The Sociological Imagination by C. Wright Mills

In the last half of the nineteenth century, social science in the United States was directly linked with reform movements and betterment activities. What is known as ‘the social science movement-organized in 1865 as ‘the American Social Science Association'-was a late nineteenth-century attempt ‘to apply science' to social problems without resort to explicit political tactics. Its members, in brief, sought to turn the troubles of lower-class people into issues for middle-class publics. By the early decades of the twentieth century, this movement had run its course. It did not remain the bearer of any radical middle-class ideology of reform; its larger urge to welfare was transformed into the limited concerns of social work, associated charities, child welfare, and prison reform. But out of ‘The American Social Science Association,' there also arose the several professional associations, and in due course the several academic disciplines, of the social sciences.

Thus, what happened to the early middle-class sociology of reform is that it split, on the one hand into academic specialties, and on the other into more specific and institutional welfare activities. This split, however, did not mean that the academic specialties became morally neutral and scientifically antiseptic.