Week 2: Social work as ethical knowledge

ANTH 6916: The social in justice
August 7, 2024

According to Jane Addams (1902), people should work to create a more democratic society, but she has a specific understanding of what democracy is:

We are ... brought to a conception of Democracy not merely as a sentiment which desires the well-being of all men, nor yet as a creed which believes in the essential dignity and equality of all men, but as that which affords a rule of living as well as a test of faith (Addams 1902, 6)

We must mix, she says, on the “thronged and common road” (Addams 1902, 6).

[D]iversified human experience and resultant sympathy ... are the foundation and guarantee of Democracy. (Addams 1902, 7)

[M]uch of the insensibility and hardness of the world is due to the lack of imagination which prevents a realization of the experiences of other people. (Addams 1902, 9)

How do you interpret these statements?

Addams, Jane. 1902. Democracy and Social Ethics. New York: The Macmillan Company. http://archive.org/details/democracysociale00addauoft.