The transformative public of Jane Addams

Abstract

This article provides an alternative contribution to journalism studies on a foundational concept by analysing texts of Jane Addams, a public intellectual contemporary with the seminal scholars Walter Lippmann and John Dewey. The author uses methods of intellectual history to construct the concept of the public from Addams’s books: Democracy and Social Ethics and The Newer Ideals of Peace, showing that all three authors, Lippmann, Dewey and Addams, discuss the same topic of individuals’ changed engagement with public political life. Addams departs from Lippmann and Dewey in setting out from the standpoints of exclusion and cosmopolitanism. Her argument regarding the public, as constructed by the author, consists of two premises. First, public engagement is a method of democratic inclusion as well as social and political inquiry for Addams. She sees the extension of relationality across social divisions as a necessary method to understand society and materialise democracy. Second, Addams emphasises cooperative and reflexive involvement especially in the characteristic developments of a time. She considers industrialisation and cosmopolitanism as characteristic developments of her own era. Addams suggests an in-principle cosmopolitan concept of the public that includes marginalised persons and groups. Compared to Lippmann’s and Dewey’s accounts of the public, Jane Addams’s argument is more radical and far more sensitive to the social inequality and plurality of a drastically morphing society.

An unknown Chicagoan legacy for journalism studies

This article opens a new window in journalism studies on a formative period: the conceptual re-construction of the public in the rapidly urbanising early 20th century USA. We often study the era through public-related books authored by Lippmann (1922, 1927 [1925]) and Dewey (1927). This article constructs the concept of the public by Jane Addams, whose life, much like Dewey’s, transected the first generation of the Chicago School. Both Dewey and Addams were insiders in the pragmatist and progressivist intellectual and political life of Chicago (Fischer, 2019; Nackenoff, 2009; West, 1989: 83–84). Lippmann and Addams, for their part, were acknowledged as journalistic figures and opinion leaders (Bryan et al., 2003: xxxv–xxxvii; Goodwin, 2014: 1–4). However, unlike both Lippmann and Dewey, Jane Addams developed her arguments through her experience living among immigrants and unprivileged families in the industrial slums of Chicago, then the heart of the changing USA. While Addams elaborates on the same topics as her contemporaries Lippmann and Dewey, who are seminal scholars in journalism studies, I find her conceptualisation to be more radical and sensitive to the increasing plurality and inequality of their drastically morphing society than either Dewey’s or Lippmann’s concepts. Addams belongs to the continuum of 19th century American feminists who claimed diversity and plurality more clearly, earlier and more thoroughly than later American pragmatists (Pratt, 2004).

When Lippmann (1922, 1927) and Dewey (1927) published their public-related books, Addams was an extensively experienced leader and well-published author, politician, reformist and activist, who had been the subject of both affluent praise and ostracism for her opinions. Hamington (2010: 2) estimates that Jane Addams was ‘the most visible female public figure of her era.’ However, the political climate turned against Addams’s radical visions during the following decade (Shepler and Mattina, 2012), and the founding director of the FBI, J. Edgar Hoover, declared her ‘the most dangerous woman in America’ (Duncan, 2015: 4).

Jane Addams, John Dewey and Walter Lippmann were all renowned public intellectuals. There are two structural factors that in principle distinguish Addams from her male colleagues. First, Jane Addams reformed US society and influenced international politics mainly without full political rights: Suffrage was won by women in the USA in 1920. Second, Addams belongs among those women whose exclusion from the canon of social sciences during the first decades of the 20th century has been addressed by several scholars (Deegan, 1988; McDonald, 2013; Sarvasy, 2009; Schultz, 2007; Seigfried, 1996). By introducing Addams and constructing her concept of the public, I extend the interpretation of a formative period of the conceptual corpus of journalism studies.

Addams, Dewey and Lippmann all write in the context of a shaken faith in the prevailing concepts of the nation-state, democracy and citizenship. All three discuss American democracy as founded on the idea of self-government in a rural society (Addams, 1964, 2007; Dewey, 1927; Lippmann, 1927) and observe that American society had changed dramatically beyond what the Founders could have foreseen, with a profoundly changed relation of the individual to public and political life. In her extensive authorship, which comprises 11 books and hundreds of published speeches and articles (Hajo, 2017), Jane Addams’s focus is neither the conceptualisation nor an explicit definition of the public. Therefore, her concept of the public is my construction, resulting from the methodology I will now introduce.

Methodology and data

The methodology I use in this text is intellectual history, understood as an ‘informed dialogue with the past, which investigates significant texts and their relation to pertinent contexts’ (LaCapra, 1983: 69). By focusing on the complexity of significant texts, intellectual history often succeeds in proceeding beyond established interpretations. LaCapra (1983: 23–35) illuminates the methodology by distinguishing intellectual history from the social history of ideas. Intellectual history, unlike the social history of ideas, does not primarily aim at the explication of past ideas in their social context, but foremost explores the intellectual work in historical texts (LaCapra, 1983: 24).

Therefore, intellectual history entails analysing texts not only as ‘historical constructions’ but also as ‘rational constructions’ (Rorty, 1984: 49–56). Similarly, texts are analysed not only as documents of the past society but also as works (LaCapra, 1983: 29–35), indeed, as works-in-progress. Approaching a published text as a work-in-progress requires the ability to pose questions that are new but relevant to the subject matter. LaCapra (1983: 31–32) suggests that intellectual historians engage in ‘worklike’ processes with the texts of past authors.

Intellectual history aims to reactivate the inquiry throughout the research process. LaCapra (1983: 23–71) introduces six relationships between texts and contexts that intellectual history could address: (a) the author’s intentions, (b) the author’s life, (c) society, (d) culture, (e) the corpus of an author and (f) the modes of discourse. He argues that these should be perceived as tools that will problematise the analysis of a complex text instead of providing shortcuts to results.

Through this list of prospective objects of analysis, LaCapra’s (1983: 23–71) aim is to demonstrate that explaining a complex text through reference to any context turns easily into an enterprise of oversimplification (LaCapra, 1983: 34). He concludes that one cannot assume any context as having been significant for an author. On the contrary, the significance of any context has to be argued and therefore constitutes a result of inquiry (LaCapra, 1983: 35, 43.)

In this article, LaCapra’s (1983) request means to me that I have an obligation to demonstrate that the question of the public was relevant to Jane Addams, even though she did not construct an explicit argument about it. I do this by formulating a research question out of what LaCapra (1983: 41–48) calls the relation of society to the text. I therefore ask each of the three – Lippmann, Dewey and Addams – two questions: (1) How did they consider individuals’ engagement with public political life had been changed? and (2) What kind of outline did they introduce about public political engagement in the changed society? By showing that Jane Addams’s texts provide answers to these same public-related questions as do Lippmann’s and Dewey’s texts, I rationalise my argument that all three participate in the discussion of the public. This enables me to identify the concept of the public in Addams’s writing.

The books by Addams (1964, 2007) most relevant to this article are Democracy and Social Ethics, published in 1902, and The Newer Ideals of Peace, which came out in 1907. The former reveals the relevancy of the public realm in her thought, while the latter clarifies Addams’s concept of the public and reveals her insights into how the public could identify itself in the confusion and perplexity of society. My analysis is based on these books. When framing Addams’s (1998) thought in her praxis, I draw especially on Twenty Years at Hull-House, which Addams (2007) published in 1910, as well as The Hull-House Maps and Papers, which Addams and her Hull-House resident colleagues published in 1895.

I begin threading my argument in the following chapters by briefly discussing Lippmann’s (1922, 1927) Public Opinion and Phantom Public as well as Dewey’s (1927) The Public and Its Problems. Addams had published her books two decades earlier. By reversing the chronological order and beginning with Lippmann’s and Dewey’s seminal texts, I wish to push journalism scholars toward the insight that Addams contributes to the legacy of our field.

Individual’s changed engagement with public political life: Walter Lippmann

Walter Lippmann’s (1922, 1927) books The Public Opinion and Phantom Public are studies of the limits and possibilities of self-government and public agency in a changed world. Lippmann (1927) reviews political thinkers from the Classical period to the Founders and brings forth as the repeating pattern the notion that the size and complexity of the community should match man’s political capacity (Lippmann, 1927: 78). The American idea of self-government was defined for independent farmers living in small, detached communities. The established idea of democracy, he clarifies, is therefore based on the ideas of isolation and independence that have now given way to cooperation and complex dependence even beyond national borders (Lippmann, 1922: 269–272).

Individuals’ engagement with public political life has therefore moved into a clearly more complex context, and Lippmann (1922: 274) worries about US citizens’ limited knowledge of the outer world. He considers the idea of a sovereign, omnicompetent citizen as an impossibility in the wide and unpredictable world (Lippmann, 1927: 20). Valuable choices cannot be made by amateurs in a complex society (Lippmann, 1922: 261). Lippmann (1922) provides an extensive account of the vulnerability and the machined character of public opinion. He asks (Lippmann, 1922: 193), ‘How, then is any practical relationship established between what is in people’s heads and what is out there beyond their ken in the environment?’

It seems that Lippmann’s frustration increases as his writing evolves. He declares that self-sovereignty is fiction (Lippmann, 1927: 71, 146). The idea that the public will would direct the course of events is described as a phantom (Lippmann, 1927: 77). He rejects faith in education, along with a slew of other approaches that have explored remedies to democracy, including eugenic, ethical, populist and socialist (Lippmann, 1927: 22–39).

In his disillusion, he provides significant notions, remarking that the idea of democracy cannot be based upon metaphysical concepts and the public cannot be claimed to have agency if that agency is metaphysical (Lippmann, 1927: 143–172). Lippmann wants to prevent the machine-like and arbitrary function of the fictive public. He asks what role the public can and should fulfil in the complex Great Society. His aim is to identify the conditions and methods whereby the public can achieve relevant agency in the changed society (Lippmann, 1927).

Lippmann’s (1927) solution is to use the newly emergent social sciences to guarantee a solid knowledge foundation for decision-making. Through his re-definition of the public’s role, Lippmann suggests a comprehensive deviation from the earlier ideal of self-government. Even though he reserves only limited agency for the public (Lippmann, 1927: 144–145), he introduces a clear concept: The public’s role is to monitor principles and procedures, but not to deal with substantive matters. The public should ensure that partisan interests do not overwhelm the common interest. Instead of the detailed content of decisions, the public oversees their collective legitimacy and workability (Lippmann, 1927: 110–114). In brief, the public intervenes to demand a solution for a problem but does not solve it (Lippmann, 1927: 199).

Individual’s changed engagement with public political life: John Dewey

In The Public and Its Problems, Dewey (1927) constructs a response to Lippmann’s (1927) argument. Dewey begins from the same starting point as Lippmann. The prevailing American concept of self-government has its origins in local agricultural communities and pioneer conditions (Dewey, 1927: 111). A state as large and as ‘racially diversified’ as the United States in the 1920s would ‘once have seemed the wildest of fancies’ (Dewey, 1927: 114).

Dewey (1927: 115) attributes the reception of heterogeneous immigrants as ‘an extraordinary feat,’ but complains that integration has produced social and intellectual uniformity and mediocrity. He observes that the USA nevertheless integrated itself politically against all the odds (Dewey, 1927: 116). Instead of ‘falling apart,’ the continent united through new technology that enabled interaction and interdependence ‘far beyond the limits of face-to-face communities’ (Dewey, 1927: 114).

Like Lippmann, Dewey suggests that individuals’ engagement with public political life has changed dramatically into another context, but unlike Lippmann, he holds the notion that the role of the public should be reserved to ‘effective political action relevant to present social needs and opportunities’ (Dewey, 1927: 125). However, Dewey does arrive at his renowned declaration, which has concerned media and communication scholars and practitioners ever since, that, ‘In spite of attained integration, or rather perhaps because of its nature, the public seems to be lost; it is certainly bewildered’ (Dewey, 1927: 116). The public ‘cannot find itself’ despite the evolution that would enable interaction across great distances (Dewey, 1927: 123).

Dewey (1927) sees a solution in the identification of the consequences of conjoint action. In an agrarian society, the consequences of conjoint action were within the reach of everyone’s comprehension and could be dealt with via face-to-face interaction. In the new Great Society, the consequences of conjoint action are indirect, and human interaction operates on ‘an impersonal rather than a community basis’ (Dewey, 1927: 126). Dewey (1927: 15–16) delivers his seminal definition: ‘The public consists of all those who are affected by the indirect consequences of transactions to such an extent that it is deemed necessary to have those consequences systematically cared for.’

The key to understanding Dewey is that individuals recognise their relationality in a thoroughly expanded environment. Proceeding into arguments that make him an author in media and communication studies, Dewey (1927: 142) states that the ‘invisible and intangible’ ties that hold men together have to be made visible and tangible through signs and symbols that implicate a mutually understood meaning (Dewey, 1927: 153), which thereby create a common interest (Dewey, 1927: 188).

Dewey returns repeatedly to the idea of a local community, and his outline of public political engagement resembles a local community improved and extended. In Dewey’s outline, insight and knowledge are provided by a state through the spirit and method of science, freedom of social inquiry and freedom of dissemination of its consequences (Dewey, 1927: 166). At the same time, social relations evolve as individuals and groups detach themselves from old restraints (Dewey, 1927: 192). Dewey writes for inclusive, diverse intercourse. His outline of public political engagement in the changed society posits individuals having a share in those groups to which they belong, and all groups interacting with one another (Dewey, 1927: 147). His vision is a community equipped with modern scientific methods of inquiry and dissemination, a community where individuals and groups are freer than in isolated communities and relate themselves to those living far away. Such a society would be the Great Community, in which ‘the ever-expanding and intricately ramifying consequences of associated activities shall be known in a full sense of the word, so that an organised, articulate Public comes into being’ (Dewey, 1927: 184).

Individual’s changed engagement with public political life: Jane Addams

Locating Addams’s concept of the public: A cosmopolitan think tank in the industrial slum

Reading Addams (1915, 1964, 1998, 2007) brings contexts that are not being discussed in Lippmann’s (1922, 1927) and Dewey’s (1927) public-related books immediately into focus. First, Addams provides broad descriptions of the unfortunate, politically marginal groups among which she lived. In her books, she relates and analyses the stories of seam-sewers and button-holers, biscuit factory girls, unemployed artisans, single mothers, young people who bear the responsibility of their parents, children who committed crimes and suicides.

Second, reading Addams (1915, 1964, 1998, 2007) reveals that there was an entire generation of educated women intellectuals working as public figures outside academia. Hull-House, which Addams established in Chicago, is often remembered only as a social and educational centre. Hamington (2018) defines Hull-House rather as ‘a pragmatist feminist think tank’ (Hamington, 2018: online) in which women intellectuals lived, socialised, and developed means and methods to investigate the explosively growing metropole around them. He considers Addams a public philosopher whose life was characterised by ‘the cycle of experience, reflection, and action’ (Hamington, 2010: 5–6).

Third, Addams writes explicitly as a cosmopolitan in a world-scale city, taking its diverse and international life as a starting point for theorising. Addams writes as a woman who travels the world and socialises with leading intellectuals and politicians. She writes as a scientist who chooses to develop her intellect and strives for political and moral judgement in cooperation with the most unprivileged. Addams’s work departs from philanthropy through her radical concepts of democracy and ethics as well as through her reflexivity. These three contexts collectively contribute to her concept of the public.

When Jane Addams arrived in Chicago in 1889, the city after the Great Fire of 1871 ‘was already the fastest growing city in the world’ (Ward, 1998: 105). Chicago’s population had multiplied 126 times between 1840 and 1880, from only 4000 to over half a million residents (Encyclopedia of Chicago, 2005). After that, the number of residents doubled in a decade, reaching a million in 1890, and then doubled again to over two million in 1910 (Encyclopedia of Chicago, 2005). Chicago expanded, especially through overseas immigration from Europe. The influx of immigrants was ‘enormous’ (Joas, 1997: 130), as were the economic and social complexities many newcomers faced (Kargon, 2010: 134–136; Lewis, 2008: 39–42). To begin living and working in these conditions was by no means an accident for Addams. On the contrary, she had searched for a neighbourhood that would reflect the societal change at its height and where the social problems would be as explicit as possible (Knight, 2005: 194; Schneiderhan, 2015: 40).

Addams decided to settle in the west side of Chicago, a popular destination of immigrants trying to earn a living in the area’s factories and sweatshops. She used her inheritance to buy a mansion on Halsted Street with Ellen Gates Starr (Knight, 2005: 185). Under the name of Hull-House, Addams and Starr opened the house to the Nineteenth Ward neighbourhood. Over 80% of the residents were immigrants or their descendants, representing 18 nationalities (Knight, 2005: 194–195). In the following years and decades, the house engaged with neighbourhood residents through an impressive variety of services and activities (Addams, 1998; Residents of Hull-House, 2007; Schultz, 2007). A thousand adults or children visited Hull-House every week (Schultz, 2007: 35). Throughout the years, Hull-House also served as a communal home for Addams, Starr and dozens of intellectuals, mainly women (Addams, 1998; Schultz, 2007).

The broad scope of Addams’s life work involves the combination of sociological knowledge, inquiry and advocacy for social reforms (Deegan, 1988; Duran, 2013; McDonald, 2013; Schultz, 2007). The Addams-led Hull-House was an institution of social thought for women sociologists in much the same way as the Department of Sociology of the University of Chicago was for men (Deegan, 1988; Fischer, 2019). Her praxis as the head resident of Hull-House enabled ‘a generation of college-educated women to embark on a life of social investigation connected to social reform’ (Schultz, 2007: 12). The most explicit document of that approach is The Hull-House Maps and Papers (2007), a published report of pioneering methods of social inquiry in an urban city (Schultz, 2007). Thus, Hull-House was a means to explore societal change through the decision to live among the most vulnerable parties experiencing that change. Schultz (2007: 14) suggests that women’s initiatives would not necessarily have succeeded in male-dominated and male-run institutes whose agendas were influenced by trustees and corporations.

Addams’s (1964 [1902]) first book, Democracy and Social Ethics, reflects her evolutionary concept of democracy (Fischer, 2019). Addams draws richly on the discursive climate of her era (Fischer, 2019: 1–22) and emphasises that both democracy and ethics receive new meanings in history as science and societies continue to evolve. Democracy and ethics are not abstract, universal concepts for her. The concepts cannot be forced upon situated persons (Fischer, 2019: 65). Instead, the content and practice of democracy and ethics can be found in continuous participation in society in its most inclusive sense. Addams (1964) aims to attain an intimate knowledge of each situation through sympathetic relations that address individuals as participants of the situation (Fischer, 2019: 65). She wants to encounter the perplexities of the situation (Fischer, 2019: 111–121) and learn to understand the views of those involved (Hamington, 2010: 13–17).

Addams considers the more affluent and powerful echelons of society responsible for establishing sympathetic relations with the less affluent and less powerful (Fischer, 2019: 48), stressing the ‘identification with the common lot’ (Addams, 1964: 11) and ‘the great moral effort of getting the mass to express itself’ (Addams, 1964: 270).

The extending public realm as a method of evolving democracy

Addams (1964, 2007) both needs and uses the public realm to flesh out her argument of evolving democracy. Even though she does not explicitly address the conceptualisation of the public, she addresses the same questions discussed above about Lippmann and Dewey. The question of individuals’ changed engagement with public political life is a critical issue for her argument.

Addams observes that social change remains so dramatic that the notion of democracy can only be achieved through extensive social experience. Previous experiences have been so unlike the complexity of contemporary life that individuals cannot understand themselves, each other, or society without social participation in the ‘constant trend of events’ (Addams, 1964: 93). Individuals are ‘under a moral obligation’ (Addams, 1964: 9) in choosing their experiences ‘since the result of those experiences must ultimately determine our understanding of life’ (Addams, 1964: 9–10). Continuous contact with social experience is ‘the surest corrective of opinions concerning social order’ (Addams, 1964: 7).

Both the written argument concerning democracy by Addams (1964) and the praxis of Hull-House suggest that Addams aims to purposefully change the prevailing lines between the private and the public realms. She writes about the ‘larger life’ (Addams, 1964: 86, 93), a life that is socially broader and includes more diverse relationships than the individual and family life (Addams, 1964: 71–101). Addams addresses institutions and groups that have previously stayed in the private realm, demanding that the ‘family in its entirety must be carried out into the larger life’ (Addams, 1964: 79). The code of care that governs family ethics is to be extended into one that includes social relations beyond the intimate realm of the home (Addams, 1964: 102–136). Every aspect in her renewed society deserves to be reconsidered and aligned to democracy so that democratic relationships rule between members of society. Her concept of democracy will not be realised unless individuals break through their walls of privacy and extend their lives into social experiences with unknown others (Nackenoff, 2009).

That industrialisation has moved many previously household-bound activities into factories means to Addams a logical increase in the household’s public interest and an extension of ethics to consider issues from a public perspective. Matrons, who for centuries had cared for domestic maids working inside their homes, can now extend their care by adopting an interest in the healthy working conditions of young girls in factories (Addams, 1964: 105–106).

Addams promotes and defends arrangements that move ordinary activities such as preparing food, eating and laundering from private households to the public space (Addams, 1964: 102–110). Addams thereby aims to extend the scope of the public realm to include entirely new activities. An example of this was her initiative regarding public playgrounds, which were a social and political innovation in Chicago (Addams, 1912; 1915).

Considering that Addams worked in the context of extreme poverty and severe social problems, paving the way to modern social work, it is noteworthy that she does not locate solutions in the private realm of homes. Instead, she purposely locates the solutions in the public realm and insists that both fortunate and unfortunate people come together to share social experiences and find new perspectives. Addams (1964) seems to see the public realm as a transitory space where social change begins. The social experience among the many enables individuals to perceive that their ‘individual needs are common needs, that is, public needs’ that ‘can only be legitimately supplied’ to individuals ‘when they are supplied for all’ (Addams, 1964: 269). The individual need and demand should be universalised, Addams (1964: 269–270) writes, and amends that in the universalising process both need and demand become clarified, which then form ‘the basis of our political organisation’ (Addams, 1964: 270). Addams’s writings on public political life resonate clearly with what Dewey (1927) wrote a quarter of a century later about identifying the indirect consequences and mutually understood meanings that call the public into being.

Addams’s Hull-House, constituting an entire block of buildings, was the above concept of public political life put into a comprehensive praxis. That the house was a woman intellectuals’ experiment of democracy meant essentially that the house enabled them to investigate social reality and relieve urban ailments through interventions whose development stemmed from everyday experiences shared with unfortunate groups and individuals (Addams, 1998; Fischer, 2019; Residents of Hull-House, 2007).

In brief, extending public life is a method of democratic inclusion and social and political inquiry for Addams. Rosiek and Pratt (2013: 585) argue that Addams’s method contains an onto-epistemic starting point that presumes the ability to become integrated in the diversity of interests and traditions of the situation at hand. At the same time, Rosiek and Pratt (2013: 585) observe that Addams’s method contains reflexivity, concluding that Addams’s method combines ‘cognitive clarity, affective sympathies with members of communities, and a sense of possibilities as yet unrealised in social life’ (Rosiek and Pratt, 2013: 585).

Addams’s concept of the cosmopolitan public emerges

Addams’s (2007) book Newer Ideals of Peace, published in 1907, clarifies her concept of the public. Her book also provides practical insights into how the public can identify itself in a changing society. As the title of the book suggests, Addams addresses peace, yet she discusses it in the context of democracy and the public realm. Peace and war were tangible issues on Chicago streets where threats of violent strikes were prevalent. When Addams (2007) writes about pacifism, militarism and imperialism, she refers to American cities and her own neighbourhood. She considers how non-violent relations can be established in an urbanised, tension-prone society. As in Democracy and Social Ethics, Addams (2007: 20–35) connects this pressing challenge with democracy, describing the urgency to reform the concept and practice of self-government that draw on the ‘moral romanticism’ (Addams, 2007: 21) of the past. She criticises the tendency to stick to 125-year-old patriotic governmental ideals. The book illuminates Addams’s view of democracy and the public realm as international praxes.

Throughout the Newer Ideals of Peace, Addams (2007) highlights two developments that she considers formative for an early 20th century American metropole: industrialisation and cosmopolitanism. She argues that there cannot be self-government without individuals’ personal understanding of and judgement on the most urgent forces of the era. However, the established concepts and practices of democracy and self-government exclude large numbers of people with whom one needs to connect to understand what industrialisation and cosmopolitanism mean.

With millions of immigrants arriving on American shores, democracy needs to be reconsidered and redefined to correspond to the new cosmopolitan condition. ‘We have failed to work out a democratic government which should include the experiences and hopes of all varied people around us,’ Addams (2007: 28–29) writes. Each ship of immigrants brings the idea of democracy anew to America, ‘every ship a new cargo of democratic aspirations’ (Addams, 1915: 146). In the new situation, nation-state-bound patriotism should make way for cosmopolitanism (Addams, 2007: 43). ‘[T]he state is composed of people brought together from all the nations of the earth,’ Addams (1912: 616) writes in an essay: ‘The patriotism of the modern state must be based not upon a consciousness of homogeneity but upon a respect for variation, not upon inherited memory but upon trained imagination’ (Addams, 1912: 616).

Sarvasy (2009: 184) argues that Addams’s emphases contrast the ideas of hierarchy of civilisations and paternalism that justified US imperialism in her time. Addams’s emphases on migrant workers, transnational families, cross-border relations, and less fortunate groups form an inclusive concept of citizenship (Sarvasy, 2009: 197). Addams sees the marginalised or newcomers as agents of change (Sarvasy, 2009: 185–186). The emergent groups, however unprivileged or illiterate, become part of the political project in Addams’s writing. The mere arrival of these groups onto the public scene changes the established relations in the political community. The excluded groups, such as women and immigrants, bring abilities and insights that the changing society needs to solve newly-emergent problems and evolve the concept and practice of democracy (Addams, 2007: 36–51, 100–115).

To summarise, it is clear that in Democracy and Social Ethics, Addams (1964) is already convinced that engagement with public political life has been actualised for groups who used to be beyond the public political domain. Addams writes for a sympathetic yet reflexive relationality with diverse groups across social divisions, and for the value of larger life to restrained individual lives. Individuals cannot understand their changing society, each other, and themselves without extensive experience among others and the resulting broader perspective. Extending public life is for her a method of democratic inclusion and a method of social and political inquiry. I find this to be the first premise in constructing her concept of the public from her thoughts.

The second premise, which I find in Addams’s (2007) Newer Ideals of Peace, provides a more detailed idea of the public by focusing on the characteristic developments of each time that define social change and shape individual destinies. Here, Addams seems to elaborate on her concept of public political engagement in the following ways. First, she introduces a more tangible content for public engagement as cooperative involvement in the characteristic developments of the era, and second, highlights the in-principle inclusive and international character of such involvement in a metropolitan city. She demonstrates in depth how outdated the public political praxis becomes if old models endure and the contributions by women, immigrants, and other excluded groups remain ignored.

I have, therefore, constructed Jane Addams’s concept of the public as one that is transformative on three levels. First, her concept of the public refers to the transformation of individual lives by extending them from limited intimate realms to experience the perplexity and promise of public life. Second, her concept refers to the transformation of society by extending inclusion and plurality. Finally, her concept suggests that through extensive social experience, the public transforms prevailing concepts of democracy and citizenship in ways that live up to the complexities and predicaments of the era.

Addams’s contribution to the concept of the public

I began this article by showing that Lippmann, Dewey and Addams all discuss individuals’ changed engagement with public political life in the early 20th century America and question the viability of inherited public-related concepts. Lippmann (1927) argues that the public’s role needs to be redefined to correspond with what the public can and should do in a changed society. Dewey (1927) argues that social and communicative conditions need to be rearranged such that the public can identify itself despite the barriers of increased complexity and spatial distance.

Jane Addams departs from Lippmann and Dewey in setting out from the standpoints of exclusion and cosmopolitanism. Writing around 20 years before Lippmann and Dewey, Addams (1964, 2007) addresses marginalised individuals and groups and argues for the inclusion of people who dwell beyond the public political domain, such as women and immigrants. Her concept of public political life escapes paternal, communal and many other restraints. She relates socio-political processes to her public-related thought in greater depth than either Lippmann (1922, 1927) or Dewey (1927). Addams is far more sensitive than they to social inequality and to the increasing diversity and plurality of a morphing, urbanising and cosmopolitanising society.

Lippmann (1922, 1927), Dewey (1927) and Addams (1964, 2007) seem to similarly emphasise relationality in their concept of public political agency. Honneth (2007) demonstrates that Dewey’s concept of the public presumes pre-political relations before procedural problem solving in the public sphere. This idea resonates well with Addams’s (1964, 2007) focus on diverse, sympathetic and reflexive social relations throughout the public realm. Her concept of public life extends from encounters on street corners to the conceptual reflection of political concepts. Addams’s concept is accessible in perceiving the most mundane interactions as constitutive for public political action, an argument Dewey (1939) still emphasised late in his life. It is nevertheless only Addams who conceptualises social intercourse, relations and the community as characteristically international phenomena in American cities.

Compared to Lippmann and Dewey, Addams’s citizens are border crossers. Of the three analysed authors, only Addams takes the new cosmopolitan condition of great US cities as the foundation of her political thought. The concept of the public that I have constructed from her writings is cosmopolitan in principle and perceives individuals as being, in principle, connected beyond national boundaries through social experiences and relations in an urban city.

Addams’s public is a cooperative effort that exceeds national borders as well as cultural and lingual limitations. Anchoring her writing tightly in life in Chicago, she emphasises the industrial, cosmopolitan city and its potentiality as a dynamo of social change and an evolving concept of democracy. Addams addresses the political prospects of the city, to which people want to come and which consequently enables new relationships and interdependence.

In reference to the analysed books, Addams published her books well before the national policy developed between the late 1910s and early 1920s that limited immigration to the USA for several decades. In contrast, Lippmann’s and Dewey’s books were written and published well into the era of such acts as The Immigration Act of 1917, The Emergency Quota Act of 1921 and the Immigration Act of 1924 (US Department of State, 2018) that denied access to the USA to undesirable groups. However, the precise extent to which this context is relevant to any of the three authors should, as LaCapra (1983: 35, 43) stresses, be explicitly demonstrated and would therefore require further study.

As factional thinking shatters our sense of the public today, Addams’s inclusive approach can provide a means of rethinking the notion of the public in holistic ways. At the same time, Addams presents a rather ambitious concept. Her evolutionary theorising (Fischer, 2019) and concept of the public, which I have constructed in this article, suggest that the public should adapt its definition and method according to the predicaments of changing society.

Conclusions

In this article, I have constructed the concept of the public from the writings of Jane Addams by showing first that her books (Addams, 1964, 2007) address the same question of individuals’ changed engagement with public political life as the public-related books by Walter Lippmann (1922, 1927) and Dewey (1927). Having compared Addams’s accounts of the topic with those by Lippmann and Dewey, I argue that her thinking provides a contemporary alternative.

Why is Jane Addams not known in journalism studies as a contributor to our conceptual corpus? Deegan (1988) suggests that her image was early on tamed and narrowed into the sector of social work. Her insistence on pacifism was politically beyond the pale in an America on the verge of entering the First World War, which led to her ostracism (Deegan, 1988: 6–7). At the same time, her feminism drove her to the margins of sociology (Deegan, 1988: 25). Shepler and Mattina (2012) show that Addams’s decision to combine feminism, pacifism and social reformism in her political action turned public opinion against her. As the President of the Woman’s Peace Party, Addams had tried to prevent the war by personal visits to the prime ministers of several European countries (Addams et al., 2003), for which she was openly ridiculed in the US press (Deegan, 1988; Shepler and Mattina, 2012). Deegan (1988: 4) says Addams’s most lasting influence can be read in the writing of her early male contemporaries, such as John Dewey.

Addams and Dewey could indeed be read as constituting a dialogue, and I suggest we should do so to enrich our views of Dewey’s texts, which we cherish and teach as classics. Schudson (2008: 1032) observes that there was no real exchange between Lippmann (1927 [1925]) and Dewey (1927) in the sense of reciprocal elaboration of ideas, whereas there clearly was between Addams and Dewey. They were close family friends and intellectual and political companions whose mutual influence has been at least partly documented (Duran, 2013; Fischer, 2019: 20, 66; Hamington, 2018: online; McKenna, 2003: 5–8; Pratt, 2004: 92–94; Seigfried, 1996: 73–82). The Public and Its Problems, which Dewey (1927) published a quarter of a century after Addams’s Democracy and Social Ethics and 20 years after Newer Ideals of Peace, might be interpreted as a more abstract discussion of topics that Addams (1964, 2007) had discussed more closely in the context of everyday life in Chicago.

Lippmann and Addams also knew each other, though as representatives of distinct generations: Lippmann was born the same autumn that Addams opened Hull-House in Chicago. As celebrated writers, they socialised in the same circles (see e.g. Addams, 1916; Washington Post, 1916). Both were acclaimed for and proud of their journalistic talent. When Addams died in 1935, Lippmann wrote her obituary, which was widely distributed (Davis, 1973: 291). Schudson (2008: 1034) highlights that Lippmann (1922) reserved for experts the role of seeing the unseen, ‘people who are not voters, functions of voters that are not evident, events that are out of sight, mute people, unborn people, relations between things and people’ (Lippmann, 1922: 382). The women intellectuals in Hull-House served as experts precisely in this sense, producing groundbreaking data (Residents of Hull-House, 2005) of the poor industrial quarters of Chicago.

The wealth of Addams’s writings about the social fabric of her time enables us to analyse Lippmann’s and Dewey’s public-related books anew. In every facet, the concept of the public I have constructed from Addams’s (1964, 2007) writings changes the picture of the reconsideration of citizens’ public political engagement in the early 20th century America.

Hamington (2010: 13) writes that Addams’s understanding of the poor and oppressed resulted in ‘a more critical form of pragmatism, imbued with a class and gender consciousness.’ Fischer (2019: 18) defines Addams’s voice as ‘one of the most significant in the quest for social justice in American history.’ Finding Jane Addams and constructing her contribution allows a more radical concept of the public to emerge from the formative era of journalism studies, a concept that still attracts us with its vitality and urgency.