Settlement Movement Case Study

(1) What do you think about the "settlement" movement? What might be some of its strong points? What might be some of the drawbacks? The settlement was “a social experiment in which young university men of Addams’s class were trying to bridge the widening gap between social classes by going to live among the poor” (67). I think that the settlement movement was a great way to actually understand the gap between social classes. Instead of the students observing from a distance, they decided to get in depth and actually interact with the members of the site being researched. In that manner they were able to witness from a personal experience the society’s everyday activities. Like Addams, she had the interest to understand the people she was observing, which meant that she needed to get involved in the people’s lives, almost like becoming one of them, and not be seen as an outsider. I think that one of the drawbacks from the settlement was that people like Addams wanted to make a difference and help improve a society while, also studying that same society. I believe that being an active member of a society is a great way to understand how that society works and how that people live their everyday lives, but when trying to intervene by trying to help the society, it “runs counter to the idea that sociologists …show more content…
How might sociologists (in her vision of sociology) work to change this?

Sociologist in the same vision as Addams, would try to guide not just certain individuals, but societies to move away from old ethics of “personal achievement, family loyalty and inter-group violence”, to new ethics were individuals as a whole learn the value of diversity. In order to guide societies to new ethics they must adapt to the new ethics of diversity, if not the issues that Addams believed that caused social problems would not be