Abstract
We still aren’t entirely sure how they did it. The building of the pyramids, I mean. Neither are we sure of the technologies used over 4,000 years ago to raise 500 ton obelisks to a vertical stance. Theories abound, but much of the specific knowledge has so far been lost to history.
Though some knowledge is lost inadvertently, some of the most heinous sins of humankind has been the willful destruction of knowledge by outsiders who feel a different society has nothing to offer, or worse; that the knowledge is necessarily evil. The world still laments the burning of the library in Alexandria almost 2000 years later. In the midst of a smallpox outbreak in Boston in 1721, Cotton Mather’s new knowledge of the power of inoculation was rejected by doctors and clergy alike because Mather had learned of this practice from a slave he had named Onesimus. They insisted that outbreaks were evidence of God’s judgment on the immoral, in which humans should not interfere. In the early 1500s, Jesuit priests burned virtually all of the Aztec books known as codices to destroy obviously “evil” knowledge and encourage conversion to Christianity. The knowledge of a civilization contained in the codices may never be recovered. Ignored for centuries, scientists today are still learning of the medicinal purposes of various plants from the indigenous peoples of the Americas. Also close to home, the entire U.S. Library of Congress went up in flames in 1814; a retaliation by the British for U.S. forces having burned their parliament buildings in York during the war of 1812. The 1976 voyage of Hokule’a from Hawaii to Tahiti impressed upon the world the sophistication of tribal global navigation technologies wrought by reading the stars.
Where would we be as a species if we had continued to accumulate knowledge and learn from each other instead of so often ignoring or destroying it? One can get an idea of how much we’ve stunted our collective growth by examining the stunning amount of technological advancement over the past 200 years when people in various countries began to more intentionally store and share knowledge. I do not mean to imply here that all technological advancement is necessarily positive. Indeed, I would argue that most technologies are morally benign. The same nuclear fusion technologies that produce energy have also been used to create some of the most feared weapons of mass destruction on the planet. The sheer accumulation of knowledge, however, is nothing short of remarkable.
Social science knowledge has also expanded. Despite Kuhnian-type arguments of all paradigms being equal, our knowledge of how to better the lives of individuals and collectivities continues to advance. In most countries today, we know that a simple social technology like queueing can reduce inequalities of distribution and the frustration (and potential violence) that other distribution technologies can elicit. It took the trampling deaths of 11 Cincinnati concert attendees at a Who concert in 1979 to illustrate the dangers of rush-seating over assigned seats. Despite its problems, Weber’s observation still stands that bureaucracy is perhaps modernity’s greatest innovation in coordinating the efforts of thousands toward a common goal. If that isn’t enough, the social sciences (and sociology in particular) has also produced its fair share of Marxian, Neitzchian, Foucauldian, deBoisian, and Butler-type voices that keep a razor-sharp eye tuned to potential adverse consequences of varying social structures and cultures.
If ethnocentrism was a threat to the accumulation of knowledge in the past, the anti-intellectual and anti-science movements of the present pose equally great obstacles today. I am not sure how to fully counter these forces, but I know that what we do here, in the Journal of Applied Social Science, is part of it. I deeply admire the painstaking way in which primary data are collected and collated into journals such as this one. Every piece of information potentially adds to what we cumulatively know about a topic. An author may feel their evaluation of a particular program at a particular time and place has limited generalizability, but a collection of evaluations on similar programs offers the promise of identifying processes that lead to better outcomes and ultimately, yes, even a better world.
It was that promise of making some kind of contribution to the repository of accumulated wisdom, no matter how modest, that long ago seduced me into studying at the graduate level. My idealism, though tempered, remains undiminished. My 1993 Ph.D. dissertation focused on comparing the relative performance of 50 for-profit and nonprofit child day care organizations in a laissez faire regulatory climate endorsed by a Conservative government in the province of Alberta, Canada. My research was soon featured in national and provincial documentaries on day care quality. A provincial government insider confided to me that my study had been influential in having the government set new regulations to help improve the situation. I learned first-hand how quality data could influence the world.
How pleased I was to find an organization like the Association of Applied and Clinical Sociology, the organization that sustains this journal. I made my first presentation at the Society for Applied Sociology (a forerunner to AACS) in 1996 and have continued to participate over the years. I had just moved to Ohio from Alberta when I received a call from Kent State University to cover the courses of an ailing Alex Boros. Despite health issues, Alex’s interest in the students didn’t wane. He checked in with me periodically to offer much-appreciated suggestions. A formative member of AACS, his contributions are kept alive through the annual Alex Boros award and through his influence on me as a young faculty member.
It was a few years after I arrived at the University of Tampa in 2005 that the sociology faculty decided to pursue CAPACS accreditation for our undergraduate program. CAPACS offers national accreditation for graduate and undergraduate programs in Applied Sociology. Just two of us were tenured or tenure-track faculty in the sociology department at the time, though we had an additional full-time faculty member in a full-time non-tenure track position. We earned CAPACS accreditation in 2012, and I’ve had the privilege of serving as Department Chair since 2016. Our program now has the largest number of majors in its history, with eight full-time faculty; four of whom are tenured or tenure-track. Since becoming accredited, we’ve dedicated our entire program to Applied Sociology and now offer both the B.A. and B.S. in Applied Sociology. Accreditation has had a very positive effect on improving the quality of our entire program. I say all this to state what I hope is obvious: there is a continued and growing interest in producing knowledge that helps create a better world.
If scientific knowledge is cumulative, so too are the efforts of editing a journal. I am deeply indebted to those who have served before in this capacity and especially to outgoing editor James Lee, who has made the transition easy. In fact, the efforts represented in this issue are his. I am delighted to begin this work with the very capable Janet Mancini Billson, Director of Group Dimensions International, serving as Managing Editor, and our seasoned Associate Editors John Glass of Collin College, and Miriam Boeri of Bentley University. Jammie Price remains Consulting Editor. I appreciate the team at Sage for working to bring me up to speed and look forward to continued cooperation. Accepting this position would not have been possible without the generous institutional support of the University of Tampa and especially our college Dean, Jack Geller. Finally, I look forward to working with and growing our editorial board, so do contact me if you have interest in serving as a reviewer.
We remain firmly committed to publishing high-quality studies by social science practitioners first and foremost, as well as academicians whose efforts focus on real-world improvements. Through both our individual and collective efforts, we stand ready to produce knowledge that can potentially improve well-being for all, one study at a time.