Edward Alsworth Ross (1866-1951) was a prolific modern intellectual who sought to understand and reform society. Midwestern in his origins and attitudes, Ross taught at several universities but in 1906 he settled at the University of Wisconsin. Ross began as a student and advocate of state economics, but he ultimately saw sociology as a more meliorative science. Between 1896 and 1901 Ross developed a theory of social control which argued that institutional restraints could lead to cooperation and progress. As a teacher, scholar, and mentor he established a sociological canon for the pre-1914 generation of American scholars. / Ross's personal standards of objectivity crossed over from advocacy to dissent in 1901, when he was fired from Stanford, and in two 1910 incidents at Wisconsin. Both incidents forced him into a more accommodating mode, first with the academic community and then within the public sphere. Long convinced that "native" Americans were threatened by immigrants, Ross set out between 1910 and 1925 to observe foreign societies, ostensibly to prove American superiority and to suggest social reforms. His dispatches from China, Panama, and revolutionary Russia were serialized in popular magazines in addition to several contemporary essays on American society. / Selected by a relief organization in 1917 to observe Russia, Ross returned highly critical of socialism. The Progressive critic of big business now praised 1920s American economic efficiency, particularly the industrial and social "controls" of Henry Ford. Still, he remained active in the women's movement, the ACLU, and in academic organizations well into his seventies. / Ross's theory of social control continues to augment sociological literature as a set of common values which determine socialization, while historians also have utilized social control as a paradigm of the Progressive Era and the recent postwar consensus. Across a career of fifty years, in over 200 written works and in the literature of social control, Ross's legacy remains in American intellectual discourse. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 57-04, Section: A, page: 1810. / Major Professor: Neil T. Jumonville. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--The Florida State University, 1996.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:fsu.edu/oai:fsu.digital.flvc.org:fsu_77703 |
| Contributors | McMahon, Sean Howard., Florida State University |
| Source Sets | Florida State University |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Text |
| Format | 371 p. |
| Rights | On campus use only. |
| Relation | Dissertation Abstracts International |
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