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This article comments on the paper Prolegomena to a Theory of Social Institutions, by Talcott Parsons. In his paper, Talcott Parsons addresses a problem on which little headway has been made since 1934 when he submitted the paper for publication to the Journal of Social Philosophy. This problem is the development of a theory of institutions, or a basis for such a theory. Parsons called his paper a prolegomena to a theory; but the prolegomena never led to the development of the theory itself either by Parsons or by others. The surfacing of Prolegomena now provides an opportunity to ask just how that theory might most profitably be developed. Prolegomena can be seen as an attempt by Parsons to establish a footing for the subjective approach to institutions based on a theory of rational action, opposing the objective approach. What Parsons calls the objective approach defines an institution as a set of social relations, a concrete social structure or organization. Parsons never explicitly defines institution in his subjective approach, but it seems clear that he means the set of regulatory norms that give rise to a concrete social structure or organization. Parson's subjective institution thus constitutes a way-station between the micro level of individual actors and the macro level of structures of relations or systems of action. In Prolegomena to a Theory of Social Institutions, a product of the early Parsons, there is a flawed but rich introduction to a theory of institutions.

The article asserts that mainstream sociology, or more specifically the nonproblematic sociology found in introductory sociology textbooks treats gender, race and class in profoundly unequal ways. Inequalities of Race, Class and Gender are quantified in Introductory Sociology Textbooks. By the mid-1990s, sociology textbook authors were no longer de-emphasizing gender in comparison to race and class. Discussion of the role of socialization in relation to group differentiation is more common for gender and is discussed in more detail than for either class. While there is on average almost one page more of aggregate cross-societal text on class than on gender, the proportion of texts including a significant amount is identical for class and gender. Thus, the overriding impression about mainstream sociology conveyed by the F&H paper fails to capture the growing impact of feminist questions on research agendas in the field of social stratification in general as well as on introductory textbook authors.

The paper proposes reorienting sociology so as to give special attention to the, discovery, description, and evaluation of social inventions. The significance of this focus is illustrated with cases of social inventions found in the Mondragén system of worker industrial cooperatives in `Spain and in new models for, agricultural research and development in Central America. The paper concludes with reflections on the implications of a social inventions focus for research methods, for social theory, and for applied sociology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Black's (1979) comment, when read in conjunction with The Behavior of Law (Black, 1976), raises several questions pertaining to the scientific adequacy of his theory of law. This paper assesses Black's theory against two criteria of scientific adequacy: generality and falsifiability. Black (1979) rejects our use of victimization survey data to test his theory because these data do not allow a comparison of that conduct initially labelled as crime and that conduct not so labelled. Our interest was not in this first-stage labelling, but in the second-stage decision by victims to increase the quantity of law by calling the police, given that the respondent had labelled some behavior as a crime. Black argues against such second-stage tests of his theory and also argues that his theory must be viewed as valid only with respect to the initial labelling of conduct as illegal; as a result, all labelling decisions predicated on the initial labelling decision are beyond the province of his theory. We also note that the basis of Black's(1979) restriction of the generality of his theory is inconsistent with his original statement of the theory (Black, 1976) in which he uses results from victimization surveys (of the same kind he now argues are irrelevant to the theory) to support his theory. In addition, Black's (1979) criteria for data sufficient to test his theory reduce the potential for testing his theory. Finally, we discuss some issues regarding conduct and its seriousness as they relate to Black's theory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A recurrent theme in the literature on modernization is the importance of Westernization in non-Western societies-the purchase of Western commodities and the emulation of Western styles. This paper critically examines this theme in relation to a negative case, the lack of Westernization in nineteenth-century China. Three different theories of consumption that have been offered to explain the nonacceptance of Western products in China-an economic theory, a cultural theory and a sociological theory_are analyzed from comparative and historical perspectives. On the basis of this analysis, it is suggested that Westernization during the nineteenth century can often be viewed more accurately as an indicator of stratificational continuity with the premodern era than as an indicator of modernizing changes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article focuses on Prolegomena to a Theory of Social Institutions, an essay by Talcott Parsons first published in the American Sociological Review. Parsons's Prolegomena is an object lesson for those who would read past theoretical work in terms of present-day conceptual categories. Written more than a half century ago, before it became standard sociological practice to differentiate the micro from the macro, a voluntaristic approach from a functionalist approach, a focus on action from an emphasis on social system and social structure, the paper escapes latter-day pigeonholes. Prolegomena shows that the early Parsons upheld a package of ideas that circumvents such polarities by combining what he terms a voluntaristic conception of human action in which the factors of will and effort are central, with a functionalist analysis that views economic, political, educational, and other social institutions as constituting a system that regulates action in relative conformity with the ultimate common values. The goal of the essay is to arrive at social institutions and certain aspects of social structure by beginning with human action, understood subjectively in terms of the means-end schema, and proceeding from there to action systems composed of long and complex [means-end] chains--chains analytically divisible into the conditional factors of heredity and environment, an intermediate sector made up of technological, economic, and political elements, and the sector of ultimate values.

This article comments on Sociology: Proscience or Antiscience, a position paper written by Randall Collins. Randall Collins' (1989) recent position paper seeks to defend sociology proper from disparate attacks questioning its status as a science. Interestingly, Collins's citations supporting the premise of external attack on sociology are actually quite limited. His single extensive example involves more the quest of sociobiologists to legitimate themselves through a general critique of all social science rather than a focused assault on sociology itself. Singled out specifically by Collins are approaches that deviate from his version of sociological theory, rather than from the scientific project of sociology per se. In Collins's discussion, Michael Foucault's complex ideas are homogenized and described by a nominalist label that has no basis in his work. Collins characterizes Foucault as a discourse theorist who reduces society to a text and social action to the field of discourse. Collins simply has displaced by Foucault's emphasis on the field of power. Collins reduces the complex work of important theorists to misleading and nominalist labels that compartmentalize and trivialize serious thought. Discourse analysis cannot replace the investigation of, and theorizing about, social action and societal structures. If the above comments are instructive, however, then there is a place for textual analysis when confronted by the obfuscating metatheoretical discussions and the biblical exegesis of the classics that passes for much of sociological theory today.

In the past decade, before the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic, rates of childhood vaccination against diseases such as measles, diphtheria, pertussis, and tetanus declined worldwide. An extensive literature examines the correlates and motives of vaccine hesitancy—the reluctance or refusal to vaccinate despite the availability of vaccines—among individuals, but little macrosociological theory or research seeks to explain changes in country-level vaccine uptake in global and comparative perspective. Drawing on existing research on vaccine hesitancy and recent developments in world society theory, we link cross-national variation in vaccination rates to two global cultural processes: the dramatic empowerment of individuals and declining confidence in liberal institutions. Both processes, we argue, emerged endogenously in liberal world culture, instigated by the neoliberal turn of the 1980s and 1990s. Fixed- and random-effects panel regression analyses of data for 80 countries between 1995 and 2018 support our claim that individualism and lack of institutional confidence contributed to the global decline in vaccination rates. We also find that individualism is itself partly responsible for declining institutional confidence. Our framework of world-cultural change might be extended to help make sense of recent post-liberal challenges in other domains. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents the author's reply to comments on his article Power in Networks of Substitutable and Complementary Exchange Relations: A Rational-Choice Model and an Analysis of Power Centralization. The comment by Markovsky, Willer, Simpson and Lovaglia (MWSL) contains fundamental flaws in their discussion of the main properties of my theory and mathematical model and in their criticism of my method of comparing predictions from the model with the empirical results which I presented in my original paper. MWSL claim that internal contradictions exist between my theory and predictions from my measure of power. My model assumes that demands for exchange are expressed for each actor by his or her partners. This structural basis of power exists regardless of whether demands for exchange among the multiple exchange relations of each actor are substitutable, complementary or independent. The elasticity of substitution among each actor's multiple exchange relations is a key parameter. They also argue that the predictions of power from my model fail empirical tests based on their method. However, the method I employed is correct; their method is wrong and is inadequate for the purpose of testing my theory.

The study of adult development is in need of theoretical reformulation. It is suggested that the paradigm of scientific inquiry that underlies the dominant mode of studying adult development, the ontogenetic model, is not an appropriate foundation for its subject matter because it tends to treat the individual as a self-contained entity and fails to recognize the profoundly interactive nature of self-society relations and the complexity and variability of social environments. Major lines of developmental theory that employ the ontogenetic model are critiqued, and it is argued that sociological applications of developmental work that do not recognize the inherent limitations risk an "ontogenetic fallacy." Drawing on findings and insights from various strands of social research, some essential elements of a "sociogenic paradigm" are identified. The paper ends with a brief illustration of how a sociogenic perspective can lead to a reinterpretation of findings that have been interpreted developmentally by sociologists interested in change in adulthood. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The causes and effects of Third World urbanization have been addressed in theories of modernization, urban bias, and economic dependency, but no single cross-national study has tested the arguments advanced by all three theories. This paper uses panel regression analysis to assess the validity of the three perspectives in sixty-one underdeveloped countries between 1960 and 1980. The results provide some support for each theory and also contradict previous studies that do not consider several important variables. Thus, future studies must transcend current theoretical and ideological particularism to avoid incomplete or false representations of urbanization and underdevelopment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper hypothesizes that official labeling gives personal relevance to an individual's beliefs about how others respond to mental patients. According to this view, people develop conceptions of what others think of mental patients long before they become patients. These conceptions include the belief that others devalue and discriminate against mental patients. When people enter psychiatric treatment and are labeled, these beliefs become personally applicable and lead to self-devaluation and/or the fear of rejection by others. Such reactions may have negative effects on both psychological and social functioning. This hypothesis was tested by comparing samples of community residents and psychiatric patients from the Washington Heights section of New York city. Five groups were formed (1) first-treatment contact patients, (2) repeat-treatment contact patients, (3) formerly treated' community residents, (4) untreated community cases, and (5) community residents with no evidence of severe psychopathology. These groups were administered a scale that measured beliefs that mental patients would be devalued and discriminated against by most people. Scores on this scale were associated with demoralization, income loss, and unemployment in labeled groups but not in unlabeled groups. The results suggest that labeling may produce negative outcomes like those specified by the classic concept of secondary deviance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sociological studies of poverty governance investigate how state actors manage marginalized populations, regulate their participation in social institutions, and reform their behavior through systems of punishment and rewards. Research in this area considers a range of institutions involved in managing poverty, but it has largely ignored an institution omnipresent in the lives of the poor—public housing agencies (PHAs). Focusing on the Housing Choice Voucher program, the largest rental assistance program in the country, I examine discretionary choices made by PHAs that affect who gets access to rental assistance, how long clients have to wait, and what they must do to maintain their benefits. I ask how these administrative decisions create successive opportunities for state agencies to govern the poor. Drawing on interviews with agency officials, I describe a tripartite process of selecting market-ready households, engaging them in rituals of market formation, and utilizing market nudges to remind them of their responsibilities as market actors. This framework deepens sociological understandings of how local state agencies utilize discretionary choices in a resource-scarce, highly decentralized policy environment to evaluate, reform, and discipline the poor. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We argue that cross-national variability in homicide rates is strongly influenced by state history. Populations living within a state are habituated, over time, to settling conflicts through regularized, institutional channels rather than personal violence. Because these are gradual and long-term processes, present-day countries composed of citizens whose ancestors experienced a degree of "state-ness" in previous centuries should experience fewer homicides today. To test this proposition, we adopt an ancestry-adjusted measure of state history that extends back to 0 CE. Cross-country analyses show a sizeable and robust relationship between this index and lower homicide rates. The result holds when using various measures of state history and homicide rates, sets of controls, samples, and estimators. We also find indicative evidence that state history relates to present levels of other forms of personal violence. Tests of plausible mechanisms suggest state history is linked to homicide rates via the law-abidingness of citizens. We find less support for alternative channels such as economic development or current state capacity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A core sociological claim is that race is a social construction; an important illustration of this is how racial classifications are influenced by people's socioeconomic status. In both Latin America and the United States, someone with higher SES is more likely to be classified as White than others of similar appearance, a pattern epitomized by the expression "money whitens." However, recent studies of the effect of SES on racial classifications show inconsistent results, sometimes depending on the measures used. We develop a broad theorization of societies as having multiple racialized hierarchies with different socioeconomic escalators potentially bringing people to higher-status locations in each one. Yet racialized hierarchies differ across societies, and some non-White classifications may reflect a process of upward movement while others may not. We assess this process in Mexico using the 2019 Project on Ethnic-Racial Discrimination in Mexico, a nationally-representative survey including highly accurate digital skin-color ratings, perceived skin-color assessments, and ethnoracial classifications by respondents and interviewers. We find that having higher education increases respondents' self-classification as Mestizo. Yet those with greater wealth are "whitened" by interviewers. Simultaneously, respondents and interviewers "lighten" respondents with greater wealth. We argue that SES can differentially affect mobility in different racialized hierarchies, showing how race is constructed partly by other social constructs like class. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Legitimacy is widely invoked as a condition, cause, and outcome of other social phenomena, yet measuring legitimacy is a persistent challenge. In this article, I synthesize existing approaches to conceptualizing legitimacy across the social sciences to identify widely agreed upon definitional properties. I then build on these points of consensus to develop a generalizable approach to operationalization. Legitimacy implies specific relationships among three empirical elements: an object of legitimacy, an audience that confers legitimacy, and a relationship between the two. Together, these empirical elements constitute a dyad (i.e., a single unit consisting of two nodes and a tie). I identify three necessary conditions for legitimacy— expectations, assent, and conformity —that specify how elements of the dyad interact. I detail how these conditions can be used to empirically establish legitimacy (and illegitimacy), distinguishing it from dissimilar phenomena that often appear similar empirically. Followed to its logical conclusion, this operationalization has novel implications for understanding the effects of legitimacy. I discuss these implications, and how they inform debates over the relevance of legitimacy as an explanation for socially significant outcomes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents the authors' opinion on the article Power in Networks of Substitutable and Complementary Exchange Relations: A Rational-Choice Model and an Analysis of Power Centralization. Yamaguchi offers a new theory of power in social exchange networks, claiming empirical support superior to that of alternative theories. Internal contradictions are self-defeating to a theory and Yamaguchi's theory (Y's theory) has at least two. Yamaguchi fails to provide a model to specify the value of the coefficient of elasticity of substitution and this failure greatly broadens the range of potentially supportive results. In the computerized Iowa protocol, for instance, the partner offering the best deal is selected automatically which prevents any special commitments or costs of switching partners. However, several factors bias his presentation of the data and each factor reduces the apparent discrepancy between the prediction of Y's theory and the experimental data. Yamaguchi's model simply does not work when the data transformations are done correctly. In sum, contrary to Yamaguchi's claim predictions from his model are inconsistent with results from experimental studies of power in exchange networks.

In this paper I propose a generational model of continuity and change in social movements. Building on political generation and cohort replacement theories, I offer three propositions about generational processes in social movements: (1) The collective identity of an activist cohort remains consistent over time, contributing to movement continuity; (2) cohorts construct different collective identities based on the external contexts and internal conditions of the movement at the time they enter; (3) cohort replacement contributes to change in social movements. These three generational processes interact with organizational factors and political opportunity structures to shape movement continuity and change. I illustrate these propositions by drawing on an in-depth case study of the women's movement from 1969 to 1992 in Columbus, Ohio, and I suggest key questions about generational processes in other cases. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Designs for the analysis of mobility effects are flawed by the manner in which the effects of origins and destinations are parametrized. Consequently, suggestions that mobility experiences do not affect attitudes and behaviors are inconclusive. A new class of models (diagonal mobility models) for the analysis of mobility effects which are demonstrably grounded in sociological theory is proposed, and estimation of these models is discussed. To illustrate the use of these models, a reanalysis of the relationship between fertility and intergenerational mobility is presented, using data from the 1962 Occupational Changes in a Generation (OCG-1) survey. The effects of origin and destination on fertility do not depend upon particular origin or destination classes; the effect of destination on fertility appears to be stronger than the effect of origin; and there is only weak evidence of mobility effects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article develops a theory of “societalization,” demonstrating its plausibility through empirical analyses of church pedophilia, media phone-hacking, and the financial crisis. Although these strains were endemic for decades, they had failed to generate broad crises. Reactions were confined inside institutional boundaries and handled by intra-institutional elites according to the cultural logics of their particular spheres. The theory proposes that boundaries between spheres can be breached only if there is code switching. When strains become subject to the cultural logics of the civil sphere, widespread anguish emerges about social justice and concern for the future of democratic society. Once admired institutional elites come to be depicted as perpetrators, and the civil sphere becomes intrusive legally and organizationally, leading to repairs that aim for civil purification. Institutional elites soon engage in backlash efforts to resist reform, and a war of the spheres ensues. After developing this macro-institutional model, I conceptualize civil sphere agents, the journalists and legal investigators upon whose successful performances the actual unfolding of societalization depends. I also explore “limit conditions,” the structures that block societalization. I conclude by examining societalization, not in society but in social theory, contrasting the model with social constructionism, on the one hand, and broad traditions of macro-sociological theory, on the other. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the sociological theories. The basic claim of the economists is that certain sociological arguments cannot be used to explain the world of financial markets. Economists refers to the taking of a specific sociological theory to a market context.

A new status value theory of power is proposed that bridges two previously distinct research literatures. The theory asserts that exchangeable objects controlled by high-status actors are perceived to be more valuable when relevant to positive status characteristics. This phenomenon is predicted to confer power to high-status actors who exchange with low-status actors. The theoretical argument represents an important link between exchange theories of power and the research on status hierarchies--two areas that until now have been sharply demarcated. The theory is tested with a series of experiments in which status-differentiated subjects negotiate exchanges using a computerized bargaining system. The results indicate: (1) Positive status characteristics accentuate the perceived value of resources; (2) high-status subjects are most often chosen as the preferred exchange partner; and (3) high-status subjects obtain the greatest share of resources indicating power use. The implications for sociological theories of power and status are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite much speculation in classical sociological theory, urbanization and industrialization are not systematically related to individual mental health. The "interpersonal environment" mediates between larger system properties and individual realities. Two kinds of interpersonal environments are noted in classical theory: a gemeinschaft environment of high social density, and an overlapping specialized social circle environment. Using stress reactions (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder) of Vietnam veterans to combat as an example, it was found that social density predicts lower levels of stress reaction only in smaller cities and rural areas, whereas interaction with a circle of Vietnam veterans is associated with reduced distress in cosmopolitan metropolitan areas and with increased stress reactions in medium sized cities and rural areas. Because combat is exogenous to the men's current urban setting, the findings are less likely to be confounded by "drift" and self-selection. Implications for classical urban theory are developed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The sociological theory of social control predicts and explains how people define and respond to deviant behavior. One kind of social control is known as self-help: the expression of a grievance by unilateral aggression such as personal violence or property destruction. It is commonly believed that self-help was largely displaced by law in the Western world during the Middle Ages, and that it has survived primarily in the traditional-especially stateless-societies studied by anthropologists. In fact, much of the conduct classified as crime in modern societies such as the United States is similar to these traditional modes of social control and may properly be understood as self-help. Several implications follow, including the possibility of predicting and explaining a significant amount of crime with a sociological theory of self-help, itself a branch of the theory of social control. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study applies cross-level network analysis to modify the Two-Step Model of communication flow, focusing on marginally positioned individuals and pointing out the "bridging function" of marginals in the flow of information between groups. The hypotheses examined derive from the concepts of the Balance Theory, applied to network analysis, suggesting that the "Strength of Weak Ties" and the related tendency toward intransivity are the structural advantages of marginals in the process of communication flow. By and large, the findings support the claimed importance of marginals, suggesting the ability of network analysis to provide a micro-macro bridge in current sociological theory and research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents authors' response to comments made by sociologist George Ritzer's on paradigm analysis in sociology. Ritzer, according to the authors, doesn't try to indicate directly that they are wrong. The authors state that Ritzer criticizes them for supposedly claiming that political socialization, status attainment, and ethnic relations are examples of "at least potential exemplars (paradigms) in sociology," but he himself considers job satisfaction, alienation and role conflict as paradigms. The authors say that Ritzer does not understand their position when he relates to the difference of their positions in the study of sociology. The authors declare Ritzer as one who cites sociologist Thomas S. Kuhn as a source without taking seriously the implications of his position. They say that Ritzer's argument that exemplars are not useful when one is interested in metasociology is not true. They maintain that if Kuhn's argument is accepted, it must be based on the exemplar idea to be coherent.

The article focuses on the measurement and conceptualization of problems faced by sociologists. These problems or tasks require a concerted effort of scholars with diverse substantive, theoretical, and methodological interests and persuasions. The author also discusses the productive interplay between theory and research in the field of sociology. Through an examination of the implications of random and nonrandom measurement errors for data analysis and theory testing, and through frustrating efforts to make sense of the theoretical and empirical literature in sociology the author feels that conceptualization and measurement problems are much complex that he had previously thought. The author discusses the problems that illustrate the complexity of the type of analysis needed in the face of missing information. These problems are: The plethora of theoretical definitions of generic behaviors and their implications for measurement, and the confounding of measured and unmeasured variables when individuals are aggregated in macrolevel analyses. The author concludes that sociologists need to work together solve these problems.

contemporary discussions of Parsons `s thought have faltered because they are insufficiently generalized. Only after his theoretical and epistemological logic has been explored, for example, can his more specific, ideological purpose be correctly understood. Parsons's theoretical ambition has been to resolve long-standing antinomies in social thought. His theory, to the degree it succeeds, formulates two central points: the social basis of individual autonomy and the multidimensional basis of social order. These positions present the heart of Parsons's formal theory. In his analysis of historical development as differentiation cultural, structural, and psychological-Parsons combines this formal logic with an ideological commitment to the expansion of individual freedom and conscious control. Incorporating elements of liberal, idealist, and materialist arguments, he outlines a theory of substantive voluntarism that is, potentially, neither conservative nor static considered as a whole, Parsons's theory contains serious contradictory strains. Nevertheless, his analysis of formal and substantive freedom represents a major contribution to social thought. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

World-system and dependency theories suggest that the specialization of some countries in the export of raw materials and lightly processed goods is an important cause of their underdevelopment. The rare empirical evidence in support of this hypothesis is inconclusive because the variables and the designs used are defective. A diachronic multiple regression test using a, new version of the theoretical independent variable also fails to provide support for the hypothesis. The test suggests that internal processes play a role that should not be ignored in the economic growth of nation-states. , [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article presents response of the article to the comments of C.S. Fischer, Dennis J. Moberg and Allan Mazur, on his biosocial theory of aggression. The author says that his intent was not to state dogma, but to move sociologists away from dogmatic social environmentalism and to suggest a conceptual framework wherein human behavior could be reinterpreted in terms of a complex interplay between biogenic, ecological and sociogenic factors. The author says that he is delighted that his piece is provoking controversy and even sincere distress, and he fully expects to be shown wrong on a number of points. The author says that he generally prefers to opt for fertile error rather than for sterile exactitude. Fischer raises several important issues, a full reply to each one of which would require a piece of article length. The behavior of a species determines whether territory is important for that species, not the mere abstract existence of physical space. The general conclusion is that one must always be prepared to entertain the hypothesis that behavior, though species-specific, is the product of the interaction of genetics and environment, so much so that to conceive of nature and nurture as alternative explanations is no longer tenable.

This article comments on the concept of moral freedom by understanding the theories proposed by Emile Durkheim. It is opined that Whitney Pope appears to be taking an ultra "strict constructionist" stance concerning Durkheim's work. He will have nothing of reinterpretations which put Durkheim's ideas in a frame of reference different from Durkheim's. Pope's position overlooks the unquestionable theoretical tensions present in Durkheim's work. Pope asserts that Durkheim was never a positivist, implying that this proposition holds in every sense of the concept of positivism. It is opined that from the beginning, Durkheirn had a strong concern for the role of morality in human societies. From the beginning, Durkheim also entertained the idea of the internalization of cultural components. In the course of his career, Durkheim improved on this idea. It is further informed that Pope links the concept of the voluntaristic characteristics of action with a religious or metaphysical entity called free will. The belief in free will may have been a feature of theology and philosophy in the history of Western thought, but it is not the only position which is tenable.

Human aggression is explained in terms of resource competition. Resource competition results from both the pressure exerted by population on material resources and from socially created demands for material and psychic resource & Resource competition produces aggression which is in turn mediated through territoriality and hierarchy. The latter two have the paradoxical effect of both regulating and provoking aggression. Drawing comparative evidence from primates, I suggest that Homo sapiens rates high on territoriality, hierarchy and aggression, and that these forms of behavior are biologically predisposed. With the food growing revolution, the cultural elaborations on these biological predispositions became increasingly important; but an understanding of human behavior must necessarily be both biological and socio-cultural. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Theories should be consistent and coherent. Unfortunately, inconsistency, incoherence, and other defects in logic are difficult to detect when a theory is stated in natural language (e.g., English). Translation into a formal logical language makes the theory's structure more explicit, and better accessible for repair. Furthermore, new hypotheses are more easily derived in a logical language. We formalize Hannan and Freeman's theory of organizational inertia in first-order logic. We then examine the logical properties of the formalized theory, provide new theorems about organizational inertia, and discuss the implications of logical formalization for sociological theorizing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article presents a response to criticisms by Paul Cammack of the new elite paradigm. Cammack's attack on the new elite paradigm provides a welcome opportunity to engage his criticisms and clarify our version of elite theory. We believe that cogent and parsimonious answers to these questions can be found in a modified version of elite theory that ties the diverse patterns of regimes and their broader political context continuities and transformations of national elites. We do not claim that elites alone run the political show, or that some simple, readily falsifiable explanation that holds for political change in all places and times can be derived from elite (or any other) theory. We argue only that elite theory illuminates the flow of modern political history and contemporary events better than competing theories, and that by synthesizing elements of elite and class theories, it may be possible to build a more powerful theory. In his attack, Cammack gives the impression that he is striking at the heart of our position. But his criticisms are based on a partial reading and caricature of our work. He ignores our attempted synthesis or elite and class theory, and he says nothing about the closeness or remoteness of our theoretical stance as a whole to modern political history.

The results of quantitative, cross-national studies of the effect of dependency/world- system position on fertility trends in noncore nations are contradictory. Some provide support for the view that dependency distorts development and, in turn, impedes fertility decline. Others either qualify or refute this finding. This study criticizes the methods, measures, and approaches used in previous research. It then conducts a new analysis based on those criticisms. Results suggest that dependency does distort development and impede fertility decline. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Max Weber's explanation of the rise of Western progress remains the best available. it needs to be blended with an awareness that geographic coincidence and medieval class conflict were instrumental in allowing strong, bourgeois-dominated towns to emerge from feudalism. This, and the very long-lasting political stalemate between contending forces in the Middle Ages and early modern Europe were the key elements in the development of Western rationality. Proof comes from comparing Europe to other major agrarian civilizations, particularly China. Twentieth-century historical scholarship confirms Weber more than it supports some recent, fashionable sociological theories about the rise of the West such as "world system theory." [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the article, the authors comment on the article "Adult Development and Social Theory: A Paradigmatic Reappraisal," by Dale Dannefer, published in the February 1984 issue of the journal "American Sociological Review." According to the authors, Dannefer presents a review and challenging critique of paradigms in sociological and psychological research on adult development, concluding that an ontogenetic model, advanced primarily from biology and psychology, is not an appropriate foundation on which to construct the subject matter of adult development because "it fails to recognize the profoundly interactive nature of self-society relations and the complexity and variability of social environments." Compared to the authors' conception of the life-span psychology scheme, Dannefer's presentation, if not fundamentally wrong, is highly inaccurate and incomplete. Their general view of the life-span developmental orientation has been and is fairly consistent with Dannefer's own position on the nature of human development. They do not view ontogenesis as fixed, but as a dynamic phenomenon. Furthermore, their life-span conception permits the analysis of intracohort differentiation and emphasizes that individual-level paradigms are insufficient.

in most sociological treatments of crime and delinquency, genetic explanations are either ignored or ridiculed. While the belief that single genetic defects produce delinquent behavior is untenable, modern genetic theory is concerned with the influence of many genes on normal human behavioral variation. This analysis of genetic variation can be united with sociological theory. In particular, a twin study of the covariation between delinquent behavior and association with delinquent peers is used to demonstrate the value of a behavioral genetic analysis for developing social theory. The phenotypic correlation between self reported "delinquency" and the "delinquency of friends" is apportioned to three theoretical sources: genetic variation; common environmental influences that affect family members equally; and specific environmental influences that affect each individual uniquely. Of the three component sources, genetic factors contributed most to the phenotypic covariation in this study. Although genetic factors are implicated, this result does not mean that delinquency is either a direct result of biological differences or that it is inevitable, Rather, it shows that causal sequences leading to delinquency are traceable to individual differences in genes. so any social causation entails either individual differences in reactions to social processes or differential social reactions to already differing individuals, implications of behavioral genetic analyses of covariation for theories of delinquency are discussed.

The article discusses sociologist Talcott Parson's interpretation of sociologist Emile Durkheim's moral freedom. Author's purpose is to clarify Durkheim's view of the theoretical status in sociological explanation of individual intentions and motivations. Collective beliefs and sentiments penetrate the individual to become a part of his social personality. Durkheim did not view individual subjective states as positable antecedent conditions of social phenomena. Parsons has asserted that sociologist Max Weber brought in normative orientation in broaching the problem of how social relations become regularized. While Durkheim considered moral rules the only force regulating man's unsocialized desires, Weber emphasized nonnormative bases of order as well as normative. In 1937, Parsons argued that Weber and Durkheim converged on the voluntaristic theory of action. Now, he asserts that his demonstration of convergence, derives from a conceptual scheme which is somewhat different from those employed by Durkheim and Weber individually, and in some respects broader than can be inferred from their works taken together.

This article comments on the article "Bringing Beasts Back in: Toward a Biosocial Theory of Aggression," by Pierre van den Berghe, published in December 1974 issue of the journal "American Sociological Review." The urgency arises from the fact that in van den Berghe's essay one finds a significant intrusion into sociology of the territoriality aggression myth at a time when that myth is suffering a well-deserved death in anthropology. Van den Berghe cannot get his argument in logical order. For most ethologists who believe in a biogenic territoriality, such a mechanism arises in a species because it is a means of preventing aggression; it is not a cause of aggression. The actual argument that ethologists make, which van den Berghe misses; is that territoriality arises as a mechanism for distributing species members evenly among limited resources, but that certain circumstances can produce infringements of territory, with aggression resulting as a wired-in response. The author says that Van den Berghe asserts that humans are overcrowded hopelessly, ignoring inconvenient facts such as the general positive correlation between the size and density of settlements and the wellbeing of their residents.

This article presents a reply to the comments made by M. Gottdiener to the essay Sociology: Proscience or Antiscience. Gottdiener apparently believes that all issues regarding the intellectual condition of sociology out to center on how closely one conforms to movements in the Parisian philosophy of the last few decades. Sociology has had a hard time establishing itself in French academic life. The amateur sociology of the Paris philosophers and literary theorists is impressive mainly to people who lack much grounding in what sociology has already achieved. Michel Foucault was primarily a historian of psychiatry who saw the connections between his specialty and other institutional spheres. In Foucault's efforts to theorize, he hit on a more modern sociological theme, the relationship between microprocesses and the macrostructure of power. Bravo; but frankly, it is an amateur's performance. It is gratifying to know that Gottdiener no longer believes that society is a self-contained text and that he is willing to entertain the possibility that discourse is affected by social organization. As sociology is practiced by literary critics and philosophers becomes more sophisticated, it ends up rejoining a stream of theory and research that has been accumulating for a long time.