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American Pragmatism, Sociology and the Development of Disability Studies
for poor minorities and social justice is representative of this
influence. SKOCPOL’s contributions have been in understanding the
welfare state in historical and cultural context. Interesting, both
WILSON and SKOCPOL came to Harvard from the University of
Chicago, another intellectual center influenced by pragmatism.
Both Harvard and Chicago have a long history of sociologists who
used both quantitative and qualitative methods to study social
problems in work that had serious policy implications.
Two important early pragmatists, John DEWEY and George Herbert
MEAD, did some of their most important work at the University of
Chicago where there seemed to be a commonality of interests
between the pragmatists and groups of sociologists (BLOOM 2000).
As ABBOTT (1999) points out, however, there is less a singular
University of Chicago “school” than central themes and diverse
groups of academics who made significant contributions to
sociology in terms of social ecology, social psychology, demography
and social organization.
The interactionist perspective in sociology proposed in the work of
WEBER (1946) and SIMMEL (1955) emphasizes the importance of
understanding the social world from the viewpoint of the individuals
who act within it. This approach was influenced by DEWEY and
elaborated by MEAD (1934) and BLUMER (1969) at the University
of Chicago into what is now known as symbolic interactionsim.
BLUMER later moved to the Department of Sociology at the
University of California, Berkeley where he trained many students
in this research tradition. Students of MEAD and BLUMER at the
University of Chicago, like Howard S. BECKER (1961), Erving
GOFFMAN (1959; 1961) and Anselm STRAUSS (1975; 1990;
1993), used symbolic interactionism as a framework to produce
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