M. Halatcheva-Trapp & A. Poferl, Dortmund, Germany
Jane Addams - social researcher, socio-political activist and Nobel Peace Prize laureate – is one of those "women in sociology" (Honegger/Wobbe 1998) who are rarely remembered today. Although Addams' research and sociopolitical activities had a significant impact on academic and public life in Chicago at the time, her work has remained in the shadow of the "Men of the Chicago School" (Deegan 1988).
Our contribution aims to dignify Jane Addams as a classic of interpretive social research. It is on the one hand sociological-historical, on the other hand sociological of knowledge: We discuss the significance of Hull-House Maps & Papers for the formation of the Inter- pretative Paradigm. Furthermore, drawing on the recent approach of Sociological Cultures of Knowledge (Poferl/Keller 2018), we ask which specific ways of producing and legitimating sociological knowledge become visible in Hull-House Maps & Papers and how social inequalities - here qua gender and institutional context - are involved.
G. Cersosimo & L. Landolfi, Salerno, Italy
Florence Kelley, whose theoretical and empirical activity played a central role in the development of social analysis, started promoting social research in the US in the early 1890s, with a critique of the capitalistic organisation of labour and the exploitation of children and women in the factories and sweatshops of Illinois. This research was also decisive in the contemporary development and use of qualitative and quantitative methods (Cersosimo, 2019; 2021). Poverty, a central element in Kelley’s observations, was to her mind, the fruit of the total subordination to work of workers, their families and their communities. Her theoretical knowledge, based on her American studies, her pragmatism and the Hull-House women’s practice of democracy, was enriched by her history, economics and law studies in European universities and her relationship with the socialist tradition, with Marx and with Engels, whose The Condition of the Working Class in England she translated into English in 1887.
The construction of an American sociological canon erased Kelley’s activity and that of many other women, authors of important research, excluded by a slew of anti-women behaviours and critical silences about their lack of scientificity. But History is blotted out by a highly focused present as Anselm Strauss is said to have stated (1993, p.256), a contradictory present in which the idea of a vocation on the part of women to transform research is becoming ever more central: I am seeking an end to androcentrism, not to systematic inquiry (Harding, 1986, p.10). Reflection on Florence Kelley’s personal journey re-opens debates and questions as to the reasons why in the last century, in the 1990s, there began a process of reappropriation of women’s contribution to the history of sociological thought and social research, which necessarily leads to their founding presence in training curricula and sociological tradition thus restoring contents, dignity and memory.
E. A. Steinhauer, London, UK
The Frankfurt School is one of the most important sociological instigators of the 20th century. While important male figures such as Adorno or Habermas are known beyond the boundaries of academia today, the role of female 'members', however, is little explored. This is due not least to the male-determined notions of intellectual and sociological (research) work that persisted throughout the first half of the 20th century, as well as to the contextual development of the Frankfurt School and the Institute for Social Research in exile and in the transatlantic field of forces in the postwar period. Nevertheless, there are important female researchers whose contributions have significantly shaped social research. Along with Else Frenkel-Brunswick, Marie Jahoda, and Herta Herzog, Hilda Weiss is one of those whose life and work have provided significant but now little-noted impulses in the history of sociology. Weiss will therefore be the exemplary focus of my proposed contribution. Her intellectual biography is characterized by a politically shaped life and the mutually determining poles of political activism, theoretical work, and applied social research. Thus, her time as a factory worker and trade unionist in Jena is inseparable from her later contribution to Erich Fromm's pioneering study of "Arbeiter und Angestellte am Vorabend des Dritten Reichs" (1929/31). This work was in turn influenced by her study of theoretical writings on 19th-century forms of social and questionnaire research; here her studies of Marx's "Enquête Ouvrière" stand out. The aim of the lecture is to shed light on Weiss' role as a sociologist, and especially to center the innovatively interwoven levels of research alongside biographical developments. Particular emphasis will be placed on her achievements in establishing a social research that combines qualitative and empirical elements, as well as on her outstanding position as one of the few intellectuals close to the Frankfurt School to have achieved academic research work and political agitation could be successfully reconciled. In addition to and through Weiss's rehabilitation as an important independent intellectual, the broader significance of archiving, protégé-mentor relationship, and co-authorship will also be illuminated, ultimately contributing to an understanding of the relationship of gendered impact versus memory in social science.
M. Keller, Frankfurt, Germany
This article aims to commemorate Gertrud Dyhrenfurth, a forgotten pioneer of empirical social research. Starting in the mid-1890s, she conducted elaborate and innovative empirical research in Germany on the living and working conditions of women in homework and women in agriculture. This is remarkable if only because she was self-taught; as a woman, she was still denied access to university studies at the time. Dyhrenfurth's studies attracted the attention of scientific circles and were reviewed in the most important journals. She was one of the women to whom the national economist Heinrich Herkner made several positive references in his well-known inaugural lecture in 1898 at the University of Zurich, which he devoted to the subject of "The Study of National Economics by Women." For Herkner, Dyhrenfurth's studies were among the works that enriched the discipline and were therefore an indispensable part of the canon. The recognition of contemporary scholarly circles is also reflected in the fact that Dyhrenfurth was one of the few women to be accepted as a regular member of the newly founded Society for Sociology. She was also awarded an honorary doctorate from the University of Tübingen in 1921.
This article provides an insight into the work of this early social researcher. On the one hand, it sheds light on the framework conditions and factors that enabled self-taught women like Dyhrenfurth to participate in science at that time, as well as on the contexts in which and the influences under which her studies were produced. influences her studies emerged. On the other hand, he examines why Dyhrenfurth fell into oblivion again and disappeared from the memory of the social sciences.
E. Smolenaars, Amsterdam, Netherlands
In the 1830s Harriet Martineau constructed an early, interesting framework for social research. In her popular pre-disciplinary sociological work How to observe Morals and Manners (1838), British writer Martineau presented her search for social facts which can be seen as one of the earliest methodology-frameworks for studying social reality. Different scholars have since, in persistent ways, re-introduced Martineaus works. Sociologist Martin Seymour Lipset labelled her a 'sophisticated analyst', adding she remained in 'the obscurity of nineteenth-century editions'.
This paper explores the question whether it may be possible to give Martineau's pre-disciplinary work a place in the history of science and in current theoretical thinking. The focus is on one interesting, promising concept: the Traveller being the researcher. By using this concept, Martineau opens communication to her 19th century readers. However, more important are the implications of her moral requisites in How to observe Morals and Manners: Key-statement is that there is no difference between 'ordinary' people and readers, between travellers and the scientist. This is to be understood in relation to the 19th century context in which the scientist is not an institutionalised person, but a moral traveller who, as her list of required research skills shows, can train herself to make better observations.
After providing a summary of Martineau's concept of the 'research(er)-as-travel(ler)', her key-statements will be exploratory evaluated in relation to: firstly the history of science and scientists, in particular the Humanities (Bod 2013) and to Martineaus intellectual network (Hobday 2017; Arbuckle 2019 - 2021) and secondly to Margaret Archers work on Agency (2017). The concluding page of the paper refers to the future and the EU Research Agenda 'Horizon Europa' to which co-creation and dialogic sociology are central elements (Ramis-Salas, Soler-Gallart, Torras-Gomez2022).
In this way the paper hopes to contribute to the question and issues posed in the Conference Frauen in der Soziologiegeschichte on 'welche (Rahmen-)Bedingungen und Verhaltensweisen gegeben sein müssen um Marginalisierung der Arbeit' – in diesem Fall am Beispiel von Harriet Martineau - 'zu verhindern.'
M. Gammaitoni, Rome, Italy
Mary Wollstonecraft should fully enter the history of the forerunners of sociology, like her contemporary J.-J. Rousseau, because in the first place she is the one who in 1700 clarified and criticized the social dynamics that influenced the lack of an egalitarian education between men and women, precluding the latter from being able to exercise rational thought and free action in space and in their own time. In addition to dedicating herself to the publication and dissemination of a treatise on women's rights, Wollstonecraft was also a careful observer of English daily life and the French Revolution.Wollstonecraft criticized in an open debate the positions of Edmund Burke, James Fordyce, Jean Jaques Rousseau, John Gregory, for political issues but also for their denial of women's right to free education, of the need for a public and equal school , with mixed classes.His critical thinking responds to all levels of contemporary sociological analysis: the direct and structured observation of some social phenomena, the description and interpretation of facts and social relations, criticism, the ability to predict their evolution and to propose solutions to the problems that have emerged.It is a fact that the history of sociology is a male story, when instead, many female scholars emerge and propose original visions of social action.
N. Jakoby, Zürich, Suisse
The beginnings of sociology are female, even if textbooks and the academic canon tell us otherwise. Harriet Martineau (1802-1876) is the first female sociologist and a pioneer of empirical social research. In German-speaking countries, however, her special role for early sociology has been completely ignored. As early as 1838, Martineau pointed out the need for an independent science of society. pointed out. She called this new science the science of society or science of morals and confidently demanded its identity and recognition as a specialized discipline. In the focus of the lecture will be her works Society in America (1837) and How to observe Morals and Manners (1838), which can be considered classics of sociology. How to observe Morals and Manners (1838) is the first methodological book in sociology, published nearly fifty years before Durkheim's Les Règles de la Methode Sociologique. Martineau's Methodology characterizes the conception of an empirical sociology, research tools such as conceptual classifications and typologies, which lead to the discovery of and typologies that lead to the discovery of social regularities, as well as a comparative sociology, for Martineau understanding of a society can only be gained by comparing it with other societies.
The reasons for presenting Harriet Martineau and her work are, on the one hand, to give sociologists a complete picture of European sociology and its institutionalization. This means that her origins can be traced back to a longer tradition than has so far been perceived and conveyed in German-speaking sociology itself. Thus, previous experiences show the particular difficulty of positioning Martineau as the first sociologist among the "established" of the discipline and of describing a different history of sociology - beyond the omnipresent classics. On the other hand, a reflection on Martineau as a classic of sociology means to convey a conception of scientific knowledge that is still modern today, which is measured by the realism of its results for the investigated facts and thus clarifies where the strengths of a sociology for the analysis of social questions and problems have always been.
R. A. Tirkey, Delhi, India
The discipline of sociology owes a significant debt to women sociologists. In recent times, several books and commentaries have highlighted the labour market participation of women, women's unpaid care work, and the education of girls and women. Due credit goes to the popular Women's Movement, including the strengthened voices in academic spaces that continue to challenge the status quo. Within this overarching discipline of sociology, an underlying need to bring women sociologists to the nucleus of social sciences, rather than pushing them to the margins. However, at this point in time, Marx, Weber, Durkheim and the likes continue to dominate the space of classical theory in Sociology. Many have argued to the urgency to place gender at the centre of sociological inquiry. Several ground-breaking works by female figures such as Harriet Martineau, Pearl Jephcott, Charlotte Perkins, and Ida B. Wells have either been forgotten or neglected within sociology. For that matter, should sociological discussions around women be organised within earmarked syllabi on women in society? Or rather, are we then sinking into sociological amnesia of ignoring/forgetting/neglecting contributions from eminent women sociologists? As pointed out in several journals, men have written the history of sociology- do we need to strengthen our voices all the more and gear towards re-writing the history of sociology? To this end, the intended paper will attempt to discuss the contributions of Irawati Karve (1905-1970), who is regarded as the first Indian woman sociologist. It will mainly look at the syllabi of Sociology courses in India and analyse the 'space' they have been given in the graduate theory curriculum. It will further understand the significant work of Karve towards the development of sociology in India.
E. Grassi, Rome, Italy
Knowledge represents the highest form of power: you can choose to increase it, spread it, lock it in or erase it. In the process of emancipation of Western societies, a peculiar and evident element is the lack of inclusiveness in the texts and in the scholastic path of female personalities and those belonging to the LGBTQ + community, implementing a real path of exclusion that, even today, unites these groups in the battle for the vindication of their rights through an intersectional vision of the person. The intent of this theoretical proposal is to follow the historiographical path of the communities indicated in order to better understand the coercion devices implemented to hinder the representativeness of gender, orientation and identity, focusing attention on the socio-political micro-mutations of the advanced techno-capitalism. From the eighteenth century to the present day, the historical events that led to the cultural gag of these figures will be analyzed.
K. S. Johnson, Florida, USA
At the core of education lies inequalities, this is a systemic issue around the country and throughout the world, therefore, the struggle within the discipline is far from over. Far too often, individual injustices are spoken about when the issues that plague us today reach far beyond one act. For that reason, it is important to notice the tree and its roots, and not just a few bad apples. To critically examine the social forces that have attempted to cast a shadow over contributors to the field of sociology and examine why this has occurred, it is worthy to provide brief historical context.
Looking back just a century ago, non-White children and non-White young adults were learning in their own schools at one time (Irons 2004; Hilberg 2020; Suchor 2020; Menkart and View 2021). Those schools, were being raided, burned down (Moss 2009; Scribner 2020). Non-White children and non-White young adults were shunned from predominantly white institutions or PWIs (Moreno 2020). This is a formula for a rock and a hard place. By the sheer fact that case after case went to trial, either at the state level or federal level, makes it clear that non-White students were being discriminated against (Wallenstein 2020; United States Courts n.d.). This issue was impacting children and adults alike (Clayton and Peters 2019; Library of Congress n.d.; Wallenstein 2020). Looking at this through another lens, non-White people were prohibited from buses, trains, bathrooms, restaurants, so this issue does not discriminate the sphere of education.
A brief look at history was provided, in a more general sense, to setup the argument that the belittling of non-White voices is neither siloed to sociology nor to education itself. Additionally, looking back at these events highlights the route I wish to take in this manuscript—to explore the history of sociology by first discussing the educational structure, and to analyze the processes of discrimination as I approach why certain people have been excluded from the discipline. There are narratives that attribute sociology, sociological theory and methodology to a White, male, colonial hegemony. Narratives like this imply that there are only certain knowledge producers.
E. Freeberg, G. L. Walker & L.-Z. Golesorkhi, New York, USA
In this paper, we map Frieda Wunderlich’s (1884-1963) idiosyncratic career and recover the overlooked contributions of some of the individual women who shaped discourse and practice on social protections at the time (Weimar Republic). As a scholar and practitioner, Wunderlich addressed the relationship between economy and society, particularly in regards to decent labor conditions. Our research explores two elements of Wunderlich’s work in this context, namely her efforts to introduce academic social research into the public policy realm while simultaneously co-creating and participating in ‘spaces’ established by and for “new women” who pursued educational reform, trained for new social policy practices, and entered politics.
We consider the two noted and interrelated elements in Wunderlich’s work by attending to three arenas where Wunderlich made her mark: German Association of Female Civil Servants of Welfare (1919 - 1933), German Democratic Party (1925-1933), and German Academy for Women's Social and Educational Work (1925 - 1933). In our exploration of Wunderlich’s scholarship and policy practice within these arenas, we situate her contributions alongside other individual women, including - but not limited to - Dorothea Hirschfeld, Hedwig Wachenheim, Cora Berliner, Gertrud Bäumer, Helene Lange, Marianne Weber, Hanna Meuter, Alice Salomon, and Hilde Lion. Through recovering and bringing into conversation the writings and practices of these “new women”, we find that theory and praxis concurrently informed Wunderlich’s career as it did for many of the women around her.
O. Neun, Kassel, Germany
The first generation of female sociologists includes the "first female sociologists in Frankfurt" in the circle around Karl Mannheim (Honegger 1994; Wobbe 1997, p. 20). This group included an unusually high number of female students for the time, such as Gisèle Freund, Nina Rubinstein, Margarete Freudenthal, Frieda Haussig, Käthe Truhel, Toni Oelsner, the sisters Evelyn Anderson and Ilse Ziegellaub, and Natalie Halperin. (cf. Honegger 1989; 1993: 185-190; Kettler/Meja 1993; Kettler et al. 2008; Ilieva 2010: 127-135). Even in the English emigration since 1933, Mannheim has students such as Viola Klein, Helene Rosenau, and Jean Floud. Claudia Honegger (1994) explains why Mannheim's sociology was interesting for many women by the fact that Mannheim was also interested in their socio-cultural situation (cf. also Kettler/Meja 1993). Thus, they could choose dissertation topics that were closely related to their own interests, experiences and life worlds (Honegger 1994: 75).
In it they deal with e.g.. questions of generational sociology (Lütkens), the history of ideas (Brünauer), the sociology of intellectuals (Halperin, Lütkens), the sociology of economics (Freudenthal, Lütkens), the sociology of gender (Klein, Rosenau, Lütkens, Halperin), the sociology of culture, art, and literature (Halperin, Klein, Freund), the sociology of sociology (Viola Klein), the sociology of education (Lütkens), the sociology of emigration (Nina Rubinstein), bureaucratic studies or social psychology (Truhel), or the sociology of Judaism (Toni Oelsner).
However, these doctoral theses supervised by Mannheim are little known, with various factors contributing to this low impact. He himself was only able to finish supervising two of the theses in Frankfurt until his leave of absence on April 14, 1933, and his subsequent emigration to England. Therefore, they can only be published for the most part afterwards, which is why the references to Mannheim have to be minimized or deleted altogether due to political constraints. Another reason is that, like Frieda Elisabeth Haussig's dissertation (1934), they can only be printed in excerpts due to financial problems. Also, not all of them have progressed far enough to be completed before emigration, e.g. Ilse Seglow's study on actresses. Contributing to the limited impact of the English doctoral dissertations in Germany is the fact that, like the work of Klein or Rosenau, they were published only in English. Mannheim's early death in 1947 is another reason for the low influence of his circle, as it prevents him from supporting his students. For the most part, therefore, they either had to give up their academic careers or, like Klein, were only able to establish themselves academically at a late stage. The forced emigration from Germany thus led to a break in this tradition to a large extent (Moebius 2022).
Although new editions of works such as the dissertation by Gisèle Freund (1968), which is praised as the first sociological work on photography, by Sallis-Freudenthal (1986), and by Klein (1971) were published in the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s, the works of Halperin, Truhel, Haussig, Brünauer, Rosenau, and Lütkens, among others, were not reprinted or translated.
They are of interest, however, because they already deal with their own gender roles in them, for example in the doctoral dissertations of Käthe Truhel, Nathalie Halperin and Margarethe Freudenthal (Kettler et al. 2008, p. 114f.). Most important for this is Viola Klein's (1946) work "The Feminine Character," but in Germany Klein is better known, if at all, as co-author of "The Double Role of Women," also published in German (Myrdal/Klein 1956; Gerhard 2010, p. 48) However, in "The Feminine Character," following on from Mannheim's sociological reflections on knowledge, she addresses the changing image of women in science and also compares the role of women with other groups in marginal positions, thus hinting at ideas of intersectionality (Tarrant 2006, p. 152f.; Kettler/Meja 1993). Theoretically, she uses the "ideology" concept and the idea of "cultural lag" to describe power relations, i.e., that the image of the social role of women follows real developments only with a delay and therefore takes on an "ideological" character.
In principle, however, the English-language literature has so far not treated Klein's German-language texts, such as her unpublished literary doctoral thesis on Celine, her later sociological description of the development of English sociology, or her German articles in the "Welt am Sonntag" (Klein 1967; Lyon 2007, p. 154).
Based on archival material from Viola Klein's estate in Reading and the archives of the "London School of Economics", the lecture will therefore, in addition to an overview of the aforementioned female sociologists in Mannheim's environment, present Klein's work as an important case study for them and thus take up a tradition of sociology that has received little attention so far.
I. Gjergji, Coimbra, Portugal
Herta Herzog’s oeuvre is inscribed in the History of Sociology of Communication, not only as a research model, a theoretical and methodological turning point of an entire discipline, but also for having formulated some fundamental questions concerning psychological motivations’ relevance in audience behaviour (Klaus and Seethaler 2016). She was the founder of the sociology of radio and reception studies (1930); invented the focus group (now widely considered Merton’s discovery) and promoted the use of psychoanalytic tools in qualitative research; was the first scholar to study serials (as a specific genre) and focused her attention on the female audience, the most neglected in sociology at that time. Despite this major contribution, Herzog’s intellectual path inside sociology was interrupted by the academic ostracism, ungendered by predatory and male chauvinist attitudes which obscured her merits and eventually drove her out of the university. It is now quite unusual to find Herzog’s name in sociology textbooks. And yet, reading Herzog’s writings today could be very useful for social and media scholars. To fully comprehend the relationship between text and context in communication processes as well as the media’s role in shaping subjects’ identities it is pivotal to turn to Herzog’s insightful research.
This presentation of the forgotten Herzog and her scientific relevance today is rooted in the assumption that unearthing women’s sociological thought not only helps rewrite the history of sociology and enrich the scientific debate; it can also provide a particular gratification to women sociologists by relieving their ‘pain’ at thinking of themselves as ‘motherless’, i.e. being inside a scientific universe shaped by only ‘fathers’, where traces of feminine are systematically removed (Lengermann, Niebrugge 1998). This awareness of (scientific) mothers’ existence would undoubtedly prevent them suffering from elemental anguish of abandonment, and yet – as Melanie Klein (1948) explains – it would also forge the conditions to perpetrate the necessary (metaphorical) matricide, that is the founding act of the subjectivation process, the condicio sine qua non for having access to the symbol (Kristeva 2000). Thus, a newly rewritten history of sociology appears to be the only way to build grounds for real women sociologists’ emancipation, liberated from fathers’ power, but also freed from mothers’ loss anxiety.
B. Hönig, Graz, Austria
Recently deceased Dorothy Edith Smith (1926–2022) is one of the most successful contemporary feminist sociologists. Smith’s oeuvre has been read and developed further mostly in the anglo-phone world; in the German-speaking world, it has been less recognized by the discipline of sociology than by interdisciplinary gender studies. In gender studies, Smith has mostly been interpreted according to the account of feminist philosopher of science Sandra Harding, as one of the so-called „standpoint theorists“. It can be criticized that Harding in her interpretation of Smith imputes categories of a discourse of philosophy of science without taking into account that Smith’s oeuvre is part of the much older sociology of knowledge discussion within sociology as a scientific discipline. Smith does not explicate these inner-sociological discussions in her own work, but rather presupposes these instead of systematically reconstructing her sociological roots; this fact contributes to the strong reception of Harding’s rather reduced reception of Smith’s work in the interdisciplinary gender studies. The paper intends to contribute to that debate and to revise that reduced interpretation by memorizing the sociology of knowledge foundations of Smith’s encompassing work.
C. Schlembach, Wien, Austria
The article focuses on Uta Gerhardt's sociology, drawing on personal recollections of conversations (mostly conducted by telephone), correspondence, and interpretations of works. Gerhardt developed a methodologically grounded, empirical and theoretical social thought in the debate with the sociology of the humanities (Simmel, Weber, Schütz, Parsons), which was aware of its historical ties, but which also triggered controversies and conflicts. At the same time, Gerhardt's biography and work are not only part of the history of sociology. She has also done sociological history herself, relying on interpretations that are faithful to the work and accurate to the text. The controversies addressed by Gerhardt concern both the theoretical and methodological foundations of postwar (German) sociology. Thus, her career goes beyond the fact that she had to assert herself as a woman in a male-dominated university environment. This article aims to discuss Gerhardt's social thought along three interrelated lines of development:
First, Berger and Luckmann made the interpretation of Schütz as a sociologist of knowledge dominant, and at the same time Schütz was widely received as an alternative to Parsons, whose systems thinking the 'disobedient generation' rejected. She countered Luckmann's thesis that Schütz's early work was proto-sociology with the role of the ideal type, which Berger and Luckmann flattened into typification and robbed of its methodological significance through approaches of philosophical anthropology (Gehlen, Plessner). In contrast to this, she showed how Schütz already pointed out the structure of social action in modern society in Sinnhafter Aufbau and how he held on to the perspective of sociology based on ideal types opened up by Weber even in his American exile.
Second, the reconstruction of the role of the ideal type for the foundation of sociology was linked to an empirical research program that Gerhardt developed in her medical sociological work in London and later in Heidelberg. Qualitative or interpretative research as it was decisively shaped by grounded theory (Glaser, Strauss), objective hermeneutics (Overmann), and the narrative interview (Schütze) appeared to her to be methodologically insufficiently grounded. In her work on bypass patients, she critically examined these approaches and eventually reverted to Weber's (and Schütz's) ideal type. Since neither Weber nor Schütz had worked with ideal types in terms of empirical social research, she first had to develop the idea into an empirical research method and was able to show how the ideal type guides both the methodological procedure and the theoretical conception of understanding sociology. In her empirical research, she demonstrated the rationality of action of individuals who were confronted with the indication of coronary bypass surgery and had to make biographical decisions (return to work, early retirement) on this basis in the course of rehabilitation.
Making health-related decisions in the context of medical treatment addressed a theme of Talcott Parsons' sociology of medicine: Medical practice in the form of professional interaction not only institutionalized a rational value structure in society alternative to economic rationality. But the role of professional action had political implications for the defense of democracy in the USA and for the restoration of democracy in Germany after 1945.
The connection between sociology and democracy became visibly more important in Gerhardt's late sociological-historical work, especially in the examination of Parson's view of democracy and dictatorship and their analysis by means of a double structure of social action (integration vs. anomie), which persists into his late work. Using Parson's intellectual biography, she was able to show, on the basis of archival material and in precise reconstructions of his work, how closely Parson's sociological thinking was linked to the social history of the 20th century - the development of democracy and its crises as well as dictatorship - and how much he thought of sociology as historically bound. This idea becomes thematic in Gerhardt's view of the theory and history of sociology when she sees the emergence of new theoretical approaches as linked to the ruptures in (especially German and U.S.) social history. In this context, too, she draws on Parson's medical sociology and elaborates, for example, the role (still highly relevant today) of the social sciences, which, in conjunction with the 'political psychiatry' of the time, provided a framework for social transformation for the American occupation regime after 1945 that was to pave the way for the postwar democracy of the FRG.
J. Goodwin & L. Parsons, Leicester, UK
A key feature of sociological practice is to continually record experiences and observations so as to develop and sustain the ‘sociological imagination’. As Mills (1959) famously instructs, sociologists should ‘start a file’ to capture everything from fringe thoughts to snippets of conversation. The analytical and explanatory potential of such files of notebooks, unpublished materials and personal research ephemera is immense, particularly for any researcher seeking to understand the disciplinary contribution of those who have gone before. Nonetheless these sorts of materials tend to be overlooked and under-utilised. Perhaps, though, it is in these files that the ‘traces’ of previous generations of women sociologists are to be found. There are many women who have been sociological practitioners and who have made an outstanding contribution to the understanding of social life who remain hidden within the minutia of academic historiographies – lost, written-out, diminished, or just simply ignored. One such sociologist is Pearl Jephcott (1900-1980). Her books, including Girls Growing Up (1942), Rising Twenty (1948) Some Young People (1954) Married Women Working (1962), A Troubled Area: Notes on Notting Hill (1964), Time of One’s Own (1967) and Homes in High Flats (1971) represent a considerable stock of forgotten knowledge which retains a contemporary relevance. Jephcott was a researcher in the Millsean mould. A supreme fieldworker who engaged in continuous cycles of reflection and observation, recording, drawing, and note-taking wherever she went. In this paper we examine the journey of ‘rediscovering’ Pearl Jephcott using her research notebooks and recorded thoughts and observations to locate her sociological orientation. We then spotlight one of her least known and unpublished works – The Social Background of Delinquency (1954) – to further examine her innovative approach to research methodology. In particular we will consider one approach Jephcott used in this study which she called the ‘playroom method’. This was a way of doing research with children and examining children’s views about community, locality, and ‘delinquency’. The paper will conclude with a brief reflection on the value of returning to past sociological studies and retracing the steps of previous generations of women sociologists through non-standard means. (345)
H. Trappe & N. Milewski, Rostock, Germany
Our contribution takes a look at the recent history of sociology over the past 25 years. Using the example of leading German sociology journals - the Zeitschrift für Soziologie and the Kölner Zeitschrift für Soziologie und Sozialpsychologie - we analyze their publication practices, taking into account gender-typical developments from the mid-1990s to the present. The background is the change in social science publishing that has taken place in parallel with a feminization of the social sciences. From a theoretical point of view, we refer to approaches explaining gender segregation in organizations as well as to explanations derived from bibliometric research of a so far lower research productivity of women. We address the following questions: Has the increase in the proportion of women in the social sciences over time been equally reflected in increased participation in publications, in peer review of articles, and in editorships? To what extent does the composition of authors by gender correspond to the theoretical-methodological and content-related orientation of articles and reflect general developments in the discipline? How do gender and academic status interact in author teams? Are women as authors of articles as visible as men?
We first reconstruct the development of the share of women in various employee and status groups in the social sciences over time on the basis of official data. This is done with the aim of describing the development that has taken place and deriving a reference benchmark for assessing the journal data. The dataset of the two journals, which we created ourselves, covers six double years from 1994/95 to 2019/20 and contains information on 566 journal articles and 673 reviews written by 1608 authors*. These data are supplemented by information on 2389 reviewers and 92 editors.
Our analyses show, among other things, that the proportion of women in all status groups in the social sciences has increased significantly and, at the end of the observation period, exceeded 50 percent for the first time in terms of full-time academic staff, doctorates passed, and UAS professorships. Despite considerable progress in increasing their visibility, however, women are not yet represented as authors, reviewers, or editors of the sociology journals analyzed in proportion to their expected share. As authors of professional articles, they have caught up the most, whereby collaborations with men of higher status, as well as a concentration on empirical-quantitative studies in the subject areas of the sociology of education and the labor market, and women's and gender studies have had a favorable effect. Women remained significantly underrepresented in peer reviewing articles and as reviewers. Overall, our findings suggest that German sociology is undergoing a transformation toward a gender-integrated discipline, but that equal participation in publication practice has not yet been achieved. The latter is not exclusively due to the quantitative representation of women, but also to their segregation into certain subject areas and their associated opportunities to act within traditional power structures.