Professor Ian Shaw. Presented at Graduate School of Social Service Administration, University of Chicago, May 4, 2011.

1. Practice and Research:
Chicago Stories
Ian Shaw
Graduate School of Social Service
Administration,
University of Chicago, May 4, 2011

2. 


The boundaries of what we now think of as social
work (and sociology) were neither inevitable nor
in perpetuity.
Social work in your country took a certain
position on the nature and merits of „science‟ in
its formative years that again was not inevitable.
I wonder if the conventional way of
understanding the relationship between research
and practice – between science and action – has
served to impoverish the range of what is
possible, and set up an interdisciplinary
relationship between social work and sociology
that serves neither one nor the other.
Three thoughts

3. 
I want to trouble the assumptions
of what belongs to particular
disciplinary boundaries.

I am primarily trying to show that
there is a „problem‟ here that will
repay work.
Troubling the waters

4. 

„The sociologist looks down upon the social
worker with a goodly measure of contempt‟
for not „having the standing or dignity of a
profession and without being based upon
scientific principles‟
„The social workers…look up to sociologists as
to people who live in the clouds, who clothe
the simplest ideas in the most cumbersome
language and who hide their ignorance of
human nature behind polysyllabic, high
sounding, more or less meaningless
verbiage.‟
Maurice Karpf, 1925
Conventional problem

5. 
Frederick Thrasher's
'The Gang'


Clifford Shaw's 'The
Jack-Roller„

a series of papers
by Ernest Burgess

Ada Sheffield
Sources
University of
Chicago Special
Collections

6. Practice, civic engagement, and
progressive reformism on the one hand
and science and research on the other can
in no way stand for social work/social
service versus sociology and social
science
 A teleological, modernizing explanation
will not do to dissolve this mélange as if
they were moments in the development of
the fields/disciplines we have today

I will suggest….

7. 
within social work there were contrasting
responses to the rise of social science –
those who ploughed a straight furrow and
those who went for cultivating the field

There are two rewarding routes into this
field. One an idea („case‟), the other a
person (E W Burgess).
..and that

8. 

Social work as
science
„Social workers
must be so trained
scientifically that
they belong in the
social science
group‟

are suffused with
the optimism

undifferentiated
mixture of assertion
and aspiration.
Practice, civic engagement, and progressive
reformism on the one hand and science and
research on the other can in no way stand for
social work/social service versus sociology/
social science.

9. 
The problems arising in connection with the presence
of gangs in a community are many. The undirected
gang or gang club demoralizes its members. It aids in
making chronic truants and juvenile delinquents and
in developing them into finished criminals. It
augments racial friction in some areas. It complicates
the problems of capital and labor in certain fields. It
organizes boot-legging and rum-running into
profitable business. It contributes to perverted
politics and governmental corruption. It promotes the
corrupt alliance between crime and politics. In
making more acute these various types of social
maladjustment it lays a heavy burden upon the
community.
Sociology as practice

10. 
„We need a new
penology which
shall be penetrating
in its insights into
the subjective
aspect of the boy‟s
life and which shall
be broader in scope
than institutional
care and the
present system of
probation and
parole‟ (p.500f)

He advocates a researchbased, researchsupported, communitylevel, systematic
community organization
approach to prevention
(p.537), and argues that
„such a program
represents a radical
departure from the
methods of social work
and community
organization as formerly
conceived‟ (p.538).
Welfare intervention

11. 
Stanley takes us through his time at the
Detention Home and the Parental School. On his
discharge at seventeen, „Upon the basis of the
materials available at that time, certain
interpretations of the case were made and a plan
of treatment was devised‟ (164). „In the light of
the foregoing interpretation of the case, it was
decided to place Stanley in an entirely new social
situation‟ (165), consisting of a „sympathetic and
informal‟ (166) foster home in a non-delinquent
community, with monitored vocational guidance,
and the development of „conventional‟ peer
relationships in the area of his new home.
Stanley

12. 
A naive reading of Shaw‟s book leaves the
reader with a sense of having been
inducted into a mélange of what we now
know as „sociology‟ and „social work‟, but
which to Shaw seems a coherent stance. I
suggest that this is close to the heart of
how things were, and not a temporary
distortion in the distinct histories of
sociology and social work.
Clifford Shaw The Jack-Roller

13. 
Shaw‟s language is often cast in the terms of
welfare intervention.

„The attitudes and intimate situations
revealed in the life-story not only throw light
upon the fundamental nature of the
behaviour difficulty, but, along with the other
case material, afford a basis for devising a
plan of treatment adapted to the attitudes,
interests, and personality of the child‟ (17).
Shaw

14. A teleological, modernizing
explanation will not do to
dissolve these differences as if
they were moments in the
development of the
fields/disciplines we have
today.

15. Straight furrows
1923-4 Report. Local Community
Research. The Social Science Group
 „Natural areas‟, „community organization‟,
„family disorganization‟, „natural history‟,
and funding for studies that would later
be Chicago School classics

Within social work there were
contrasting responses to the rise
of social science

16. Population and Housing Conditions
 Family Welfare Work in Chicago
 Immigration: Select Documents and Case
Records


lost opportunity
Straight furrows

17. 
Ada Sheffield „Social Case Interpretation
for Research‟

„the subject-matter of much social study
is unstable. Not only do two students
perceive different facts, they actually in a
measure make different facts to be
perceived‟
Field cultivators

18. 
Throughout the 1920s and early 30s Burgess pursued
a creative preoccupation with the identity and
historical development of sociology and social work in
relation to one another. This led him to an early
position that there is an essential interdependence
between the two, and that their separate disciplinary
developments had converged on a mutual while still
distinguishable set of linked research interests. This
essentially egalitarian view of their relationship
prompted him to a view that there are reciprocal
gains to be had, the one from the other. It also
enabled him to voice positive criticisms of his own
discipline and of social work.
Ernest Burgess and the forgotten
articles

19. 
What should social case
records contain to be
useful for sociological
interpretation? They
should contain what will
render them valuable
for social case work,
that and no more. This
answer will, I know,
perplex and astonish
many social workers
and sociologists.
(Burgess, 1928: 524).

My proposal is actually
quite simple and I
think, entirely feasible
and reasonable, in spite
of the fact that I do not
anticipate its immediate
and general adoption.
It is to enter into the
case record statements
made by all persons
visited in nearly as
humanly possible the
language which they
used. (1927: 192)
What social work has to offer
sociology

20. 
Existing case records seldom, or never, picture
people in the language of Octavia Hill, with their
“passions, hopes, and history” or their
“temptations”, or “the little scheme they have
made of their lives, or would make if they had
encouragement”. The characters in case records
do not move, and act, and have their being as
persons. They are depersonalized, they become
Robots, or mere cases undifferentiated except by
the recurring problems they present. (1928:
526-27)
Case records

21. 
„To enter the interview in the words of the
person signifies a revolutionary change. It
is a change from the interview conceived
in legal terms to the interview as an
opportunity to participate in the life
history of the person, in his memories, in
his hopes, in his attitudes, in his own
plans, in his philosophy of life.‟
More on case records

22. 

The boundaries of what
we now think of as social
work (and sociology) were
neither inevitable nor in
perpetuity.
Social work in your
country took a certain
position on the nature and
merits of „science‟ that
again was not inevitable.
It could perhaps be seen
as the triumph of the
straight furrow over the
cultivated field

I wonder if the
conventional way of
understanding the
relationship between
research and practice –
between science and
action – has served to
impoverish the range of
what is possible, and
set up an
interdisciplinary
relationship with
sociology that serves
neither one nor the
other.
Three closing thoughts

23. 
…I would not wish to draw a line from 80
or 90 years ago and teleport Frederick
Thrasher, Clifford Shaw, Ada Sheffield or
Ernest Burgess to the present. What I
would plead for, however, is a relationship
between social work and sociology of
intellectual reciprocity based on
egalitarian respect.
So….