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The problem of alienation is a pervasive theme in the classics of sociology, and the concept has a prominent place in contemporary work. This paper seeks to accomplish two tasks: to present an organized view of the uses that have been made of this concept; and to provide an approach that ties the historical interest in alienation to the modern empirical effort. Five alternative meanings of alienation are identified: powerlessness, meaninglessness, normlessness, isolation, and self-estrangement. The derivation of these meanings from traditional sociological analysis is sketched, and the necessity for making the indicated distinctions is specified. In each case, an effort is made to provide a viable research formulation of these five alternatives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The maintenance of original value orientations and of pristine character is a crucial problem area encountered by institutions, particularly in the face of changing external or internal social circumstances. The tensions engendered in such conditions are clearly evident in sects, which provide a valuable institutional type for analysis, in that they have an explicit value commitment, are clearly circumscribed organizations, and are peculiarly self-conscious of their relations with the wider society. Some sects are markedly successful in the preservation of undiluted values of protest; others, notably those which gradually become denominationalized, are much less so. This paper seeks to distinguish and characterize distinctive types of sect, and to use such characterizations to determine the specific elements, and combinations of elements, which promote or retard such development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The border-states of Missouri and Kentucky currently present a picture of incomplete racial desegregation of the public schools. Roughly 64 percent of the counties with Negroes in each of these states had started or had plans by May 1957 for some racial integration in education. Questions immediately arise as to the possible differences between desegregating counties and those maintaining complete segregation. The present paper relates this scattered design of segregated and integrated counties to three demographic variables. Two principal factors have been held by educators and social scientists as crucial in school integration—urbanism and Negro ratio. A third demographic variable, economic prosperity, is closely related to urbanism and Negro ratio and often cited as independently important in race relations. The mixed pattern of acceptance of public school integration is in important part a function of a number of demographic factors. Urbanism and economic prosperity appear to be crucial variables. All 24 of the predominantly urban counties in the two states are desegregating, and even the partly urban counties are more often desegregating than totally rural counties.

Sociology is often criticized as being ambiguously general or too broadly eclectic. It is held that a scientific organization of knowledge is hindered by the variety of content and method grouped together as sociology. On the other hand, a case can also be made against excessive division of the subject matter of sociology into "fields" or "areas" and "sub-areas." There is a danger that basic forms and primary forces of social life will be forgotten in the shuffle of special sociologies. Both under-generalization and over-generalization, it would seem, may be pitfalls for sociologists. This paper is an attempt to clarify the nature of general sociology by suggesting a division of its subject matter. It is intended that the categories developed should be sufficiently comprehensive to represent the broad scope of sociology without the listing of numerous sub-areas. Furthermore, the categories should correspond more closely to the habitual operations of sociologists than to an ideal scheme of what sociologists should be doing.

Studies utilizing content analysis have appeared with increasing frequency in literature of the social sciences over the past thirty years. During this period this technique has been employed in a wide variety of sociological researches in such areas of interest as culture and cultural change, race and ethnic relations, the sociology of war and social psychology. It is the purpose of this paper, however, to suggest that a major limitation is frequently encountered when sampling content in this manner, and must be taken into consideration both in deciding whether to use this design in a particular research situation and in the formulation of probability statements about the results. It can be shown from the theory of cluster sampling that where the elements within a duster are positively correlated, the variance of this design will be greater than would be obtained if the elements were selected according to the simple random design. In fact, relatively small positive intraclass correlations will have an appreciable effect on the variance, particularly where the size of the cluster is large.

A critical analysis of the social and economic consequences of nuclear development demands some understanding of fields which are professionally far removed from the areas of competence of the social scientist. Terms, concepts, and problems closely related to mathematics, physics, chemistry, engineering, and metallurgy must be comprehended and their interrelations seen. Perhaps this is why atomic energy has received relatively little attention from sociologists and economists. Certainly it is not because the area is inappropriate for social science research as becomes clear when, for example, atomic power is viewed as a case of technological innovation with consequences for the entire social and economic system. Atomic power is one of three principal areas of present nuclear development. The other two, which are not of concern in this paper, are the atomic and hydrogen bomb and the use of radioisotopes in medical, scientific, industrial, and agricultural research and practice. The basic technical problem of atomic power is that of the production of heat through nuclear fission and the transfer of that heat to power by mechanical means.

Social interaction of any kind requires some degree of consensus. This is true only if the word consensus sheds its connotation of empathy, of emotional rap- port, and is confined to meaning agreement on the terms of which interaction takes place. Consensus may thus be defined as the tacit delineation of mutually accepted norms of behavior. Since it takes two to make a quarrel, a quarrel requires consensus in this sense. The examination of certain situations in which consensus is purposefully manipulated may illuminate its significance in inter- action; the primary object of this paper, however, is to relate the analysis of interaction to more general sociological categories, and thereby to develop further insights into the processes of social interaction. The roles that an individual plays in different social situations may sometimes be present as possible alternatives in the same situation. A man may invite workmates or colleagues into his home and meet them in the same situation as that in which he enacts the role of husband and parent. The roles of husband and of parent may themselves over-lap in this way in different situations within the home.

In a book which has maintained attention and perhaps increased in influence over two decades, writer Florian Znaniecki describes the method he names analytic induction and designates it as the method which should be adopted in all sociological research. Analytic induction, is merely a special name for one formulation of a basic philosophy that research must be directed toward generalizations of universal rather than frequent applicably. But Znaniecki's statement is usually unequivocal and is specifically oriented toward sociological research. Hence it makes an excellent point of departure for a study of contrasting methodologies. Methodological advance requires more than the mere tolerance of alternative methods. Any particular methodology must be examined and assessed in the light of the total process of research and theory formulation. Accordingly, the objective of the present paper is to offer a definition of the place of the search for universals in the total methodology for dealing with non-experimental data. The procedure will be to examine specific examples of empirical research employing the analytic induction method, to note what they do and do not accomplish, to establish logically the reasons for their distinctive accomplishments and limitations and on these grounds to designate the specific utility of the method in relation to probability methods.

The behaviorist, neo-positivist school of sociology in the United States, with its emphasis upon mathematical symbolization, has gained many cohorts during the last quarter of a century, but it is only latterly that it has found a champion to present its tenets systematically and in full panoply. If this paper directs itself almost exclusively to one representative of this school which has so many followers, it is because the presentation of its case is both most recent and most thorough. Indeed, it should be a source of deep gratification that the position of this school of thought has finally been placed upon a full canvas, and been offered for popular showing. Only thus could both its merits and demerits be made obvious. For two decades, in a series of publications long and short, professor George Lundberg, erstwhile president of the American Sociological Society, has carried on a campaign for scientific method in the social sciences, and particularly sociology. The kind of world Lundberg wants is one in which the social scientist will be accepted as the final authority in informing men of how they can achieve the goals they set for themselves without himself approving or disapproving of these goals.

That housing is an important practical problem needs no argument. If practical problems are to be dealt with intelligently they obviously require the foundation of sound knowledge. The knowledge required to deal intelligently with housing includes not merely what all of the social sciences have to give but also the technical knowledge which architecture, engineering, art, law, administration, business and other professions can offer. Housing is a social activity. As such, sociology has something to learn from it and it constitutes a subject matter for sociological study. Sociology also presumably has some knowledge to bring to housing problems. It is the purpose of this paper to indicate what this two-fold interest of sociology in housing is as a giver and a receiver of knowledge. Sociology is clearly not the only discipline bearing upon housing and, conversely, what housers can legitimately ask of sociologists will only give them a partial answer to their problems. This discipline is concerned with what is true of man by virtue of the fact that he leads a group life.

Three months after the attack at Pearl Harbor, the President of the United States, as a war measure, authorized the Secretary of War, or Commanding Generals of Defense Commands designated by the Secretary, to prescribe military areas in the United States from which any or all persons might be excluded. The civilian exclusion orders of the Western Defense Command which followed almost immediately required all people of Japanese ancestry, whether citizen or alien, to be evacuated from the state of California, most of Washington and Oregon, and parts of Arizona. This paper attempts in all too hasty way to point out one of those neglected areas that in the opinion of the writer, now an administrator, seriously affect the validity and usefulness of much social science research in the community field. In conclusion, the two fatal weaknesses to stability and continuity of the relocation center community are pointed out, namely, the absence of an economic base, and dependence upon the vagaries of bureaucracy and political maneuvers.

The period of time covering the National Defense Program and the active participation in the war witnessed not only a considerable change in the demographic characteristics of the population, but also served to reveal the great flexibility in the labor supply of the United States. Moreover, at no other time was it so important to understand the connection between population characteristics and the labor supply. Thus, the elementary problems of obtaining the manpower needed for the military as well as for producing the goods for winning the war focused attention on the potential labor supply among women. No analysis of this potential was possible without knowledge and appreciation of the facts relative to the age, marital, and dependency status of the female population and their bearing upon labor market participation. In this paper the attempt will be made to assess the relative importance of demographic factors in the changing size and composition of the labor force over a span of time.

The extent to which a sociological scientist can make contributions to the understanding and improvement of that society depends upon his capacity to identify social objects and processes, the techniques of observation at his command, and his comparative knowledge and understanding. The paper discusses some of the areas of national life to which objective analyses by these disciplines could and should make definite contributions. There are few difficulties in the way of studying any of the large Federal projects. They constitute living laboratories of human actions and there is great need that they be studied. Research has been done in some of these areas. So much more is needed that one who knows something about the programs and projects can scarcely help being critical of both administrators and sociological scientists for neglecting objective and thorough analysis of them. The unevenness with which the knowledge and acceptance of social science exists among the various levels of people dictates that there shall be conflict between people on these levels concerning its value.

The article presents various developments related to social sciences. The District of Columbia Chapter of the American Sociological Society concluded a successful year under the leadership of Clyde W. Hart on Monday, April 1. At the meeting on that date the following were elected as officers for the 1946-47 term: Margaret Jarman Hagood, president; Raymond V. Bowers, vice-president; Ruth Reed, secretary-treasurer; Harry Alpert, alternate representative on the Executive Committee. The Board of Missions, the Board of Evangelism and the Crusade for Christ of the Methodist Church will distribute among their workers 1,000 copies of The World's Need of Christ by Dr. Charles A. Eliwood, Emeritus Professor of Sociology of Duke University. This book was first published in 1940. This new edition, now in press, will be bound in paper covers, and will not be put on sale. Dr. Eliwood will represent the American Sociological Society as its official representative at the Sesquicentennial celebration at the University of North Carolina April 12 and 13.

The purpose of the article is to make an exploratory study of National Archives to ascertain what materials they contain of interest to social sciences and what are the facilities and difficulties involved in working with these archival materials. Large amounts are to be found in historical societies, state and local archives, ports of entry, etc. Papers so retained may not be the most recent and active, although that is the commonest arrangement. Definition of archives is fairly descriptive of its own materials.

This paper suggests a qualification of the theory of the marginal man as conceived by sociologist R.E. Park and elaborated by sociologist Everett V. Stonequist. The concept around which this qualification is oriented is that of the marginal culture. Anthropologists have sometimes used this term to refer to a distant or border culture, but it is used in this discussion as a nongeographical equivalent of the anthropological concept of marginal area. The marginal area is conceived as a region where two cultures overlap and where the occupying group partakes of the traits of both cultures. Here sociologists may review briefly the Park and Stonequist exposition of the theory of the marginal man. When an individual shaped and molded by one culture is brought by migration, education, marriage, or other influence into permanent contact with a culture of a different content, or when an individual from birth is initiated into two or more historic traditions, languages, political loyalties, moral codes, or religions, then he is likely to find himself on the margin of each culture, but a member of neither.

The article presents information on some of the programs of the sociological society of the U.S. which was formed in the year 1938. American Documentation Institute, which operates Biblioflim Service, has served over 2500 scholars with about 7000 items totaling hundreds of thousands of pages since 1934. This is a non-profit document copying service on 35-mm. film or 6 x 8 photoprints made there from. The cost is one cent per page for film or ten cents for photoprints. The American Sociological Society will hold its 1938 annual meeting at Detroit, Michigan, December 18, 1930. The hotel at which the meeting will be held and the tentative program will be announced as soon as possible. International Criminology Society will hold its first International Congress in Rome at the end of September, 1938. Six themes will be discussed, the first three of which will call forth resolutions. These are etiology and diagnosis of juvenile delinquency and the effects of such research on legal institutions, personality of the criminal, the criminological preparation of the judge and his role in the fight against delinquency; Criminal prophylaxis in various countries and Ethnology and criminology and precautionary measures in various countries.

The article author comments on the views expressed by sociologist George A. Lundberg on the doctrine of operationalism as applied to the field of sociology. The principal concern of operationalism is with measurement. The operationalist procedure is useful, but one should not think that it excludes all other procedures. Disputes resting upon the assumption of perfect knowledge are less important than the question what we should do with imperfect knowledge, and in the present stage of sociologists' knowledge the quality-quantity antithesis still retains some significance. Lundberg's use of this contribution from the field of physics raises the question of the advisability of importing the methodology of the physical sciences into social science. The physical scientists have progressed further than sociologists have, and these sociologists are in a position to learn from them. One of the most important lessons the physical scientists can teach is that method must always be flexibly adapted to subject matter. As data change, procedures and assumptions must change.

The investigation reported in this article formed a part of a program of study recently undertaken on a Social Science Research Council fellowship. The original problem was epidemiological in character, the purpose being to obtain evidence of the relation of childhood infection to adult tuberculosis. The present paper is limited to one aspect of this investigation. It is an attempt to control or evaluate the influence of environment in order to determine the relative tuberculosis mortality rates of urban and rural populations under equivalent conditions. Tuberculosis mortality rates were computed and compared for various sections of the Swedish population. This article presents a chart showing a comparison of these rates for the city of Stockholm, the rest of urban Sweden, and rural Sweden as a whole, tile rates being presented for several broad age groups and also combined by standardization against the age distribution of the total Swedish population in 1920. As shown by the standardized rates, the tuberculosis mortality of the males tended to be somewhat higher in the urban than in the rural districts, but for the females very little difference between the mortality rates in the two sections of the material was to be observed. This latter fact is perhaps associated with the phenomenon of relatively higher tuberculosis mortality rates for females in the rural sections of countries in which women perform a considerable amount of physical labor.

This article focuses on sociologist Marian Slater's paper "My Son the Doctor: Aspects of Mobility Among American Jews." The author says that the paper consists of an incomplete antithesis without a convincing thesis and without the trace of a synthesis. The antithesis is the denial of the so-called scholarship thesis, meaning that Jewish prominence in the professions is due to the love of learning among old-country Jews, especially those coming from Eastern Europe. It knocks down that strawman without, however, proposing any meaningful antithesis to which it could be contrasted and without developing a comprehensive account of the various factors contributing to Jewish professionalization. The Jewish response to antisemitism in the economic sphere, at all times and in many places, has been to resort to self-employment. Moreover, when higher education became available to them, Jews turned largely to law arid medicine for two reasons— first, because thereby they remained independent of any openly or clandestinely restricted Gentile institution, as far as hiring and advancement was concerned, and second, because the free professions were as remunerative as business.

This article presents a report of the Committee on the Visiting Scientists Program for Sociology. The Visiting Scientists Program for the American Sociological Association began rather slowly in 1962-63 as the Committee attempted to select institutions to be visited and visiting scientists. As of May 15, 1963, there were 13 visits completed. Approximately 18 more visits will be completed by the beginning of June, 1963, if all goes well. Both the sociologists selected as visiting scientists and the institutions to be visited have proven to be most cooperative. The Committee has received a large number of inquiries concerning the program, and the program appears to be fulfilling a long-standing need. It is still too early to tell how successful the program has been in fulfilling its objectives, but an evaluation report will be prepared this summer by scholar John Kitsuse of Northwestern University. The report will examine the procedures of the program and the reactions to the program both by visiting scientists and institutions visited. In

The activities of the International Sociological Association during the past year have centered around plans for the Fourth World Congress of Sociology to be held in Perugia, Italy, probably from September 8 to 15, 1959. There are to be three sections as follows: sociology in its social context, the application of sociological knowledge and developments in sociological method. All papers are by invitation in the first section; and the third section is broken down into ten seminars, each chairman of which will prepare a paper to which invited discussants will react. In second section, papers may be offered for consideration to the chairmen of the sub-sections. The Social Science Research Council is administering a grant from the grant-making foundation Carnegie Corp. of New York for travel grants to international meetings. The committee in charge seeks persons who by their presence, participation or organizing services, will make major contribution to the success of a conference; and scholars who by their attendance will gain ideas and contacts that will advance their own research.

This is the first report of the current Editor of the journal "American Sociological Review," who assumed his duties in January 1955. Thanks are due the retiring Editor, Robert E.L. Fans, who with characteristic generosity extended his own tour of duty and responsibility beyond the ordinary termination date and who passed on to the incumbent enviable standards of administrative efficiency and objectivity. During the period June 1954-May 1955 the number of articles received and published was almost identical with the preceding year. From June 1953-May 1954, 349 papers were received and 74 articles and 8 research notes were published, totaling 581 pages. From June 1934-May 1955, 348 papers were received, 79 articles and 4 research notes were published, totaling 530 pages. In 1953-54, 112 pages of book reviews and notes were published, in 1954-55, 140 pages. This count excludes communications, news and the like. The increasing of the number of Assistant Editors to twelve made it possible to change a general policy to a strict rule, and each paper is now reviewed by at least two Assistant Editors in addition to the Editor. Our authors have frequently expressed appreciation for the professional counsel of the Assistant Editors. recommend the smallest possible recognition of their contribution: that they be referred to henceforth as Associate Editors.

This article presents a report of the representative to the American Association for the Advancement of Science. The program for the Section K of the AAAS in Missouri, consisted of 8 sessions five of which were concerned with the general subject of the impact of technology upon society, one with public opinion polls, one with the address of the vice-president, Chairman of the Section, and one with business. The session dealing with the regional organization and control of resources dealt with the proposed M.V.A. The author representative personally planned this program and presided at the session. One of the papers was read by J. O. Hertzler. Other sociologists who read papers at the sessions were W. F. Ogburn, Samuel Stouffer, and S. C. Gillfillan. The attendance at most of these sessions was pitifully small, except for the session on public opinion polls which was very well attended. There was a glaring lack of local support, perhaps most of the attendance coming from outside the St. Louis area in Missouri. Apparently no effort had been made to turn out the students in social sciences attending the two local municipal universities.

Conspiracies are consequential and social, yet online conspiracy groups that consist of individuals (and bots) seeking to explain events or a system have been neglected in sociology. We extract conspiracy talk about the COVID-19 pandemic on Twitter and use the biterm topic model (BTM) to provide a descriptive baseline for the discursive and social structure of online conspiracy groups. We find that individuals enter these communities through a gateway conspiracy theory before proceeding to extreme theories, and humans adopt more diverse conspiracy theories than do bots. Event-history analyses show that individuals tweet new conspiracy theories, and tweet inconsistent theories simultaneously, when they face a threat posed by a rising COVID-19 case rate and receive attention from others via retweets. By contrast, bots are less responsive to rising case rates, but they are more consistent, as they mainly tweet about how COVID-19 was deliberately created by sinister agents. These findings suggest human beings are bricoleurs who use conspiracy theories to make sense of COVID-19, whereas bots are designed to create moral panic. Our findings suggest that conspiracy talk by individuals is defensive in nature, whereas bots engage in offense. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Presents an introduction to the December 1987 issue of the journal "American Sociological Review."

The article is a reply by authors to the critic Thomas P. Wilson on their article " Substantive Interpretations of Differential Equation Models." According to the authors, Wilson reiterates several qualifications and warnings that were already spelled out in the original article. Wilson suggests that the contradiction the authors found between interpretations of the coefficients of a linear differential equation in two different substantive contexts results from nothing more profound than ambiguity of terminology. The authors disagree with him on this point, in large part because they believe ambiguities in terminology to be sometimes more profound than he thinks. Wilson worries about "the mathematically unsophisticated reader," who might be misled into thinking that "the discussion is far more general than in fact it is." The authors explicitly restricted their discussion to one of single-equation linear differential equations that have a stable equilibrium. The authors disagree with his contention that interpretation of coefficients depends entirely on the substantive context.

The article is in reply to comments made on the article "The Structure of Attitude Systems in the General Public: Comparisons of a Structural Equation Model." The comparison of attitude systems between the public at large and elites has been primarily along two related dimensions: the degree of constraint among various political attitudes and the degree to which those specific attitudes are derived from and reflect a more general ideological position on an underlying liberal-conservative continuum. There was internal evidence that some respondents had answered some questions with very high reliability, while others had responded to the same items with very little reliability. These marked differentials fit very poorly with the conventional view of measurement reliability then prevailing, which was instrument-specific and assumed to be invariant in level over objects measured. Similarly, it is easy to assume that the theory is nothing more than one monotonous prediction, to wit, that correlational indicators of constraint and stability will be high in well-informed populations and low in poorly informed ones.

This article presents the author's reply to the criticism of his paper by sociologist Harry Perlstadt. The author says Perlstadt has overlooked weaknesses of the empirical presentation to dwell on tangential and misguided attacks on the theoretical argument. Moreover, even when he comes to the lower priority methodological issues, he is mainly entangled in problems which a fuller reading of the text would resolve. The author says Perlstadt's discussion next turns to his reputed use of the five power bases as a nominal scale. He further states that this approach presumes that power bases are mutually exclusive. The author says he frankly doesn't see how either imputation occurs anywhere in his discussion. This misreading is compounded by a confusion between expert and legitimate power. The author says some of Perlstadt's criticism rests on a clear misreading of his text. Perlstadt questions the adequacy of the total conformity measure. The author says the question Perlstadt raised concerning whether preferences are perceived as orders or as influence attempts is answered by the data on perception of principal influence in his paper.

Presents a letter to the editor about empiricism and social sciences.

The mere fact that certain stimuli are labelled "values" does not make them non-measurable, nor does the fact that responses to such stimuli are called value judgments prevent them from displaying empirical regularities which may enable social scientists to make predictions. This was the conclusion reached in an earlier paper which reported the results of three empirical tests of the hypothesis that qualitatively unlike values are incommensurable. All three tests resulted in rejection of this hypothesis, thereby indicating that "human values, including those which are regarded by certain authorities as being of infinite worth, become measurable relative to each other in exactly the same manner as other verbal stimuli. Although the critical ratios which resulted in rejecting the null hypothesis in the previous study were all quite large, it seemed desirable to repeat with a new group of respondents at least the third of the three experiments—the one dealing with "infinite" values. Denominationally stratified samples of the ministerial members of the Seattle Church Council had been used in the first run of this experiment.

The Annual Census of Research yielded 763 reports on projects in progress. In replying to the Census, members were requested to classify their projects by fields of sociology, indicating for each project a first and second choice among the twenty-one categories listed on an instruction sheet. These twenty-one categories were those used in taking the 1949 Census when members were last asked to classify their own projects. The number of projects reported by fields is given in a Table. The other category provided on the instruction sheet yielded sufficient numbers of reports classified by members as in the fields of communications and medical sociology to make adding these categories advisable in Table. Most of the remaining projects in the other category were classified by members as in the fields of alcoholism, aging and retirement, social psychiatry, and social stratification. If these categories are added to the instruction sheet, when the 1953 census is taken, the number of members using the other category should be reduced greatly.

The article presents the news and announcements of American association Society. Michigan Sociological Society: The following Papers were read before the spring meeting of the Michigan Sociological Society March 17, at Ann Arbor: Roy H. Holmes, University of Michigan, Inquiry Into the American Way of Life"; Amos Hawiey, University of Michigan, "Redistribution Versus Segregation: A Suggested Solution of Minority Group Status"; Frank E. Hartung, Wayne University, "An Appraisal of Positivism in Sociology"; Elizabeth Briant Lee, Detroit. The American Council on Education has announced the appointment of a Commission on Motion Pictures in Education. The present members are: Mark A. May, chairman; George S. Counts; Edmund E. Day; Willard E. Givens; George Johnson; George F. Zook, ex officio. The work of the Commission is supported by a grant from eight motion picture production companies made through the Motion Picture Producers and Distributors of America, incorporated. Temple University:Negley K. Teeters, assistant professor of sociology at Temple University, believes that Camden's (N.J.) Director of Public Safety, David S. Rhone, invoked an old law prohibiting children under 14 years of age.

This article presents information about various meetings and announcements as of August 1938. The American Catholic Sociological Society was organized at Loyola University, Chicago, on March 26, 1938, by seventy-five teachers of sociology representing thirty Catholic universities and colleges of ten states. Its purpose is to promote unity and cooperation among Catholic educators and institutions of higher learning in the field of social thought and action. The Chicago Recreation Commission and Northwestern University have recently issued Commercial Recreation, Volume II of the five-volume Survey, which deals with performing arts, sports, health, travel, newspaper promotional activities, amusement parks and endurance contests, ballrooms and dancing schools, and, briefly and quantitatively, with liquor establishments, commercialized vice, and borderline recreational activities. The Mid-West Sociological Society, held its annual meeting at Des Moines, Iowa, April 21-23, with over 100 persons from 43 institutions in attendance.

During 1952 the American Sociological Society's Committee for Liaison with the National Council for the Social Studies carried on considerable correspondence with respect to the best ways to carry out its assignment. Also numerous contacts were made with Julian C. Aldrich, President of the National Council for the Social Studies, and John Haefner, vice-president and program chairman for the National Council for the Social Studies. After this consultation the committee prepared by correspondence, a program to be held at the American Sociological Society's meeting in Atlantic City, September 4, 1952, and another to be given at the annual meeting of the National Council for the Social Studies at Dallas, Texas, November 28, 1952. It is believed that these foregoing program are a step in the direction of good liaison between the two organizations. It was also suggested that certain significant reports of interest to members of both societies be printed in the American Sociological Review and Social Education, and that other special reports be published in special monographs. It was recommended that the Review mention articles that might be of importance to secondary school teachers.

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]

The article presents information about the 1964 Annual Meeting of the Association to be held at the Sheraton Mt. Royal Hotel, Montreal, Canada, during August-September, 1964. The article provides a list of the sessions and the presiding chairmen by the 1964 Program Committee. For each field in which the Association has a Section, the program chairman has been appointed by President George C. Homans and the Program Committee in consultation with the Section Chairman. The names of some of the program chairman and the programs are as follows: History of Sociology under the chairmanship of Kurt W. Back; Social Change under the chairmanship of Kenneth E. Bock; Sociology of Education under the chairmanship of Dan C. Lortie, etc. In order to provide growing membership with the widest opportunity to participate in the annual program, each person is allowed to read only one paper if he is sole author, by a long-standing rule of the Association, and to contribute to two sessions only if he is joint author in each case or is a chairman or discussant in one case.

During the past year, the American Sociological Society has continued its steady growth. There are, for example, 5,462 members now, as compared with 2,673 in the reorganization year, 1949. Among these, there are now 2,480 active members, as against 1,352 in 1949. Income from dues, estimated to be more than three times greater in 1958 than in 1949, is now actually running ahead of these estimates, partly because of intensive efforts this year to bring in new members, and partly because many present members have been more punctilious than usual in paying their dues. Thus the Society will enter its new phase of revised program and organization with a broad base of support within the profession. Not only are members more numerous they seem also to become steadily more active in their roles as members. Abstracts of papers for the annual meeting have reached a volume where printing is more efficient than mimeographing. Correspondence between members and the Executive Office mounts more rapidly than the staff has been able to expand to take care of it promptly.

The 1959 Annual Meeting of the Society will be held at the Edgewater Beach Hotel, Chicago, Illinois, September 3, 4 and 5. Joint sessions are being arranged with the American Anthropological Association, the Rural Sociological Society and the Society for the Study of Social Problems. The following sections and chairmen have been arranged by President Kingsley Davis. In order to provide the growing membership with the widest opportunity to participate in the annual program, each person is allowed to read only one paper if he is the sole author, and to contribute to two programs only if he is joint author in each case or is a chairman or discussant in one case. The sessions planned by the Program Committee promise to be original, challenging and informative. A special effort is being made at this meeting to improve the process of communication in the sessions. Also, a feature of the Chicago conference is that certain sessions will be devoted to sociology as a profession and to the advancement of the interests and position of sociologists.

This article presents a report of the American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS). The annual meeting this year was marked by a very interesting innovation of four round- table discussions. The topics were the nature of the Humanities, their function in the society, and plans for furthering the work of the ACLS. A background paper entitled "The Humanities in the Next Decade" had been prepared in advance by the Executive Offices and circulated before the annual meeting. This paper served the admirable function of stimulating discussion without controlling it. This delegate was in the round table chaired by scholar Henri Peyre and found the discussion highly stimulating. There was a feeling of real participation, an exciting exchange of ideas, and a sense of the seriousness of problems concerning the humanities. The same attitudes were expressed at the final session when the rapporteurs reported on their respective sessions. There was a general attempt to define the Humanities and there was agreement that a precise definition was not possible since all intellectual activities had humanistic aspects at times. It was also considered important to stress the coalescent quality of the humanities.

The article presents information related to the field of sociology. The American Catholic Sociological Society held its first annual convention at the Morrison Hotel, Chicago, Illinois from December 26-28. There were more than twenty-five papers and discussions at the meetings. Some of the topics considered were: the teaching of introductory, problems, and advanced courses, rural problems; social welfare; family; political sociology; and research. The Society also held a meeting on December 30 at Detroit, Michigan where many members of the ACSS were attending the annual meetings of the American Sociological Society. According to another information the National Conference on Family Relations will hold three regional meetings in the early months of 1939: one at New Orleans, from February 24-25; one at Chicago in March; and one in New York City. The first meeting at New York last September was a great success. Those participating agreed unanimously that the organization should be continued and put upon a permanent basis.

The sociology of scientific knowledge (SSK) has challenged many of the "core" conceptions of theory and method that remain entrenched in sociology textbooks. In conjunction with recent developments in history and philosophy of science, sociologists of science speak of the disunity of science and describe the local-historical origins of particular scientific facts and laws. "Core" sociology textbooks devote no attention to the methodological implications of recent sociology of science. Elementary textbooks present upbeat versions of the discipline that emphasize sociology's scientific methodology; they describe sociological methods as implementations of a general research process designed along hypothetico-deductive lines. Viewed from the vantage point of SSK, such widely disseminated elementary versions of sociology promote an asociological conception of science. In this paper we suggest that the "epistemic flattening" accomplished by SSK's research on the natural sciences provides a valuable antidote to current anxieties about the coherence and scientific status of sociology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article comments on a 1993 study by Peter Kollock, which examined the iterated Prisoner's Dilemma (IPD) under monitoring uncertainty. Much of what is true in Kollock's paper is not new, and much of what is new is either not true or not significant. First, Kollock does not address a new problem. What he identifies as the key issue, namely the compromise that must be made between vulnerability to exploitation and vulnerability to needless cycles of recrimination, was clearly identified as a problem a decade ago. Kollock's main result is not new either. His main finding is that when playing the noisy IPD, strategies that use a more relaxed accounting system often have important advantages. In contrast, strategies that were generous--for instance, cooperated more than their partners did--were quite effective. To see why Kollock's observations regarding the effects of noise cannot be taken at face value, they ought to be reconsidered in the context of what is known. Kollock portrays uncertainty as have only negative consequences. However, uncertainty's benign effects may be significant. The benign effects of noise concern the two most fundamental aspects of the evolution of cooperation: its emergence and its stability.

In this paper, I introduce a new measure of power in exchange networks under substitutable/complementary exchange relations. Although it is derived from a model based on a modification and extension of Coleman's model of collective action, the new measure reflects major characteristics of Emerson and Cook's power-dependence theory, in which power emerges as a result of exchange based on actors' benefit-maximizing actions under network constraints on exchange. In the new measure, an actor's power depends on the number of exchange partners interested in the actor's resource, the extent to which the actor's partners are not interested or are less interested in others' resources than in the actor's, the power of the actor's partners as interdependent correlates, and the consequences of shifts in demand made by the actor's partners under the substitutability/complementarity of exchange relations among their multiple partners. I also show high consistency between power distributions predicted by the new measure and corresponding experimental results by Cook et al. (1983), Yamagishi, Gilmore, and Cook (1988), and Skvoretz and Wilier (1993). Finally, using simulated exchange network data, I derive an enriched set of hypotheses about the structural and relational determinants of power centralization under closely substitutable exchange relations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper shows how the social structuring of activity leads people to develop relationships with others who are similar to themselves. Most relationships originate in foci of activity that bring together disproportionately homogeneous sets of people. The more homogeneous these sets of people are, the more relationships tend to be with similar others. A sample survey and a study of friendships in one large factory illustrate the importance of the social structuring of activity for age similarity. It is suggested that the neglect of structural factors has led to the overestimation of the extent to which people "prefer' to associate with similar others. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The main and interactive effects of age, period, and cohort are not estimable. although certain combinations of those effects are. A method used to obtain estimates of the effects of these variables involves the assumption of additivity and the imposition of one or more constraints on the relative effects of particular age levels, periods, or cohorts. This method can rarely if ever be justified for three reasons: first, the possibility of interactive effects cannot be ruled out a priori; second, although a constraint on the relationship of two groups may appear appropriate on a priori grounds, even small errors in the specification can have large effects on the estimates; and third, measurement error can lead to highly inaccurate estimates even if the constrain: is precisely correct. A solution to the dilemma lies in the specification and measurement of the theoretical variables for which age, period, and cohort are indirect indicators. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents a comment on the article "The Tacit Conventions of the Modernity School: An Analysis of Key Assumptions," by William C. Rau that appeared in the 1980 issue of the journal "American Sociological Review." The theoretical and methodological errors made by Rau and others earlier in attempts to demonstrate the multidimensionality of individual psychosocial modernity and to disprove the unidimensionality of this hypothetical construct have roots that run deep. At work here is a broader tendency of social scientists to engage in debates over questions of unity-diversity as a result of their general failure to recognize what term fundamental intrinsic duality. In this article the author shows the nature of the argument made by Rau in his article and taking his article as, one example of a broader type of misguided criticism of modernity that others have also engaged in with less visibility. The author also refers to the factor structure of the OM-519 subscales now analyzed in some greater detail than was possible in becoming modern. These factor analysis results continue to support the case for an overall unity in the pattern of psychosocial modernity, as argued in prior publications from the Harvard six-nation project. The issue of unity-diversity in modernity measures is addressed more generally and the author suggests that the long debate in the published literature over whether modernity is unidimensional or multidimensional is fatuous since modernity is both unitary and diverse simultaneously.

I examine the extent to which health-related events account for the well-established relationship between undesirable life events and psychophysiological distress. Employed in the analysis is a distress scale similar to others often used in previous research. This scale, the Macmillan Health Opinion Survey index, relies heavily on psychosomatic symptoms as indicators of distress. The analysis clearly indicates that when health-related events are controlled, other undesirable events have small and nonsignificant effects upon psychophysiological distress. Further, the analysis also shows that health-problem events are more strongly related to physiological than to psychological items on the distress scale. The results clearly suggest that previously well-established correlations between undesirable events and distress may have been inflated due to the operational confounding of health-related items on the independent and dependent variable scales. The implications of these findings for research in the Holmes-Rahe tradition-and for life-events research in general-are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents information on sociology and paradigms in evolutionary theory. Sociobiologists introduced tautological reasoning into the evolutionary model. This is a somewhat surprising charge coming from someone apparently knowledgeable in the history of Darwinian thought. It is not clear how sociobiology utilizes any tautology not present in Darwin's original formulation. The charge of tautology has been leveled at Darwinian theory, even very recently. If fitness in Darwin's sense is defined in terms of survival, the theory is reduced to a tautology. However, assertions of Darwinian fitness must always be made in reference to an organism or trait in the context of a changing environment. Darwin defined fitness as being well adapted and any trait that helped an organism to survive increased its fitness. However, sociobiologists and population geneticists do not use fitness in this very broad sense. Adaptiveness, therefore should not be equated with fitness in the genetic sense. An adaptation is any genetically determined characteristic that increases an organism's ability.