Dr. Ben Jordan - Modern Manhood and the BSA, Citizenship, Race, and the Environment, 1910-1930

[RememberSchiff]

His 2009 dissertation: (free ) . Very interesting read on James West, James Beard (zingers), patrol method, the Interracial Service, BSA early history, immigrants, minorities, urban vs rural, conservation/animal rights vs pioneering/scoutcraft...Good stuff.

https://escholarship.org/content/qt6s56c7cg/qt6s56c7cg_noSplash_adb0c60e663dce67efa6513d5571baa4.pdf

Subsequent book (2016?): Modern Manhood and the Boy Scouts of America

In this illuminating look at gender and Scouting in the United States, Benjamin René Jordan examines how in its founding and early rise, the Boy Scouts of America (BSA) integrated traditional Victorian manhood with modern, corporate-industrial values and skills. While showing how the BSA Americanized the original British Scouting program, Jordan finds that the organization’s community-based activities signaled a shift in men’s social norms, away from rugged agricultural individualism or martial primitivism and toward productive employment in offices and factories, stressing scientific cooperation and a pragmatic approach to the responsibilities of citizenship.

By examining the BSA’s national reach and influence, Jordan demonstrates surprising ethnic diversity and religious inclusiveness in the organization's founding decades. For example, Scouting officials’ preferred urban Catholic and Jewish working-class immigrants and "modernizable" African Americans and Native Americans over rural whites and other traditional farmers, who were seen as too "backward" to lead an increasingly urban-industrial society. In looking at the revered organization’s past, Jordan finds that Scouting helped to broaden mainstream American manhood by modernizing traditional Victorian values to better suit a changing nation.

https://uncpress.org/book/9781469627663/modern-manhood-and-the-boy-scouts-of-america/

https://flexpub.com/preview/modern-manhood-and-the-boy-scouts-of-america

[MattR]

I've only read the introduction so far. My first impression is that, for the majority of issues, nothing has changed, at all. It's the same arguments about program, council, national, parents that "Molly coddle" their kids, "the good ol days" when kids were self reliant, struggle with incorporating minority immigrants and more. 1920 and 2020 look surprisingly similar.

It might have some good insights into how to move forward with less national resources as they had little.

Only warning: this is a real thesis and not a scouter U thesis.