American Sociological Association
| Formation | January 1, 1905 |
|---|---|
| Headquarters |
1430 K Street Washington, D.C. |
|
2015 President
|
Paula England |
| Website | www |
The American Sociological Association (ASA), founded in 1905 as the American Sociological Society, is a non-profit organization dedicated to advancing the discipline and profession of sociology. Most members work in academia, but about 20% work in government, business, or non-profit organizations.
The ASA holds its own annual academic conference, the American Sociological Association Annual Meeting. The 103rd ASA Annual Meeting in Boston in August 2008 attracted 5,458 attendees. ASA publishes several academic journals. The best known is the American Sociological Review and the newest one is Contexts, a magazine designed to share sociology with other fields and the public. In 2010, ASA's membership went beyond 14,000 and consists of various sociology-related professionals: academics (professors, students, researchers) as well as other practitioners. ASA currently is the largest professional association of sociologists in the world, even larger than the International Sociological Association.
The mission of the ASA is to advance sociology as a scientific discipline and as a profession serving the public good.
The American Sociological Association was founded in December 1905 at Johns Hopkins University by a group of fifty people. The first president of the association was Lester Frank Ward.
The American Sociological Association is governed by a code of ethics and ethical standards. In 1970, the first ASA code of ethics was written. Since 1970, the code of ethics has been revised. The Committee on Professional Ethics worked to write this code and upon completing and approving it in 1997, the code focused on three goals. These three goals were to make the code more educative, accessible, easier to use, and more helpful for sociologists to understand ethical issues.
In 1993, then-doctoral student Rik Scarce was jailed for more than five months as a result of following the ASA's code of ethics. Scarce's Ph.D. research was on the radical environmental movement. Based on an FBI investigation of an Animal Liberation Front break-in, federal prosecutors argued in court that Scarce may have engaged in conversations with individuals believed to be involved with the incident. Prosecutors demanded that Scarce testify to a federal grand jury about those conversations, but Scarce refused to answer three dozen questions, citing the ASA Code of Ethics and the First Amendment as his reasoning for remaining unresponsive. Scarce's refusal to answer resulted in a contempt of court citation and 159 days spent in jail. He was never suspected of wrongdoing and—in keeping with contempt of court practice—he was never read his Miranda rights, arrested, or tried.
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