Collaborative experiments: Jane Addams,Hull House and experimental social work

Abstract

The social reformer, sociologist and feminist Jane Addams (1860—1935), who established Chicago's Hull House as one of the first settlement houses in America, described her work as experimental, but at the same time she and many of her co-workers rejected the idea of Hull House as a laboratory for social scientific investigation. The present article discusses Addams's unique understanding of social experiment beyond the laboratory. Through `experimental' improvement of social conditions for underserved people and communities in the city of Chicago, Addams and her co-workers perceived the laboratory experiment as an inferior variation of the experiment in society, and not vice versa. Based on the description of experiments at Hull House, this essay attempts to show how different dimensions of experimentation beyond the laboratory can be framed and how alternate phases that combine knowledge production and knowledge application can be conceptually comprised.

Jane Addams (1860—1935), réformatrice sociale, sociologue, féministe, a créé la Maison Hull à Chicago, l'un des tout premiers établissements sociaux aux Etats-Unis. Elle a elle-même qualifié son travail d'`expérimental' mais en même temps, elle et bon nombre de ses collaborateurs ont rejeté l'idée que la Maison Hull était un laboratoire expérimental d'investigation scientifique et sociale. Cet article analyse la conception unique, au delà du laboratoire, qu'avait Jane Addams de l'expérimentation sociale. En améliorant `expérimentalement' les conditions sociales de personnes et de communautés défavorisées à Chicago, Jane Addams et ses collaborateurs ont perçu l'expérimentation en laboratoire comme une variation mineure de l'expérimentation en société, et non réciproquement. Cet essai, en partant de la description d'expérimentations à la Maison Hull, tente de montrer comment, au delà du laboratoire, des dimensions différentes de l'expérimentation scientifique peuvent trouver un cadre et comment des phases alternées de production de la connaissance et d'application de la connaissance peuvent s'y trouver contenues.

Keywords

Experiments in social science History of sociology Social settlements Society as laboratory

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