American social science association

The American Social Science Association was founded in 1865 in Boston by intellectuals and reformers seeking to understand and improve a rapidly changing society. The association sponsored meetings, solicited papers, and collected information bearing on social welfare topics such as civil service reform, treatment of the insane, prison discipline, criminal law, sanitary conditions, and education and employment of the poor. Subsequent, more specialized organizations of professional social scientists, such as the American Historical Association and the American Economic Association, had their roots in the American Social Science Association. The association held its last annual meeting in 1907.

The American Social Science Association (ASSA) was founded in Boston in 1865. Through a letter circulated by the Massachusetts Board of Charities, prominent social reformers and intellectuals were asked to form an American organization, similar to the British Social Science Association, to understand and improve a rapidly changing society. As the circular explained, the society would discuss "those questions relating to the Sanitary Condition of the people, the Relief, Employment and Education of the Poor, the Prevention of Crime, the Amelioration of the Criminal Law, the Discipline of Prisons, the Remedial Treatment of the Insane, and those numerous matters of statistical and philanthropic interest which are included under the general head of 'social science.'" At its first meeting the association adopted a constitution and elected William Barton Rogers as president. Franklin Benjamin Sanborn served as secretary.

The association structured itself in four departments: Education; Public Health; Jurisprudence; and Economy, Trade and Finance. The latter department would later be split into the Department of Social Economy and the Finance Department. The leadership of the departments was built on existing professional specializations; doctors chaired Health, lawyers led Jurisprudence, and college professors took charge of Education.

The association expected its members, professionals along with humanitarian reformers and businessmen, "to collect all facts, diffuse all knowledge, and stimulate all inquiry, which have a bearing on social welfare." Members were to meet together regularly to read papers and discuss social economics and the means to human improvement. Members presented their papers at large general meetings; the association published several of these papers; and meetings received detailed coverage in the local press.

In 1868 the association's executive committee appointed Henry Villard as permanent secretary. In 1870 Villard resigned from the post, leaving the association with no permanent secretary and consequently no effective leadership. The association even discussed disbanding. Then in October, 1873, the board named Sanborn permanent secretary and the association began to revive. Under Sanborn, the ASSA forged a link with the National Conference of Charities and Corrections (NCCC), and the two organizations continued to meet together for a decade.

The very broad base membership of the ASSA led to tensions which would eventually split the association. The delegates to the NCCC were interested in practical solutions to the problems of the poor, the insane, and the criminal classes. They found the papers presented by academics within the ASSA to be too theoretical and abstract. At one time the ASSA executive committee discussed a plan to merge the association with Johns Hopkins University, by which academic inquirers would gain a viable framework for organizing their disciplines. This plan did not gain approval, and in the meantime academic specialists began to form their own associations in their fields of social science. The American Historical Association was formed in 1884; they met with the ASSA but refused to organize as a subordinate department in the ASSA. In 1885 economists formed the American Economic Association followed in 1903 by the American Political Science Association and in 1905 by the American Sociological Society.

After a period of comparative financial security in the 1880s, the association faced financial hard times in the 1890s. Its members were drifting to other more specialized organizations and its role or purpose was not clear. By 1908 the association was unable to marshal the strength to hold its annual meeting.

The association is the subject of Thomas L. Haskell's monograph The Emergence of Professional Social Science: the American Social Science Association and the Nineteenth-Century Crisis of Authority . Those desiring a more detailed history of the ASSA should refer to this volume (University of Illinois Press, Urbana, Illinois, 1977).