Hostname: page-component-8448b6f56d-42gr6 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-23T10:19:52.836Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Emergent, Relational Revolution: What More Do We Have to Learn from Jane Addams?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 April 2021

Danielle Lake*
Affiliation:
Center for Design Thinking, Elon University, Campus Box 2620, Elon, NC27244, USA
*
Corresponding author. Email: dlake@elon.edu

Abstract

What does Jane Addams's approach to social change offer to publicly engaged scholars and activists today? This essay explores several dimensions of Addams's work that have been misinterpreted and overlooked, putting these aspects of her work into conversation with research on endeavors to move higher education toward civic democratic engagement. The goal is to visualize opportunities and strategies for more inclusive and democratic engagement with issues across local, regional, and global communities. In particular, this essay explores how Addams's place-based, boundary-spanning methods of engagement provide strategies for more inclusive and collaborative philosophical activism, including (1) fostering and sustaining relationships across difference, (2) engaging with soft systems mapping, and (3) using synthetic imagination in crafting transdisciplinary engaged narratives. In conjunction with research on social change and creative innovation, Addams's work highlights the potential value of collaborative and democratic endeavors across difference as a means toward more radical imaginaries and relational revolution.

Type
Article
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2021. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of Hypatia, a Nonprofit Corporation

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Addams, Jane. 1894. Domestic service and the family claim. In The world's congress of representative women 2, ed. Sewall, May Wright. Chicago: Rand, McNally.Google Scholar
Addams, Jane. 1896a. A belated industry. American Journal of Sociology 1: 536–50.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Addams, Jane. 1896b. The object of social settlements. Union Signal, March 5.Google Scholar
Addams, Jane. 1910/1990. Twenty years at Hull House with autobiographical notes. New York: The MacMillan Company.Google Scholar
Addams, Jane. 1932. The excellent becomes permanent. New York: Macmillan.Google Scholar
Addams, Jane. 2002. The objective value of a social settlement. In The Jane Addams reader, ed. Elshtain, Jean Bethke. New York: Basic Books.Google Scholar
Addams, Jane. 2007. The settlement as a factor in the labor movement: Residents of Hull-House. In Hull-House maps and papers. Urbana: University of Illinois Press.Google Scholar
Adichie, Chimamanda. N. 2009. The danger of a single story [Video]. TED. https://www.ted.com/talks/chimamanda_adichie_the_danger_of_a_single_story.Google Scholar
Alessandri, Mariana. 2019. Spiritual activism in the Rio Grande Valley: Leaving the ivory tower. Paper delivered at the Society for the Advancement of American Philosophy Annual Meeting, Columbus, Ohio.Google Scholar
Bandy, Joe, Price, Mary F., Clayton, Patty H., Metzker, Julia, Nigro, Georgia, Stanlick, Sarah, Etheridge Woodson, S., Bartel, A., and Gale, S.. 2018. Democratically engaged assessment: Reimagining the purposes and practices of assessment in community engagement. Davis, Calif.: Imagining America.Google Scholar
Boggs, Grace Lee. 1998. Living for change: An autobiography. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.Google Scholar
Burns, Tom, Machado, Nora, and Corte, Ugo. 2015. The sociology of creativity: Part I: Theory: The social mechanisms of innovation and creative developments in selectivity environments. Human Systems Management 34 (3): 179–99.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Calhoun, Cheshire, ed. 2004. Setting the moral compass: Essays by women philosophers. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Cattani, Gino, Ferriani, Simone, and Colucci, Mariachiara. 2015. Creativity in social networks: A core-periphery perspective. In The Oxford Handbook of the Creative Industries, ed. Jones, C., Lazersen, M., and Sapsed, J.. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Checkland, Peter. 1999. Systems thinking, systems practice: Includes a 30-year retrospective. New York: Wiley.Google Scholar
Crosby, Alexandra, Fam, Dena, and Lopes, Abby Mellick. 2018. Transdisciplinarity and the “living lab model”: Food waste management as a site for collaborative learning. In Transdisciplinary theory, practice and education: The art of collaborative research and collective learning, ed. Fam, Dena, Neuhauser, Linda, and Gibbs, Paul. Cham, Switzerland: Springer.Google Scholar
Daynes, Gary, and Longo, Nicholas V.. 2004. Jane Addams and the origins of service-learning practice in the United States. Michigan Journal of Community Service Learning 11 (1): 513.Google Scholar
Deegan, Mary Jo. 1988a. Jane Addams and the men of the Chicago school, 1892–1918. New Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction Books.Google Scholar
Deegan, M. J. 1988b. W.E.B. Du Bois and the women of Hull-House, 1895–1899. American Sociology 19: 301–11.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Deegan, Mary Jo. 2002. Race, Hull House, and the University of Chicago: A new conscience against ancient evils. New York: Praeger.Google Scholar
Dewey, John. 1981. Experience and nature, in The later works, 1925–1953, vol. 1, ed. Jo Ann Boydston (the late works Volume 1 : 306–307). Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press.Google Scholar
Elshtain, Jean Bethke. 1998. A return to Hull House: Reflections on Jane Addams. Cross Currents 38 (Fall): 257–67.Google Scholar
Elshtain, Jean Bethke. 2002. Jane Addams and the dream of American democracy: A life. New York: Basic Books.Google Scholar
Farrell, Michael. 2001. Comment on Niel McLaughlin/2: Types of creativity and types of collaborative circles: New directions for research. Sociologica 2 (2). https://www.rivisteweb.it/doi/10.2383/27716.Google Scholar
Fauvel, Anne Marie, Lake, Danielle, and Sisson, Lisa. 2017. Working with implementing a feminist pragmatist approach to support local food recovery. Public Philosophy Journal 1 (1): 118.Google Scholar
Fenton, Jen L. K. 2019. “Our feet are mired in the same soil”: Deepening democracy with the political virtue of sympathetic inquiry. PhD diss., Marquette University.Google Scholar
Fischer, Marilyn. 2014. Addams on cultural pluralism, European immigrants, and African Americans. Pluralist 9 (3): 3858.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fischer, Marilyn. 2020. Jane Addams's evolutionary theorizing: Constructing democracy and social ethics. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Freire, Paulo. 1970. The pedagogy of the oppressed. New York: Bloomsbury.Google Scholar
Frodeman, Robert. 2014. Sustainable knowledge: A theory of interdisciplinarity. New York: Palgrave MacMillan.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Frodeman, R., & Briggle, A. 2016. Socrates tenured: the institutions of twenty-first-century philosophy (Ser. Collective studies in knowledge and society). Rowman & Littlefield International.Google Scholar
Hamington, Maurice. 2004. Embodied care: Jane Addams, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, and feminist ethics. Urbana: University of Illinois Press.Google Scholar
Hamington, Maurice. 2009. The social philosophy of Jane Addams. Urbana: University of Illinois Press.Google Scholar
Hartlep, Nicholas, and Lake, Danielle, Purcell, Jennifer W., Bush, Adam, Perry, Lane Graves III, Fleck, Bethany, Kliewer, Brandon W., Janke, Emily M., Peace and Conflict Studies Department, Markham, Paul N., Orphan, Cecilia M., and Saltmarsh, John A.. 2019. Toward an innovative civic engagement pedagogy (Saltmarsh Award Essay). eJournal of Public Affairs 8 (1). http://www.ejournalofpublicaffairs.org/toward-an-innovative-civic-engagement-pedagogy/.Google Scholar
Hartman, Eric, Reynolds, Nora, Ferrarini, Caitlin, Messmore, Niki, Evans, Sabea, Al-Ebrahim, Bibi, and Brown, John M.. 2020. Coloniality-decoloniality and critical global citizenship: Identity, belonging, and education abroad. Frontiers: The Interdisciplinary Journal of Study Abroad 33 (2): 3359.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hernandez Castillo, R. Aida. March, 2020. Against discursive colonialism: Intercultural dialogues as a path to decolonize feminist anthropology. Paper delivered at the 47th Annual Meeting of the Society for the Advancement of American Philosophy. San Miguel de Allende, Mexico.Google Scholar
Hildebrand, David. 2013. Dewey's pragmatism: Instrumentalism and meliorism. In The Cambridge companion to pragmatism, ed. Malachowski, Alan. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Huutoniemi, Katri. 2015. Interdisciplinarity as academic accountability: Prospects for quality control across disciplinary boundaries. Social Epistemology: A Journal of Knowledge, Culture and Policy 30 (2): 163–85.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Johnson, Steven. 2010. Where good ideas come from: The natural history of innovation. New York: Penguin Group.Google Scholar
Knight, Louise W. 2005. Citizen: Jane Addams and the struggle for democracy. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Knight, Louise W. 2011. Jane Addams: Spirit in action. W.W. Norton.Google Scholar
Kuh, George D. 2008. High-impact educational practices: What they are, who has access to them, and why they matter. Washington, D.C.: Association of American Colleges and Universities.Google Scholar
Lake, Danielle. 2018. Opting in? The potential for progress when engaging across intractable differences. Educational Theory 67 (6): 693711.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lake, Danielle, and Thompson, Paul. 2018. Philosopher-as-liaison? Lessons from sustainable knowledge and American philosophy. Dewey Studies 2 (1): 1041.Google Scholar
Leffers, M. Regina. 1993. Pragmatists Jane Addams and John Dewey inform the ethic of care. Hypatia 8 (2): 6477.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Levine, D. 1971. Jane addams and the liberal tradition. State Historical Society of Wisconsin.Google Scholar
Liedtka, Jeanne, and Bahr, Kristina J.. 2019. Assessing design thinking's impact: Report on the development of a new instrument. Darden Working Paper Series. Charlottesville: University of Virginia.Google Scholar
Linn, James. 1935. Jane Addams: A biography. New York: Appleton-Century.Google Scholar
Lugones, María. 2003. Pilgrimages/peregrinajes: Theorizing coalition against multiple oppressions. Lanham, Md.: Rowman & Littlefield.Google Scholar
Lynton, Ernest A. 1996. Rethinking the nature of scholarship. International Higher Education 6 (December). https://doi.org/10.6017/ihe.1996.6.6217.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Menger, P.M. 2001. Art, politicization, and public action. Sociétés & Représentations, 11(1), 167.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Nackenoff, Carol. 2009. New politics for new selves: Jane Addams's legacy for democratic citizenship in the twenty- first century. In Jane Addams and the practice of democracy, ed. Fischer, Marilyn, Nackenoff, Carol, and Chmielewski, Wendy. Urbana: University of Illinois Press.Google Scholar
Parker, John, and Hackett, Edward. 2012. Hot spots and hot moments in scientific collaborations and social movements. American Sociological Review 77 (1): 2144.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Riddle, Mark, and Hanneman, Robert A.. 2005. Introduction to social network methods. Riverside, CA: University of California. http://faculty.ucr.edu/~hanneman/.Google Scholar
Saltmarsh, John. 2019. Ernest A. Lynton and the tyranny of research. In Building the field of higher education engagement: Foundational ideas and future directions, ed. R, Lorilee. Sandmann and Diannn O. Jones. Sterling, Va.: Stylus Publishing.Google Scholar
Scheman, Naomi, Hilde Lindemann, Marion Verkerk, and Walker, Margaret. 2008. Narrative, complexity, and context: Autonomy as an epistemic value. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Seigfried, Charlene Haddock. 1996. Pragmatism and feminism: Reweaving the social fabric. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Seigfried, Charlene Haddock. 2013. The social self in Jane Addams's prefaces and introductions. Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society 49 (2): 127–56.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sklar, Kathryn Kish. 1991. Hull House maps and papers: Social science as women's work in the 1890s. In The social survey in historical perspective: 1880–1940, ed. Bulmer, Marin, Bales, Kevin, and Sklar, Kathryn Kish. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Stoecker, R. 2016. Liberating service learning and the rest of higher education civic engagement. Philadelphia: Temple University Press.Google Scholar
Vink, Josina. 2019. In/visible: Conceptualizing service ecosystem design. PhD diss., Karlstad University.Google Scholar
Voinov, Alexey, and Bousquet, François. 2010. Modelling with stakeholders. Environmental Modelling and Software 25 (11): 1268–81.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Whipps, Judy. 2010. Examining Addams's democratic theory through a postcolonial feminist lens. In Feminist interpretations of Jane Addams, ed. Hamington, Maurice. Philadelphia: Pennsylvania State University Press.Google Scholar
Whipps, Judy. 2019. Dewey, Addams, and design thinking: Pragmatist feminist innovation for democratic change. In The Oxford Handbook of Dewey, ed. Fesmire, S.. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Whipps, Judy. 2020. Comments on Fischer's evolutionary theorizing: Constructing democracy and social ethics. Author Meets Critics panel response at the Society for the Advancement of American Philosophy Conference, San Miguel de Allende, Mexico.Google Scholar
Wilson-Grau, R. and Britt, H. 2013. Outcome Harvesting. Ford Foundation, Cairo.Google Scholar