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The article focuses on the press and public opinion in Great Britain, discussed at the Conference of the British Sociological Association in 1955. The first influence on the policy of a paper will be its tradition, which is a vital part of its goodwill as a business. Next important factor is the readership's character and the circulation. A paper that is read standing in the train, giving special attention to the interests of women, punters and filmgoers, will not have space to inform its readers adequately about foreign affairs. Third in the list of influences in a newspaper office comes the experience, educational background, sense of responsibility of the editor and his editorial staff. Whatever the policy of the paper, their special interests and bias will be reflected in it. The next factor to consider is contact with readers. The newspaper can influence the reader by a multitude of stories, ideas, recommendations and services. The reader can only refuse his pennies. Circulation is, of course, very important. Without it advertising dies, and the paper dies with it. But generally speaking, the paper's attitude in foreign affairs will be a secondary factor in the reader's choice of reading.

This article focuses on the contributions of professor A. R. Radcliffe-Brown to the study of social organization. What Radcliffe-Brown did was to distinguish between the search for historical and evolutionary origins, the preoccupation of ethnology, and the study of the laws of custom and social organization, the province of social anthropology. Those social scientists other than anthropologists who know Radcliffe-Brown's work, tend to pay attention only to his methodological articles. But the vital theoretical contribution lies in his ethnographically centered papers. It is in them that Radcliffe-Brown's adherence to the view that there are laws of social life which can be established by systematic and empirical investigation, is brilliantly justified. These papers are mainly concerned with problems of social organization, or as Radcliffe-Brown now prefers to call it, social structure. Radcliffe-Brown shows that the merging or identification of alternate generations fits in with the widespread concept of the completion of the cycle of the generations in three successive steps, and with the contrasting roles of grandparent and parent in family systems. It is ethnography based on a theoretical discipline, the discipline of structural analysis as first given shape by Radcliffe-Brown.

Presents a list of books on Sociology received for the "British Journal of Sociology." Some of the books are: "Democracy and Social Ethics," by Jane Adams; "Psychology and Social Problems," by Michael Argyle; "The New Frontiersmen," by G.S. Aurora; "The Penal Press," by Russell N. Baird; "Race Relations," by Michael Banton; "The Impact of Television: Methods and Findings in Program Research," William A. Belson; "The Social Construction of Reality," by Thomas Luckmann and Peter Berger and "Culture and Society in India," by N.K. Bose.

This paper presents a report on the characteristics of persons planning a career in the legal profession in the U.S. In the sociology of occupations and professions the legal profession has certainly not suffered neglect. Yet, although there are reports of empirical research on career histories within the profession, characteristics and activities of lawyers in different specialities, political roles of lawyers, and other pertinent topics, little in the way of systematic empirical findings existed on the kinds of persons who are attracted to legal careers until the series of studies was undertaken from which the present report is derived. In the spring of 1961 the National Opinion Research Center (NORC) embarked on a study of the factors which enter into the educational and career plans of college students. As part of this study NORC collected pre-coded self-administered questionnaires from a national sample of college students who were due to receive the bachelors degree in June, 1961. The study involved a two-stage stratified sample of institutions and their senior classes, and resulted in a return of 33,982 questionnaires, or approximately 85 per cent of the sampled students. When weighted to be representative of the entire June, 1961 graduating class, this resulted in a total of 56,664 cases. The initial study reports contained data on the social origins of prospective lawyers. The present paper presents some of the results of a more extensive analysis of the role of background factors in the choice of a legal career and is drawn from a comprehensive analysis of the role of social origins, college experience and law school experiences in t

The article focuses on the author's comment on sociologists Kingsley Davis and Wilbert E. Moore's paper "Some Principles of Stratification." According to the author, the paper offers some important point but that the argument they advance is contradictory in certain of its implications and therefore defective. The source of the difficulty is to be found in one of the premises of their argument. To state it most simply, the premise asserts, "people desire rewards." This assertion is incontestable, but it is not adequately qualified in their argument. The author shows in the first part of this article how their argument, containing this premise, leads to contradictory implications. Then, in the second part of this article, the author attempts to provide qualifications which he believes will allow Davis and Moore's argument to avoid contradictions and thus give it greater force.

This paper attempts to show that the myth of the primal horde is of use in that: (1) It helps to account for behavior that is observable at formal meetings, (2) sheds some light on the earlier socialization process and (3) can give some insight into the operation of wider social groupings. This obviously is a formidable task, beyond the scope of any one paper. The author discusses the university seminar of the formal kind where there is a chairman and sometimes a vote of thanks. He hope to show that the myth of the primal horde not merely explains what goes on but can even be said to describe to some extent behavior at such meetings. There is also an attempt to show how the ideas first used in the context of the university seminar can be applied to formal settings that are apparently very different namely those of the military parade and the religious service. Formal behavior, according to the view expressed here, owes its significance to the triumph it celebrates. It must therefore be essentially unstable for where the triumph is too complete there will the need for defensive morality be dissipated.

The article focuses on the sociology in and of China. In the general history of social sciences it is assumed that the marriage between sociology and anthropology comes late, having been preceded by a long courtship. China does not fit this pattern. Almost as soon as social sciences were established there anthropology and sociology were intertwined, to be disentangled in a strange way when Communists arrived. To avoid a tedious recitation of evidence just one witness is called upon, a scholar whose later career in the U.S. makes his testimony underline the Chinese paradox. Writing in China in 1944 Francis L.K. Hsu has said in this paper that the word sociology is used synonymously with the term social anthropology. It is customary to date the beginning of sociology in China by the publication of Yen Fu's translation of two chapters of "The Study of Sociology" in 1898. Later a few original works were produced in Chinese and courses of instruction were introduced in universities, it was not until about the 1920s that sociological investigations of any great weight began to be made.

This article discusses the educational sociology of sociologist Émile Durkheim. It is the purpose of this paper to outline some ideas of Durkheim on education and to show how they are closely linked with his sociological thought. It can be no more than an introduction to a subject upon which the writer is preparing a more substantial work. None of the educational writings of Durkheim has yet been published in England. In fact most of them were only published posthumously in France. Some notes on the most important of them are given at the end of this paper. The majority of them were prepared in the form of lectures and are listed in order of the dates on which the course was first given and not according to the date of publication which is separately recorded. There are many lectures still existing in manuscript form. It was thought best to give quotations in the following pages in English and the translations are those of the writer except where otherwise noted as coming from existing translations. Moreover, this paper will conclude with a brief outline of four major functions of educational sociology which are based on practical principles in line with Durkheim's methodology. These functions are the determination of the present social facts of education and their sociological function, determination of the relation of education to social and cultural change, comparative sociology of education and the study of the school itself as a social group and in relation to other social groups.

The article focuses on the paper "Status, Mobility, and Anomie: A Study in Readiness for Desegregation," by Melvin M. Tumin and Ray C. Collins Jr. This paper presents some highly interesting data. It does not, however, present data which would support the conclusions at which the authors claim to have arrived on the basis of their data. What the paper does is to raise some extremely significant questions, which the authors fail to pursue. The authors of the paper divide their respondents into four mobility categories based on a two-way occupational status classification. The two statuses are high and low. The four mobility categories are high stationaries, upward mobiles, downward mobiles and low stationaries. The authors then present findings relating scores on five scales of readiness for desegregation to these four mobility categories. Finally, they relate the desegregation scores to scores on the Srole anomia scale. Their findings are that the two mobile groups combined do not differ significantly from the two stationary groups combined in readiness for desegregation, the two high-status groups show considerably more readiness for desegregation than the two low-status groups, the rank order of decreasing readiness for desegregation is, first, high stationaries; second, upward mobiles; third, downward mobiles; fourth, low stationaries and the rank order of increasing anomia is the same as the rank order of decreasing readiness, i.e. the greater the anomia, the less the readiness for desegregation.

This paper is an attempt to show that distinct dimensions of political alienation are reliable predictors of variations in political behaviour, independently of factors such as level of government and kinds of situations. In other words, there is a direct relation between the type of alienation and the mode in which it is expressed. The paper also calls attention to the functions served by the alienated as agents of political change. Variations in the modes of expression result from the following four types of political alienation: powerlessness, distrust, meaninglessness and isolation. Political powerlessness refers to the "perceived expectancy of an individual that his own behaviour cannot determine the occurrence of political outcomes that he seeks." The incentive to take part in politics is weak among the powerless who consequently elect to express their alienation through non-participation. Distrust is a person's feeling that the occupants of political roles systematically and consistently violate specific political norms or the "rules of the game" when dealing with certain publics.

The aim of this paper on occupational prestige is two-fold. The first part of the paper is devoted to a more general discussion of some theoretical and methodological shortcomings of the sociological literature on occupational prestige. The aim of the second part of the paper is to provide an illustration of one possible approach to the theoretical and empirical analysis of dissensus in occupational prestige which may be able to transcend at least partly some of the suggested shortcomings of the conventional approach. The sample utilized for the empirical analysis is a sample of the West German élite. The findings indicate that the position of an individual in the structure of voluntary interaction and his normative standards have an impact on the prestige assigned to different groups of occupations. Comparing science and nonescience occupations all requiring a university education, it was found that members of the elite who had close, personal interaction with scientists as well as a more favourable attitude towards the consequences of science and read proportionally more science literature assigned disproportionally higher prestige to science occupations in contrast to occupations outside of science.

The paper asks whether mass media rather than being a homogenizing force, is in fact one that promotes differentiation, whether mass media is one for revolutionary change and whether rather than generating a crisis of identity, it aids in generating new identity. In other words, the advent of new communications techniques and patterns particularly television may have proven to have had precisely the contrary effect of that suggested by some of the classical views of the increasing massification of society and social relationships. The emergence of sundry militant minority groups in the 1960s, the black revolutionists, student and anti-war groups, neo-feminists, the poor, the Indians organized as red power with the aid of the electronic mass media implies that the social consequences of the new technologies of communication will profoundly alter the social order but not in the exact way foreseen by most of the contemporary mass society essayists. Although mass media may have a confirmative potential for majority groups, it possesses a transformative function for minority group identities. With future developments of multi-channel cable vision and other individualized media, an accentuation of the process may occur.

This article presents some questions for the attention of medical sociologists. Some medical educators, admittedly few, still subscribe to the view that they alone are competent to provide role models for medical students and that, therefore, no matter what the subject, the proper training of the physician requires that a physician teach it. Others, adopting a less extreme standpoint, appear to be prepared to accept the behavioral sciences on trust as it were, even while retaining some of these reservations and often questioning the relevance of sociological theory and method to the practical problems of health and illness. While there are then a few medical educators with reservations, it appears that the vast majority nowadays consider that sociology, psychology and anthropology, and perhaps other allied disciplines, have an acknowledged place somewhere in the medical curriculum. It is not proposed in this paper to enter into the general debate on whether the behavioral sciences have anything to contribute to medicine and should be incorporated into medical training.

The sociological analysis of factions has been developing rapidly in sociological research. According to the definition, a faction is stipulated to be an ephemeral group which emerges in order to operate in the interest of a specific aim or conflict. The criteria of recruitment of members to the different factions in the community are based on upon personal aspirations which are involved in the acute cause of rivalry or conflict and not upon any pre-existing connection among its members such as kinship ties, religious affiliations, common caste membership etc. By this definition, it follows that when a faction develops into a more stable group based on some permanent criteria of membership, it is no longer a faction. The paper discusses the phenomenon of factions in communities of immigrants. It presents findings of a research project in Israel which tried to reconstruct and analyze the history and conditions under which factions first emerged and then disappeared in some newly created communities of immigrants in the course of ten years. It attempts to develop further analysis about the conditions under which factions may arise, some possible variations they may display in their composition and structure and most importantly, the function that they possibly perform in the process of adjustment of immigrants to the new social, political and economic conditions.

The paper examines the theoretical link between the social differentiation of population groups in modern industrial society and the residential differentiation of such groups and suggests alternative methods of analyzing urban residential differentiation by outlining the results of a study of social areas in Melbourne, Victoria. The paper is primarily concerned with a limited model of urban society and is restricted culturally and temporally to the modern industrial city which emerged as a consequence of the industrial revolution. One criticism of social area analysis has been that, while its underlying theory is mainly concerned with understanding social differentiation in modern industrial society, the main empirical concern among social area analysts has been with a problem of a different, although related order, the residential differentiation of socially differentiated groups. The first section of the paper discusses the general processes through which the three constructs of social rank, urbanization and segregation come to have a spatial referent. The second section of the paper reports an empirical test of the Shevky-Bell schema using 1961 census data for Melbourne. A two-staged component analysis is used to test for the existence of the three hypothesized dimensions of residential differentiation. A more efficient method of classification is used to derive a typology of residential areas using two component scores for each area.

The sociological analysis of factions has been developing rapidly in sociological research. According to the definition, a faction is stipulated to be an ephemeral group which emerges in order to operate in the interest of a specific aim or conflict. The criteria of recruitment of members to the different factions in the community are based on upon personal aspirations which are involved in the acute cause of rivalry or conflict and not upon any pre-existing connection among its members such as kinship ties, religious affiliations, common caste membership etc. By this definition, it follows that when a faction develops into a more stable group based on some permanent criteria of membership, it is no longer a faction. The paper discusses the phenomenon of factions in communities of immigrants. It presents findings of a research project in Israel which tried to reconstruct and analyze the history and conditions under which factions first emerged and then disappeared in some newly created communities of immigrants in the course of ten years. It attempts to develop further analysis about the conditions under which factions may arise, some possible variations they may display in their composition and structure and most importantly, the function that they possibly perform in the process of adjustment of immigrants to the new social, political and economic conditions.

The object of this paper is to deal with only two important uses. First, the material throws considerable light on the processes of acculturation and the first part of this paper discusses such processes with two basic objectives in view. One is a critical assessment of the main body of hypotheses and generalizations which have so far been made in this field and the presentation of a more useful theoretical framework within which the subject may be discussed; the other will be an application of this new framework to the available historical data relating to one of the islands, Jamaica, on which the author has recently done extensive research. For what is most striking about the West Indies is that they present one of the few cases in world history where groups of peoples were deliberately thrown together, forcefully deculturated or detribalized as the case may be and new societies consciously created for the achievement of specifically defined goals. Thus, there emerged in the post-emancipation period a dual culture, or two Jamaica's: one was the Afro-Jamaican cultural system, which was largely a consolidation and revitalization of patterns developed during slavery; the other was the European-oriented cultural system which was the revival of British civilization in the island after its disintegration during slavery.

The article presents comments of the author on his article "Profiting from a Comprehensive School," published in the "British Journal of Sociology," to draw attention to the sociological study of comprehensive schools. Author defends his article on two grounds presentation and analysis, and conclusions. Any inadequacies on presentation are probably determined by the limitations of the article-intended as a research note and not a fully developed paper. The criticism in conclusions seems largely directed at presentation. The conclusions are in fact valid on the basis of the findings of the research itself. The same applies to statistical techniques employed. In short it would seem that no valid critique of the conclusions themselves is presented. However, here is a point-by-point reply. The tables present the most outstanding deviations in keeping with the summary nature of the article. They are condensations of tables in the thesis. Thus class categories are included or omitted in accordance with the importance of variations.

The problem of unemployment among youth has been a matter of urgency for many governments in Africa, Asia and Latin America during recent years. Another is the innocent aggravation of the problem by the programmes of accelerated expansion of primary and middle-school education in the new independent states, such as Ghana and Nigeria, which flood the labour market with armies of school-leavers each year. The response of the Ghana government to this deteriorating position was quick. A White Paper on a national workers brigade was published in August 1957 and referred to the concern of the government at the growing problem of unemployment amongst school-leavers. The White Paper on a National Workers Brigade proposed to establish a new organization and provide a new approach to the unemployment problem in Ghana. The great increase in strength of the brigade was achieved through a programme of rapid expansion of the number of camps, from two to sixteen. Leadership training was instituted in January 1959. Since there is much waste of effort and money, the workers brigade may not be a very useful model for all countries to follow.

This article is the author's reply to sociologist E.R. Yeld's paper on Islam and social stratification in Northern Nigeria. The author focuses attention on the inappropriateness of Yeld's data, methodology and mixture of problems. According to the author, Yeld's paper is an instructive exercise in the misuse of controlled comparison. She set out to compare the differing effects of two variables which were defined so as to overlap considerably. She presents no conclusions on this point, and neither indicates these effects nor compares them. Yeld undertook the analysis of social stratification in Hausa capitals, but for this she only had materials from Kebbi, which is not representative of these units either in its level of development, size, complexity, or in its depth of Muslim culture. The author says that Yeld has constructed a melange which is placed before us as a correct restatement of Hausa stratification.

This paper is meant to contribute to the knowledge about totalitarianism by means of analysis of the totalitarian mass vote that is to provide a basis for conclusions upon motivations of voters of totalitarian parties. This paper is focused upon the analysis of the phenomenal rise of the Nazi vote from 1927 to 1933 in Germany and in Austria in order to learn more about those who limit their support of totalitarianism to their ballots. Selected data from the Austrian Communist vote since 1945 are then presented in support of the author's hypothesis that a mass vote for a totalitarian party is not motivated by ideological commitments or even by endorsement of a political programme but simply represents a non-specified protest of discontent. In Germany, the Nazi's mass vote was recruited from former non-voters and minor party voters who returned to voting for minor parties or not at all during the party's brief, but spectacular decline just before it came into power. In Austria, there was but little non-voting and but limited voting for minor parties. However, Austrian defectors to Nazism did not turn to dictator Adolf Hitler directly from their old party, instead, they first either refrained from voting or voted for insignificant splinter groups before they finally turned to Hitler.

This article discusses the ethics of trade union leaders. In this paper, the author gives an account of the premisses from which trade union leaders act and to examine, in a general way, their aims, their code of trade union morality, their loyalties and to show their attitude to the standard of social behaviour in the society which they purport to change. It is not a comprehensive examination. Some aspects of behaviour are barely mentioned for example, the problem of remuneration whether these men should be paid like the workers they represent or as businessmen is not discussed. There is considerable discussion of the problem of honours, but this can cast only an oblique light on their approach to what is an appropriate standard of social behaviour. Throughout this paper only full-time general secretaries and presidents of trade unions are classified as trade union leaders. There is an ethical basis for decision-making in all trade unions. The objectives of a trade union tell one what the union is hoping to achieve, but the traditions stipulate the kind of action and behaviour to be adopted in pursuit of those objectives. Thus, the behaviour of trade unionists is not formally rational. One reaches a different conclusion when the behaviour of trade union leaders is measured by the standard of the minority. This is a standard that is related to the ultimate purpose of trade unions and shows a correlation between present behaviour and intended social and economic changes.

This article discusses the concepts of incest and adultery. This paper tries to define the meanings of incest, adultery and fornication. Moreover, three classes of sexual offense were identified. In the first class falls mogyadie, an intercourse with a woman of the same clan and punishable by death. The second class of offence consists basically of intercourse not with members of the same descent group but with the wives of fellow members, as well as with other classificatory wives. The third class of sexual offence is with wives of other men and the sanction here is the simple adultery payment. Furthermore, this will also discussed a patrilineal case, the Tallensi. The standardized procedure for the investigation of moral, ritual or legal norms gives the following threefold division namely: sexual intercourse with a member of the same patrician, sexual intercourse with the wife of a member of the same patrician and sexual intercourse with the wife of a non-clansman. The current sociological explanations of incest are not, then, alternatives. Explanations in terms of external relations are relevant to the prohibitions on intra-group intercourse, while those in terms of internal relations are primarily relevant to the group-wife prohibition. Exogamy can be related to the former, but not to the latter. This paper has attempted to establish a typology of heterosexual prohibitions to facilitate both cross-cultural studies and the depth analysis of particular societies.

This article discusses the functions of Polish trade unions. The research material for this paper has been derived largely from Polish trade union publications. It is the contention of the author, that by examining the Polish trade union press, one can arrive at an objective presentation of the role that trade unions play in Poland. This paper will also attempt to examine the Soviet direction in which these unions have been moving. Moreover, the first to discard the tactic of trade union independence was not a trade union body but the Unity Congress of the Communist and Socialist parties. The part the unions played during the first post-war period in work competition did not take any definite organizational forms. Despite all the measures in Poland, which tend to lessen solidarity among workers, that solidarity continues to persist but its manifestations are different from the first post-war years. The fact that the trade unions, acting in concert with management, are driving workers to produce more, clearly indicates that there is no authority workers may appeal to for the redress of their grievances from the excesses of this programme. The reaction of the workers to this politicalization of all programmes, including entertainment, offered in the culture and recreation halls was to avoid them as far as possible.

This article discusses a study on social status and clique formation among grammar school boys in London, England. This paper reports on another aspect of the inquiry into the effects of social class at adolescence, which has been carried out at the London School of Economics and Political Science in England under the direction of Doctor H. T. Himmelweit. Within the broad framework of the research project, an important place was allotted to problems of peer group selection. Moreover, the paper is based on information from three sources: a choice of friend questionnaire, a sociometric questionnaire and an open-ended question on the attributes of a good friend. The most interesting conclusion which has emerged from these data points to an important difference between this country and the U.S. In both countries, the adolescent's value system largely determines his friendship choices. In England, it has been shown that similar class stereotypes may be found and it is quite possibly true that such friendship criteria as are embodied in the choice of a friend questionnaire reflect parental values. It could also be argued, that the working class boys in the grammar school are exceptional, in that they come from homes where middle class values are prevalent. In England, it may be said in general that by having secondary grammar and secondary modern schools, the working class pupils are divided into those who will be given an opportunity for social ascent and those who will not. England deliberately segregates the new recruits to the higher social levels and gives them more advanced training in separate schools. Under these conditions, several factors combine to give the working class boy those attitudes, interests and motives which are concomitant with his future social position.

This article discusses matters concerning the pressures that play upon behaviour as a result of the fact that a symbol of status is not always a very good test of status. By definition, then, a status symbol carries categorical significance, that is, it serves to identify the social status of the person who makes it. But it may also carry expressive significance, that is, it may express the point of view, the style of life, and the cultural values of the person who makes it, or may satisfy needs created by the imbalance of activity in his particular social position. There are two important kinds of status symbols: occupational symbols and class symbols. On the whole, occupation symbols are firmly tied to an approved referent by specific and acknowledged sanctions, much in the manner in which symbols of social caste are rigidly bound. In the case of social class, however, symbols play a role that is less clearly controlled by authority and in some ways more significant. From the point of view of this paper, circulation of symbols has two major consequences. First, those with whom a symbol originates must turn from that which is familiar to them and seek out, again and again, something which is not yet contaminated. The second consequence is perhaps the more significant of the two. Status symbols provide the cue that is used in order to discover the status of others and, from this, the way in which others are to be treated.

This article discusses the distribution of power in nationalized industries in the U.S. in 1951. The appointment of the National Coal Board was announced in the summer of 1946. In the following three years ownership of the fuel and power and transport industries was vested in a number of public corporations, two of which controlled, in terms of total undertakings and labour force, industrial organizations larger than any previously known in this country, or in the U.S. Nationalization offers a wide range of subjects of great interest to the sociologist. This paper, it is hoped, will indicate the degree of change which has taken place by considering the shifts in centres of power which transfer of ownership has produced. It describes the present distribution of power in nationalized industry as it is revealed by an examination, first, of the relation of Parliament, the Government and the trade unions to the controlling Boards; second, of the institutional forms, or patterns of organization adopted for each industry; and third, of the different groups to whom power has been apportioned within each industry. The aim of the paper is thus to define the effective power exercised by the Boards, to ascertain how power has been distributed within the various levels of organization, and to indicate some of the groups in the power structure and the conflicts between them. It is based on data collected in over two years' research into the working of the nationalized industries on behalf of the Acton Society Trust.

This section provides an overview of several reports on the social work presented during the conference of the British Sociological Association in 1957. In her paper, The Development of Professional Social Work and its Place in the Welfare State, Una Cormack began by tracing the history of social work. She argued that social work as we know it was a response to problems posed by the industrial revolution. By the end of the last century the principles, and some of the skills and attitudes typical of modern social work were already widely accepted. But at the turn of the century a rift appeared between social work and social reform. As a result, many social services developed without any effective participation by social workers, and for many years social work was handicapped by its alienation from the main streams of thought and action. Some discussed social work in terms of social functions and professional roles, others in terms of occupational categories and the services within which social workers are employed, and others in terms of the skills and attitudes held to typify the professional social worker. Much of the discussion that followed was concerned with problems of status within the social services.

This section presents the highlights of a discussion on race relations during the conference of the British Sociological Association in 1957. Three main papers were read by A. H. Richmond on Theoretical Orientations in Studies of Ethnic Group Relations in Britain, by H. S. Deighton on History and the Study of Race Relations and by H. S. Morris on The Plural Society. The convenor made an opening statement on his views of the nature and possible scope of race relations studies, while professor Pear wound up the second session with a brief outline of the study of speech as a social device for classifying, identifying, and characterizing national and ethnic groups. The programme had been designed to bring a wide range of academic interests to bear up on the field, and in the event there was an interesting interplay of views from sociologists, social anthropologists, historians, and social psychologists. Among the points raised in discussion the following seem to have been of major importance. The definition of prejudice and its measurement are more difficult questions than is often realized, and any simple-minded treatment of racial attitudes can be very misleading. There was emphasis on the need for structural analysis of race relations with special reference to changes in access to political power afforded to minorities.

This article provides information on the biennial conference of the British Sociological Association at Queen Elizabeth College in London, England on March 22 to 24, 1957. The theme Sociology in Retrospect and Prospect was an appropriate one in view of the increasingly felt need to undertake a systematic re-assessment and clarification of the main issues involved in sociological theory and practice. A large theme of this nature could not be pursued in exhaustive detail, but the papers in both the plenary and the group sessions were such as to stimulate much thought, and the degree of interest shown in the conference was such as to suggest that this theme was one of central concern to all. The attendance was greater than had been anticipated. Although not central to the theme of the conference, perhaps one of the most significant facts about it was that it became the basis for a consciously contrived effort to begin and foster co-operative relations between the British Association and the American Sociological Society. Another encouraging feature was that 39 students were sufficiently interested to become student members of the association. The executive officers were very helpful throughout, and finally it proved possible to send over a small delegation.

This article presents the highlights of a discussion on criminology during the conference of the British Sociological Association in 1957. Attendance at the three meetings of the section ranged between fifty and thirty members. The opening paper by W. Cordon Rose, reviewed the development of criminology in Britain over the last half-century in terms of its relationship to the Penal Reform movement and the growth of social studies in British Universities. In the second paper, J. C. Spencer, director of the Bristol Social Project, dealt more specifically with sociological studies in the field of criminology. Apart from a more effective articulation of studies of delinquent sub-cultures and the socialization process in the delinquent family, he underlined the need for research into the field of white-collar crime. A final paper by L. T. Wilkins, social statistician at the Home Office, dealt with the philosophy of prediction methods, a most important development in the penological field, especially in relation to the use of indeterminate sentences. Although the group contained only a minority of members actively concerned in the criminological field, the presence, of persons from other disciplines may be regarded as an encouraging sign of interest by other sociologists in the association.

The study of Asian societies has not yet had its share of attention within the framework of comparative sociology as a whole. As one step towards remedying this situation, a one-day conference, called by the British Sociological Association, was held in London, England, at the School of Oriental and African Studies on December 2, 1961, to discuss the position of sociology in Asia. Papers dealing with India, China, Japan, Malaysia, Thailand and Indo-China and Burma were presented at the conference. Coverage was thus fairly comprehensive, though certain areas, including the whole of the Middle East, were left out on this occasion. The aim of speakers present at the conference was to assess the present state of knowledge about societies they were considering, with special reference firstly to sociologists of Asian nationality and secondly to the current contribution of British scholarship. Papers that were presented, while they showed wide variation in the state of sociology in different countries, also showed for Asia as a whole a volume of work being done which western sociologists could ill afford to ignore. Some criticism arose in the discussion of the idea of regional research entrees and of inter-disciplinary teams assembled for area studies. There was discussion also of the alleged problem of translating sociological concepts into Chinese or Japanese.

This article presents information regarding organizational change as illustrated by a case-study of a geriatric hospital. The basis for the present paper is a case study of a geriatric hospital which the author was invited to undertake because the principals, the consultants, the matron and the hospital secretary, felt they had effected a beneficial change of emphasis from the traditional good bed nursing, as far as staff shortages allowed, of sick old persons until they died to a policy of re-enablement and rehabilitation. The principals concerned wanted a study carried out partly because they were understandably proud of their achievements but also because they knew there would be some changes of key personnel in the near future and hoped it might be possible to discover the structural factors in the situation which were conducive to the success of the change and might ensure the continuation of the new policy despite changes in leadership. The introduction of the housekeeping scheme was an important aspect of the change of emphasis from bed nursing to re-enablement.

The paper explains why so many people exercising freedom of choice and living in a world of privatized religion, elect to make use of religious rites of passage, in the form of religious rituals associated with birth, marriage and death, while at the same time rejecting other social forms of religious action. The phenomenon is a complex one and therefore any simple causal explanation will probably be inadequate. Moreover, the undergirding of rites has changed with the course of time, no longer are they upheld by legal or quasi-legal sanctions. Recognition has to be given to the social setting of rites of passage. A crucial mark of differentiation between rites of passage and other rituals is that such rites directly involve, or are intended to involve, family and kin groups, extending even to the local community, that is, participants stand in a socially structured situation. Rites have some religious significance for participants. To actors, occasions related to rites of passage, the birth of a child, marriage and death, are in themselves times of personal importance, although not necessarily of crisis proportions.

The paper traces some consequences of characterizing the sociological discipline as an 'occupation.' The concept of 'occupation,' while suffering from abuse, nevertheless retains its reference to the crucial defining process which characterizes sociology. Using the concept of 'occupation' in its sensitizing function, it was suggested that evidence of phenomena in sociology which indicated efforts to achieve orientation could be found by the location and identification of 'pieties' of individual sociologists, by granting recognition to a form of knowledge termed mystique, by the identification of forms of ritual and what was termed 'secular prayer,' a form of character-building and by the location of different 'cognitive styles.' Two styles were mentioned, one being characterized by continuity, the other by 'conversion' experience. These phenomena it was suggested, would best be termed 'cultic' in character. Possible hypotheses were suggested. Some attempt was made to indicate types of interpretations and observations possible using cult as an orientational or sensitizing concept.

The paper examines, by exegetical analysis, two contemporary social movements occurring in two different social structures. It seeks to throw light on the sociological categories of protest and discontent and the relationship between these and social structural variables such as status situation. The Ras-Tafarians in Jamaica and the Black Muslims in the U.S. both openly reject their society. Adherents to these movements have created their own unique Weltanschauung, namely, a projection into semi-secular kingdoms, for the Ras-Tafarians Ethiopia is heaven, Haile Selassie is God and for the Muslims Allah is supreme, Islam is the black homeland. Deliverance from defined socio-economic deprivation will come not from a transcendental Christ but from Allah and Ras-Tafari. It is concluded that both movements achieve some measure of adjustment to their unfavorable life-situations but that sociology must spell out that which possesses Muslims and Ras-Tafarians is not a demon but the social system of which they are a part. Sociology can employ dynamic concepts to construct theories capable of predicting conditional outcomes of the conflicts which are built into social systems and which the rebels kick against. the outcomes lies in this world.

The article focuses on comparative sociology. The purpose of this paper is in part to explain this apparently paradoxical situation by looking at the historical development of comparative sociology, but more important, it tries to assess the role of comparison and the inter-relationship of theory and method in the generation of social theory, through a discussion of the methodological problems inherent in comparative analysis. The association of evolutionism with comparison was a major reason for the comparative method being devalued, if not discredited. Unfortunately comparison has also been linked with functionalism, a link which is not inevitable, and is certainly undesirable. Sampling is another attempt at solving the central problem of how one compares a potentially vast quantity of social facts. Choice of unit or level, specification, quantification, and randomization are all attempts to handle this basic dilemma, while controlling against the chance of generalizing from the atypical.

It is proposed in this paper to examine the role of the prison welfare officer with particular emphasis on the clash between the competing belief systems of "casework" and "custody." There is a vast and growing literature devoted to role theory. Its attraction for sociologists is that it offers a way of describing individual behaviour which does not rely on biological or psychological theories of motivation. The relationships of complex organizations to their wider environment have been relatively unexplored. In the case of prisons powerful and contradictory emotions cloud the attitudes held by large groups in society. Imprisonment is an historically recent way of disposing of convicted offenders. It remains the stated function of the circuit judge to "deliver the goals" rather than to fill them and in a more vigorous era this deliverance implied simple alternatives. If proved innocent the offender was released; if guilty he was shamed or tortured, maimed, transported or killed. The over-riding aim was retaliation by society on behalf of the offended person. A new philosophy emerged which defined the offence as an act of will, assumed rationality in the offender and provided opportunities for reflection and expiation. Solitary confinement material deprivation and hard work were the chosen instruments of this policy.

Over recent years, sociologists have devoted considerable attention to the comparative analysis of industrialized societies. Perhaps the major impetus for such interest has been the discussion the so-called "thesis of convergence" has generated. Although this thesis tends to focus upon "structural" features of societies, there have been other arguments which have suggested that such developments are related to changes of a more "cultural" kind. Researcher A. Inkeles has put forward the view that industrial modes of production particularly of the large-scale bureaucratic kind, generate structural environments and institutional features which lead to relatively consistent patterns of attitudinal responses. This paper is an attempt to re-examine Inkeles' thesis in the light of empirical data for two industrial societies, namely England and Sweden. More particularly, the emphasis is upon the perceptions of various aspects of social stratification. In order to test Inkeles' thesis, the findings of a number of empirical studies have been synthesized. But it is important to stress the problems of comparability. The studies have been conducted at various points of time; different research designs have been utilized; and the objectives of the studies have often been quite different.

The article presents a discussion on ethics of scientific knowledge. Scientific knowledge may be defined as knowledge which is collected and organized in accordance with four technical norms: empirical validity, logical clarity, logical consistency of propositions, and generality of principles. However, it may be argued that such technical norms do not guarantee the objectives of science. It has been pointed out that science has realized its basic objectives, and its technical norms have had relevance because of broader institutional values which articulate scientific endeavor. This value system, which is usually referred to as the scientific ethos, consists of universalism, organized scepticism, communality, ethical neutrality, and disinterestedness. It is this value system which provides the impetus for scientific activity and guarantees its validity. The emergence of the scientific ethos has been traced to the historical conditions of the seventeenth century. In retrospect, it is clear that the convergence of a number of trends such as secularization, rationalism, and cultural relativism combined to produce the facilitating conditions.

It has become widely accepted by those working in the sociology of science that one of the most significant social processes within the scientific communities the exchange of information for professional recognition. Professional recognition is valued by scientists, not only because it is experienced as gratifying in itself, but also because it makes more accessible a variety of associated rewards such as research funds, promotion, salary increases and so on. Professional recognition, however, depends on research publication. Thus, the professional career of research scientists centres around the exchange of information for recognition. In the present article, the physics department at a new Canadian university is studied with special reference to this exchange process and to the manner in which the reward system of the scientific profession structures activities within the department. The first section of this article examines how the policy of the government-sponsored National Research Council combine with norms of independence within the department to enable the physicists at Simon Fraser University in Burnaby, British Columbia to pursue their individual research interests.

One of scholar Karl Mannheim's most important conceptions, that of the free floating intelligentsia, can be seen as playing more a normative than a factual role in his thought. This is not to say that Mannheim regarded this construction as having no factual basis. Indeed, throughout his career he held that such a relatively classless stratum of intellectuals existed in the European society of his time. But Mannheim's evaluation of the role this stratum was equipped to play changed radically over the course of his sociological career. His most famous and most thoroughly discussed treatment of the intelligentsia was in a chapter on the possibilities of a scientific politics in the book "Ideology and Utopia." Here his tone was exceedingly optimistic, for he thought that the European intelligentsia might be the bearers of a tremendous political synthesis, a dynamic mediation between the left and right wings of the European political spectrum. In any event, this theme-the role of the socially unattached intelligentsia-will constitute the thread which ties together the various treatments Mannheim offered of intellectual strata generally. The approach of this paper will be broadly developmental, dividing Mannheim's writings into four basic stages. To begin with, there is the material Mannheim published before 1929. In this period, the intelligentsia is seen as relatively unimportant.

The article focuses on the limitations of holding to a strict fact-value dichotomy, given some of structural difficulties students of social problems encounter. Authors also attempted to extend and clarify the above analysis via a critical discussion of two papers concerned with the value problem in the sociology of deviance-by the well-known American sociologists, Howard S. Becker and Alvin Gouldner. In this article, authors are involved not only with theoretical implications and omissions of this debate but also more generally with its implications for social theory at large. Authors have argued throughout that the social structure will determine that what is truth for one group will not be truth for another. Authors further suggest that there is a clear rationale for close examination of the extent to which deviant values are inextricably linked with social structure, and that, with this as a major concern, one can elucidate one's conception of the way in which men define the world and the way the world actually is.