Search

The article presents information on the 1965 issue of the journal "Sociological Inquiry." The 1954 and 1955 Supreme Court decisions on desegregation are the force that set in motion vast changes that are restructuring the very nature of race relations in the United States. This volume contain recent developments relating to race relations in the United States. Its nine essays touch on several of the major areas in which change occurs or in which old blemishes remain. The paper by Robin Williams, with which this issue begins attempts an overview of what has happened in the last two decades. Most of the papers in this set are themselves reports of research appropriate to Williams' contention that intergroup relations are part of the basic dynamics of modem social systems. Richard Lamanna's doctoral dissertation is concerned in part with the response of the Negro public school teacher to desegregation. Lewis Killian turns his attention to the negotiations between representatives of the white and Negro communities.

This article reports on the convention of the American Sociological Association. The article further refers to a sociologist who is so much a part of normal society that today one of the stores is tendering a fashion show for his wife to indicate her status equal to the wife of doctor, politician or any other example of social adjustment to be found at a convention in New York. According to the author, the paper presented at the convention can only represent a tiny sample of all the chaff that is annually struck up by this vast communal threshing crew. People owe many of these papers to the broad tolerance of the American academic community which apparently approved and even financed them without one man in a supervisory position having the discourtesy to suggest that the matter under study was self-evident. There seems also to be developing a sociology within sociology which promises much. Its best sample is a paper which indicates that persons who fail to answer sociological questionnaires by mail come from homes where their parents habitually beat them.

This paper has suggested the need to reexamine die value-stance of sociology. In adopting the ideology of science, it eschewed experimentation as a basic methodological device. Yet, this paper has also suggested that there is a tendency to confuse the extra-scientific values and norms of science with the scientific method. Thus, the greatest danger to scientific objectivity may not lie so much in sociological experimentation as the inability of the sociologist to separate scientific from value decision-making. Value decisions, undiscriminated and rooted in the ideology of pure science, can be as inhibiting to the effective use of the scientific method in expanding the boundaries of knowledge as any other institutionalized norms. The paper also sugegsted that experimentation had much to oiler sociology. But in failing to imitate the physical sciences in this regard, it may have sacrificed a tool important to its development. A possible means of reconciling ideological and methodological differences over this issue might lie in the development of systematic methods by which to examine the values as well as the methodology which underlie any research effort. The investigator could review the values implicit in his research in much the same way as he now reviews the steps involved in his application of the scientific method. Much could be learned. Human intellectual experience suggests that we proceed more efficiently when the grounds for our behavior are set down, cares fully reviewed, and criticized. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article presents Peter M. Hall's response to Rosabeth Moss Kanter's comments toward his article "A Symbolic Interactionist Analysis of Politics," published in the 1972 issue of "Sociological Inquiry." The author concludes that Kanter misunderstands his perspective by subsuming it under American liberalism. If there is anything that he is not, it is an American liberal, and if there is anything he is criticizing in American sociology, political sociology, and symbolic interaction, it is consensual, pluralistic, and liberal bias. Hall also does not deny the need to see the totality of the society, its interdependencies, feedbacks, and impacts, in short, society as a system. To settle misconceptions, Hall emphasized that his paper had a special focus and set limits as to its goals and coverage. It was not intended to be a complete analysis of politics nor a complete analysis of American politics.

Expanding traditional sociological conceptions of community to include environmental considerations in community research, this paper stresses the importance of documenting both subjective and objective environmental concerns, as well as reconciling such differences as are presented and details precedence. Some recent data on the nature of social contact in high-rise ‘communities’ illustrate this approach. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The network approach to urban studies can be differentiated from other approaches by its emphasis on the primacy of structures of interpersonal linkages, rather than on the classification of social units according to their individual characteristics. Network analysis is also a methodology for the investigation of these structures. Substantive issues related to interpersonal ties in the city, migration, resource allocation, neighborhood, and community are examined in terms of the network structures and processes that order and integrate urban activities. Finally, a view of the city itself as a network of networks is proposed. It is the organization of urban life by networks that makes the scale and diversity of the city a source of strength rather than of chaos, while it is precisely that scale and diversity which makes the existence of a complex and widely ramified network structure possible. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Contemporary work on the development of status and power structures is reviewed. It is shown that theorists have conceptualized the relationship between these structures in opposite ways. Some have held that the structures tend toward alignment. Specifically, they have held that persons tend to be equally high or low in both structures. Others have held that the structures tend toward non-alignment. Specifically, they have held that the range of persons statuses tends to be greater than the range of their power. An attempt is made to reconcile the different theories underlying these two conceptions by postulating that one conception is correct under certain conditions and that the other is correct under other conditions. The conditions specified involve an important but somewhat neglected aspect of the overall stratification structure, what is called the secondary stratification structure, and the importance persons assign to this structure. [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.

The article presents authors personal thoughts on the pursuit of sociological problems. The author intends to retrace his steps along one path of his intellectual career--the path that links two books, titled, "Social Change in the Industrial Revolution," and "Theory of Collective Behavior," and a number of recent articles and papers on sociological theory and psychological theory. The main emphasis in the article was on the need for a determinate synthesis of the several classes of variables that are essential for the explanation of collective behavior such as cultural, social, psychological, ecological and other variables. In attempting to sort out the major influences on his choice of sociological problems, he resorts to a device that he find congenial and helpful: to arrange these influences in a series extending from very general, predisposing influences which have steered his intellectual interests to the very specific, immediate influences that have determined a particular strategy of analysis in working on a sociological problem.

The article demonstrates the possibility of supplementing substantive considerations with materials developed through an analysis of intellectual systems for underlying structural dimensions. The central issue raised here concerns the character of the selected representation of the mode of thought, i.e. the property of the mode of thought that is selected to represent it. Insofar as studies in the sociology of knowledge take some substantive property of a mode of thought and seek to understand its social origin, their point of departure is not the mode of thought per se but certain of its substantive properties. Portions of two different intellectual systems are treated empirically to ascertain the manner in which their demonstrations of proof are structured. These structures are uncovered through the use of Gutmann scale analysis. While any set of branching deductions may be considered as partly ordered set, the findings reported in this paper show that the portions of the intellectual system chosen for analysis converge to an almost perfectly ordered set. Finally, known properties of Gutmann scales are assigned to the structural dimension, and implications for the sociology of knowledge are drawn.

This paper employs a cybernetic model of a religious symbol system to explain the competition among Rabbinists, Hasidim, and Messianists in the Jewish communities of eighteenth-century Poland. Hasidism's ability to attract adherents is explained by the great flexibility of its constitutive belief, ‘communion with God’ when compared with Rabbinic Torah or the Messianic belief in the ‘lifting of sparks.’ This flexibility is traced through all levels of the cybernetic hierarchy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article presents some directions for research in sociolinguistics. The term sociolinguistics is frequently confused with the activity of anthropologists engaged in traditional ethnographic work; with the new linguistics of transformational grammars; or with work in psycholinguistics. However, sociolinguistic study attends to those reflections of social structure which are revealed in language, particularly in speech usages and is concerned neither with motivation nor with conscious behavior. Sociolinguistic can help in solving sociological problems, but there are obvious problems in adapting linguistic techniques to sociological problems. Sociologists have much to gain and nothing to lose by attempting resolution of these problems. Thus far sociologists simply have not exploited the great potential of a substantively rich, methodologically rigorous, and theoretically suggestive body of work. At the very least, the trained linguist can facilitate research by giving new dimensions to those of more traditional variety. There are many ways in which the technical apparatuses of linguistics can be brought to bear on sociological problems, just as there are areas of research design and data handling in which sociologists may have something to offer linguists.

This article focuses on the concept of linguistic relativity and also discusses relations between language, social stratification and cognitive orientation. The author notes that literature is still meager in the subfield dealing with linguistic correlates of social stratification. On the level of linguistic structure or language, there still has no thorough phonological, grammatical and semantic comparison of even a single pair of class dialects. The relations between language, social stratification and cognitive orientation have been studied most deeply in a series of publications by Basil Bernstein. In these papers, a distinction is made between a restricted code, speech which uses relatively limited linguistic resources and is consequently predictable to a high degree, as against an elaborated code, which allows a larger number of structural options and shows a correspondingly low level of predictability. Differences between these two codes are matters of language behavior rather than of language structure.

This paper discusses sociological issues concerning linguistically homogeneous and linguistically heterogeneous polities. The author notes that linguistically homogenous polities are usually economically mode developed, educationally more advanced, politically more modernized and ideologically-politically more tranquil and stable. Linguistically homogeneous polities tend to be smaller in area (i.e., below 75,000 square miles), to have a higher population density (i.e., above 100/square mile), to have a lower proportion of agricultural population (i.e., less than 66 per cent), and to be more highly urbanized. Highly urbanized polities are defined as those polities in which 20% or more of the population resides in cities of 20,000 or more and in which 12.5% resides in cities of 100,000 or more. Linguistically heterogeneous states tend in the opposite direction in connection with all of these variables, i.e., they tend to be large, of lower population density, of a higher proportion of agricultural population, and to be of a low degree of urbanization. According to some studies, linguistically homogeneous polities tend to have at least a medium per capita gross national product of at least 300 U.S. dollars per year, and they tend to have developed or intermediate economic status.

The fact is that the lower classes are not more likely than the middle class to have a disease or condition but they do react more violently to it and are more concerned about it. Nonetheless, neither sociologists nor public health researchers have for the most part taken proper note of the split between getting sick and reacting to it. For example in a recent general review of chronic illness the author does not even mentions his own study which shows no relationship between class and the prevalence of illness. Rather, he shows that some few chronic illnesses diagnosed in hospitals are related to living in lower class neighborhoods. Yet, he avoids making an overall statement about chronic illness and social class. There are obviously sonic problems here in the sociology of Sociology. First, there is a serious problem in the interpretation of tables which is caused by a lack of satisfactory non-parametric measures of association and analyses of variance. Second, there is a fallacy of forgetting why it is thought that social class was related to illness in the first place. The present paper concludes that social factors are important in the experience of ill health, although not in the gross fashion that had been imagined.

Processes of perception and thought are such that anyone who reads a book is necessarily selective in absorbing the author's meaning. What one reader thinks the author was saying may not coincide with what the author intended to say nor with another reader's perception of what the author meant. The first time the author read Robert M. Maclver's book "Social Causation" the parts which most caught his attention made the book seem at best a weak defense of the Verstehende approach in sociology or at worst a thoroughly animistic and anti-scientific treatise. This article, demonstrates the MacIver's book, like some of the works of other sociologists, explains a need of innovation in the basic concepts of sociology. Although Maclver will be cited more often than any other author. This paper is not intended as mere exegesis of one man's thoughts. Maclver is taken as a specimen, more or less representative of others. The interpretations offered in this article are intended to apply to sociology rather than to just this particular sociologist.

Influential members of the urban planning profession have developed certain ideas about new town design, including notions such as self-containment, social balance, and the neighborhood unit. These parallel, to some extent, concepts that have emerged from the field of community sociology. Efforts to put these ideas into practice have fallen Jar short of the mark. Without more sophisticated implementation mechanisms, better theories of social interaction at the neighborhood level, and new approaches to citizen participation, efforts to build new towns are likely to remain severely crippled. The aim of this paper is to summarize past efforts to translate implicit theories of social organization into actual new town designs. The possibilities of closing the gap between theory and practice through the use of more explicit forms of social experimentation are discussed in the context of the fledgling new towns program in the United States. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent years numerous discussion of urban communities have given great weight to themes of disorganization and disorder. This paper critically examines several important conceptual, procedural, and substantive issues inherent in most treatments of community disorganization. To illustrate such fundamental problems as ‘overgeneralization’ and dominant group bias five specific topics—migration, disasters, slums, ghettos, and collective violence—were selected for intensive analysis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this paper is to give an overview of the literature on formal voluntary organizations in the urban community. The theoretical approaches that guided much of the research in this area are identified as social structural, social psychological, and organizational. Basic findings suggest that formal participation, including church membership, is a characteristic of urban life. Population characteristics, attitudes, informal interaction, and community involvement are all related to formal membership. Moreover, formal organizations attempt to integrate individuals with the larger community, and such groups, in urbanizing areas, facilitate modernization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article focuses on the student and teacher relationship. When instructors find their classes failing to respond to lectures with the vitality and interest with which they were presented, failing to participate in discussions with measured scholarly interest, and treating assignments as unwanted tasks, they accuse their students of being unappreciative, lazy, and apathetic. The central success of any course is the coming together of interests among students and between students and faculty. This paper analyzes the problems in the normal teacher-centered class, the changes introduced in transforming it into a student-centered-structure; student reactions to the changes; and its difficulties. One case of an immanent problem grew out of an attempt to come to grips with grading procedures. Students tried to reform the course away from competitive relationships and a mystification of authority in the instructor.

This paper attempts to clarify the concept of rationality in Max Weber's sociology of religion. Three new terms: rationalism, rationalization, and rationality, are used to distinguish the different meanings Weber gives to rationality. Efficient orientation of means to ends (rationalism) is distinguished from the systematizations (rationalization). Rationality, finally, is the control of action by ideas. Rational social action is produced only by powerful irrational motives, and it holds a distinct place in Weber's sociology of ideas. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article analyzes the Marxist paradigm. In order to develop a coherent perspective, it is necessary for the author to go back to the work of Marx himself, to isolate its basic features and the tensions and ambiguities they involve, and then to assess the work of contemporary Marxists in the light of this heritage. While the central task of this paper is a critical review of the Marxist contribution to political analysis, such a focus must be located within the scope of Marx's theory as a whole, rather than separated out and isolated as one dimension of the theory. Therefore, the author begins with a general review of Marx's social theory and then explore his analysis of the political realm in the light of the societal problems defined by the theory as a whole.

Unidimensional conceptions of socioeconomic status require that alternative indicators of one's position in the stratification system have similar elects upon the consequences of socioeconomic level. We show herein that different indicators of social participation and psychological well-being are in fact associated with different indicators of socioeconomic status. Thus, any attempt to combine these indicators—educational attainment, occupational pursuit, family income, or occupational origins—into a single index of socio- economic status will prove unsatisfactory because its component parts have different consequences for the same variable. We also show in this paper precisely how certain formulations of the effects of inconsistency and mobility are wholly redundant and only represent a logically possible way of interpreting the linearly additive effects of the variables used to define inconsistency and mobility. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Presents an introduction to the March 1970 issue of the journal "Sociological Inquiry."

The objective of this paper is to clarify some of the perspectives of the discipline of sociology, to identify radical viewpoints and how they have evolved and converged, and to indicate some of the consequences of a radical sociology and its prospects. A radical sociology calls for a radical perspective, namely, a structural perspective. Such a perspective requires uncovering economic and political realities in the attempt to understand social structure. Intellectual relevance should not merely be cloaked in terms of efficacy demands which derive from state welfarism and militarism, but should be the extension of a radical and structuralist perspective. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents answer to sociologist Victor Lidz on his criticism over the research paper "Toward a Radical sociology" by Albert Szymanski. Lidz seems to Szymanski to focus on two major points: Lidz argues that corporate sociology is approaching value-freeness while radical sociology, because of its "idol-worship" is unable to be objective; and he, as a Parsonian, argues that the institutionalization of certain kinds of ethical and professional values produces objective science. Rather than picking at various minor points and insinuations made by Lidz, Szymanski attempts in this reply to answer his critique by refuting these two positions. Lidz, in arguing for a value free sociology fails to comprehend that values and beliefs have a fundamental resonance with one another. That is, that there is a strong psychological tendency for values and beliefs to fall into consistent patterns. Lidz argues extensively that the development of science hinges on the institutionalization of the value of objectivity. His argument is either trite or simply mistaken.

The article presents criticism on sociologist Albert Szymanski's research paper "Toward a Radical Sociology." Szymanski is quite direct in setting aside as an ideal the establishment of conceptual frameworks that might ensure the objectivity of sociological knowledge. Central to his position is a rejection of sociologist Max Weber's methodology based on the sharp distinction between empirical judgments and evaluational judgments, a distinction that Szymanski recognizes to be "impeccable" in logic, yet holds to be a "philosophical sophism," and on the assertion that all intellectual disciplines must give strong primacy among their commitments to the ideal of objectivity. Citing the sociology of knowledge truth that all knowledge within the social sciences is in certain respects conditioned by the historical environment within which it is developed, hence not "objective" in the sense of being free of all social partisanship, Szymanski argues that a radical sociology would not be any the less objective were it to accept the constraints of adopting certain "humanistic" commitments among its fundamental values.

This paper analyzes the nature of value-commitments, conceived as a generalized symbolic medium of interchange in the processes of social interaction, in this respect paralleling money, power, and influence. Commitments constitute moral obligations of units of a system of social interaction to maintain the integrity of a value-pattern and to strive toward its implementation in action through combination with non-value factors. Stability of commitments is a basic condition of the compatibility of wide moral freedom with the exigencies of social functioning. Like the other three media, commitments are not bound by a zero-sum condition, but can be expanded, especially through charismatic movements. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article focuses on the social construction of documentary reality. A documentary reality is fundamental to the practices of governing, managing and administration of this form of society. The primary mode of action and decision in the superstructures of business, government, the professions, and other like agencies, is in symbols, whether words, mathematical symbols or some other. It is a mode of action which depends upon a reality constituted in documentary form. The social scientist's ordinary knowledge of her society originates in and depends upon these documentary forms. This is more, much more, than merely her use of statistical and other information produced by census bureau, departments of health welfare agencies, internal revenue departments and the like. The organization which actuality acquires in the accomplishment of a fact is not simply an explication of an order which is already perceived, though it may sometimes be just that. But it is important to recognize that facts are constructed in a context of telling. The organization that is created aims at this telling and aims therefore at the purposes for which it will be told. The selection of categories and conceptual procedures expresses that structure of relevance.

Presents an introduction to the Spring 1966 issue of the journal "Sociological Inquiry."

The article discusses the social sources of criminology. The author states that as a synthetic discipline utilizing the knowledge of separate branches of study, the content of criminology has been shaped to a large degree by the nature of relationships between those disciplines that provide food for criminological thought. Some of those relationships and their effects are the subject of the first part of this article. As a practical discipline oriented to applied results, the content of criminology has also changed with changes in the broader society and its mode of response to criminals, as mediated by occupational groups whose members are charged with the prevention, processing and control of crime. Relationships between the society and its agents on the one hand and social scientists on the other, can be seen in changes that have occurred in specific areas of crime studies. Some of those changes are reviewed in the second part of the article. The author points out in the U.S. the study of crime has been intimately linked with the growth of sociology. As the field was conceived in its early years in this country, sociology was to be in large part a science of social problems, devoted to the study of all those forces bringing misery to industrial man. Study of such problems occupied the center of sociological concerns.

This article presents Sidney R. Waldman's comments to David Easton's article "Some Limits of Exchange Theory in Politics," published in the 1972 issue of "Sociological Inquiry." In rebuttal to Easton's suggestion that the author is not clear as to the nature of the five propositions that form the core of exchange theory, Waldman emphasizes that exchange theory does not imply that men consciously calculate costs or benefits, that they consciously try to satisfice, or that they consciously calculate the probable outcomes of the various actions they see open to them. Also, Easton argues that exchange theory, despite its claims, is only a special theory which attempts to explain variation in support for political institutions and practices. However, in the author's opinion, a reading of the basic propositions should readily convince the reader that the theory is intended to explain all behavior, not merely behavior that involves support for regime, government, political party, or other institutions.

The challenge to the principle of causality in other disciplines has been taken over by some sociologists, who have criticized its utility for sociological inquiry and who suggest in some instances that the term should be dropped from the sociological lexicon. The critiques are grounded in four somewhat overlapping perspectives: the positivist, the statistical, the interactionist, and the conceptualist. A formulation of what constitutes causality is presented, which takes account of these critiques and which also attempts to preserve continuity with past definitions. The basic elements are ontological status, productivity, conditionality, uniformity, and asymmetry. The importance of this subject, why the notion should be retained by sociologists, and the difference that this formulation makes are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although differential ranking in science is not readily visible to lay observers, American science is, in fact, sharply graded. Rewards and facilities for research are concentrated among relatively few investigators and organizations. This distinctive pattern of stratification, at odds with the egalitarian ethos of science, is not solely attributable to the distribution of talent in the scientific community. There is however a high correlation between assessed contributions to science and investigators' scientific standing. The present pattern of stratification is the outcome of processes of allocation of men and resources among various sectors of science which include selective recruitment and socialization of young investigators, differential access to publication and research facilities, and differential recognition of scientists' contributions through citations to their work and honorific awards. In a time when the legitimacy of reward systems in many social institutions is routinely challenged, scientists are apt to accept their own as just and correct. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Radical activism in sociology can be explained as reaction against developments in American society, university structure, social theory and the American Sociology Association. Beginning in 1967 with a controversy over a Vietnam resolution, it has grown to include organized opposition through the Sociology Liberation Movement and the separation of the Black Sociologists Association. The assumptions behind sociology as an academic field and an occupation, have been and are being tested and found erroneous by an increasing number of sociologists. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article presents an introduction to the March 1, 1968 issue of the journal "Sociological Inquiry."

Presents an introduction to the March 1, 1961, issue of the journal "Sociological Inquiry."

Presents the table of contents for the Spring 1961 issue of the journal "Sociological Inquiry."

Action theory's substantive image of social organization, theory building strategy, and methodological tenets are compared with those of interactionism. Despite polemics to the contrary, action and interaction concepts denote a similar image of social organization and personality. As is argued, the principle difference between the two perspectives revolves around the issue of the most appropriate theory building and methodological strategy. The ontological implications of this fact are examined and found not to justify the continued partitioning of social theory into antagonistic metaphysical camps. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The prominent recent repetition of a widespread miscue on the date and description of Weber's magisterial Author's Introduction to the Collected Essays in the Sociology of Religion may serve as an apt point of departure for this essay which I happily dedicate to Talcott Parsons. Apart from his other writings to which only passing reference is made in the present essay. Prof. Parsons' Structure of Social Action and his annotated translation of Weber's Protestant Ethic offered me—and offered very many others—indispensable aid in uncovering the structure and meanings of Weber's pioneering investigations into the comparative historical sociology of the world religions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The 200 year old debate about convergence is indicted for one-sidedness in theory and lack of clarity in its propositions. A functional typology of solidarities is developed with predictions of convergence, divergence, and evolutionary invariance. Specific hypotheses for comparative survey research are presented. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay attempts to identify some underlying commitments of ethnomethodology. The commitments explored are the idea of reflexivity, science, normal practice and the radical empirical stance—all of which are essential to ethnomethodology. Finally, it is argued that as an upshot of these commitments, ethnomethodology harbors a political implication which allows for its use as an instrument for de-objectification. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the definition of theory and its relation to an individual and the society in general. Theory arises out of, flows back into, exists in, and is an aspect of, an active, passionate and willful attempt to secure one outcome rather than another in an external and internal world. Theory is thus only an ingredient in action. It is an aspect of practice, of struggle and of praxis. Theory is what differentiates human from the rest, for humans themselves are in large part, theory. The society is a society constituted as to quality and determined as to degree by the suppositions or theories that individuals have about themselves. While true so far as it goes, society is more than that because individuals each have suppositions and theories about society. And with society, as with persons, the theory, belief, faith or supposition is neither outside nor really in any ordinary sense about society. Theory is therefore, not about an individual but it is the individual and it is not about the society but rather it is the society itself. Apathy, frustration, loneliness and despair relate to the personal and social theories within which people live.

Claims that sociology must be divided into closed ideological and paradigmatic camps are critically examined. Convergences among the major analytical approaches are considered and possible explanations explored. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article focuses on the significance of women's movement in social history. The women's movement has given the society a sense of right to have women's interest represented in sociology, rather than receiving as authoritative the interests traditionally represented in a sociology put together by men. This article aims to explore women's perspective as a radical critique of sociology. From the point of view of women's place, the values assigned to different aspects of the world are changed. The world is taken as a model as it appears from the point of view of the afternoon soap opera. Supplementing sociology merely extends the authority of existing sociological procedures. The author suggests more reorganization which changes the relation of the sociologist to the object of her knowledge and changes also her problematic. According to the author the point to be considered is that bow sociology is thought, has been based on and built up within the male social universe. There is a difficulty of a disjunction between how women find and experience the world beginning though not necessarily from their place and their concepts and theoretical schemes available to think about it in.

The article comments on sociologist James W. Loewen's research paper "Action and Sociology." Sociologists will recognize Loewen's statement for what it is worth, a polemic by presumably a "radical sociologist" someone on a continuum between a social reformer and a revolutionary in the disguise of a sociologist. The Marxist rhetors with whom Loewen apparently identifies will undoubtedly find much to please them in his piece. They will undoubtedly appreciate its these characteristics: his version of the New Left catechism, implicit and explicit; his artful exegetical distortion of what sociologist Philip M. Hauser have written; his moral fervor and righteousness; his "1984" version of the status of sociology, of the American Sociological Association, and of the sociological literature; his apotheosis of sociologist Karl Marx; his self-donned cloak of martyrdom.

Presents an introduction to articles published in the Spring 1961 issue of the journal "Sociological Inquiry."

The article presents a guide to organizations, books and periodicals concerned with the sociological concept of nonviolence. Description of major organizations active in nonviolence has been given like Fellowship of Reconciliation Organization (FOR)--an affiliate of International FOR (IFOR) is a major pacifist organization carrying out a variety of projects concerning peace, civil rights, and related areas such as education in non- violence and against capital punishment. Large topical libraries are maintained by IFOR and also by many of its 27 national affiliates. Newsletter covers highlights of IFOR activities and concerns, with additional journals published by the national affiliates. There are several books dealing with the subject of non-violence like, "Conquest of Violence," by Joan V. Bondurant which is an outstanding analysis and application of the Gandhian philosophy of conflict, "The Power of Non-violence," by Richard Gregg which discusses the psychological factors relate to nonviolent resistance. There are several articles concerning protests for civil rights.

A social-psychological perspective, used in the analysis of three cases of nonviolent direct action, combines the ‘exchange theory’ of Homans and the two and three dimensional approaches for the analysis of interpersonal behavior suggested by Leary and Bales. The three dimensions are: dominance-submission, positive-negative, and goal oriented-deviant. Once the behavior of a nonviolent actor has been identified in this three dimensional space. the expected behavior of his opponent can be predicted. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The term ‘nonviolent resistance’ is frequently assumed to refer to a single and coherent theory about the proper way to manage conflict. There are, however, two quite different theories subsumed by this general term. One assumes a basic human harmony and denies the morality of or necessity for either coercion or violence. The second regards conflict as normal, even healthy; nonviolence is perceived as an economic way of testing strength and the only limit set upon means is that of threatening or using physical force. Because activists, advocates, and observers often fail to distinguish these views, the effectiveness of nonviolent resistance is frequently impaired. This is because resisters of differing views fail to find a common basis for cooperation and because the spectator is confused by apparently contradictory professions and actions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]