Science,reform,and the ‘science of reform’: Booker T Washington,Robert Park,and the making of a ‘science of society’

Abstract

This article examines how Robert Park’s work, first at the American Congo Reform Association (ACRA) as a secretary/publicity agent and later at Tuskegee Institute as Booker T Washington’s researcher, ghostwriter, and co-author, influenced how he conceptualized what academic sociology could do and should be. Once he secured an academic position at the University of Chicago, Park, like many of his peers, sought to establish his difference from and superiority over practical reformers by defining his object of study – society – as a ‘social organism’ which was governed by natural laws. Park’s definition of sociology and its object of study made it possible not only to exclude non-academic researchers from the discipline but also to place his own actions as a ‘reformer’ (i.e. imperial consultant at Tuskegee and the ACRA) beyond scholarly inquiry. Park’s relationship to Washington helps to explain the relationship between sociology’s separation from the reform movement and the erasure of colonialism and imperialism from disciplinary history. It also partially accounts for why contemporary sociology’s analytical structure still struggles to account for and theoretically capture the complexities of colonial history.