The Ph.D. and the institutionalization of american sociology

Abstract

The organizing of disciplines in American higher education, which occurred as the twentieth century began, involved gaining recognition for distinctive areas of research, organizing disciplinary associations, creating journals dedicated to fields, creating pro fessorships devoted to fields, granting doctorates in fields, and organizing administra tive units (i.e., departments) providing some level of autonomy to fields in colleges and universities. Such classic works as Emile Durkheim's Les R?gles de la m?thode sociologique (1895) and Georg Simmel's Soziologie. Untersuchungen ?ber die Formen der Vergesellschaftung (1908) were aimed at gaining recognition for sociology as a field; English translations of an earlier version of the first chapter of Simmel's volume, "The Problem of Sociology," were particularly important. The foundings of the short-lived National Sociological Association in 1903 (a largely African American undertaking cen tered at Howard University) and of the American Sociological Society in 1905 marked the development of disciplinary associations for sociology. Dedicated professorships began in the United States, evidently, with the appointment of William Graham Sumner at Yale in 1875, and doctorates in sociology were first awarded at Chicago in 1895 to Jerome Hall Raymond (American Municipal Government) and Frederic William Sand ers (An Exposition in Outline of the Relation of Certain Economic Principles to Social Adjustment) (see Faris, 1970: 135). The organizing of sociology departments appears to have begun at the University of Kansas and the Chicago Theological Seminary, both in 1890. The primary datum reported here is the presence of professors with doctorates, teach ing sociology in American institutions of higher education. Doctorates, of course, are granted by institutions either in the subject of instruction or in some other subject, or even in no subject at all. As sociology departments came to be organized, the connection between doctorates and institutions came into view; the degrees came to be brand names, as it were. Thus this paper also focuses on the establishment and consolidation of depart ments of sociology. It is not a mere matter of administrative units being organized offi cially; noting that would be an exercise in mere chronology. Departments needed to impress administrators and board members with the academic credentials of their fac Anthony J. Blasi is a professor of sociology at Tennessee State University. The author may be reached at