75 Years of the Pacific Sociological Association 1929-2004

Seventy-Five Years of the Pacific Sociological Association, 929-2004 seventy-five years of the Pacific Sociological Association Seventy-Five Years of the Pacific Sociological Association, 929-2004 Seventy-Five Years of the Pacific Sociological Association, 929-2004 seventy-five years of the Pacific Sociological Association 1929 – 2004 by Dean S. Dorn published by the Pacific Sociological Association THIS HISTORY Sacramento, California 2005 is dedicated to those who have volunteered their labor and time to support the PSA throughout the last three-quarters of a century. Some are named herein, while most, alas, are not. Seventy-Five Years of the Pacific Sociological Association, 929-2004 copyright © 2005 the This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution/Non-Commercial/ShareAlike License. Pacific Sociological To view a copy of this license, visit creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.0/ Association. or write to Creative Commons, 559 Nathan Abbott Way, Stanford, CA 94305 USA Some rights reserved. For additional copies, Library of Congress Catalog No.: xx-xxxxxx please contact the Pacific Sociological ISBN: x-xxx-xxxxx-x Association online at WWW.CSUS.EDU/PSA. First Printing: April 2005. Printed in the United States of America. Seventy-Five Years of the Pacific Sociological Association, 929-2004 Emory S. Bogardus 882 – 973 Founder of the Pacific Sociological Society (Associa- tion) in 1929, and the sociology honor society Alpha Kappa Delta in 1920. Bogardus taught at the Uni- versity of Southern California and was also president of the American Sociological Asso- ciation in 1931. Seventy-Five Years of the Pacific Sociological Association, 929-2004 Seventy-Five Years of the Pacific Sociological Association, 929-2004 TABLE OF CONTENTS PREFACE ................................................................ iii INTRODUCTION ..................................................... PART I DESCRIPTIVE HISTORY ...........................................3 SECTION A THE EARLY YEARS 929 – 949 ............................... 3 The Organizational Meeting in 929 .....................3 The Formative Years of the 930s .......................... 4 The War Years and the 940s .................................3 SECTION B THE MIDDLE YEARS 950 – 979 .............................9 The 950s: The Beginning of Rapid Growth .......................................................9 The 960s: Continued Growth, A Name Change, Constitutional & Financial Issues ...........25 The 970s: Rapid Growth, Conflict and Turmoil, and the Establishment of Committees on Freedom of Research, the Status of Women & Ethnic Minorities .......... 38 SECTION C THE LATER YEARS 980 – 2004 .............................. 62 The 980s: A Period of Decline in Membership and Registration .............................. 62 The 990s: Resurgence and Vitality After an Early Decline ......................................... 8 The Early 2000s: Into the 2st Century: 75 Years Old and Thriving ..................................... 05 PART II ANALYTICAL HISTORY: Analysis & Trends Over 75 Years .......................... 24 REFERENCES ..............................................................................57 APPENDIX ..............................................................................60 INDEX .............................................................................. 65 Seventy-Five Years of the Pacific Sociological Association, 929-2004 i ii Seventy-Five Years of the Pacific Sociological Association, 929-2004 n a beautiful Fall day in October 993, I received the archives of the preface Pacific Sociological Association from former Secretary-Treasurer Fred Preston. I drove down to Fresno from Sacramento in a rented Ovan, and Fred drove up to Fresno from Las Vegas. In the parking lot of a retail store, the archives – old and dusty cardboard boxes containing the past of the PSA – were transferred. Through the years of being secretary-treasurer and recently executive director, I would infrequently go to my garage where the archives were stored and hunt for something that someone requested. During these hunts, I made a promise that I would someday look more carefully through the papers, ledgers, letters and other assorted items and write a history of the association. As the seventy-fifth annual meeting approached, I decided to piece the past together to celebrate this occasion. Three-quarters of a century seemed to be a fitting time to get serious about doing a history. I was soon motivated by the discovery that I had a personal connection, although remote, to the individual most responsible for the founding of the association, Emory S. Bogardus. It turns out that Bogardus and I were born in the same small town, Belvidere, Illinois, and both of us graduated from the local high school, 57 years apart. His nephew Henry Bogardus was a friend of my father. Of course as a child I knew nothing of sociology or of the Bogardus family tree. Belvidere was and Dean S. Dorn to some extent still is a small community surrounded by cornfields, where the Executive Director provincialism of the ages permeates almost everything. Records indicate that Sacramento CA only Bogardus and I, among thousands of graduates, have gone on from Belvi- December 31, 2004 dere High School to acquire doctorates in sociology, an improbable occurrence. With that connection as a special motivation, I plunged in and soon had the dusty boxes in nearly every room of my house. What follows is my effort to provide a record for those who want to look back now and for those who will, hopefully, look back in the future. I chose to write the association’s history as a descriptive chronology, a sort of encyclopedia of what occurred year by year, rather than creating chapters on broad topics such as the governance of the association, the role of women, and the evolution and growth of the association. I do, however, end with a section that attempts to ana- lyze the trends that have occurred over the last seventy-five years. I also chose to refer to myself in this account by name rather than personal pronoun; in that way I appear as all the others before me who have given their time and effort to support the association. I want to thank the previous secretary-treasurers for preserving the past of the PSA, even though I found in some years so much missing that only silence greeted my hunt through the archives. Thanks also go to the many past presidents who took time to send reminiscences of their experiences with the association. Finally, Joshua Lurie-Terrell is owed a special thanks for graciously agreeing to design and typeset this history. Seventy-Five Years of the Pacific Sociological Association, 929-2004 iii Seventy-Five Years of the Pacific Sociological Association, 929-2004 THIS HISTORY of the Pacific Sociological Association is written to celebrate its introduction seventy-fifth anniversary. The association was founded on October 5, 929 as the Pacific Southwest Sociological Society under the leadership of Emory S. Bogardus, University of Southern California, who served as its first president in 929 and second in 930. The first annual meeting was held on January 25th, 930 at the Hotel Alexandria in Los Angeles. At this time, under the direction of William F. Ogburn at the University of Chicago, work was under way on what was to become a significant research study, Recent Social Trends, which used statistics to describe changes in American society from 890 to 930. In addition, the Social Science Research Council was also very active in promot- ing social science research. However, sociology was young and in the shadow of history and economics, so it was a bold stroke on the West Coast to start a regional association (Short 2004). The PSA is the oldest true-blue regional sociological association. Although it started as a southern California organization, those who attended its first annual meeting in January of 930 decided to extend membership to sociolo- gists throughout the Pacific region and to change its name to the Pacific So- ciological Society in the following year. All of the other regional associations were started later. The Eastern Sociological Association was founded in 930, a District of Columbia branch of the American Sociological Society in 93, the Southern in 935, the Midwest in 936, the Southwestern in 937 and the North Central in 938, which grew out of the Ohio Valley Association that in turn was formed from the Ohio State Association organized in 925 (Simpson 988, p.8). Although the North Central claims that it started as a regional association in 925, it did not have a president from outside of Ohio until 939-40. By the same logic, one could argue that the PSA began in 95, since it devel- oped from the Southern California Sociological Association, which Emory S. Bogardus started at USC. This history is based on archives handed down over the years to incoming sec- retaries and presidents, published accounts of the association’s activities during its early years, which appeared in Sociology and Social Research, Research Studies of the State College of Washington, Pacific Sociological Review, and The Pacific So- ciologist, the PSA newsletter, which started in 993. The archives contain lists of members, financial records, including membership records and dues, income and expense accounts, letters of correspondence from the president and secretary, mostly about the annual meeting, records of election to office, decisions and minutes of the council and business meetings, negotiations over contracts for publishing proceedings and journals,

Load more