Jane addams

Jane Addams (Cedarville, Illinois, September 6, 1860—Chicago, May 21, 1935) was a feminist social worker, Settlement Movement activist, sociologist, pacifist, American reformer, administrator public and writer She was an important leader in the history of Social Work and in the suffragette movement in the United States who also advocated for world peace. In 1889 she co-founded Chicago's Hull House with Ellen Gates Starr, one of the most famous Settlement Houses in North America, which is now a museum. In 1910 she was awarded an honorary Master's degree from Yale University, becoming the first woman to receive an honorary degree from that institution. She was a co-founder in 1910 of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU).

In 1931 she became the first American woman to be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, and is recognized as the founder of the profession of social work in the United States. She was a radical pragmatist and the first woman 'public philosopher' from United States. When Addams died in 1935, she was the best-known female public figure in the United States.

At the height of the Progressive Era, when presidents like Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson identified themselves as reformers and social activists, Addams was one of the most prominent reformers. She helped focus the government and the American public on the issues mothers care about, such as the needs of children, local public health, and world peace.

Biography

Jane Addams in 1915.

Born in Cedarville, Illinois, Jane Addams was the youngest of eight children born to a prosperous northern Illinois family of English descent. In 1863, when Addams was two years old, her mother Sarah Addams died pregnant with her ninth child. From then on Addams was cared for by her older sisters. By the time Addams was eight years old, four of her siblings had passed away: three as infants and the other at sixteen.

Addams spent her childhood playing in the streets, reading at home and studying at Sunday School. At the age of four she contracted spinal tuberculosis, known as Pott's disease, which caused a curvature in her spine and health problems that accompanied her for the rest of her life. This complicated her interaction with other children as she limped and could not run well. As a child she considered herself ugly and she was afraid of embarrassing her father when she walked with him on the street while he was wearing his best clothes.

Addams adored her father, John H. Addams, when she was a child, as she made clear in her memoir, Twenty Years at Hull House (1910). He was a founding member of the Illinois Republican Party and a Senator from the State of Illinois (1855-1870). He supported his friend Abraham Lincoln in her runs for Senate in 1854 and for President in 1860. John H. Addams was an agricultural businessman with extensive timber and cattle holdings; flour and wood mills, and a wool mill. He remarried in 1868 when Jane was eight years old to Anna Hosteler Haldeman, a Freeport miller's widow.

As a child, Addams had big dreams of making something worthwhile in the world. A voracious reader, she became interested in the poor by reading Charles Dickens. Inspired by her mother's kindness to the poor in Cedarville, she decided to become a doctor to live and work with the poor. It was a vague idea fueled by her reading of fiction. Addams' father encouraged her to enter higher education, but close to her home. Addams was eager to attend the new women's college, Smith College in Massachusetts, but her father required her to enter the nearby Rockford Women's Seminary (now Rockford University) in Illinois. After graduating from Rockford in 1881, she hoped to attend Smith College for her bachelor's degree. That summer, her father died unexpectedly from a sudden case of appendicitis. Each of her children inherited approximately $50,000 (equivalent to $1.34 million in 2016). That fall, Addams, her sister Alice, her sister's husband Harry, and her stepmother Anna Haldeman Addams, moved to Philadelphia so the three young men could begin their medical education. Harry had already received training in medicine and continued to study it at the University of Pennsylvania. Jane and Alice completed their first year of medical school at the Women's Medical College of Philadelphia, but Jane's health conditions, spinal surgery, and a nervous breakdown prevented her from finishing her degree. Her failure filled her with sadness. Also, her stepmother was ill, so the entire family canceled plans to stay for two years and returned to Cedarville.

The following fall her brother-in-law Harry performed surgery on her back to straighten it. He then advised her that she give up her studies and devote herself to traveling. In August 1883 she began a two-year tour of Europe in the company of her stepmother, traveling for periods with friends and family who joined them. It was on that trip that Ella Addams decided that she didn't have to be a doctor to help the poor. Upon her return in June 1887, Addams lived with her stepmother in Cedarville and spent winters with her in Baltimore. Addams, still filled with a vague ambition, sunk in depression, and uncertain of her future, felt useless living the conventional life expected of a privileged young woman. She wrote extensive letters to her friend from Rockford Seminary, Ellen Gates Starr, mostly about fathers and literature but sometimes also about her despair. Meanwhile Addams was gaining inspiration from her constant reading. Fascinated by the early Christians and Tolstoy's book My Religion, she was baptized in the Cedarville Presbyterian Church in the summer of 1886. Reading The Duties of Man by Giuseppe Mazzini, began to be inspired by the idea of democracy as a social ideal. She still felt confused about her role as a woman. The Slavery of Women by John Stuart Mill made her reflect and question the social pressures placed on women to marry and dedicate her life to her family.

In the summer of 1887 Addams read in a magazine about the new idea of starting a settlement house. He decided to visit the world's first, Toynbee Hall in London. She, along with some friends including Ellen Gates Starr, traveled through Europe between December 1887 and June 1888. At first Addams did not tell anyone about her dream of starting a settlement house, but she began to feel guilty for not acting. to fulfill his dream. Believing that sharing her dream might help him act on it, she told Ellen Gates Starr about it. Starr loved the idea and agreed to join Addams in creating the settlement house. Visiting Toynbee Hall Addams was fascinated. Her dream of classes mingling socially for mutual benefit, as had happened in early Christian circles, seemed to be embodied in this new type of institution. Addams discovered that the settlement house was a space where unexpected cultural connections happened and where the narrow boundaries of class, culture, and education could be expanded. They doubled as community arts centers and social service facilities. There the foundations for American civil society were established, a neutral space where different communities and ideologies could learn from each other and seek common interests for collective action.

In 1889 Addams and her friend and lover Ellen Gates Starr co-founded Hull House, a Chicago settlement house. The dilapidated mansion had been built by Charles Hull in 1856 and was in need of repairs and improvements. Initially, Addams paid for all expenses (repairing the porch roof, painting the rooms, and purchasing furniture) in addition to operating expenses. However, donations from different people sustained the house from the first year and Addams was able to reduce the proportion of her contributions, and the annual budget began to grow rapidly. A number of wealthy women became major donors to the house including Helen Culver, who managed the estates of her cousin Charles Hull, and who later allowed the house to be used rent-free. Addams and Starr were the first occupants of the house, which would later become the residence of approximately 25 women. At its peak, Hull House was visited by more than two thousand people a week. Hull House was a center for research, empirical analysis, study and debate as well as a center for living and building good relationships with the neighbourhood. Among the objectives of Hull House was to bring educated and privileged young people into contact with the real lives of the majority of people. The residents of Hull House conducted research in housing, obstetrics, tuberculosis, typhoid, garbage collection, cocaine, and truancy. The main residents of Hull House were educated women united by their commitment to labor unions, the National Consumers League, and the suffragette movement. The Hull House facilities included a night school for adults, clubs for older children, a public kitchen, an art gallery, a gymnasium, a girls' club, a bathhouse, a bookbindery, a music school, a theater group, apartments, a library, meeting rooms, an employment office and a dining room. In addition to providing social services and cultural events for the mostly immigrant population of the Near West Side neighborhood, the Hull House provided young social workers the opportunity to gain practice. One of the most important aspects of Hull House to Addams was the arts program. Hull House's arts program allowed Addams to challenge the industrialized education system, which matched individuals to a specific job or position.

Addams was the companion and partner of Mary Rozet Smith for over 30 years and there has been much speculation about her life and her relationship. Addams burned many of her letters, but also referred to her relationship as a “marriage.” They traveled together, co-owned a home in Maine, and remained committed to each other.

Social work

The Hull House today.

Sello, 1940, in homage to Jane Addams.

After her return from Europe in 1885, Jane Addams began her social work. She helped orphans in Chicago's Room and was active in many charitable organizations. In 1888 she founded Hull House in Chicago, one of the first group homes in the United States modeled on South London's Toynbee Hall, which Samuel Barnett had founded in 1883.

The shelters were centers where the poor received training and social benefits, and represented progress in social reforms. Almost 2,000 people attended Hull House every week who used the facilities it had:

• Adult afternoon school
• Guards
• Associations for older children
• Art Gallery
• Public kitchen
• Coffee
• Gymnasium
• Swimming pool
• Binding workshop
• Music school
• Theatre Company
• Library
• Workshop for girls
• Job Search Service

Hull House also served as a sociological institution for women. Addams was a friend and colleague of early members of the Chicago School of Sociology, whom she influenced with her applied sociology. She was one of the authors of the Hull-House Maps and Papers in 1893, which defined the interests and methodology of Chicago sociologists. She worked with George Herbert Mead on different aspects of social reform, such as women's rights or the textile workers' strikes of 1910. Addams linked the central ideas of symbolic interactionism with the theory of cultural feminism and pragmatism, which support their ideas.

In 1911 he helped found the National Foundation of Settlements and Neighborhood Centers, of which he served as its first president. Concerned about the start of the First World War, she founded the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom in 1915. She spoke out against American involvement in the war and supported President Woodrow Wilson's position. The same year she agreed to lead the major international women's conferences in The Hague, which were attended by more than 1,500 women from 28 countries. Jane Addams also co-founded the American Civil Liberties Union and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). She also joined the American Anti-Imperialist League and the American Sociology Association and participated in the women's suffrage movement.

In 1929 she was named honorary president of the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom and two years later she became the first American woman to win the Nobel Prize, which was awarded to her for her social commitment. In 1935, shortly before her death, she was honored on the occasion of the 20th anniversary of the birth of the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom.

Sociology

Jane Addams is considered one of the founders of the most relevant sociology. She was a member of the American School of Sociological Society from its inception in 1905 and wrote frequently in its journal. She too, she collaborated with the Chicago School of Sociology and wrote at least 12 sociology-themed books.

The bifurcated consciousness is one of his main contributions, this concept was proposed in 1889 and refers to the situation of privilege; it is also the bifurcated conscience that drives her to find a place to stop dreaming and take action through the foundation of the Hull House community center. Social ethics is another of his main concepts, this ethics gives rise to thinking about improving the situation of human beings.

The epistemological principles of Jane Addams's social theory are:

• Applied sociology: theory must go hand in hand with practice.
• Organic social theory: humans and nature are unity. Social changes in institutions affect all individuals.
• Evangelical Social Theory: All human beings are naturally kind.
• Reciprocity of recognition: the participant observation should always be respectful of individuals and their environment.
• Social ethics as a vertebral norm of thought and action: social action must be understood as a moral force of society and must allow to improve living conditions.

The sociological relevance of this author lies in the fact that her academic work was transferred to practice (applied sociology). She wrote on sociological theory with an awareness of her own particular role and status in society.

It was a precursor of the interpretive paradigm where the focus in understanding is the self that usually has the meanings of other people. She is also a precursor of the sociology of everyday life, of sociology for people and institutional ethnography. She rejected the idea of the socially determined individual and understood social ethics in socialized democracy.

Sociological Methodology

Jane Addams' starting point is complex relationships, she made constant use of empathic participant observation and carried out the analysis of multiple points of view in different relational contexts.

Proposal from the social sphere

In the contextual political framework, the State is enlightened and interventionist. There is a strong preponderance for the idea of the common good, where individuals must learn to identify their personal interests linked to the idea of the common good. For Jame Addams, democracy is socialized and must be incorporated into the daily life of all individuals.

Feminist Sociology

Addams worked with a gender perspective by looking at the world from a specific and differentiated position of women. She studied women from different points of view through observation. She had a theoretical and practical commitment to build a fairer society between men and women. Jane Addams is one of the forerunners of difference feminism.