ABSTRACT
This chapter presents an overview of the settlement movement in America. It shows how the settlement workers were sociologists in their self-definition and action and in their relations with other sociologists. The chapter describes the sociology done by the settlements in terms of the empirical research they undertook and the theory they created. It deals with a moment—largely forgotten by sociologists—when sociology in the United States played a vital role in improving the lives of individuals and groups and in shaping government policies to produce a more just society. Between 1885 and 1930, as sociology was becoming an academic discipline, sociology was also being practiced intelligently, innovatively, and self-consciously outside the academy in the social settlements that grew up in America's major cities. A consciousness of the importance of sociology in the work of the settlement is present in numerous reports and mission statements by the settlements. The settlement residents' most powerful weapon was their cultural capital.
