Annie Marion Maclean, Feminist Pragmatist and Methodologist

Authors

Mary Jo Deegan, University of Nebraska-LincolnFollow
Michael R. Hill, University of Nebraska-LincolnFollow
Susan L. Wortmann, Nebraska Wesleyan University

Date of this Version

2009

Citation

Published in Journal of Contemporary Ethnography 38:6 (2009), pp 655-665.

Comments

Copyright © 2009 Mary Jo Deegan, Michael R. Hill, and Susan L. Wortmann; published by SAGE Publications. Used by permission.

Abstract

Annie Marion Maclean was a major Chicago sociologist and methodologist. She was profoundly influenced by the gendered division of labor in sociology during her era. Maclean combined her work with the men and women of the early Chicago school of sociology and the women of Hull-House, an early social settlement. As a feminist pragmatist, Maclean was both a theorist and practitioner who used qualitative and quantitative methods. She set precedents in the Chicago school of ethnography, participant observation, and critical methodology. Maclean, however, was not the “mother” of ethnography. Harriet Martineau holds a far stronger claim to be a founding contributor to the origin and development of ethnographic methodologies in the social sciences.