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The article presents information about various conferences and academic activities in the field of sociology that appeared in the 1965 issue of the "International Journal of Comparative Sociology." The International Association of French-Speaking Sociologists had its Fifth Symposium from September 29 to October 4, 1964. The symposium was held near Quebec, Canada, under the chairmanship of professor Georges Gurvitch. The theme of the symposium was "Social Classes in Present-day Sociology." A series of papers were on social classes in tropical Africa. The Sixtieth Annual Meeting of the American Sociological Association was held at Chicago, Illinois, from August 30 to September 2, 1965. One came from this conference of American sociologists, with many Canadians present, a little confused, certainly so if he went with the purpose of taking it all in. For this anonymous reporter the impression was one of bigness, of complexity, and of a great bureaucracy emerging. The Sixth World Congress of Sociology will be held in Evian, France, during September 4 to 11, 1966. Communications by prospective participants are of two types official and individual. Specialists interested in an official presentation are required to contact the president of the working group in which they are interested.

The article presents information on castes, outcastes and the sociology of stratification. In this paper an attempt will be made to explore in necessarily preliminary terms the reasons for the occurrence of caste structures and their most extreme manifestations, untouchable groups, in so many different places and in so many different socio-cultural contexts. Obviously, unless one is to believe in multiple cases of unique social causation, societies displaying caste characteristics may be suspected of having structural properties in common which predispose them to develop along such lines once the right combination of historical events takes place. The study of caste groups is but a particular aspect of the study of social stratification and social stratification is to be found is one form or another in almost all human societies. Outcastes are, of course, simply a variety of caste group, despite the misleading implications of the word used to designate them, their presence in a society announces that caste in one of its more rigid manifestations is to be found there. Their presence also announces in the case of Asia, that a mingling has occurred between certain indigenous social institutions of the society and what the author refers to as the 'Hindu Ethic' which have been introduced by the process of historical diffusion.

The article focuses on a symposium which addresses itself to one of the central problems, be called "comparative macro-sociology" The theoretical problem of the relationship between class and ethnicity, or, more broadly, of the structure of asymmetrical dependence between human groups linked through economic and political ties, is, or course, common to a great many complex societies throughout the world. The empirical focus on Peru is fortuitous when the author was approached and asked to undertake the editorial task. The increasing numbers of studies of class-stratified and ethnically diverse societies that have accumulated over the last fifteen years or so have come out of two broad traditions: Marxian class analysis, and the cultural anthropological approach. The reasons why ethnicity was never meaningfully incorporated into the intellectual structure of Marxism are complex but fairly apparent. At the empirical level Marx was primarily concerned with the advanced industrial societies of Western Europe that were more ethnically homogeneous, or at least where the salience of class conflicts in the mid to late 19th century was greater than that of ethnic conflicts.

The article tests the hypothesis that there is no significant relationship between social class and self-reported delinquent acts among Swiss boys in varying age groups. A questionnaire was given to boys studying in four different schools in the Graubuenden Canton in Switzerland. The null hypothesis was tested that there is no significant difference in the delinquent acts by social class of respondents. Chi square tests were conducted for three age groups thirteen to fifteen years, fifteen to nineteen years and thirteen to nineteen years. The results strongly support research findings in the U.S. and Canada. It was found that lower-class boys are more apt to engage in aggressive and serious delinquencies and sons of farmers engage more frequently in "social" delinquency and theft yet are underrepresented among aggressive delinquents. Upper-class boys are both aggressively and socially less delinquent. Overall, no class of boys is consistently over or underrepresented in all categories of delinquent acts.

The article presents some evidence from Great Britain of the influence exerted by children's educational attainments upon working class parents' aspirations for their children. Low aspirations and distinctive values found in working class communities are developed and maintained and a number of studies of predominantly working class populations have shown a tendency to rely on networks of informal contacts in providing information about job opportunities and in exercising influence to obtain jobs. Two different measures were developed of the home background provided by the family. One of these measured the number of "middle class attributes" possessed by the parents and referred to their education and the occupations they had held and to the education and occupation of their fathers and the education of their mothers. The other referred to the families' expenditure on housing, consumer durables and the decoration and furnishing of the home. Increasing importance of formal qualifications and educational attainments in occupational selection is giving more power to the formal agencies of the school and the Youth Employment Service and is substituting universalistic for particularistic criteria in job selection.

The article examines the characteristics of the youth culture among upper middle-class Canadian and Swiss boys. According to the article, recent social and economic change in Canada has made possible a culture of leisure and an affluent and highly industrialized society. This has resulted in an unexpected emergence of a prestigious youth culture and the highly glamorized, socially celebrated role of teenager. Big business has been quick to appreciate and influence the purchasing power of young people. Through the mass media it has promoted the "needs" of younger age groups, publicized the adolescent market and colorfully highlighted, as a moral imperative, active participation in teenage events. Although Switzerland is one of the affluent countries of the world, it ranks objectively lower than either Canada or the United States. Here the family unit is apt to be relatively stable, authority still vested firmly with the parents, and the rights and obligations governing parent-child relationships clearly defined and respected.

The article presents short articles and reports about ongoing research related to comparative sociology. A great amount of literature has appeared on the Indian caste system. In the United States, the caste theory has divided sociologists into two groups One group headed by W.L. Warner has considered the relationship of the Negro and white populations in the United States as a form of the caste system. The other group of the caste theorists including Charles C. Johnson present arguments against applying the term "caste" to both India and the United States. Although Charles C. Johnson sees many similarities in the social stratification system in the United States and the caste system of India, he still objects to identifying both systems as a caste. An attempt will be made to examine the validity of the arguments raised by these American caste theorists and to inquire further whether the objections raised by them are appropriate to the social system in changing India. It is not quite clear whether these caste theorists mean to say that a person cannot change his social status, or that transition from one caste to another is not possible. It is relatively true that people cannot change their caste status which is hereditary, but they may nevertheless rise in social status. Socioeconomic mobility in the "actual caste system" of modern India is not only possible within castes, but across levels of castes. Unfortunately this has not been possible in the United States because of the conspicuous visibility of color. No doubt a Negro may aspire to and achieve a position of high social status, but life chance differentials tend to restrict both his spatial and social mobility. His mobility is largely within the limits of segregation.

This article analyzes the dynamics of social stratification systems. It is assumed that both structural and cultural variables are essential for the sociological approach to stratification and that it is necessary to find some way of relating these two categories of variable. The fundamental characteristic of the concept stratification is that it involves ranking ordering units in a hierarchy. The sociologist can impose any criterion of ranking onto society and thus divide the units up into classes.

The article studies various aspects of social class, affiliation and ethnic prejudice. It is observed that despite the progress in the social class concept there exists a dearth of consensus in the field of social stratification. The disagreement embraces every phase of the field, its concept, methodology and findings. General agreement seems to have been accomplished on one point in the social class phenomena, and that says that differences in social class affiliation should have a bearing on differential social behavior. It is generally agreed that without the distinction of differential behavior on the part of the different segments of society there would be no purpose in its study. The article makes an attempt to close the gap one step toward a codification of the class concept. In line with the theoretical frame of reference and the hypothesis that differential social class affiliation will be seen in differential behavior attitudes, the article considers the variables of prejudice and religiosity. It is also the concern of this study to verify the usefulness of the mailed questionnaire approach to gathering social phenomena data. The problem of the mailed questionnaire approach with its accompanying drawback of the relatively small percentage of returns and from making inference to the universe of discourse has as yet not been solved.

The article focuses on the social sources of communism in Finland. The Communist movement in Finland has heavy mass support. In addition it has strongholds in very diverse social and economic areas. The most important historical events are presumably those related to the extension of political rights to all groups in the population. Traditionally the rise of working class movements is explained by the lower classes' feelings of deprivations because of their position in the class structure. A table of different social classes and their relative political preferences has been provided. Even if social class, defined by occupation or self-identification, does not account for the differences in Communists or Social-Democratic support, one may assume that some factors make the Communist supporters feel more deprived than the Social Democratic ones. A comparative table of party preference among working and middle class has also been provided. Other statistical data based on different classes, regions and parties with interpretation has been given.

This article is an attempt to examine certain relationships between family structure and social class in contemporary Portuguese society. It is primarily concerned with two structural variables, namely the locus of authority in the family and its structural range beyond the limits of the nuclear or conjugal core unit. In other words, the questions the author proposes to raise are these who is subordinate to whom, and what consanguine, affinal and ceremonial relatives of a given individual are actually tied to him by reciprocal obligations and privileges. The Portuguese upper class has retained, in spite of peripheral changes, its patripotestal and extended character. Sometimes it is a joint family in the residential sense of the term, for a married son with his wife and children may continue to live in his parents' household. While ceremonial kinship ties are weak or non-existent in other classes, they have retained considerable vitality among the peasantry. Surrounded by prohibitions and magical beliefs, they still perform the functions of expanding the family circle and of reinforcing existing kinship ties whenever ceremonial kinship coincides with biological or affinal kin relationships.