![]() The conflict of purposes among early sociologists is epitomized by the lengths to which Sumner himself went in devising titles which would sharply distinguish his courses from the reformistic ones taught by his colleagues at Yale Divinity School. Sumner’s strident disdain for social welfare activities. To the scientific emphasis in pioneer American sociology was added an antireform bias, stemming from the laissez-faire philosophy of Spencer and sounded in W. However, this is opposed by another theme, reflecting continuity with the thought of August Comte and Herbert Spencer, holding to a scientific purpose in the study of society, which was present almost from the first in the social science movement. Such facts strongly tempt one to the conclusion that American sociology was fathered by the study of social problems. The lineal ties of their versions of sociology to the older social science movement are attested by the substantial numbers of these early sociologists who were members of the National Conference of Charities and Corrections and of the American Prison Congress (Sutherland 1945). Toward the end of the nineteenth century, when sociology began to receive formal departmental recognition in colleges and universities, many of those recruited to teach it came from backgrounds of the ministry and welfare work. The courses attained quick popularity with students, many of whom were repelled by limitations of the classical or science curricula and who were fired by the social ferments of the post- Civil War period. The development of such courses reflected motivations of persons both within and outside the universities who were seeking to arouse and prepare students for careers of legislative reform. Many, if not most, of these courses, however titled, dealt with topics subsequently recognized as the substance of social problems courses in sociology with possibly somewhat greater attention paid to education and law. In large part it was responsible for the introduction of social science courses in American colleges and universities, beginning in 1865 and reaching a peak between 18. This represented a merger of a variety of local and regional associations, whose constituted objectives were clearly meliorative (Bernard & Bernard 1943). The roots of the intellectual orientation toward social problems as an academic subject are more precisely located in the broadly based American reform movement from which, in 1865, there issued the American Social Science Association. These included prison reform, settlement work, child rescue, promotion of temperance, housing betterment, and improvement of conditions of employment of women and children by the middle of the nineteenth century many of these had crystallized into organized actions or associations. The more immediate forerunners of what came to be the social problems approach emerged from writings, reports, essays, and surveys by Protestant clergymen, philanthropists, and middle-class humanitarians, in the United States as well as England, who were dedicated to a variety of social reform activities. Antecedents can be found in the literature of socioeconomic criticism and reform which was directed at many of the consequences of commerce, industrialism, and urban growth in western Europe, particularly eighteenth-century and nineteenth-century England. History of social problems approachĬoncern with social problems has been singularly American or Anglo-Saxon. ![]() ![]() These conflicting viewpoints, as well as salient misgivings shared by many as to whether social problems is a“field,”or can validly be included with sociology, are in part understandable in the context of the origins and history of sociology itself. Proceeding beyond this general statement to a more precise definition of social problems poses a complicated task of sorting out the wide diversity of views held by sociologists as to the nature of the subject matter and the perspectives from which it should be studied (Merrill 1948). Social problems study or research consists of the ordering of perspectives and social facts in relation to the ends and means of collective action. Social problems are part of the climate of opinion in society which centers on expressed needs for public policies and anticipated requirements for social control. The distinctiveness of such questions as a separate object of sociological study rests upon their topicality, currency, and pragmatic derivation. Social problems are described most simply as perplexing questions about human societies proposed for solution. Social problems and social disorganization
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