Springfield, Ohio: a Summary of Two Centuries
Springfield, Ohio: a Summary of Two Centuries

Author: Tom Dunham

Publisher: Author House

Published: 2012-08-27

Total Pages: 171

ISBN-13: 1477261931

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This survey highlights Springfields beginnings as an industrial oriented settlement growing into a city with an increasingly diversified industrial base well into the 20th century. Discussed in this connection is the role of railroads as a necessary condition to industrial success. As industry grew, commercialism expanded, and became centralized in the downtown. The text traces the citys viable and lively downtown from the mid-19th century to the mid-20th century. The background for the decline following World War II is covered, as well as the downtowns changing role in the modern era. Not all, however, is industry and commerce. The citys wealth and the wealth of individual citizens led to the construction of many fine buildings of architectural merit as venues for cultural, entertainment, and religious functions. Many of these structures are treated in relation to their cultural functions. Not the lease of the topics discussed is Springfields saga with infrastructure problems and their eventual correction.

The Social Survey in Historical Perspective, 1880-1940
The Social Survey in Historical Perspective, 1880-1940

Author: Martin Bulmer

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 1991

Total Pages: 414

ISBN-13: 0521363349

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This 2001 book traces the history of the social Survey in Britain and the US, with two chapters on Germany and France. It discusses the aims and interests of those who carried out early surveys, and the links between the social survey and the growth of empirical social science.

Sociology and Scientism
Sociology and Scientism

Author: Robert C. Bannister

Publisher: UNC Press Books

Published: 2014-02-01

Total Pages: 312

ISBN-13: 1469616238

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During the 1920s a new generation of American sociologists tried to make their discipline more objective by adopting the methodology of the natural sciences. Robert Bannister provides the first comprehensive account of the emergence of this "objectivism" within the matrix of the evolutionism of Lester Ward and other founders of American sociology. Objectivism meant confining inquiry to the observable externals of social behavior and quantifying the results. Although objectivism was a marked departure from the theoretical and reformist sociology of the prewar years, and caused often-fierce intergenerational struggle, sociological objectivism had roots deep in prewar sociology. Objectivism first surfaced in the work of sociology's "second generation," the most prominent members of which completed their graduate work prior to World War I. It gradually took shape in what may be termed "realist" and "nominalist" variants, the first represented by Luther Lee Bernard and the second by William F. Ogburn and F. Stuart Chapin. For Bernard, a scientific sociology was radical, prescribing absolute standards for social policy. For Ogburn and Chapin, it was essentially statistical and advisory in the sense that experts would concern themselves exclusively with means rather than ends. Although the objectivists differed among themselves, they together precipitated battles within the American Sociological Society during the 1930s that challenged the monopoly of the Chicago School, paving the way for the informal alliance of Parsonian theorists and a new generation of quantifiers that dominated the profession throughout the 1950s. By shedding new light on the careers of Ward and the other founders and by providing original accounts of the careers of the leading objectivists, Bannister presents a unique look at the course of sociology before and after World War I. He puts theory formation in an institutional, ideological, and biographical setting, and thus offers an unparalleled look at the formation of a modern academic profession.