Sociologists and american prohibition: A study of early works in the american journal of sociology1895–1935

Sociology, since its inception, has regarded itself as an agency for investigating social change. Alcohol reform during American Prohibition has been studied from status-politics and politico-economic perspectives. This work delineates what sociologists of the early twentieth-century observed and wrote about the American experiment with Prohibition in the early American Journal of Sociology. Overall, these sociologist gave limited attention to Prohibition. Why AJS sociologists had so little to contribute can be understood by situating the answer in the early sociohistorical context of the social pathology perspective and the Chicago School of sociology. We live as did the ancients when their world was not yet disenchanted of its gods and demons, only we live in a different sense. —Weber¹ His interests are social deviance and social theory and include the role of the media in the American prohibition. The quote is from Max Weber’s essay “Science as Vocation” fromMax Weber: Essays in Sociology, edited and translated by H. H. Gerth and C. Wright Mills (1946, 148.) London: Oxford.