14 ● Kate van Heugten and Anita Gibbs
Despite her groundbreaking work, many sociologists have never heard of
Jane Addams as a sociologist. Instead, she came to be considered, alongside
Mary Richmond, a founding mother of social work, and her leadership was
identified with the development of the community work branch of social
work. Addams was a pacifist in relation to war and an activist for human
rights. In 1931, she became the first American woman to be awarded a Nobel
Peace Prize (Leighninger 2008).
Addams was not the only social activist lecturer based at Hull House.
Sophinisba Breckinridge had a degree in sociology, but she also studied
mathematics and law and held two doctorates—one in law and one in political
science. Edith Abbott had a degree in sociology and a doctorate in political
economy. She was knowledgeable in the most sophisticated statistical methods
of the time, and she taught those methods at the University of Chicago (Jabour
2012). Yet despite their formidable academic pedigrees, the work of these aca-
demic women gradually came to be discounted by the male sociologists at the
University of Chicago. This was largely due to the women’s social activism,
because although these women collected data via some of the most rigorous
methods, they believed that the work should be done in the service of social
purposes, and this did not meet the narrow definitions of the academic sociolo-
gists. The women came to be known as social workers, a title that they appeared
happy to adopt (Shaw 2009).
Divisions in the Department of Sociology at Chicago
From its inception, the University of Chicago’s sociology department
admitted women as students, and the women of Hull House taught in the
social sciences. The survey methods that had been used in the develop-
ment of the Hull-House Maps and Papers were initially embraced by other
Chicago sociologists. However, within a few decades of the department’s
establishment, many of the male Chicago sociologists, in their striving for
acceptance as members of a scientific discipline, began to disavow their
earlier use of social mapping. Instead, they turned to statistics and the test-
ing of hypotheses (Bannister 2003). They sought to increase the academic
standing of sociology by pursuing ideals of science and reasoning. Whereas
departmental sociologists and their students had previously been closely
involved in practical social projects, including in connection with Hull
House, they now emphasized the view that objective theorizing required
abstinence in relation to practical pursuits. The positivist ideal of value neu-
trality was also promulgated, so that, although it was deemed appropriate
to study people’s values and behaviors, it was considered inappropriate for
sociologists to act on their own values. The role of sociology was viewed not