Montext of the activity and thought of Mary Richmond

Abstract

In order to understand the significance of an author and his or her work, it is essential to appropriately consider the author’s social and scientific context. Mary Richmond was one of the pioneers in a new profession that emerged at the same time as the Social Sciences. She was key in the shaping of the discipline thanks both to her own research and the influence that other more established professions and major schools of thought of the time had on her work, specifically James’ and Dewey’s Pragmatic Philosophy and the theories emerging from the University of Chicago’s Departments of Sociology and Anthropology, among them including most substantially the interactionist approaches of George Herbert Mead. All of this in an environment of economic, social and political change during the Progressive Era in the United States.