Search

This article discusses changing patterns of rural organization. There are many different approaches possible for a summary of a congress. The first design which will be used is to study a general hypothesis based on the sociologist R.K. Merton's comparison between European and American research technique in the sociology of knowledge. It seems as if one of the most important tasks in science is to study repeatedly the reliability and the validity of the empirical findings, in order to construct a coherent theoretical building. This means that the same hypothesis has to be tested several times at different places and at different points of time. It might be a very stimulating task for the European Society for Rural Sociology to further such a cumulative work. There has not either been very much discussion of how to study the consequences of a change. Especially the nonintended consequences are of great interest for a rural sociologist and have great practical importance. A final aspect in connection with change is the study of social processes. The necessity of analyzing the socio-cultural linkage has already been emphasized.

The sociology departments in the Nordic countries provide the institutional platform for Nordic Sociology and for the Nordic national sociological associations that form the Scandinavian Sociological Association. This paper focuses on journal articles produced by current (as of 1 January 2001) faculty of 16 of these Nordic Sociology departments in the period 1981-2000. First, we provide a brief overview of article productivity and citations to articles produced in this period by country and department. Second, we estimate a multilevel model of citation patterns by articles published, the academic position and productivity of each author, and the structure and productivity of each department as a whole. Third, we test the extent to which the effects of such factors differ between departments and individuals. In all departments, publications in high-impact journals increase the number of citations to any given article, to other work of the same author, and to the work of other faculty in the department. The effect of publishing in high-impact journals differs significantly between individual authors, and work in certain types of journals yields more citations than the journal impact factor would predict. We argue that departmental affiliations with outside faculty and departmental productivity can be seen as a form of social capital that benefits both individuals and departments as a whole. These findings strongly suggest that diversity is a defining characteristic of this sociological community, precluding monolithic definitions of Nordic sociology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article is based on the idea that the problem of unity or integration of modern society has not yet been solved in sociological theory. The paper attempts a new solution based on a creative synthesis of elements from Talcott Parsons' functionalism, rational choice theory, and Niklas Luhmann's new systems theory. The core idea is that the state and the political sphere work together as an integrating centre of modern societies. Present approaches understand the political allocation of resources either as an exchange process or as solidarity caused by internalized social norms. None of them embodies a concept of collective rationality; therefore they cannot give a dynamic account of the public allocation of collective goods. This dichotomy of individual rationality and norm-guided behaviour will be produced and reproduced on the level of general theory in the discussion on the problem of order or collective action as long as sociology is founded on the assumption that society is made up of individual human beings and their actions. However, by replacing action with Luhmann's concept of communication and rethinking collective action within this new framework, it becomes possible to develop a concept of collective rationality. This new conceptualization is used to clear up problems and overcome shortcomings in Luhmann's own theory of modern society as functionally differentiated. Observed as a consequence of action, function is collective action. A solution to the problem of collective action or social order is found with the emergence of rational solidarity as a medium that symbolizes the difference between individual and collective rationality as a unity: one should sacrifice individual opportunities to achieve collective goals and solve problems for the society to which one belongs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The widespread existence of political passivity and apathy among the citizens of the democratic nations is deeply disturbing to many people. The concept of an enlightened citizenry exercising its franchise in pursuit of its rights and interests is so basic to the theory of the democratic state that the flagrant failure of a sizeable portion of the electorate in Western societies even to take the trouble to vote appears to challenge the essential validity of the ideology of popular government. Most of what people know about the passive citizen comes from studies of the vote and most of this information comes from election statistics. Evidence from many different countries has given a general picture of the sociological characteristics. When people seek to understand the motivational situation, which underlies political passivity, they feel the need of information going beyond their knowledge of the sociological characteristics of non-voters. Knowing a person's social status, people can infer something about the political forces that may be acting on him, but this is only moderately satisfying. Psychological analysis requires an understanding both of the person and the psychological world around him. Sociologist Kurt Lewin originally stated the proposition that behavior depends on the state of the person and his environment. In order to understand or to predict behavior, the person and his environment have to be considered as one constellation of interdependent factors. The bulk of this paper is devoted to a consideration of those characteristics of the person and his environment, which may be thought to underlie political passivity.

Among Nordic social scientists during the postwar period, Stein Rokkan made the clearly most important contribution to comparative historical sociology. This article distinguishes three phases of his work: a phase of early experiences in the 1950s, followed by two mature phases in the 1960s and 1970s. In both these phases Rokkan wanted to explain the diversity of European political systems, but in the second mature phase he developed a much broader framework to analyse the economic, territorial and cultural contexts of Europe's political developments. The methodology of his conceptual maps and his model of Europe is discussed in some detail. It is argued that in his mature work, Rokkan increasingly departed both from variables-oriented sociology and mainstream positivist methodology. The notion of theory implied by his mature work corresponds best to the notion found among critics of variables-oriented sociology, and it converges with the notions of grounded theory and thick description as developed in interactionist schools of sociology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sociologist Seymour M. Lipset reports that a Swedish newspaper editor recently told him that politics in Sweden is boring. The transformation of politics from vivid clashes over ideology to what some people consider a dull, technical discussion about means for promoting goals questioned by none is reported to take place not only in Sweden but in the other Scandinavian countries as well. This process is often referred to as the depoliticization of politics. Depoliticization then seems to imply a transformation of political ideologies into a set of more or less distinct administrative technologies based on a widespread consensus as to what kind of goal one should try to attain. Even if ideological differences are not wiped out altogether ideological differences are de-emphasized in a depoliticized political community. A decreasing ideological saliency is an important aspect of so-called depoliticization. It is in this sense is often supposed to cause a decline of subjective involvement in political affairs. Subjective involvement in political affairs will probably not be reduced throughout the citizenry when ideological saliency becomes less manifest. Much will depend on the ideological style of individual citizens and of their immediate environments, and on the "goodness of fit" of individual and environmental ideological styles. Only if there is a less good fit between individual and environmental ideological styles do people suspect a decline of political involvement.

Harriet Holter was ahead of her time, and influenced heavily all the research areas she ventured into, such as sex roles, family, sexualized violence, resistance to knowledge and gender perspectives on research and politics. In this article these contributions are presented, illustrated and discussed. It is further argued that the explanation for her particular voice and outstanding contribution to sociology and women's research can be found in her interdisciplinary background, her generation-gendered experiences, her siding with the oppressed and her ways of collaborating intellectually. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article traces the influence of sociologist Edward Westermarck on the development of sociology. When the first commercial edition of his doctorate thesis--much enlarged by the inclusion of numerous empirical examples was published in 1891, it immediately became a best-seller, a scientific sensation of almost the same order as the Kinsey Report fifty years later. From the very beginning Westermarck was convinced that the emotions which help to maintain the norms which express them moral ideas of a society, developed through man's struggle for survival: through some kind of natural selection they had evolved in a fasion similar to the human genotype. What Westermarck tried to in The History of the Human Marriage was first to prove that the promiscuity hypothesis could not be true and secondly to describe and analyse the multiform ideas and habits which were connected with human sexuality, marriage and family. In most of Westermarck's books there are occasional asides about how he went about collecting his data. When Westermark began his academic studies in 1881, there was not a single university where sociology was taught as an academic subject. At an early state in his scholarly development he became convinced that no normative ethic could be constructed unless it was known which acts people regarded as moral and which they regarded as immoral.

One aspect of urban society which has always interested urban sociologists is the spatial pattern of the urban community. First, interest concentrated on the distribution of various kinds of problem cases. Maps showing the positions of cases were prepared. Rather soon the varying density of population was considered and rates of cases to the population under risk were computed. In discussing and explaining the variation of the rates, the distributions of other phenomena, i.e., other ecological variables, were introduced and studied. Similarities and differences were shown cartographically and the degree of similarity of spatial distribution was also measured as a correlation. Eventually rather many variables got involved in the analysis. The focal interest no longer was so exclusively on the problem cases but transferred also to the other descriptive or explanatory variables. These, however, were often rather similarly distributed. Some urban sociologists, have kept a keen interest in the single variables and explore causal relationships between then without assuming common factors to explain correlations between the variables.

This article focuses on practical use of sociological knowledge. A scientist can aid a decision maker by providing one of the several ingredients out of which decisions are made: knowledge. He is competent by his training to provide this. But he is not particularly competent to make the decision itself; nothing in a sociologists's training has qualified him in any special way for such a task. Of course, one makes many decisions in the course of scientific work, decisions about methods, data, inferences, conclusions, and so forth. The interesting fact about these decisions is that they involve only modest risks and that these risks are borne by the scientist alone. If a wrong decision is made and a scientific mistake is published, the worst that can happen is that someone points out the error in subsequent publication and the erring scientist stands corrected. This may be embarrassing and hurt one's professional reputation a little, but usually the scientist still has his job and his community standing; it may sometimes even be an asset to him to have received the attention brought about by his mistake.

This article presents news briefs on sociological associations as of December 1969. The president and executive committee of the International Sociological Association (ISA) received from different parts inquiries and remarks, concerning the problem, whether, in the present political situation so full of tensions and conflicts, the Congress in Varna should be held at all, and whether the ISA should not take a definite position in view of the political events of last year. Jan Szczepanski, president of the ISA, recalled in a statement that the ISA was required to take a position in view of different political events in the past. During the Evian Congress, several of colleagues demanded firmly to condemn the repression against the sociologists in Argentina. As an association affiliated with UNESCO, the ISA does not make any political declarations and does not take anybody's part. By engaging in any political activity the association will lose its status with UNESCO, and at the same time would jeopardize the very possibility of existing as an association. The Scandinavian Sociological Association invites its members to a meeting of the General Assembly and the sixth congress of the Scandinavian sociologists, to be held from June 5-7, 1970.