Martineau, Addams, and Du Bois: Sociology as Social Action

Introduction: Philosophy and Practice United

"Practice what you preach." This simple phrase, however clichéd, could sum up the lives and works of Harriet Martineau, Jane Addams, and W.E.B. Du Bois. All three dedicated their lives and writings not simply to improving the philosophy of social involvement in particular disadvantaged communities, but to achieving practical social change through their own lives, personal acts of defiance, and public acts of engaged social upheaval.

Harriet Martineau and the Foundations of Positivist Sociology

Harriet Martineau was born at the beginning of the nineteenth century into a large, upper-middle-class English family. She was quickly orphaned by the death of her father and abandoned by her husband. Unlike most women of her station, Martineau was forced to support herself solely through her own writing early in her adult life. To earn a living, she wrote essays, novels, biographies, news columns, and some of the first seminal texts on the subject of sociology.

Her sociological significance also has its roots in her willingness to travel and go "into the field." Martineau began a two-year study of the United States when she visited the country in 1834. She documented this visit, and a later 1838 journey, in works entitled Society in America, Retrospect of Western Travel, and How to Observe Morals and Manners. She stressed the need for aspiring sociologists to objectively compare different ways of life. An observer could not proceed with the assumption that truth and justice resided in one's own culture alone; one had to apprehend a new culture on its own terms. She is therefore considered the mother of positivist sociology, a standing crystallized in her monumental work on the Middle East, Eastern Life: Past and Present. All her works examined the "correspondence problem between inter-subjectivity, verifiable observable, and unobservable theoretical issues" and provided a positivist solution to examining local cultures and analyzing relations between the genders (Smith, 2001).

Jane Addams and the Settlement Movement

Martineau died in the 1870s, shortly before the birth of Jane Addams, the founder of the settlement movement. Addams is noted for viewing the needs of the poor with an objective sense of compassion and an absence of moral judgment. Her social activism was thus conducted in a spirit similar to that in which Martineau carried out her sociological analyses of American and Middle Eastern societies. Addams was another woman who defied conventional expectations in her devotion to improving the lives of the poor — both through her actions in the community and through her writings. Her work in social settlements addressed the problems created by urbanization, industrialization, and immigration.

Unlike many other settlement houses of the era, Addams's Hull-House provided kindergarten and day-care facilities for the children of working mothers, an employment bureau, an art gallery, libraries, English and citizenship classes, and theater, music, and art classes. "As the complex expanded to include thirteen buildings, Hull-House supported more clubs and activities such as a Labor Museum, the Jane Club for single working girls, meeting places for trade union groups, and a wide array of cultural events" (UCI, 2005). During this period, Addams also penned books, speeches, and newspaper articles advocating for the rights of the poor to better housing and living conditions, as well as for the international peace movement. Addams was thus among the first activists to unite social theories about the empowerment of women with the empowerment of the poor and with international labor and peace movements.

Conclusion: A Shared Legacy of Engaged Scholarship

All three figures — Martineau, Addams, and Du Bois — demonstrate that the most enduring sociological work is not confined to the library or the lecture hall. Each translated philosophical conviction into direct social practice: Martineau through rigorous cross-cultural fieldwork, Addams through community-based institution building and advocacy, and Du Bois through scholarly research and political organizing. Their lives collectively illustrate that the most powerful sociology is lived as much as it is written.

Works Cited

"About Jane Addams." University of Illinois at Chicago. 2005. http://www.uic.edu/jaddams/hull/newdesign/ja.html

Smith, Jason. "Harriet Martineau." Six Sociologists. 2001.

Rudwick, Elliott. "Dubois, W.E.B." World Book Online Reference Center. 2005. World Book, Inc.