Sadie American, Pioneer of Visual Sociology
...ss community organizer who served on over 100 civic boards and committees. Though she lacked the academic credentials of better-known colleagues Jane Addams, Edith Abbott and Sophonisba Breckinridge, Sadie nonetheless displayed the sociological imagination. Her concern and effort on behalf of immigrants brought public attention to immigrant problems that previously had been a series of private troubles. Modifications in the semiotic representation of the figure of the Devil in Recent Western History are examined. Drawing on the Symbolic Marxism of Michael Taussig and Fredric Jameson's Theory of Cognitive Mapping, it is argued that the collective representation of the Devil has covaried with the development and expansion of capitalism as a historical mode of production. Developing from its medieval depiction as a bestial alien-other to the modern Faustian image of an anthropomorphic deal maker, the devil has shifted in direct attunement to shifts in the character of capitalism. As Capitalism expands...