Sympathetic Knowledge and the Feminist Expansion of Democratic Experimentalism

Abstract This article re-examines democratic experimentalism through the philosophy and practice of Jane Addams. Inspired by John Dewey’s pragmatism, democratic experimentalism emphasizes institutional reform through policy experimentation and participatory mechanisms. Yet both Dewey and Addams conceived democracy as a way of life grounded not only in institutions, but also in habits, dispositions, and affective ties. Addams developed this integrated vision through the situated experience of Hull House, where daily coexistence with socially marginalized groups shaped a distinctive mode of interpreting and enacting democratic life. Drawing on Addams’s writings and on practices at Hull House, the article shows how democratic legitimacy was transformed into a cooperative, affective, and situated practice with direct institutional consequences. In this sense, sympathetic and cooperative dispositions emerge as a practical condition for democratic participation and institutional transformation. While contemporary democratic experimentalism offers powerful institutional procedures for addressing complex social problems, Addams’s work reveals that such procedures become democratically effective only when sustained by sympathetic and imaginative dispositions. The article concludes by connecting Addams’s approach to contemporary feminist practices and by proposing a cooperative feminist experimentalism capable of renewing her insights within present-day institutional contexts.