influence of Addams and Dewey. Founded in 1985 by the presidents of Brown, Georgetown, and Stanford Universities, working with the president of the Education Commission of the States, Campus Compact has the following mission: Campus Compact advances the public purposes of colleges and universities by deepening their ability to improve community life and to educate students for civic and social responsibility. Campus Compact envisions colleges and universities as vital agents and architects of a diverse democracy, committed to educating students for responsible citizenship in ways that both deepen their education and improve the quality of community life . . . (Campus Compact, 2021)

In 1999, Campus Compact and the American Council on Education brought together 51 college and university presidents at the Aspen Institute, where they endorsed the Presidents’ Fourth of July Declaration on the Civic Responsibility of Higher Education (Campus Compact, 1999). This declaration affirmed the civic mission of colleges and universities, calling “for a radical restructuring of higher education around the formation of civic knowledge, skills, and dispositions.” The declaration “gave voice to a growing sentiment that the movement had to do more than instill a sense of social responsibility-​-​it had to empower people to act” (Benson et al., 2017, pp. 80–​81). Thus

Education, Hull House, and Civic-Engagement Practices    699 far, more than 585 college and university presidents have signed the declaration, with Rockford College’s president being one of the earliest signers. The declaration’s call to action is reminiscent of Addams’s and Dewey’s pragmatist philosophy. According to Addams, “We forget that the accumulation of knowledge and the holding of convictions must finally result in the application of that knowledge and those convictions to life itself ” (Addams & Seigfried, 2002/​1902, p. 33). It is not enough to know; one must act on that knowledge. The declaration also calls to mind Addams’s claim (1961/​1910) of the subjective necessity of the settlement house as an antidote to the uselessness that young people often experience when they are aware of societal injustices but are, as yet, unaware of the means to bring about change. According to Longo (2005), “addressing this sense of uselessness is one of the core legacies of Hull House that lives on in today’s efforts to revitalize civic engagement” (p. 5). This suggests a present-​day subjective necessity for civic engagement.

Civic Engagement through the Practice of Service Learning Service learning is one of the means by which colleges and universities address students’ sense of “uselessness.” Service learning provides students with “the opportunity to work alongside people in the community, reflect on that experience, and help contribute to positive change” (Benson et al., 2017, p. 79). Although Dewey is often credited as the intellectual forefather of the service-​learning movement, Addams also contributed significantly to the origins of service learning through her practices at Hull House (Daynes & Longo, 2004; Deegan, 2017). Dewey and Addams were close friends and colleagues who agreed on many points. Daynes (2004) claims that Dewey’s philosophy encompasses almost all of the major components of service learning: the role of experience in learning, the importance of connecting with the community, the value of reflection, and the emphasis on democratic as well as subject-​matter outcomes. These beliefs are shared by Addams; however, there are areas of difference. For example, Dewey emphasized campus-​community partnerships from the campus perspective, while Addams focused on community-​campus partnerships from the community perspective. “A full consideration of Addams significantly revises understanding of the origins of service-​learning, suggesting service-​learning has its origins as a practice, not a theory; in the community, not the university, and among women, not men” (Daynes & Longo, 2004, p. 6). Addams protested against a “restricted view of education” (Addams, 1961/​1910, p. 279) while at Rockford Female Seminary and while at Hull House. She saw education as being restricted in many ways—​one of which was place, with Hull House and the surrounding neighborhood offering more expansive, experiential, responsive, and democratic opportunities for learning than the university classroom. In the context of service learning, education that moves beyond the classroom and into the community has positive outcomes for both academic and civic learning (Longo, 2005). Community sites for service learning are endless and include settlement houses, community centers, schools, museums, parks, theatres, non-​profit organizations, and small

700    Belinda M. Wholeben and Mary Weaks-Baxter businesses. Addams chose to establish Hull House so that she could be present among the poor and experience their struggles firsthand. Only then could she determine which issues, of the many in society, to act upon (Morton & Saltmarsh, 1997). By the same token, it is important for faculty and students to be immersed in the communities in which they serve. Being present and experiencing inequalities in society through interactions with community members can drive personal and collective decisions on where and how to serve. Hull House was founded on the principles of sympathetic understanding and reciprocity between the residents and their neighbors, fostering relationships that were mutually beneficial and in which residents and neighbors learned from one another. High-​quality service-​learning experiences also foster sympathetic understanding and reciprocal relationships between students and community members. The following case study illustrates the benefits of these qualities in interactions between students and community members. The service-​learning project was a language exchange program in which English-​speaking DePaul University students were paired with Spanish-​speaking recent immigrants to teach each other their language and their culture (d’Arlach, Sanchez, & Feuer, 2009). The pairs met for three hours a week, for nine months, with half of the time being spent in teaching each other their native language and customs, and half of the time being spent in reflective discussions of social problems. In this scenario, the community members, as well as the students, had valuable assets to exchange. Over time, the community members began to be more trusting and comfortable with their student partners. The pairs also began to humanize each other, realizing that they each had aspirations, personal stories, and struggles more similar to their own than different. Humanizing their partners had the effect of making the community members feel more equal to the students as they realized that they, too, held expertise. In addition, the discussions of social issues led to changes in viewpoints from problems being impossible to solve to possible to solve. The designers of this service-​learning project understood what Addams understood. Reciprocal relationships are democratic, egalitarian relationships. Expertise is not held just by the students, or in Hull House’s case the residents, but is also held in the community. Addams often reminded others that she was not necessarily an expert. She was a member of the community in which expertise resides (Longo, 2005). The reciprocal exchange of language learning is similar to the story that Addams tells of the Italian immigrant who learns English in her kitchen while she teaches her instructor how to cook macaroni. As the community members began to humanize the students, they developed sympathetic understanding of students’ lives, habits, and plights. The community members no longer saw the university students as modern versions of the “charity visitors” that Addams describes in Democracy and Social Ethics (Addams & Seigfried, 2002/​1902), but as reciprocal partners learning from each other. For reciprocal relationships to develop, service-​learning experiences must be specifically structured so that students and community members have equality in the exchange of knowledge or other assets. Imagine how different the outcomes for the community members would

Education, Hull House, and Civic-Engagement Practices    701 have been had the service-​learning experience been the more typical tutoring situation where students provide services “for” not “with” their partners. Among Addams’s core beliefs were the beliefs that we “learn of life from life itself ” (Addams, 1961/​1910, p. 55), that we test theory against our experiences, and that we reflect upon life’s experiences to gain insights. Addams often told reflective narratives, such as the story of the shipping clerk, in educational programming and in her discussion with others at Hull House (Longo, 2005). These reflective narratives contextualize learning and make meaning relevant. Service-​learning practitioners use reflection activities to help students make meaning from their community experiences. These activities take place before, during, and after community experiences and occur alone, with classmates, and with community members. There is evidence that when service learning links academic study with community experiences through extensive reflection, students obtain a deeper understanding of the societal problems they face as engaged citizens (Eyler, 2002). One of the societal problems that community-​engaged students face is poverty. The mission of Hull House was “to provide a center for higher civic and social life; to institute and maintain educational and philanthropic enterprises, and to investigate and improve the conditions in the industrial districts of Chicago” (Addams, 1961/​1910, p. 73). Providing direct charitable service was not Addams’s original plan, but the needs in the community were great. Hull House residents worked to address neighbors’ essential needs and to advocate for structural reform. The field of service learning faces this same tension, to support charitable service or support activism and structural reform (Daynes & Longo, 2004). The Principles of Good Practice for Combining Service and Learning differentiates between community service and service learning. Charitable acts are the emphasis of community service, while service learning focuses on helping students understand the root causes of social problems (Benson et al., 2017). Students learn to understand the complexity of real-​world problems and develop collective problem-​solving skills.

Civic Engagement through the Practice of Participatory Action Research Today, as in Addams’s day, no matter the problem being addressed, community-​based participatory-​action research is a research methodology in which researchers and members of the community collaborate to gain knowledge about community problems and to apply that knowledge to the solution of community problems (Harkavy & Puckett, 1994). When researchers are members of a university, participatory-​action research that is sustained, comprehensive, and beneficial to both the community and the university also aims to develop generalizable theory. Participatory-​action research is democratic, relational, and often transformational, as academic researchers and community members learn from each other throughout the research process.

702    Belinda M. Wholeben and Mary Weaks-Baxter Participatory-​action research projects are often embedded in university courses in which classroom learning is integrated with service, in this case research, in the community. Undergraduate students, graduate students, staff, and faculty members, sometimes from multiple disciplines, interacting over time at the same community site on real-​world problems can lead to better teaching, learning, research, and academically based community service. While participatory-​action research is more directly part of the legacy of Hull House, civic and community engagement practices in higher education more generally are rooted not only in Hull House and the settlement-​house movement but also in 19th-​century women’s education and Addams’s experiences at Rockford Female Seminary. As Addams reflected on her college years as she traveled Europe after graduation, she came to the realization that she must do something, and that the community of women at Rockford could, in fact, be a model for the community of women who built and sustained Hull House. Rockford Female Seminary and its influence on Addams are echoed not only in the practices of Hull House, but also in the work of current-​day civic and community engagement programs and centers. In many ways a recognition of these roots point as well to the gendered nature of these current-​day practices.

Coming Full Circle In the present day, Jane Addams’s portrait hangs alongside Anna Peck Sill’s portrait at Rockford University, and a cornerstone of the university is the Jane Addams Center for Civic Engagement. Although at Rockford, Addams’s name bears special significance because she is one of the university’s own, her influence also runs deep at community-​engagement centers at other universities and colleges. Addams’s practices have become commonplace in educating students about their role in service. At Rockford’s Jane Addams Center, that role is tied specifically to the university’s ideals through the study and practice of citizenship, service, and lifelong learning. Through the many community partnerships that have been cultivated, students have had a powerful impact, from bringing community awareness to the issue of human trafficking, traveling to Haiti to provide medical care, and developing protocol for police officers in their interactions with transgender individuals to working on projects supporting refugees and immigrants who have settled in the Rockford area, designing branding for a non-​profit organization raising funds to support cancer patients, and developing an after-​school STEM program at a community center. Such an enumeration of student engagement is built on the legacy Addams set forth in practice—​in doing something—​and remains a constant reminder that college students of today, much like Jane Addams at Rockford Female Seminary, face the “snare of preparation,” aiming to find their place in the world, “longing to construct the world anew” (Addams, 1961/​1910, p. 57).

Education, Hull House, and Civic-Engagement Practices    703

References Addams, J. (1961/​1910). Twenty years at Hull-​House with autobiographical notes. Signet. Addams, J. (1994/​1904). The humanizing tendency of industrial education. In E. Lagemann (Ed.), Jane Addams on education (pp. 120–​123). Teacher’s College Press. Addams, J. (2002/​1880). Bread givers. In J. B. Elshtain (Ed.)., The Jane Addams reader. (pp. 8–​ 9). Basic Books. Addams, J. (2002/​1881). Cassandra. In J. B. Elshtain (Ed.)., The Jane Addams reader (pp. 10–​13). Basic Books. Addams, J., & Seigfried, C. H. (2002/​1902). Democracy and social ethics. University of Illinois Press. Benson, L., Harkavy, I., Puckett, J., Hartley, M., Hodges, R. A., Johnston, F. E., & Weeks, J. (2017). Knowledge for social change: Bacon, Dewey, and the revolutionary transformation of research universities in the twenty-​first century. Temple University Press. Brown, V. B. (2004). The education of Jane Addams. University of Pennsylvania Press. Campus Compact. (1999). Presidents’ Fourth of July declaration on the civic responsibility of higher education. https://​comm​unit​yeng​agem​ent.uncg.edu/​wp-​cont​ent/​uplo​ads/​2014/​08/​ Campus_​Compact_​Chief_​Academic_​Officers_​Colloquium_​on_​E​ngag​ed_​T​each​ingL​earn​ ing.pdf Campus Compact. (2021). Mission and vision. https://​comp​act.org/​who-​we-​are/​miss​ion-​and -​vis​ion/​ Community-​Wealth.org. (n.d.). Overview: Anchor institutions. https://​commun​ity-​wea​lth .org/​str​ateg​ies/​panel/​anch​ors/​index.html Daynes, G. (2004). The use of history in the movement for the civic engagement of higher education. Service Learning, General, 214–​220. https://​dig​ital​comm​ons.unom​aha.edu/​slcesl​ gen/​214 d’Arlach, L., Sanchez, B., & Feuer, R. (2009). Voices from the community: A case for reciprocity in service-​learning. Michigan Journal of Community Service Learning, 16(1), 5–​16. Daynes, G., & Longo, N. V. (2004). Jane Addams and the origins of service-​learning practice in the United States. Michigan Journal of Community Service Learning, 11(1), 5–​13. Deegan, M. J. (2017). Jane Addams, feminist pragmatism, and service learning. In C. Dolgon, T. D. Mitchell, & T. K. Eatman (Eds.), The Cambridge handbook of service learning and community engagement (pp. 51–​63). Cambridge University Press. Eyler, J. (2002). Reflection: Linking service and learning: Linking students and communities. Journal of Social Issues, 58(3), 517–​534. Hamington, M. (2009). The social philosophy of Jane Addams. University of Illinois Press. Harkavy, I., & Puckett, J. L. (1994). Lessons from Hull House for the contemporary urban university. Social Service Review, 68(3), 299–​321. https://​www.jstor.org/​sta​ble/​30012​534 Holli, M. G. (1989). Hull-​House and the immigrants. Opening new worlds: Jane Addams’ Hull-​ House (pp. 7–​10). University of Illinois at Chicago. Horowitz, H. (1974). Varieties of cultural experience in Jane Addams’ Chicago. History of Education Quarterly, 14(1), 69–​86. https://​www.jstor.org/​sta​ble/​367​606?seq=​1 Knight, L. W. (2005). Citizen: Jane Addams and the struggle for democracy. University of Chicago Press. Knight, L. W. (2010). Jane Addams: Spirit in action. W. W. Norton & Company. Longo, N. V. (2005). Recognizing the role of community in civic education: Lessons learned from Hull-​House, Highlander Folk School, and the Neighborhood Learning Community.

704    Belinda M. Wholeben and Mary Weaks-Baxter (CIRCLE Working Paper 30). The Center for Information & Research on Civic Learning & Engagement. Morton, K., & Saltmarsh, J. (1997). Addams, Day, and Dewey: The emergence of community service in American culture. Michigan Journal of Community Service Learning, 4(1), 137–​149. Phillips, J. O. C. (1974). The education of Jane Addams. History of Education Quarterly, 14(1), 49–​67. Public Purpose Institute. (2021). Community engagement classification (U.S.). https://​pub​lic - ​ purp ​ o se.org/ ​ i nit ​ i ati​ ves/ ​ c arne ​ g ie- ​ e lect ​ ive- ​ c las ​ s ifi ​ c ati ​ ons/ ​ c ommun ​ ity- ​ e ng ​ a gem ​ e nt -​cla​ssificat​ion-​u-​s/​ Robbins, S. (1994). Rereading the history of nineteenth-​century women’s higher education: A reexamination of Jane Addams’ Rockford College learning as preparation for her Twenty Years at Hull-​House teaching. Journal of the Midwest History of Education Society, 21(2), 27–​45. Sayles, S. (2005). Education for democracy: Discovering civic engagement. McNair Scholars Journal, 9(1), 121–​131. http://​schol​arwo​rks.gvsu.edu/​mcn​air/​vol9/​iss1/​14 Taylor, H. L., Jr., & Luter, G. (2013). Anchor institutions: An interpretive review essay. Marga Incorporated Anchor Institutions Task Force. https://​commun​ity-​wea​lth.org/​cont​ent/​anc​ hor-​insti​tuti​ons-​inter​pret​ive-​rev​iew-​essay# Townsend, L. (1985). Anna Peck Sill and the Rise of Women’s Collegiate Education [Doctoral Dissertation, Loyola University]. Townsend, L. (1986). The education of Jane Addams: Myth and reality. Vita Scholasticae: The Bulletin of Educational Biography, 5, 225–​246. Welch, M., & Saltmarsh, J. (2013). Current practices and infrastructure for campus centers of community engagement. Journal of Higher Education Outreach and Engagement, 17(4), 25–​ 55. https://​eric.ed.gov/​?id=​EJ1018​631

Chapter 36

Jane Adda ms a nd Epistemic Ag e nc y i n C ontemp ora ry So cial Work Heidi Muurinen and Aino Kääriäinen

Introduction Professional social work developed at the same time as the industrialization and urbanization of society at the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th century. The first organizers of modern social work were the Charity Organisation Society and the Settlement House movements in Britain (Shields, 2017a, p. 43; Harrikari & Rauhala, 2019, p. 81). However, the most often-​named pioneers of modern Western social work are Jane Addams and Mary Richmond, who both lived in the United States and, along with many of their contemporaries, influenced the development of the social work profession (Harrikari & Rauhala, 2019, p. 81). Perspectives on Jane Addams’s role in the development of contemporary social work have varied throughout history, and her role as a social work pioneer has only been fully acknowledged after the 1980s (Puurunen, 2019, p. 47). Since then, social work research has recognized Addams as central to the origin of community work (Healy, 2012, p. 175), glocal social work (Harrikari & Rauhala, 2019, p. 83), and urban social work (Asén et al., 2021). Addams’s applications of pragmatist epistemology have also been recognized in practice-​based social work research that addresses questions relevant to and aims to improve practice (Saurama & Julkunen, 2012; Muurinen & Satka, 2020). In fact, Addams (1899, p. 48) considered that the duty of the research community was “not to study and depict, but to serve.” Addams’s views on social work and the concept of social work itself were shaped over many decades and through the experiences she had from living and working in the local

706    Heidi Muurinen and Aino Kääriäinen community in Chicago and operating in the settlement movement. Understanding social work as knowledge and action that is focused on individuals, communities, and society created a significant foundation for her philosophy (Puurunen, 2019, p. 320). Addams can be described as a pragmatist (Shields, 2017b, p. 19). In Hull House, Addams was a resident philosopher who considered that one of the aims in settlement was applying and revealing knowledge (Hamington, 2009, p. 34). Thus, Addams’s pragmatism concerned questions on how knowledge is created in social work and how to reflect on it in practice (Puurunen, 2019, p. 327). Addams also had the idea that Hull House would provide educated women with an opportunity to apply their training and collect data to influence society (Addams, 1910/​2019, p. 199). For Addams, pragmatism created a foundation for reflecting previous and present knowledge and experiences and for applying this understanding in practice and decision-​ making (Puurunen, 2019, p. 327). Today, the idea of applying academic knowledge and forming knowledge is at the core of social work discussion. The epistemological questions and the positivist or interpretivist use of knowledge has been debated in social work, and especially around evidence-​based practice, since the 1990s (Payne, 2014, pp. 49–​50). Therefore, in this chapter, the focus is on Addams’s pragmatism and how her ideas of knowledge and action in social work can contribute to contemporary discussions on evidence-​informed and theory-​informed social work. First, we will discuss Addams’s views on social work and knowledge. Then we will move to more recent social work discussion on evidence-​based practice and how her thinking could resonate with evidence-​informed and theory-​informed practice without forgetting the perspective of the service user. Finally, we will illustrate through a social workers’ group intervention model, inspired by pragmatist views, how Addams and her perspectives on knowledge application have contemporary applicability in social work today. In analyzing the experiences of the social workers who participated in the groups, we are interested in how social workers’ epistemic agency can be supported by consciously applying the pragmatist method and reflecting with others on the practical consequences.

Jane Addams and Social Work Piia Puurunen (2019, p. 323) distinguishes three periods during which Addams’s notion of social work was formed. During the early period (1889–​1902), social work was problematized in relation to charity work and to traditional philanthropic work, which were the preliminary social work concepts. In her writings, Addams questioned the benevolent charity workers’ approach in the unequal helping relationship. Strengthening active and aware individuals and participatory communities and society would, according to Addams, require a social work orientation that is self-​critical and reflective as well as ethical and democratic (Puurunen, 2019, pp. 320–​321).

Jane Addams and Epistemic Agency in Contemporary Social Work    707 During the second period (1902–​1914), Addams’s conception was built on the relationship between private charity work and public social policy and institutions. In this period, the concept of social work appeared for the first time alongside charity work, and Addams described social work as containing many orientations, such as producing knowledge and using it to strengthen social security or pointing out structural discrimination (Puurunen, 2019, p. 323). In the third period (1914–​1935), the concepts of social work and social worker were settled. According to Puurunen (2019, p. 323), during this period social work was legitimized, institutionalized, and established as a profession with academic training. In the third period, Addams also brought up the role of social work in relieving suffering, especially during times of turmoil. She considered that the duty of the profession was to hold onto a humanitarian orientation, and this required professional self-​reflection (Puurunen, 2019, p. 323). Over a hundred years later, the global definition of social work emphasizes practice, social change, human rights, and social justice, and it still resonates with Addams’s views on social work (Shields, 2017a, p. 46). The global definition of the International Federation of Social Work states that “Social work is a practice-​based profession and an academic discipline that promotes social change and development, social cohesion, and the empowerment and liberation of people. Principles of social justice, human rights, collective responsibility and respect for diversities are central to social work. Underpinned by theories of social work, social sciences, humanities and indigenous knowledges, social work engages people and structures to address life challenges and enhance wellbeing” (IFSW, 2014). Modern social work is described to as having two views of practice and society. According to Mullaly and Dupré (2019, pp. 1–​7), the major view is conventional, and it originates from the scientific philanthropy of the Charity Organization Society. The conventional view focuses either on the individual and personal change or at most on the person-​in-​environment and limited social change. The second view is progressive or critical and focuses on fundamental social change and the transformation of society. The progressive view has roots in the Settlement House movement in which the focus was on reforming society rather than merely reforming the person (Mullaly & Dupré, 2019, 4). In social work practice, the promotion of change is connected to the ideas of macro practice, community work, and case advocacy (Payne, 2014, p. 217), and to critical or structural social work, which has its theoretical roots in critical theory (Mullaly & Dupré, 2019, p. 200; Payne, 2014, p. 327). According to Mullaly and Dupré (2019, p. 200), the term “structural” describes how social problems are built in the present social order, and, therefore, the focus of change is also on the structures. Although Addams is not directly referenced in the above discussion on progressive social work or structural social work, the elements are present in her writings. Puurunen (2019, p. 235) describes how Addams recognized social work as having different bases or orientations, such as a structural orientation that was sociological, and it aimed to enhance social reform and develop social welfare with people. Another

708    Heidi Muurinen and Aino Kääriäinen orientation focused on applying scientific knowledge to improve well-​being, solving social problems, and collecting data to influence society, and therefore meant developing a scientific mindset in practice (Puurunen, 2019, p. 236). Thus, we will next discuss pragmatist views on the role of knowledge in social work practice.

Applying Knowledge in Social Work Pragmatist Epistemology and Multidisciplinary Knowledge Firstly, Addams considered pragmatism to be an epistemological framework and a base for professional reflection and knowledge creation (Puurunen, 2019, p. 327). Pragmatist philosophy was developed in the United States at the end of the 19th century. The often-​ named founders are Charles S. Peirce and William James, along with philosophers John Dewey and George Herbert Mead (Shields, 2017b, p. 18). Addams worked closely with Dewey and Mead and was in correspondence with James, who respected her work and her writings (Shields, 2017b, p. 18). Although Jane Addams was not recognized as a philosopher by her contemporaries, she contributed to a critical and radical understanding of pragmatism (Hamington, 2009, pp. 32–​35). Pragmatism can be described first and foremost as a method or an attitude that looks at outcomes and consequences (James, 1907/​2008, p. 52; Dewey, 1908, p. 86). Observing these consequences requires experimenting in practice (Dewey, 1908, p. 8). Whether an experiment is used in science or in developing society, “the great thing is not to avoid mistakes but to have them take place under such conditions that they can be utilized to increase intelligence in the future” (Dewey, 1920/​1988, p. 199). It seems that Addams put this into practice. A key tenet in Addams’s pragmatism is reflection. For Addams (Puurunen, 2019, p. 327), in social work knowledge is never only the result of theoretical analysis but is always experiential because social workers face contradictions that require reflection on the situation in relation to previous knowledge and experiences. Besides reflection on helping relationships in clinical work, reflection also enables social work knowledge production and using that knowledge to have an impact on society and enhance welfare (Puurunen, 2019, p. 327). In order to understand Addams’s ideas of pragmatism and knowledge creation, the concept of “sympathetic knowledge” may also be useful. Sympathetic knowledge is based on knowing other people with some degree of depth, which awakens empathetic caring and leads to action on behalf of others (Hamington, 2009, pp. 71–​72). Thus, encounters and reciprocal exchanging of experiences are required to obtain such significant knowledge as well as a greater understanding of the problem-​solving process in social work practice. Secondly, for Addams the social work knowledge base was multidisciplinary and eclectic as it combined, as well as influenced, psychology, medicine, economics, sociology, statistics, philosophy, and educational science (Puurunen, 2019, p. 325). Puurunen (2019,

Jane Addams and Epistemic Agency in Contemporary Social Work    709 p. 325) describes how Addams considered that social work required special expertise and that its approach to people’s situations and social problems was holistic, unlike in some other professional fields. A key notion was that in social work knowledge, experience, and skills are built upon and are bound to operating in practice. However, Addams also considered that besides utilizing experiential knowledge, social work should also be guided by multidisciplinary research knowledge on human life. Addams recognized the difficulties universities had in applying their findings to social life and how a settlement as part of the community could operate in knowledge acquisition, organization, and dissemination (Hamington, 2009, p. 6). Puurunen (2019, p. 127) writes how these epistemological aspects complement Addams’s views on the role that knowledge—​and especially the conscious application of knowledge—​has in social work methods and in the helping relationship (also Addams, 1899, p. 35). Addams considered that valid knowledge would be practical, and the settlement could test its validity for the local community and find ways to disseminate knowledge (Puurunen, 2019, pp. 128–​129). In Hull House, Addams and her colleagues adopted the instrumentalist and fallibilistic pragmatist attitude or method in experimenting and reflection. The pragmatist method meant that they used experiments in changing practice, testing new ways with the community to help the community, and observing the consequences (Gross, 2009). Besides experiential and sympathetic knowledge, they also reflected on and applied research-​based knowledge, as the following three examples of the Jane Club, the social method of shared breakfasts, and the Coffee House demonstrate.

Three Examples of Applying Research Knowledge in Hull House The first example is the start of a housing cooperative called the “Jane Club.” The working women would bring up their difficulties in paying rent in times of need or when attending strikes. Addams described how they “read aloud together Beatrice Potter’s little book on ‘Cooperation,’ and discussed all the difficulties and fascinations of such an undertaking, and on the first of May, 1891, two comfortable apartments near Hull-​ House were rented and furnished” (Addams, 1910/​2019, pp. 214–​215). Thus, utilizing the writings of Potter, who was herself an English social reformer and researcher, provides an example of how research-​informed practice and how a small experiment started and led to the establishment of the Jane Club. The second example of how research knowledge was applied, was through what Addams (1899, p. 49) called “a social method.” Addams described shared breakfasts organized for Italian migrant women to be a social method for change because these informal meetings led to modeling a more nutritious diet. Thus, changes were gradually made by group activities and through informal meetings (Hamington, 2004, p. 118). Eventually, these women had an impact on their neighborhood by forming “a little centre for the intelligent care of children” (Addams, 1899, p. 49), which allowed nutritional knowledge to be disseminated to the community.

710    Heidi Muurinen and Aino Kääriäinen The third example demonstrates how Addams also recognized the value of failed practical experiments for learning (Shields, 2017b, p. 22). Another experiment to spread the latest knowledge on nutrition to the neighborhood through a Coffee House failed because it was based on preconceived ideas of people’s needs and lacked dialogue with the community (Hamington, 2009, p. 113). However, despite this failure, the residents were then able to rearrange the Coffee House to meet the needs of the community (Hamington, 2009, p. 113). As discussed above, Addams considered it important in social work to apply multidisciplinary knowledge and the pragmatist method or attitude. The attitude was present in Hull House, where readiness to experiment was a requirement (Addams, 1910/​2019, p. 212). Also, according to Addams (1910/​2019, p. 212), applying and creating knowledge required from the residents scientific patience in the accumulation of facts, steady holding of their sympathies, readiness to interpret the public opinion of their neighbors, and putting aside their own opinions or self-​assertation. Next, we will continue with topical discussion on evidence-​based and evidence-​informed social work and how Addams’s ideas inform it.

Evidence-​Informed and Theory-​Informed Social Work Evidence-​based practice (EBP) has two approaches. According to Payne (2014, p. 53), the first is a “top-​down” approach in which the effectiveness of practice is evaluated, and the best practices are agreed. In this approach, systematic reviews and practice guidelines or protocols are collected. The second approach defines EBP as a practice and a process in which practitioners and clients together evaluate the methods or interventions (Payne, 2014, p. 54). The often-​cited process, borrowed from evidence-​based medicine, begins with defining an answerable question to which the best available evidence is located and critically appraised, clients are informed, and the intervention is evaluated (e.g., Gambrill, 2001). The process always requires professional reflection and experiential knowledge as well as discussing the views of the client. In social work, evidence-​based practice has been much debated, especially when the focus has been in narrowly finding and evaluating evidence-​based practices (EBPs) based preferably only on the golden standard of RCTs, which are difficult to conduct (Payne, 2014, p. 55). Other main arguments against EBP concern its positivist paradigm, practical difficulties in evaluating complex interventions (EBPs), politics in accepting the present social order, and interest in changing individuals or communities instead of society (Payne, 2014, p. 55). It would seem that the positivist and narrow idea of EBP is difficult to reconcile with the progressive view of social work. In reflecting how social work research findings, whether empirical or theoretical, could be applied in practice, we were inspired by pragmatism and also by Addams. The pragmatist approach does not have a methodological hierarchy; it recognizes not only scientific knowledge but also the experiential knowledge of different actors, and it most importantly relies on reflection on the practical consequences and on participatory knowledge

Jane Addams and Epistemic Agency in Contemporary Social Work    711 production (Muurinen & Satka, 2020, pp. 129–​130). Thus, pragmatism can bypass the ontological and methodological concerns of the narrow and positivist form of EBP. Pragmatism also provides ideas of how to proceed with applying research findings in a reflective and participatory manner. These ideas relate to the pragmatist attitude, scientific mindset, and applied science orientation discussed by Addams. These are similar to curiosity, critical reflection, and critical thinking, which are named by Austin et al. (2012) as the requirements of research-​informed social work practitioners today. In this chapter, we use the term evidence-​informed practice (EIP) and theory-​informed practice of which the first is more common in the United States and the latter in Europe (Austin, 2020, p. 26). We consider evidence-​informed practice to be first and foremost a process that includes a wide range of research, not only evaluation studies of EBPs. To emphasize the less discussed role of theoretical research, we include the term “theory-​ informed practice” alongside EIP. In social work, theories include perspectives, frameworks, models, and explanatory theories. These can be helpful for understanding 1) what social work is and 2) how to do it or 3) theories that may concern the client’s world (Payne, 2014, pp. 5–​6). These different types of theories are intertwined and can be used together with evidence-​based findings on interventions, but also when such evidence is not available (Payne, 2014, p. 10). As a part of the problem-​solving process, theories, perspectives, frameworks, and research on client populations can also inform a social worker regarding the needs and experiences of service users and can help in forming answerable questions. To conclude, the above description on evidence-​informed and theory-​informed social work as a process resonates with Addams’s thoughts on the scientific mindset, and the pragmatist attitude of observing and reflecting on the consequences of using multidisciplinary research. Addams also considered social work to be doing good with people, not for them, and questioned the actor-​object position (Puurunen, 2019, p. 324). In evidence-​informed social work as a participatory process, clients are not considered objects, but the process emphasizes discussion with clients on their views and values and allows them to make decisions based on the existing knowledge. Shared reflection of theoretical concepts or knowledge may also lead to awareness raising concerning structural problems. Finally, the role of shared reflection is closely connected to Addams’s idea of sympathetic knowledge, which is created in discussing the perspectives and experiences of clients (Hamington, 2009) and is therefore a significant part of the EIP process and the knowledge created within it.

Applying Pragmatist Attitude in the Practice and Theory Groups As discussed above, in social work, evidence-​based or evidence-​informed practice is defined as a problem-​solving process where knowledge is acquired, created, tested,

712    Heidi Muurinen and Aino Kääriäinen and evaluated (Gambrill, 2001). However, research has shown that social workers’ difficulties in interpreting research and their lack of access and time to read research have been identified as obstacles for evidence-​informed social work (Beddoe, 2011; Gray et al., 2013; Nutley et al., 2007, pp. 81–​83; Muurinen & Kääriäinen, 2020). To overcome these obstacles and to bridge the gap between theory and practice, we were inspired by the example of Jane Addams and especially the idea of the pragmatist philosopher John Dewey (1920/​1988, pp. 163, 169), who considered that theories, notions, and conceptions should be used as tools in reflecting on and analyzing situations and in searching for practical solutions. In 2015, we designed a Practice and Theory pilot group intervention to support social workers in applying theoretical and qualitative research and strengthening evidence-​informed, and more concretely theory-​informed, practice in Finland (Kääriäinen & Muurinen, 2020; Muurinen & Kääriäinen, 2020, 2022). The goal of the Practice and Theory group was to connect research-​based, qualitative, or theoretical knowledge to social workers’ practical skills and practical wisdom (Smeeton, 2015, p. 18). The group was based on the idea of pragmatist inquiry and doing reflective experiments in one’s own work. The group met five to six times and in each session the group chose a one-​sheet-​long research summary prepared by the group facilitator. The research for the group was selected by considering its relevance, applicability, width, and familiarity and included not only social work research but also more widely research from the field of social sciences and philosophy (Muurinen & Kääriäinen, 2022). The group discussed various social work practice theories (e.g., narrative practice). Also, social science theories, such as Goffman’s (1955/​2016) concept of “face,” which describes how a positive self-​image is created, maintained, and guarded in interaction with others, or Lonne et al.’s (2016) recommendations for six steps of ethical decision-​ making principles in child protection, were discussed. Two examples of the summaries used are available online (Kääriäinen & Muurinen, 2020). In between the group meetings, each participant applied the chosen research concept or summary to their practice by considering the practical consequences or by doing small practical experiments (Peirce, 1878/​1934; Dewey, 1916, p. 8). Thus, the group allowed the participants to try out some of the things they had been taught and put truth to “the ultimate test of the conduct it dictates or inspires,” as Jane Addams (1910/​ 2019, p. 199) wrote about the residents in Hull House over a hundred years ago. The participants’ practical experiences were then shared and reflected on within the group in a dialogical manner (Buber, 1923/​2008), by applying the method of narrative collaboration (Gubrium & Holstein, 1997) as well as turn-​taking in speaking and listening (Morgan, 2000). A more detailed description of the group is available as a guidebook (see Kääriäinen & Muurinen, 2020). The qualitative research of the Practice and Theory pilot group intervention is based on data from three different groups. The data are collected in 2015–​2017 and consist of reflective group interviews during the last group meetings (total 16 participants) and of follow-​up interviews held three to six months later (total 14 participants). Thus, the

Jane Addams and Epistemic Agency in Contemporary Social Work    713 results concern mostly short-​term and to some extent intermediate outcomes that were identified by the participants. The intermediate and especially the long-​term outcomes call for further research (Muurinen & Kääriäinen, 2022). Next, we will describe the participants’ experiences of the group. We were especially interested in how the participants’ epistemic agency emerged. Agency can be considered epistemic when knowledge has been applied or has been used to obtain more knowledge or to create new knowledge (Damsa & Andriessen, 2012, p. 204). Thus, epistemic agency refers to the metacognitive skills (Scardamalia, 2002) that social workers need, use, and develop when they reflect on practical situations, apply experiential and scientific knowledge, and make interpretations. Because epistemic agency has been analyzed as a feature that is constructed at an individual level (e.g., Scardamalia, 2002) and at a collective level (e.g., Fairweather & Montemayor, 2017), we will discuss the participants’ experiences of the Practice and Theory group on these two levels. The data excerpts have been translated from Finnish into English and to maintain confidentiality, we do not identify from which group each data extract is from.

Practice and Theory Groups and Epistemic Agency Strengthening Personal Epistemic Agency After the Practice and Theory groups, the participants stated that the groups had helped them to understand how empirical research and theories are and can be connected to social work practice. Although evidence-​informed practice has been discussed for decades, the participants experienced several obstacles in integrating research findings into their practical work. Many participants also mentioned that they had previously felt frustration, guilt, or shame for connecting research to their work so tenuously. In order to understand how research is connected to practice, it was important that this epistemological connection was not only explained but also demonstrated in the groups’ reflective discussions. In the groups, the most significant activity was the conscious reflection on practice and theory, application of knowledge in practice, and observation of the consequences. This idea of putting the truth to “the ultimate test of the conduct it dictates or inspires” was a key tenet in Addams’s (1910/​2019, p. 199) pragmatism. In the group, this reflective process concerned especially the social workers’ own knowledge, attitudes, and actions. For personal reflection, participants felt that the research summaries worked as tools in analyzing their actions in different situations. The participants stated that the theories and research helped them to distance themselves from their work, to examine it in a new light, and recognize and explain their own actions.

714    Heidi Muurinen and Aino Kääriäinen The group provided a space in which the participants could orientate themselves toward their own actions and experiences, and to talk about these to others. Emphasizing this was important, because the discussions could easily turn to general descriptions of situations or merely to talking about how demanding client cases can be. In fact, the participants often mentioned that they had not usually discussed with their colleagues how they act themselves or if they could act differently, as one participant describes: In peer reports we have previously focused on what could be done [in the client situation] and what could work. Not so much how you act yourself.

Also, in evidence-​based clinical work, the focus can often be on decision making, choosing interventions, and evaluating the consequences. However, through the entire problem-​solving process, the understanding and the interpretations of the situation as well as the relationship between the social worker and client are essential. Thus, a mechanical application of techniques rarely works, for evidence-​based practice requires personal and critical reflection or, as Addams describes it, the scientific mindset and an applied scientific orientation founded on pragmatism. According to the participants, analyzing one’s own work was important because it enabled them to recognize not only their own expertise but also the limitations of their knowledge. Addams pointed out the advice given to her by her father (1910/​2019, p. 176) “that it was very important not to pretend to understand what you didn’t understand, and you must always be honest with yourself inside, whatever happened.” This self-​ understanding that the participants developed and the fallibilist attitude they practiced when doing reflective, small experiments in their work is a significant part of evidence-​ informed and theory-​informed practice in which it is necessary to acknowledge the limits of professional and personal knowledge. While the participants brought up the importance of knowing what one does not know, they also observed that qualitative or theoretical research findings could inform their practice. For individual work, reflecting on theoretical constructions not only offered both informational perspectives and possible interpretations for clients’ situations, but also challenged the workers to consider the client’s experiences and put themselves in their client’s shoes, which is characteristic for Addams’s idea of sympathetic knowledge (Hamington, 2009). The following excerpt describes how not only research on EBPs, but also qualitative or theoretical research, can help one to understand and reflect on clients’ experiences: [theories] increase understanding in client work. It is sometimes so difficult to understand where they are coming from, what their experience of everything is, and in a good way these [theories] bring in the background or its meaning, and everything that has happened in that life, how they affect why the client has come here, that is important to understand.

Participants also discussed the social structures and how understanding the social function of social work helps in understanding the limits and possibilities of one’s

Jane Addams and Epistemic Agency in Contemporary Social Work    715 activities. Thus, besides providing insights and tools for working with individuals, reflecting on theories also increased the participants’ understanding of the importance of social work at the macro level, and the more sociological and structural orientation Addams had already described. Thus, the reflection of theory and practice increased the awareness of societal consequences, as one social worker described it: “I can reflect in a completely different way why social work is done or why one makes decisions or what effects an activity has.” The participants experienced that reflecting on their own actions, client cases, and macro practice in the light of research had several positive consequences for them. For example, familiarizing oneself with research helped to explain to other human-​ service professionals what social work and a social worker’s expertise entails, as well as describing the interpretations of client situations. The small practical experiments to apply the research knowledge in one’s own work and reflecting on these experiences led to a new appreciation of personal skills, supported developing new working methods, enabled professional empowerment, and increased the feeling of being inspired in one’s work. We interpret this as a strengthening of personal epistemic agency. The ability to apply knowledge as well as to make professional knowledge and reasoning explicit are significant characteristics of epistemic agency (Damsa & Andriessen, 2012, p. 204). Epistemic agency as a metacognitive skill (Scardamalia, 2002) is at the core of pragmatism as a method and an attitude, and it can be strengthened through conscious and reflective inquiring into one’s practice. Addams recognized this in her own writings on social work in which knowledge creation is always connected to practice and requires reflection on multidisciplinary and experiential knowledge (Puurunen, 2019, pp. 235–​236; Addams, 1912, pp. 65–​66).

Enabling the Collective Level of Epistemic Agency The participants in the Practice and Theory groups considered that not only their personal endeavors to apply knowledge and observe the consequences but also the shared reflection on work were significant. Shared discussions and open deliberation about the demanding nature of social work and complex situations—​without choosing a wrong or right solution—​helped the participants to broaden their perspectives and provided new options for acting. The participants considered the shared discussions to improve the quality of their work, increase their professional abilities, and help to find new operating models, as stated in the following excerpt: Why this group was good is that I have the energy to make fresh interpretations and not just act through habit. I feel that everyday work encourages you to just act through habit.

As Addams wrote, sharing experiences and memories is important for learning and for shared knowledge creation (Addams, 1902/​2019, p. 61). In general, gaining new

716    Heidi Muurinen and Aino Kääriäinen perspectives and work practices from others was valued and considered important in the groups. Also, concrete changes in participants’ work methods were made because of the group, as explained in the following excerpt: When I’ve been thinking about a case, I’ve somehow woken up or I’ve got these ideas, and finally in one client case, I made a breakthrough after being stuck for a year because of that one [group] meeting.

Understanding work and talking about work had become more positive than before, based on the feedback from other participants. Finding new options for actions removed professional cynicism and encouraged participants to make new interpretations of client situations. Thinking alone was not felt to be as productive as discussions in groups: It is difficult to get yourself going, to take the time, and this is also a lot more productive. We probably think about a lot of things on our own, but it is different when you can talk to someone else and share things.

The groups’ participants explained that their demanding work gave them little or no time for reading about research findings, even though they may have been interested in it. However, the participants stated that participation in the group lowered the threshold to read more and have discussions about theories that guide their work. Even when some participants in the groups had not always found the time to consciously apply the research and reflect on it in their work, they were still able to internalize the theoretical perspective that was discussed and learn from others. Besides sharing personal experiences, the participants explained that they had gained new knowledge and methods while listening to others and their experiences. While working at Hull House, Addams emphasized active listening and considered it an essential habit of embodied care (Hamington, 2004, p. 108). In the Practice and Theory groups, the active listening was significant for dialogical interaction, recognizing different perspectives and viewpoints, and forming a shared understanding. When thinking about the consequences of the groups, the participants compared the Practice and Theory groups to training sessions. The participants said that information gained in training is not adapted to work or the work community in the same way as the discussions held collectively in a group, when new information and practices are discussed and evaluated together. The groups strove to foster a positive and confidential atmosphere so that the participants would be encouraged to speak about their personal working life experiences. In the feedback, a positive atmosphere was also felt to support learning. For example, one of the participants described how “the group had a positive vibe and we got along together and learnt.” The Practice and Theory groups supported and increased shared intentional processes (Damsa & Andriessen, 2012), consisting of reflecting in groups, examining one’s own work habits, and collegial listening, which increased self-​knowledge and activated shared actions. Combining theory and practice does not necessarily always result

Jane Addams and Epistemic Agency in Contemporary Social Work    717 in an extensive change of action or a research project, but rather in continuous knowledge creation, as happens in everyday life. Meanwhile, the participants said that information gained in training is not adapted to work or the work community in the same way as the discussions held collectively in the groups, where the new information and practices were discussed and evaluated together. We interpret the group discussions, active listening, and the group structure itself as enabling the collective level of epistemic agency. As discussed previously, personal epistemic agency is a core skill used in the pragmatist method when knowledge is applied, and consequences are observed. But in pragmatism, knowledge creation is not only an individual process but also a collective learning process that takes place with the community and in interaction with the environment. Addams also understood the collective aspect of epistemic agency in Hull-​House, which was an active learning community (Hamington, 2009, p. 165). Addams also understood the significance of shared learning processes and collective epistemic agency within the community. For example, she realized that to reduce high infant mortality, the local women had to be involved in developing community waste disposal (Addams, 1910/​2019, pp. 260–​262). Similarly, to tackle the barriers and obstacles of EIP and to avoid burdening individual social workers, collective reflection and knowledge production must be supported. Thus, collective reflection and organizational structures that allow social workers time and space to reflect can enhance evidence-​informed and theory-​informed practice in the work community as well as support individual practitioners, as the social worker in the following excerpt describes: This has been very good for me. That I have come here, had the peace to come and think. I always have articles or books on my desk, but I never have a moment when I would have the time to read them. I haven’t even had the opportunity to leave and come to a different place. This has been very good.

To conclude, the interaction between the individual’s work and the collective-​learning community supported the development of epistemic agency (see Fairweather & Montemayor, 2017, p. 364) and increased the group participants’ well-​being at work. The development of shared epistemic agency requires collective motivation for investigating complex situations (Fairweather & Montemayor, 2017, p. 169). Practicing this shared inquiry and reflection may lead not only to the implementation of EBPs but also to a wider epistemological understanding, the utilization of different kinds of research knowledge to inform practice, and continuous workplace learning and innovation.

Discussion In this chapter, the focus has been on how pragmatism and Addams’s writings contribute to contemporary discussions on evidence-​informed and theory-​informed social work.

718    Heidi Muurinen and Aino Kääriäinen Addams considered it important in social work to adopt the pragmatist attitude and to apply multidisciplinary knowledge. The pragmatist attitude and an applied science orientation were present in Hull House, where readiness to experiment was a requirement (Addams, 1910/​2019, p. 212) and where research knowledge could be disseminated and tested for its validity for the local community (Hamington, 2009, p. 6; Puurunen, 2019, pp. 128–​129). We consider that Addams’s ideas and the examples of how Hull House operated can inspire discussions on the variety of research, including theories, that can inform practice instead of the narrow and top-​down views of EBP. We believe that Addams would advise social workers today to avoid objectifying the client and instead, alongside the application of scientific knowledge, to focus on sympathetic understanding and on reflecting on evidence and theories with service users. Addams would also no doubt encourage us to establish Practice and Theory groups or similar learning communities not only for social workers but also for service users. While it seems that the narrow idea of EBP focused on reforming the individual is difficult to reconcile with the progressive view of social work that Addams had, the applied science orientation and the sociological orientation Addams described can be combined and can support each other. Reflecting and experimenting especially with theoretical knowledge may lead to awareness raising concerning structural problems, as the participants in the Practice and Theory groups described, and eventually to collecting data for developing the practice or for doing macro social work. In Hull House, the residents were, according to Addams (1910/​2019, p. 212) “bound to see the needs of their neighbors as a whole, to furnish data for legislation, and use their influence to secure it.” Hull House as a learning community can provide examples and inspiration to show how collective structures can support research application and dissemination, like the Practice and Theory groups analyzed in this chapter. These kinds of organizational structures and emphasis on collective activities and the importance of learning communities could strengthen evidence-​informed and theory-​informed practice and help to tackle some of the obstacles research has described. Previous research has also emphasized the importance of interactive group processes and supportive organizational structures for promoting EIP (Austin et al., 2012; Austin & Carnochan, 2020; Carnochan et al., 2017; Nilsen et al., 2012). In this chapter, we have analyzed the experiences of participants in the Practice and Theory groups. In the groups, the social workers consciously applied the pragmatist method of observing and reflecting with others on practical consequences. This required, demonstrated, and strengthened their epistemic agency. Epistemic agency is at the core of the pragmatist method, and it is also at the heart of evidence-​informed practice and is characteristic of a research-​minded practitioner. Epistemic agency is based on collective communication, which makes it possible to adjust one’s behavior in complex situations containing moral and ethical questions (Fairweather & Montemayor, 2017, p. 177). The group participants explained that the shared discussions on research increased their ability to analyze their own actions and increased their opportunities to find new ways of operating in demanding client

Jane Addams and Epistemic Agency in Contemporary Social Work    719 work. The participants also felt that analyzing their own practice improved their ability to explain their viewpoints and decisions. Thus, the interaction between individual and collective work supported the development of epistemic agency (Fairweather & Montemayor, 2017, p. 364). The development of epistemic agency requires collective motivation for investigating complex situations (Fairweather & Montemayor, 2017, p. 169), which was also recognized by Addams, who motivated people to join different Hull House clubs to learn and to have an impact on society. In the Practice and Theory groups, reflecting together, examining one’s own work habits, and collegial listening increased self-​knowledge and participants’ well-​being at work; it also motivated them to participate the group. For evidence-​informed and theory-​informed practice, a significant observation was that participation in the groups and doing small practical experiments lowered the threshold to apply knowledge and carry out inquiries in the participants’ own work. Thus, the Practice and Theory groups supported and increased shared intentional processes (Damsa & Andriessen, 2012). Combining theory and practice does not necessarily always result in an extensive change of action or a research project, but rather in continuous knowledge creation that happens in everyday life, as in the different clubs at Hull House over a hundred years ago. To conclude, in research, analyzing professionals’ actions through the concepts of personal and shared epistemic agency increases an understanding of the connections between knowledge, action, and different types of agencies. The societal consequences of epistemic agency (Reider, 2016) are significant because human agents can choose the type of information their actions are based on. In contemporary social work, following the footsteps of Addams, becoming aware of one’s own knowing, knowing together, and evaluating actions together, as well as changing operating practices, are productive when done in a group. In this way, shared reflection on multidisciplinary knowledge, experiential knowledge, and sympathetic knowledge can improve the quality of work and services.

Funding Heidi Muurinen’s original empirical research was supported by the city of Espoo grant 2017. Funding for research expenses was provided by the Teachers’ Academy fellows’ home unit grant (University of Helsinki) for Aino Kääriäinen.

References Addams, J. (1899). A function of the social settlement. The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 13 (May), 33–​55. Addams, J. (1902/​2019). Democracy and social ethics. In The Greatest Works of Jane Addams (pp. 13–​76). Madison & Adams Press.

720    Heidi Muurinen and Aino Kääriäinen Addams, J. (1910/​2019). Twenty years at Hull House. In The Greatest Works of Jane Addams (pp. 171–​312). Madison & Adams Press. Addams J. (1912). The civic value of higher education for women. Bryn Mawr Alumnae Quarterly 6 (2), 59–​67. Asén, K., Julkunen, I., & Saurama, E. (2021). Contemporary urban social work: A scoping review. Nordic Social Work Research. https://​doi.org/​10.1080/​21568​57X.2021.1890​192 Austin, M. (2020). Identifying the conceptual foundations of practice research. In L. Joubert & M. Webber (Eds.), The Routledge Handbook of Social Work Practice Research (pp. 15–​31). Taylor and Francis. Austin, M. J., & Carnochan, S. (2020). Practice research in the human services: A university-​ agency partnership model. Oxford University Press. Austin, M. J., Dal Santo, T. & Lee, C. (2012). Building organizational supports for research-​ minded practitioners. Journal of Evidence-​Based Social Work 9 (1–​2), 174–​211. Beddoe, L. (2011). Investing in the future: Social workers talk about research. British Journal of Social Work 41, 557–​575. Buber, M. (1923/​2008). I and thou. Translated by Walter Kaufman. Howard Books. (Original: Ich und Du). Carnochan, M., McBeath, B. & Austin, M. (2017). Managerial and frontline perspectives on the process of evidence-​informed practice within human service organizations. Human Service Organizations, Management, Leadership & Governance 41 (4), 346–​358. Damşa, C. I., & Andriessen, J. (2012). Shared epistemic agency for knowledge creation: An explorative case study. In A. Moen, A. I. Morch, & S. Paavola (Eds.), Collaborative Knowledge Creation: Practices, Tools and Concepts (pp. 203–​218). Sense Publishers. Dewey, J. (1908). What does pragmatism mean by practical? The Journal of Philosophy, Psychology and Scientific Methods 5 (4), 85–​99. Dewey, J. (1916). Essays in experimental logic. Editora Griffo. Dewey, J. (1920/​1988). Reconstruction in philosophy. In J. A. Boydston (Ed.), The Middle Works of John Dewey 1899–​1924, Vol. 12 (pp. 77–​201). Southern Illinois University Press. Fairweather, A., & Montemayor, C. (2017). Knowledge, dexterity and attention: A theory of epistemic agency. Cambridge University Press. Gambrill, E. (2001). Social work: An authority-​based profession. Research on Social Work Practice 11 (2), 166–​175. Goffman, E. (1955/​2016). On face-​work: An analysis of ritual elements in social interaction. Psychiatry, Interpersonal and Biological Processes 18 (3), 213–​231. Gray, M., Joy, E., & Plath, D. (2013). Implementing evidence-​based practice: A review of the empirical research literature. Research on Social Work Practice 23 (2), 157–​166. Gross, M. (2009). Collaborative experiments: Jane Addams, Hull House and experimental social work. Social Science Information 48 (1), 81–​95. Gubrium, J. F., & Holstein, J. A. (1997). The new language of qualitative method. Oxford University Press. Hamington, M. (2004). Embodied care: Jane Addams, Maurice Merleau-​Ponty, and feminist ethics. University of Illinois. Hamington, M. (2009). The social philosophy of Jane Addams. University of Illinois Press Urbana. Harrikari, T., & Rauhala, P. (2019). Towards glocal social work in the era of compressed modernity. Routledge.

Jane Addams and Epistemic Agency in Contemporary Social Work    721 Healy, K. (2012). Social work methods and skills: The essential foundations of practice. Palgrave Macmillan. IFWS. (2014). Global definition of social work. https://​www.ifsw.org/​what-​is-​soc​ial-​work/​glo​ bal-​def​i nit​ion-​of-​soc​ial-​work/​ James, W. (1907/​2008). Pragmatismi: Uusi nimi eräille vanhoille ajattelutavoille. Translated by Antti Immonen. Eurooppalainen filosofian seura ry. Kääriäinen, A., & Muurinen, H. (2020). Combining practice and theory in professional fieldwork: A guidebook to facilitate practice and theory groups. University of Helsinki –​Publications of the Faculty of Social Sciences. Lonne, B., Harries, M., & Featherstone, B. (2016). Working ethically in child protection. Routledge. Morgan, A. (2000). What is narrative therapy? Dulwich Centre Publications. Mullaly, B., & Dupré, M. (2019). The new structural social work: Ideology, theory, and practice. Fourth edition. Oxford University Press. Muurinen, H., & Kääriäinen, A. (2020). Integrating theory and practice in social work: An intervention with practitioners in Finland. Qualitative Social Work 19 (5–​6), pp. 1200–​1218. Muurinen, H., & Kääriäinen, A. (2022). Using theory in practice: An intervention supporting research dissemination in social work. Human Service Organizations: Management, Leadership & Governance 46 (1), 1–​10. Muurinen, H., & Satka, M. (2020). Pragmatist knowledge production. In L. Jouber & M. Webber (Eds.), The Routledge Handbook of Social Work Practice Research (126–​136). Routledge. Nilsen, P., Nordström, G., & Ellström, P. E. (2012). Integrating research-​based and practice-​ based knowledge through workplace reflection. Journal of Workplace Learning 24 (6), 403–​415. Nutley, S. M., Walter, I., & Davies, H. T. O. (2007). Using evidence: How research can inform public services. Policy Press. Payne, M. (2014). Modern social work theory. ProQuest Ebook Central. Macmillan Education UK. Peirce, C. S. (1878/​1934). How to make our ideas clear. In C. S. Peirce, C. Hartshorne, & P. Weiss (Eds.), Collected Papers of Charles Sanders Peirce, Vols. 5–​6: Pragmatism and Pragmatism: Scientific Metaphysics (pp. 248–​271). Harvard University Press. Puurunen, P. (2019). The conception of social work in Jane Addams’s thought. Publications of the University of Eastern Finland Dissertations in Social Sciences and Business Studies 203. University of Eastern Finland. Reider, P. J. (2016). Introduction: What is social epistemology and epistemic agency? In P. J. Reider (Ed.), Social Epistemology and Epistemic Agency: Decentralizing Epistemic Agency (pp. vii–​xvi). Rowman & Littlefield. Saurama, E., & Julkunen, I. (2012). Approaching practice research in theory and practice. In E. Marthinsen & I. Julkunen (Eds.) Practice Research in Nordic Social Work: Knowledge Production in Transition (pp. 171−191). Whiting & Birch Ltd. Scardamalia, M. (2002). Collective cognitive responsibility for the advancement of knowledge. In B. Smith (Ed.), Liberal Education in a Knowledge Society (pp. 67–​98). Open Court. Shields, P. (2017a). Jane Addams: Pioneer in American sociology, social work and public administration. In P. Shields (Ed.), Jane Addams: Progressive Pioneer of Peace, Philosophy, Sociology, Social Work and Public Administration (pp. 43–​67). Springer.

722    Heidi Muurinen and Aino Kääriäinen Shields, P. (2017b). Jane Addams: Public philosopher, and practicing, feminist pragmatist. In P. Shields (Ed.), Jane Addams: Progressive Pioneer of Peace, Philosophy, Sociology, Social Work and Public Administration, (pp. 17–​30). Springer. Smeeton, J. (2015). From Aristotle to Arendt: A phenomenological exploration of forms of knowledge and practice in the context of child protection social work in the UK. Qualitative Social Work 16 (1), 14–​28.

Chapter 37

Af f ect and Emot i on i n Jane Addams’ s T h ou g h t Clara Fischer

Feminist Theory, Pragmatism, and Emotion In this chapter, I present the first explicit exposition of emotion in Jane Addams’s work and develop a reading of her treatment of feeling that hopes to provide resources for contemporary scholarship on affect and emotion across the disciplines. The chapter constitutes a significant contribution to Addams studies, but also situates itself in the wider context of canonical feminist work, contemporary trends in critical theory, and classical pragmatist work on the emotions. This wider scholarly context will be briefly introduced here. There is an extensive body of feminist work on feeling and emotion, ranging at least from the discussion of “sensibility”(Wollstonecraft, 1993) in Mary Wollstonecraft’s writing to second-​wave feminist work on socially proscribed, or what Alison Jaggar also calls “outlaw,” emotions (Jaggar, 1992). This literature examines the supposedly more emotional nature of women when compared to men, and explores the philosophical and political implications of a historic denigration of feeling in Western scholarship. Feminists have engaged with debates on the dominant models of emotion, usually developing a social-​constructivist conception of feeling that also allows for cognitivist claims to be made.1 Elizabeth Spellman’s critique of the “Dumb View” of emotion is perhaps the most well-​known feminist critique of a physicalist view of emotion that denies emotion cognitive content, that is, that denies that emotions are generally “about” something (Spelman, 1989). In that sense, feminist contributions to theorizations of emotion have usually been anti-​dualistic, specifically countering the emotion-​reason dualism (and its attendant ascription of women and men to either side of the dichotomy). More recently, some feminists and theorists across the disciplines (including in sociology, political science, geography, and queer studies) have championed

724   Clara Fischer a “turn to affect” in critical theory in a call for a return to feeling that often goes hand in hand with a call for a return to the body (Clough, 2010; Sedgwick, 2003; Thompson & Hoggett, 2012; Thrift, 2004). New materialists and affect theorists propose affect or embodiment/​“the flesh” as primary paradigmatic categories that should replace or follow on from the linguistic turn. The idea is that a focus on affect and the body can redress the supposed elision of these categories in linguistic-​turn theorizing, but can also be used as the basis for a new kind of metaphysics—​that is, as the basis for thinking about being as such that prioritizes affect, emotion, and the body, rather than language (as has been the case throughout much of the 20th century). In previous work, I have shown that such affect-​theoretical efforts to redress the imbalance between feeling, nature, and bodies, on the one hand, and cognition, language, and culture, on the other, unfortunately sometimes result in an overemphasis on the former categories, thereby maintaining dualisms by inverting the emphasis on the former oppositional. Moreover, some affect-​theoretical work treats minds, affects, and bodies atomistically, describing affect as prior to and thereby in some sense superior to cognition and culture (Fischer, 2016). One prominent example of this is Brian Massumi’s work (Massumi, 2002), wherein affect is described as a basic metaphysical unit, a vitalist force that is disconnected from any kind of social construction or cognitive processes. Massumi draws on the pragmatist work of William James to bolster his case, which is perhaps not entirely surprising, given James’s strongly physicalist conception of emotion that describes feeling as bodily sensation, with emotion, according to James, having “no mind-​stuff ” but being merely the “feelings of its bodily symptoms” (James, 1981). Needless to say, much of the above runs counter to the anti-​dualistic theorizations of emotion historically developed by feminists, but also to the traditionally anti-​dualistic thought of pragmatism. In light of this, I have previously proposed John Dewey—​the arch-​critic of dualisms in general—​as a useful thinker for feminists interested in developing post-​linguistic-​turn critical theory that truly redresses philosophical dualisms (Fischer, 2016). Indeed, in two papers published as “The Theory of Emotion” I and II, Dewey critiqued James’s conception of feeling and argued for an alternative view that recognized the social as well as the cognitive dimension of emotion (Dewey, 1894, 1895). As I see it, Dewey thus fits more neatly with feminist canonical approaches to emotion and avoids atomistic and dualistic theorizations of feeling. Given this background on feminist canonical work on emotion, affect theoretical work, and pragmatism, I will, in this chapter, examine the treatment of emotion by yet another prominent pragmatist thinker, Jane Addams. There is clearly a tension between James and Dewey on emotion, with James’s physicalist theory—​also termed the James-​Lange theory—​seeming to be in opposition with Dewey’s pragmatist commitment to anti-​dualistic thinking. Indeed, James’s physically reductionist theory seems to run counter to these more commonly held pragmatist commitments, even to his own statements on emotion elsewhere that seem to contradict his strongly atomistic and individualistic take on feeling (James, 1987). Given that my interest lies in unearthing resources for feminists on feeling in the post-​linguistic turn, I examine whether such tensions continue in the work of the most well-​known classic feminist-​pragmatist

Affect and Emotion in Jane Addams’s Thought    725 thinker. Does Addams, like James, conceive of emotion in physicalist terms? Or does her conception of emotion follow along Deweyan lines, allowing for cognitive content and social construction? Or is her approach to emotion different again, bringing new aspects of feeling to light and, perhaps, posing new conundrums for contemporary feminists? Given the dearth of analysis of Addams’s conception of feeling,2 I begin by establishing what, exactly, this conception consists of. I then examine whether Addams’s work, like Dewey’s, can be drawn on by feminists interested in contributing to current debates on affect and emotion in the context of critical, post-​linguistic-​turn theorizing. My aim is thus for this exploration of feeling to add to a number of disciplines, including sociology, politics, gender studies, geography, and queer studies, as they undertake a (re)engagement with affect and emotion for the present.

“Unearthing” Feeling in Jane Addams’s Thought Surveying feeling in Addams’s work has turned out, for this author, not to be a straightforward task. References to “emotion” are scattered throughout her writing, with particular feeling-​states and concepts invoking affect discussed in a variety of texts ranging across a number of diverse topics. Unlike in James’s and Dewey’s work, there is no single go-​to text that clearly sets out her theory of feeling—​that is, no systematic, explicit theorization of affect and emotion that lets us neatly compare her conception of feeling by placing it alongside her pragmatist contemporaries’ theories of emotion. Defining feeling in Addams’s work is thus more like an “unearthing” and necessarily an imperfect pursuit, as one has to uncover and examine her use of the term “emotion” and related concepts to piece together what it is she might have meant and what role she affords feeling more generally in her thought. With that said, this implicit treatment of feeling in Addams’s work is not entirely surprising, as her writing style differs so much from her contemporaries’ style, but also from traditional academic writing as such. Addams is well known for producing texts that interweave personal reflection, quotes, and insights from intellectuals, and the voices of the members of her community to form a rich, polyvocal tapestry of narrative and analysis (Fischer, 2012). This style means that she has sadly often been written off as a mere “storyteller,” and relatedly a “doer” of pragmatism, rather than a thinker in her own right. With pragmatism, including feminist-​ pragmatism, experiencing somewhat of a resurgent interest in the latter part of the 20th century and into the present, though, her work has gained renewed traction, as feminists laud her style as one that reflects her commitment to inclusivity and her recognition of gender, race, and class differences (Hamington, 2010). Her incorporation of women’s voices, especially marginalized women’s voices, at a time when women were rarely viewed as interesting or worthy subjects of moral and political debate—​certainly not as first-​person informants in such debate—​is admirable and yields new insights that

726   Clara Fischer strictly “academic,” detached writing by its very nature cannot produce. As Charlene Haddock Seigfried also notes of Addams’s “[pervasive] focus on women”: “until the development of feminist theory . . . few philosophers took women’s experiences and oppressive conditions as unproblematically central to the development of ethical theory” (Seigfried, 2002). In light of Addams’s unique style, and the widespread references to “emotion” throughout her work, I have tried to tease out two dominant themes that seem to recur across texts, and that illustrate the role Addams affords feeling in social, moral, and political thought and, importantly, action. My analysis highlights that, for Addams, feeling is central to an ethics based on cooperative inquiry, but ethics, more generally, needs to be informed by and in turn inform social action. As she says, “the sphere of morals is the sphere of action” and “speculation in regard to morality is but observation and must remain in the sphere of intellectual comment,” but “a situation does not really become moral until we are confronted with the question of what shall be done in a concrete case, and are obliged to act upon our theory” (Addams, 2002b). I think that this focus on action as a fundamental part of ethics sheds further light on Addams’s style and the seemingly sporadic treatment of feeling in her writing. When understood in the context of a moral theory that derives its significance from and is informed by and in turn informs action with regard to concrete problems, it becomes clear that although feeling is central to this moral theory, Addams is simply not interested in systematically setting out the metaphysics of emotion. Instead, Addams wants—​in conversation with the members of the community she served, with philosophical and literary interlocutors, and with earlier incarnations of herself (sometimes as charity worker)—​to look at what an ethics built on feeling can do, that is, how it can respond to morally problematic situations and be utilized by people to address such situations ethically and justly.

Two Themes/​Roles for Emotion in Addams’s Thought Emotion as the Basis of an Ethical Standard Two Ethical Standards With that said, I will set out below the two themes or, given Addams’s emphasis on action, roles for emotion, which I think Addams’s thought espouses as the basis for moral theory and practice. Both feature across her writings, but are perhaps best captured in the essays of Democracy and Social Ethics. The first theme—​emotion as the basis of an ethical standard—​is particularly evident in the essay “Charitable Effort.” Here, Addams tries to tease out the differences between two conflicting moral standards, as she sees it, that characterize charity work. Addams begins by noting that poverty used to be commonly attributed to laziness and vice but, given a new “democratic instinct,” is now no

Affect and Emotion in Jane Addams’s Thought    727 longer blamed on the poor. The charity worker is now unsure “of her superiority” to the washerwoman and recognizes the virtues of the latter, and the vice of her own unearned privilege—​a “parasitic cleanliness and social standing attained only through status” (p. 12). While there has thus been a softening toward people in need of charitable work, as Addams sees it, the charity worker’s ethical standard still starkly contrasts with the standard of poor people themselves. Addams describes the perplexity this raises in the charity worker, as she encounters an entirely different moral approach throughout her work. As Addams explains: “a most striking incongruity, at once apparent, is the difference between the emotional kindness with which relief is given by one poor neighbour to another poor neighbour, and the guarded care with which relief is given by a charity visitor to a charity recipient” (p. 13). Addams describes the charity worker’s approach to the families she visits as detached and cold, and she relates her increasing unease in the face of the poor neighbors’ entirely different treatment of one another, and the contrasting values underlying such treatment. Rather than urging self-​sufficiency, cleanliness, and the need to save (despite poor people’s clear inability to save in the face of destitution), she increasingly comes to question her own assumptions and the presumed virtues and social norms she should impress upon these families, which she now recognizes as the product of her own, privileged background. Conversely, the poor members of the community she encounters feel perplexed by the charity worker’s values and approach. Given the class she comes from, and the wealth she has, they do not understand why she cannot just give away her riches, rather than setting down stipulations for conduct, and being reluctant to give unconditionally. They question her true motives for engaging in charity work at all and are puzzled by her inability to give in the way that they are accustomed to give to one another. This, then, is the conflict between two moral frameworks, which, according to Addams, means that “the neighbourhood mind is at once confronted not only by the difference of method, but by an absolute clashing of two ethical standards” (p. 13).

Emotion as the Basis of an Impoverished Community’s Ethical Standard Interestingly, Addams repeatedly describes the ethical standard found among and practiced by the poor people of the community as one centered on emotion. As the charity worker is increasingly confronted and challenged by the charity recipients’ differing moral code and behavior, she discovers that “her humble beneficiaries are far in advance of her, not in charity or singleness of purpose, but in self-​sacrificing action” (p. 33). Addams gives several examples of such self-​sacrifice among the poor, which, she asserts, would not be found in rich areas among the economically privileged. The woman living in a one-​room tenement flat with her husband and children who takes in a pregnant, former work colleague, with the husband ungrudgingly sleeping on a park bench to make way for the destitute friend, and even finding her a midwife to assist on the “promise of future payment” (p. 14); the live-​in landlady who shares coal or food when a family are out of work; the Irish immigrant family who take in a homeless widow and her children despite the husband being unemployed; the family friend who misses her first

728   Clara Fischer day at a paid job because her neighbor was ill and the children asked her for help—​all of these are instances of the selfless actions of the members of the impoverished community and are performed as a matter of course and unquestioningly. These self-​sacrifices are the “emotional kindness” Addams refers to that so perplex the charity worker, who, by contrast, gives only reluctantly. What, exactly, does this “emotional kindness” consist of though? What role, precisely, is afforded to emotion in the contrasting ethical standards as developed by Addams? Is it simply the case that the charity worker is ill informed, practicing an unfeeling ethics based on class prejudice, while the self-​sacrificing ethical standard centered on emotion is the superior moral code? Are the working-​class people the charity worker encounters therefore more ethical? Do they have a more well-​developed sense of feeling that allows them to adopt this ethical standard? And need this always be foreclosed to the privileged charity worker? Ascertaining answers to these questions within Addams’s text leads one into murky waters. While on the one hand, Addams does indeed laud the self-​ sacrifices made by the impoverished neighbors for each other—​hence her reference to their being “far in advance” of the charity worker in this regard—​there is another sense in which the emotional basis of the ethical standard of the poor is an innate and natural capacity that presumably thereby does not hold greater ethical value, nor require praise or recognition. Indeed, Addams frequently essentializes the emotional capacities of the community members and even describes such capacities in evolutionary terms as remnants of earlier times. Such descriptions make for uncomfortable reading, as references to “primitive” people and their more emotional ways raise concerns about racialized and classed characterizations that are, of course, also reminiscent of traditional descriptions of (emotional) women.3 Asserting that “the instinct to pity, the impulse to aid his fellows” has “served man at a very early period, as a rude rule of right and wrong,” Addams claims that “this rule still holds among many people with whom the charitable agencies are brought into contact” (pp. 14–​15). Addams was of course of her time, and the language of “primitive society” and “primitive people” was ubiquitous among intellectuals and people of her class. However, there is still a jarring incongruity here, as Addams, on the one hand, seems to elevate the more feeling, self-​sacrificial moral code of such people, but on the other hand attributes this to an innate, unevolved capacity of a more unrefined and crude mode of being. For example, while calling out the charity worker on preconceived, “incorrigibly bourgeois” notions on the issue of early marriage and child labor, Addams notes that she “cannot insist so strenuously upon the conventions of her own class, which fail to fit the bigger, more emotional, and freer lives of working people” (p. 21). Although it is of course important that Addams’s proxy, the charity worker, confronts her own class prejudice, and that she genuinely seems to want to understand differences arising from her background and the background of the poor members of the community, it is less clear why the latter should be described as “more emotional” and “freer.” My worry here is that this conception of emotion, as a “primitive” capacity of unevolved people, not only reproduces racist and classist stereotypes, but also hints at a reason/​emotion dichotomy,

Affect and Emotion in Jane Addams’s Thought    729 with the capacity for reason possibly reserved for more refined—​that is, middle-​and upper-​class—​people. With that said, Addams still seems to elevate the latter ethical standard and presents feeling as a universal capacity—​albeit one stemming from earlier, simpler times—​that erroneously becomes repressed in the charity worker’s moral framework, and that constitutes an important human capacity for morality. She writes of “the natural outgoing of human love and sympathy, which, happily, we all possess in some degree” (p. 17), and also laments organized charity work’s misleading depiction of the emotion of pity as “capricious, and not to be depended on” without “the dignity of conscious duty” (p. 16). Again, emotion is presented as innate and “natural” but, according to Addams, rightly prompts the charity worker to be suspicious of the substitution of “a theory of social conduct for the natural promptings of the heart” (p. 16). Addams illustrates this with the example of the destitute man who, after lengthy deliberation and reticence, finally seeks help but, although “instinctively expect[ing] tenderness, consideration, and forgiveness,” is met with an interrogation and exhortation to work, rather than with “warmth of heart and sympathy” (p. 16). This, then, is the unfeeling ethical standard of charity work clashing with the standard based on feeling that Addams sets out here as superior, and as based on our innate capacity to feel toward others. It is this very human and universal capacity of emotion that makes the feeling ethical standard recognizable to the charity worker in the first place, and that raises tension and discomfort within her. Given Addams’s promotion of feeling as the basis for ethics, one might think, then, that the solution to the charity worker’s perplexity should lie in her adoption of the poor neighbors’ ethical standard, that is, for her to treat the families she engages with as they would treat each other—​by allowing pity, empathy, kindness, love, and related emotions to issue in selfless, unconditional giving. Indeed, Addams notes that sometimes a charity worker’s discomfort in the face of the differing ethical standard espoused by the impoverished community leads her to reject her wealth and “live in a tenement house as simply as the other tenants do” (p. 31), much like a Roman Catholic nun adopts vows of poverty. For Addams, though, such emulation of poverty is insincere and, rather than constituting an adoption of the feeling ethical standard, is an inauthentic copying of hardships the charity worker will never know. As she puts it: “both the tenement-​ house resident and the sister assume to have put themselves upon the industrial level of their neighbours, although they have left out the most awful element of poverty, that of imminent fear of starvation and a neglected old age” (p. 31). So what is the charity worker, confronted by her own privilege and the self-​sacrifice of the poor neighbors’ ethical standard, to do? Can the conflicting standards ever be reconciled?

Reconciling Two Ethical Standards? Emotion and Sympathetic Knowledge In the final paragraph of her essay, Addams sets out the shortcomings of each ethical standard. Here we get a clearer indication that although Addams views the impoverished neighbors’ ethical standard as laudable for its basis in feeling and for the unquestioning

730   Clara Fischer self-​sacrifice it involves, she still views this standard as problematic. It is worth quoting the relevant passage in full here—​she says: “The Hebrew prophet made three requirements from those who would join the great forward-​moving procession led by Jehovah. “To love mercy” and at the same time “to do justly” is the difficult task; to fulfil the first requirement alone is to fall into the error of indiscriminate giving with all its disastrous results: to fulfil the second solely is to obtain the stern policy of withholding, and it results in such a dreary lack of sympathy and understanding that the establishment of justice is impossible.” (p. 33)

It becomes apparent here that the standard based on feeling, for Addams, is inadequate insofar as it results in “indiscriminate giving.” We are never told why exactly, though, such giving should be “disastrous,” save for when the charity worker tries to emulate poor people’s circumstances despite her privileged background. Indeed, Addams seems to laud the selfless giving of the poor neighbors, so why should this now be a shortcoming of their ethical standard? Since Addams does not spell this out for us, I will attempt to piece together a possible answer here. The question returns us to the depiction of emotion in Addams’s thought as a necessary basis of ethics, and as a universal, human capacity that, at least in the poor members of the neighborhood, forms a remnant of an earlier, unrefined morality. I previously raised the possibility that, for Addams, the crude morality based on emotion may be informed by a traditional philosophical dichotomy between emotion and reason. Is it the case that emotion as an unevolved, early human response to moral problems becomes refined by reason over the ages? What, exactly, is Addams’s take on the relationship between emotion and reason? Addams does not provide us with an explicit theorization of this, but does hint at the need for an integration of emotion and cognition to allow the charity worker to address her perplexities and guide her actions. Writes Addams: “the necessity for activity and a pull upon the sympathies is so severe, that all the knowledge in the possession of the visitor is constantly applied, and she has a reasonable chance for an ultimate intellectual comprehension” (p. 33). It seems, from this, that the sympathies—​that is, the strong emotions evoked by the ethical standard based on feeling—​need to be synthesized by cognition via the charity worker’s applied knowledge to create an emotionally and intellectually informed moral standard. This much is also supported by Addams’s critique of the “dreary lack of sympathy and understanding” evinced by organized charity work, and by remarks made elsewhere in the book. In another chapter titled “Political Reform,” Addams discusses various efforts to bring about social and political change. Here, she speaks of the need for reformers to work “shoulder to shoulder with the cruder men . . . who are indeed pushing forward social morality, but who are doing it irrationally and emotionally, and at the expense of the well-​settled standards of morality” (p. 119). Taken together, these comments seem to indicate that Addams views the ethical standard of “the crude man,” that is, of the impoverished members of the community, as too emotional and insufficiently rational, while the inverse is true of the standard of the charity worker. So, returning to my

Affect and Emotion in Jane Addams’s Thought    731 earlier question: what is one to do to navigate the disparity between these two opposing standards? Although Addams sadly does not elaborate upon this in the “Charitable Effort” chapter, elsewhere she draws on the notion of “sympathetic knowledge.” As the term indicates, this phrase is a synthesis of emotional and intellectual elements and, for Addams, constitutes the answer to moral problems as such. In A New Conscience and an Ancient Evil, Addams describes “sympathetic knowledge” as “the only way of approach to any human problem” (Addams, 2002a). It involves the adoption of one’s own standpoint, as well as that of others, and requires feeling with others and empathizing. On this account, emotion can provide us with knowledge, as sympathetic knowledge arises from feeling and involves a questioning of one’s own prejudices, and an openness toward caring for others, including those often deemed to be unworthy of care.4 Sympathetic knowledge, then, appears to be the means by which the supposedly too irrational, emotional standard of the poor community members can be reconciled with the too unfeeling ethical standard of the middle-​class charity worker. Importantly, for Addams, this can only be done, however, through social cooperation, as it is her interaction with others that allows her to learn from them through feeling to acquire that last ethical requirement as set out by “the Hebrew prophet.” Following “love of mercy,” and “to do justly”—​represented, for Addams, by the poor neighbors’ and by the charity workers’ ethical standards, respectively—​is the requirement for humility, “to walk humbly with God” (Addams, 2002b). However, this can only be achieved, and thereby both ethical standards reconciled, “by a social process,” “to push forward the mass, to march with her fellows” (p. 33). Since sympathetic knowledge involves knowledge derived from feeling with others, it is only by “walk[ing] many dreary miles beside the lowliest of His creatures” (p. 34) by “realiz[ing] . . . activity . . . in connection with the activity of the many” (p. 120) that Addams’s ethics of cooperative, feeling inquiry may be lived and put into practice.

Emotion as the Basis of “Perplexity” My elaboration of Addams’s ethical framework as one that involves both emotion and cognition, as a cooperative, social process involving sympathetic knowledge derived and applied in tandem with others, connects with the second theme of emotion I want to present here. Throughout Democracy and Social Ethics, Addams describes various “perplexities” that arise from conflicting moral frameworks and social practices. In “Charitable Effort” it is the perplexity raised by the two conflicting ethical standards of the charity worker and of the impoverished community. In the “Political Reform” chapter, it is a “perplexity” caused by an opposition between political reform as divorced from real life and welfare as advanced by corrupt representatives. Each chapter centers on such a “perplexity” and prompts the discussion and subsequent analysis. Importantly, in light of what has been said about the linkage between emotion and cognition, there is again, here, at play a mingling of feeling and knowledge, as perplexities, for Addams,

732   Clara Fischer are, deeply felt. They involve feelings of discomfort, inadequacy, confusion, and doubt, but thereby lead to a radical rethinking of what was previously presumed to be straightforwardly given. This, indeed, is the “intellectual comprehension” Addams refers to as experienced by the charity worker who sympathetically and cooperatively acquires new knowledge through her interactions in solidarity with the members of the impoverished community. This affective dimension of doubt, the feeling of unease one encounters when confronted with experiences, values, and attitudes that are alien to one’s own, can prompt new knowledge and forms the very basis of sympathetic understanding. The perplexities set out by Addams thus again evince the coterminality of emotion and cognition as they simultaneously hold affective and epistemological significance. This mutually reinforcing relationship between feeling and cognition is similarly developed by Dewey, for whom doubt forms the very basis of a theory of inquiry (Dewey, 1997; Fischer, 2014). As in Addams’s work, doubt features, for Dewey, as the affective prompt for a revisiting of habits. It is the feeling of doubt that spurs us to investigate new responses to (morally) problematic situations, that shakes us out of reliance on habituated, but now inadequate, courses of action. With that said, Addams is much clearer about the fact that such a reconsideration of one’s habits arising from the discomfort caused by “perplexity” requires a close examination and questioning of one’s class and racial background, and the norms and social habits informing same. Thus, Addams writes of the charity worker who is confronted by the disparity between her own advantages and the poverty of those she encounters during her charitable efforts: The young charity visitor who goes from a family living upon a most precarious industrial level to her own home in a prosperous part of the city, if she is sensitive at all, is never free from perplexities which our growing democracy forces upon her. (Addams, 2002b)

It is this perplexity that ultimately changes her intellectual understanding, but also her moral outlook and practice as she develops, cooperatively, the sympathetic knowledge required for change.

Addams in the Contemporary Context Having laid out the prominent themes, which, on my reading, can be found in Addams’s work on affect and emotion, it remains to be seen how Addams can be utilized by critical theorists of the post-​linguistic turn. What does Addams have to offer contemporary scholarship? And how does her work on emotion compare to James’s and Dewey’s theories? I have already noted that anybody looking for a clearly set-​out, metaphysical theory of emotion in Addams’s work will be disappointed, as no such exposition exists.

Affect and Emotion in Jane Addams’s Thought    733 This is due to the fact that Addams simply was not interested in providing such, but was rather concerned with the role of emotion in moral theory and practice. Her focus therefore already differs greatly from James’s and from Dewey’s, although we can still ask whether her conception of feeling replicates the physicalist or anti-​dualist tendencies in their respective theorizations, and what implications this might have for contemporary thought. Again, addressing these questions, though, is not entirely straightforward, as on the one hand, Addams’s depiction of emotion as an almost intuitive, natural, unthinking, and earlier guide to morality that is most widely practiced and evinced by the “primitive” or “crude” men of the impoverished neighborhood, seems to chime with James’s physicalist model of emotion that denies cognition a role in feeling. On the other hand, Addams’s synthesis of emotion and cognition in the ideas of sympathetic knowledge and the felt perplexities that prompt reconsideration of one’s habits again seem anti-​dualistic and rather Deweyan in her equal consideration of emotion and reason. Since Addams never explicitly sets out what, exactly, emotions are, we can only infer that emotions as useful and laudable human capacities for the development of sympathetic understanding are, in themselves, largely conceived in physicalist terms, while their further development into an ethical standard that is neither too emotional, nor too rational, allows for an anti-​dualistic reconfiguration of emotion with cognition that, for Addams, is essential for achieving moral and political change in cooperation with others. With that said, it seems that Addams may be useful to a variety of scholarly projects in the present moment: for those interested in further developing feeling in physicalist terms by ascribing a greater bodily and less cognitive significance to feeling, Addams’s conception of emotion as basic human capacity may prove helpful—​although, given its linkages to an evolutionary view of more or less emotional people is also fraught with difficulty. Those in search of anti-​dualistic theorizing on emotion and cognition, especially as this might inform an ethics of cooperative action, would do well to examine Addams’s concepts of sympathetic knowledge and felt perplexities. Even though these leave intact a physicalist account of emotion, they nonetheless envisage a joint role for both capacities that lies at the very heart of an ethics prompting us to examine our classed, gendered, and racialized prejudices and social norms, holding the capacity to guide our actions to bring about feminist and socially just ends.

Notes 1. The dominant models of emotion are normally understood as the cognitive, the social constructivist, the Darwinian, and the Jamesian models (which together can be referred to as “physicalist,” following Dixon (2003). 2. I have not been able to find any work that provides an in-​depth examination of Addams on affect and emotion, although relatedly, we do have analyses of Addams with regard to care ethics, which of course entails feeling and a focus on empathy in particular—​see e.g., Hamington, 2004 and 2008. 3. For more on the use of this language in Addams, see also Marilyn Fischer, 2010.

734   Clara Fischer 4. Addams notes the importance of caring for the “unworthy” poor in Democracy and Social Ethics and relates the story of an elderly woman who is an opium addict, but is cared for by a charity worker as though she were a family member (Addams, 2002b, p. 30).

References Addams, J. (2002a). A new conscience and an ancient evil. University of Illinois Press. Addams, J. (2002b). Democracy and social ethics. Edited by C. H. Seigfried. University of Illinois Press. Clough, P. T. (2010). The affective turn: Political economy, biomedia, and bodies. In M. Gregg & G. J. Seigworth (Eds.), The Affect Theory Reader (pp. 206–​225). Duke University Press. Coole, D., & Frost, S. (2010a). Introducing the new materialisms. In New materialisms: Ontology, agency, and politics (pp. 1–​43). Duke University Press. Coole, D., & Frost, S. (Eds.). (2010b). New materialisms: Ontology, agency, and politics. Duke University Press. Dewey, J. (1894). The theory of emotion I: Emotional attitudes. The Psychological Review 1 (6), 553–​569. Dewey, J. (1895). The theory of emotion II: The significance of emotions. The Psychological Review 2, 13–​32. Dewey, J. (1997). How we think. Dover Publications. Dixon, T. (2003). From passions to emotions: The creation of a secular psychological category. Cambridge University Press. Fischer, C. (2012). Pragmatists, deliberativists, and democracy: The quest for inclusion. Journal of Speculative Philosophy 26 (3), 497–​515. Fischer, C. (2014). Gendered readings of change: A feminist-​pragmatist approach. Palgrave Macmillan. Fischer, C. (2016). Feminist philosophy, pragmatism, and the “turn to affect”: A genealogical critique. Hypatia: A Journal of Feminist Philosophy 31 (4), 810–​826. Gregg, M., & Seigworth, G. J. (Eds.). (2010). The affect theory reader. Duke University Press. Hamington, M. (2004). Embodied care: Jane Addams, Maurice Merleau-​Ponty and feminist ethics. University of Illinois Press. Hamington, M. (2008). Care ethics and international justice: The cosmopolitanism of Jane Addams and Kwame Anthony Appiah. Social Philosophy Today 23, 149–​160. Hamington, M. (Ed.). (2010). Feminist interpretations of Jane Addams. Pennsylvania State University Press. Jaggar, A. (1992). Love and knowledge: Emotion in feminist epistemology. In E. D. Harvey & K. Okruhlik (Eds.), Women and reason (pp. 115–​142). University of Michigan Press. James, W. (1981). The emotions. In The principles of psychology, vol. 2 (pp. 449–​459). Harvard University Press. James, W. (1987). Romantic love and personal beauty by Henry T. Finck. In The Works of William James: Essay, comment, and reviews. Harvard University Press. Marilyn Fischer. (2010). Trojan women and devil baby tales: Addams on domestic violence. In M. Hamington (Ed.), Feminist interpretations of Jane Addams (pp. 81–​101). Penn State Press. Massumi, B. (2002). Parables for the virtual: Movement, affect, sensation. Duke University Press. Sedgwick, E. K. (2003). Touching feeling: Affect, pedagogy, performativity. Duke University Press.

Affect and Emotion in Jane Addams’s Thought    735 Seigfried, C. H. (2002). Introduction to the Illinois edition. In Democracy and social ethics. University of Illinois Press. Spelman, E. v. (1989). Anger and insubordination. In A. Garry & M. Pearsall (Eds.), Women, knowledge, and reality: Explorations in feminist philosophy (pp. 263–​273). Unwin Hyman. Thompson, S., & Hoggett, P. (Eds.). (2012). Politics and the emotions: The affective turn in contemporary political studies. Continuum. Thrift, N. (2004). Intensities of feeling: Towards a spatial politics of affect. Geografiska Annaler 86 (1), 57–​78. Wollstonecraft, M. (1993). A vindication of the rights of woman. Oxford University Press.

Chapter 38

Epil o g u e Jane Addams’s Contemporary Relevance Joseph Soeters, Patricia M. Shields, and Maurice Hamington

The Oxford Handbook of Jane Addams is an unprecedented collection of commentaries on the work of Jane Addams that demonstrates her ongoing relevance to today’s world. Addams was a pragmatist and, as such, was focused on tangible policies and practices to make the world better. Accordingly, we invited contributors to find contemporary significance in Addams’s published work. However, eschewing excessive abstraction as Addams would, this collection is more than a reconstruction of her thoughts and those of her contemporaries. Instead, the writers for this volume find her observations and ideas about democracy, her emphasis on the often-​neglected power and value of women, her criticism of the perceived usefulness of military matters, her eye for racial relations, and her pragmatism aimed at progress for everyone as still valid and valuable in the twenty-​first century. The renowned political and social scientist Robert Putnam (2021, 8) noted remarkable similarities between the 1870s, 1880s, 1890s, and today’s world. He described those earlier times: “Inequality, political polarization, social dislocation, and cultural narcissism prevailed—​all accompanied (. . . .) by unprecedented technological advances, prosperity, and material well-​being.” But things changed. Following up on the so-​called Gilded Age “came more than six decades of ( . . . ) progress toward greater economic equality, more cooperation in the public square, a stronger social fabric, and a growing culture of solidarity” (Putnam with Romney Garrret, 2021, 10). This, however, did not last. The development toward more equality, cooperation, and altruism ended during the mid-​1960s, although its legacy remains in many spheres of life. Unions have lost much of their power, inequality and poverty have increased substantially again, people became competitive and polarized in everyday life rather than fellows supporting each other, and solidarity became an eccentric word again. Putnam does not just display a view. He underpins his assessment with sound data and depicts these historical changes

738    Joseph Soeters, Patricia M. Shields, and Maurice Hamington with the so-​called I-​We-​I curve. This curve indicates that the Western world developed from an “I”-​society into a “We”-​society and then back to an “I”-​society. Interestingly, Putnam refers to Addams as one of the progressives who did her utmost to ameliorate the living conditions of the poor in her neighborhoods and later connected this to nationwide and international efforts to create a better world (Putnam with Romney Garrett, 2021, 331–​332). In his view, Addams is a prime example to learn from while trying to mitigate the “I”-​thinking that tends to dominate today’s world again. This epilogue summarizes four main areas in which contemporary scholars from different disciplines can still excavate Addams’s words for benefit. We selected four areas of modern contentiousness for which Addams’s methods and analysis remain helpful: inequality, immigration, militarization and unstable peace, and threats to democracy. Each section discusses the contemporary challenge and then brings Addams into a conversation about the issue.

Social, Economic, and Gender Inequality Inequalities in income and welfare have increased substantially over the last decades. Ostensibly, globalization aimed to bring relief and advancement to people in many places. And it did have some positive impact. Many previously so-​called developing countries, such as China, South Korea, and Mexico, have caught up with the Western world; China, for instance, has become the world’s second-​largest economy. Yet, recent years have witnessed extreme winners and losers through globalization (e.g., Piketty 2019). The winners are few but significant; the losers are many. Such dichotomies of economic well-​being happen worldwide, including in affluent societies like the United States. Accounts by journalists (Vance 2016) and sociologists such as Arlie Russell Hochschild (2016) have made it very clear that today’s middle-​and working-​class families (both traditional and nontraditional) often struggle to sustain themselves economically. They are more fragile. Incidents such as divorces, job loss, or health problems may suddenly lead to unexpected marginalization, poverty, and even homelessness. Large companies such as Starbucks and Amazon may pay proper wages. Still, they go to great lengths to prevent unionization of their employees, hence suppressing their voice and opportunity to mitigate employment-​related risks. Furthermore, the overall economic standing of African Americans is no better than it was during the civil rights movement of the 1960s (Long and Van Dam 2020). When it comes to improving the living conditions of Black men, women, and children, including mortality rates, homeownership, and education, “America has taken its foot off the gas” (Putnam with Romney Garret 2021, 240). Comparable developments, particularly concerning minorities, also occur in the so-​called welfare states of western Europe, such as the Netherlands.

Epilogue   739 If she were still alive, Addams would stand up for those people, at home and abroad. Like she did in her own life, she would try to overcome the stereotypical thinking about poor people as victims of individual faults and weaknesses. Addams would criticize glorifying and idolizing the rich as superior and intelligent people “who deserve what they earn.” She would try to persuade employers to reach for acceptable solutions to labor disputes as she did during the Pullman Strike (Addams 1912). It is not difficult to imagine Addams today criticizing Amazon’s and Starbucks’ attempts to smother workers’ rights. She would aim to influence the general social climate and press governments to take measures, for instance, concerning taxes, that aim to create more egalitarian societies. She would likely concur with French economist Thomas Piketty’s (2019) suggestions to stop the growing inequalities in the income and wealth distribution inside and across nations. Addams would likely be aghast that gender inequality remains virulent in many places. Although women’s educational level, earning position, and autonomy in the Western world have considerably improved over the last decades (Putnam with Romney Garret 2021, 245ff.), the gains are much less noticeable in many other spots on the planet. Gender(s) equality requires continuous attention from politicians, activists, and researchers. Suppose one would doubt the value and impact of Addams’s emphasis on everyday practical experiences and fairly casual observations. In that case, there is rigorous research today showing how correct she was in stressing the importance of gender equality. Beath et al. (2013) revealed that emancipation of women in traditional, male-​ dominated societies indeed is possible. In field experiments across numerous villages in Afghanistan, they found that development programs stressing gender equality improve outcomes specific to female participation. These benefits include economic, social, and political activities, which increase mobility and income generation (Beath et al. 2013, 2017). Beath et al.’s findings concur with Nobel Prize Winners Abhijit Banerjee and Esther Duflo (2012), who conducted research globally, particularly in India. Here, they demonstrated that the poor are, in fact, more rational, risk-​taking, and entrepreneurial than most people, including aid experts, would expect. Moreover, these studies, which use randomized controlled trials in the field, reveal results consistent with Addams’s observations about the poor immigrants in Chicago. Practice-​oriented contemporary research confirms Addams’s observations that when women and people below the poverty line obtain more societal decision-​making power and influence, they are likely to leave society better off. This more significant influence is expected to decrease gender and more general social and economic inequality in many spheres of life, at all levels of living together, from neighborhoods to international relations. This confirmation is based on today’s most rigorous methodological and scientific standards, methods unavailable in Addams’s times. Interestingly, female scholars Fotini Christia and Esther Duflo play a prominent role in this top-​notch research that is so much in line with Jane Addams’s thoughts; a century or so earlier, women were not even allowed to enter academia.

740    Joseph Soeters, Patricia M. Shields, and Maurice Hamington

Immigration and Refugee Crises Addams worked in Chicago at a time when it witnessed one of the most significant influxes of immigration in US history. Due to climate changes (drought, aridity, flooding, hurricanes), wars, violent conflicts and repression, and the pull of more advanced economies and societies, people increasingly seek refuge in places outside their place or country of birth. Forced migration is one of the world’s intractable problems. It leads to brain drains in departure areas and upheaval in arrival societies. Consequently, democracy in the hosting, increasingly diverse societies tends to be at risk (Mounk 2022). There are significant responses at the borders, including technological, legal, and, if deemed necessary, military control; borders become barriers to human flourishing (e.g., Massey, Durand, and Pren 2016; Mau 2021). National borders are being fortified with the erection of fences and walls. If asylum seekers present themselves by boat on the coast of Australia, they are sent or towed away to places far-​off, as a policy of “offshore processing.” The UK government is putting comparable plans in place (e.g., Cooney 2022). In other nations, such as Greece, asylum seekers are put away in specially designed camps isolated from society. Anxiety increases among host nationals in the societies of arrival, often in the Western hemisphere. Many citizens, not all, fear the competition of the newcomers; the scramble for housing, jobs, income; and, yes, the preservation of their cultural and religious identity. This anxiety influences everything, including traditional political relations and power balances. The survival of conventional political parties is threatened. Populism incited by new political parties is rising, and a reluctance to welcome more asylum-​seekers is growing (Mounk 2022). Nonetheless, the enthusiasm European politicians and citizens displayed in hosting refugees fleeing from the war in Ukraine in 2022 was surprisingly large. Explicit and implicit bias result in different treatment for various refugees, immigrants, and minority identities. In this volume, Varner (2023) and True (2023) mention how Addams stressed the importance of cosmic patriotism, hospitality, and cosmopolitanism in responding to foreigners and immigrants. Addams consistently pointed to the challenging living and work circumstances that immigrants faced as new arrivals in the United States (e.g., Addams 1910). For her, it was essential to help the dominating Anglo-​Protestant citizenry get beyond their stereotypical thinking about southern and eastern Europeans, including Russians and Jewish people from Russia (Fischer 2014). Addams, however, felt “diffident” to say a lot about the fate and position of African Americans, who constituted only a tiny minority in the Chicago area at the time. She was interested in helping to promote the case of African Americans (together with W. E. B. du Bois and Ida B. Wells), but her thoughts about African American culture were often somewhat traditional (Fischer 2014; Moskop 2023).

Epilogue   741 With the benefit of hindsight, it is surprising to see she did not spend many words on the case of America’s indigenous people, who were still suffering tremendously during her lifetime. The interests of the indigenous people were out of her sight, and perhaps she did not feel comfortable writing about unfamiliar topics. She was not alone in this respect. Social scientists of her time, with whom Addams affiliated, experienced similar ethnic myopia, missing the opportunity to develop profound sociology of Native Americans—​other than describing their folkways as illustrations of more general insights (e.g., Sumner 1906). This intellectual neglect was part of a more general phenomenon. Putnam (with Romney Garrett 2021, 336–​ 338) describes in “a cautionary tale” that many progressive reformers in the “We”-​society did not escape from white nationalism and segregationism. For example, President Woodrow Wilson implemented racist policies such as Jim Crow-​type segregation within the US federal workforce (Yellin 2013). Furthermore, significant parts of FDR’s New Deal ultimately discriminated against people of color and women (Putnam 2021, 337). These are faults one should try to avoid in today’s world, a world that needs to be all-​inclusive. Addams’s efforts to enlighten opinions about immigrants, women, and African Americans’ living and working conditions and improve these conditions are still inspiring (e.g., Addams 1902; Fischer 2019). Even if people in hosting societies nowadays distinguish between various sorts of refugees, immigrants, and minorities—​as the progressive reformers did—​optimism seems possible. Following Putnam and Romney Garrett (2021, 315ff.; Mounk 2022, 253ff.), one may expect many positive developments to occur: decreasing perceptions of differences between people, better opportunities to integrate newcomers into the established society, grassroots movements of civilians based on moral awakening and universal solidarity, and astute political leadership. All of this will be conducive to dealing appropriately and decently with the challenges of immigration and the refugee crises. Addams is a prime example to pursue here.

Militarization and Unstable Peace Although “the better angels of our nature” seem to indicate otherwise (Pinker 2011), militarization (i.e., more spending on security and more reliance on military solutions to problems) continues to grow. Reports by the renowned Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) demonstrate that even though the current sales of weapons are lower than during the heydays of the Cold War, they are still relatively high and actually on the rise again. Moreover, the sudden invasion of Ukraine by Russia in 2022 resulted in many European nations discarding their longstanding caution and increasing military expenditures. Nations want to defend their borders as well as those of their allies. They also want to secure and expand their interests in strategic resources, such as gas, oil, and precious

742    Joseph Soeters, Patricia M. Shields, and Maurice Hamington metals such as lithium. And, as the war in Ukraine illustrates, some of them do not eschew military actions to do so. Instead, such, often gruesome, military actions are accompanied by narratives depicting old grievances, complaints about old injustice that needs to be repaired, or campaigns to bring freedom and democracy to places where such ideals are far from realized. For sure, there is also a “business” component in this. Weapons industries have commercial interests and want to raise their profit margins. Increasing weapons sales are legitimized by arguments that emphasize the need to defend oneself and one’s interests. In this way, wealthy Saudi Arabia has purchased huge numbers of aircraft from US military industries, a development that the then-​Trump government applauded. The invasion in Ukraine gave the “defend oneself ” argument even more weight, particularly in Europe, hence increasing the overall degree of militarization on that continent. Also, the fear of falling behind in military innovation is presented as a solid argument to push military expenditures even further (e.g., Dunlap 2011). In Russia, the increasing gas and oil sales revenues have been used to modernize and expand their military forces and equipment. In this connection, permanent war readiness and the production of weaponry also come with costs associated with post-​operation destruction, waste, and pollution (Reno 2019). In all this, it remains surprising to see how few women participate in the decision-​ making on military affairs and the crafting of peace in particular. Many western European nations have appointed women defense ministers (Germany, Belgium, the Netherlands, Portugal, Slovenia). This progress may be somewhat superficial given that “Only 4% of the signatories to peace agreements between 1992 and 2011 were women and only 9% were negotiators” (di Giovanni 2021). In ending the military operations in Afghanistan and during the war in Ukraine, women played a minor role in strategic decision-​making, as True (2023) points out in this volume. This absence is surprising because women have been instrumental in forging peace in long-​lasting conflicts in Liberia, Northern Ireland, and the Philippines. It seems gender perspectives are genuinely needed in such protracted, tedious conflicts, but—​mirabile dictu—​they still do not count enough (di Giovanni 2021). Addams argued that women should share in social leadership, because exclusive male leadership often manifested in a militaristic approach (Addams 1906). She thought everyday problems and challenges in city administration were too often infused with values and ways of thinking and acting that belong to military life but not to the civilian atmosphere. Addams disagreed with the idea, still prevalent today, that peace would be secured by the preparation for war (Addams 1906, 6). Throughout her life, she was particularly ambitious in finding ways to create peace when war and violent conflict are seen as the most apparent solution to conflictual challenges (Shields 2017, 33–​34). Her pacifism drew harsh public criticism when she delivered an address in New York’s Carnegie Hall titled “Revolt Against War.” Her address referred to World War I, which raged in Europe. This address changed the public’s perception of her (Hamington 2009, 89). In addition, Addams discussed the disconnection between decision-​making on military action—​frequently by older men—​and the youngsters who suffered the

Epilogue   743 horrible consequences of war (Hamington 2009, 90). Unfortunately, this disconnect still seems operant, as illustrated by the war in Ukraine. The contributions to the Oxford Handbook of Jane Addams by Ruetenik (2023), Pratt (2023), Shields and Soeters (2023), Ruffa and Tulp (2023), and True (2023) elaborate how Addams’s views on pacifism and the crafting of peace in an international context, including peacekeeping, are still important today. Current academic arguments and political analyses demonstrate there is a great deal of human potential for peace, which is entirely in line with what Addams (1922) was pleading and acting for. Moreover, today’s research in psychology, sociology, political science, and anthropology confirms the points that Addams was advancing throughout her life (Fry 2007; Pinker 2011; Horgan 2014; Roy 2019). However, much to many people’s enormous regret, such pleas received a solid hit by Russia’s gruesome operations in Ukraine, starting in 2022. Yet, Addams’s strategies around peace could inform ways to proceed when the Ukraine war ends or how to stop it from escalating.

Threats to Democracy There is reason to believe that optimism about the future of democracies is unjustified. The number of liberal democracies is going down worldwide, and so is the quality of democratic decision-​making (Levitsky and Ziblatt 2019). Analysts speak of the erosion of democracy’s social foundations (Calhoun et al. 2022). In Western democracies, particularly in the Anglo-​Saxon atmosphere, the “winner-​takes-​it-​all” system leads political parties to endeavor to win, whatever it takes. Whatever it takes includes blunt, “vital” lies, policies that suppress voter turnout, voter exclusion, and impactful changes in the composition of voter districts (i.e., gerrymandering). Relatively new but potentially consequential is the introduction of laws and regulations that enable politicians in power to interfere in the outcomes of elections (Mounk 2022, 273). Finally, there is the impact of mass media steered by the agenda of capital investors. Overall, the growing concentration of financial resources (Piketty 2019) is unlikely to foster democracy; on the contrary, it tends to undermine it (Schwalbe 2015, 8). Financers—​few but big—​impact general policy directions of political parties and often have a stake in appointing who is going to be at the parties’ strategic apex. An adjacent development concerns the rise of populism and authoritarianism again. One does not need to be as worried as novelist Elias Canetti (1984 [1960]) when he toiled on his Crowds and Power, although some people undoubtedly will. Yet, there are enough indications that authoritarianism on waves of populism is taking off again worldwide. Populism and authoritarianism are threatening to democracy as they imply the rejection of democratic rules of the game, the denial of the legitimacy of political opponents (who are framed as not belonging to the “real people” or “the silent majority”), the toleration and sometimes encouragement of violence, and the readiness to curtail civil liberties of opponents, including the media (Levitsky and Ziblatt 2019, 65–​67). These

744    Joseph Soeters, Patricia M. Shields, and Maurice Hamington political expressions constitute anti-​pluralism, as they are voiced by politicians who claim to be the only and rightful representative of one particular population group, “the only group that counts” (Müller 2017, 105ff.). Anti-​pluralism attacks the heart of democracy because, in democratic decision-​making, building coalitions consisting of different political factions are often needed. Such solidarity requires the ability to make tough concessions, lengthen time horizons, and temporarily overlook disagreements to find common moral ground (Levitsky and Ziblatt 2019, 219). In general, democracy is not easy to obtain or maintain. It requires effective institutional arrangements at all levels of society that are perceived to be trustful and fair. In vivo experiments demonstrated that the implementation of community policing in various parts of the Global South was not as successful as in the Western hemisphere. The experiments did not improve citizen-​police trust, promote greater cooperation of citizens with the police, or reduce the crime rate (Blair, Weinstein, Christia et al. 2021). These disappointing results were related to a lack of resources, unstable support by the police leadership, and a fluctuating police workforce. It takes more than good intentions to get democracy to work. Indeed, flawed institutional arrangements undermine democracy. Addams argued for a rich understanding of democracy from the outset of her work in Chicago. In her first book, Democracy and Social Ethics (Addams 1902), she identified the essence of democracy as “the identification with the common lot”; for her, “democracy constantly raises the value and function of each member of the community” (Addams 1902, 80). Addams felt that a lack of democracy contributed to a society where the needs of the poor and the working men and women went unanswered (Addams 1902, 96–​97). Democracy, in her view, includes mutual care through sympathetic understanding, particularly of the ones at the bottom of society. For Addams, there was no substitute for direct interaction at the grassroots in neighborhoods where nearby relations enable citizens to develop sympathetic understanding of the “other.” Women, as Addams claims, must be the primary actors in creating such a grassroots level of democracy (Fischer 2019, 30) while they engage in democratic expression as they organize and take part in platforms to identify and solve problems. In Addams’s view, democracy is simple but expansive. It consists of providing education for all (Hamington 2009, 161) and arranging practicalities essential for citizenship in a cosmopolitan society, including, for instance, collecting garbage. Democracy is more than mass movements in politics and elections now and then. It is also about community engagement in decision-​making and listening; it is also about power from below (Fox Piven 2008). Addams advocates the opposite of today’s rising populism and authoritarianism, just as she contradicts the legitimacy of overpowering democratic practices by the wealthy and the mighty.

Jane Addams and Today’s World Addams was unique in combining practice with theories. She could observe everyday occurrences, locate broad connections, and articulate vision and social imagination.

Epilogue   745 Her pragmatist sociology and philosophy entailed reflective engagement. Everything she did was aimed at moral and social progress. She was a woman of deeds, immediately followed by reflection, closely connected with further action. For Addams, the personal is political and reflected in praxis. At Hull House, she actively engaged in bettering the conditions and perspectives of the needing by holding others in better conditions co-​ responsible for this task and encouraging them to participate. A practice that cannot become obsolete. Were she alive, Addams would have developed ideas and plans to respond to many of today’s challenges. Her responses would be multifold, but there is a common element in her views at the meta-​level. She expressed the worth of increasing cooperation among people and decreasing zero-​sum competition. This message is taken up again and elaborated on today by social thinkers such as Richard Sennett (2013), Robert Putnam (2021), and Martin Nowak (2012). All manner of academic tools, such as statistics, computer simulations, and theorizing, demonstrate that more cohesion and cooperation among people and nations is better for solving the challenges ahead of us. They all present strong academic, rigorous evidence that confirms Addams’s work and theories as a pragmatist, sociologist, and social philosopher. Jane Addams is still relevant, perhaps now more than before.

References Addams, J. 1902 (2002). Democracy and Social Ethics. Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press Addams, J. 1906 (2007). Newer Ideals of Peace. Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press. Addams, J. 1910 (1990). Twenty Years at Hull House: History of the Settlement House and Social Reformism in Chicago’s West Side. Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press. Addams, J. 1912. “A Modern Lear.” Survey 39 (November 2): 131–​137. Addams, J. 1922 (2002). Peace and Bread in Times of War. Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press. Banerjee, A., and E. Duflo. 2012. Poor Economics: Barefoot Hedge-​fund Managers, DIY Doctors, and the Surprising Truth about Life on Less than $1 a Day. London: Penguin Books. Beath, A., F. Christia, R. Enikopolov. 2013. “Empowering Women through Development Aid: Evidence from a Field Experiment in Afghanistan.” American Political Science Review 107(3): 540–​557. Beath, A., F. Christia, and R. Enikopolov. 2017. “Direct Democracy and Resource Allocation: Experimental Evidence from Afghanistan.” Journal of Development Economics 124(1): 199–​213. Blair, G., J. M. Weinstein, F. Christia et al. 2021. “Community Policing Does Not Build Citizen Trust in the Police or Reduce Crime in the Global South.” Science 374 (1098): 1–​14. Calhoun, C., D. Parameshwar Gaonkar, and Ch. Taylor. 2022. Degenerations of Democracy. Boston: Harvard University Press. Canetti, E. 1984 (1960). Crowds and Power. New York: Farrar, Strauss and Giroux. Cooney, Chr. 2022. “First Refugees to Be Told This Week of Their Relocation to Rwanda.” The Guardian (May 9).

746    Joseph Soeters, Patricia M. Shields, and Maurice Hamington Di Giovanni, J. 2021. “Why Can’t Women End Wars?” Foreign Policy, October 10. Dunlap, Ch. Jr. 2011. “The Military-​Industrial Complex.” Daedalus 140(3): 135–​147. Fischer M. 2014. “Addams on Cultural Pluralism, European Immigrants and African Americans.” The Pluralist 9(3): 38–​58. Fischer M. 2019. Evolutionary Theorizing: Constructing “Democracy and Social Ethics.” Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press. Fry, D. P. 2007. Beyond War: The Human Potential for Peace. Oxford/​New York: Oxford University Press. Fox Piven, F. 2008. “Can Power from Below Change the World?” American Sociological Review 73(1): 1–​14. Hamington, M. 2009. The Social Philosophy of Jane Addams. Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press. Horgan, J. 2014. The End of War. San Francisco: McSweeney’s. Levitsky S., and D. Ziblatt. 2019. How Democracies Die: What History Reveals about Our Future. London: Penguin Books. Long, H., and A. Van Dam. 2020. “The Black-​White Economic Divide Is as Wide as It Was in 1968.” The Washington Post (June 4) https://​www.was​hing​tonp​ost.com/​busin​ess/​2020/​06/​ 04/​econo​mic-​div​ide-​black-​hou​seho​lds/​, accessed May 23, 2022. Masssey, D. S., J. Durand, and K. A. Pren. 2016. “Why Border Management Backfired.” American Journal of Sociology 121(5): 1557–​1600. Mau, S. 2021. Sortiermaschinen. Die Neuerfindung der Grenze im 21. Jahrhundert. München: C.H. Beck. Moskop, W. W. 2023. “Intersections of Race, Gender, and Class in Jane Addams’s Political Friendships.” In The Oxford Handbook of Jane Addams, edited by P. Shields, M. Hamington, & J. Soeters. New York: Oxford University Press. Mounk, Y. 2022. The Great Experiment: How to Make Diverse Democracies Work. London etc.: Bloomsbury Publishing. Müller, J.-​W. 2017. What Is Populism? London: Penguin Books. Nowak, M. A. 2012. SuperCooperators: Altruism, Evolution, and Why We Need Each Other to Succeed. New York etc.: Free Press. Piketty, Th. 2019. Capital et Idéologie. Paris: Editions du Seuil. Pinker, S. 2011. The Better Angels of Our Nature: The Decline of Violence in History and Its Causes. London: Allen Lane. Pratt, S. 2023. “Vital Lies and the Fate of Democracy.” In The Oxford Handbook of Jane Addams, edited by P. Shields, M. Hamington, & J. Soeters. New York: Oxford University Press. Putnam, R., with Sh. Romney Garrett. 2021. The Upswing: How We Came Together a Century Ago and How We Can Do It Again. London: Swift Press. Reno, J. O. 2019. Military Waste: The Unexpected Consequences of Permanent War Readiness. Oakland, California: University of California Press. Roy, A. 2019. My Seditious Heart: Collected Non-​Fiction. London: Hamish Hamilton. Ruetenik, T. 2023. “Jane Addams, Expansive Masculinity, and the Fragility of War Virtues.” In The Oxford Handbook of Jane Addams, edited by P. Shields, M. Hamington, & J. Soeters. New York: Oxford University Press. Ruffa, C., and C. Tulp 2023. “Strange encounters? Contemporary field researchers and six lessons from Jane Addams.” In The Oxford Handbook of Jane Addams, edited by P. Shields, M. Hamington, & J. Soeters. New York: Oxford University Press.

Epilogue   747 Russell Hochschild, A. 2016. Strangers in Their Own Land: Anger and Mourning on the American Right. New York/​London: The New Press. Schwalbe, M. 2015. Rigging the Game: How Inequality is Reproduced in Everyday Life. 2nd ed. New York/​Oxford: Oxford University Press. Sennett, R. 2013. Together: The Rituals, Pleasures and Politics of Cooperation. London: Penguin Books. Shields, P. 2017. Jane Addams: Progressive Pioneer of Peace, Philosophy, Sociology, Social Worl and Public Administration. Cham (Switzerland): Springer. Shields, P., and J. Soeters. 2023. “Jane Addams and The Noble Art Of Peaceweaving.” In The Oxford Handbook of Jane Addams, edited by P. Shields, M. Hamington, & J. Soeters. New York: Oxford University Press. Sumner, W. G. 1906 (2007). Folkways: A Study of Mores, Manners, Customs and Morals. New York: Cosimo Classics. True, J. 2023. “Peace Pragmatism: Jane Addams’s Role in Feminist International Relations.” In The Oxford Handbook of Jane Addams, edited by P. Shields, M. Hamington, & J. Soeters. New York: Oxford University Press. Vance, J. D. 2016. Hillbilly Elegy. A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis. London: HarperCollins. Varner, T. 2023. “Jane Addams and Twenty-​First Century Refugee Resettlement: Toward the Substitution of Nurture for Warfare.” In The Oxford Handbook of Jane Addams, edited by P. Shields, M. Hamington, & J. Soeters. New York: Oxford University Press. Yellin, E. 2013. Racism in the Nation’s service: Government workers and the Color Line in Woodrow Wilson’s America. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press.

Index

Note: Tables, figures, and boxes are indicated by t, f, and b following the page number; notes are indicated by “n” following the page number and followed by the note number. Abaka, E., 162 Abbott, Edith attended Webb’s course on methods of investigation, 655 at Chicago School of Civics and Philanthropy, 658, 695 leadership roles of, 232–​33 as resident of Hull House, 76, 695 social scientific research, 81, 650 writings of, 40 Abbott, Grace as director of Immigrants’ Protective League, 232 as director of US Children’s Bureau, 231, 233 leadership roles of, 224, 235, 236 on next generation, 232–​33 as resident of Hull House, 76 social scientific research, 81 writings of, 40 Abbott, Lyman, 396, 401 ableism, 609, 615 Ableism in Academia (Gillberg), 615 Abrams, Stacey, 49 Ackerman-​Leist, Philip, 675, 679 Action for Afghanistan, Australia, 421–​22 Addams, Anna, 685 Addams, John Huy, 3, 572–​73, 684, 690 Addams, personal life early childhood, 3–​4, 4t, 684 education at Rockford Female Seminary, 4, 684–​90, 699, 702 health issues, 612, 690 key life events, 4t known to burn letters, 626

lesbian relationships, 266–​67, 269, 272, 294, 626, 647 religious principles, 374, 392, 686 Addams, Sarah Weber, 3, 684, 685 Addams, speeches of “Advantages and Disadvantages of a Broken Inheritance” (Atlanta University), 247 at American Friends Service Committee reunion (1920), 487 “Americanization” (1919), 64–​65 “Bread Giver” (1880), 688 Carnegie Hall Addresses, 290, 434, 742 “Democracy or Militarism?” (1899), 120 “A Modern Lear,” 14, 83–​84, 118–​20, 287, 339, 358 National Conference of Social Work (1930), 24–​25 “Pacifism and Patriotism in Time of War” (1917), 178 on patriarchy at Rockford College (1895), 286 response to Russian Decree of Peace, 61 “Revolt Against War,” 742 on sense of duty to family (1912), 293 “The Subjective Necessity for Social Settlements” (1894), 115–​16, 172, 174, 175–​ 76, 295, 358, 569–​70, 651 timeline of, 4t Universal Peace Conference (1904), 433, 439n6 use of term “feminist” (1913-​1914), 290 valedictory speech at Rockford College, 373, 689 “Women and the State” (1911), 288–​89

750   Index Addams studies, maturation of, 3–​34 book and commentary timeline, 6t influence in philosophy, 13–​20 influence in public administration, 20–​23 influence in social work, 23–​26 influence in sociology, 7–​12 key events and works, 4t social amelioration and public sociology, 12–​13 “Advantages and Disadvantages of a Broken Inheritance” (Addams), 247, 248 affect and emotion, in Addams’s thought, 723–​35 in contemporary context, 732–​33 emotion as basis of ethical standards, 726–​31 emotions as basis of “perplexity,” 731–​32 feminist theory, pragmatism, and emotion, 723–​25 theory of feeling, 725–​26 affectionate interpretation, 83–​86, 358, 366 Afghanistan, withdrawal from (2021), 421–​22 African Americans. See also diversity and inclusion in organizations, Addams and Du Bois on in Chicago, 503 contributions omitted from history, 162 economic standing of, 738 educational discrimination against, 154–​55 gynecological medical abuse of women, 613 JA’s advocacy for, 294–​95, 485, 740, 741 JA’s political relationships with, 245–​50 lynchings of, 157, 246–​47 racist attitudes toward, 157, 741 agency. See social work, epistemic agency in contemporary, and Addams Alessandri, Marianna, 494–​95 Alinsky, Saul, 378, 382 Alonso, Harriet Hymn, 430 Alternatives to Detention programs, 482 Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America (ACWA), 66, 114 Amazon.com, 738, 739 American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), 75, 208 American Council on Education, 698 American Federation of Labor (AFL), 113, 283

American First populism, in 1923, 65–​67 American Friends Service Committee (ASFC), 47, 487, 494, 495 American Journal of Sociology, 9, 11, 114, 585, 587 American Philosophical Association, 191, 192 American Pragmatism, Addams and Dewey on, 169–​86 child welfare, 177–​78 intellectual entanglement, 171–​73 philosophy as method, 170–​7 1 points of divergence, 178–​80 shared philosophical pragmatism, 173–​75 social reform ethics, 175–​77, 182n12 vision of publicly engaged pragmatism, 180–​81 American Railway Union (ARU), 118, 579 American Social Science Association (ASSA), 570 American Sociological Association, 9, 13 “Americanization” speech by JA (1919), 64–​65 “America Stupid Toward Aliens, says J. Addams” (Muncie Star Press), 487 AmeriCorps, 377 Amiel, Henri Frédéric, 514 Anchor Institutions Task Force, 698 Anderson, Mary, 376–​77 animals, moral standing of, 675–​76 Anthony, Susan B., 378 Anti-​Imperialist League, 101 Ao Naga tribe, caring spaces (Amrita Banerjee and Karilemla), 360–​61, 365 Arendt, Hannah, 50 Aristotle, 571 Arizona Border Recon, 491 arms industry, 418, 742 Arms Trade Treaty (1913), 418 “Arts at Hull-​House” (Addams), 694 Atlanta Sociological Laboratory, 163–​64 Atlanta University, 155, 161, 247 Phylon (journal), 162 Attlee, Clement, 607 auctoritas, 569, 571–​73 autoethnography, 583 autotelic activity, 340n8 Aveling, Eleanor, 264 Axelrod, Robert, 214–​15

Index   751 Babbie, Earl, 567 Bacharach, S. B., 213 Backward Glance, A (Wharton), 272 Bakhtin, Mikhail, 262 Balch, Emily Greene, 16, 273, 442 Baldwin, John, 130–​31 Bamberger, P., 213 Banerjee, Abjijit, 739 Banerjee, Amrita, 360–​61, 365 Barbusse, Henri, 514 Barnett, Canon Samuel, 516–​17, 646, 647, 648 Barnett, Henrietta, 646, 647 Beard, Charles, 373 Beath, A., 739 Bebel, August, 288–​89 Bell, Christine, 418 bend toward justice concept. See justice, Addams and Mead on benevolence, ethic of, 42, 314–​16, 317, 320, 357, 685 Benhabib, Seyla, 352, 353 Bennet, Samuel, 175 Bentley, Arthur, 39 Bernstein, Marver H., 382 Bernstein, Richard, 96 Bethune, Mary McLeod, 376 Beveridge, William, 606–​7, 614, 650 Biden, Joseph R., 55, 480 big data, 585–​86, 590–​91, 597 Biology of War, The (Nicolai), 515 Birth of a Nation (film), 295 Black, Clementina, 654 Black Lives Matter, 49 Boas, Franz, 155 Boggs, Grace Lee, 16 Bok, Edward, 266, 269 Boltanski, Luc, 406 Booth, Charles, 9, 156, 264, 531 Boston marriage. See lesbian relationships, of Addams Bourne, Randolph, 70, 179 Bove, V., 451 Bradley, F. H., 173, 174 Brailsford, H. N., 515 Branson, T. S., 338–​39 “Bread Giver” (Addams), 688 Breckinridge, Sophonisba, 40, 158, 650, 695

Brett, George, 267 Briggs, Asa, 319 Brinton, Ellen Starr, 626 British Social Model (BSM), 611 Brown, John, 281 Brown, Victoria Bissell, 119, 279, 629–​30, 684, 686 Bruegel, Pieter, 327, 328f Bruere, Henry, 373 Brumstead, Horace, 155 Bryan, Mary Lynn McCree, 263, 625, 627, 628 Bryan, William Jennings, 688 Bulkley, Mildred E., 654, 655 Bureau Men, 21, 306, 309–​10, 317, 372, 374, 375, 376, 380, 381 Bureau Men and Settlement Women (Stivers), 21 Buried Temple (Maeterlinck), 63 Burnier, DeLysa, 376, 381 Burns, John, 647 Buroway, Michael, 13, 591     Cabot, Ella Wyman, 16 Caird, Edward, 173, 174 Campus Compact, 698–​99 Canada, settlement-​house movement, 648 Canadian Sociological Association, Canadian Review of Sociology, 591 Canetti, Elias, 743 care-​centered leadership and democratic community, 75–​92 care-​centered governance and full life, 89 construction of care-​centered communities, 81–​83 development of, 77–​81 marketization of care and community, 86–​89 sympathetic understanding and affectionate interpretation, 79, 83–​86 care deficits, 89, 122 care ethics. See feminist care ethics care political theory, 111–​12. See also labor unions, in a caring democracy Caring Democracy (Tronto), 120–​21 caring space in-​between, 360–​62, 364 Carlyle, Thomas, 394

752   Index Carnegie Foundation, 696, 697 Carson, Rachel, 665 Carson, Sara, 648 Cassano, Graham, 122–​23 Centre for Justice Exchange, Canada, 595 Chamberlain, Neville, 421 Chanters, Jessie A., 14 Charity Organization Society (COS), 23–​24, 150, 151, 158, 159, 570, 705, 707 charity workers/​family visitors, 42, 80, 82–​83, 119, 312, 317, 356–​58, 363, 373, 691, 726–​32. See also immigrants Chartrand, Vicki, 595, 596, 597 Chiapello, Eve, 406 Chicago Board of Education, 530 City Council, 530 Conciliation Board, 580 Chicago Association for the Advancement of Colored People, 157 Chicago Bar Association, 230 Chicago City Club, Committee on Education, 131 Chicago Congress on Social Settlements, 535 Chicago Federal Commission on Industrial Relations, 131 Chicago Garment Strike (1910), 66–​67 Chicago School of Civics and Philanthropy, 695 Chicago Urban League, 295 Chicago Woman’s Club (CWC), 225, 230, 238n6 child labor, critique and reforms, 112, 113, 114, 177–​78, 236, 316, 319, 331–​32, 334–​35, 528 “Children’s Games” (Bruegel), 327, 328f Christadora House, New York, 648 Christia, Fotini, 450, 739 “Christianity and Democracy” (Dewey), 172 Christian principles, 651. See also public administration and social equity, and Addams; sociology, legacy of Addams in chronic illness. See disabled and ill women, and Addams’s pragmatist feminism circular response framework (Follett), 210 citizen experience, 659 Citizens Committee of Garment Workers, 131 civic belonging, 486–​94

Civic Design Studio (MIT), 555 civic engagement, in higher education, 696–​702 Civic Federation of Chicago, 283 civic housekeeping. See municipal housekeeping Civilian Conservation Corps, 233 Civil Service Commission, 236 Cleveland, Grover, 118, 579–​81 climate change. See social ethics for ecological and community resilience, and Addams Clinton, Bill, 86–​87 Cochran, Molly, 179 Coit, Stanton, 569, 647 Colby, Vineta, 57 College Settlement Association (CSA), 151 College Settlement of Philadelphia (CSP), 152 Collet, Clara, 650, 654 Columbia University, 234 Coman, Katherine, 647 Commager, Henry, 589 Common Faith, A (Dewey), 181n5 common good, 88 community-​engaged research, 596 Community Mental Health Act, 318 community of inquiry, 313–​14 Comte, Auguste, 7, 399, 403, 404, 505, 509, 512 Condition of the Working Class in England in 1844, The (Engels), 227, 287, 527 Conference of the Study of the Negro Problems (Du Bois), 155 conflict dynamics. See cooperation, Addams and Follett on conflict zone research. See field research, and lessons from Addams Conrad, Joseph, 514 contemporary relevance, of Addams, 737–​47 immigration and refugee crises, 740–​41 legacy of JA, 744–​45 militarization and unstable peace, 741–​43 social, economic, and gender inequality, 738–​39 threats to democracy, 743–​44 Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW), 417 Cook County Charities, 535

Index   753 Cook County League, 246 Cooper, Anna Julia, 16 cooperation, Addams and Follett on, 205–​21 convergence of theories on, 212–​17 current implications, 217–​18 Follett on handling conflict in work situations, 209–​12 JA on handling conflict in work situations, 207–​9 Corn Mother myth, 67, 69 corporate social responsibility, 377 Corporation for National and Community Service, President’s Higher Education Community Service Honor Roll, 696–​97 Coser, Lewis A., 130, 135 cosmic patriotism, 488–​91, 740 Council of Women’s Trade Unions of Chicago, 114 Courtney, M. E., 25 COVID-​19 pandemic, 590, 592, 593–​94, 606, 608 Crane, Caroline Bartlett, 671 Crawley, Ernest, 57 Creative Experience (Follett), 206, 210 Crisis, The (NAACP), 11, 158, 160, 162 critical disability scholarship. See disabled and ill women, and Addams’s pragmatist feminism crowdfunding, 590–​91, 598 Crowds and Power (Canetti), 743 Crowell, Thomas, 528 Curti, Merle, 403 Cywar, Alan, 179     D’Agostino, Maria J., 382 Dahl, Adam, 88 Daniels, Roger, 502 D. Appleton and Company, 266 Darwin, Charles, 138, 400, 505, 508, 509, 515, 516 Das Kapital (Marx), 207, 287 daughter theory, 283, 292 Davies, Maud, 654 Davis, Allen F., 269, 439n4 “Day at Hull House, A” (Moore), 587 Daynes, G., 699

Debs, Eugene V., 118, 489, 579 Deegan, Mary Jo on feminist pragmatism, 695 on Hull House, 12, 466, 468, 696 on JA as critical pragmatist, 393 on JA as sociologist, 389, 390–​91 on JA’s principles and practices, 85, 113, 131–​ 32, 248, 671–​72, 696 on JA’s writings, 9, 264, 390–​91 on lack of attention on JA’s ideas about welfare state and social policy, 407 pragmatists on children’s play, 330–​ 31, 340n10 writings of, 9, 264, 390–​91 De Lora, Renee, 635 Deloria, Vine, Jr., 161 democracy current threats to, 743–​44 feminism and, 294–​95 JA’s evolutionary conceptions of, 507–​13, 744 learning as reciprocal ideal, 693–​94 Seigfried on pragmatist model of, 174 social function in, 692–​93 democracy, and effects of vital lies, 55–​74, 71n1 American vital lies, 64–​67 pragmatism and democracy, 67–​7 1 pragmatism of Lee (Violet Paget), 57–​61 Russia, war and vital lies, 61–​64 Democracy and Social Ethics (Addams), 13, 14, 15, 16, 19–​20, 21, 40, 42, 56, 62–​63, 93, 95–​ 96, 99, 115, 121, 141, 187, 244–​45, 247, 261, 265–​66, 267, 272, 294, 317, 319–​20, 331, 337, 348, 350, 358, 394–​96, 403, 404, 508, 509, 582, 587, 589, 670–​7 1, 691, 694, 700–​701, 726–​32, 744 “Democracy or Militarism?” (Addams), 120 Democratic Party, Women’s Division, 233, 235–​36 democratic vision, of Addams, 37–​54 data gathering and participation as policy, 43–​45 international vision, 46–​47 milieu and networks, 37–​41 processes for realization of, 41–​43 in 21st century, 47–​51 Denison House, Boston, 647 DePaul University, 700

754   Index De Quincey, Thomas, 687 Descartes, René, 170 design practices. See social design, wicked problems, and Addams Desmond, Matthew, 594, 595–​96, 597 De Vesselitsky, Varvara, 650, 654 “Devil-​Baby at Hull House, The” (Addams), 273, 355 devil baby phenomena, 11, 513–​14 Devine, Edward, 231 Dewey, John, 373, 390, 391, 393, 404, 406, 443, 444, 489, 615, 652, 670, 679, 698, 733. See also American Pragmatism, Addams and Dewey on on abstract truths and morals, 396–​97 on antagonism, 17 on benevolent interest in others, 42 commitment to experience, praxis, and social change, 348, 349 contributions to Hull House, 14, 40, 587, 694–​95 on democracy, 41 on doubt as basis of theory of inquiry, 732 ends-​in-​view from experience, 588, 595 as founder of NAACP, 158 as founder of pragmatist philosophy, 708 on function of universities, 339 influence of Addams on, 14–​15, 40, 550–​51 influence on Rorty, 93 on JA’s principles and practices, 14, 118 lack of environmental discourse by, 667 on moral intelligence and habits, 349, 367n2 Pappas on, 349 on play, 330 public policy design, 43, 44 service-​learning movement, 699 shared thinking on ethics with JA, 14, 397 on social growth, 585 support for US involvement in WWI, 12, 70 on theories and practical solutions, 712 writings of, 169, 172, 181n5, 313, 348, 506, 724 Dewson, Molly, 235–​36, 237 diagonal trajectories (Minas), 597 dialogical listening, 79, 84–​85 dialogic reciprocity. See social ethics, Addams at confluence of feminism and pragmatism Dickinson, G. Lowes, 515 Dieleman, Susan, 96

Dillingham Commission (1911), 502–​3 disabled and ill women, and Addams’s pragmatist feminism, 603–​23 disease, public health crises and construction of chronically ill women, 612–​14 enactment of reciprocity, 608–​10 evolutionary theories and evolving societal values, 616–​17 ignorance and chronically ill as idlers, 615 lived experience and knowledge with principles, 604–​6 social practice and social amelioration, 606–​8 thoughts on squalor and want, 616 women in difficult times, 610–​11 “Discourse in the Novel” (Bakhtin), 262 diversity, 10–​12, 18–​19, 41, 218 diversity and inclusion in organizations, Addams and Du Bois on, 149–​67 activism and national movement for rights, 157–​59 background of Du Bois and collaboration between, 152–​54 intellectual connection between and education advocacy, 154–​55 JA on Du Bois and equal opportunity, 155 political priorities and controversy, 159–​62 role of settlement houses, 151 scholarship on diversity and inclusion, 162–​64 social environment of Addams and Du Bois, 149–​51 sociological methodology/​empiricism, 155–​57 Dixon, Brian, 550–​51 domestic workers, 10 Dorcas Federal Labor Union, 114 Doubleday, Page, and Company, 266, 271 Dow, Jenny, 587 Downey, Kristen, 234 Dreiser, Theodore, 270, 272 Du Bois, W. E. B., 9, 489, 511, 588. See also diversity and inclusion in organizations, Addams and Du Bois on inspired by Hull House Maps and Papers, 10 JA’s collaboration with, 11, 152–​53, 246 praise of Kelley, 228 writings of, 151, 155, 156, 161, 531 Duflo, Esther, 739 Dupré, M., 707

Index   755 Durant, Henry Fowle, 568 Durkheim, Émile, 7, 8, 391, 392, 400, 404–​5     Eastman, Max, 178 Eaton, Isabel, 152 echo chambers, 103–​5 ecofeminism, 666, 671–​73 Ecoleague, 674 ecological resilience. See social ethics for ecological and community resilience, and Addams economic inequality in late 1800s, 150 Rorty on, 101 Eddo-​Lodge, R., 609 Eddy, Beth, 400 education African Americans and, 154–​55 as emancipatory, 163 ethical teaching, 337–​39 mandatory public education initiatives, 178 service learning, 330, 338–​39, 697, 699–​701 sustainability values and, 674 education, Hull House, and current civic engagement in higher education, and Addams, 683–​704 current civic engagement in higher education, 696–​702 Hull House years, 690–​96 JA’s education at Rockford Female Seminary, 684–​90 legacy of JA, 702 “Education by Current Event” (Addams), 62, 70–​7 1 Eikenberry, Angela M., 381 Eliot, George, 513, 516 Elshtain, Jean Bethke, 95, 375, 397, 415 Elson, Alex, 79, 82 Ely, Richard T., 266, 267, 269, 271, 373, 375, 401, 535 Emergency Quota Act (1921), 65 Emerson, Ralph Waldo, 281, 374 “Energies of Man, The” (W. James), 187–​ 88, 191–​93 Engels, Friedrich, 122–​23, 227, 287, 288, 527 Enlightenment paradigm, 16, 506, 510–​11 enthymemes, 289

environmental justice. See social ethics for ecological and community resilience, and Addams epistemic agency. See social work, epistemic agency in contemporary, and Addams Epstein, David J., 474 ethical teaching, 337–​39 Ethics (Dewey and Tufts), 14, 506 Ethics (Wundt), 506 ethics of care, 360–​62, 609, 670 “Ethics Without Principles” (Rorty), 97 ethnic myopia, 741 Europe, labor unions, 114, 119, 120, 122 Evans, G., 668 evidence-​based practice (EBP), 710–​11, 714, 717–​19 evidence-​informed practice (EIP), 711–​14, 717, 718 evolutionary-​historical method, 505 evolutionary self, 138–​42 evolutionary theory, 400–​401, 404–​5 Evros River crossing (Turkey/​Greece), 483, 485, 495 Excellent Becomes the Permanent, The (Addams), 273 “Experimental Novel, The” (Zola), 270–​7 1     Fabian Society, 654 Fair Labor Standards Act, 236 fallibilism, in social philosophy, 20, 101 families, feminist vision for, 292–​94 family visitors. See charity workers/​family visitors Feagin, J. R., 591 Federal Works Agency, 233 female principle, belief in, 690–​91 feminism, as cluster concept, 347 feminism of Addams, biographical approach, 279–​303. See also social ethics, Addams at confluence of feminism and pragmatism community of inquiry, 313–​14 cultural assumptions for ambitious women, 280–​82 democracy and, 294–​95 embrace of feminism, 289–​91 feminist vision for families, 292–​94 gender equality, 282–​86 ideographic nature of, 279–​80 patriarchy, 286–​89

756   Index feminist, origin of term, 290 feminist care ethics, 18, 76–​77, 111, 121, 310, 314–​16. See also labor unions, in a caring democracy feminist participatory-​action research, 608 feminist pragmatism as approach to community problem solving, 694–​96 Deegan on, 468, 695, 696 ethics of war/​peace and, 413–​16 at Hull House, 468 JA seen as practitioner of, 393 JA’s social ethics, 346–​48 public administration, industrial citizenship and, 312–​14 Seigfried on, 347, 669 sympathetic understanding and, 618 feminist standpoint theory, 15, 313, 353, 539, 652–​53, 671 Fesmire, Steven, 367n2 feudal legacy, of industrial society, 308–​9 field research, and lessons from Addams, 459–​78 challenges for contemporary field researchers, 460–​64 engagement of under-​represented groups, 472–​74 importance of collaboration, 464–​66 lessons learned, 474–​75 as outsider researcher, 466–​68 as peace researcher vs. activist, 468–​69 researcher identity and positionality, 469–​70 role of empathy and respect, 471–​72 “Fifteen Years at Hull-​House” (Addams), 266 filial relations, 141, 338, 670 Fine, Jean, 569 Fischer, Marilyn. See also methodologies of writing, thinking and activism, of Addams Comte’s influence on JA, 399, 404 on cosmic patriotism, 488 on Dewey and JA’s shared thinking on ethics, 14, 397 on JA’s principles and practices, 15–​16, 115, 116, 141, 242, 244–​45, 248, 289, 308, 354, 391–​92, 404, 433, 485, 555, 608, 671 on JA’s writings, 350–​51, 395, 606

on power of industrialism, 309 writings of, 15 five giant evils (Beveridge), 606, 608 “Fixation of Belief ” (Peirce), 313 Flexner, Abraham, 24 Floyd, George, 310 Foa, R. S., 49 Follett, Mary Parker, 16, 679. See also cooperation, Addams and Follett on attended London School of Economics, 606 on circular response framework, 210 contributions to feminist pragmatism, 608 on democracy, 607 on Hull House, 589 integrative processes, 609, 615 writings of, 206, 209–​10 food systems and community gardening, 675 Forster, E. M., 100–​101 Fourteen Points (Wilson), 415 Fourth World Conference on Women, Beijing (1995), 417 Frankfurter, Felix, 226 Frazer, James George, 67 Fredrickson, George, 321–​22 Freire, Paulo, 163 Fuller, Margaret, 272, 687 fuller life vision, 82–​83, 88, 89 “Function of the Social Settlement, The” (Addams), 652     Gaffney, Catherine, 491 Gale, Zona, 263, 273 garbage removal project, 75, 136, 538, 548–​50, 558–​59, 562n9, 653, 668 Garfield, James A., 690 Garfinkel, Harold, 406 Garland-​Thomson, R., 611 garment industry, 319 Garment Workers’ Strike (1910), 132 Garrett, Romney, 741 gender equality, 282–​86, 422–​23, 739 General Federation of Women’s Clubs, 39, 225, 231, 238n5 George, Henry, 264 George Herbert Mead: Play, School and Society (Seigfried), 330

Index   757 Germany Intercultural Gardens Project, 675 settlement-​house movement, 648 Gibson-​Graham, J. K., 598 Gifford, Walter, 377 Gillberg, C., 606, 614, 615 Gilman, Charlotte Perkins, 9, 16, 38, 671 Gladden, Washington, 401 Godart, Justin, 648 Goffman, E., 712 Golden Bough, The (Frazer), 67 Goldman, Daniel, 71n1 Gompers, Samuel, 120 “Gospel of Recreation, The” (Addams), 194 “Gospel of Relaxation, The” (W. James), 187–​ 91, 192, 193 Gospels of Anarchy (Lee), 59 Gouldner, A. W., 213 grassroots politics, 45 Green, Judith M., 15 Greene, T. H., 173, 174 Greenstone, David J., 393 Groos, Karl, 268, 335–​36, 340n11 group egotism (Llanera), 104–​5 Grunt: The Curious Science of Humans at War (Roach), 437–​38 Gulick, Luther H., 332–​33, 334 Guy, Mary E., 380     Habermas, J., 591–​92 Hackett, Francis, 268, 272 Hague, The International Congress of Women (1915), 76, 232, 252, 256n15, 413–​15, 417–​18, 420, 492 International Congress of Women (1919), 253 International Criminal Court, 419–​20, 442 World Court, 101 Hajo, Cathy Moran, 515, 628, 629–​30, 638–​39 Haldeman, Alice Addams, 631 Hall, G. Stanley, 513 Hall, Prescott F., 502 Hamilton, Alice, 47, 80, 273 Hamilton, Lillias, 650 Hamington, Maurice, 15, 592

on JA as feminist, 279 on JA as feminist pragmatist, 393 on JA as reluctant socialist, 208 on JA’s principles and practices, 78, 95, 105, 175, 181, 198, 315, 339, 353, 378, 465–​66, 671 Handbook of Settlements (Woods and Kennedy), 647 Handy, Robert, 399, 401–​2 Hansen, Jonathan, 489–​90 Hansen, Karina, 614 Hardie, Keir, 647 Harkavy, I., 697 Harkness, Margaret, 654 Harnish, Brandon, 401 Harper, William Rainey, 695 Harrison, Frederic, 509–​10 Harvard Annex, 209 Hawken, Paul, 666–​67 Hayden, Dolores, 540 Head Start, 377 Hegel, G. W. F., 173, 174 Heilbrun, Carolyn, 272 Hejny, Jessica, 679 Heldke, Lisa, 15, 675 Herron, George, 401 Hildebrand, David L., 382 Hill, Octavia, 647 Hillman, Bessie Abramowitz, 114 Hine, Walter Page, 271 Historical Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs), 150, 154 historic myths concept, 61–​64, 69 Hitler, Adolf, 421 Hobhouse, L. T., 268, 509–​10, 511 Hobson, John A., 509–​10, 515, 647 Hochschild, Arlie Russell, 738 Holbrook, Agnes Sinclair, 532, 534, 535, 537–​38, 653–​54 Holli, Melvin G., 687 homelessness, 318 Honeyman, S., 605, 611 hooks, bell, 292 Hoover, Herbert, 233, 376, 377, 512 Hopkins, George B., 21 Hopkins, Rob, 676 Horowitz, H., 694 hostilization, 444–​45

758   Index Howard, L. M., 452–​53 Howells, William Dean, 263, 266 How the Casual Labourer Lives (Rathbone), 650 Hull, Charles, 587 Hull House Boys Club, 198 Hull House Maps and Papers (1895), 10, 17, 112, 113, 153, 156, 207, 227–​28, 263–​64, 316, 331, 460, 649, 653–​54, 697 Hull House Maps and Papers, approach to urban inequities by Addams and Kelley, 525–​43 arrival of Kelley to Hull House, 526–​29 as mixed-​methods approach, 536–​38 produced by the residents of Hull House, 534–​36 strategies for feminist approach to urban research by Addams, 538–​41 study of nationalities and wages in 19th Ward of Chicago, 533f study of nationalities and wages in Nineteen Ward of Chicago, 531–​34 study of urban poverty and labor exploitation, 529–​31 Hull House Settlement, 40. See also garbage removal project; immigrants; Jane Club; juvenile court project; labor law initiatives; social change methodology of Hull House, and New Deal reforms advocacy for labor reforms, 113, 319, 652, 690–​91 advocacy for legislative reforms, 101 application of research knowledge in, 709–​10 bath house, 556 built first public playground for children, 164, 668 Bureau of Labor, 227, 494 closure of, 658 Coffee House, 85, 356, 588, 589, 709, 710 collaboration with UPENN, 152–​53 community dining room, 365–​66 as community of inquiry, 314 day nursery, 356, 588 Deegan on, 12, 466, 468, 696 devil baby phenomena, 11, 273, 355, 513–​14 Dewey as trustee of, 14

Diet Kitchen and meal programs for children, 588–​89, 596 educational efforts, 78, 116, 132–​33, 150–​51, 163, 169, 492, 687, 689–​90, 693–​96, 700–​701 as form of social reform ethics, 175–​76 founding of, 4, 75, 78, 150–​51, 282, 283, 396, 415–​16, 467, 567–​68, 587, 588, 646, 686 health services, 557 influences of Rockford College on, 690–​91, 693–​94, 695 Jackson on, 363–​64 Labor Museum, 116, 138–​39, 337–​38, 365, 556, 556f laundry facilities, 588 as learning community, 718, 719 legacy of, 648, 659, 692–​93, 699, 702, 706 as liminal space for dual-​ended agency, 359–​66 as model of care-​centered leadership and administration, 76, 78–​81 as model of civic mission, 697–​98 neighborhood point of view, 140–​41, 445, 465–​66, 493–​94 New England kitchen, 43 as nonideological, 19, 140 political hospitality, 492, 493 purpose of social activities, 17 recreation practices, 197, 198–​200, 330, 332, 356, 556, 667–​68 research on public school provision, 652 settlement progressive methodology, 5 shared breakfasts as social method, 709 social clubs, 356 social designs of, 555–​56 as springboard to public administration, 22 theater and art activities, 336, 337, 363, 364, 556–​57, 562n14, 694 Webers’s interests in, 8–​9 Working People’s Social Science Club, 78, 373 Humanitarian Respite Center (HRC), Catholic Charities, 494–​95 Human Nature and Conduct (Dewey), 348 Hurston, Zora Neal, 16 Hutchings, K., 459 Hutchins, Bessie, 654 Hyvärinen, M., 583

Index   759 Ibsen, Henrik, 59 I Came a Stranger (Polacheck), 582 ideographs (McGee), 280 idleness (Beveridge), 606, 608, 614–​15, 616 “If Men Were Seeking the Franchise” (Addams), 433 Illinois Board of Charities, 229–​30 Board of Control, 230 Bureau of Labor, 530–​31 Bureau of Labor Statistics, 529 census of child workers (1880), 331 Factory Inspectors, 223, 230, 530 Immigration Commission, 232 Juvenile Court Bill (1899), 230 State High School Athletic Association, 199 Illinois Association of Manufacturers, 530 Illinois Factory and Inspection Act (1893), 530 Illinois Progressive Party, 131 Illinois Woman’s Alliance, The Condition of Public Schools in Chicago, 530 Illinois Workshop and Factories Act, 536 immigrants. See also charity workers/​family visitors; Hull House Settlement; refugee resettlement, and Addams; sweatshop working conditions art expression at Hull House, 364–​65 beliefs of racial hierarchy for, 502–​3 care ethics inclusion of, 315, 354–​56, 363 Emergency Quota Act (1921), 65 emotional kindness among, 727–​30 escape from Russian Revolution (1905), 483 housing conditions, 510 Hull House Labor Museum participation, 138–​39, 556, 556f JA’s political relationships with, 243–​ 45, 483–​84 new international morality among, 511–​12 percentage of Chicago population, 503 prostitution, 17, 234, 272, 341n16 role of daughters, 283 value of, 18, 50 Immigrants’ Protective League (IPL), 131, 232 “Immigrants under the Quota” (Addams), 65, 66 Immigration Act (1924), 65, 480

Immigration Act (1965), 503 immigration and refugee crises, 740–​41. See also refugee resettlement, and Addams imperialism (Hobhouse), 511 Indigenous peoples, and settler-​colonialism, 595, 596 individualistic ethics, 121, 141–​42, 244, 245, 285–​86, 315, 321, 398, 508 industrial capitalism critique of, 194–​95, 270, 392 evolutionary discourse and, 400 influence on mass media, 743 leisure and, 335 industrial citizenship. See public administration and industrial citizenship, Addams on industrial democracy, 507–​9 inner consent concept, 62–​63, 66, 72n10 Institute for Editing Historical Documents, 635 intellectual sexism, 10 Intercultural Gardens Project, Germany, 675 International Association of Settlements, 648 International Campaign to Ban Landmines (ICBL), 442 International Committee of Women for Permanent Peace, 625–​26 International Federation of Settlement and Neighborhood Centers, 658 International Federation of Social Workers, 26, 707 international peace movement, 250–​53. See also World War I International Suffrage Congress (1913), 290 International Women’s League, 460 I-​We-​I curve (R. Putnam), 737–​38, 741     Jacks, John, 249 Jackson, Shannon, 83, 363–​64 Jacobi, Mary Putnam, 289 Jacobs, Harriet, 272 JADE. See Jane Addams Papers Project, accessibility to Jaggar, Alison, 723 James, Henry, 57, 71n3, 272, 579

760   Index James, William, 391, 406, 489, 508, 708. See also sport and recreation, Addams and W. James on influence of Addams on, 14–​15 on JA’s principles and practices, 13, 40, 261, 267, 269–​70 Lee’s critique of, 56–​59 physicalist conception of emotion, 724, 733 on pragmatism, 407, 588 public policy design, 43, 44 speeches of, 436–​37 writings of, 57, 58, 173, 187–​93, 436–​37 James-​Lange theory, 724 Jan. 6th insurrection, 55 Jane Addams and the Men of the Chicago School 1892–​1918 (Deegan), 9, 264, 390–​91 Jane Addams Houses, Chicago, 333f Jane Addams-​Hull House Museum, 546–​ 47, 635 Jane Addams Papers Project, accessibility to, 263, 515, 625–​42 broadening of accessibility, 629 crowdsourcing, 636 digital maps, 633, 634f, 638f educational resources, 633–​35 identifications of people, organizations, and events, 631–​32 JADE metadata, 630–​31 JADE thematic tags, 633 JADE transcriptions, 629–​30 Jane Addams Digital Edition (JADE), 628–​41 Jane Addams Papers Microfilm Edition (JAPM), 626–​27 Jane Addams’s archives, 625–​26 National History Day, 634–​35 research tips using JADE, 640–​41 Selected Papers of Jane Addams (SPJA), 628 social network analysis, 638–​39, 639f subject terms access, 631 textual analysis in digital humanities, 636–​ 37, 637f Jane Addams Recreation Trail, Cedarville, Illinois, 668 Jane Addams’s Evolutionary Theorizing (Fischer), 15 Jane Club, 113, 530, 588, 709 Janowitz, Morris, 446

JAPM. See Jane Addams Papers Project, accessibility to Jesus, 281 Jim Crow segregation, 149 Joas, Hans, 394, 397, 405, 406–​7 Johnson, Lyndon B., 381 Johnson-​Reed Act (1924), 503 Jones, G., 614 Jones, Robert Alun, 391 Joslin, Katherine, 119 justice, Addams and Mead on, 129–​47 biographical backgrounds, 130–​33 generalized other, “me” and “I” and bending toward justice, 137–​39 implications for contemporary society, 142–​44 interconnected and interdependent self as evolutionary self, 138–​42 symbolic interactionism, empathetic understanding, and social progress, 134–​36 Just Shelter, 594 juvenile court project, 44, 82, 101, 223, 230, 238n16, 559 Juvenile Protection Association, 230 Juvenile Protection League, 232     Kafer, Alison, 605 Kang, Susan L., 122 Kant, Immanuel, 352, 670 Karilemla, 360–​61, 365 Keith, Heather, 15 Kelley, Florence, 287, 377. See also Hull House Maps and Papers, approach to urban inequities by Addams and Kelley advocacy for safe working conditions, 113, 376 appointed to Illinois Bureau of Labor Statistics, 529 federal Children’s Bureau and, 231 as founder of NAACP, 158 on JA’s principles and practices, 268, 269 leadership roles of, 223, 234 as member of Taylor Society, 311–​12 as mentor, 235, 236 as resident of Hull House, 76, 223–​29, 263–​64 on right to childhood, 332

Index   761 socialist roots, 288 social scientific research, 81 State Bureau of Labor, 22, 530–​31, 537, 538 as State Factory Inspector, 223, 230, 316, 530, 536 writings of, 319, 536, 650–​51, 656 Kellor, Frances, 234 Kenney, Mary, 530 Kim, E., 609 Kingsley Hall, Tokyo, 647 kinning process, 421, 424n1 Kirkup, Thomas, 507 Knight, Louise W. on empowerment of neighborhood women, 559 on garbage removal project, 549 on inspiration from JA, 473 on JA’s early life, 685, 687 on JA’s principles and practices, 75, 76, 115, 171, 314, 429, 435, 555, 572 as resident of Hull House, 357 Koengeter, S., 648 Kropotkin, Peter, 516     labor law initiatives, 82, 227, 232, 233, 235, 236, 238n20, 530, 536, 551–​52, 578 labor unions decline of, 119, 123n2 in Europe, 114, 119, 120, 122 lateral progress and, 18 as organs of protest and change, 319 seen as adversarial in US, 114 Starbucks/​Amazon suppression of, 739 as vital to social reform, 9–​10, 207, 284 labor unions, in a caring democracy, 111–​25 JA on democracy and labor, 114–​17 JA on labor movement, 111–​14 as means to social progress, 117–​20 role of labor, 122–​23 Tronto on caring democracy, 120–​22 Labov, William, 571 Lady, The (Putnam), 289 Lake, Danielle, 353, 363, 677 land ethic, 666, 677–​78 “Larger Aspects of the Woman’s Movement, The” (Addams), 291

Lasch, Christopher, 279, 389 Last Child in the Woods (Louv), 668 lateral progress, in social philosophy, 18, 21, 117, 120, 175, 322, 339, 445, 508 Lathrop, Julia C., 535, 650. See also My Friend, Julia Lathrop (Addams) at Chicago School of Civics and Philanthropy, 40, 658 as commissioner on State Board of Charities, 229–​30 Cook County charities and, 229, 318 as director of US Children’s Bureau, 22, 229–​33, 559 Hull House and, 223–​26, 527–​28 on Hull House Maps and Papers, 537 JA’s praise for, 87–​88 juvenile court project, 44, 223, 230, 559 on public service, 305 on relationship between Kelley and JA, 226–​27 as resident of Hull House, 76 Law, J., 598 League of Nations, 37–​38, 46, 47, 64, 205, 332, 415 Advisory Committee on Traffic in Women and Children, 233 League of Women Voters, 162 Leave No Trace, 673 Lee, Vernon, 56–​62, 64–​65, 67–​7 1 Leffers, M. Regina, 177, 670 Lengermann, P. M., 12–​13, 591, 649, 657 Lenin, Vladimir, 61 Leopold, Aldo, 666, 677–​78 lesbian relationships, of Addams. See Smith, Mary Rozet; Starr, Ellen Gates Letters Upon the Aesthetic Education of Mankind (F. Schiller), 336 Levine, Helisse, 382 Lewis, Lucy Biddle, 626 Liberalism and Social Action (Dewey), 169 Life and Labour of the People in London (Booth), 531 liminal spatiality. See social ethics, Addams at confluence of feminism and pragmatism Lincoln, Abraham, 281 Lindsay, Samuel McCune, 152, 153 Lindsay, Vachel, 263

762   Index Linn, James Weber, 273, 625, 626, 631, 641 literary art, of Addams, 261–​77. See also Jane Addams Papers Project, accessibility to; methodologies of writing, thinking and activism, of Addams; specific essays and books by title articles in American Journal of Sociology, 9, 11, 114, 587 articles in The American Magazine, 62–​63, 271 articles in The Crisis (NAACP), 11 articles in The Delineator, 272 articles in Ladies Home Journal, 38, 266, 289, 375, 433 articles in The Independent, 247 critique of JA’s writings, 268, 271 fame from autobiography, 271–​72 Fischer on rhetorical skills of, 391–​92 influence of Tolstoy on, 264–​66 JA’s commentary on, 262–​63 praise for JA’s writings, 13–​14, 15–​16, 261, 266, 267, 269, 271, 272, 273, 274n3, 334, 354, 367n6, 725–​26 reading materials of JA, 262–​63, 264, 268, 270, 281, 282, 374 scope of, 76 statement on racism in New York Evening Post, 295 timeline of, 4t use of terms “feminist/​feminism” in essays, 290–​91 valedictory essay/​speech on Cassandra, 281, 284, 373, 429, 568–​69, 576, 689 Llanera, Tracy, 104 Lloyd, Henry Demarest, 227 London School of Economics, 657 Longo, N. V., 692, 694, 699 Long Road of Woman’s Memory, The (Addams), 263, 273, 290, 291, 337, 513–​14, 577–​79, 582, 653 Lonne, B., 712 Louv, Richard, 668 Love, Jeannine, 381 Lugones, Maria C., 360, 362, 363 Lundeen, Taylor, 638 “Lynching and the Excuse for It” (Wells-​ Barnett), 157 lynchings, of African Americans, 157, 246–​47

Macmillan, 266, 267, 269, 271, 272 MacMullan, Terrance, 436, 443 Maeterlinck, Maurice, 63 Mann, Susan, 669 Marsh, Edward, 269 Marten, James, 332 Martin, Jay, 171 Martineau, Harriet, 655 Marx, Eleanor, 647 Marx, Karl, 7, 391, 403 comparison of JA’s views to, 8, 114, 122–​23, 208 influence of writings on Kelley, 226–​27 writings of, 207, 287 Mason, Otis T., 506 Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Civic Design Studio, 555 mass incarceration, 318 Massumi, Brian, 724 “Master and Man” (Tolstoy), 265–​66 material feminism (Hayden), 540 maternal welfare state, 22–​23 Maude, Aylmer, 264–​65 Mazzini, Giuseppe, 116 McAllister, Sue, 594–​95 McArthur, Benjamin, 332 McBride, Paul M., 196 McCandless, Sean A., 380 McClure, Samuel S., 266 McDermott, Stacy Pratt, 199, 628 McDowell, Mary, 113, 231, 330, 653 McGee, Michael C., 280 McGerr, Arthur, 408 McGuire, John Thomas, 311–​12, 381 McKenna, Erin, 175, 672, 675–​76 McKinley, William, 228 Mead, George Herbert, 9, 391, 670. See also George Herbert Mead: Play, School and Society (Seigfried); justice, Addams and Mead on as founder of pragmatist philosophy, 708 as Hull House board member, 40 idea of the socialized self, 397 on pure play and organized games, 17, 330–​31, 340n10 situated interactions, 406 on social order and problem solving capacity, 394 support for US involvement in WWI, 12

Index   763 theory of action, 394 writings of, 330 mechanics of cooperation (Nowak), 216 methodologies of writing, thinking and activism, of Addams, 501–​23 current usefulness of evolutionary methodology and theories, 515–​17 evolutionary-​historical method of analysis, 504–​13 historical and demographic background for interpretation, 502–​3 juxtaposition of literature and evolutionary science, 513–​15 methodology of writing, 503–​4 militarism. See also peaceweaving, and Addams absolutist military doctrine, 446–​47 along borders, 483, 491 broadening of meaning of, 435 critique of, 12, 46, 291 environmental degradation and, 678 as incompatible with feminism, 490 industrialism and, 308–​9 origin of term, 291 pragmatist military doctrine, 446–​47 unstable peace and, 741–​43 Military Industrial Complex, 428 Mill, John Stuart, 41, 287, 514 Mills, Charles Wright, 12, 454 Minas, M., 597 Mind, Self and Society from the Standpoint of a Social Behaviorist (Mead), 330 Mirabella, Roseanne M., 382 mixed-​methods research, 156, 536–​38 “Modern Lear, A” (Addams), 14, 83–​84, 118–​20, 177, 207–​8, 287, 339, 358, 508, 579, 580–​81 “Modern Tragedy, A” (Addams), 508 Monroe, Harriet, 261 Moore, Dorothea, 79, 587 moral blindness, 444 Moral Boundaries (Tronto), 120–​21 “Moral Equivalent of War, The” (W. James), 436–​37 moral resilience. See war virtues and expansive masculinity, Addams’s critique of moral tribalism and polarization, 142–​43 Morley, John, 268, 509–​10

Morris, A. D., 591 Moskop, Wynne Walker, 493 Mounk, Y., 49 Mullaly, B., 707 multidisciplinary knowledge. See social work, epistemic agency in contemporary, and Addams municipal housekeeping, 11, 21, 38–​39, 77–​78, 177–​78, 306, 309–​11, 315, 372, 539–​40, 653, 696 Murphy, Cornelius F., 407 Musgrave Bonomo, L. Ryan, 15, 364 My Friend, Julia Lathrop (Addams), 229, 273, 294, 305, 318     Naismith, James, 198, 668 narrative analysis. See sociological research, Addams’s use of narrative in “Narrative Analysis: Oral Versions of Personal Experience” (Labov and Waletzky), 571 Nasmyth, George, 512, 515 National American Women Suffrage Association (NAWSA), 40, 160, 162, 293, 294 National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), 50, 228, 283, 294–​95 The Crisis (journal), 11, 158, 160, 162 founding of, 10, 40, 157–​58, 378 National Association of Colored Women’s Clubs (NACWC), 249 National Child Labor Committee, 75, 85, 231, 378 National Committee on Child Welfare, 376 National Conference of Charities and Corrections, 24, 40, 75, 158, 231 Committee on Immigration, 232 National Conference of Social Work (1930), 24–​25 National Congress of Mothers, 225 National Consumers League (NCL), 75, 223, 224, 225, 228–​29, 231, 233, 234, 235 National Council of Charities and Corrections, 283 National Council of Churches, 377 National Council of Negro Women, 376

764   Index National Council of Social Work, 75 National Federation of Settlements and Neighborhood Centers, 283, 658 National Historical Publications and Records Commission (NHPRC), 626 National History Day, 634–​35 National Labor Committee, 228 National Outdoor Leadership School, 673 National Union of Healthcare Workers (NUHW), 122 National Urban League, 246 National Women’s Trade Union League, 283 National Youth Administration, Office of Minority Affairs, 376 Native Americans, lack of attention to, 454, 455n7, 485, 741 nature. See social ethics for ecological and community resilience, and Addams “Nebular Hypothesis, The” (Addams), 691 Need of Theoretical Preparation for Philanthropic Work, The (Kelley), 656 Negro American Family (Du Bois), 156 Neighborhood Guild, 647 neighborhood pods, 592 neighborhood point of view, 140–​41, 445, 450, 465–​66, 493–​94, 573–​75 neoliberalism, 86–​89, 111, 114, 122 Netherlands, settlement-​house movement, 647 New Conscience and an Ancient Evil, A (Addams), 17, 272, 284, 292, 341n16, 532, 534, 606, 731 New Deal, 305, 377, 741. See also social change methodology of Hull House, and New Deal reforms New Democracy, The (Weyl), 48 Newer Ideals of Peace (Addams), 13–​14, 19, 21, 187, 250, 253–​54, 261, 265, 266, 268–​69, 272, 288, 291, 313, 316, 333, 335–​36, 350–​51, 427, 430, 438, 439n6, 506, 509, 510 New Jersey Council for the Humanities, 635 New Public Management (NPM), 87–​89 New State, The (Follett), 209–​10 New York (state) Bureau of Municipal Research, 20–​21, 372, 373 Committee on Safety, 233, 235

Factory Investigation Commission, 235 Industrial Commission, 233, 235 Joint Legislative Committee to Investigate Seditious Activity, 47 Lusk Committee, 435, 439n8 New York City Christadora House, 648 College Settlement, 569 Consumers’ League, 234–​35 Henry Street Settlement House, 228 Neighborhood Guild, 569 Nickel, Patricia Mooney, 381 Nicolai, Georg F., 512, 515 Niebrugge, G., 12–​13, 591, 657 Niebrugge-​Brantley, J., 649 1984 (Orwell), 103 Nobel Peace Prize awarded to Balch, 442 awarded to JA (1931), 4, 223, 442 awarded to von Suttner, 442 awarded to Williams, 442 Nobel Prize, awarded to Ostrom, 216 Noddings, Nel, 337, 670 No More Deaths/​No Más Muertes, 491 No Refuge: Ethics and the Global Refugee Crisis (Parekh), 484 Norris, Frank, 270 Norton, Bryan, 678 Nowak, Martin A., 214–​16, 745 Nussbaum, Martha, 485     Oakley, Ann, 11, 28, 606, 607 “Objective Values of Social Settlements, The” (Addams), 358, 375, 651–​52 Occupy Wall Street movement, 49 Olson, Catie, 636–​37 Opdycke, Sandra, 435, 439n8 “Operation of the Illinois Child Labor Law, The” (Addams), 530 Organisation for Economic Co-​Operation and Development, 481 Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State in Light of the Researches of Lewis H. Morgan (Engels), 288 Orosco, J. A., 492–​93 Orr, David, 674

Index   765 Orwell, George, 103 Ostrom, Elinor, 214–​15, 216–​17 O’Sullivan, Mary Kenney, 133 outlaw emotions, 723 over-​tension (W. James), 188–​93 Owen, Robert, 281 Owens, P., 459 Oxford University, 694     “Pacifism and Patriotism in Time of War” (Addams), 178 Page, Walter Hines, 266 Paget, Violet. See Lee, Vernon Pappas, Gregory Fernando, 349 Parekh, Serena, 484 participatory-​action research, 449–​50, 608, 653, 695, 701–​2 “Passing of the War Virtues” (Addams), 435 Pater, Walter, 57, 513 paternalism, 84, 85, 113, 118–​19, 373, 614 patriarchy, 286–​89 patriotism, 197, 251, 433–​36. See also cosmic patriotism Payette, Jessica, 122–​23 Payne, M., 710 Peace and Bread in Time of War (Addams), 63–​ 64, 67, 69, 250, 253–​54, 273, 295, 514 peace pragmatism, women, peace, and security agenda, 413–​26, 742. See also field research, and lessons from Addams feminist pragmatism and ethics of war/​ peace, 413–​16 JA’s legacy in international efforts, 416–​20 in practice and learning from JA, 420–​23 peaceweaving, and Addams, 441–​58 future challenges, 453–​55, 678 goals of peaceweaving, 442, 455n2, 672 peacekeeping, 4Ps of pragmatism and, 447–​53 pragmatism and military doctrines, 446–​4 7 pragmatism and war, conflict, and peace, 443–​46 women in peace missions, 451–​52 Peirce, Charles Sanders, 14, 56, 58, 68, 313, 444, 588, 708

Perkins, Francis on JA’s principles and practices, 80, 496n5 on Kelley’s personality, 527 at National Consumers League, 228 as resident of Hull House, 76 as Secretary of Labor, 22, 224, 233–​36, 376 perplexity for charity visitors, 99–​100 defined, 84, 444, 568 in dialogic understanding of ethics, 350 emotions as basis of, 731–​32 function of, 317, 403, 454–​55, 588 sympathetic understanding and, 84, 444 “Personal Reactions During War” (Addams), 434 Philadelphia Negro, The (Du Bois), 151, 156, 531 Philadelphia Research and Protective Association, 234 Phillips, John S., 271 philosophy, and Addams, 13–​20 emergence of Addams studies in, 14–​16 social philosophy, 13–​14, 16–​20 Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature (Rorty), 93, 96–​97 Philosophy of Play, A (Gulick), 332–​33 Platt, Jennifer, 645–​46 play, education, and ethical teaching, Addams on, 327–​43 ethical teaching and social experimentation, 336–​39 play, recreation, and arts in pragmatist social philosophy, 334–​36 play and childhood in context, 327–​30 seven rhetorics of play, 329t, 337, 340n6 social value of children’s play and relation to democracy, 330–​33 “Play as catharsis” (Groos), 336 Playground Association of America, 332, 668 “Play Instinct and the Arts, The” (Addams), 195 “Play of Man, The” (Groos), 335–​36 pluralism, in social philosophy, 18–​19 Polacheck, Hilda Satt, 582 Polish Peasant, The (Znaniecki and Thomas), 10 political friendship. See race, gender, and class, in Addams’s political friendships political patronage system, 230

766   Index Pollock, Frederick, 505 populism and authoritarianism, rise of, 743–​44 post-​traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) field researchers in war-​torn regions and, 461–​63 war veterans and, 437 post-​truth era, 103–​5 Potter, Beatrice, 709 Potter, Caroline, 687 Pound, Roscoe, 40 pragmatism ( 4Ps), 447–​53 participatory, 449–​50 pluralistic, 451–​52 practical, 448–​49 provisional, 452–​53 Pragmatism (W. James), 57, 58 Pragmatism and Feminism (Seigfried), 14–​15 pragmatist social ethics, Addams and Rorty on, 93–​109 democratic relations as ethical and epistemic project, 94–​98 social ethics amid undemocratic relations, 98–​103 social experience and trust in post-​truth era, 103–​5 sympathetic understanding and, 94, 95, 97, 99 Prasad, M., 591, 595, 596 Pratt, Scott L., 15, 171, 397, 407, 490, 743 Princeton Review, College with a Conscience, 697 principled compromise, in sympathetic understanding, 85–​86 Principles of Good Practice for Combining Service and Learning (Benson), 701 Principles of Psychology (W. James), 173, 188, 189 Process of Government, The (Bentley), 39 Progressive Party, 40, 159–​60 JA’s role at National Convention (1912), 273, 295 propinquity, 586, 587, 589 propinquity to the poor. See race, gender, and class, in Addams’s political friendships prostitution, 17, 234, 272, 341n16, 534 Provenzo, E. F., Jr., 162 “Public Activities and Investigations” (Addams), 548

public administration and industrial citizenship, Addams on, 305–​26 contemporary implications, 321–​22 definitions and historical perspective, 307–​8 feudal legacy of industrial society, 308–​9 industrial charity, 317–​18 industrial citizenship, 306, 311–​12, 315–​16 informed by ethic of care, 314–​16 informed by feminist pragmatism, 312–​14 labor relations, 318–​21 models of public administration, 306 municipal housekeeping, 309–​11, 315 workplace safety, 316 public administration and social equity, and Addams, 371–​87 erasure of JA from public-​administration literature, 374–​75 JA’s embedded influences on social equity rediscovered, 381–​82 JA’s influence on public administration, 376–​79 JA’s influence on public administration social equity, 379 politics administration dichotomy, 371–​73 social justice and social equity, 379–​80 Stivers on, 20–​23, 372 public education, as mandatory, 178 publicly engaged pragmatism, 180–​81 Public Works Administration, 233 Puckett, J. L., 697 Pullman, George M., 83–​84, 104, 118, 177, 207–​8, 287, 320–​21, 508, 553–​54, 579 Pullman strike (1894), 14, 42, 45, 83–​84, 118–​19, 176–​77, 207–​8, 287, 319, 320–​21, 378, 553–​ 54, 579–​81 Putin, Vladimir, 55–​56, 70, 421 Putnam, Emily James, 289 Putnam, Robert, 590, 737–​38, 741, 745 Puurunen, Piia, 706–​9     Quandt, Jean B., 395     race, gender, and class, in Addams’s political friendships, 241–​58 with African American leaders and organizations, 245–​50

Index   767 with immigrants near Hull House, 243–​ 45, 493–​94 lessons from women’s international peace movement, 252–​53 with women peace activists, 250–​52 race as socio-​historical construct (Du Bois), 156 race memory, 514 racism. See also African Americans as health issue, 613 in late 1800s, 150 progressive reformers and, 741 racial hierarchy of immigrants, 502–​3 Ramapo College of New Jersey, 628–​29, 635 Rathbone, Eleanor, 650 rational agency (Rorty), 97 Rauschenbusch, Walter, 401 Rawls, John, 352 Reagan, Ronald, 86 recreation. See sport and recreation, Addams and W. James on Red Scare (1921), 375 “Reflex Arc” (Dewey), 313 Réflexions sur la violence (Sorel), 59–​60 reflexivity, 135–​36, 416, 539 refugee resettlement, and Addams, 479–​98 cosmic patriotism, 488–​91, 740 feminist-​pragmatist orientation and civic belonging, 486–​94 hospitality as deemed illegal, 491–​94 JA’s legacy in twenty-​first century, 494–​95 militarism, nationalism and current refugee crisis, 481–​86 refuge, refugees and reframing responsibility, 484–​86 Regan, Tom, 666, 675 Reich, Robert, 88 Religion of Humanity (Comte), 512 Republican Party, 159 “Respect for Law” (Addams), 157, 246, 247–​ 48, 249–​50 “Revolt Against War” (Addams), 742 rhetorics of play, 328, 329t, 337, 340n6 Richmond, Mary, 24, 29n8, 151, 158, 705 rigid moralism, 444 Riis, Jacob, 264 Rittel, H., 677 Roach, Mary, 437–​38

Robbins, S., 687–​88 Robbins, S. R., 338–​39 Robert Browning Settlement, London, 647 Robins, Margaret Dreier, 269 Rockefeller, Steven, 172–​73 Rockford College (formerly Female Seminary), 229, 281, 286, 625 Castalian Society, 694 Hull House Summer School, 689–​90 Jane Addams Center for Civic Engagement, 697, 702 JA’s education years at, 684–​91, 699 as signatory to Campus Compact declaration, 699 Rockford University, 702 Rolston, Holmes, 666, 677–​78 Romme, George, 547 Roosevelt, Franklin D. appointment of Perkins to Cabinet, 235–​36 Bethune in Office of Minority Affairs under, 376 New Deal, 305, 741 as New York governor, 235 Roosevelt, Theodore, 192, 231, 261, 272, 377 invited JA to second his nomination at Convention, 273 JA support for presidential campaign, 158, 159–​60 as New York governor, 228, 235 as reader of JA’s books, 76 Rorty, Richard, 93, 393, 406. See also pragmatist social ethics, Addams and Rorty on Rosiek, Jerry L., 397, 407 Routley, L., 473 Royce, Josiah, 14, 268 Ruetenik, T., 743 Ruffa, Chiara, 451, 461–​65, 466–​67, 470, 471–​72, 743 Ruffin, Josephine St. Pierre, 249 “Rugged Individualist Club, The” (Love), 381 Ruggeri, A., 451 Ruskin, John, 694 Russell Sage Foundation, 657–​58 Russian “Decree of Peace,” responses to, 61–​64 Rynbrandt, L., 671–​72

768   Index Salomon, Alice, 26 Salt, D., 679 Sanborn, Frank, 155 Sand, George, 687 Sand County Almanac (Leopold), 666 Sargent, James Singer, 57 Sarvasy, Wendy, 97, 365–​66 Schachter, Hindy L., 311, 317 Schiller, F. C. S., 56–​59, 336, 340n11 Schilling, Melissa A., 213 Schneiderhan, Erik, 94, 97, 393, 403, 406 Schott, Linda, 433, 439n6 Schroeer, W., 648 Schultz, Rima Lunin, 264, 392 Sciancalepore, Victoria, 628 Scientific Management (Taylor), 372, 375 Scott, Anne Firor, 230, 394 Scott, James C., 452 Second Twenty Years at Hull-​House, The (Addams), 17, 65, 101, 206, 247, 256n10, 273, 295, 337, 574, 649 second-​wave feminism, 609 Sedgwick, Ellery, 273 Seed, Philip, 399 Seigfried, Charlene Haddock, 16 on feminist pragmatism, 347, 669 on JA as feminist pragmatist, 393 on JA’s principles and practices, 95, 130, 132, 173–​74, 289, 352, 359, 429, 726 on women in peacemaking, 285 writings of, 14–​15, 330, 358 Seligman, Edwin, 266 Sen, Katayama, 647 Sennett, Richard, 745 sentimental education (Rorty), 95, 97, 98, 101, 102 service learning, 330, 338–​39, 697, 699–​701 “Settlement as A Factor in The Labor Movement, The” (Addams), 114 settlement-​house movement, 23, 151, 175, 178, 306, 390, 398, 569, 646–​48, 705, 707 settlement model of public administration. See municipal housekeeping; public administration and industrial citizenship, Addams on settlement sociology, return to in digital age and Addams, 585–​601 changes and implications, 589–​91

knowledge translation, 594–​96 neighborly relation, 591, 592–​94, 596, 597 reconstruction of settlement sociology, 591–​92 social problems and social relations, 596–​98 theories of pragmatism, 586–​89 settlement sociology, transnationally and Addams, 645–​62 fate of, 658 history of “the social,” 657–​58 JA and theory of, 650–​53 methodologies of, 653–​55 origin myths, 645–​46 settlement movement, 646–​48 settlements and social research, 648–​50 universities and, 655–​56 sewing trades, 319 sexual and gender-​based violence (SGBV) crimes, 420 Shakespeare, Tom, 610, 615 Shakespeare, William, 336 Shaw, Anna Howard, 160 Shaw, George Bernard, 265 Sheppard-​Towner Maternity and Infancy Act (1921), 23, 47, 231 Shields, Patricia M., 743 on JA as social worker/​activist, 459 on JA’s principles and practices, 289, 381, 382, 672 on public administration, 307 Siegmund-​Schultze, Friedrich, 648 Silent Spring (Carson), 665 Sill, Anna Peck, 683–​86, 687, 688, 689, 702 Simmel, Georg, 8, 392 Sims, James Marion, 613 Sinclair, Upton, 270 Sing, Edith, 650 Singer, Peter, 666, 675 Skocpol, T., 590 Small, Albion, 9, 390, 400, 587 Smith, Mary Rozet as partner of JA, 266–​67, 269, 272, 294, 626, 647 support for Hull House, 228 Smith College, 199 social bricolage, 209 social change methodology of Hull House, and New Deal reforms, 223–​40 Abbott, as the next generation, 232–​33

Index   769 Hull House toolbox, 236–​37 JA and women’s reform networks, 223–​26 Lathrop on administrative excellence, 229–​31 mutual influences of JA and Kelley, 226–​29 Perkins as Secretary of Labor, 233–​36 social conflict, value of, 179–​80 social conscience, 41 “Social Control” (Addams), 247–​50 social democracy, 19–​20 components of, 11, 19–​20 in JA’s speeches, 569–​70, 651 in JA’s writings, 508 labor movement and, 112, 119–​20 as second phase of democracy, 116 social design, wicked problems, and Addams, 545–​66, 677 cultivation of systemic change, 558–​60 framing and reframing of wicked problems, 551–​53 generation and prototyping of possibilities, 555–​58 historic and geographic mapping, 554–​55 lessons learned, 550–​51 relational immersion, 553–​54 sewage crisis, 548–​50, 558–​59, 562n9 wicked problems and role of design, 546–​48 social equity. See public administration and social equity, and Addams social ethics, Addams at confluence of feminism and pragmatism, 345–​69. See also feminism of Addams, biographical approach dialogic reciprocity, defined, 345–​46, 352, 362–​63 Hull House as liminal space, 359–​66 Hull House as space-​in-​between, 362–​66 liminal spatiality, defined, 345–​46 from moral motive to social motive as pragmatist reconstruction, 348–​51 reading JA as feminist pragmatist, 346–​48 reciprocity in difference and interactive theory of moral agency, 355–​59 from social ethics to dialogic ethics, as Addamsian reconstruction, 351–​55 in-​between spaces and ethical self, 360–​62

social ethics, and Addams. See also Democracy and Social Ethics (Addams); pragmatist social ethics, Addams and Rorty on; sympathetic understanding action as medium for, 603–​4 elements of and citizenship, 41–​43 expansion of experiences, 139–​40 Fischer on, 16 of immigrant communities, 245 industrial citizenship and, 312, 315–​18 labor relations and, 318–​21 social democracy as way of being, 19–​20, 21 urbanization and, 508 social ethics for ecological and community resilience, and Addams, 663–​82 community and ecological resilience, 669–​72 contribution to environmental thinking and activism by JA, 672–​79 environmental ethics in the Anthropocene, 664–​67 influence on recreation, leisure, and environmental health by JA, 667–​69 social gospel. See public administration and social equity, and Addams “Social Insurance and Allied Services” (Beveridge), 606 Socialist Party, 234 social media, 547, 585–​86, 590–​91, 593–​94 Social Model of Disability, 611 social philosophy, 13–​14, 16–​20 Social Security Act (1935), 82 Social Security Administration, 236 social surveys, 529, 531 social work, and Addams, 23–​26 social work, epistemic agency in contemporary, and Addams, 705–​22 application of pragmatist attitude in Practice and Theory groups, 711–​17 application of research knowledge in Hull House, 709–​10 collective level of epistemic agency in Practice and Theory groups, 715–​17 evidence-​informed and theory-​ informed, 710–​11 periods of development of JA’s social work, 706–​8

770   Index social work, epistemic agency in contemporary, and Addams (cont.) pragmatist epistemology and multidisciplinary knowledge, 708–​9 strengthening of personal epistemic agency in Practice and Theory groups, 713–​15 Society for Ethical Culture, 516 Society of Midland Authors, The, 273 sociological research, Addams’s use of narrative in, 567–​84 economy of structure, 579–​81 emotion as test of theory, 576–​77 narrative analysis, 581–​82 narrative realities scholarship, 582 point of view and claims for auctoritas, 571–​73 point of view from the neighborly relation, 573–​75 situated vantage point and interpretation, 577–​79 social context of, 568–​70 storytelling sociology, 582–​83 use of narrative, 570–​81 Sociological Review, The, 272 Sociological Society, 654 sociology, and Addams, 7–​12. See also settlement sociology, return to in digital age and Addams; settlement sociology, transnationally and Addams gender and diversity, 10–​12, 18–​19 peace, war and military, 12 pragmatism and life accomplishments, 9–​10 social reform approach, 7–​9 sociology, legacy of Addams in, 389–​410 contributions as sociologist, 390–​93, 402–​5, 505–​7 partial experience and “the Great Experience,” 393–​96 pragmatist principles and Christian ideas, 393 pragmatist research and Christian social critique, 405–​8 social evolution or political eschatology, 400–​402 socialized and self-​sacrificing self, 396–​99 Soeters, J., 672, 743

Some Ethical Gains through Legislation (Kelley), 650–​51 Sonnenstuhl, W. J., 213 Sonoran Desert migrant corridor, 491 Sorel, Georges, 57, 59–​60 Soss, Joe, 88 Souls of Black Folks (Du Bois), 161 Soul Trak, 673 Speaker of the House of Representatives, The (Follett), 209 Specht, H., 25 speciesism (Singer), 666 speeches of Addams. See Addams, speeches of Spelman, Elizabeth V., 723 Spencer, Herbert, 400, 508, 509 Spingarn, Joel, 158, 159 Spirit of the Youth and the City Streets, The (Addams), 187, 261, 263, 265, 269–​7 1, 272, 331, 334, 337, 513 SPJA. See Jane Addams Papers Project, accessibility to sport and recreation, Addams and W. James on, 187–​203 James on sport and over-​tension, 188–​90 James on vital energy, 191–​93 JA’s influence on recreation, leisure, and environmental health, 667–​69 JA’s theory of recreation, 193–​97 recreation at Hull House, 198–​99 recreation vs. relaxation, 199–​200 Spry, Tami, 583 standard of decency, 82 Starbucks, 738, 739 Star Knitting Works, 118 Starr, Ellen Gates art exhibitions, 337 as co-​founder of Hull House, 75, 78, 150, 225, 282, 283, 528, 567–​68, 587, 588, 691 Hull House Maps and Papers, 535–​36 as partner of JA, 294 Stebner, Eleanor, 402 Stengel, Barbara, 171–​74, 178, 180–​81 Stevens, Alzina, 114, 530, 535, 536 Stivers, Camilla, 21, 372, 381 Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), 741 Stone, Lucy, 281

Index   771 storytelling sociology. See sociological research, Addams’s use of narrative in Stout, Margaret, 382 Strong, Josiah, 398, 400, 401 “Structure/​Antistructure and Agency under Oppression” (Lugones), 360 Studies of the Eighteenth Century in Italy (Lee), 57 Subjection of Women, The (Mill), 287 “Subjective Necessity for Social Settlements, The” (Addams), 115–​16, 172, 174, 175–​76, 295, 358, 375, 399, 508, 514, 569–​70, 576–​7 7, 651 subjects of a life (Regan), 666 suffrage movement, 290 Sullivan, Shannon, 11, 364, 455n7 Sustained Dialogue (SD), 143, 145n14 Sutton-​Smith, Brian, 328, 330, 340n6 Swarthmore College, Peace Collection, 625, 626, 627 “Sweating System, The” (Kelley), 319, 536 sweatshop working conditions, 112, 114, 234, 309, 319, 529–​30, 536, 540 Swope, Gerard, 377 symbolic interactionism theory (Mead), 130–​ 31, 134–​36 sympathetic knowledge, in social philosophy, 16–​18 sympathetic understanding. See also pragmatist social ethics, Addams and Rorty on affectionate interpretation and, 79, 83–​86 benevolence ethic vs., 314 characteristics of, 373, 398–​99, 444, 508–​ 9, 708 cosmic patriotism and, 490–​91 emotions and, 731, 733 experimentation and, 539 feminist pragmatism and, 618 with immigrants, 453–​54 JA as embodiment of, 135–​36 Lake on, 353 of the “other,” 744 propinquity to the poor and, 244 rules and regulations vs., 691 service learning and, 700 shared reflection and, 711 Whipps on, 145n9

Taft, William Howard, 231 Taft-​Hartley Act (1947), 120 Tarbell, Ida, 271 Tarver, Erin C., 200 Taylor, Frederick W., 22, 311, 372 teamsters strike (1905), 309 theory-​informed practice, 711–​14, 719 “Theory of Emotion I/​II, The” (Dewey), 724 Thomas, William I., 9, 10, 130, 298n72 Thompson, J. David, 266 Thompson, William “Big Bill,” 65–​67, 70 Thunburg, Greta, 663–​64 Tickner, J. A., 459 tit-​for-​tat strategy (Axelrod), 215 Tolstoy, Leo, 264–​65, 281, 430–​32, 439n4, 445, 686 Tomczak, Philippa, 594–​95, 596, 597 Tönnies, Ferdinand, 392 Towards a Feminist Pragmatist Model of Healthcare (Gillberg and Jones), 614 Townsend, L., 686, 691 Toynbee, Arnold, 116, 507 Toynbee Hall, London, 4, 150, 282, 516, 606, 607, 646, 647, 648, 658, 659, 690, 694 trade unions. See headings at labor unions; Women’s Trade Union League “Trade Unions and Public Duty” (Addams), 114, 117 tragedy of the commons (Ostrom), 216–​17 Transition Town movement, 676 transnational civil society, 38, 46 Travis, Donald, 446 Trevenot, Laurent, 406 Treviño, A. J., 591, 593 Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire, 235 Tronto, Joan, 120–​22 Trotter, Wilfred, 514–​15 True, J., 459, 740, 742, 743 Truman, Harry S., 236 Trump, Donald J., 55, 69–​70, 742 Trygg-​Helenius, Alli, 647 tuberculosis, 25, 483, 557, 612 Tufts, James, 14, 506 Tulp, Chiara, 463, 467, 470, 743 Turkey/​Greece, migrant border crossing, 483, 485, 488, 495

772   Index Twenty Years at Hull-​House (Addams), 17, 43, 62–​63, 76, 78, 85, 115–​16, 197, 271–​72, 284, 285, 290, 294, 465, 504, 558, 572, 631, 640, 647, 649, 655–​56, 684, 686, 689, 691, 693 Tyrrell, George, 57     Ukraine, Russian invasion of, 55–​56, 133, 420, 421, 422–​23, 480, 486, 740, 741–​42, 743 UN Convention of the Rights of the Child (1989), 331–​32 “Unexpected Reactions of A Traveler in Egypt, The” (Addams), 290–​91 Unfaithful Angels (Specht and Courtney), 25 UNICEF, on child labor, 331 United Kingdom demeaning of welfare recipients, 618 Federation of Residential Settlements, 658 London County Council, 647 post-​2008 austerity regimes, 607–​8 settlement-​house movement, 646, 648, 650, 654–​55 Trade Board, 655 universal healthcare system, 606–​7 United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL), 449 peacekeeping, 442, 449–​50, 451, 452–​53 Sustainable Development Goals, 677 women, peace, and security agenda, 417–​19 United Negro College Fund, 376 United Neighbourhood Centers Association, 658 universal healthcare system, in England, 606–​7 universalistic Western moral theories, as substitutionalist, 352–​53 Universal Peace Conference (1904), 433, 439n6 universities and colleges campus-​community partnerships, 697–​99 current civic engagement in higher education, 696–​702 service learning, 699–​701 settlement house movement and, 694 settlement sociology and, 655–​56 sustainability and environmental studies, 674 University of Chicago

admission of African American students, 154–​55 Department of Household Administration, 695 Extension Division, 466, 695 JA’s association with, 8, 40, 466 Perkins as faculty member of, 233 School of Pragmatism, 130 School of Social Service Administration, 23, 390, 695 School of Social Work, 40 School of Sociology, 130 Social Settlement Committee, 131, 132 Sociology Department, 151, 531, 657, 695 University of Illinois, Chicago Jane Addams College of Social Work, 23 Jane Addams Memorial Collection, 626 University of Michigan Library and Information Science, 636–​37 School of Information, 638 University of Nebraska, Grace Abbott School of Social Work, 23 University of Pennsylvania (UPENN), 152–​53 UN Security Council Resolution 1325 on gender perspective, 417–​18, 420 Resolution 2242 on women’s involvement with weapons control, 418 Resolution 2538 on women in peacekeeping operations, 419 Urry, J., 598 US Children’s Bureau, 82, 223, 224, 229, 230–​ 31, 559 US Food Administration Department, 253, 512 US Labor Department, Women’s Bureau, 376–​77 US Labor Statistics Department, 227 US National Archives’ Citizen Archivist, 636 US War Labor Policies Board, 232 Utilitarianism (Mill), 41     Vaccine Hunters Canada, 593–​94 Varieties of Religious Experience (W. James), 58 Varner, T., 740 Vaughn, L. M., 596 venereal disease, 612

Index   773 Vera, H., 591 Victoria Women’s Settlement, Liverpool, 650 Vink, Josina K., 552–​53, 562n10 vital lies. See democracy, and effects of vital lies Vital Lies (Lee), 56–​58 Vital Lies Simple Truths (Goldman), 71n1 Vitra Design Museum, Switzerland, 545 von Suttner, Bertha, 442     “Wage-​Earning Children” (Kelley and Stevens), 536 Wald, Lillian, 158, 228, 231 Waletzky, Joshua, 571 Walker, B., 679 war. See also peaceweaving, and Addams; World War I PTSD and, 437 Roach on, 437–​38, 439n3 W. James on, 436–​37 Ward, Humphrey, Mrs., 647 Ward, Mary A., 63, 264, 270 War on Poverty, 377, 381 war virtues and expansive masculinity, Addams’s critique of, 427–​40 appeals to pity and prudence, 430–​32 facility of expansive patriotism, 433–​36 moral resilience vs. pragmatic compromise, 428–​29 Watts, D. J., 591 Webb, Beatrice, 9, 507, 569, 647, 655 Webb, Sidney, 9, 507, 647 Webber, M., 677 Weber, Adna Ferrin, 268 Weber, Marianne, 8–​9 Weber, Max, 7, 8, 11, 391, 392, 398 welfare reform, 86 welfare state, 590, 606–​8, 616–​17 Wells, N., 668 Wells-​Barnett, Ida B., 11, 16, 157, 246–​47, 256n11 Wendell, Susan, 610, 611, 612 Weyl, Walter, 48 Wharton, Edith, 261, 263, 272 Wharton, Susan, 152–​53 What I Believe (Tolstoy), 264 What Then Must We Do? (Tolstoy), 265

What to Do? (Tolstoy), 264, 265 Whelan-​Jackson, Nate, 197, 200 Whipps, Judy D., 15, 145n9, 279, 551, 555, 559 Whitcombe, Eliza P., 113 White, Julie Anne, 111 white feminism, 352, 605, 609 White House Conference on Child Welfare, 232 White House Conference on Dependent Children (1909), 231 Whitford, Josh, 406 Whitman, Walt, 268 wicked problems, 353, 363, 595, 677. See also social design, wicked problems, and Addams “Widening the Circle of Enlightenment” (Addams), 18 Wilberforce College, 152–​53 Wilcox, Delos, 268 Wild Duck, The (Ibsen), 59 Williams, Fanny Barrier, 246, 256n11 Williams, Jody, 442 “Will to Believe, The” (W. James), 57, 58 Wilson, Woodrow, 20, 21, 61–​62, 70, 232, 371–​72, 415, 741 Witt, Charlotte, 347 Witt, Matthew T., 381 Wollstonecraft, Mary, 723 Woman and Socialism (Bebel), 288–​89 Woman’s Share in Primitive Culture (Mason), 506 Woman’s Tribune, 288 women advocacy for voting rights, 39, 160, 225, 231, 286, 288, 506, 507 contributions omitted from history, 374–​75, 607, 657, 699 feminist vision for families and, 292–​94 health symptoms seen as psychosomatic, 612–​13 role in municipal housekeeping, 38–​39 roles in UN peace processes, 418, 419 as signatories to peace agreements, 742 Women and Public Housekeeping (Addams), 539 “Women and the State” (Addams), 288–​89 Women at the Hague (Addams, Balch, and Hamilton), 273, 285

774   Index Women Breaking the Silence (WBS), 452 Women’s Christian Temperance Union, 435 Women’s City Club of Chicago, 246 Women’s Industrial Council, 654 Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF), 4, 40, 46, 47, 76, 101, 205, 273, 378, 414–​15, 417, 423, 442, 492, 493, 494, 513, 625–​26, 678 Reaching Critical Will program, 418 Women’s International Peace Conference (1915), 12 Women’s Joint Congressional Committee, 231 Women’s Peace Party (WPP), 40, 64, 75–​76, 413–​15, 492, 625 Women’s Trade Union League, 8, 75, 85, 113–​14, 225, 232, 233, 237, 654 Women Take the Wheel initiative, Poland, 422 workplace safety, 316 World War I ICW resolutions, 413–​15, 417–​18, 420

JA’s pacifism and, 12, 46–​47, 133, 178–​79, 273, 429, 443, 467–​68, 474, 514, 742–​43 support for US involvement, 12, 70, 133, 179 surveys and interviews by JA regarding, 466, 469, 470, 472 Wright, K. A. M., 473 Writing a Woman’s Life (Heilbrun), 272 writings, of Addams. See literary art, of Addams; specific essays and books by title Wundt, Wilhelm, 506, 508     Young, Stella, 615 Young Men’s Christian Association (YMCA), 377     Znaniecki, F., 10 Zola, Emile, 270–​7 1 Zola, Irving, 612–​13 Zooniverse, 636