Jessie Taft: biography of this reference of symbolic interactionism

Jessie Taft (1882-1960) was a pioneering philosopher and sociologist in symbolic interactionismshe, the women's movement and the discipline of Social Work. However, these contributions are frequently dismissed as she is more recognized for having made important translations of the works of psychoanalysts Otto Rank and Sigmund Freud.

In addition, Taft belongs to a generation of women scientists who faced multiple forms of exclusion and professional segregation, among others. things as a consequence of the strong rejection of the assimilation of feminine values ​​in the public sphere, reserved exclusively for men.

She was also one of the women who made up the Chicago School for Women and approached from the perspective of social consciousness the booms of the women's movement, emphasizing the psychological conflicts that women scientists of the epoch.

In this article we will follow the work carried out by García Dauder (2004; 2009) for approach the life and work of Jessie Taft through a brief biography

, paying attention to both her theoretical contributions and the social context in which they were developed.

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Jessie Taft Biography: A Pioneer of Social Work

Jessie Taft was born on January 24, 1882 in Iowa, United States. She was the eldest of three sisters, the daughters of a businessman and a stay-at-home mother. After having studied high school at Drake University in Des Moines, Iowa; she completed higher education studies at the University of Chicago.

In the latter, she trained with George Mead, a sociologist known for having laid the foundations of symbolic interactionism and who participated as her thesis director. In addition she was trained in the pragmatist tradition of the Chicago School.

In the same context, Taft met Virginia Robinson, a woman with whom she adopted two children and who was her life partner for more than 40 years. Among the many subversive phrases she contributed, Jessie Taft said that in America, where business riots above culture, it was not uncommon to find the single woman seeking company and refuge in another woman with whom to build bonds of similar criteria and values, difficult to find in a husband (Taft, 1916).

On the other hand, the doctoral thesis work carried out by Jessie Taft in the same context had the name of "The Women's Movement from the Point of View of Social Consciousness” (The women's movement from the point of view of social consciousness), where problematized the tensions between the private and the public, paying attention to how the political, economic and social transformations had shaped the “self”, especially in relation to the conflicts that women face at home and in the job.

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The Hull House and the beginnings of Social Work

Founded in 1889 by Jane Addams and Ellen Gate Starr, the Hull House social center became a space meeting place for many women (several reformers and social scientists who came from the University of Chicago). They soon generated an important network of contacts and collaboration.

This network resulted a qualitative and quantitative research paper that is recognized as the Chicago School of Sociology for Women, and that, among other things, had an important impact not only on North American sociology, but also on the social and legislation, for example on the issue of social and racial inequalities, immigration, health, child labor and labor exploitation.

At the same time, this was a context of important social transformations generated by industrial capitalism. The women of the Chicago School, together with some already recognized sociologists, such as Mead, Dewey, William Isaac Thomas, and others, questioned the strong androcentrism that marked the discipline and recognized the need to expand both the participation of women and the presence of feminine values ​​in the public space.

Meanwhile, and to the opposite side, management and access to higher education was marked by both sexual and disciplinary segregation, which means that there were "junior" schools intended only for women, whose objective was to stop the growing feminization of university students.

Likewise, and in the disciplinary field, sociology ceded part of its contents to a new school, in which, in addition A good part of the work of reform and political content that the Escuela de Mujeres de Chicago. This school was "Social Work". And it was precisely in this context that Jessie Taft found herself displaced from sociology to Social Work, and later launched a school known as "clinical sociology."

Among other things, the above had as a consequence the displacement of the values ​​of the feminine to she the activities related to the new and later undervalued discipline, Social Work; and the values ​​of the masculine towards the academic institution and the sociology that was developed there. With which, Jessie Taft and many other women scientists found themselves in serious difficulties to access positions as teachers or researchers at different universities.

Social work and clinical sociology

In the context of a New York state women's reform school, Jessie Taft remained critical of considering that these women had "mental deficiencies", and she maintained that there could be a rehabilitation centered not so much on themselves, but on change their environment and living conditions. For example, ensuring that they have sufficient financial resources or an adequate education.

These were the beginnings of "clinical sociology", which later moved to the social assistance of children with different difficulties and to restructuring adoption practices.

After facing various difficulties in accessing a job both as an auditor and as a sociology researcher, Jessie Taft found herself she incorporated into the School of Social Work at the University of Pennsylvania, which among other things made her a leading woman of said discipline.

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Symbolic interactionism and the women's movement

Jessie Taft argued that the women's movement (which was sparked by an increasingly evident malaise), had its roots in a psychic conflict of this collective. They had desires for emancipation that they could not carry out because social conditions did not allow them.

She importantly emphasized the need to make changes in a "social conscience" that promoted domestic individualism around a depersonalized industrial order.

In analyzing the social and economic transformations of industrial societies, Taft was very careful when detailing how gender made the experiences lived different for men and for women. women. This is how she maintained that the reforms could be carried out only when the "self" of each person became aware of the subjectivities and social relationships that were being built in societies industrial.

Bibliographic references:

• Garcia Dauder, S. (2009). Jessie Taft. Symbolic interactionism, feminist theory and clinical social work. Social Work Today, 56: 145-156.
• Garcia Dauder, S. (2004). Conflict and social conscience in Jessie Taft. Digital Athena, 6: 1.14.
• Taft, J. (1916). “The Women's Movement from the Point of View of Social Consciousness. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
• The University of Chicago (2018). Ahead of her time. UChicago Magazine. Retrieved June 20, 2018. Available in https://mag.uchicago.edu/education-social-service/ahead-her-time.