Deegan labels the years 1920 to 1965 the ‘dark era of patriarchal ascendancy’ (1995: 333). It is in this period that the pioneering women died or retired and were not replaced. She argues that the only two sen­ior men who were remembered positively by women graduate students were W. Lloyd Warner and David Riesman. Riesman, […]

There are two versions of the events in Chicago after 1920. In the dom­inant, male, version of the story, three men of great perspicacity — Faris, Park, and Burgess — inherited the department, purified it, and created a recognisably modern sociology there. In other words, they separated academic sociology as an objective, scientific discipline from […]

Abbott (1999: 24) contrasts the ‘profound’ impact that the literatures on urban issues and on ‘race-ethnicity’ have had on the history of Chicago sociology with the lack of impact made by encounters with feminism. In the main part of this chapter it is that lack of impact that I am going toaddress. Noticeably, Abbott himself […]

In 1990 the University of Helsinki celebrated its 35th anniversary. The sociology department decided to have a conference on Society, Intellectuals and the University. Elina Haavio-Mannila (1992) was chair of the department and invited me to speak. The conference took place in English, although I was the only British speaker, among Finns, French, German, Italian […]

were there any founding mothers? I n Amanda Cross’s (1981: 33) novel, there is a scene in Cambridge where Kate Fansler is with her niece, Leighton, a student at Harvard and an aspiring actress. Leighton describes Hedda Gabler as: ‘scared sh—, scared to death of being unconventional but seething underneath’. The ways in which First […]

The hysteria aroused in men like Davis and Hammersley by feminist methods is paralleled by the disquiet produced by critiques of old meth­ods and proposals for emancipatory methods coming from other ‘out­siders’. The rise of the new men’s studies, gay and lesbian studies, queer theory, and critical race theory has led many men to raise […]

Since 1980 there have been male responses to feminist methodology that have been hysterical. James Davis’s (1994) attack using the offen­sive metaphor of germs and infections is entirely hysterical in tone. Of course, not all men have been opposed to feminist methods, methodol­ogy or epistemology as the work by, for example, McLennan (1985), Holmwood (1985) […]