Abstract
The American Dream is among the United States’ most recognizable and revered symbols of our national heritage. Celebrated in popular culture, this statement of national purpose has been analyzed by commentators across the broad range of humanistic and scholarly disciplines, including American sociology. While sociology has developed a lengthy history of studies dedicated to ‘the American way of life’ and – to a lesser degree – the role of the American Dream in society, the work of sociologists from earlier eras arguably over-shadows many of the efforts undertaken since the millennium. The present paper argues that sociology is especially well suited to investigations and analyses of the role and impact of the American Dream and urges a re-dedication of sociological efforts to chart its meaning and influence.
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Notes
The question of whether to capitalize ‘Dream’ or not capitalize 'dream' in the phrase perhaps should not detain us long. An argument can be made that the phrase has become so ubiquitous, stylized, and nearly sacred that like other names, titles and labels we deem significant, we should grant the entire phrase the honor of capitalization. At the same time, the phrase appears so frequently in the text that capitalization becomes somewhat distracting and perhaps acts to reify the concept to the detriment of the analysis. Therefore I have capitalized the phrase in the Abstract and here but hereinafter the word ‘dream’ will appear in lower case, except where I am quoting from a source.
DuBois was aided by a single white woman, Isabel Eaton, in complete contravention to the tenor and racist attitudes of the time. Eaton supplied her own 80 page report on Negro Domestic Service as an appendix. The principal interviews were all conducted by DuBois, as the text makes clear.
Although Addams was not formally associated with the University of Chicago Sociology Department when she began her immersion in Chicago urban life, her work is widely recognized as influencing Chicago Sociology’s recognition that one of the better ways to understand society was to go out in to the field and develop an understanding from the manner in which communities were organized.
Frazier’s book was translated and published in English for the first time in 1957.
Hannerz trained in anthropology at the University of Stockholm but conducted his doctoral fieldwork that led to the publication of Soulside in Washington, D.C. His book, an exercise in urban ethnography, was far more influenced by sociological analyses of African American ghetto life than anthropological works, as his many textual references and extensive discussions attest.
Henry is one among several of the academics whose work is discussed here whose career crossed disciplinary lines. Henry was trained in anthropology (under the direction of Franz Boas and Margaret Mead) at Columbia University (Ph.D. 1935). However, from the late 1940’s until the time of his death in 1969 he served as professor of sociology and anthropology at Washington University, St. Louis and – of course – the volume discussed here is an analysis of American society and culture, whether characterized as from an anthropological or sociological perspective.
Bluestone and Harrison, like some of the earlier writers discussed, have mixed academic pedigrees. Bluestone, although a professor of economics, was for many years the Director of the Social Welfare Research Institute at Boston College. Harrison was a professor of political economy and planning at MIT. Nevertheless, their work was widely representative of the work of many sociologists from the 1970’s to the 1990’s with its emphasis on structural changes in the economy and labor markets, including William Julius Wilson’s several studies from this period.
Newman, who holds her Ph.D. degree in anthropology from the University of California, Berkeley, has held appointments in sociology departments for much of her career, including positions affiliated with sociology at Princeton and Harvard. Her work has primarily been directed at studies of the poor and middle classes in the United States, including the volume discussed here.
Graham was a Harvard Law graduate and lawyer in New York City at the time he wrote Our Kind of People. He has written more than a dozen non-fiction books, primarily about black American society and the black experience. He has consciously pursued participant observation studies for some of his work, including serving as a $ 7/hour server at a white country club while on leave from his New York law firm. Thus, while not a sociologist, the work underlying Our Kind of People arises largely from his own (unannounced) participant observation as a quasi-insider to the black elite.
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Acknowledgments
The author would like to thank Courtney Carter Choi, B.A. Saint Martin’s University 2011 (summa cum laude), master’s candidate in Interdisciplinary Studies, University of Washington-Tacoma, for her research assistance. Ms. Choi is presently a population management analyst for the Washington Department of Corrections, Tumwater, WA.
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Hauhart, R.C. American Sociology’s Investigations of the American Dream: Retrospect and Prospect. Am Soc 46, 65–98 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12108-015-9253-1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12108-015-9253-1