Jane Addams's Social Thought as a Model for a Pragmatist-Feminist Communitarianism

Whipps, Judy D.

doi:10.1353/hyp.2004.0041

Cited by 5 publications

(9 citation statements)

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“…That is, the mission centers around facilitating LatinX community organizing and empowering civic participation through education and leadership development, employee recruiting, and policy innovation. 4 See also Leffers 1993;Hamington 2001;Fischer 2004;Hamington 2004;Whipps 2004;Hamington 2009;Fischer 2010. For an excellent historical account of Addams's intellectual relationships with the men of the Chicago School, see especially Deegan 1988.…”

Section: Remedial Organizational Strategies For Institutionalizing Responsible Constituent Storytellingmentioning

confidence: 99%

Storied Social Change: Recovering Jane Addams's Early Model of Constituent Storytelling to Navigate the Practical Challenges of Speaking for Others

Fenton

2021

Hypatia

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This essay recovers Jane Addams's (1860–1935) practice of constituent storytelling as a resource for contemporary social-change-nonprofit professional practice and activism. Whereas feminist theorizing is rich with resources for theorizing about constituent storytelling, Addams, as both a publicly engaged philosopher and a social-change-nonprofit professional, is uniquely situated to provide practical ways forward for social-change practitioners navigating the lived complexities of speaking for others in light of spatial stratification, subordinating structures, and epistemic exclusion. As a hybrid activist-scholar situated across diverse spaces, Addams serves as a bridge between feminist theorizing about speaking for others, and practices of it among social-change-nonprofit professionals and activists. I show that Addams reveals new ways of thinking about the practice of constituent storytelling for social-change-nonprofit professionals. Namely, in this lived context, speaking for others entails speaking for them through one's own story. Responsible constituent storytelling names oneself as a speaker, owns one's own social standpoint in this rhetorical naming practice, and orients the story through one's own journey—a journey inevitably riddled with failures and faulty assumptions—toward democratic neighborship with the Other across difference.

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Section: Remedial Organizational Strategies For Institutionalizing Responsible Constituent Storytellingmentioning

confidence: 99%

Storied Social Change: Recovering Jane Addams's Early Model of Constituent Storytelling to Navigate the Practical Challenges of Speaking for Others

Fenton

2021

Hypatia

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“…Feminist pragmatism borrows from classical American pragmatism a privileging of lived experience over theory, and from feminism a commitment to social justice (Whipps and Lake 2020, 1, 12). Contemporary feminist pragmatists Marilyn Fischer, Maurice Hamington, Danielle Lake, Charlene Haddock Seigfried, and Judy Whipps take inspiration from women—some academics, not all—in history who argued in word and deed for the rights of vulnerable populations (Seigfried 1996; 1998; 1999; Fischer 2004; Whipps 2004; Hamington 2010; Fischer 2011; 2014; Lake 2014; 2015; Fischer 2019; Whipps 2019; Whipps and Lake 2020). Some of the values that feminist pragmatists are committed to include: a) reflecting on concrete experience, b) epistemologies “based in experience and relationality,” c) public engagement in the form of “place-based local activism,” d) education, e) social action, f) participatory democracy, and f) pluralism (Fischer 2010, 94–95; Whipps and Lake 2020, 12–26).…”

Section: Feminist Pragmatism and Jane Addamsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Place-Based Philosophical Activism on the US–Mexico Border

Alessandri

2021

Hypatia

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Before the Department of Homeland Security instituted the Migrant Protection Protocols in January 2019, as many as 1,000 Central American refugees passed each day through Catholic Charities’ Humanitarian Respite Center, where they received food, clothing, a shower, toiletries, and sandwiches for the road. Sister Norma Pimentel founded the Humanitarian Respite Center in 2014 to “restore human dignity” to refugees who had been degraded and vilified during their dangerous journeys north, not least by way of their processing by the US government. Sister Norma has inspired countless people, including me, to engage with the community as a form of place-based philosophical activism, that is, of situated and engaged teaching, scholarship, and service. In this essay I read Sister Norma as a feminist pragmatist in the historical and philosophical lineage of Jane Addams, and I aim to provide an example of how a feminist-pragmatist approach can support and encourage philosophical activism in our communities. Feminist scholars can learn from feminist pragmatism the importance of “being-with,” “sympathetic understanding,” and “a larger social impulse.” Feminist pragmatism encourages academics to become place-based philosophical activists who use their teaching, research, and service in order to press for social justice.

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“…Her involvement with Hull House, a settlement house focused on community and reciprocity and with hopes "to unite academic theories with action," showed her commitment to living pragmatist philosophy. 30 Addams argued that scholars of pragmatism "should become members of the communities plagued by the problems that their theories aimed to solve." 31 As a woman and a social worker, Addams was acutely aware of the ways power differentials can distort relationships, shape social interactions, and colour experience.…”

Section: Towards a Critical Pragmatism: Feminism And Intersectionalitymentioning

confidence: 99%

“…32 Her pragmatism was necessarily critical, where "interdependent diversity or the need for hearing the voices of 'others' is essential to Addams' pragmatism and feminism-indeed she believed that having many diverse experiences was a moral responsibility." 33 While she argued that people's "basic likenesses . .…”

Section: Towards a Critical Pragmatism: Feminism And Intersectionalitymentioning

confidence: 99%

Eclecticism or exclusivity? The (critical) pragmatist ethos of (intersectional) analytic eclecticism

Peet¹

2020

International Journal

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Eclecticism in International Relations (IR) claims to reject the rigid boundaries set by various theoretical traditions, yet, in practice, it falls short of moving the field “beyond paradigms” and tends to produce analytical exclusivity rather than eclecticism. This exclusivity is the result of Sil and Katzenstein’s investment in tenets of American pragmatism. These tenets favor consensus and universalism, leading to the reproduction and exclusivity of the theoretical status quo. Dissolving paradigmatic boundaries requires a more critical form of pragmatism. Drawing on the common origins of feminism and pragmatism paired with the contemporary feminist concept of intersectionality, this essay proposes a critical pragmatist ethos and an intersectional analytic eclecticism. This can produce a more inclusive form of analytic eclecticism and render visible the power dynamics that shape experiences as well as academic scholarship. Only when analytic eclecticism is informed by intersectionality and a critical pragmatism might it actually move IR “beyond paradigms.”

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Jane Addams's Social Thought as a Model for a Pragmatist-Feminist Communitarianism

Cited by 5 publications

References 0 publications

Storied Social Change: Recovering Jane Addams's Early Model of Constituent Storytelling to Navigate the Practical Challenges of Speaking for Others

Storied Social Change: Recovering Jane Addams's Early Model of Constituent Storytelling to Navigate the Practical Challenges of Speaking for Others

Place-Based Philosophical Activism on the US–Mexico Border

Eclecticism or exclusivity? The (critical) pragmatist ethos of (intersectional) analytic eclecticism

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