Western Illinois University

A Foundation for Sustainable Rural Community Development

Ezra Dwight Sanderson

Rural Sociologist

Dwight Sanderson (1878-1944) was born in Olio, MI. He graduated from Michigan State College at age 19 and received his B.S. in agriculture at Cornell a year later in 1898.

Like Charles Josiah Galpin and others of their generation, Sanderson “drifted” into rural sociology from another field after twenty years of study, teaching, administration, and publishing in entomology and zoology. He went from a fellowship in sociology at Chicago to Cornell as professor of rural sociology in 1918. Except for time in Chicago in 1921 to pursue his Ph.D., Sanderson continued at Cornell until his retirement and death in 1944.

In the tradition of other rural life advocates who were born in the Midwest and spent their lives in the East, Sanderson maintained an abiding interest in rural life. He was vice president of the American Country Life Association in 1919 and was president in 1938. He pioneered in rural sociology, serving as the first president of the Rural Sociological Society in 1938. He was the thirty-second president of the American Sociological Association in 1942. In his earlier career, Sanderson was recognized as an American entomologist; he also was president of the American Association of Economic Entomologists in 1910.

On the way to his twenty-five years as professor of rural sociology and department head at Cornell University, Sanderson had been successful in research, teaching, and administration in agricultural education in state college and experiment stations. After graduating from Cornell in 1898 he went to Maryland Agricultural College as assistant state entomologist. In 1899, he became entomologist at Delaware Agricultural Experiment Station, where he remained until 1902, when he became entomologist of the State of Texas and professor of entomology in the Texas Agricultural and Mechanical College. Then in 1904, he became professor of zoology at New Hampshire College, now the University of New Hampshire; in 1907, he became director of its Agricultural Experiment Station. In 1910, Sanderson became dean of the West Virginia College of Agriculture and director of the Agricultural Experiment Station, where he remained until 1915.

Sanderson spent 1916 and 1917 at the University of Chicago as a fellow in the Department of Sociology. His move to sociology flowed from his many activities in agricultural colleges. As a college of agriculture dean with a new and expanding experiment station, it did not take him long to move into the field of human relationships and leadership; nor did it take him long to apply the scientific methods used in zoology to rural communities. Besides his work in entomology, he contributed much to rural sociology, including a number of books, about forty main articles and book reviews, and extension bulletins.

Works by Dwight Sanderson

  • 1917. “The Teaching of Rural Sociology: Particularly in the Land-Grant Colleges and Universities.” The American Journal of Sociology 22 no. 4. (January 1917): 433:60.
  • 1920. “Democracy and Community Organization. Papers and Proceedings. Fourteenth Annual Meeting of the American Sociological Association. V. 14 The Problem of Democracy, p. 83-93. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. (Accessed: October 8, 2008).
  • 1922. The Farmer and His Community. New York: Harcourt, Brace, and Co. (Accessed: October 8, 2008).
  • 1927. Farm Income and Farm Life. New York: American Country Life Association (published by University of Chicago Press).
  • 1932. The Rural Community: The Natural History of a Sociological Group. Boston: Ginn and Company.
  • 1939. Rural Community Organization. New York: J. Wiley and Sons.
  • 1940. Leadership for Rural Life. New York: Association Press.
  • 1942. Rural Sociology and Rural Social Organization. New York: J. Wiley and Sons.

Recommended Resource

  • “Dwight Sanderson.” American Sociological Association. (Accessed: July 23, 2008).