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Tins paper is intended as an effort at taking-stock of the reference group concept after nearly three decades of use, the latter two of which have been marked by its more than ample employment. Its popularity indeed has so frequently led to its serving as an all-purpose post hoc explanation of behavior that it has led to the wry definition, "Your reference group is a group that you behave like and you behave like them because they're your reference group" (Cohen, 1962: 104). The inconsistencies, lack of clarity, but also areas of agreement which have marked the varied formulations of the concept, will be apparent from the following review and commentary. The Final discussion indicates some of the matters still to be considered in the use of thin important but perhaps overworked concept. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper seeks to outline and evaluate Pierre Bourdieu's work as it has appeared most recently in feminist studies and the field of gender and education. In particular, it suggests ways in which Bourdieu's theoretical insights could be seen to more effectively contribute to cutting edge debates in both social theory and feminist thought regarding concepts such as agency, identity and domination. It also argues that a more creative and empirical engagement with the recent work of Bourdieu, alongside an interdisciplinary reading of more recent cultural and social theories of power, would be a fruitful way forward in advancing a feminist sociology of education. In the present historical moment and against the tide of postmodern and post-structuralist feminist accounts, Bourdieu is often read as a determinist who has little to offer contemporary feminist debates or who argues that masculine domination is too tightly woven to social practices of a given field. In short, this paper argues that such a view is not only a misreading of Bourdieu's work on fundamental theoretical grounds, but fails to acknowledge the ways in which his more recent work on masculinity addresses both the cultural and social conditions underlying contemporary forms of symbolic domination. In short, the paper argues that Bourdieu's theory offers an analytical breadth and range beyond the scope of anything that a normative, liberal account of masculine domination could provide. Yet, in drawing from such diversity, Bourdieu's oeuvre is able to resist incomprehensibility. It stands as a highly focused, realistic and generative attempt ( McNay, 1999 ; McLeod, 2004 ) to chart the problems of subordination, differentiation and hierarchy, and to expose the possibilities, as well as the limits, of gendered self-hood. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper argues that the question of knowledge needs to be reconceptualised if sociology is to make its potential contribution to current debates about the curriculum. It begins with a review of the dominant assumptions underlying contemporary curriculum policy: neo-conservative traditionalism and technical-instrumentalism. It then examines the relativist position on knowledge that follows from the postmodernist critiques that have recently come to dominate social theory, particularly in the sociology of education. The paper argues that, in different ways, each of these approaches avoids the question of knowledge and hence leaves unresolved epistemological and educational dilemmas. In the final section, the paper draws on recent research in the sociology of science to develop what is referred to as a social realist approach to knowledge and explores its implications both for the curriculum and the claims that we are entering a 'knowledge society'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper outlines the difficulties in conceptualising and presenting research, in particular doctoral work in education, in the current climate of intellectual theorising. It argues that many researches experience a phenomenon described in the paper as 'post-modernist tension' when trying to write in an atmosphere of theoretical and methodological uncertainty. The author elaborates the 'symptoms' of post-modernist tension, and makes a critique of some elements of contemporary social theorising. Nevertheless, the author acknowledges the usefulness of contemporary social theory in challenging traditional research, despite its density and inaccessibility to many researchers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents several papers related developments in economics as realist social theory. According to the author, social theory expressly committed to work out the nature of social being, and, or how people access social reality is going through something of a revival in economics. The papers presented, provide numerous results, arguments, conjectures, and critiques have been produced in recent years, and aim to take some of these specific developments further. Context of the papers and basic ideas and results are presented.

Ordinarily an anniversary occasions the reification of an artificial period. In this case however, there is a certain juncture in the history of the point of view which makes of the past quarter-century something worthy of consideration for symbolic interactionism as well as for our celebration of the founding of the Midwest Sociological Society. The year 1937 lies virtually in the middle of a four-year period which saw the publication of Mind, Self, and Society, Movements of Thought in the Nineteenth Century, and The Philosophy of the Act. It would represent the greatest naiveté to suggest that thus the year 1937 represented the introduction of symbolic interactionism. We are all aware of the long development: from James, Baldwin, and Cooley to Thomas, Faris, Dewey, Blumer, and Young. Even the Tardean imitation and suggestion which underlay Ross's Social Psychology contributed a good deal ordinarily not credited to him in the development of interaction theory. Nor is it the fact that Mead represents the fullest development of the orientation that makes so significant the posthumous publication of his works (for which we may conveniently take 1937 as an anchoring point). Mead's ideas had been known for a very long time. He had taught University of Chicago students from 1893 to 1931. His notions were bruited about in classes and seminars wherever there were professors conducting them who had studied at the University of Chicago—not least in the great heartland included in the Mid-west of our Society. Some of Mead's students had published their versions of his ideas or quotations from some of his philosophical papers—Kimbali Young's Source Book in Social Psychology of a decade earlier contained a paper by Mead, and his Social Psychology bore the strong imprint of Meadian interactionism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For the St. Louis meeting of the Midwest Sociological Society, the author organized a special session to reflect on the particular sociological tradition associated with Washington University, with a particular focus on Alvin Gouldner's work. From that session came this symposium, for which various papers presented were developed into articles. The session and these articles raise important issues for what they tell us both about Gouldner's work and about where sociology is as a discipline today. Among these issues are (1) the optimistic quest for objective value-free knowledge positivism entailed in the past versus a self-reflexive quest for knowledge that entails a tragic acceptance of its limits at presents, (2) the effort to distinguish social theory from sociology, ideology, and politics, with all of whom it overlaps as they strive to be both social diagnosis and social therapy, (3) the production of knowledge as dependent both on the lived experiences that shape our biographies and on the intellectual influences available in the local settings where we work, (4) the effort to warn us against the various accesses to which our disciplinary and personal commitments give way, and (5) the role social theory can play as a search light that illuminates our way in the darkness of the empirical world in which we live, while it simultaneously casts a shadow. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is a response to articles by Shilling and Abraham, which were concerned with the relationship between Giddens' structuration meta-theory, differentiation-polarization theory, and positivism. Despite their conflicting conclusions, both authors criticize my reconstruction of differentiation-polarization theory, and I try to clarify the nature of that reconstruction and the theory it represents. It seems to me that these articles display misunderstandings of, and unwarranted prejudice against, positivism; though they are of course by no means alone in this. I suggest that while the sort of debate in which these authors engage is welcome, there needs to be a more open-minded approach towards the theoretical and methodological resources available to sociologists of education, including those frequently dismissed as positivist. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is a response to Professor K. Swanwick's critique of our sociological perspective on music education. A detailed presentation of the sociology of music thesis demonstrates that accusations of 'social determinism' and 'referentialism' are both misconceived Moreover, Swanwick's position leads to difficulties in his approach to music aesthetics, where at times he makes assumptions concerning the work of theorists such as Meyer and Keil which these authors have themselves explicitly repudiated We then relate certain observations which Swanwick's makes concerning the processes of schooling to wider sociological theories of schooling that help make sense of the kinds of constraints Swanwick's correctly identifies Finally, we accept Swanwick's challenge to be more explicit concerning both our response to his charge of relativism and our practical recommendations for the reform of music teaching. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper describes the nature of critical theory, its historical development, its connections to sociology and Marxism, and the central debates over its core ideas. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Within the growing number of analysts who employ the world system perspective on national development, theoretical disagreements have evolved which may only be settled by examination of available data. Using an adaptation of the network metaphor, this paper blockmodels the world trade system in order (1) to demonstrate a single mode of international exchange in the world system instead of the competing capitalist and communist modes proposed by some, and (2) to illustrate the unique position of the middle level of nations in a three tier world system—a position sometimes denied. Implications for the competing world system theories and world development itself are presented. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Karl Marx's sociology has been interpreted incorrectly as the consequence of the application of a "dialectical" method to social phenomenon. In this paper, I discuss his actual method of theory construction (a rather more complicated phenomenon than the simple reversal of the Hegelian dialectic), the Ricardian method of successive approximations. This method involves three steps or stages—observation, model formation, and model testing and revision. Marx's Capital is reviewed in the light of his use of this method. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper suggests possible implications of a study of clothing fashion leadership for current sociological theory in regard to the process of fashion diffusion. Theory of the diffusion of innovations was chosen as the framework for the investigation. Fashion innovativeness and fashion opinion leadership were studied in relation to selected social, psychological, and economic variables. Since the test of collective selection occurs in the local social system it would seem appropriate that theories regarding the operation of the fashion process account more fully for the rate and degree of acceptance and rejection of innovations in the local social system, and for the functions of local participants in the process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Theorizing in economics is often associated with some form of individualism. This paper considers the nature of this association in the work of Carl Menger. I adopt this focus not only because of continuing interest in Menger's work, but because recent developments in social theory facilitate a fruitful reevaluation of his general position. I argue that a convincing link between theory and individualism is absent in Menger's work. Moreover, I argue that the various criticisms often made of his work actually relate to the ideas which underlie his individualism rather than, as is usually supposed, those arising from an adherence to a form of Aristotelianism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Interest in the diffusion of innovations has, in the last twenty years, produced a plethora of research findings, which have been summarized by a number of writers (e.g., Lionberger, 1960; Rogers, 1962, 1967 and 1968; Katz et al., 1963; Jones, 1967; Bohlen, 1064). However, these summaries are basically taxonomic and programmatic rather than theoretic in nature. As the paucity of theoretical work in diffusion studies has been well recognized (cf. Bogers, 1962:300; Robinson and Bailey, 1965:332), there exists a real need for us to search for a general theory pertinent to this field. The aim of the present paper is to discuss a recurrent theme running through many diffusion studies, namely the old concept of adopter-innovation compatibility, and to show how this concept looms as highly suggestive of its utility as a theoretical approach to the studies in the diffusion of innovations and social change. The notion of adopter-innovation compatibility has been utilized in recent diffusion research in two general ways: explicitly and implicitly. We shall therefore discuss first these two different modes in which it has been used and then its implications as a general theory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is intended as an effort at taking stock of the reference group concept after three decades of use in sociological research. The inconsistencies and some areas of agreement shared by social scientists are presented. Throughout its history, the phenomena of the reference group have been described by the idea of social groups, namely in-groups and out-groups, primary groups and significant others. The crucial problem in the reference group theory is stated as that of "ascertaining how a person defines such a situation, which perspective he uses in arriving in a definition, and who constitutes the audience whose responses provide the necessary confirmation and support for his position." The value of the reference group concept in specifying the types of others "represents a vast simplification and fairly sharp specification of the idea of the other" and the idea that groups other than one's own may serve to shape one's frame of reference is economically articulated by the concept.

The present paper began with an attempt to formalize the Davis-Moore functional theory of social stratification. It was found that the theory could be represented by a static model consisting of two algebraic equations with appropriate constraints on the functions. Then the tools of path analysis were used to evaluate the empirical adequacy of the Davis-Moore and Parsonian functional theories of social stratification as representations of cultural beliefs about stratification. Because of the likely presence of measurement and sampling errors, it was impossible to reject definitely either of the models. However, the estimated path coefficients were more consistent with the Parsonian theory than the Davis-Moore theory. This led to an inquiry into the conditions under which one model would be a better representation than the other. It was argued that the Davis-Moore scheme would provide a more accurate representation of cultural beliefs under conditions of high organizational interdependence whereas the Parsonian framework would give a better representation under conditions of low interdependence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article focuses on an article by Hugh Dalziel Duncan, which discussed the uses and misuses of Max Weber's types of legitimationin American sociology. The author of this article said that he delivered a critical paper on the social theory of Talcott Parsons, the substance of which was a rather stern injunction for him to realize that social action was better conceived of as symbolic interaction, and that man's propensity for selection and creativeness made social process out of what he thought was social system. Since the true breadth of Duncan's theoretical perspective may unwittingly have been obscured by a rather heavily developed critique of Parsons, it might be pointed out that at a time when the social organizational and social psychological dimensions of our field are increasingly subject to disparate analysis, Duncan's function has been to mount a campaign for their reintegration through an expanded and improved synmbolic interaction approach.

It has been almost twenty years since Davis and Moore published their famed theory of stratification. During this period, the discussions which it has engendered have been numerous and highly instructive. It is now time to address ourselves to problems which concern the testability of the theory and its experimental validity. This paper reports the results of an empirical study of one of the basic issues raised by Davis and Moore. A major proposition of their theory argues that in the final analysis, social stratification arises in a society because of differential rewards for performance in the social positions therein. These rewards can be of several types. For our purposes, two are of major importance: symbolic and economic rewards, hereafter referred to as "prestige" and "reward. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]