W. I. Thomas

William Isaac Thomas (b. Russell County, Virginia, 13 August 1863, d. Berkeley, California, 5 December 1947), was an American sociologist. He is noted for his pioneering work on the sociology of migration on which he co-operated with Florian Znaniecki, and for his formulation of what became known as the Thomas theorem, a fundamental law of sociology: "If men define situations as real they are real in their consequences." [Thomas, William I.; Thomas, Dorothy: The Child in America (Alfred Knopf, 1929, 2nd ed., p. 572)]

Early life, education, and academic career

Thomas was born in Russell County in 1863 as the son of a farmer and Methodist minister of Pennsylvania Dutch descent. His family moved to Knoxville, the seat of the University of Tennessee, when he was a boy, because his father wanted to improve the educational prospects for his seven children.

From 1880, Thomas studied Literature and Classics at the University of Tennessee, where he obtained a B.A. degree in 1884 and became Adjunct Professor in English and Modern Languages. While at Knoxville, Thomas also taught courses in Greek, Latin, French, German, and, interestingly, natural history. At the same time, he developed an interest in ethnology and social science, reading Herbert Spencer's Principles of Sociology. In 1888, Thomas got married to the first of his two wives, Harriet Park.

In 1888/1889, he attended the German universities of Berlin and Göttingen to study classic and modern languages. During his time in Germany, he also furthered his interest in ethnology and sociology under the influence of German scholars such as Wilhelm Wundt.

Upon his return to the United States in 1889, he taught as professor of English and, from 1894, professor of sociology at Oberlin College in Oberlin, Ohio. While at Oberlin,

Having been invited to teach a class in sociology at the University of Chicago in 1894, he moved there permanently the following year to pursue graduate studies in sociology and anthropology at the then newly-founded Department of Sociology, where he finished a Ph.D. thesis On a Difference in the Metabolism of the Sexes in 1896. After that, he returned to Europe to conduct field studies in various ethnic and cultural studies in preparation of a comparative work on European nationalities which, however, remained unfinished.

For the next almost 25 years, Thomas taught sociology and, to a lesser extent, anthropology at the University of Chicago, becoming Instructor in 1895, Assistant Professor in 1896, Associate Professor in 1900, and eventually Full Professor in 1910. From 1895 until 1917, he also co-edited the American Journal of Sociology.

1907 saw the publication of Thomas's first major work, Sex and Society. In spite of showing some biologistic bias that would today be considered sexist (such as "Anthropologists ... regard women as intermediate between the child and the man"), it was in fact progressive considering the intellectual setting of its time. In particular, he fervently called for an end the subjection of women in society, speculating that whether women's "capacity for intellectual work is not under equal conditions greater than in man" due to the "superior cunning" and "superior endurance of women".

Thomas as a pioneer of the biographical approach in social research and migration studies

In 1908, he received a substantial grant from Helen Culver to finance his research on the life and culture of immigrants to the U.S. Managing the Helen Culver Fund for Race Psychology for ten years until 1918 enabled him to undertake several journeys to Europe in order to study the background of East European immigrant groups. Initially planning to study several nationalities, he stripped his research project down to Polish immigrants, who formed the most visible ethnic community in Chicago. For this purpose, he studied the Polish language, established contacts within Chicago's Polish community and undertook field trips to Poland.

Initially Thomas employed methods of field observation that ethnographers had originally developed to study non-literal societies. According to an anecdote told by Thomas himself, it was a complete accident that inspired him to use personal written material as an ethnographic source and to develop the biographic approach in sociology, which would later establish his lasting reputation in sociology. While walking down a street near his home in Chicago, Thomas was almost hit by a garbage bag which had been thrown out of a window. The bag burst open and Thomas discovered a letter in it, which he curiously picked up to discover it was written by a Polish woman immigrant.

He spent the next years collecting both oral reports and written materials in the Chicago Polish community and its country of origin. He utilised a variety of documents ranging from newspaper reports, archives of organisations, to personal letters and diaries, which he acquired by placing advertisements in the Chicago Polish-language press - offering, e.g., 10 to 20 cents per letter sent from Poland.

Cooperation with Florian Znaniecki on The Polish Peasant in Europe and America

In 1913, during one of his journeys to Poland, Thomas met the Polish sociologist Florian Witold Znaniecki, who at that time was editing the journal Wychodźca polski ("The Polish Emigrant") and directing an organisation representing Polish emigrants in Warsaw. He assisted Thomas in his studies in the archive of organisation, which proved to be a valuable source. When World War I broke out the following year, Znaniecki himself left Poland, which had been partitioned between three of the warring parties between 1795 and now became a theatre of war, and traveled to Chicago, where he met up with Thomas. Whether he had formally invited Znaniecki or not remains unclear. In all events, Thomas immediately employed Znaniecki as his research assistant. Znaniecki finally became Thomas's co-author on their monumental work The Polish Peasant in Europe and America (1918-1920), which Lewis Coser called "the earliest major landmark of American sociological research". In it, Thomas and Znaniecki put forward a biographical approach to understanding culture in general which remained influential until this day, as well as an approach to understanding ethnicity in particular, which in many respects was ahead of its own time and is currently being rediscovered in the context of transnational studies in migration.

The "Scandal of 1918"

In spite or because of the prominence gained through The Polish Peasant, Thomas's standing both inside and outside academe proved precarious. For a number of reasons, he was subject to critical attention from the conservative Chicago establishment. Firstly, he was known for what would today be called left-wing views on society and the phenomenon of crime. Studying the delinquent subculture of Chicago's Polish immigrant community, he adopted a pragmatic approach to the problem, rather than a moral one. Secondly, he led a "bohemian" life, was often seen in the Chicago art scene, and made no secret to his being attracted to women. His lifestyle did not conform with the image of a respectable professor and made him a controversial figure also among colleagues.

Disaster struck when the FBI arrested Thomas under the Mann Act, which prohibits "interstate transport of females for immoral purposes," while in the company of one Mrs Granger, the wife of an army officer with the American forces in France. Some speculate that Thomas's arrest was an intrigue schemed by the FBI, which at that time was observing his wife Harriet for her pacifist activities. Although Thomas was acquitted of the charge in court, his career was irreversibly damaged. The university immediately dismissed him, without awaiting the outcome of his case, without any relevant protest from his colleagues. Chicago University Press, which had already published the first two volumes of The Polish Peasant, quit the contract, so that the remaining three volumes had to be published by an unrenowned Boston publisher. The Carnegie Corporation of New York, which had previously commissioned Thomas to write a book for its "Americanization" series, refused to publish it under the author's own name. Thus, in 1921 Old World Traits Transplanted appeared under the names of Robert E. Park and Herbert A. Miller, who had contributed minor parts to it, and it was not until 1951 that the book's authorship was ascribed to Thomas by a committee of the Social Science Research Council. It was eventually reissued under the actual author's name.

Later years

After the scandal, Thomas withdrew to New York. He never managed to obtain a tenured position again. From 1923 to 1928, he lectured at the New School for Social Research, at that time a progressive, but marginal academic institution. Incidentally, Thorstein Veblen, who had co-founded the school in 1919, had fallen from grace with the academic establishment for similar reasons. In 1927, he was made president of the American Sociological Association, thanks to the support of a younger generation of scholars, and against tough opposition from the establishment. However, this was a purely honorary position for one year which did not restore Thomas's official career.

In spite of his marginal standing, he was able to continue his research thanks to the support of philanthropists and institutions. Most importantly, in The Unadjusted Girl (1923) he developed on the concept of the "definition of the situation": "Preliminary to any self-determined act of behavior there is always a stage of examination and deliberation which we may call the definition of the situation..." The individual's definition of the situation is always subject to "a rivalry between the spontaneous definition of the situation made by members of an organized society and the definition which his society has provided for him. The individual tends to a hedonistic selection of activity, pleasure first; and society to a utilitarian selection, safety first." Along with the ideas of George Herbert Mead, Thomas's concept of the definition of the situation later proved to be an important starting point for the rebellion of symbolic interactionism against structural functionalism.

A 1928 book on The child in America, co-authored with his research assistant Dorothy Swaine, contains the sentence with a fundamental law of sociology , which - although some consider it a truism - would go on to become famous as the Thomas theorem: "If men define situations as real, they are real in their consequences" (Thomas&Thomas 1928: 572). In 1935, after his divorce from Harriet Park, Thomas and Dorothy Swaine Thomas, 36 years his junior, got married. In 1936, Pitirim A. Sorokin, Chairman of the Department of Sociology at Harvard University, invited Thomas as visiting lecturer (until 1937). After that, Thomas gradually withdrew into retirement in New York, New Haven, and finally Berkeley, California, where he died in 1947.

Quote

• "It is not important whether or not the interpretation is correct—if men define situations as real, they are real in their consequences." - Thomas theorem
• "If men define situations as real, they are real in their consequences"" - Thomas theorem
• "If people view somebody as great, then he is" - another, more specific version of the Thomas theorem

Works

• 1903 (as editor): Minnesota stories: A collection of twenty stories of college life. Collected and arranged by Charles F[lint] McClumpha and W.I. Thomas. Minneapolis, Minn.: Wilson.
• 1903: The relation of the medicine-man to the origin of the professional occupations. Chicago, Ill.: University of Chicago Press.
• 1907: Sex and society: Studies in the social psychology of sex. Chicago, Ill., London: University of Chicago Press / Unwin.
• 1909: (as editor): Source book for social origins. Ethnological materials, psychological standpoint, classified and annotated bibliographies for the interpretation of savage society. Chicago, Ill., London: University of Chicago Press / Unwin 1909.
• 1917: (with Herbert S. Jennings, John B. Watson, and Adolf Meyer): Suggestions of modern science concerning education. New York, N.Y.: Macmillan (includes Thomas's essay "The persistence of primary-group norms in present-day society: Their influence in our educational system").
• 1918-1920 (with Florian W. Znaniecki): The Polish peasant in Europe and America. Monograph of an immigrant group.
  • 1918: Volume 1: Primary-group organization. Chicago, Ill.: University of Chicago Press.
  • 1918: Volume 2: Primary-group organization. Chicago, Ill.: University of Chicago Press.
  • 1919: Volume 3: Life record of an immigrant. Boston, Mass.: Badger.
  • 1920: Volume 4: Disorganization and reorganization in Poland. Boston, Mass.: Badger.
  • 1920: Volume 5: Organization and disorganization in America. Boston, Mass.: Badger.
• 1921 (with Robert E. Park and Herbert A. Miller as main authors): Old world traits transplanted. New York, London: Harper. (= Americanization studies.) In the aftermath of the 1918 "scandal," the book could not be published under Thomas's name, so his collaborators Park and Miller featured on the cover until a posthumous 1951 re-issue.
• 1923: The unadjusted girl. With cases and standpoint for behavior analysis. Boston, Mass.: Little, Brown 1923 (= Criminal science monograph 4.)
• 1928: (with Dorothy Swaine Thomas): The child in America: Behavior problems and programs. New York: Knopf.
• 1937: Primitive behavior: An introduction to the social sciences. New York, London: McGraw-Hill (= McGraw-Hill publications in sociology)
• 1951 (edited by Edmund H. Volkart): Social behavior and personality. Contributions of W.I. Thomas to theory and social research. New York: Social Science Research Council 1951.
• 1966: (edited by Morris Janowitz): W.I. Thomas on social organization and social personality. Selected papers. Edited and with an introduction by Morris Janowitz. Chicago, Ill., London: University of Chicago Press 1966 (= The heritage of sociology.)

Further reading

• Lewis A. Coser: Masters of Sociological Thought: Ideas in Historical and Social Context. New York: Harcourt, Brace and Jovanovich.

External links

• William Isaac Thomas and Florian Znaniecki
• Works by William I. Thomas. Project Gutenberg
• [1] German Website on "Thomas-Theorem" with examples for application & relevancy

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