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This conceptual paper reviews four dimensions of the climate change (CC) debate concerning perception, framing, and political and economic dimensions of CC. It attempts to address the question posed by sociological research as to what can be done to reduce the social forces driving CC. In doing so, it attempts to uncover mechanisms that delay or prevent the social change required to combat CC. Such mechanisms call into question the Ecological Modernization Theory's assumption that modern societies embrace environmental sustainability with no radical intervention to change the social, political, and economic order. It specifically considers how the representation of CC as a distant phenomenon, in both temporal and physical terms, might contribute to social disengagement. A reflection on the interdependencies among science, political economy, media, and individual perceptions guides this paper. All these social forces also shape the CC discourse in diverse ways according to the evolution of the phenomenon over time (in scientific, but also in political and economic terms) and in relation to its spatial dimension (global/national/local). The variety of climate discourses contributes to increasing political uncertainty; however, this is not the only factor that generates confusion around the CC. Multiple and contrasting information might trigger a "blaming/empowering game" that works at various levels. This mechanism simultaneously promotes the necessity for sustainable development and perpetuates "business as usual‐oriented" practices. Implementing sustainable development is therefore constantly undermined by a difficulty in identifying "heroes" and "devils" in the context of CC. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Along with Ward, Giddings, and Keller, William Graham Sumner has been considered a social evolutionist. The Science of Society, supposedly written by Sumner with Keller, has been traditionally utilized to document his evolutionary orientation. However, two recently discovered unpublished Sumner manuscripts show that the mature Sumner rejected almost all the basic premises of social evolutionism. This paper concludes that Sumner rejected social evolutionism during the last decade of his career and that the evolutionary orientation found within The Science of Society, which was published 17 years after his death, was the result of Keller's thought. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines ‘alternative institutions’ in a variety of institutional domains as participatory-democratic modes of organization. Grounded in comparative data, it posits structural conditions, both internal to an organization and in its environment, which support or undermine the achievement of its collectivist-democratic ideals. While the literature on social movement organizations well demonstrates the fragility of democratic systems and their tendency toward oligarchization, goal displacement, and organizational maintenance, this work suggests, in propositional form, conditions which militate against these all-too-common transformation patterns. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Moderate social movement organizations (SMOs) often denounce radical SMOs for statements and actions that threaten to alienate potential sources of external support. This paper analyzes the development of such interorganizational hostility in the Southern civil rights movement over the issues of Communist participation, the Vietnam War, and black power. In demonstrating how the moderate SMOs' perceived need for external support aggravated divisions over these issues, this paper calls attention to a major source of intelorganizational hostility in the movement that previous work has overlooked. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article presents an introduction to a selected bibliography of various literature related to sociology. It is largely because of the broad range of problems currently of concern in modern industrial societies that interest in the development of social indicators has not localized itself in any particular sector of society. "Recent Sociological Trends," by William Ogburn represents one of the earliest attempts to compile a system of social indicators. To gain a strong historical background to the growth for the social indicator movement one may find it helpful to examine the interest and activities of the federal government in this movement. For, even though government in the United States has traditionally displayed a tendency to overlook the broader social dimensions of societal change and development in favor of narrower economic concerns, some of the strongest momentum in the growth of the social indicator movement has come by way of the federal government. Several of the more influential publications appearing over the past five years have been directly or indirectly a product of governmental activities.

Much has been written to explain the collapse of the former Soviet Union. Little attention, however, has been paid to understanding why post-1991 Russia has maintained stability despite continued economic and political turmoil throughout the 1990s. This paper attempts to answer this question by applying an integrated model of territorial disintegration to examine the political, economic, demographic, and geopolitical changes in the pre-1991 Soviet Union and post-1991 Russia. The integrated model is constructed by synthesizing Goldstone’s demographic-structural model, Skocpol’s and Collins’ geopolitical model, and a modified version of Collins’ argument of the destabilizing potential brought about by rapid market development as three alternative routes to territorial disintegration. It is found that improvement in Russia’s geopolitical condition after 1991 is largely responsible for the decline in disintegrative potential. Slower population growth also rendered the demographic route less disintegrative during the 1990s. More effective taxation and the availability of foreign loans enabled the Russian state to handle its financial crises, thereby curbing the development of destabilizing forces through the dynamics proposed by Collins. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper offers elaborations on current knowledge about social-movement framing processes and cognitive liberation, especially regarding technical controversies and not-in-my-backyard (NIMBY) protest. The social-constructionist lens of the framing perspective also allows refinements in conventional explanations of NIMBY conflicts. Attention is given to the dynamics of emergence, continuity, and change in framing strategies over time in controversy regarding the U.S. Army's chemical-weapons disposal program. I focus specifically on dynamics involved in the development of cognitive liberation, particularly the framing difficulties that occur in the context of cognitive ambiguities produced by an "information haze." These ambiguities create problems for developing and linking the diagnostic, prognostic, and motivational elements of collective-action frames. I also attend to frame transformation, explaining how transformation may be both animated and constrained by a movement's opponent. I conclude that NIMBY is only one possible framing and can be transformed as the context of the dispute shifts. Moreover, framing activities in technical disputes may be particularly difficult due to the role of scientific rhetoric and experts in interpreting risks and shaping understandings of the situation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Utilizing recent research and monographs from participants and observers, this paper reports on the underanalyzed Vietnam antiwar movement. Key events are placed in a historical context that help to explain the origins of the movement. Particular attention is given to the various responses of the state to the challengers and the complex interrelationships with the media. As the antiwar movement grew and developed, there were multiple factors that contributed to solidarity and factionalism within the movement. Despite state repressive actions and internal factionalism, the movement was successful in helping to end the war. The effects on U.S. policies were more indirect than direct. The antiwar movement mobilized millions of citizens to public protest. The demonstrations helped to shift public opinion away from supporting the war and activated third parties to question and demand an end to war policies. The political system did respond to the antiwar movement’s demands. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Social Impact Assessment (SIA) is a method of policy analysis that offers great potential for integrating scientific policy analysis into a democratic political process. This potential has not been realized in large part because there has been no theoretical framework to guide SIA. In this paper I propose such a framework, using Habermas' (1970) pragmatistic approach to policy. The framework suggests heavy emphasis on use of SIA early in the policy process and on methods that emphasize impact identification and portrayal. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The efforts of the Reagan Administration to cut government funding for the arts and the social sciences reflects not only a general desire to curtail government spending but also a specific conservative effort to ‘defund the Left’ by eliminating especially those programs regarded by conservatives as the basic source of liberal and radical social change in the United States. This paper examines the conservative animus against government support for the arts and the social sciences. The discussion has four parts: The first traces the history of contemporary American conservatism and identifies its central ideological themes. The second argues that the belief that government and intellectuals are the two main sources of liberal social change has led conservatives to target government programs allegedly guilty of social activism and to develop their own relatively autonomous connterintellectual network. The third examines how this political agenda and institutional structure have influenced conservative opposition to government funding of the social sciences and the arts. The final part suggests some implications our analysis has for defending the social sciences and the arts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The ‘conflict school’ in contemporary sociology emerged in large part as a critique of the theory of social change that Talcott Parsons developed during his middle period, which began with the empirically-oriented essays that appeared after The Structure of Social Action (Parsons, 1937), and extended through the simultaneous publication of Towards a General Theory of Action (Parsons and Shils, 1951) and The Social System (Parsons, 1951). The conflict critique, now enshrined in textbook lore and highbrow writing alike, accused Parsons of a static, idealist bias that ignored issues of process, conflict, and change. While Parsons's attitude toward change, during this and later periods of his development, was complex and often ambiguous, this evaluation was certainly incorrect. I will demonstrate, in fact, that in this middle period Parsons actually produced a more systematic and compelling approach to conflict and change than the theories produced by the conflict critics themselves. In the first part of this paper, I will present the formal elements of Parsons's change theory. The second part will add substance to this theory by showing how Parsons applied it to the empirical problematics of recent Western development. In the third section, I will relate this formal and substantive theorizing to the vastly misunderstood deviance paradigm from The Social System. In conclusion, I will return to the question with which I began: What is the real relationship between the conflict theorists and their very useful straw man, ‘Talcott Parsons’? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The rise of environmental justice activism since the 1980s provides an exceptional opportunity to study the relations between a grassroots movement and philanthropic foundations. I utilize archival documents and interviews with activists and funders to pose two guiding questions. One, to what degree has the environmental justice movement gained access to foundations? Two, to what degree does this movement maintain self-determination in its relations with foundations? This paper shows that the movement successfully established connections with a few key foundations. I also show how environmental justice grantee organizations maneuvered around some of the foundation-related constraints that might otherwise present very real threats to their self-determination. This analysis builds on, but also goes beyond, the channeling and co-optation literatures that emphasize the potentially negative influence of foundation funding on grantees. It also contributes to the newly developing social relations perspective which conceptualizes social movement philanthropy as a relationship that is mediated by many factors (for instance, the political orientation of the funder and grantee, among others). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Environmental sociology is founded on the assumption that the natural resource base of a society establishes the limits or constraints within which that society must operate. Thus, a change in the resource base on which a society depends will necessitate changes or adaptations within that society. This study attempts to empirically test these assumptions by looking at the effects of groundwater availability in the Great Plains of the United States from 1940 to 1980. Using a model derived from human ecology theory, it was found that irrigation development had major implications on nonmetropolitan counties during the time period studied. Irrigation development resulted in increased agricultural production, variations in the structure of farm enterprises, and in increased retention of both farm and nonfarm populations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sociological research on what people think has been hampered by inadequate methods. These inadequacies are illustrated by Coleman's survey research and Bittner's participant observation study. The ethnoscience approach in anthropology is developing improved methods for studying cognitive content, and the usefulness of these methods is illustrated by research on (1) wedding ceremonies, (2) kinship terminology and (3) norms and social change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The author of this article shares insights into the Harvard Project on the Sociocultural Aspects of Development, a comparative study of the differential impact of varying modernizing settings on attitudes and values. The Harvard Project on the Sociocultural Aspects of Development is a comparative study (in Chile, Argentina, Israel, Nigeria, India and Pakistan) of the differential impact of varying modernizing settings on attitudes and values. Sustained development seems to depend on the wide diffusion through the population of certain attitudes, and values. United States positions to act, and habits of doing things which, in combination, characterize the "industrial man" and differentiate him from the man of tradition who makes up the bulk of the population in most underdeveloped countries. The author notes that sustained development seems to depend on the wide diffusion through the population of certain attitudes, values, dispositions to act, and habits of doing things. The working assumption is that experience in a modern industrial enterprise will induce changed attitudes, which, on the whole, will make men better-adapted and more effective citizens of a modern society.

The article presents a letter from the editor concerning the May 2007 issue of "Sociological Inquiry." The issue features articles about problems facing labor unions in the United States, giving employees a personal stake in the management of the workplace, health-endangering behavior among young Native Americans, the Atom for Peace program and its effects on nuclear proliferation globally, the effects of marital status on happiness and family life, and an analysis of the politics of social movements.

A great deal of scholarship investigates the effects of parenting on adults who parent. While existing literature has identified the ways in which parenting affects parents adversely, we argue that more attention needs to be paid to how having children may enhance parents' lives. Thus, we draw upon twenty-four in-depth interviews with young parents in order to investigate this process. First, we identify five ways in which parents say caregiving has changed their worldviews, relationships, and expectations, leading them to 1) erect barriers, 2) aspire for more, 3) view parenthood as a second chance, 4) hew a new path, and 5) make connections. Second, we uncover two central metaphors that parents rely on to explain the effect that having responsibility for children has had on their lives: the child as witness and the child as tether. We also point to future areas of investigation, arguing that only with an adequate understanding of what parenting does to parents can we understand what changing trends in families and inequality hold for ourselves and our futures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Emotions can be a source of information and an impetus for social action, but the desire to avoid unpleasant emotions and the need for emotion management can also prevent social movement participation. Ethnographic and interview data from a rural Norwegian community describes how people avoided thinking about climate change in part because doing so raised fears of ontological security, emotions of helplessness and guilt, and was a threat to individual and collective senses of identity. In contrast to existing studies that focus on the public's lack of information or concern about global warming as the basis for the lack of public response, my work describes the way in which holding information at a distance was an active strategy performed by individuals as part of emotion management. Following Evitar Zerubavel, I describe this process of collective avoiding as the social organization of denial. Emotions played a key role in denial, providing much of the reason why people preferred to avoid information. Emotion management was also a central aspect of the process of denial, which in this community was carried out through the use of a cultural stock of social narratives that were invoked to achieve “perspectival selectivity” and “selective interpretation.” [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Social movement organizations frame not only their target issues, but their own organizational identities. In doing so, they are sometimes forced to make difficult decisions that pit principle against considerations of image. This article compares and contrasts episodes from two different movements: (1) Amnesty International's (AIUSA) expansion of its human rights agenda to include death penalty abolitionism and (2) the American Civil Liberties Union's (ACLU) endorsement of drug legalization. Based upon documentary and interview data, I demonstrate that Amnesty's decision to work toward the abolition of capital punishment provoked intense internal debate based upon the prevalence within AIUSA at that time of a narrow conception of human rights, concern about the effect of anti-death penalty projects on the group's priorities, and the fear that the carefully crafted image the organization had built would be damaged by anti-death penalty work. The ACLU's endorsement of drug legalization provoked some of the same concerns, but issues of public identity management were far less evident. Instead, internal debates focused on the proper breadth of the organization's anti-prohibitionism. I suggest that the differences between the two cases may be understood in terms of contrasting organizational cultures, framing vocabularies, and membership profiles. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article examines the concept of social movement endurance by analyzing the Rastafari movement in Jamaica. The Rastafari represent a good case study for exploring social movement endurance for a number of reasons. First, the Rastafari is a very old social movement, dating back to the 1930s. While many social movements fade after a short-lived peak, the Rastafari has not only persisted but has also become globally important. Second, the posture of the Rastafari is radical, inviting criticism from mainstream society. The Rastafari is based on transcendental principles, mostly drawn from the Bible, that offer a radical reinterpretation of the sociopolitical conditions of Jamaica as well as the rest of the world. Third, the Rastafari is a political or religious movement that consistently has been perceived as a threat to the cultural and political well-being of Jamaica. Accordingly, since its emergence the Rastafari has received stiff resistance from the Jamaican establishment. Despite its radical posture and its perceived threat to the Jamaican established order, however, the movement has prevailed for more than six decades.

This article draws upon ethnographic data to explore two boundary framing processes at Crossroads. Boundary framing about grantmaking substance involves efforts by Crossroads to define its problem area for funding. It distinguishes between social services, which many foundations fund, and community organizing, which few others support. Boundary framing about grantmaking structure is Crossroads's effort to distinguish itself from all other local foundations, because its grantmaking decisions are made by a diverse group of activists recruited from the types of community organizations that Crossroads funds, rather than by politically lesser informed elites. The article argues that during boundary framing actors simultaneously articulate two vocabularies of motives for movement participation: an instrumental vocabulary about dire, yet solvable, problems and an expressive vocabulary about collective identity. Activists construe their goal-oriented actions as continually aligned with, and fueled by, identity claims. This argument elucidates the taken-for-granted notion that people join movements to effect social change. The study argues that "social change" is as much about who movement actors are as what they do and that these meanings jointly motivate participation. In exploring what "social change" means to those who work for it, the study outlines a new direction for integrating cultural and structural approaches to social movements.

Contrary to conventional social problems models that depict environmental problems as arising from either ‘sin’ or ‘error,’ such problems are rooted in the modern treadmill of production. Following the classification of Theodore Lowi, recent environmental movement organizations appear to have emphasized a social redistributive rhetoric (sin), but have engaged in practices of distributive politics (error). As a result, even with the advent of the ‘radical’ appropriate technology movement in the mid 1970s, the central issues relate to the forces of production, with far less attention given to the social relations of modern production. The explanation for this disparity lies partly in the substantial decline of a participatory base for social movement organizations in the 1970s. Hence the advent of appropriate technology movement organizations has raised competition for limited membership pools, inducing older organizations to become more diffuse in their ideologies in order to maintain and/or attract constituents. Second, the social context makes successful redistributive policies less likely, encouraging movement organizations to find successes in more decentralized distributive negotiations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A common criticism of Parsonian theory has been that it is really not a theory but only a classificatory scheme. Critics claim that its concepts are not amenable to operationalization and that low-level empirically testable hypotheses cannot be derived from the theory. We argue that: (1) These criticisms are based upon a limited concept of theory, one that neglects other important Junctions that theory performs. (2) Many concepts in Parsonian theory can and have been operationalized. (3) Empirically testable propositions can be deduced from Parsons's theory. Examples from the areas of social evolution, criminology, small groups, and the sell are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article presents a comparative perspective into the nature of the legal profession. In various ways, lawyers shape the substance of the legal order rather than merely apply it. To be of theoretical rather than merely descriptive use, the sociologist's understanding of the legal profession should be based on international comparison and should not confine itself to one country. Legal systems are closely related to the particular character of each society. Therefore, it would be difficult to decide which findings about the legal profession are of general significance and which are bound up with the peculiarities of the Japanese, the German, or the American legal and social order, if investigations were limited to one country. The reality of social change, always unpredictable to some extent, entails that adjudication can never be reduced to a mere application of existing legal norms to given cases. There is always the possibility of changing the norms in the process of adjudication--of judicial legislation.

Utopian communities—an alternative community form—vary flora large, comprehensive settlements in which most aspects of life are collectively organized to small informal households low on comprehensiveness and collectivization, like many contemporary communes. The initial stages, organizational problems, politics, and economic organization of both highly-structured large communes and minimally-structured small communes are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Comparative empirical evidence is presented to show the basic instrumentally, of low-income urban dwellers to the existential circumstances they face. In Latin America, urban dwellers have seemingly internalized the urban/industrial values of capitalist society and, depending on the availability of jobs and other urban resources and facilities, choose the most rewarding strategy for obtaining benefits. Given the general lack of a well-established structure of secondary industry and the particularistic procedures presently most appropriate for getting jobs and other resources, the motives and basis for communal and collective action are lacking. This is seen most clearly in the example of squatting, where short-term collective action does not develop further, once the objectives of the squatters are achieved. Various forms of instrumental action are expressed in a typology based on subjective orientations and objective opportunities. In the light of the evidence cited, discussions of ‘marginality,’ ‘urban social movements’ and ‘'restructuring of community’ are misplaced. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The field of urban politics is vast and rapidly increasing. Students of a number of disciplines with a plethora of specific interests work within its hazy boundaries. The purpose of this essay is to attempt a contemporary synthesis of the field by linking a set of social structural changes to a variety of patterned political outcomes. Concretely a number of trends affecting urban social organization are summarized with three dimensions. Next the political consequences of change along each of these dimensions are discussed in some detail. Finally, the variable effects produced by the interplay among dimensions are dealt with in a way that gives rise to some data-based speculation about the future of urban politics. In addition to advancing a number of researchable hypotheses, it is hoped that the essay will sensitize the reader to some of the more fundamental issues that loom ahead. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article addresses the decline in the relative importance of communities as bases of collective action. The author emphasizes that the relative decline in communities as bases of collective action has resulted from changes in the structure of power inside and outside communities, from shifts in the relative efficiency of concentrated and dispersed groups in mobilizing resources, and from stabilization of the claims made by communities on other groups. Urbanization played a part in the transformations and so did other changes which have been generally associated with urbanization in the Western experience, but are by no means intrinsic to urbanization.

The relationship between crisis and role change is examined in terms of a three-stage model of role development: differentiation, de-differentiation, and reconfiguration. Crisis is conceptualized as a sufficient but not necessary condition of rapid and significant role change. Trends in occupational and political roles of women during and alter World War II are presented as empirical support of the theoretical framework. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The term ‘secularization,’ when its referent is social institutions and value-norm complexes, is viewed as an instance of differentiation. However, the process of differentiation has both structural and functional components. Confusion in the debate over the nature and extent of secularization in American society arises from the fact that there is disagreement over the functions of religion in a differentiated social setting. A typology of meanings of ‘secularization’ is developed by focusing on this functional component of the differentiation process. This typology, combined with a specification of the various meanings of ‘religion,’ is utilized to pinpoint specific areas of disagreement in the debate over secularization. Suggestions are made on ways to empirically resolve the controversy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Mr. Zeigler, a Director of the Center for Issue Advertising in New York, a television and feature film producer, advertising art director and copywriter, teaches a workshop at the New School for Social Research in Manhattan called ‘Social Change Through Issue Advertising.’ The class functions as a miniature advertising agency for interest groups whose objectives coincide with the workshop's: the defense of an individual's right to his life, health and property through legislative changes. Recognizing the power of advertising to educate and persuade, Mr. Zeigler believes the shortest distance to meaningful social change may be along Madison Avenue. The following is from an interview with him. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article describes the author's current research in comparative sociological analysis. The author's current research interests and plans focus around several concrete topics, which tend to converge around some common theoretical problems. This reorientation raises a series of general problems to the clarification of which some of the works undertaken in the researches enumerated above may make some contribution. First, there is the problem of the place of these societal goals in the universe of goals and wishes of the individual. Second, there is the problem of how and by whom such goals are crystallized and formulated. Among the concrete topics of research are: a reexamination of the relations between tradition, change and modernity; and an analysis of process of change in different types of micro-societal and macro-societal settings. The analytical assumptions or orientations of the said researches tend to merge into a broader analytical framework, the focus of which is the importance of the charismatic dimension in the process of institution-building, of the location of this dimension in the "center" or centers of society, and of the crucial importance of these dimensions in processes of institution-building and of social change and transformation alike.

This article focuses on the linguistic reflex of social change and outlines the main patterns of behavior and of terminology in nineteenth century Russian kinship. The main argument is to describe how the social system altered between 1850 and 1950, and how and why cataclysmic changes triggered off and eventually effected equally cataclysmic changes in the components underlying the terminology as well as the terminology itself. Over the past century the behavior, values and nomenclature of Russian kinship appear to have covaried in three ways, which involve household and affinal terms, type of industrialization and genealogical distance and finally, the Orthodox Church and various natural and fictive ties. First, the stem, joint fraternal and patrilocal households and the ideology of extended patrilocal groups has been replaced in all regions and at all social levels by a statistical and jural norm of small families of parents and children. Second, the extraordinarily high development of cottage industries and of migrant or outside labor in 1850, has largely been replaced by permanent and fully urbanized industrialization. Third, rituals, incest taboos and ideological influence of the Russian Orthodox Church have been replaced by the new rituals, secular laws, and norms of the Soviet state.

For understanding the roles of moderate whites today, this article assesses a historical case of organized moderation which apparently was quite successful in reaching its admittedly limited goals, the Association of Southern Women for the Prevention of Lynching (ASWPL). In many respects the ladies of the ASWPL were a pioneer white group speaking out for moderation in the Deep South, and in the record of their activities one finds important similarities with racial moderates and liberals in United States today. The term 'moderate' is used throughout this article to designate persons who, at the minimum, favor desegregation in the abstract and law and order . The case of the ASWPL may be instructive for understanding the role of racial moderation today if viewed in the framework of a crisis theory of social change. There are at least three logically deprivable roles which the moderate may play: Initiator, Conciliator and Educator. The Associations members acted as catalysts in speeding the process of detraditionalization.

The differences in the structure of the white and Negro sub-communities may constitute a variable which, apart from the superior power of the white sub-community, affects the progress of desegregation. The sudden shift of the historic Negro community from accommodation to protest, from subservience to challenge, may have an even broader significance for the study of social change. The two types of associations in the Negro community which have come closest to exerting real power in the institutions of the white community have been labor unions and protest organizations. From the consideration of the structures of the two sub-communities and from observation of some cases of confrontation, propositions concerning the position of the Negro leader as spokesman for his subunity are derived. These propositions are offered as hypotheses relating to what may be called "the role of the Negro Leader-agent." They become most relevant and may be tested best when community race relations are at a stage of negotiation between white and Negro leaders.

This article is concerned with the role of a strategic minority community member in the process of desegregation, that of the Negro public school teacher. Several studies completed before the 1954 Supreme Court decision addressed themselves to this topic either directly or indirectly. Four reasons are given for the suggestion that the Negro teacher is of strategic importance. The article will endeavor to determine that how do Negro teachers feel school desegregation will affect them and their jobs? To what extent are the teacher's attitudes and behavior in the community and classroom a function of the community context and his perceived self interest? The results clearly shows that the study of social change requires a multilevel approach. It was found that the militancy of Negro teachers increases with increases in social scale, suggests that Negro attitudes and goals bear a complementary relationship to white attitudes and goals. It has been shown that the pressure for desegregation from the Negro community is greatest in those urban-industrial areas where whites are likely to be least resistant to the change. On the other hand, it is in the areas where the whites are most resistant that the Negroes are least desirous of the change.

The article measures the impact of an international boundary on the spatial pattern of television channel selection in a region where channels originating from both Canada and the United States are mutually receivable. It presents the findings of an exploratory study carried out in several communities on both sides of the United States-Canadian boundary, specifically between Washington and British Columbia. Television has become one of the most important and ubiquitous elements of cultural diffusion in society. The geographical spread of its availability has brought an overwhelming majority of the population within the range of its influence in North America. Although there are varying opinions as to the degree and the nature of the sociological impact of television, there is undisputed agreement that television has become a major culture element with a strong potential for the development of consensus, conformity and standardized values. Television, however, does not achieve equal spatial impact.

The article focuses on the impact of television in contemporary American society. It uses content analysis to explore and illuminate certain dimensions of program presentation that could serve as models for television viewers' behavior. Goals, methods, and combinations of goals and methods presented on programs viewed by various segments of the television audience are analyzed. The degree to which approved goals are portrayed as being successfully achieved by either approved or disapproved methods are also studied. Since many critics appear to worry less about the content of children's programs and are more concerned about adult programs which children are known to watch, it becomes of interest to attempt to determine the extent to which content differs over program types relative to the amount of difference within program types. In this article, a goal was defined by any verbal act or behavior by any character indicating a desire or wish for an identifiable situation. By situation is meant a state of affairs, an identifiable system of relationships.

The article focuses on the boundaries and development of sociology. It probes into some problems of cross-national sociology. As a young science and a new profession, sociology has been approached in different ways by different nations. In the United States where social changes have taken place more rapidly than in other nations, its existence has largely been limited to the university campuses. Sociologists are only now beginning to play their part in all branches of national life. A national boundary, as the term is used in the article, does not merely refer to the demarcation lines established by international commissions as a result of political negotiations or a war between two or more states. National boundaries constitute barriers of three major types, namely: semiotic, political, and cultural. It is possible that the diversity of arguments about what should constitute the subject matter of sociology stemmed from the fact that the early American sociologists represented a variety of backgrounds ranging from the ministry to paleontology.

The article focuses on the research on elections and the sociology of politics in the Northern Scandinavian countries. These countries have a long tradition of scholarly academic work on problems of government, administration and politics which mirrored the concerns of the central administrative bodies of the monarchies and issues of legitimation and normative regulation. The political forces in the Scandinavian countries have three basic processes of economic and social change which are the continuous strengthening of the position of the independent bourgeoisie of merchant capitalists and entrepreneurs, the growth over the same period of a money and market economy in agriculture and the rise of an organized class of working men in the cities and the countryside. The marked improvements made in the conduct of sample surveys in the design of interviews collates comparable tabulations for the differences between the countries in the cleavage bases of their voter alignments, polarization by socio-economic status and the major forces making for a reduction in the distinctiveness of the followers of different parties. The most critical of the between country differences in the party power balance would be the political alignments of the rising new middle classes.

This article focuses on the influence of decision-making on the process of social and cultural change of a Mexican colony, Yalcuc. The colony of Yalcuc was founded under the leadership of Don Alonso Vasquez by a few members of the village of Huajam, together with families from various villages. Later, Don Alonso became president of Yalcuc. Despite internal differences, Yalcuc is a tightly knit community with a high degree of cooperation in community projects. In matters of community concern, the decision-making in Yalcuc follows various stages. Don Alonso decides what course of action to recommend to the community at large. At next stage, a meeting of adult males is called to discuss the matter publicly, and here Don Alanso states the issue and presents his recommendation. The general discussion that follows may be meager or heated, depending on the topic, but the recommendation of the president is almost always accepted. A final decision is reached by the consensus of the meeting. In Yalcuc Don Alonso's infIuence varied with different kinds of decision-making processes and among different subgroups within the community. Yet if developmental programs aim to cultivate democratic values it is essential that they locate community leaders like Don Alonso and give them the freedom of choosing innovations which seen to them appropriate for their groups.

The article presents the article author's reply in response to criticism of his article on "Nonviolent Action from a Social -Psychological Perspective." The author speaks to his three major points in the order in which he presented them. He agrees that a comprehensive scheme for the analysis of nonviolent direct action would include more than the focus on face-to-face interaction which he has taken. Concerning the application of existing social-psychological theories to the study of nonviolent direct action, he supposes that it would be fair to use any scheme, even if the original author did not have nonviolence in mind. The test of the theory would presumably be its power to organize the data and to suggest testable hypotheses concerning this type of interpersonal behavior. Critics suggests that in only a small number of the instances in which nonviolent action is used as an instrument of social change do the actors avow "love" for their opponents and seek to convert them. Thus the author's analysis of the ideology would not apply to most cases.

The article presents a critical analysis of social notes related to sociology. In the case of a journalist observing the sociologist, a formula for a perpetual circular interaction may be concluded. Philosophers and students of social change have often questioned whether there is such a thing as progress, but to sociologists a full treatment in the social notes of a metropolitan newspaper may seem like the essence of progress, after decades of being overshadowed by the livelier and more satisfyingly alcoholic conventions of lumbermen, war veterans and publishers. The social notes also overlooked the contributions of sociologists such as George P. Murdock, Leonard Broom, Howard Becker, William H. Sewell, Calvin F. Schmid, Otis D. Duncan, R.F. Bales and others. The functions of a national meeting--exchange of research discoveries, discussion and decision on problems of the profession, efficient allocation of persons to positions, and a variety of productive types of interstimulations--are understood by people but these do not entertain the subway reader.