Title:  Civics:  as Applied Sociology

Author:  Patrick Geddes

Release Date:  August 17, 2004 [EBook #13205]

Language:  English

Character set encoding:  ASCII

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Civics:  as Applied Sociology

by Patrick Geddes

Read before the Sociological Society at a Meeting in the School of
Economics and Political Science (University of London), Clare Market,
W.C., at 5 p.m., on Monday, July 18th, 1904; the Rt.  Hon. Charles Booth,
F.R.S., in the Chair.

INTRODUCTION

This department of sociological studies should evidently be, as far as possible, concrete in treatment.  If it is to appeal to practical men and civic workers, it is important that the methods advocated for the systematic study of cities, and as underlying fruitful action, be not merely the product of the study, but rather be those which may be acquired in course of local observation and practical effort.  My problem is thus to outline such general ideas as may naturally crystallise from the experience of any moderately-travelled observer of varied interests; so that his observation of city after city, now panoramic and impressionist, again detailed, should gradually develop towards an orderly Regional Survey.  This point of view has next to be correlated with the corresponding practical experience, that which may be acquired through some varied experiences of citizenship, and thence rise toward a larger and more orderly conception of civic action—­as Regional Service.  In a word, then, Applied Sociology in general, or [Page:  104] Civics, as one of its main departments, may be defined as the application of Social Survey to Social Service.

In this complex field of study as in simpler preliminary ones, our everyday experiences and commonsense interpretations gradually become more systematic, that is, begin to assume a scientific character; while our activities, in becoming more orderly and comprehensive, similarly approximate towards art.  Thus there is emerging more and more clearly for sociological studies in general, for their concrete fields of application in city after city, the conception of a scientific centre of observation and record on the one hand, and of a corresponding centre of experimental endeavour on the other—­in short of Sociological Observatory and Sociological Laboratory, and of these as increasingly co-ordinated.  Indeed, is not such association of observations and experiments, are not such institutions actually incipient here and elsewhere?  I need not multiply instances of the correlation of science