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Unadjusted Girl: With Cases and Standpoint for Behavior Analysis
Boston : Little, Brown and Company Publication 1923 Female juvenile delinquents This is an OCR reprint. There may be numerous typos or missing text. There are no illustrations or indexes. When you buy the General Books edition of this book you get free trial access to Million-Books.com where you can select from more than a million books for free. You can also preview the book there.
261 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1923
About the author
William I. Thomas
36 books3 followersWilliam Isaac Thomas was an American sociologist.
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
December 7, 2023
we live in a society
September 29, 2014
Though it was a product of its time, I found the methodological discrepancy from modern sociological works to be a serious hindrance to my acceptance of Thomas' primary arguments. I especially questioned Thomas' introductory statements about instincts (from Watson's research) and the general classification of wishes (his own assertions). It felt as though Thomas philosophized about the social world while locked away in the ivory tower, hand-picking quotes that matched his ideas rather than letting the data shape his conclusions. He does not critically analyze this data, but he seems to merely point it out as examples of the categorized wishes that he preconceived. This was especially frustrating while reading his long excerpts that were accompanied by barely a few descriptive sentences by Thomas. Since the concept of wishes had not been previously established in another work, the way it was derived made me question the legitimacy of the discussions to follow.
Despite this criticism, Thomas' innovative concept of the "definition of situations" remains relevant to a multitude of sociological interests in addition to the area of delinquency. Perceptions and reactions of individuals shape their social world and affect their thoughts and behaviors to follow, regardless of the reality of the original events to which they reacted. His conceptualization of defining situations was reminiscent of a symbolic interactionism, though I believe this theoretical perspective did not emerge until decades later. It seems that this work may be an early influence of symbolic interactionism, so it would be interesting to see how Thomas' work fits into a larger body of social theory today.
I am also critical of Thomas' ideas about gender roles for girls as it relates to their behavior. The specific nature of the gender role Thomas discussed is outdated, but his idea that a specific role to fulfill existed at all is off-course. Though this was far after Thomas' time, Judith Butler reimagined gender role theory by introducing the concept of gender performativity consisting of a multiplicity of masculinities and femininities. Though Thomas was discussing the dominant role of femininity, his argument could have been richer if the idea of multiple femininities was incorporated.
Further, I wish that Thomas had not overlooked parts of the historical context in which these women lived. At the beginning of the twentieth century, women's suffrage and first-wave feminism had just emerged in America, the idea of the "New Woman" was developing with an emphasis on education, and the Nineteenth Amendment awarding voting rights for women had passed in 1920. Though this movement primarily concerned civil rights and changing dominant gender roles for upper-class white women, it challenged the normative role for women in male-dominated social spaces. Accordingly, Thomas focuses too much on a micro level, concerning individual women and their experiences, relationships, and wishes, and does not place enough emphasis on such macro-level influences. With a blend of a micro and macro approach to gender, we might be able to understand how larger events, like gender roles being challenged on a wide-spread level, could relate to the pattern of women's delinquent behavior during this time period.
Despite this criticism, Thomas' innovative concept of the "definition of situations" remains relevant to a multitude of sociological interests in addition to the area of delinquency. Perceptions and reactions of individuals shape their social world and affect their thoughts and behaviors to follow, regardless of the reality of the original events to which they reacted. His conceptualization of defining situations was reminiscent of a symbolic interactionism, though I believe this theoretical perspective did not emerge until decades later. It seems that this work may be an early influence of symbolic interactionism, so it would be interesting to see how Thomas' work fits into a larger body of social theory today.
I am also critical of Thomas' ideas about gender roles for girls as it relates to their behavior. The specific nature of the gender role Thomas discussed is outdated, but his idea that a specific role to fulfill existed at all is off-course. Though this was far after Thomas' time, Judith Butler reimagined gender role theory by introducing the concept of gender performativity consisting of a multiplicity of masculinities and femininities. Though Thomas was discussing the dominant role of femininity, his argument could have been richer if the idea of multiple femininities was incorporated.
Further, I wish that Thomas had not overlooked parts of the historical context in which these women lived. At the beginning of the twentieth century, women's suffrage and first-wave feminism had just emerged in America, the idea of the "New Woman" was developing with an emphasis on education, and the Nineteenth Amendment awarding voting rights for women had passed in 1920. Though this movement primarily concerned civil rights and changing dominant gender roles for upper-class white women, it challenged the normative role for women in male-dominated social spaces. Accordingly, Thomas focuses too much on a micro level, concerning individual women and their experiences, relationships, and wishes, and does not place enough emphasis on such macro-level influences. With a blend of a micro and macro approach to gender, we might be able to understand how larger events, like gender roles being challenged on a wide-spread level, could relate to the pattern of women's delinquent behavior during this time period.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews