Research by Bureaucracy: Hattie Plum Williams and the National Commission on Law Observance and Enforcement, 1929-1931

This paper explores the bureaucratized research activities (1929-1931) of the National Commission on Law Observance and Enforcement (NCLOE) from the perspective of Hattie Plum Williams' sociobiographical experience. Williams was a doctoral student of George E. Howard and earned her Ph.D. in 1915 — the first doctorate in sociology awarded by the University of Nebraska. That same year, she joined the Nebraska faculty and eventually became Chair of the Department (1922-1928).2 In 1931, at age 53, this fuU professor was called upon be an unpaid fieldworker, gathering data accord ing to rigid protocols stipulated by the NCLOE. Archival reconstruction of Williams' "view from the bottom" of the university and NCLOE bureauc racies is the special focus of this paper. This perspective purposefully opens the disciplinary record to examine a neglected woman's work in sociology (Long 1987). Max Weber (1958) astutely saw that bureaucratic organization gives maximum instrumentality to occupants of top positions in hierarchical structures. Universities and and national crime commissions are not exempt from this insight. Weber also asserted that modern bureaucracies move increasingly toward legal-rational norms of conduct. Rosabeth Moss Kanter (1979) observes, however, that Weber's thesis was true for men but not for women. Women in bureaucracies, she demonstrated, were more likely to be treated under paternal norms. This result is doubly problematic for women scholars conducting sociological investigations in large, patriarchal, bureaucratically-organized universities. Hierarchical structures shape not only their day-to-day ex perience as researchers, but also pattern the subsequent historical accounts (if any) of their scholarly labors. Too frequently, women's experiences in educational bureaucracies and the published disciplinary accounts of their work — follow anything but legal-rational norms. The story of Hattie Plum Williams' efforts on behalf of the NCLOE is a dramatic illustration of burcaucratically-generated slights and inequities in the everyday lives of many women sociologists.