SOCIOLOGY AND SOCIAL WELFARE
2011
Tracy Peressini*
Renison University College
University of Waterloo
Free at Last: Sociology & Social Welfare
When I give food to the poor they call me a saint. When I ask why the poor have no food they call me a communist.
Dom Helder Camara, quoted in the Guardian, 21 Jan 1985
...from each according to his ability, to each according to his need...
Karl Marx, Critique of the Gotha, 1975
Social welfare and social justice are the cornerstones on which Sociology as a social science is founded. Reacting to the injustices and inequalities that they observed in their time, the early architects of Sociology asked the question of how social order is possible and sought answers in the social structures, institutions, organizations, processes and discourses of society. From Marx to Blumer, C. Wright Mills to Dahrendorf and Parsons to Bourdieu, Sociologists have strived to develop and apply social science knowledge for the betterment of society. In so doing, their ultimate goal was to take their understanding and social facts and put them into action in order to build a free, equitable and just society. After 350 years of social science inquiry, our division’s goal and vision of a just society is no different, nor is our commitment to praxis.
Our vision of a just society is one in which each person is free to explore and develop to their fullest potential. It is a society in which every person, adults and children alike, has free and equal access to the resources and opportunities they need in order to develop physically, mentally, emotionally and socially. It is a society free of political, economic, religious, cultural and social oppression. It is a society that is not bound by class, status, power, income, ecology, ancestry, religion, gender, race, ethnicity, sexuality, age or disability. It is an inclusive and caring society that is rooted in freedom, compassion, fellowship and humanism. It is a society in which each individual has the freedom and opportunity to develop their abilities and meaningfully contribute to the welfare of society. As Martin Luther King so eloquently put it in his 1963 speech at the Poor Peoples March on Washington,
When we let freedom ring, when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God's children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual, "Free at last! free at last! thank God Almighty, we are free at last!"
Martin Luther King, August 28, 1963. Washington, D.C.
In short, this division’s vision of a just society is one that emboddies all of the visions of the other divisions of the Society for the Study of Social Problems. Each division focuses on a specific dimension of social inequality, injustice, oppression and exclusion. Each division envisions a society in which such ‘differencing’ is erradicated. Each division’s vision is one of freedom from social oppression, repression and one which embraces social inclusion, acceptance and mutual respect. All of these visions are pieces of the social welfare puzzle and it is this division’s mission to pull the pieces together into a cohesive picture and understanding of the structures and processes that prohibit, limit and constrain people’s capacity to create, develop and contribute to a good society.
The Sociology and Social Welfare Division supports the cause of social justice by bringing the sociological imagination to bear on the study of social problems and issues, globablly, nationally, regionally and individually. Its mission is to develop and promote an understanding of and knowledge about the social institutions, structures and processes that create and perpetuate inequality, exclusion and oppression. Its goal is also to assist in the creation and development of public policies, affirmative actions and social services through the application of social science knowledge, perspectives, methods and technology.
Selected Readings Readings
Agger, Ben. (2000). Public Sociology: From Social Facts to Literary Acts. Rowman and Littlefield Publishers.
Alinsky, Saul (1969). Rules for Radicals. Vintage Press.
Arendt, H. (1958). The Human Condition. University of Chicago Press.
Bateson, Gregory (2000). Steps to an Ecology of Mind. University of Chicago Press.
Becker, Howard S. (1976). Sociological Work: Method and Substance. Transaction Publishers.
Bellah, R.N., Madsen, R., Sullivan, W.M., Swindler, A. and S. M. Tipton (1992). The Good Society. Random House.
Berger, P.L. and T. Luckmann (1967). The Social Construction of Reality: A Treatise in the Sociology of Knowledge. Anchor Press.
Berstein, R. J. (1971). Praxis and Action: Contemporary Philosophies of Human Activity. University of Pennsylvania Press.
Blau, P. and O.D. Duncan. (1978). The American Occupational Structure. Free Press.
Blumer, H. (1986). Symbolic Interactionism: Perspective and Method. University of California Press.
Bourdieu, P. (1977). Outline of a Theory of Practice. Cambridge University Press.
Coleman, James S. (1998). Foundations of Social Theory. Harvard University Press.
Corning, P. (2011). The Fair Society: And the pursuit of social justice. University of Chicago Press.
Dahrendorf, R. (1979). Life Chances. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Dohling, D. (2010). Injustice: Why social inequality persists. The Policy Press.
Dolgoff, R. (2008). Understanding Social Welfare: A Search for Social Justice. Allyn & Bacon Publishers.
Durkheim, E. (1982). Rules of Sociological Method. Free Press.
Fanon, F. (2005). The Wretched of the Earth. Grove Press.
Friere, Paulo. (2000). Pedagogy of the Oppressed. Continuum Books.
Friere, Paulo. (2000). Pedagogy of Freedom: Ethics, Democracy and Civic Courage. Rowman and Littlefield Publishers.
Garfinkle, H. (1991). Studies in Ethnomethodology. Polity Press.
Giddens, Anthony (1986). The Constitution of Society: Outline of the Theory of Structuration. University of California Press.
Habermas, J. (1985). The Theory of communicative Action, Volume 1: Reason and the Rationalization of Society. Beacon Press.
Habermas, J. (1991). The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere: An Inquiry into a Category of Bourgeois Society. MIT Press.
Hack, S. (1998). Manifesto of a Passionate Moderate. University of Chicago Press.
Hills, J., Le Grand, J. andD. Piachaud. (2002). Understanding Social Exclusion. Oxford University Press.
Hobhouse, L.T. (2010). Social Development: Its Nature and Conditions. Routledge Revivals Series (first published 1924). Routledge Press.
Husserl, E. (1977). Cartesian Meditations: An Introduction to Phenomenology. Martinus Nijhoff Publishers.
James, O. (2008). The Selfish Capitalist. Random House.
Kuhn, Thomas S. (1996). The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. University of Chicago Press.
Lin, Nan (2002). Social Capital: A Theory of Social Structure and Action (Structural Analysis in the Social Sciences). Cambridge University Press.
Marcuse, H. (1991). One-Dimensional Man: Studies in the Ideology of Advanced Industrial Society. Beacon Press.
Marmot, M. (2004). The Status Syndrome. Holt Paperbacks.
Marx, K. (2000). Das Kapital. Regenry Publishing.
Linda McQuaig. (1993). The Wealthy Bankers Wife. Penguin Publishers.
Mehrotra, S. and E. Delamonica (2007). Eliminating Human Poverty: macroeconomic and Social Policies for Equitable Growth. Zed Books Ltd.
Merton, Robert K. (1968). Social Theory and Social Structure. Free Press.
Mills. C. Wright (2000). The Sociological Imagination. Oxford University Press.
Parsons, T. (1967). The Structure of Social Action. Free Press.
Piven, F.F. and R.A. Cloward (1979). Poor People’s Movements: Why they succeed, how they fail. Random House.
Porter, Jack (2007). Is Sociology Dead? Social Theory and Social Praxis in a Post-Modern Age. University Press of America.
Porter, John (1965). The Vertical Mosaic. University of Toronto Press.
Rigney, D. (2010). The Matthew Effect: How advantage begets further advantage. Columbia University Press.
Saul, J.R. (1995). The Unconscious Civilization. The House of Anansi Press.
Schram, Sanford (2002). Praxis for the Poor: Piven and Cloward and the Future of Social Science in Social Welfare. NYU Press.
Taylor-Gooby, Peter (1991). Social Change, Social Welfare and Social Science. University of Toronto Press.
Wacquant, L. (2008). Urban Outcasts: A Comparative Sociology of Advanced Marginality. Polity Press.
Wallerstein, I. (1975). The Capitalist World-Economy (Studies in Modern Capitalism). Cambridge University Press.
Wallerstein, I. (2001). Unthinking Social Science: The Limits of Nineteenth-Century Paradigms. Temple University Press.
Wainryb, C., Smetana, J.G. and E. Turiel. (2008). Social Development, Social Inequalities and Social Justice. Lawrence Erlbaum Associates Inc. Publishers.
Watkins-Hayes, C. (2009). The New Welfare Bureaucrats: Entaglements of Race, Class and Policy Reform. University of Chicago Press.
Weber, Max. (2011). Methodology of Social Sciences. Transaction Publishers.
Wilkinson, R. (2005). The Impact of Inequality: How to make sick societies healthier. The New Press.
Zeldin, Theodore. (1998). An Intimate History of Humanity. Vintage Press.
*Chair, Sociology and Social Welfare Division, 2009-2011
