ABSTRACT
In the bearing of sociological theories on empirical evidence and the bearing of empirical evidence on sociological theories in community studies, to borrow liberally from a Mertonian play on words, rarely do we fi nd sociologists pausing to explore the sociology of knowledge origins of the fi eldwork context of the intellectual development of community sociologists, especially those who eventually come to infl uence urban public policy. This is particularly the case in the absence of such sociology of knowledge concerns when it comes to African American and other sociologists of color who have specialized in urban and rural community studies (Stanfi eld 1985, 1987; Anderson and Zuberi 2000). In this essay, I offer such an analysis of Hylan Lewis and his Blackways of Kent, an understudied classic in the history of American community studies (Stanfi eld 2008) which I argue still has much value as a theoretical and methodological text on community based fi eld work and in understanding the ideas Lewis carried with him as he evolved into a prominent urban public sociologist in the 1960s and beyond.
