The British Tradition of Social Administration: Moral Concerns at the Expense of Scientific Rigor

Abstract

A merican social science is, tentatively and perhaps belatedly, discovering ethics, particularly in issues surrounding the uses of social science research for policy making. Although the concern may seem novel to many social scientists, in fact the discipline is rediscovering its roots. In Britain the links between ethics and social science were never so completely severed, but were forged in a quite distinctive way, through the creation of the field of Social Administration. The development of Social Administration, with its particular strengths and weaknesses, offers a useful basis for comparing the American and British experience. Less than a century ago the social sciences in Britain and the United States were directly and explicitly concerned with ethics. American sociologists such as Albion Small and E.A. Ross combined in their teaching scientific analysis and direct ethical prescription.' From 1906 sociology at Harvard University was taught in the Department of Social Ethics. In Britain leading figures such as the social philosopher L.T. Hobhouse and the early social investigator Seebohm Rowntree combined scientific concerns with specific ethical and political interests. A recent history of British social science between 1870 and 1914 is titled Ethics and