ABSTRACT
Feminist pragmatist, social settlement leader and Nobel Laureate, Jane Addams is a recognized world leader with a sweeping mind, personal charisma and an innovative intellectual legacy. She is one of the most important female sociologists who has ever lived. She was a leader for dozens of women in sociology from 1890 until her death in 1935, although after 1920 most of these women were forced out of sociology and into fields such as social work, home economics, applied psychology, pedagogy and administration in higher education. Jane Addams was born on 6 September 1860 in the small Mid-
western town of Cedarville, Illinois. She was profoundly influenced by her father John Addams, a Hicksite Quaker, state senator and mill owner, but she did not know her mother Sarah Weber, who died when Addams was two years old. In 1877 Addams entered Rockford Female Seminary, one of the pioneering colleges for women. After graduating in 1881, she entered an extended period of unhappiness and depression. In August, her father died and his absence left her confused and despairing. She entered the Women’s Medical College in Philadelphia in the autumn, but she soon returned to Illinois. Ill and surrounded by family problems, Addams drifted for a year. Finally taking some action, she travelled to Europe in 1883 but she remained frustrated for the next two years until her return to Europe. Accompanied by her college friend Ellen Gates Starr, Addams found a direction for her life after visiting the social settlement Toynbee Hall in London’s East End. This group served the exploited working classes and supported artisans who harmonized their interests in art, labor and the community. Toynbee Hall provided a model for Addams and Starr to co-found their social settlement, Hull-House, in Chicago in 1889. Hull-House became the institutional anchor for women’s gender-segregated work in sociology and a link with the most important male sociological centre during this era, the University of Chicago. The 1890s were lively, controversial years at Hull-House, where
anarchists, Marxists, socialists, unionists, and leading social theorists congregated. John Dewey, George Herbert Mead, and W. I. Thomas, among others, were frequent visitors, lecturers and close friends of Addams. Chicago pragmatism was born through their collegial contacts and intellectual exchanges. A groundbreaking sociological text, Hull-House Maps and Papers was published by Hull-House residents in 1895, predating and establishing the urban interests of the early Chicago male sociologists.
