Jane Addams's Evolutionary Theorizing

"Marilyn Fischer serves as a time-traveling tour guide who takes us on a journey that reveals the genesis and meaning behind Jane Addams's first monograph. Fischer's detective work, tracking Addams' allusions, paraphrases, and quotes, reveals her connection to the wider world of social evolutionary theory and helps us better understand and appreciate the work as a historical text. Her erudite study of Addams's prose and its connection to other theorists of the time help us decode the lost meanings of Addams's work. You'll never read Democracy and Social Ethics the same way again."--Cathy Moran Hajo, director, The Jane Addams Papers Project "Prominent Progressive Era social activist and Nobel Peace Prize winner Jane Addams was also an intellectual of the first order. In this groundbreaking book, Marilyn Fischer probes deeply Addams's contributions to a central debate of her day: What implications did Darwin's theory of evolution have for social theory? Fischer deftly traces the influence of contemporary debates on the development of Addams's original social evolutionary theory. As Fischer brilliantly argues, in 1902, Adams presented that theory to the world in her first book, Democracy and Social Ethics."--Louise W. Knight, author of Jane Addams: Spirit in Action "Fischer's beautifully written book is a model of scholarship, offering an unparalleled view into the scientific and literary contexts of Addams's early work. In demonstrating that Democracy and Social Ethics must be read against the background of evolutionary theories of social change, Fischer has fundamentally transformed our understanding of this book and its inception."--Trevor Pearce, University of North Carolina at Charlotte