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This study addresses the personal and familial consequences associated with the worker displacement that followed the closing of the Bridegstone/Firestone tire production plant in Decatur, Illinois, in December of 2001. A series of three surveys were sent to the last known addresses of all former Firestone workers. The first was sent immediately after the closure of the Decatur plant; the others went out six months and one year later. The surveys solicited job search information as well as personal and familial costs associated with the plant closing. Focus group interviews were held throughout the year and provided a rich context for the survey data. The results of this two-pronged approach reveal the human costs faced by displaced workers. I argue that economic development plans need to prioritize enhancing worker productivity through ongoing training programs and prioritize direct assistance of displaced and dislocated workers and their families. I conclude with recommendations about how to diminish the burdens on displaced workers.

In this paper, we maintain that sociologists should deliberately teach social responsibility as a means of fulfilling the promise that C. Wright Mills envisioned. A key aspect of the sociological imagination includes a sense of social responsibility, but that aspect is best learned through a combination of experience and academic knowledge. Students gain the fullest sense of the sociological imagination, one that includes social responsibility, when they are able to have encounters and experiences that challenge their pre-existing world-views and allow them to see first-hand the sociological concepts they learn in the classroom. Further, we argue that teaching social responsibility is appropriate because it has deep roots in the discipline. We identify the origins of the active learning model in sociological theory and provide examples of the ways in which social responsibility is realized through service learning experiences of our students.