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This article addresses the relationship between sociology and history. Few conservative historians, notably G. R. Elton, have defended a traditional case for the autonomy of history against the encroachments of social science, but the prevailing view appears to take it for granted that in principle, it is desirable that history and sociology should achieve some form of symbiosis. The latter has generally been regarded as the progressive solution to the problem. Its vision of historically-informed sociologists and sociologically-informed historians leaves the conventional demarcation between the subjects intact. It challenges neither the traditional conception of history nor the theoretical credentials of sociology. History, like any other social science, is an entirely intellectual operation which takes place in the present and in the head. The fact that the past in some sense happened is not of primary significance since the past is in no sense synonymous with history. Firstly, the historian investigates or reconstructs not the past, but the residues of the past which have survived into the present. Secondly, the work of the historian is an active intellectual exercise that designates which of these residues possess historical significance, and what significance they possess.

This article addresses the inter-relationship of the theory of Berger and Luckmann within the sociology of knowledge and empirical research in the sociology of literature. The core of Berger and Luckmann's analysis is of the dialectic of man's relative openness in relation to his environment, his plasticity of instinctual structure and his need. There are several advantages in studying the sociology of literature and art within the perspective of the sociology of knowledge. Berger and Luckmann provide the basis for a general theory of both the media and art, even though they do not articulate it. On the one hand, they are concerned with the analysis of reification at the level of everyday consciousness. In the close context is their analysis of second order objectives of meaning, the process by which various layers of legitimation maintain social integration. These analyses together provide a ready basis for the sociological consideration of the inter-relationship of social control aspects of the mass media and the professionalization of the roles of the gate-keepers. On the other hand, their analysis of institutional segmentation and the development of socially segmented subuniverses of meaning provides the beginnings of a theory of art.

This article discusses the deficiencies in R. E. Best's examination of phenomenological sociology and its philosophical antecedents. Best contends that phenomenological sociologists call on the work of Edmund Husserl and Alfred Schutz to provide a research programme for the study of social phenomena. After investigation, Best discovers that phenomenological sociologists are not adhering to the principles and upholding the traditions of phenomenology. Accordingly, application of the term phenomenology to their work is improper. The argument is patently absurd. At two points, Best mentions something called phenomenological introspection. By doing this, he joins a number of individuals dating as far back as 1903. Best insists that phenomenology is concerned with the way an individual places meaning on a situation and process called the attachment of meaning. However, Husserl stated that to have a meaning or to have something in mind is the cardinal feature of all consciousness. Best also accuses phenomenology of being a form of relativism. In one sense this is completely false for Husserl attacked relativism. This would be expected in that Husserl held science must study the absolute. Consciousness is absolute and cannot be reduced to historical determinants.

This article explores some of the limitations of sociological discussions of literature with special reference to the novel. The failure to explicate the connection between literary work and its social context is an important limitation of the Marxian perspective. It accounts for the inability of Marxists to distinguish between the various responses of socially similarly literary men to the same historical experience or the differential responsiveness among those of similar location and education to literary products in general. According to Alan Swingewood, the sociology of literature must treat literature as literature and creative talent as creative. Sociology and literature are not identical practices. They must be treated accordingly. He conceives of sociology as an analytic and constructive activity while art is concerned with the discovery and elaboration of images. Meanwhile, Michel Zeraffa approaches the novel in a way which is essentially evaluative. Zeraffa argues that the history of the novel represents a move from social description to social interpretation which also constitutes a move from illusion to the achievement of art. Historically this may be a plausible account of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century trends but it oversimplifies the complexity of the past and is wholly misleading as an interpretation of the eighteenth century of earlier.

This article presents a response to the criticism raised by Michael Mulkay in his review of Social Exchange Theory in the March 1975 issue. Mulkay is surprised that the article did not see the differences between George Homans and Talcott Parsons as important in the development of social exchange theory. He apparently shares the view that Homans' exchange theory was developed in reaction to Parsons' collectivistic sociology. But the position is mistaken. Further on the claim of disagreement between Parsons and Homans, it is significant that when Homans became wholly individualistic in his sociology, he established his point by attacking collectivism. Whereas Homans believes that theory should be in the classical form of interrelated propositions, he attributes to Parsons the practice of seeing a theory as a body of interdependent generalized concepts which Homans believes is mistaken. Mulkay shares with other sociologists the mistaken impression that the principal disagreement between Homans and Parsons is over the choice of individualistic versus collectivistic models of social action. Mulkay also affirms that The Human Group is the original source of the ideas that issued into Homans' social exchange theory as developed in Social Behavior: Its Elementary Forms. The truth is that The Human Group is an embarrassment to Homans' individualistic social exchange theory.

The purpose of this article is to indicate the precise nature of the problem of societal ordering, which can best be explained by adapting a well-known simple example. Let A, B and C be three different things to be ordered by a certain criterion, and let 1, 2 and 3 be three different persons. The things to be ordered can be anything whatever but from the stand-point of sociology, let each one be the prestige of a different occupation, it being supposed that there already is available an operational definition of the prestige of an occupation. Then suppose individual 1 orders B before C, B before A, and C before A, individual 2 orders C before A, C before B, and A before B, and individual 3 orders A before B, A Before C, and B before C. Each individual's ordering is coherent and a majority orders A before B and B before C. However, a majority also orders C before A. Therefore, since the community or class of individuals 1, 2 and 3 has an incoherent ordering of the prestige of occupations A, B and C, it would appear to be false to suppose that there is such a thing as a prestige order of occupations for that community, notwithstanding that each individual has one. Furthermore, it would appear to be false to suppose that there is such a thing as a consensus among the three numbers as to the community's value orientation with respect to the prestige order of occupations.

This article discusses the concept of psychology, sociology and social psychology, and how they differ from one another. The presentation of the issues does not describe what psychologists and sociologists do completely accurately. Most of them operate, not from principles chosen singly, but from a general paradigm which contains a particular configuration of methodology, conceptual and substantive interests, theory, and ideological and other applications. There is something amiss when someone argues that an individual is simply a product of his social environment while at the same time disclaiming a deterministic conception of causality, or when he is willing to be lax about either internal or external validity and still vigorously claim that psychology or sociology is a science. If social science activity is indeed a struggle between different ideologies, then the content of one's theories and not the nature of one's methodology should be the major criterion for acceptance or rejection. The privileges, and certainly not rights in this case, are the profitable and prestigeful titles of psychologists and sociologists. The desirable course of action is clear, both the disciplinary boundaries and the paradigms within them should be torn down and the latter reconstructed.

Alienation no doubt ranks as one of the most frequently used terms in sociology. It probably also stands as the most frequently misused, abused, and misconstrued term in sociology. The various denotative and connotative meanings that have been attached to the word are legion. Above all, there is one fundamental chasm which divides this terminological wasteland: the gulf between the 'alienations' of the philosopher-theoreticians and the 'alienations' of the empiricists. The purpose of this paper is to bridge that chasm, or, at least, provide material for a later construction.
It is essential to specify the present realm of discourse. My goal is to fashion and defend a broad interpretation of alienation which is both philosophically significant and sociologically useful; one which is founded on an historically central meaning of the concept and which simultaneously reaches to contemporary empirical research conducted in its name.[1]. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article attempts to re-examine the thesis regarding the disruptive effect of rapid urbanization on support for political authority in the context of recent Jamaican experience. A number of studies of a macro level and aggregate data character have suggested a positive link between rapid and extensive urbanization and political and social disorder. Recently, however, these findings have been challenged by survey research and anthropological studies of Latin American societies. The central theme of this body of analysis has been that adaptation and integration of marginal rural-to-urban migrants within large metropolitan and increasingly ghettoized urban centers containing large metropolitan huge areas of impoverished squatter settlements. Urban squatter settler form an integral part of the urban social structure who are no less integrated into the urban social and political environment than are the urban born city population. Some of the analysis advanced to account for this level of adjustment to the urban environment includes the migrants' easy cooptation into urban patro-client politics; their low levels of material and social expectations; and the preservation of their strong integrative social institutions such as the extended family and religious activity.

This article attempts to understand the relationship between sociology and history by examining of material relating to the position and development of sociology in Yugoslavia with the hope the distinctive nature of the position of sociology in society will be thrown into comparative relief. It must be made clear that in discussions of the relationship between history and sociology, one is dealing with highly organized professional groups, with a high level of articulate self-awareness. These groups tend to be relatively self-sufficient intellectually, and there is little cross-recruitment between them. One makes a career, in other words, as either a historian or as a sociologist. Under these circumstances the discussion about the relationship between sociology and history reads like a kind of academic diplomacy. But, like all diplomacy, it is dependent upon a highly specific set of political circumstances. One does not negotiate treaties to cover all circumstances, but only certain foreseen circumstances. A brief consideration of the position of sociology in Yugoslavia will serve to highlight just how specific and peculiar are the circumstances which govern our current understanding of the relationship between sociology and history.

Empirical social science, as a contemporary method of studying and understanding society, has its heritage in the philosophical approach to science known as naturalism. An increasingly vocal minority now contends this method misconceives our role in society, ignoring distinctly human, subjective, non-quantifiable aspects of existence we share with no other worldly phenomena. In this essay I attempt a systematic explication and critique of the one attempt at humanizing social science which, more than any other, is establishing itself as a reasonable methodological alternative for a new, self-consciously aware breed of social scientists. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents the opinion of the author on scholar Thomas Samuel Kuhn's scientific paradigms, as reflected in his book "The Structure of Scientific Revolutions." The author is attempting at considering the possible existence of paradigms in sociology. According to Kuhn, experiencing classic problem solutions prepare physicists to see things differently. However, there are no positive implications of Kuhnian sociology, according to scholar John Urry.

This essay is a case study whose main purpose is to test the utility of different theories for understanding a problem in personality and social structure. That problem is to explain the effects of two institutions--slavery in the American South and the concentration camps in Nazi Germany--on the modal behavior and modal personality characteristics of the members of the subordinate segments in the two institutions. I shall approach the problem by critically examining the third chapter of Stanley M. Elkins' book, Slavery: A Problem in American Institutional and Intellectual Life. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article aims to show that the work of Claude Lévi-Strauss, considered from the point of view of sociological theory, can be seen to be an attempt to resolve a number of traditional sociological paradoxes and methodological contradictions which make his place in the history of sociology like that of Talcott Parsons. One of the most obvious and familiar difficulties in Durkheimian functionalism is that of the origin of the social fact. Durkheim defines the latter as an aspect of social life which exhibits its factuality or objectivity by its collective and frequently coercive nature. To kneel down in the street is inmost cases an obvious individual eccentricity, and would be treated as such by most people, sociologists included. But kneeling in church is a social fact simply because it is a form of behavior common to a collectivity of people and because, besides being a purely statistical norm, it is also a behavioral one, one is expected, in Catholic churches at least, to do it. The problem, that of accounting for the origins of social facts, can be broken down into two subsidiary problems, both of which Lévi-Strauss attempts to solve. First comes the question of the historical origin of the social fact, ultimately a question of tracing culture back to nature, or collective consciousness to that of individuals; and secondly there is the issue of the structural or synchronic origin of the social fact, its casual basis in the present.

Many of the responses to the early version of what follows included a complaint that as I had not defined my terms some difficulty in understanding my meanings was encountered. I do not wish to sound disgruntled, especially since on the whole the responses were very favorable rather, I wish to report that the complaint puzzles me greatly since I use the terms in their traditional senses. It is possible to explain this puzzlement, perhaps, by the fact that I use terminologies and present views of opposing schools of thought so that some readers are familiar with only one part of the terms and views exposed here. For my part I doubt that many readers are not familiar with both schools of thought to the extent of knowing their terminologies. Be it as it may, here is a glossary of the chief technical terms of this essay. I do not insist on my view that my use is fairly traditional--only that it is consistent, and consistently employed in this essay, and to a larger extent than in most works on the topic which I have noticed. As far as traditional usage is concerned, confusion apart, a few authors identify the term 'individualism' with 'psychologism', whereas one of the chief points made in this paper is that the proper terms are 'psychologistic individualism' and 'institutionalistic individualism', and they label somewhat different view-points. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on phenomenological sociology. The philosophical basis and legitimation for phenomenological sociology resides in the phenomenology of Husserl, a philosophy reoriented by Schutz in his consideration of the intersubjectivity of the natural attitude and thus made relevant to the study of social phenomena. The subject matter of the paradigm is the everyday, commonsense, taken-for-granted life-world of the natural attitude, embodied and expressed in stocks of socially constructed recipe knowledge. Phenomenological sociology studies not only the content of these stocks of knowledge, but also the processes by which they are constructed, transmitted, received and acted upon, and the role of the organizational and institutional structures in shaping these processes. Man is considered to be both active initiator of planful action and receptor of, and respondent to, socially distributed knowledge; he stands in a dialectical relationship to social reality, as both producer and product. Phenomenological sociology subscribes to the principles of methodological individualism and relativism. Reality, truth and rationality are defined in terms of the meanings the individual places on his situation and his actions.

This article examines the progress and problems which plague the sociology of leisure. There are reasons for the slow progress of the sociology of leisure. First, since leisure is a sphere of life which is, by its very nature, supposed to be free and uncommitted, there are certain difficulties about applying scientific techniques to the study or planning of leisure behavior. Another reason is that leisure values and behavior have commonly been regarded as residua categories of social life. Despite of lack of comparative data over time, the sociology of leisure has made some progress. It is quite true that there is no evidence whatsoever to suggest that many members of the population feel that their own leisure is a problem. There are, of course, exceptions to this generalization, including the young people living in places where there are inadequate leisure facilities outside the home and the retired people who do not know what to do with their enforced leisure time. An important category of empirical inquiries into leisure has been concerned with the spare-time activities and work-leisure relationships of people in different occupations. Another group of surveys has focused on the leisure of young people , partly with an eye on the social policies which are needed to provide better opportunities and facilities.

The corpus of Alfred Schutz's methodological writings is directed at creating a scientific method which does not subjugate a meaning-endowing actor to objective, impersonal causal laws. Given the nature of this task, it is surprising that the list of Schutz's published writings is so small. It consists, in fact, of only one full-length book and numerous articles which have been compiled into a three-volume anthology. This relative paucity of published writings is partly due to the extreme care and meticulousness Schutz exhibits in writing and re-writing each work, and partly the result of a Jekyll-Hyde type of life in which days are spent pursuing money and success in the business world, leaving only nights to teach and write. In this paper I shall summarily describe Schutz's efforts and see if his phenomenologically defined notion of subjectivity is reasonably incorporated into a valid scientific method. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article reflects on the social philosophy of Karl Popper. Karl Popper is a widely influential writer on the methodology of the social sciences. To many sociologists, scientific method means Popper's account of scientific method. Yet Popper does not believe that sociology should be value-free. He believes that a commitment to scientific sociology, far from clearing us from making value-judgments about utopian thought, requires us to denounce it. Thus Poppers, supports the orthodox view that utopian thought is objectionable, but it is unusual in deriving this value-judgment from his conception of scientific method. Popper developed his views on the methodology of the social sciences and his social philosophy in the course of his critique of something he calls historicism. Popper defines historicism as an approach to the social sciences which assumes that historical prediction is their principal aim, and which assumes that this aim is attainable by discovering the rhythms or the patterns, the laws or the trends that underlie the evolution of history. With characteristic vigor, Popper denounces historicism as logically defective, false, sterile and murderous. Poppers critique of historicism is linked with his analysis of utopianism. The connection is mainly made by a third villain: holism. Holism is the doctrine that events must be understood in the context of the social whole of which they form a part.

The article presents a study into Weber's view of Islam, the author have attempted to show that one can plausibly perceive four different theses in Weber's sociology of civilizations. On the basis of contemporary research and theoretical discussion, three theses can be dismissed as either false or theoretically weak. The fourth thesis is that Islam declined and was eventually forced into economic dependence on Europe because it could not solve an inherent weakness in what Weber called "sultanism." In this final perspective, Islamic beliefs are still treated as influential, but the presence of these beliefs rather than other beliefs is explained by the social and economic structure of patrimonialism. When Muslim reformers came to understand their own economic decline, they often employed theories of ascetic motivation, but this fact cannot be taken as evidence that asceticism is a necessary aspect of capitalist development. The ideology of hard work in modern Islam was very largely a colonial importation.

The term `sub-culture' is one that has been part of sociology for many years, and which, like "role," "class" and "charisma," whether or not it was in current usage before the rise of sociology, is certainly now a feature of everyday language. lying utility, even if coupled with a superficial lack of clarity. In this article the author considers three distinct but interrelating problems about sub-culture. The first of these is the general issue of culture and structure as perspectives on social relations, the second the problem of the definition of the boundaries of a sub-culture, and the last the question of the genesis, maintenance and change of sub-cultures. The concept "Culture" is often more a loose reference to social milieu than an adequate idea of social structure. Although sociologists at times write as though social relations could be empirically carved up into culture and structure, these two concepts represent only an analytical distinction, that is they cover the same actual social relations from a different standpoint, selecting different aspects for consideration.

The problems of the Marxist approach, is that a debate on the Marxist interpretation of literature, as of anything else, is too likely to become merely a debate on the validity of Marxism-so that if alienation is a useful substantive concept, then it will suffice to explain literature as well as all other human phenomena, superstructure as well as base. Having accepted the coherence of alienation one can accept all the inbuilt assumptions that come with, it, and in approaching literature simply select those key works which illustrate most cogently the truth of alienation-not a dishonest process, of course, since clearly alienation applies equally to all literary works, some just bring it out better than others. The first task in any sociology of the novel is to get away from facile stylistic-ideological correlations. Although the novel was the product of the bourgeois epoch, there is no way of correlating the novelist's growing awareness of alienation with formal or substantive changes in the novel itself.

Educational under-achievement loosely defined may be seen as referring to the inability of individual pupils, or groups of pupils to match in academic performance what evaluations of their intelligence suggests. Psychologists, for their part, with increasingly sophisticated measurement techniques, have sought to explain under-achievement in terms of individual differences in personality, in physical attributes, in cognitive ability, in early socialization and motivation. In brief, taking as their reference point for comparison the achieving individual, psychologists have focused in the main upon ostensibly classless variables. A recent boundary rub-out between psychology and sociology surrounds the relationship of teacher expectations on academic achievement and under-achievement. Yet significantly absent in this latest fusion is any critical evaluation and reappraisal of each discipline's underlying assumptions, with resultant research following the same hackneyed lines as before, without incidentally, the benefit of any interdisciplinary criticism. As this has had a particularly depressing effect upon more sociologically oriented research, the ensuing discussion will remain within this general orbit.

This article presents information regarding the sociology of anti-institution. Most social groups or collectivities, other than those of a most impermanent kind, seek to perpetuate their existence and identity over time. The modern formal organization, for example, tends to adopt a rational, bureaucratic structure in order to ensure its survival, i.e., it sets rational goals, assesses the efficiency of performances in pursuit of those goals, specifies behaviour requirements in written rules or an understood code of conduct, replaces inefficient personnel, clearly demarcates lines of authority to minimize conflicting claims, plans for unforeseen contingencies, socializes personnel to play the required roles, and trains successors to take over the leadership when required. Face-to-face few individuals could match W.B. Curry, in set pieces he was almost irresistible to both adults and children. But just occasionally the collective illusion was pierced. A very real danger was that the pupil society which was vulnerable to his manipulation might also fall sway to an alternative leader, now and again, a boisterous boy with a kind of natural authority would magnetize a group and begin to define deviance as social so that it threatened to become a slavishly followed norm.

This article presents information regarding methodological implications of symbolic interactionism for the study of deviance. Theoretically symbolic interactionism rests on three primitive assumptionst reality as it is sensed, known and understood is a social production. As such it consists of social objects, the meanings of which arise out of the behaviours persons direct towards them. Humans are granted the capacity to engage in minded, self-reflexive behaviour. In the course of taking their own standpoint and fitting that standpoint to the behaviours of others, humans interact with one another. Interaction is seen as an emergent, negotiated, often times unpredictable concern. Interaction is symbolic simply because minded, self-reflexive behaviour demands the manipulation of symbols, words, meanings and diverse languages. Language refers to all the utterances, gestures and movements one interactant communicates to self or other. It is viewed as a conversation of gestures arising out of the interaction process. Interactants can communicate in a silent-gestural language or in a set of personally specific vocal utterances. Their languages may transcend situations.

The sociology of leisure can be illuminated by examining the four main themes that have preoccupied its contributors. These preoccupations are: the definitions of leisure, the diffusion of leisure, Leisure and life styles, Macro and micro-social perspectives on leisure. According to the Countryside Recreation and Research Advisory Group(CRRAG), leisure is the time available to the individual when the disciplines of work, sleep and other basic needs have been met. The essential elements of leisure, an antithesis to "work" as an economic function, a pleasant expectation and recollection, a minimum of involuntary social-role obligations, a psychological perception of freedom, a close relation to the values of the culture, the inclusion of an entire range from inconsequence and insignificance to weightiness and importance and often, but not necessarily, an activity characterized by the element of play. Leisure is none of these by itself but all together in one emphasis or another."

The present article is an effort to extend the investigation of informal patterns within the discipline by focusing on the relationship between the doctoral origins of session organizers and participants in the Annual Meetings of the American Sociological Association. In this study the author will be concerned with two issues: An examination of the pattern indicated in his 1971 study, that is, do session organizers with doctorates from Chicago, Columbia, or Harvard tend to favour as participants individuals who also hold doctorates from these three schools. This is in keeping with the session, several sessions in each Annual Meeting were excluded from this study; a discussion of findings from several recent empirical studies in the sociology of sociology with the aim of integrating such findings into an explanatory scheme. Originally, the author intended to examine the Annual Meetings for the last five years 1966-70. This is in keeping with the session, several sessions in each Annual Meeting were excluded from this study.

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.

In this article the author focuses on the controversy surrounding sociologist Thomas S. Kuhn's book entitled "The Structure of Scientific Revolution." The author here makes two points that are raised for sociology by Kuhn's argument. The first point will detail the non-radical and the radical responses to his account, both responses being characterized by a belief that Kuhn's argument about natural scientific development somehow legitimates the sort of sociology they are currently practicing. The second point is that it does not follow from this that Kuhn is of no interest to sociologists; on the contrary, he has an extremely interesting although limited sociology of natural scientific knowledge. What are the non-radical and radical sociological reactions that have developed or could develop in response to this thesis? Central to both and to Kuhn's argument is the notion of a paradigm. The none radical sociological reaction is the claim that if sociology is to develop it must transcend the present situation where there are multitudinous pre-pre-paradigms competing with each other, where work is done at all sorts of levels and significance, and where there is excessive methodological neurosis.

In this article the author focuses on the sociological career in Great Britain. The author remarks that as a student he knew nothing of working-class life, and the great industrial north was a nightmare land of smoke and grime through which one had to travel to get from London to the Lake District. At Cambridge he read history, which was at that time, with a few exceptions, very badly taught. The experience was not, on the whole, either attractive or enlightening. Nevertheless his whole outlook on life changed very rapidly. Although, history was in general badly taught at Cambridge in the years just before the First World War, there were two teachers who not only taught the author a lot but also left their mark on his subsequent career. The author says that if only he had been a sociologist then, what an opportunity this would have given him to study, by participant observation and any other survey method not requiring a computer, the emergence of a structured society from a miscellaneous collection of individuals flung together by chance in a confined space and its subsequent fortunes.

The article presents a list of books reviewed, names of authors who contributed to the journal and a table of contents to volume 24 of the "British Journal of Sociology." Some books that are reviewed in the journal are "Society and the Policeman's Role," by M.E. Cain, "Arabs and Berbers," edited by E. Gellner and C. Micaud and "The Future of Work and Leisure," by S. Parker.

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.

Differences between residential institutions may be greater than existing theory on the subject would have one to believe. The study describes the development of a questionnaire to assess the ways boys in approved schools perceive their social environment. Considerable differences were found between schools and it is concluded that approved school training is not homogeneous form of treatment. The differences could be explained by a number of factors. First, the questions could have been answered differently if schools had differed in the percentage of boys faking good or faking bad. A second source of spurious variation could have been tendency for some boys to agree with any statement favorable or unfavorable. A third source of variation may have resulted from halo effect. Thus while the act of faking good or faking bad would have involved a deliberate effort on the part of the respondent, it is also possible for a respondent to genuinely believe that all is right, or alternatively everything is wrong, with his surroundings. There is an evidence of large differences in the way approved schools are perceived and have produced a questionnaire for measuring these differences. This or similar questionnaires may play a useful part in the increasingly important field of cross-institutional research.

The article focuses on social integration of a society and deviance. Remarkably little interest has attached to whether high levels of social integration beget deviance. The idea of reciprocity in role-playing provides a useful way of giving greater meaning to the concept of social integration. The view here is that the more do roles in given types of situation mutually facilitate the playing of each other, that is, the more is reciprocity built into role relationships, the greater will be social integration. A group may be well integrated internally and little integrated with the larger society of which it is a part. Again, a whole society may be characterized by overall social integration of any degree. Tension in a social structure depends on the degree of reciprocity in role relationships. The less is reciprocity, the greater is tension. Thus if role reciprocity in a social structure is very low, tension in that structure is very great.

The search for universals means not so much stepping over the borders of cultural communities, as discovering construction principles common to the Spheres of the human praxis apparently belonging to entirely different realms. In other words, universal principles instead of common denominators, theory instead of endless rearrangement of disarrayed empirical records follow immediately. It is quite possible that in non-linguistic cultural sub-systems, like in language, the value of each element depends entirely on their opposition to other elements, on their being different from other elements. They are therefore characterised not by any positive quality of their own but by their oppositional quality and differential value. Common misinterpretations notwithstanding, a chance to bridge the conceptual chasm between statics and dynamics, synchronic and diachronic dimensions, is also built into the analytical equipment of the modern linguistics. The numerous statements to the contrary, frequent as they have been, have been born out of the understandable, though not necessarily convincing, passion of the devout preachers of an undoubtedly revolutionary idea.

The article focuses on various sociologists. There were a number of sociologists who were rather bemused and puzzled seeing Sorokin being idolized by the radical students and young faculty members. It seemed to them that Sorokin, who had condemned violence and revolutionary activity ever since the Revolution, was being worshipped by the wrong people. Some of the famous scholars are Pitirim A. Sorokin, Nicholas S. Timasheff and Georges Gurvitch. Timasheff, Sorokin and Gurvitch have succeeded, each in his own way, in becoming internationally famous scholars. The paths they each chose to follow seem to have been determined to a significant degree by their respective family backgrounds, as well as by the Revolution. Timasheff's approach in his sociological writings was historical and analytical. Sorokin's work and style represent a marked contrast to Timasheff's. While Timasheff used historical data as empirical facts, Sorokin used the data as means for conforming his personal apocalyptic vision. Gurvitch's ideas were also formed under the direct impact of the Revolution.

The article focuses on social mobility and economic growth. Concerning the nature of the entrepreneurial role itself, the industrial capitalist, though he may seek profit for a variety of motives, nevertheless must behave as if profit were the defining goal of economic action. He must, in competitive circumstances, seek to discover and employ those tools and techniques which multiply the human energy invested in their creation and use, thereby providing income-yielding power in the process of production and exchange. One may reason that people who are in general achievement-oriented displayed the same orientation in selecting a career, i.e., they experimented with different occupations, either imaginatively on the basis of whatever information they had or by trial and error in practice, and so chose to stay with the activity for which they were best suited, business. It thus seems clear, then, that the achievement norm-potentially so appropriate for entrepreneurial roles-became operative in economic growth not because of the high social prestige of business activity, but rather because transformations in Elizabethan patterns of social mobility.

It is well known that American agriculture benefited enormously by mechanization and rationalization, even if the spirit of industrial production had to be modified in its adaptation to this field of economic endeavor. A case of over-zealous organization is revealed in the institution of hand-shaking practiced at various receptions. In a reception given after a wedding, for example, the bride and bridegroom and their parents stand at the door in a line and shake the hand of every guest turning up, a laborious and lengthy process in many cases. Every system of examination involves a measure of order and organization, but the American approach goes in this respect to extremes. A significant expression of the principle of organization is the establishment of rules. Rules try to organize human behavior in such a way as to achieve the desired goals efficiently. It would be unimaginable to have a system of mass-production in which the division of functions was not complemented by the following of strict rules as to how each function must be performed.

Propositions and concepts are reexamined and modified as a result of the discussion on social mobility. Social structures which are ethnically differentiated give rise to the kind of definition that would apply the label 'minority.' An imbalance arises between aspirations and actual chances of mobility leading as a rule to partial mobility. Social mobility is seen as the movement in social status or social position by individuals of diverse social origins measurable by the occupational index. This is a search for the causal explanation of differential mobility rates between coloured minorities and white minorities. A number of studies have stated and others have implied that the immobility of coloured groups is due to discrimination on grounds of the special racial factor of colour. A factor which influences the social mobility chances of minority groups is the stereotyping or homogenization of attitudes in the receiving country with regard to social class. Another factor is the socio-economic structure and politico-legal condition prevalent in the receiving country. Re-statements of the propositions include that social mobility in terms of socio-economic indicators is not caused by a rigidity in social structure and that it depends on the rank order in which the minority group is.

The crisis confronting Western sociology is seen to hinge on a fundamental re-examination of the identification of the logic of natural and social sciences. The dialectical logic involved is viewed as providing a bridge between Marxist and non-Marxist sociology which are battling for the mantle of orthodoxy in Western sociology. Sociologist Karl Marx viewed his method as scientific and its product, historical materialism, as a reality. The dominant forces in Western sociology shape their self-image to foresee and relegate anticipation to those engaged in policy planning. Western sociology has been inhospitable to dialectical imagery. Sociology is dialectically linked with alienation, the two working together as a single interactive process. Sociologists began to suspect that the consistency and closure demanded by the system assumption failed to provide a place for fundamental social change. The decision of sociologist Charles Loomis to title his presidential address before the American Sociological Association granted both official sanction and encouragement to the dialectical mode from the Western sociological orthodoxy. The division that has taken place in the house of Western sociology is evidenced within Marxist sociology.

This article discusses current student discontent in terms of the "politics of the knowable," the possible social effects of a view of reality. The author argues that the current revolt--itself but part of an age-old revolt--is bolstered by an ideology that is by no means so weak that it can be wholly disregarded--particularly in the social, as opposed to the natural, sciences. Some students feel that a university career but renders them fit for capitalist consumption, tailors them to dummydom, seduces them with an appeal to cupidity, thus endowing them with the status of a kind of organization courtesan--a rich, kept amenity of the status quo. The present system is felt to be excessively vocational. Individuals are turned out to meet pre-determined ends-not to expand. These ends are resented. They are felt--to put it kindly--to be beside the Point. They are felt to be "irrelevant," of use neither to society as seen by them nor to the individual. Syllabuses are accused of being too detailed studies are accused of being too rule-bound--both are held to be symbols, not of professional rectitude, rather of social decadence. It is clear that students do not mean by "relevance" what one might have thought they would.

It is the contention of this article that there has been a pronounced tendency in sociology to under-emphasize the study of values and moral issues, and that the cause of this is twofold: the cultural and organizational climate within which sociologists operate and the lack of consensus among them on a conceptual framework within which accumulative research on values could occur. The article has attempted to assess the current level of accomplishment in the field of value study and to suggest possible reasons for the apparent lack of progress. The need for an increased emphasis on this aspect of social relations is considered sufficiently urgent to warrant a renewed effort toward the achievement of a measure of consensus in theory. The premise that human social action is an integral part of a totally interrelated, determined but largely undeterminable universe of matter is offered as a possible starting point. It is hoped that the model of value change proposed might eventually prove capable of generating hypotheses concerning cultural and social change and the relation of such change to value systems.

The article presents the author's opinions on sociology. There is only one sociology and that it is functionalist. We are all functionalists now, if indeed it is society we are studying. Society in this assertion does not mean the whole society but the state of human association or interaction. I am not advocating that there is any special need to study whole societies, but that there is a special need to stay focused on social facts. In so far as anyone thinks there is a different sociological approach from the functionalist, it will be because he has been diverted from the emergent properties of social action, probably to the psychology of the actor. That is to say, he will not be making a different approach but approaching a different thing. But in so far as we try to grapple with social facts we will be functionalists. It is sometimes suggested that a theoretical task for the moment is to work out a synthesis that would reconcile functionalism with some of the other assumed non-functionalist views such as a conflict view or a balance view of order.

American sociology is distinguished from British and continental European sociology by, among other things, a lack of interest in identifying and measuring social class, as distinct from social status. Indices of occupational prestige ratings have served as indices of social status. This article explicates the most popular American scale of occupational prestige ratings, and concludes that this index is not a plausible index either of the relative prestige of occupations or of social status, and furthermore, that such an index in principle is not obtainable. The errors of proponents of the scale lie in an idealistic theory of the social order and repetition of the classic mistake once committed, but now long avoided, by economists: aggregation of subjective evaluations. A well-known characteristic feature of American sociology, in contrast to British and continental European sociology, has been the absence of serious attempts to establish numerical indices of social class. Yet there have been a number of attempts to establish indices of what is variously known as social status or socio-economic status, mainly by means of polled verbal evaluations of occupations.

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.

Too often, sociological accounts of literature have used fiction merely as illustrative of sociological theories, concepts and schemes of analysis, adding little to sociological theory and impoverishing en passant the richness of the literary work. The concentration upon the nineteenth-century novel by Marxist writers is understandable, for it is in this novel that the phenomenon of class conflict, the disenchantment of the writer with bourgeois democracy and the flight from realism, either in the form of reactionary romanticism or avant-garde literary forms, are to be discovered. This approach is useful in overcoming a particular barrier presented to a sociology of literature by literary critics. By and large, the literary critics are concerned with the discernment of quality and taste and the establishment of the great works of art, and thus erect the distinction between high culture and low culture. Yet it is very often the case that a coherent world view is presented by what are generally regarded as second-rate or downright bad writers. An approach of this kind places the sociologist in bad company, because it directs attention to the interstices of respectable social life, where the fantasies of many are actualized in portrayals of the pursuits of thieves, murderers and perverts.

The article comments on the concept of power. Power is one of the most central and yet problematic concepts in sociological theory. Power, like love, is a word used continually in ordinary speech, understood intuitively, and defined rarely, people know what the power game is. In many instances sociologists have been no more precise than this. Yet it is possible to define power precisely without losing the core of its common-sense meaning. This section discusses critically current definitions of power, and concludes by suggesting a refinement of current definitions which maintains their essence while avoiding some of their misleading assumptions. Most sociological theorists have defined power in more restricted terms, as a specific type of relation between objects, persons and groups. The most influential definition remains that of the sociologist Max Weber: power is the probability that one actor within a social relationship will be in a position to carry out his own will despite resistance, regardless the basis on which this probability rests.

The article discusses sociologist Christopher Bryant's defence of scientific sociology. Bryant rejects the idea that sociology must be exclusively humanistic and he proposed three categories of social reality. Humanistic explanations vary in a number of ways, in directness, in simplicity and according to the persistence of the action referred to. Within humanistic explanation there are levels, continua rather than dichotomies. Most famed sociology is humanistic explanation. That this has not been recognized and is frequently denied is profoundly damaging to the defence of the subject. It leads sociologists to fail to push humanistic explanations to their limits of logical and empirical rigour, it leads them to self condemnation, and provides ammunition to sociology's opponents. Bryant, in keeping with his acceptance of a rather rigid dichotomy, is inclined to accept much of the philosophical case against comparison and generalization. Bryant's argument tends to miss the strongest of the philosophical cases. This involves recourse to a fundamental relativism.

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.