Chapter 61: Humanist Sociology

JOSEPH A. SCIMECCA

Humanist sociology Numerous theoretical frameworks, among them Marxism, conflict theory, phenomenology, symbolic interaction, feminist sociology, and postmodern sociology, can all be said to have some form of a humanistic orientation as a part of their overall framework. However, as a specific school, humanist sociology is most readily identified with those sociologists who in their teaching, research, and activism gravitate around the Association for Humanist Sociology (AHS)—founded in 1976 by Alfred McClung Lee, Elizabeth Briant Lee, and Charles Flynn. Although a number of sociologists (Glass 1971; Goodwin 1983; Lee 1973; Scimecca 1995) have offered definitions of humanist sociology, the one I will use here is that of a former president of the AHS, Thomas Ford Hoult (1979), who calls sociology humanist if “the research and teachings of its practitioners have one ultimate purpose—to develop a society where the best potential of all humans is to be realized; in short to humane ...

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