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2007 Howard, George Elliott (1849-1928) Michael R. Hill University of Nebraska-Lincoln, [email protected]

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This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Sociology, Department of at DigitalCommons@University of Nebraska - Lincoln. It has been accepted for inclusion in Sociology Department, Faculty Publications by an authorized administrator of DigitalCommons@University of Nebraska - Lincoln. Hill, Michael R. 2007. “George Elliott Howard.” Pp. 2170-2171 in the Blackwell Encyclopedia of Sociology, Vol. 5, edited by George Ritzer. Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing. 2170 Howard, George Elliott (1849-1928)

21 percent in 1978), though the routes into REFERENCES AND SUGGESTED these single-person households and the length READINGS of time spent in them varies significantly. A further third of households (34 percent) now Buzan, S., Ogden, P., & Hall, R. (2005) House­ consists of couples living alone, eithyr married holds Matter: The Quiet Demography of Urban or cohabiting; some have not had children Transformation. Progress in Human Geography 29: and others have children who are no longer 4l3-36. Heath, S. & Cleaver, E. (2003) Young, Free and dependent. The remaining households gener­ Single: Twenty-Somethings and Household Change. ally comprise lone-parent households (8 per­ Palgrave Macmillan, Basingstoke. cent) and those where people are living with Holdsworth, C. & Morgan, D. (2005) Transitions in friends/unrelated others (4 percent). Impor­ Context: Leaving Home, Independence and Adult­ tantly, as discussed above, just as household hood. Open University Press, Maidenhead. composition has been altering, so too there is National Statistics (2005) Living in Britain: The 2002 even greater flux over time in the personnel General Household Survey. Online. www.statistics. involved in each category as people's domestic gov.uk/ccilnugget.asp?id=818. circumstances and partnership status alter. Schneider, D. (1968) American Kinship: A Cultural While these figures are about Britain, broadly Account. Prentice-Hall, Englewood Cliffs, N]. similar trends are found in other western coun­ Silva, E. & Smart, C. (1999) The New Family? Sage, London. tries as a result of shifting family demography under the global processes of late modernity (Buzan et aI. 2005). As noted, the growth of cohabitation, divorce, and separation and the lack of clarity over the processes of children leaving home are having an impact throughout Howard, George Elliott the developed world. Clearly, though, the extent to which they occur and the impact they have (1849-1928) depend in part on the social, fiscal, and urban policies impacting on family and household Michael R. Hill organization in the different societies. One sig­ nificant element within this is the operation of George Elliott Howard, a distinguished social the housing market. The availability of different scientist trained initially in history, rose to the forms of housing to different sections of the presidency of the American Sociological Society population, the costs and quality of such hous­ in 1917. Howard earned the A.B. in 1876 at ing, and the alternatives which are considered the University of Nebraska. Following two years acceptable all have an impact on the choices of advanced study in Germany, Howard joined people make and the pattern of households they the Nebraska faculty in 1879. Howard's most construct. To take one example, at a macro level, prominent Nebraska student from this period, increased separation and divorce are likely to Amos Griswold Warner, later wrote American generate provision of more single-person hous­ Charities (1894) - a standard classic in the field. ing, but in turn people's decisions about whether Howard was named to the prestigious "First or not to remain in a particular partnership will Faculty" of Stanford University in 1891. be influenced to some degree by their perception At Stanford, when sociologist Edward of the housing that will be available to them. Alsworth Ross was summarily fired in 1900 by Similarly, decisions about leaving the parental university president David Star Jordan, Howard home will be based on alternative housing immediately defended Ross's right to free options as well as ideas of appropriate indepen­ speech. Jordan demanded Howard's apology - dence. or his resignation. Howard resigned, as did other Stanford faculty members in sequence. SEE ALSO: Cohabitation; Couples Living Instantly, Ross was hired by chancellor E. Apart Together; Family Structure; Kinship; Benjamin Andrews to teach sociology at the Second Demographic Transition University of Nebraska. The so-called "Ross human genome and the science of life 2171 affair" at Stanford resulted ultimately in the Institutions. Trans. D. B. Mann. Sociological Ori­ founding of the American Association of Uni­ gins 2(2): 81-6. versity Professors and the establishment of Hill, M. R. (2000) Epistemological Realities: Archi­ academic tenure in American universities. val Data and Disciplinary Knowledge in the His­ tory of Sociology - Or, When Did George Elliott After a series of brief appointments, including Howard Study in Paris? Sociological Origins 2, 1 the University of Chicago (1903--4), Howard (special supplement): 1-25. returned in 1904 to the University of Nebraska, Howard, G. E. (1988) Sociology in the University of where his colleagues included Edward A. Ross Nebraska, 1898-1927. Mid-American Review oj and Roscoe Pound. In 1906, with Ross's depar­ Sociology 13(2): 3-19. ture for the University of Wisconsin, Howard Vincent, M. J. (1928-9a) George Elliott Howard: was named head of Nebraska's newly reorga­ Social Scientist. Sociology and Social Research 13: nized Department of Political Science and 11-17. Sociology. Howard was an egalitarian, activist, Vincent, M. J. (1928-9b) George Elliott Howard: and humane sociologist who championed Social Psychologist. Sociology and Social Research 13: 110-18. women's suffrage, encouraged racial tolerance, Williams, H. P. (1928-9) The Social Philosophy of and advocated prohibition. An exacting scholar, George Elliott Howard. Sociology and Social Howard's elaborate published syllabi on General Research 13: 229-33. Sociology (1907), Social Psychology (1910), Pre­ sent Political Questions (1913), Marriage and Family (1914), and other topics remain extraor­ dinary models of rigorous instructional gui­ dance. Howard's later Nebraska protegee, Hattie ~lum Williams, earned her PhD in 1915, human genome and the and in 1923 - with Howard's encouragement and endorsement - became, at Nebraska, the first sCience of life woman in the world to chair a co-educational doctoral degree-granting department of sociol­ Anne Kerr ogy. Howard retired in 1924. The author of scholarly books and dozens of Although the double helix structure of DNA was professional articles, Howard is best known discovered in 1953 by James Watson, Francis today for his massive History of Matrimonial Crick, Maurice Wilkins, and Rosalind Franklin, Institutions Chiefly in England and the United it was not until the 1980s that powerful sequen­ States (University of Chicago Press, 1904). A cing and information technologies were devel­ quintessential study in the sociology of institu­ oped that enabled scientists to identify particular tions (Howard claimed for himself the inven­ genes associated with hereditary diseases and to tion of "institutional history" as a category of begin to map all of the genes in human DNA: the study), Matrimonial Institutions merited critical so-called human genome. The human genome appraisal from Emile Durkheim and provided project was a massive international mapping the intellectual foundations for the 1906 exercise which began in the 1990s and culmi­ National Congress on Uniform Divorce Laws. nated in the publication of a draft sequence by the International Human Genome Sequencing SEE ALSO: American Sociological Associa­ Consortium of the entire human genome in tion; Divorce; Marriage; Pound, Roscoe 2001, which is freely available on the Internet. In the same period a broader range of bio­ medical knowledge was also developing, parti­ REFERENCES AND SUGGESTED cularly in the fields of assisted conception. READINGS More recently, research into stem cells and tissue Ball, M. R. (1988) George Elliott Howard's Institu­ engineering, alongside the so-called "postge­ tional Sociology of Marriage and Divorce. Mid­ nomic sciences" of pharmacogenomics and pro­ American Review oj Sociology 13(2): 57-68. teomics, has also developed. This "science of Durkheim, E. (2000). A French Perspective on life" involves detailed understanding of the George Elliott Howard's History oj Matrimonial basic cellular mechanisms involved in human