What We Cannot See

Betty and Al Lee initiated the founding of the Society for the Study of Social Problems (SSSP) 75 years ago and the Association for Humanist Sociology 50 years ago. The political and conceptual changes in sociology and American society bracketed between 1951 and 1976 as well as the change in the direction of change with the advent and reformulations of neo-liberalism over the last 50 years allows us to appreciate the prescience of the Lees. Raymond Williams concept of a structure of feeling suggests ways creative minds can capture in their imagination the urgency of what remains unsaid in one’s own historical time. None of us can see the future in the way that Asimov’s fictional “psychohistorian,” Hari Seldon, could predict it; perhaps, though, from the vantage point of humanist sociology, we can discern vacancies in our present and gather tools for its making.