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Burke, Sara Z. (1997). Seeking the Highest Good: Social
Service and Gender at
the University of Toronto, 1888-1937. Toronto:
University of Toronto Press.
ISBN
0-8020-0782-1/0-8020-7146-5. $55.00/$17.95 Pp. 194.
Reviewed by Theresa M. Richardson
University of South Florida
January 6, 1998
Sara Burke received the prestigious John Bullen Prize for the best
doctoral thesis awarded by the Canadian Historical Association for
Seeking the Highest Good. The award is well deserved. The
research
is exemplary, the analysis rich and insightful. Burke's work also has
a characteristic of all fine history. It is multilayered, commanded
by a specific question with biographical details and events in a
particular time and place which shed light on the broader trajectory
of history showing how cultures (knowledge and experience), are
transmitted across time and space.
At the simplest level, Seeking the Highest Good is the
history of
the University of Toronto University Settlement, which was
established in 1910 in response to a perceived crisis in urban
poverty and spurred by an injunction from university President
Robert Falconer to seek the "highest good" through social
service. On
a more complex level, University Settlement was the outcome of an
emergent social ethic which combined moral imperatives with
scientific research which Burke terms the "Toronto ideal." The
origins of the Toronto ideal trace back to the transfer of British
idealism to Canada. The settlement movement in Britain, initiated by
the founding of Toynbee Hall in 1884, was in response to the rise of
an educated middle upper class in England and their response to the
impoverishment of the general population due to industrialization and
urbanization. At Balliol College, Oxford University, Arnold Toynbee
and later T.H. Green combined moral philosophy with social reform
initiatives to argue that the duty of citizenship of young college
men seeking salvation should be expressed in self-sacrifice by
sharing their education with those less fortunate in work associated
with poor relief. University Settlement in Toronto was created under
the auspices of the Department of Political Economy, established in
1888 under W. J. Ashley, a graduate of Balliol College where he
imbibed the philosophy of T. H. Green and became familiar with ideas
leading to the founding of Toynbee Hall. The "Toronto ideal"
was
subsequently forged by Ashley, his successor John Mavor and social
philosopher E. J. Erwick.
The struggle to establish University Settlement and define its role
draws out the intersection of gender and evangelical
religion in the formation of the formal disciplines of the social
sciences in Canada and elsewhere. Toynbee Hall was established with a
distinctly masculine ideal. The settlement movement as it expanded in
Britain and the United States early became feminized. Examples in the
United States include Jane Addams' Hull House in Chicago and Lillian
Wald's Henry Street Settlement in New York City. In these cases, the
settlement movement led to the formation of professional social work
characterized by hands-on empirical research and eventually case work
as a methodology. In Toronto, the original masculine definition
prevailed and the controversy over policy was at first less on
gender (women were excluded) than on religion. Conflicts between
evangelical Christian concepts of missionary work and salvation, as
depicted by the YMCA, were juxtaposed with the aspect of Toynbee Hall
and W. J. Ashley's interpretation of masculine settlement work as the
need for young men to engage in empirical research and social problem
solving for the sake of spirituality and moral growth but without the
evangelical supernatural elements of recruiting the poor for
salvation in the next life.
The University Settlement was not able to maintain the Toynbee Hall
model. The feminization of social work and rethinking of its
objectives around World War I led to the differentiation of Political
Economy from social work with the founding of the Department of Social
Work in 1914. As social work became a largely feminine discipline, as
it had elsewhere, its status at the University of Toronto was
reduced. These events help explain the politics of the social
sciences in Canada where the discipline of sociology, for example,
has been slow to develop.
Burke makes major contributions in this work to the history of social
thought in fully six areas of interest to scholars in Canada, the
United States and Britain. First, Burke contributes to our
understanding of the settlement movement specifically in each of the
above contexts as well as in a comparative sense. Second, Burke
contributes to the history of the professions and early development
of the social sciences in particular. This includes the
differentiation between political economy, political science,
economics, sociology and social work. The central advancement here is
in the discussion of the conflict between an emphasis on science and
empiricism and moral imperatives for social reform. Third, the gender
issues which are described provide an analysis of the way that the
prestige hierarchy of subjects and methods intersect with the gender
of the practioner. The feminine status of social work relegated it to
a semi-profession as it was feminized in status. Specifically this
sheds light on the Canadian context of Toronto where resistance to
feminization was bolstered by the "Toronto ideal." Fourth, the
role
of religion was central as evangelical Christian ideology was
confronted by the charity organization movement and middle class
idealism about social reform with its focus on empiricism and
scientism. Fifth, Burke contributes to the history of higher
education at the University of Toronto and also in the United States
and Britain in developing the intersection between charity, social
reform movements and university based social science research. This
involves the politics of fields of study and ideas which are
rearranged by each unique contextual configuration of individuals and
agendas. Finally, Burke contributes to the history of ideas and
biography. Her descriptions of individual actors in this story
illuminates not only the central figures of W. J. Ashley, John Mavor
and E. J. Erwick but Robert Falconer, Harold Innis and William Lyon
Mackenzie King, among others. This is a great book and a significant
contribution. It is highly recommended not only for those interested
in Canadian history but for its insights into events in Britain and
the United States as well.
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