 |
        |
Reflecting on ASA’s Centennial Year, 2005At this time 99 years ago . . . Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle had just exposed the squalor, corruption, and cruelty within the Chicago meat-packing industry, creating a popular sensation that prompted the Roosevelt administration to mount a federal investigation and brought needed reforms. Meanwhile, the American Sociological Society began assessing other social ills, as well, with its new “army” of 115 charter members who just elected their first president, Lester Ward, and held an inaugural Annual Meeting in Providence, RI (1906). 85 years ago . . . the 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution passed, guaranteeing women’s suffrage, and that year the Alpha Kappa Delta international sociology honor society was founded by University of Southern California sociologist Emory S. Bogardus for the purposes of stimulating scholarship and promoting the scientific study of society (1920). 56 years ago . . . the then-Soviet Union test exploded its first high-energy atomic bomb, and in that same year the American Sociological Society Executive Office was established at New York University, tapping Matilda White Riley with her legendary high-energy personality, to serve part-time as the first Executive Officer (1949). 19 years ago . . . the illegal Iran “arms-for-hostages” deal was exposed, initiating the controversial and scandalous Iran-Contra Affair in the Reagan White House, but without equivalent controversy or scandal ASA began publishing Sociological Methodology and Sociological Theory (1986).
|