Wisdom In The Heartland Institute - USA, Inc.

Booneville Avenue looking south from downtown Springfield, Missouri.  Although it looks like a photo that might have been taken during the Coronavirus lockdown, it was actually taken in 2014. So much of the Midwest has a look of abandonment. However, that might be explained from the nature of wide open spaces and a big, generous sky.

This website is a revision of an older version which was in need of updating even before the world turned itself upside down on the appearance of what is called a “novel Coronavirus.” The point now is to reintroduce the enterprise “WITHIN-USA” – Wisdom in the Heartland Institute intended as a vehicle to bring the study and appreciation of sociology to a wider audience. That most Americans are unaware of the contributions made to sociology by American scholars, past or present, is a fact easily demonstrated by asking any random individual to name an American sociologist. Only those who have had some formal academic experience with the discipline as high school or university students could likely answer such a question.

Sociology has evolved during the development of world civilization in every corner of the globe. WITHIN-USA takes as its intellectual task the raising of awareness here in the United States to the discipline of sociology and the particularly American contributions to it. There is an irony in the anonymity of American sociology at this historical moment, as so many elements of American social life become unsettled. Enormous social and economic inequalities; harsh political differences; racial and ethnic tensions – all are playing out against the demands of the chaotic health crisis of the Coronavirus and the bitterly fought Presidential election.

The Heartland

The Heartland is an invented space, an imaginary location. Every nation has its heartland; every person as well. It is indescribable, indefinable. The genius of America has been its capacity to continuously reinvent the Heartland. It is no geographic center. No creed or dogma envelopes it. No group owns it. Its vibrancy and movement have percolated to every corner of this land. It finds sympathy with Heartlands outside its borders. It is a form of wisdom. The project of the Institute is to place the discipline of sociology on the map of the Heartland.