In its 1936 issue, Social Process in Hawaii published “The Taxi-Dance Hall in Honolulu,” a heavily redacted version of a 48-page paper (RASRL Box A-3, Folder 97) written by two undergraduates for an introductory sociology course. Writers Victoria Lord and Alice W. Lee tackled the topic with energy and enthusiasm: on-site visits to seven of…
In previous TL posts, we have considered—directly and indirectly—the role housing has played in the lives of UH students and the community at large. Earlier posts have discussed how students wrote about Chinatown and Kaka‘ako, neighborhoods that existed on the brink of poverty with poor housing stock and sometimes dire living conditions. Leading up to…
Through them long years I have served in college [Waiale‘e Industrial School for Boys]. What I learn from there was a crook life. This is a true story which I will confessed to it. I would like to said this, This little story might help you to keep your children safe at home (G.M., “A…
The information contained here has been the product of six months study of an isolated Hawaiian community in the Makiki Valley called Maunalaha. I have gained the information first hand by intimately associating with [the residents] and having the good fortune of being accepted as one of them. The members of the community were…
It is unusual that we can trace the path of an RASRL paper from inception to fruition. The papers usually exist sui generis without much context to provide clues as to their origin or production. In these posts we’ve tried to fill in information about the writers, the time period, places that are mentioned or other…
A previous post focused on the experiences of returning veterans as university students during the early post-World War II years. In this one, we look at the job experiences of civilians during the War, drawing from two subsets in the RASRL Collection. Some of the RASRL writers featured here entered the workforce right after high…
As our loyal readers know, in January 2017 we mounted an exhibit, Mapping the Territory: Maps and Papers from the Romanzo Adams Social Research Laboratory. This exhibit is our most recent project to explore and showcase the RASRL Collection and encourage others to use this unique resource. As it turns out, the exhibit also has…
“Residential Distribution of Public School Teachers, 1931-32” An article that appeared in the Honolulu Star-Bulletin on August 25, 1932 reported that “Teachers Live Away from Homes of School Children.” The article showed a chart that supported this gripping news and reported the following facts: The majority of teachers lived in Nu‘uanu, Makiki, Mānoa, Waikīkī and…
As featured in previous Thinking Locally posts, the morale diaries offer a rich accounting of civilian life from 1942 through 1944, and much of what the RASRL writers reported on was what they observed and overheard as they rode the buses. Among these entries is a remarkable paper that provides a detailed analysis of the…
Fewer than twenty women were surrounded by several dozen servicemen at this celebration – a party or a dance organized for members of the 33rd Infantry “Prairie Division.” Several of the girls look happy to be providing a pleasant diversion for the soldiers. Some are surrounded by several men, others stand off to the side.…
After December 7, 1941, the Sociology Department began to study the impact of the war with special funds allocated by UH’s Board of Regents (University of Hawaii Bulletin, The Report of the President for Fiscal Year July 1, 1942 to June 30, 1943, pp. 6-7). For Andrew Lind and Bernhard Hormann, UH sociologists, the goal…
Recently we came upon a small subset of materials in RASRL that is unlike the rest of the student work in the Collection. If these papers are in response to an assignment, it isn’t one we’d come across before. The authors don’t sound like undergraduates, and after reading thousands of papers we know what undergraduate…
Given the large number of student papers in RASRL, one might expect that a good share of them would be about education. After all, education was what brought RASRL faculty and students together. Yet only a handful of papers are about UH and none, in our search thus far, focuses on the public schools as…
Maps are an important part of the ephemera of the RASRL Collection. The maps were, as far as we know, created by students to accompany research papers. Sometimes there is a map with no paper; sometimes there is a paper with no map. Standing alone, then, they require interpretation and invite speculation about what they…
During the 1926-27 academic year, William Carlson Smith joined the UH faculty as a visiting member. Smith was a good fit for UH’s Sociology Department. In the 1920s, Smith worked as a researcher on the Survey of Race Relations with Robert Park investigating “relations between Orientals and whites on the Pacific Coast” (Tentative Findings of…
Bringing People, Places, and Events in Hawaiʻi’s past alive through text and media
Exploring and venting about quantitative issues
The Physician Wellness Movement and Illegitimate Authority: The Need for Revolt and Reconstruction
Gain Long-term Freedom From Addiction
Everyone lives in their own universe, welcome to mine
about Territorial Hawai‘i
the Story within the Story
Thinking Locally 