Search

The article studies relative deprivation and participation in the civil rights movement. The civil rights movement, like many social movements, incorporated several sub-movements which utilized different types of tactics. It incorporates a variety of different patterns. This paper explores the extent to which different patterns of relative deprivation may be differentially associated with a variety of movement tactics. Relative deprivation may be one state of mind which motivates participation in social movements. Reference group comparisons may result in feelings of either relative deprivation or relative satisfaction depending upon the reference group selected. It has been suggested that black participation in the civil rights movement was a consequence of an inability to achieve at a level commensurate with societally induced aspirations. Social movements undergo changes over time in terms of goals, tactics, population base contributing support, and reactions of the wider society. These variables influence participation. It may well be the case that different types of relative deprivation are associated with participation at different stages of a movement.

This paper has summarized a study of presidential prestige and has, through the systematic comparison of historians of differing political per- suasions, examined patterns of relationship between prestige and two dimensions of perceived presidential attitude. These patterns indicate that presidential prestige or greatness is associated with different characteristics of perceived presidential attitude among liberal and conservative historians. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents notes on a research paper related to the analysis of public policy in the U.S. According to the author, this recent analysis is a most useful and needed clarification of a very emotion charged issue within the social sciences. In this study the researcher identifies a certain dialectical process which takes place between paradigms, as perceptions of social problems in terms of Paradigm II are translated into actions which fit the available technology of Paradigm I, and then lose their effectiveness by blaming the victim. The difficulty for the program planner or administrator is that there is no acceptable institutionalized thought structure, specifically, there is no belief-value system on which to base action within the second paradigm. Something more is involved than finding a satisfactory belief-value basis with which to induce a large qualitative change in social structure. The author remarks that within political science the challenge to empiricism for its own sake has been clearly made on the precise ground that much of its research outcomes are socially irrelevant.