11 Paradoxes of Transnational
Knowledge Production in Social Work
Stefan Köngeter
INTRODUCTION
Transnational studies pose a challenge to social work that is reflected on at least two distinct levels. First, there is growing evidence that social relations and practices cannot be analysed only within the confines of the nation-state anymore, as numerous transnational processes can be observed that transcend those confines at the level of individuals, communities, or organisations. Second, the debate about the transnationalisation of the social world (Pries 2008) shows that the neglect of these transnational processes is a symptom of an inherent weakness in social science methodology and theory building. The social sciences have overlooked the importance and the changing meaning of the nation, the nation-state, and its institutions, e.g., territory, law, or authority (Sassen 2008). This blind spot, referred to as methodological nationalism (Wimmer and Glick Schiller 2002), has hindered the exploration of transnational processes already underway for some time.
This chapter is based on the assumption that social work is also affected by methodological nationalism (section 2). My argument does not, however, take up the proposal to develop a transnational methodology, as for example in the work of Khagram and Levitt (2008). Instead, a sociology of scientific knowledge informed by post-colonialism and feminism is taken as a basis for the argument that knowledge production itself should be examined and deconstructed, which, in turn, would enable us to find vital clues about the development of methodological nationalism (section 3). After an overview of previous research into the transnational production of knowledge in social work (section 4), the case study of the settlement movement is introduced (section 5). Alix Westerkamp's “Letters from American Settlements” (1917–19) represents an early example of transnational knowledge production (section 6) which is not only historically significant for social work because of the settlement movement, but draws attention to paradoxical phenomena within a transnational production of knowledge (section 7).
THE METHODOLOGICAL NATIONALISM OF THE SOCIAL SCIENCES
As a result of growing concern with the phenomena of globalisation (Beck 2000), the transnationalisation of the social world (Glick Schiller, Basch, and Blanc-Szanton 1992), and the global diffusion of western culture (Meyer 2009), social science theory and methodology are faced with the central challenge of determining what significance the nation-state and its institutions still have. Theories of transnationality, cosmopolitanism, or globalisation criticise an unreflective and inadequate approach to the nation and the nation-state. Both classical and current sociological theories are accused of fostering methodological nationalism, which is described as an anachronistic, and largely implicit, assumption about social reality: “Methodological nationalism considers nation states as the basic unit of all politics. It assumes that humankind is naturally distributed among a limited number of nations, which organise themselves internally as nation states and delimit themselves externally from other nation states” (Zürn 2003: 358).1
The most comprehensive and detailed criticism of methodological nationalism was developed by Wimmer and Glick Schiller (2002), who identified a problematic isomorphism of national-state institutions and schemes of analysis in the field of social sciences. Wimmer and Glick Schiller distinguish three forms of methodological nationalism. Especially in what they call sociological “grand theories,” i.e., the grand theories of the sociological classics such as Max Weber and Talcott Parsons, the importance of the nation-state as one of the key principles of modernity is largely ignored. This underestimation of the importance and persistence of the nation-state prevents a deeper analysis of the transformations of nationalism, the nation-state, and its institutions. A second variant consists of the naturalisation or reification of a nation-state perspective. In political science, economics, anthropology, etc., nation-state-oriented categories were used as the unquestioned framework for analysis; social processes within the nation-state are, as a matter of course, distinguished from processes outside, without realising that and how they relate to each other. Finally, a third form of methodological nationalism, i.e., the hypostasis of territorial border creation, has been met with criticism. The social sciences are accused of painting a picture of the nation-state and society as a container, in which a clearly defined territory confines culture, politics, economy, and community.
According to their argumentation, these three different variants of methodological nationalism mutually reinforce each other and are represented to different degrees in the respective sub-disciplines of the social sciences: while the so-called grand theories largely ignore nationalism and the nation-state, they are reified or naturalised in the empirically oriented social sciences and are territorialised in historical studies.2
It is not the aim of this chapter to show whether social work also follows narrow conceptions of the nation-state and the welfare state. An analysis of the methodological nationalism of social work in Germany has already been undertaken elsewhere (Köngeter 2009). This analysis shows that theories in social work often use a concept of society without adequately stressing the relationship between the term ‘society’ and the persisting importance of the nation-state. As it is not made explicit to what extent this nation-state and its welfare institutions continue to shape social reality, the nation-state remains a commonsensical, quasi-natural, and pragmatic angle in social work. The implicit nature of the nation-state is strengthened by the fact that research, as well as its funding institutions, also refer as a matter of course to fields of activity whose boundaries are determined by welfare-state institutions. The productions of welfare and of scholarship are in large part shaped by the nation-state and, therefore, reinforce the national framework of each other.
It would be inadequate, however, merely to argue for a transnational production of knowledge and methodology (Khagram and Levitt 2008). This approach would mean, first of all, missing the opportunity to discover those attempts at transnational knowledge production and methodology which already exist. Furthermore, it would mean taking up an epistemologically problematic position: criticising the social sciences and their methodology from an external standpoint, as it were, without reflecting on the fact that the critique itself is also a part of this discursive context.
DECONSTRUCTING METHODOLOGICAL NATIONALISM
A perspective informed by feminism, post-colonialism, and the sociology of scientific knowledge takes a fundamentally different position. Within this theoretical context, knowledge in academia is principally seen as “situated knowledge” (Clifford 1989; Haraway 1991). The social sciences and their theories cannot claim to describe social reality from the outside, but rather, each description as part of social reality is anchored in a social reality. With Pierre Bourdieu one can demand that, because of “the inextricable relationship of scientific—and hence also sociological—practice with overall societal competition and struggle for power, sociology has to turn these facts into an object of its own research, i.e., the tools of science have to be applied to science itself” (Eickelpasch 2002: 57).
From such a reflexive perspective, one's own framework of academic production has to be addressed critically. Such a perspective from the sociology of knowledge is therefore not content with diagnosing that there is (at least the tendency of) a largely hidden nation-state bias in the production of knowledge and theory in social work, but it would inquire into the factors and conditions of its emergence. This approach not only gives rise to a methodological discussion in transnational studies, but also opens up a new field of research with numerous questions which have rarely been taken into consideration to date, and which have not been adequately investigated either for the social sciences or for social work.
This chapter assumes a primarily historical perspective on the research field of (trans)national knowledge production. The questions arising from this point of view include: how has the development of social work been influenced by knowledge from other national contexts? Along what routes has knowledge in social work spread transnationally? What contextualisations and transformations have been accomplished? To what extent have such processes in social work increased awareness of transnational phenomena, possible solutions, and theoretical reflections? When and how did a narrow methodological nationalism come to prevail?
When it comes to reconstructing these questions, there are certain important starting points, in addition to the fundamental considerations of Bourdieu outlined earlier. A striking example of this is Said's study (1983), in which he traces the transformation undergone by Lukacs's theory of reification. Said analyses how this theory was adopted by Lukacs's student Goldmann (1973) and later by the Welsh literary scholar Williams (1973), who ultimately utilised this Goldmann-Lukacs theory for his literary studies. Said (1983: 238) offers a critical summary:
Without wishing in any way to belittle the importance of what Lukacs’ ideas (via Goldmann) did for the moribund state of English studies in late twentieth-century Cambridge, I think it needs to be said that those ideas were originally formulated in order to do more than shake up a few professors of literature. This is an obvious, not to say easy, point. What is more interesting, however, is that because Cambridge is not revolutionary Budapest, because Williams is not the militant Lukacs, because Williams is a reflective critic—this is crucial—rather than a committed revolutionary, he can see the limits of a theory that begins as a liberating idea but can become a trap of its own.
This example points to the general conditions for a ‘travelling theory.’ Said works on the assumption of a multi-stage model, according to which a theory first arises from a particular set of conditions, then it travels a certain distance in space and time, where it is confronted with new conditions and is therefore adapted and transformed (Said 1983: 227). Clifford (1989) takes up this idea and radicalises it. He argues that Said's concept of the ways theories are transformed is too simple. Instead he returns to the Greek roots of the word and paraphrases theories as “a practice of travel and observation, a man sent by the polis to another city to witness a religious ceremony” (Clifford 1989: para. 1). He concludes from this that theory is an act of displacement, distancing, and comparison. Theorising thus means leaving one's native country, going abroad, but also returning home with new knowledge. Yet at the same time he objects that such a concept of home no longer exists in the post-colonial age:
Theory is no longer naturally ‘at home’ in the West—a powerful place of Knowledge, History, or Science, a place to collect, sift, translate, and generalise. Or, more cautiously, this privileged place is now increasingly contested, cut across, by other locations, claims, trajectories of knowledge articulating racial, gender, and cultural differences. But how is theory appropriated and resisted, located and displaced? How do theories travel among the unequal spaces of postcolonial confusion and contestation? What are their predicaments? How does theory travel and how do theorists travel? Complex, unresolved questions. (Clifford 1989: para. 8)
The diffusion and circulation of knowledge and ideas have attracted greater attention in the context of the increasing preoccupation, in the social sciences, with phenomena of globalisation and transnationalisation. Surprisingly, transnational studies play only a small role in this context. Instead, neo-institutional studies3 (Hasse and Krücken 2005) are partly responsible for drawing attention to these boundary-crossing forms of knowledge production (Meyer 2009). The early neo-institutional investigations, however, do not clarify which practices make the diffusion of this knowledge possible or how the knowledge is transformed (Sahlin and Wedlin 2008). Another important approach for studying the circulation of ideas is that of the laboratory studies of Latour, Callon, and others (Latour and Woolgar 1979; Callon 1980), which, with the aid of the concept of translation, open up a microanalytical perspective. This makes it possible to show that, despite transnational and global tendencies to homogenisation, the transfer of knowledge from one social world to another (Star and Griesemer 1989; Strauss 1993) is always associated with a transformation, which is fundamentally undefined and open (Callon 1980).
TRAVELLING THEORY IN SOCIAL WORK
Let us now turn to the question of how, in the history of social work,4 knowledge, ideas and theories have circulated, left their own nation-state contexts, and been received in others. Little research to explore this has been done in social work so far. The existing studies give the impression that, particularly when social work was being established at the beginning of the twentieth century, social workers and researchers took great pains to make knowledge from other nation-state contexts accessible in their own countries (Hegar 2008; Schüler 2004; Konrad 2009). Treptow and Walther (2010) surmise that the exchange across national borders mainly has to do with the fact that the crises of nineteenth-century social life in the developing industrial nations of Europe and North America have to be read as transnational crises. Their thesis is that these parallel developments of the industrialised states in Europe and America led to ideas and theories being received and applied cross-nationally. An important part was played by strong international social movements which arose in reaction to these social inequalities and ensured a positive reception for their ideas and theories across national borders. The international workers’ movement, the women's movement, and the Red Cross movement can be cited as examples (Treptow 2004).
So although social work has become more aware of its transnational history in recent years, the existing literature does not usually clarify the significance of the nation-state for this exchange. Lorenz (2006) is one of the few to emphasise the importance of the nation-state for the history of social work in this context. He shows that schools and the welfare state are the central institutions through which the traditional forms of collectivisation (such as family and communities) are extended to the nation-state as a whole: “The nation constitutes its identity through these educational efforts, through not leaving the socialisation of its young to chance” (ibid.: 32). Social education is thus an essential strategy for ensuring that the population sees itself as part of an “imagined community” (Anderson 1983). The increasing awareness of transnational and global phenomena reveals the cracks in this imagining. This gives rise to new questions for social work: what function does social work have in the creation and maintenance of this central imagining of modernity? How has social work positioned itself in relation to this imagined national unity? What role do transnational practices of knowledge play?
THE EXAMPLE OF THE SETTLEMENT MOVEMENT
These questions will now be analysed using the example of the settlement movement at the beginning of the twentieth century. The settlement movement is considered one of the main roots of professional social work in Great Britain and North America, as well as in Germany (Müller 1982; Sachße 1986; Wendt 2008). The starting point for this movement was social segregation, which was becoming visible in urban areas and was seen as increasingly problematic. Since the mid-nineteenth century, the compartmentalisation of the various population groups in the large cities of the industrialised western nation-states had increasingly come to be seen as a scandal. Schreiber (1904: 1) describes this sudden focus on and criticism of the social divide somewhat sarcastically:
Between the seventies and eighties of the old century, London was gripped by ‘slum fever’. This was not a malignant disease which spread from the overpopulated, dirty streets of the East, the so-called ‘slums’, into the capital city, but rather a sudden, feverish interest on the part of the educated in getting to know the long-ignored dens of poverty, as if they were a completely new discovery, rather than something long in existence, which had evolved gradually, over a period of decades, bit by bit.
This “slum fever” developed into criticism of a form of social work which limited itself to seeing the poor only as people in need of help. Instead, for parts of the bourgeoisie a conviction arose that it was necessary to move closer to the poor and the workers. This led to the idea of establishing settlements of so-called “educated” people (Picht 1913) in these districts, to come into contact with the workers and the poor as “neighbours” and to get to understand them better, to offer them educational opportunities, and thus to counteract the social divide. One of the founding declarations of the settlement movement—a lecture by Canon Samuel Barnett5 delivered to a group of young men at St. John's College in Oxford in 1883—clearly shows this linking of social criticism and social work, typical of the settlement movement:
Many have been the schemes of reform I have known, but, out of eleven years’ experience, I would say that none touches the root of the evil which does not bring helper and helped into friendly relations. ( . . . ) Not until the habits of the rich are changed, and they are again content to breathe the same air and walk the same streets as the poor, will East London be ‘saved’. Meantime a Settlement of University men will do a little to remove the inequalities of life, as the settlers share their best with the poor and learn through feeling how they live. (Barnett and Barnett 1915: 104–5)
Numerous settlement houses were subsequently established on the model of Toynbee Hall, not only in England, but also in the U.S. (Davis 1967). There in particular, the settlement movement evolved, quantitatively and qualitatively, into a constitutive factor for social work. Historic research has concentrated on the successful settlements in Boston, New York, and in particular Chicago, where the most famous settlement, Hull House, was founded by Jane Addams and Ellen Gates Star (Carson 1990).
As a rule, the transnational development6 of the settlement movement is emphasised in this context. Still, there has been no precise historical analysis of the significance of this transnational knowledge production. Generally, the path of the settlement movement is traced from its founding in England, via its vigorous expansion in the U.S., to its spread into nearly all the industrial nations of North America and Europe.7 As to the dissemination of ideas, the settlement movement resembles other international social movements and organisations at the time. However, some social movements, such as the international women's movement, were more aware of the fact that the international exchange of knowledge involves amendments, struggles, and negotiations about certain issues. A good example of this kind of transformation is the research on imperialism in international's women organisations conducted by Rupp (1996), and how it was challenged by women of the so-called Third World. To date, however, there exist no analyses of the transformations of the settlement idea and the importance of the nation-state context. This is all the more astonishing given that the social work discussion of the time highlighted the differences between settlements in the respective nation-states.
Thus for example Jane Addams speaks of “social settlements,” in contrast to the English settlement movement, in order to emphasise the reform-oriented position of the American settlement movement (Addams 1892). Coit (1892), who was of vital importance for the development of the settlements in New York, also criticises the English settlements for not focusing on the “social reconstruction” of society. The differences between the nation-states were also highlighted from a sociological point of view. In his discussion of the basic functions of the settlements, Mead (1907–8: 108–9) argues:
It is an interesting fact that settlements have flourished only where there has been a real democracy. Neither France, with its layers of society, its social castes, nor Germany, with its fundamental assumption that the control of society must take place from above through highly trained bureaus, have offered favorable soil for the growth of settlements. In France it is mutually impossible for men in different social groups to domesticate in other groups. In Germany nobody out of his own immediate milieu undertaking to enter into relations with others is at ease unless he has on a uniform indicating by what right he seeks information, gives advice, or renders assistance.
These examples show the rarely questioned assumption that differences emerge along national boundaries. In particular, Mead's reasoning about the dissemination of the settlement idea operates with an unquestioned assumption concerning notions of the nation, democracy, and cultural characteristics.
However, the aim of these quotes is not to reveal the questionable conjecture that national contexts determine the particular type of settlement work within a nation-state. Instead, they are intended to elucidate the fact that a comparative perspective on the settlements presupposes the nation-state as an independent, explanatory variable. As shown earlier, however, the nation-state is not a given, but a modern institution which is periodically reproduced. Thus, an examination of the transnational exchange of knowledge (both in the settlement movement and in social work) must consider two questions: not just how does the nation-state influence the knowledge production of the settlement movement, but also, conversely, to what extent does the knowledge production of the settlement movement contribute to the production of the nation-state?
The following analysis takes the latter question as its main starting point and reveals how various ideas concerning the settlement work of different (national) origin influenced the understanding of settlements in Germany and how these ideas became intertwined and intermingled in the imagined German national context.
LETTERS FROM AMERICAN SETTLEMENTS
To this end, we delve into a series of letters about the American settlements sent to Germany by Alix Westerkamp during her stay in Chicago between November 1913 and May 1914, only months before the outbreak of World War I. These letters were printed in twelve episodes, between 1917 and 1919, in the journal Akademisch-Soziale Monatsschrift (Academic Social Monthly) and were written at a time when the settlement movement was about to reach the peak of its significance: the most important ideas had already been developed and the well-known social settlements were already widely recognized in the developing field of social work and social welfare. These settlements, such as Hull House, Chicago Commons, and Toynbee Hall, were seen as prototypes for the establishment of settlement houses in other large cities of the industrialised world. Therefore, production of knowledge concerning settlement work as expressed in these kinds of letters, publications, and talks used to be very common. However, the particular significance of these letters results from the relationship between the author of the letters, the Chicago Commons, and its founder Graham Taylor.
CONTEXTUAL BACKGROUND OF THE LETTERS FROM AMERICAN SETTLEMENTS
Alix Westerkamp had a lasting but for the most part overlooked influence on the settlement movement in Germany and on work in the most prominent settlement, the Soziale Arbeitsgemeinschaft Berlin-Ost (SAG Berlin-Ost, East Berlin Social Working Group). Unlike the founder of the SAG Berlin-Ost, Friedrich Siegmund-Schultze, Westerkamp's influence on settlement work in Berlin, and that of the other collaborators, has hardly been researched to date. Thanks to the prominent role of Friedrich Siegmund-Schultze, the focus so far has been on the influence of the English settlements on the SAG Berlin-Ost (Scherer 2004; Lindner 1997). As a Protestant minister he had close connections with Protestant churches in England and was co-founder of the “Church Committee for friendly relations between Great Britain and Germany” (Siegmund-Schultze 1990: 47). He was strongly influenced by a visit in 1908, which took him to the poorest parts of East London. There he encountered the work being done in the first settlement in Great Britain, Toynbee Hall, founded in 1884 by Henrietta and Samuel Barnett.
Rarely mentioned, however, is the influence of the American settlements on Germany. For example, Friedrich Siegmund-Schultze visited American settlements such as Hull House for the first time in 1911 (Siegmund-Schultze 1990). Even more important was Alix Westerkamp's visit to the Chicago Commons. These experiences obviously influenced her decision to become part of the Soziale Arbeitsgemeinschaft, yet her involvement had begun much earlier and coincided with the establishment of the Soziale Arbeitsgemeinschaft in East Berlin. As the first woman to obtain a doctorate in law in Germany (Röwekamp 2005), she initially headed (from 1907) the Rechtschutzstelle für Frauen (women's legal protection centre) in Frankfurt am Main, before moving to Berlin in 1911 and taking charge of the Deutsche Zentrale für Jugendfürsorge (DZfJ, German centre for youth care). This was the context for her first contact with Siegmund-Schultze in the summer of 1911. When the latter was looking for a place to establish the SAG, he turned to Westerkamp.8 Based on her previous experience in the context of the Berlin Jugendgerichtshilfe (juvenile court assistance), she advised him to take the area around the “Schlesischer Bahnhof” as a starting point. This area was considered the home of many labourers who were alienated from the church but were involved in the communist, socialist, and social democratic parties of the time. The SAG Berlin-Ost was in fact founded in this area that same year, at Friedensstrasse 60.
Westerkamp managed the DZfJ for two years before leaving on her study trip to Chicago, where she spent several months becoming acquainted with settlement work in the Chicago Commons. Even though she did not mention in her letters why she opted for the Chicago Commons rather than for the far better known Hull House of Jane Addams, two explanations are possible: First, its founder and first director, Graham Taylor, was a Protestant clergyman, just as was Friedrich Siegmund-Schultze. Both were engaged in the international peace movement and they probably knew each other from Friedrich Siegmund-Schultze's visit in 1911. Second, this settlement house was situated in an area where many German immigrants used to live. As Alix Westerkamp intended to volunteer as a settlement worker, the Chicago Commons was a perfect place to make use of her language abilities and her aspiration to contribute to settlement work. After her return from the U.S., she became a close collaborator of Siegmund-Schultze and edited the Akademisch-Soziale Monatsschrift with him from 1917 to 1924 (Röwekamp 2005).
The Chicago Commons was founded in 1894 by Graham Taylor, who “was one of the first to introduce sociology or social ethics into the curriculum of a theological school” (Davis 1967: 13). While this settlement house had a religious background, its main emphasis lay on social reform and democratic development. Because of this combination of religious and societal impetus, the Chicago Commons was an often-referred-to example, especially in large cities such as Toronto, where the churches used to play an important role (Fraser 1988; James 1997). This characteristic also made it interesting for the German settlement movement, especially for the Soziale Arbeitsgemeinschaft Berlin-Ost with its Protestant background. In fact, German class conflict bore greater resemblance to the social circumstances in the UK, but the focus on social reform and democracy was of great interest to German settlement workers, who found themselves in a highly unstable political and societal context at the end of World War I.
THE LETTERS
An overview of the range of themes covered by Alix Westerkamp in her nineteen letters will clarify the structure and the themes under discussion. She wrote her letters mainly in the Chicago Commons, which was—as she says—the oldest and biggest settlement in Chicago, after Hull House. She writes about Graham Taylor with “endless” admiration (Westerkamp 1917–19, II: 49),9 but is initially unable to establish a close relationship with him.
The dominant motif of the letters becomes clear in the first sentences of her first letter on 16 November 1913: “I'd rather tell you about where and how I'm living next time. I'm still too new here. But I've already seen a great deal of Young America. Young America! What is it? It's Young Italy, Young Poland, Young Hungary, Young Bohemia, Young Slovenia and Slovania, Young Norway and Sweden, Young England, Scotland and Ireland, Young France, Young Germany, and—last but not least—a young Jewry. But all of them are becoming a young, vigorous America.” This America—above all its political culture and the socio-political challenges it faces—continues to preoccupy Westerkamp in subsequent letters. She makes comparisons with Germany mainly to emphasise the otherness of life in the U.S. For example, she writes in the first letter: “I get the impression that the young people here are taller and stronger than in the old world. It's as if they have more room to grow, and therefore flourish like free-standing trees. In Germany a certain lack of physical agility is often seen as naturally connected with Jewishness. Here the young Jews play the sport of Young America from an early age, and they become just as sinewy and tall and straight as the others” (ibid. I: 21).
Her letters read like a sort of autoethnography. She describes her struggle with the adverse conditions in Chicago (wind, dust, dirt, and noise), her own foreignness, of which she is particularly conscious on such occasions as Christmas and Easter, and finally, in the last letters, her illness (“a simple grip”), which confines her to bed for several weeks and takes her to a sanatorium 60 km west of Chicago. The settlement work itself is also described wholly from a subjective point of view. Westerkamp does not write about something she is observing, but describes how she herself experiences the settlement work, how she becomes acquainted with American “living conditions” during her “investigations” in Chicago, how she makes contact with German families, how she rescues a family from death by suffocation, how disconcerting she finds the American Christmas celebration with its songs, whose lyrics (Oh tree of fir) are wrongly assumed to be English originals, the red Christmas decorations, which remind her not of Christmas but of a socialist rally, etc. The manner in which she proceeds is characteristic of the attitude of the settlement workers: by means of a more participant than observing attitude they try to understand and describe social worlds from the inside out (Wietschorke 2006), whether it be the local Berlin neighbourhood, work in a factory, or settlement work in another country.
It is not until 2 December 1913, in the third published letter, that she discusses the settlement work in the Chicago Commons in more detail. As at the beginning of the first letter, she starts by highlighting a difference between Germany and America: “In Germany there is only very little which is similar; our problems are quite different to those of the United States. Here the problem of nationalities is a defining one for almost all social work.” In the entrance hall to the Chicago Commons she is impressed by a quotation from Homer: “He was a friend to man and he lived by the side of the road.”10 This quotation, she concludes, is the real “leitmotif of the settlements.” This short motif alludes to the metaphor of the “neighbour” which is central for the settlement movement (Irving, Parsons, and Bellamy 1995). The settlement workers settle where they can meet their fellow humans, where they can immerse themselves in their everyday life and culture, and where they can offer help to those who seek it. Westerkamp sees this goal of settlement work as closely connected to the task of “turning the immigrants into useful ‘American citizens’” (Westerkamp 1917–19, I: 28).
This leitmotif of settlement work reveals strong parallels to an experience which she places in a broader context. That which preoccupies Westerkamp almost more than the actual settlement work is the political and social culture of America. On 7 January 1914 she begins one of her most forceful letters on the subject with the following words: “Your Christmas letter is there, with its ‘Christmas sermon’. Its ‘text’ inspired what has perhaps been my greatest and most wonderful experience here in the United States” (ibid. IV: 120). She is referring to a letter from Germany whose author is unnamed, and as she later adds in a footnote, the text she is alluding to comes from “A Christmas Carol” by Charles Dickens: “But I am sure I have always thought of Christmas time . . . as a good time: a kind, forgiving, charitable, pleasant time: the only time I know of, in the long calendar of the year, when men and women seem by one consent to open their shut-up hearts freely, and to think of people below them as if they really were fellow-passengers to the grave, and not another race of creatures bound on other journeys.” She describes the experience inspired by the text in contrast with her everyday life in Germany: “In Germany, the class differences constantly assert themselves everywhere. Anyone who has any feeling for this at all senses them as a physical pressure. Never, in all the joyless manifestations of our public life, which are to be addressed as consequences of class differences, have I been able to rid myself of the feeling: mea maxima culpa” (ibid. IV: 120).
In contrast, in her eyes American life is infused with the conviction that people are in principle equal and have equal rights:
It is unbelievably different to Germany—life in the street, in the tram, in the train, in assemblies, in public buildings. The people are, to quote your Christmas sermon, ‘fellow passengers’, not just at Christmas, but all year round. The wonderful words of the Declaration of Independence, ‘that all men are created equal’—they're not literally fulfilled, just as they're not intended to be understood literally, but they're at least somewhat of a reality here. The differences are there—differences in wealth, in education, in social position, and many others, just like in our country, but in everyday life those who are at a disadvantage are not constantly reminded of this—it is not cudgelled into them, as it were. (ibid. IV: 120f., italicised quotes in English in the original text)
What is interesting in this quote is not only the fabulous creolisation of the language in itself (which includes English and English-influenced phrases), but the idea which Westerkamp is expressing thereby. She brings her different experiences in Germany and the U.S. together, but they refuse to merge and create a unity. Westerkamp is caught in a process of transition which puts her in a state of personal tension, for in spite of her euphoric description of everyday life in America she notes two lines later: “Never have I been more passionately German, never have I felt more consciously that one is rooted with one's innermost values in the soil of one's native land” (ibid.).
This general, fairly abstract insight is illustrated in the same letter with an example. First she describes a “political scandal” which preoccupied Chicago around the end of 1913 and the beginning of 1914. This occurred in the “Board of Education,” to which Ella Flagg-Young was, surprisingly, not re-elected as chairwoman, although she—as Westerkamp presumes—[must] have achieved wonderful things” (ibid. IV: 122). Instead, her former assistant, “quite a good politician, but not an educator” (ibid.), became chairman on the basis of a “terrible intrigue” (ibid.). “A storm of indignation raged through Chicago” (ibid.), and mass meetings were held, demanding that politics should cease to influence the administration. The “people's will” (“des Volkes Wille”) triumphed in the end, and Ella Flagg-Young became chairwoman again. Westerkamp draws the conclusion that she had already hinted at earlier: “One learns an incredible amount from such an event. It's also quite healthy for someone who has perhaps been too burdened by Germany's air to see that too, perfection is still an unattained goal. One thing, however, was clear from the beginning: that Chicago would find a way out of this difficulty. The Americans have a tremendous energy for higher development in their constitutional life” (ibid.). For her, the United States is not the ideal model because it differs with respect to the fundamental issue of the settlement movement, the segregation into rich and poor. Instead, it is distinguished by a sort of basic political and social structure in which the “history of a people (Volk) with such a decisive talent for politics” (ibid. V: 154) manifests itself. Westerkamp, in her system of motifs, closely links this basic political-social structure to the work in the settlements. The motifs of the “fellow passenger” and the “friend to man” produce the picture of an elective affinity between the strategies of the settlement workers and the already existing basic political-social structure.
Westerkamp gives further examples of this basic message about the political culture in subsequent letters. In the following three striking aspects may be identified. On 28 January 1914 she recounts a typical “American destiny” (ibid. VI: 184), using this case to illustrate the difference between the political landscapes in the two countries. During one of her late-evening “investigations” she has been accompanied by a co-worker from the Chicago Commons. She has always considered this man to be of a “scholarly nature” and was therefore all the more astonished when it transpired that he came from a steel-working family. Full of admiration, she recounts his story: how his father died of tuberculosis, his mother encouraged him to see his fate as “not unchangeable,” and he earned money as a steelworker until he saved enough to be able to go to university. Even in Germany, such a career is not impossible, Westerkamp concedes. She wonders, however, why such people are almost all to be found among the ranks of the Social Democrats in Germany, while this is not the case in the U.S. (ibid. VI: 185).
One letter later, on the topic of the political situation of women, she reports enthusiastically on the introduction of women's suffrage and on the “political education” being provided “by women for women” (ibid. VI: 186). Political issues are “discussed with a seriousness, with a thoroughness and an interest . . . which astonish me” (ibid.), and not only among women in fashionable clubs, but also among the “simplest and poorest women, whom we are accustomed to classify as ‘washerwomen and cleaning ladies’” (ibid.).
Finally, on 11 February, she discusses the national celebrations on the birthdays of Abraham Lincoln (12 February 1809) and George Washington (22 February 1732). She compares these with the “jubilee of our emperor” (ibid. VIII: 54) from the previous year, when she walked along Unter den Linden—a central boulevard of Berlin—and heard a voice from the festive crowd saying: “‘Well, tout Berlin11 is here.’ This ‘tout Berlin’ made me flinch. Where were the people from the North and the East, from Neukölln and Lichtenberg,12 where were ‘the people’ (‘das Volk’)? Who remembered that countless people ( . . . ) had no part, not the even the tiniest part in their emperor's jubilee? Can you call that a national holiday?” (ibid., emphasis in original). In contrast, the “national holidays” in the U.S. live up to their name, according to Westerkamp. She cites two assemblies as evidence of this: for one, a meeting of the “Mother's Club,” in which the previously mentioned “washerwomen and cleaning ladies” come together, and from whose midst “the spontaneous wish [arose] for their celebration to begin with a lecture about George Washington” (ibid.). Secondly, a “negro gathering” (ibid. VIII: 56), which makes it clear to her that the “negro question” has not yet been solved, but that the blacks are nonetheless recognised by the white population as having equal rights—in complete contrast to Germany, where anti-Semitism illustrates the systematic disadvantaging of certain population groups (ibid.).
Her experiences with American political life also change her perspective on the work in the settlement. One manifestation of this is the way she reports on this work. For example, the second and third compilations of letters (10, 17, 24, and 31 December) still focus on the characteristic of cultural diversity, and on the major challenge faced by the Chicago Commons because of its location in a district where the ethnic and social composition is constantly changing. After the foregoing quoted letters on everyday political-social life in January, in the middle of February (14 and 19 February 1914) she returns to the description of the actual work in the settlement but now she places more emphasis on the significance of the settlement's political attitude and work. For example, she describes her experiences with a group of Italian men during a game evening in the auditorium: “You should see these young Romans around the table, flashing eyes, burning cheeks, and unconsciously, fantastically grand, picturesque gestures. And for all their temperament and passion a certain respect for parliamentary form which seems to become second nature to anyone who grows up here” (ibid. IX: 92). It is not entirely by chance that the indexical “here” in the second sentence is ambiguous: does it refer to the settlement, Chicago, or the U.S.?
This parliamentary attitude seems, for her, to infuse all aspects of life in this settlement. She writes almost emotionally about a daily routine, the “Vesper.” For her this meeting after dinner, devoted to the discussion of a current event from the city or state, from social work or personal life, is like an “hour of consecration for the whole day” (ibid. X: 122). The description of the meetings and the name remind one of a religious ceremony with a profane or rather socio-political content. On one of these evenings the topic is a miners' strike which kept the U.S. on tenterhooks in 1913 and 1914. She is impressed both by the events surrounding this strike, and by Graham Taylor's knowledge of the political situation relating to this conflict. Her summary includes a sarcastic dig at Germany: “And as with the national holidays, I can't help thinking again here: how could it be otherwise? . . . In the end, every country has the social democracy it deserves” (ibid. X: 123).
The last letters of Westerkamp display a deeper immersion into the everyday life of Chicago and an adoption of the mythology of the American dream (in particular, the equality of opportunity and the ability to solve existing problems). Therefore, her experiences in the U.S. deepen her criticism of the German situation. The extent to which this affects her personally becomes clear in the last letter, before she becomes ill for several months. On 25 February 1914, on the occasion of Washington's birthday, she took part in a celebration dedicated to the new arrivals in the city and the country. Deeply moved, she quotes extensively from the speech given by a representative of the government, who emphasised the significance of every individual and of the people (Volk) as a whole for the development of the country. She contrasts this with her evening reading of a newspaper which has a “foreign part” once a week: “With greedy eyes I looked for ‘Germany’. I had such a longing to read something which would make my heart beat faster, and I found. . . . the Zabern affair. A chill seized me. I thought it was a mental chill. But since then I've been ill” (ibid. X: 126). Of course this is just a coincidence. And yet the contrast could scarcely be more extreme. Here the United States, which presents itself to Westerkamp as a democratic country, there Germany, where the military inflicts arbitrary force on the populace in Alsace (in this case Zabern/Saverne); here a country which—in Westerkamp's view—welcomes all people equally, there a country rife with racist, nationalist, and class-specific resentments.
CONCLUSIONS
The analysis of Alix Westerkamp's letters is significant for the question of transnational knowledge production in social work in three respects. First, it provides concrete information about the settlement movement and its transnational knowledge production and shows how these ideas travelled through space and time, and how they were transformed and translated in other contexts. Second, it reveals the ambivalent meaning of boundary objects such as the nation and the people (Volk) in these practices of transnationalising knowledge. Third and finally, such an analysis gives rise to new perspectives on the question of how transnational practices—and the correspondence between the U.S. and Germany undoubtedly counts as one of these—relate to methodological nationalism in social work.
1. Alix Westerkamp describes settlement work and the settlement movement not as a method for solving particular social problems, but as a movement which sees itself as embedded in a general political development, which is concerned with the pursuit of social and political goals. She therefore only describes the settlement work in the Chicago Commons in a small part of her letters, and instead concentrates in large part on the political and social developments in Chicago and the U.S. She regards the settlement movement as a crucial means of advancing reforms, especially at a national level. Even where she deals with the subject of the political-social setting of Chicago by recounting the events after Ella Flagg-Young was voted out of her position as chair of the Board of Education, she eventually also refers to the socio-political culture in the U.S. in its entirety. Westerkamp sketches a picture of a settlement movement which pursues, almost as a matter of course, the goal of instigating political-social reform in a particular nationstate context, the U.S. in this case. In sum, her letters describe a reform movement which is situated in a neighbourhood but is ultimately concerned with the nation.
With terms such as the nation or the people (das Volk) she refers to a decisive connecting piece of the settlement movement, one which has not been adequately explored. The idea of establishing settlements in the poor areas of large cities developed in a discursive field in which authors from very different ideological backgrounds—for example, Friedrich Engels (German socialist), Léon Faucher (French liberal), William Cooke Taylor (Irish Whig)— criticised the fact that the “rich abandoned their responsibility for morality and order among the working classes” (Dennis 1980: 315). The emergence of “two nations,” as Benjamin Disraeli, the romantic writer and conservative prime minister, put it in 1845, was considered a serious threat to the nation-state (in this case, the United Kingdom). The metaphor of the two nations was influential for the settlement movement but has been interpreted in very different ways in different contexts.
Samuel Barnett, for example, viewed this disparity as a result of spatial segregation and a lack of education and knowledge. With reference to the English settlement movement, Allen F. Davis points out: “[It] was part of the larger Romantic revolt against the vulgarization of society, and its ultimate goal was the spiritual reawakening of the whole man—and not just the labourer, but the university man also” (Davis 1967: 7). Barnett thus considered the divided nation to be a crisis of the nation in the sense of an educated community. In other words, education and communication promoted by spatial permeation were the cure that was envisaged for the nation.
Jane Addams (1899) also took up the question of the two nations in her article “A Function of the Social Settlement.” She argues in opposition to Disraeli's diagnosis: “We do not like to acknowledge that Americans are divided into ‘two nations,’ as her prime minister once admitted of England. ( . . . ) Our democracy is still our most precious possession, and we do well to resent any inroads upon it, even although they may be made in the name of philanthropy” (ibid.: 33). Her reference to the democratic system in the U.S. elucidates her conception of the nation: it is above all a political community. She does not deny the analysis of social inequality within the U.S. but she obviously believes in the idea of a political way of tackling these challenges. Her favoured strategy resembles Barnett's vision of a settlement only at first glance: She is also persuaded that “the most pressing problem of modern life is that of a reconstruction and a reorganization of the knowledge which we possess” (ibid.: 34). But reorganisation of knowledge means not only sharing the knowledge with the poor—for example, through education. With reference to pragmatic academics such as John Dewey, she demands first and foremost the application of social science knowledge to the benefit of the poor, especially in areas where it is most needed. In sum, social settlements are a way of building a nation as a knowledgeable community.
Because of the strong antagonism between the bourgeoisie and the working class, the question of the nation and the nation-state was an even more important issue within the German settlement movement than elsewhere. Friedrich Siegmund-Schultze takes up the metaphor of Disraeli in an unpublished manuscript with the title “Two people” (Zwei Völker) (EZA 626/I 6: 2). He describes one people as the old one “that lives in remembrance of the history of its ancestors, having grown up in victorious wars; . . . proud of its strength, at the same time in possession of the entire national tradition;” the other people, the new one, is considered to be “without national tradition, . . . raised . . . in the peaceful and international development of industry and technology, nowhere rooted in the soil, . . . thus viewing the world as its homeland.” Although Siegmund-Schultze searches for a conciliatory position between these two peoples, in other publications he leaves no doubt about the deficiencies of this new people: “And after all one fact is undeniable: a dreadful mass disease is currently spreading through our nation. The hostility to God has become epidemic” (1990: 298). This quote illustrates the fact that Siegmund-Schultze regards the national division not only as a social issue but also as a moral one. Seen from this angle, settlements attempt to overcome the gap between the socialist-oriented and atheistic labourers, on the one hand, and the bourgeois church, on the other. In other words, he considers the sharp opposition of the social classes in Germany to be a crisis of the nation as a moral community.
Alix Westerkamp's letters from an American settlement were written at the intersection of these different conceptions of the nation and nation-state which emerged before and after the beginning of the settlement movement. Two conceptions of the nation dominate her reports. First of all, her passionate account of the feelings of guilt and depression in her thoughts about the class conflict in Germany reveals her view of the nation as a moral community. Her tendency to use religious metaphors also underlines this notion, which she shares with Siegmund-Schultze. Instead of dwelling on the problem of irreligiosity, however, she focuses decisively on the political culture of the U.S. and its ability to overcome not only the economic gap but also the religious, gender, and racial differences within the nation-state. The so-called “Vesper” in the Chicago Commons stands paradigmatically for her move toward a political overcoming of societal (i.e., religious, economical, gendered, etc.) disparities. This daily ceremony is a religiously based yet profane event in which the settlement movement manifests its aspiration to become the nucleus of a political community. This second view ultimately sublates (in the Hegelian sense) the previous conception, since Westerkamp considers a political approach to be suitable for overcoming, or at least lessening, the moral disparities within the nation.
2. The utilisation of the polymorphic notion of a nation and a people (Volk), which we have previously analysed, has implications for the question concerning the ways in which knowledge is produced transnationally and the consequences thereof. Westerkamp's letters can undoubtedly be taken as an important example of the way in which ideas and knowledge circulated across borders in early twentieth-century social work. Like Werner Picht (1913), for example, whose book Toynbee Hall and the English Settlement Movement was an important contribution to the spread of this idea in Germany, she too chooses the route of long-term observing participation. She condenses these personal and physically very strenuous experiences into letters, which are then published in the Akademisch-Soziale Monatsschrift, mainly for the benefit of those with a professional interest in the subject. Although she uses such categories as ‘people’ (Volk) and ‘nation’ fairly sparingly, they do nonetheless play a central role as frames of reference. Though she does not state this explicitly, Westerkamp seems to perceive a sort of elective affinity between the U.S. and the settlement movement. The principles of the settlement are reflected, in her view, in a particular U.S. political-social culture, and vice versa. The impression emerges that this is the place where the idea of the settlement movement can have its full effect. One could borrow Westerkamp's quip and say: just as every country has the social democracy it deserves, so does every country have its corresponding settlement movement.
Such constructions have interesting implications for the circulation of knowledge and ideas. Tying settlement work to a specific national context in this way means that it cannot simply be imitated and transferred as a strategy. Contemporaries and readers of the Akademisch-Soziale Monatsschrift will probably be wondering what conclusions can be drawn from Westerkamp's experiences for settlement work in Germany. She herself gives no direct answer to this. By constructing an elective affinity, however, she creates a dilemma for her readers: they are presented with an interesting ‘model,’ which nevertheless does not seem usable, or at least not in this form. These unique experiences also seem to create a dilemma for Westerkamp herself. The apparently enormous discrepancies between the U.S. and Germany frustrate her intensely. The ‘mental’ chill which seizes her is symptomatic of her feelings of resignation and hopelessness. On the one hand she is enthusiastic about the idea of settlement work and about the political-social culture in the U.S. On the other hand, this brings home to her how much the situation in Germany oppresses her—although or particularly because she feels more passionately German than ever before.
The significance of the frame of reference of a nationally influenced political-social culture draws attention to an elementary mechanism of transnational knowledge production. With terms like people (Volk) and nation, Westerkamp chooses terms which are important ‘anchor points’ for both the readers of her letters in Germany and for the settlement movement. Talking about the nation and the Volk is, for Westerkamp, a sort of boundary object, with which she can connect her experiences in the U.S. with her readers’ horizon of experience. In the sociology of scientific knowledge, the significance of such boundary objects has long been acknowledged:
Boundary objects are both plastic enough to adapt to local needs and constraints of several parties employing them, yet robust enough to maintain a common identity across sites. They are weakly structured in common use, and become strongly structured in individual-site use. They may be abstract or concrete. They have different meanings in different social worlds but their structure is common enough to more than one world to make them recognisable means of translation. The creation and management of boundary objects is a key in developing and maintaining coherence across intersecting social worlds. (Star and Griesemer 1989: 393)
The analysis of Westerkamp's letters shows that she avoids using terms such as Volk and nation. She does not make it too easy for her readers. With terms such as American life, America, American citizen; with comparisons (to Germany) and with strategically placed narrative she emphasises the individuality of the U.S. and—through the comparison with Germany—that of nations and national developments in general. And yet boundary objects such as nation or Volk reveal a paradox. They make it possible for different actors from different social contexts to refer to these concepts. But at the same time they are boundary objects which entail a construction of uniqueness. For the settlement movement, such terms are even able to create a common identity, as shown by Lies Benzler's (1926) account of the second congress of the international settlement movement in Paris. She quotes the chairman of the Federation of British Settlements: “He emphasised the paradoxical aspect of an international settlement conference. Every settlement, he said, began with a national goal: it sought to help its own people (Volk) to achieve unity. Thus every country, he continued, had its own particular problems and challenges. But out of the protest against evil in each individual people (Volk), a goal for the whole of humanity arose. In the settlement movement, he argued, sincere ‘nationalism’ ended in ‘internationalism’” (Benzler 1926: 46). By referring to a nation as a quasi-natural frame of reference, all the members of the settlement movement reassure each other of their commonality. The quote also shows the self-evident quality of the nation as an almost natural organisation of the social world at the time, even in a social movement that is, to a great extent, involved in the international peace movement (for example, Jane Addams, Friedrich Siegmund-Schultze). At the same time, however, this common point of reference generates a marked difference between the actors, which can only be overcome through the construction of a paradox, with nationalism ultimately merging into internationalism—though why this should be so remains unanswered.
3. This result, finally, throws new light on the question of how a methodological nationalism has been able to arise in social work. Westerkamp's letters about the “American settlements” are evidence of a transnational production of knowledge. But in this knowledge production, the boundary objects nation and people (Volk) acquire a life of their own: they reinforce the impression of the otherness and uniqueness of the settlement work which Westerkamp is observing. In other words, Westerkamp's transnational practice13 ultimately leads to a reinforcement of the nation-state frame of reference, even if this was probably not her intention. The example shows, however, that a transnational production of knowledge does not necessarily lead to a reduction in national differences. On the contrary, nationalisms can actually be intensified by certain practices of comparison, and by the establishment of boundary objects that not only connect different actors but also divide them by emphasising the particular characteristics of certain actors such as nations.
In the case of the settlement movement, this paradoxical logic of the term ‘nation’ is intensified through its ideological framework. Not only by seeking to support the poor or to overcome the segregation of the poor and the rich within large cities, but also by reconstructing and reforming the nation and the nation-state, the settlement movement regards the solution of social problems to be a national endeavour. Many settlement workers were skeptical about the focus of professionalised social work on individual cases and favoured the idea that all the societal actors should participate in the campaign against social divisions within the nation-state. Settlement houses were seen as both the pivotal core of this reform and as an anchor for the different actors within the nation-state. Although settlement workers did not promote the methodological nationalism of social work, they nonetheless were furthering a kind of progressive and reformative nationalism during this period.
NOTES
1. In this context, methodological nationalism has to be distinguished from normative nationalism, which is a political premise that denotes the right of nations and nation-states to self-determination. Still, the two perspectives are interlinked: the unquestioned premise of the social sciences, according to which the confines of the nation-state represent the quasi-natural confines of social life, refers back to the everyday assumptions of political and everyday actors.
2. This sharp and comprehensive criticism of the social sciences did not remain unchallenged (Chernilo 2006). Particularly questioned was the diagnosis that the classical grand theories would follow a methodological nationalism. I will not discuss this criticism in more detail because it is not relevant to the following argument.
3. New institutionalism is a theoretical reference point for research, especially in the field of organisational studies. This approach reflects the societal embeddedness of organisations and the legitimacy organisations gain by adopting structures and practices that could be found in the environments of these organisations (which are called organisational fields). In particular, Meyer (2009) with his world polity analyses focuses on macro-sociological phenomena and the global diffusion of institutions.
4. Historical research on social work, especially research focusing on the transnational production of knowledge, faces the very important problem that the confines of social work are anything but determined or defined. Social work is not only differently understood in various time periods, but also in different social and cultural contexts. The research I am dealing with in this study is mainly related to what is called ‘social work’ in North America, the United Kingdom, and parts of Europe.
5. Samuel and Henrietta Barnett established the first settlement house, Toynbee Hall, in 1884. The name derives from Arnold Toynbee, an English economic historian who moved to Whitechapel, East London, in order to aid in improving the living conditions there. He died in 1883.
6. This development is considered transnational in so far as the transfer of ideas across national boundaries conveys a process of translation of these ideas into a new social and national context. This translation implies a revelation, reflection, and reconfirmation or modification of those nation-state institutions involved in this process (for example, language, territory, culture, and law). The goal of this definition is not to get a grasp of a certain scope, but a certain kind of phenomena.
7. Only a few settlements were founded in Asian cities such as Hong Kong and Manila.
8. His first intention was to start settlement work in an infamous Berlin neighbourhood called the Scheuenviertel. But the partial demolition of this district in 1907 and Siegmund-Schultze's aim of getting in contact with the “Berlin's healthy and hardy labour force” (Lindner 1997: 83) led to a reorientation.
9. The first six episodes were published in 1917, episodes 7 to 11 in 1918, and the last episode in 1919.
10. This Homerian motif was very popular at the time in Canada and the U.S., particularly because of a poem by Sam Walter Foss. While Alix Westerkamp does not mention this context, it is likely that Graham Taylor chose the Homer quotation in light of the popularity of this poem. The second stanza of the poem makes it clear that there are obvious parallels to the settlement idea: “Let me live in a house by the side of the road/Where the race of men go by;/ The men who are good and the men who are bad,/ As good and as bad as I./ I would not sit in the scorner's seat/Or hurl the cynic's ban;/ Let me live in a house by the side of the road/And be a friend to man” (Foss 1897: 11).
11. Westerkamp quotes this French expression for “all of Berlin” literally, and in this way also indicates the bourgeois background of the narrator, since practicing French was fashionable in German bourgeoisie at the time.
12. Neukölln and Lichtenberg used to be independent, highly industrialised and congested cities in the Berlin area.
13. This is taken to mean the totality of the transnational practices of Alix Westerkamp and her target audience: from the participatory observation via the writing and reading of the letters to the publication, the renewed reading, quoting, and the analysis taking place here.
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