Sociology, Department of
Date of this Version
2004
Citation
Pp. 386-387 in Poverty in the United States: An Encyclopedia of History, Politics, and Policy, Vol. I , edited by Gwendolyn Mink and Alice O'Connor. Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO.
Abstract
Hull-House Maps and Papers (HHMP) was a groundbreaking text published in 1895 by the residents of Hull House, led by Jane Addams and Florence Kelley. They described and measured group patterns associated with immigrants, working conditions, specific laborers, labor unions, social settlements, and the function of art in the community. Women's moral agency was central to their use of social science to improve democracy and the lives of the disenfranchised.
The mapping of social and demographic characteristics of a population within a geographical area became the core methodology of sociologists at the University of Chicago during the 1920s and 1930s. Acknowledgment that this methodological technique was associated with Hull House residents is singularly lacking in academic sociology. The Hull House residents' empirical studies also helped establish the major topics for academic sociology from the 1890s until the present.