American Sociology Before World War II

Early American sociology has been worked over and written up by so many able individuals that the probability of generating new facts is slight. However, the unfolding of collective experience from time to time forces reevaluation of historical antecedents and while the facts may not be new, their significance often becomes novel. As Croce observed, each age must rewrite history from its own perspective. The present essay is commissioned as a bicentennial review of American sociology through the period of dominance of the Chicago school. This is here taken to mean roughly to Germany's invasion of Poland on September 1 , 1 939, which marked the outbreak of World War II, the end of the Depression, and the transformation of the internal and external character of American society. This transformation was so radical as to render inappropriate the family of sociological theories that had become dominant in American sociology and its capital, the University of Chicago. The changed milieu was a major factor in the shift in the center of sociological domi­ nance from the Midwest to the coasts. At an earlier time, at the beginning rather than the end of the period covered by the present essay, milieu forces played a role in the differentiation of American sociology from its European originals.