Harriet Martineau

Dzieła

• 1838How to Observe Morals and Manners (Jak obserwować obyczaje i maniery)

  Jeden z pierwszych podręczników badań społecznych: najpierw badaj instytucje i zapisy społeczeństwa, wykorzystując to, co mówią ludzie, tylko jako komentarz do nich – i mierz społeczeństwo jego własnymi zasadami.

Stanowisko

How to Observe Morals and Manners (1838) is one of the earliest treatises on the method of social research. Martineau warns travellers against judging foreign customs by their own prejudices and against generalising from a few conversations. Instead they should study “things” – institutions, records, buildings, epitaphs, popular songs, even the statistics of crime and suicide – in which a whole people expresses its morals. Society in America (1837) applied this method and measured the young republic against its own declared principles of equality and self-government. By that standard slavery stood condemned, and so did the position of women: in a chapter on “the political non-existence of women” she argued that they were governed without their consent, contrary to the Declaration of Independence. Martineau held that society, like nature, follows laws that can be known, which drew her to Comte; her translation made positivism available to English readers. Long remembered mainly as a populariser, she has been recognised since the late 20th century as a founder of sociology in her own right, though historians still debate how far the title fits.

Życie i kontekst

Harriet Martineau was born in 1802 in Norwich into a Unitarian family of textile manufacturers and became increasingly deaf from her youth. When the family firm failed, she earned her living by writing. Her Illustrations of Political Economy (1832–34), monthly stories that explained the ideas of Adam Smith, Malthus and Ricardo, made her famous. From 1834 to 1836 she travelled through the United States, where her open support for the abolitionists made her enemies. She went on to write novels, history and journalism, settled in Ambleside in the Lake District in 1845, and in 1853 published a condensed English translation of Comte’s Course of Positive Philosophy. She died in 1876; her Autobiography appeared the following year.

Dalsze główne dzieła

• Illustrations of Political Economy (1832–34)
• Society in America (1837)
• The Positive Philosophy of Auguste Comte (translation, 1853)
• Autobiography (1877)

Pojawia się w

• Podróż „Jak socjologia wyłoniła się z filozofii” · Przystanek 9 z 12
• Podróż „Jak społeczeństwo stało się możliwe do pomyślenia” · Przystanek 3 z 12