Constraints on a Reform Movement: Relationships between SSSP and ASA, 1951-1970

Abstract

The Society for the Study of Social Problems (SSSP) was originally a social movement that challenged the post World War II leadership of the American Sociological Society (ASS) and took an adversary position in a controversy over the uses of sociology and the merits of different styles of research. Yet it later lost its critical ardor and became a “mainstream” organization, primarily of sociologists specializing in the study of social problems. The founding and evolution of SSSP are analyzed in terms of a dilemma faced by many movements. In order to influence nonparticipants, a movement must establish its credibility, but in seeking to do so, it is often constrained by their outlooks and may have to compromise its initial goals. In the case of SSSP, this problem was related to its efforts to legitimate itself within the broader discipline. Such efforts are shown to have blunted the opposition of some early SSSP leaders to the leaders of the American Sociological Society. The discipline's standards, traditions, and rewards are then shown to have influenced SSSP's evolution, with the decline of interdisciplinary ties and changes in Social Problems receiving the most attention.