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The question of agency is central to several important debates in contemporary sociology. Unfortunately, discussions of agency can become embroiled with issues related to free will and determinism. George Herbert Mead developed an approach to agency that avoids unsolvable metaphysical problems about free will and determinism. This paper presents Mead's work relevant to agency, revealing both Mead's method and the details of his theory. First, it shows how Mead followed the basic methods of behavioristic psychology, which require that abstract philosophical and psychological concepts are defined in terms of the actual behaviors involved. A strict focus on behavior helps in avoiding metaphysical impasses when dealing with such complex issues as decision making and choice. Second, the paper presents an overview of Mead's specific theories about awareness, meaning, decision making, choice, creativity, and social responsibility, showing how he analyzed these concepts in terms of the central nervous system, language, inner conversation, taking the role of others, reflective intelligence, the ‘I’ and the ‘me,’ and related concepts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper critically examines sociological treatments of the concept of charisma. It demonstrates that the existence of diverse and conflicting views on charisma is due partly to sociologists' selection accentuations of the different types of charisma (magical, prophetic, and routinized) in Weber's writings. Reconsidering charisma as an expression of alienation, the paper also suggests a synthetic approach that may alleviate the conceptual anarchy surrounding it. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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.

This paper constitutes an attempt to extend a style of theoretical activity in sociology which is quite new to their domain. It is theory which rests upon the central postulate of economic theory that of rational man attempting to pursue his selfish interests. Perhaps the central problem in sociological theory is that posed most succinctly by Thomas Hobbes. Why is there not a war of all against all? Hobbes took as problematic what most contemporary sociologists take as given: That a society can exist at all, despite the fact that individuals are born into it wholly self-concerned, and in fact remain largely self-concerned throughout their existence. Conflict within a communal group, which can occur in the process of collective decision-making, illustrates well the dilemma in which sociologists find themselves. Seeing conflict as a massive element in the functioning of society, but unable to say anything about it as social theorists, they split themselves as individuals off from themselves as sociologists: they form "Journals of Conflict Resolution," join disarmament and peace committees, yet continue to purvey sociological theory which has nothing to say about conflict.

Social constructionists have produced a rich theoretical and empirical literature on the rise and fall of public issues. By focusing exclusively on claims-making behavior in a micro interactive context, social constructionists, in the tradition of Spector and Kitsuse, generally have rejected efforts to link claims-making to antecedent variables. Thus they often treat claims-making participants as activities, devoid of motives, meanings, and intentions. In this paper, ideology and interest are offered as antecedent variables to claims-making and as the critical factors which determine why some claims are more marketable than others. Interest and ideology also are examined as both subjective and structural/cultural phenomena. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we address the question of the existing and potential role of sociologists in the nuclear debate by first sketching some of the major nuclear issues, second by guaging the extent of professional attention which sociology has focused on nuclear issues, and third by describing a sampling of what sociologists have written on nuclear issues. Our focus is on the professional sociological literature. In addition to it there is a vast peace literature which ranges from academic studies to newsletters and propaganda pieces. Sociologists may contribute heavily to the peace literature and be active in the peace or related campaigns, but we exclude these activities from our study. We view them as actions which sociologists do in their roles of concerned citizens. Our focus here is on the professional sociological literature and our comments pertain solely to it. We select thirteen journals to represent various aspects of this literature and review all issues from 1945 to the present to guage the coverage of nuclear issues in the sociological literature. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper attempts to provide an overview of the questions Max Weber was attempting to answer in his study of ancient Israel and to articulate his own theses about the nature of ancient Israelite society. It also aims to assess the cogency of the ideal type "prophet" described in two of Weber's works. The author notes that in studying ancient Israel, Weber was, at once and at the same time, studying ancient literature and the society that produced it. Weber sought to understand the character of one specific religion that has continued for over a 2000 year period through this writing, wherein he expressed his feelings of the existence of Judaism as a problem. He was concerned to ask a more universal question, one that encompassed the major cultures of both Orient and Occident, and also believed that anyone who was an heir to the traditions of the modern European civilization would approach problems of universal history with a set of questions that would appear both inevitable and legitimate. One leitmotif running throughout Weber's chapters on ancient Israel is the emphasis on change.

Although it is a prominent feature of modern experience, driving has received little attention from sociologists. Yet social interaction between motorists is an integral part of the traffic situation. This paper explores its bases and some of its typical dynamics. Other sociologically relevant aspects of driving are delineated and the issue of how driving may influence modern culture is addressed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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.

The article presents information on family as a small group association. Sociologist Reuben Hill's review of family studies includes, as one approach, the conceptualization of the family as a small group association. Sociologist George Homans is mentioned in this connection, though, perhaps naturally, few words are devoted to his actual contribution. His contribution has been both direct in terms of writings on role-relations within the family and indirect in terms of generalizations about small groups which prove to be useful in its study. The present paper follows this indirect route. Interaction frequency and intensity of liking have proven to be two of the more useful variables in small group research. Homans' proposition that "persons who interact frequently with one another tend to like one another" is taken as the starting point for a discussion of some aspects of role-relationships in the English family, mainly that of the traditional working-class. Interaction normally varies with liking only if the interaction is freely chosen and can he broken off when desired. If a member of a group is forced to interact with someone he does not like, the chances are at least as great that he will dislike the other more, as that he will come to like him after all. It seems fair to take length of courtship as a measure of the variables with which people are here concerned and to predict a correlation between interaction, affection and understanding.

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.

The article focuses on 100th anniversary of Alpha Kappa Delta (AKP) which espouses a philosophy of lifetime inclusion such as once a member, always a member. It mentions AKD supports the professional development of members through a number of initiatives and AKD sponsors a distinguished lecture featuring the work of David Embrick in 2020. It mentions appreciation to Emory Bogardus who convened a meeting of fourteen sociologists interested in big ideas.

This paper utilizes the case of the Zaddik in the Hasidic movement to discuss routinization in terms of the movement's doctrinal basis and thus extends Max Weber's generalizations about charisma. The Zaddik was a highly personal type of leader whose authority is based on his ability to make contact with the feminine element of God, which is immanent but hidden in the world, and is demonstrated by his ability to gather disciples. The Lurianic Kabbala's myth of creation provides a way of recognizing similarities and organizing differences among Hasidim. The problems of the leaders on how to read their message and authority into the past to forge a sense of history for their followers, and how to read that same message into the future to provide the promise of salvation, have been highlighted. In the history of Judaism, there is a fairly constant tension between the ethical and exemplary dimensions of action. This tension expresses itself as a tension between two alternative conceptions of God as a transcendent lawgiver and God as a spirit immanent in all creation. The nature of the Zaddik's role and then the cultural legitimation for it have been examined.

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]

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]

In 2014, the Department of Defense began a broad review of transgender military service. Following this review, in 2016, the Obama Administration announced a policy of transgender inclusion in the military. However, in 2017, before enactment of that policy, President Trump announced the reinstatement of a ban on transgender military service. Although, in the last five years, these events have garnered much media attention, sociologists have generally left them unexplored. In this article, I begin the process of incorporating transgender military experience into sociological discussions by examining how transgender service members navigate their uncertain status vis‐à‐vis military service. In so doing, I explore how transgender personnel might be "doing transgender" (Connell, Gender & Society24(1):31) in the context of shifting norms about who can and cannot officially exist within the ranks of the military as well as possibilities for future research examining transgender military experience more broadly. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Several influential sociologists have questioned the wisdom of criminology's departure from sociology. Omitted from these reflections are the rationale explaining the schism. The present work grants a historical account to fill that absence. Oral histories with 17 leading criminologists, 13 of whom trained as sociologists, have been collected and analyzed. Two domains are explored, professional/organizational and informal/intellectual. First, the departments evidence different hiring patterns, journal content preferences, and journal structures over the past half‐century. Second, there are contrasts regarding ideology; sociology trends leftward. Criminological research concentrates on a dependent variable; sociology links to a unifying orientation. There are concerns that the field's training and research may be too narrow and that the lure of influencing policy could undermine its opportunity to offer critical commentary. Criminology's focus on addressing crime as a practical concern serves some advantages. However, many respondents were conflicted over the loss of an abiding identity. If the field fails to confront its preference for multitheoretical, policy‐driven discussion, it risks being pruned or subsumed without a more fixed sense of identity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This issue of "Sociological Inquiry" presents a new and rather exciting feature which I believe will be of great interest to the readers of this journal. They are, for the first time, publishing the winning paper of the Alpha Kappa Delta (AKD) undergraduate paper competition. The editorial advisory board strongly recommended publishing the winning paper as "Sociological Inquiry" is, after all, the official journal of AKD, the international sociology honorary society. They also know that many of their subscribers are students. The editor hope that they enjoy this rather unique look at an aspect of human society that has been virtually untouched by sociologists. As they read this article, he hope also that they come away with a sense of satisfaction with knowing that the next generation of sociologists is being well trained in their discipline. Recognizing that much of this behavior has little to do with intended suicide, and cannot necessarily be linked to other pathologies, Sarah Hodgson interviews individuals who engage in this type of self mutilation through online chat rooms. Her analysis reveals several layers of learning that take place, as well as numerous mechanisms that are employed to maintain their credibility in a society that otherwise stigmatizes such behavior.

The article presents a list of contributing authors to the issue, including Keith Brown, Doris Hamner, and Alexandra Hendley.

This article focuses on the need for sociologists to understand governmental process relevant to the conduct of researches in social science. The author of this paper opposes the premise that sociologists have a history of ethical violations. However, the author still encourages sociologists to comprehend the functions of the government for the reason that researchers can wreak harm in their handling of data. It is also a must for sociologists to have an ethical foundation in their conduct of fieldwork for social research.

The article presents brief biographical profiles for the contributing authors to the issue, including Margarita V. Alario, Amy C. Finnegan, and Cristina Flesher Fominaya.

Between 1999 and 2004 only one article appeared in the American Sociological Review, the American Journal of Sociology, or Social Forces using primary data collected with Web-based research techniques. Since then there have been only a handful of studies published in these core sociology journals drawing on Web-based surveys or other forms of Web-based data. The use of Internet-based data has become widespread in many academic fields, especially health research and education; Web-based techniques are becoming routine in the practice and study of politics; and online commercial and market research has become a billion dollar industry. At the same time, the utility of random digit dialing surveys has eroded considerably owing to declining contact rates, increased use of technologies to screen unwanted telephone calls, and the replacement of landline telephones with cell phones. There is increasing evidence that Internet research can produce representative data. Although Web-based surveys may overrepresent some populations, Internet usage in the general population is now well over 75 per cent and is especially strong among some hard to reach populations. Internet surveys have the potential to reduce measurement error, missing data, and respondent attrition. Sociologists must overcome their fear of participation in stigmatized Internet research and actively engage in the development of techniques and refinements that will increase the utility and validity of Internet-based data collection. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The author of the article discusses sociological writing and how the prose used in that field must stand up to the criticism of any English professor. The article discusses the book "Modern English Usage" by H. W. Fowler and the way Fowler defined sociological writing as one that utilizes complicated and pretentious words. The author points out that some criticism drawn by their field's writers is justified, and uses examples drawn from the works of sociologists Henry F. Graff, Jacques Barzun, and Everett Wilson, to show how sociologists often use language germane only to their own field of science.

In his popular introductory sociology text, Stark identifies W. E. B. Du Bois and Albion Small as important cornerstones of the U.S. sociological tradition. While the work of the “Chicago School” is well known in sociological circles, Du Bois’ sociological legacy is not. The Philadelphia Negro ([1899] 1996) is a classic empirical sociological study that is rarely included in discussions of the development of scientific sociology. Likewise, The Negro Church ([1903b] 2003) represents one of the first empirically based sociological studies of a religious institution. Sociologists of religion routinely discuss the contributions of Durkheim, Weber, and Simmel while virtually ignoring Du Bois. This is ironic because Du Bois’ work on religion was based on ethnographic data, field interviews, surveys, and census data. This article provides an overview of Du Bois’ sociological study of the Black Church in the United States by identifying some of the main themes developed in The Philadelphia Negro ([1899] 1996), The Souls of Black Folk ([1903a] 1994), and The Negro Church ([1903b] 2003). These studies reveal that Du Bois was a pioneer in the areas of evaluation research, public sociology, service learning, and congregational studies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sociologists have frequently cited the importance of the local institutional base for bolstering social organization and control, and ultimately reducing crime rates. Local noneconomic institutions may be particularly relevant to controlling urban Black crime rates, because in the face of limited access to the legitimate labor force, access to institutions such as churches and civic organizations helps to extend social networks, increase civic engagement, transmit mainstream norms, and provide a forum from which to address community problems. This analysis examines the links between measures of access to such noneconomic institutions and Black homicide rates for a sample of large urban areas circa 1990. The results indicate that after controlling for socioeconomic disadvantage, racial inequality and various other relevant measures, institutional access is negatively associated with Black homicide rates. However, this violence constraining impact appears to be most dramatic in urban areas where Blacks are most highly segregated from Whites. Implications of these results are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article discusses the question of students' approach to understanding the social world. To explore this question the authors created and administered the Luck and Superstition Questionnaire to 426 students taking Introduction to Sociology. It was found that nearly 70 percent of students indicate some level of test-related superstitious practice. However, it was also found that superstitious practice was largely unrelated to religious belief and practice, gender and race, educational performance and grade expectations, and end-of-semester pressures. Sociology is guided by the rational orientation and empirical methods that are hallmarks of modem Western societies. This rational orientation takes the external world as something to be understood and mastered through the tools of empiricism-systematic observation, description, hypothesis testing, and experimentation. Sociologists are committed to a rational approach which is often evident in the way they test their students. They believe that students should master the concepts, theories, and relevant applications in the field of sociology.

This article focuses on several issues related to sociological theory. The argument advanced here suggests that the meaning of theoretical diversity has been misread by many of sociology's practitioners. Sociologist Jonathan H. Turner's reading of the situation, to reiterate one example, is that sociologists are allowed to do their thing in their own way, to a very real detriment of the discipline. More to the point, diversity is seen as reflecting a lack of social control in the sociological enterprise. As contended here, however, Turner and other integrationists might have the direction of their causal reasoning all wrong; sociology's organizational and theoretical differentiation are in part responses to too much social control in the discipline, as well as responses to the existence and experiences of various groups within a surrounding society. From a perspective that anchors itself in ontology, theoretical and organizational diversity are not problems to be eradicated, but preferred. They signal the voices of human variety that struggle to be heard despite efforts to the contrary. Fortunately, they have yet to be silenced. The current interregnum is to be praised, for it provides the preconditions for a less exclusive, more relevant, and more humanistic sociological project.

The publication of the Marshall Lectures is part of the current upswing of interest in what is happening at the boundaries between the economy and society as well as between economics and sociology. Parsons welcomed the opportunity to give the Marshall Lectures because he wanted to apply his system of action to other areas within the social sciences. Parsons' argument in the lectures, however, was too general and his interpretation of Keynes was incomplete. Economy and Society (Parsons and Smelser 1956) represents in these and a few other aspects a clear advance in Parsons' thinking. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article reports on various levels in sociologist Talcott Parsons' intellectual development on economic and sociological theory. As reported, Parsons' scholarly inquiry deals with the connection between economic theory and sociological theory. After graduating in 1924, Parsons made the decision of becoming an academic and writing a dissertation. It is further reported that Parsons' decision led to the discovery of the German tradition in economic thought, more specifically the work of Max Weber, the German sociologist and economist.

Rupert B. Vance, a distinguished sociologist, was a true Renaissance man whose writings spanned a variety of disciplines and touched on many issues of public as well as professional interest. As is typical of such scholars, his writings are published in a broad range of books, journals, newspapers, and other outlets. Reed and Singal (1982) brought together a selection of his writings on the South as a region, but his works in other areas have not been synthesized. The effort here is to assess his contributions to the field of population. Although no great ideas in population analysis are associated with his name, a review of his publications shows that he often was ahead of his time in dealing with issues and his influence on the field can be profoundly felt. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses gender roles and women's issues as an area of interest among sociologists. A way to examine developments in gender issues is to take as a base population only those individuals citing an interest in this specialty and then to examine the proportions of males and females represented. Gender issues as a specialty originated with observations and concerns occurring principally within the female population of sociologists. The trends, however, do raise several interesting questions on increase in male representation within gender issues. Seventeen percent of the manuscripts submitted to the journal "Sociological Inquiry" over the past two years were concerned with gender roles and women's issue although they do explain why all but one of the authors were female gender roles and women's issues as an area of interest. Thus, the percentage of submissions is much greater than the percentage of those interested in gender roles and women's issues. There are several possible explanations for this situation. First, it may be that the data are not representative of the total population of sociologists. Second, individuals with an interest in gender roles and women's issues may be more likely to submit manuscripts than those with other areas of interest.

Although sociologists have long been interested in the analysis of inequality, there have been relatively few systematic attempts to measure it. Most measurement has utilized popular existing measures such as the Gini coefficient, which unfortunately is relatively difficult to compute and interpret. This article presents a new measure of inequality (B) that is based upon the concept of entropy. The B measure is used for categorical data and complements Theil's (T) entropy measure for continuous data. The B measure is illustrated for both income and wealth data and successfully meets several criteria for evaluating measures of inequality. These include the criteria of scale invariance, sensitivity to transfers, and adequate upper bounds. A further advantage of sociological entropy measures of inequality is that they facilitate interdisciplinary comparison of work on inequality between sociology and other disciplines (such as economics) which use entropy measures of inequality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Energy has grown in importance to sociologists over the past several years because of the growing interest in environmental variables and because of the reality of the energy predicament facing many contemporary societies. These concerns have stimulated a steady growth in energy-related sociological research; unfortunately, this research has proceeded either atheoretically or along lines where energy issues are ‘gerryrigged’ to traditional sociological concerns. A continuation of these practices offers little hope for producing cumulative knowledge. Sociologists interested in developing theoretical research programs or theoretically guided empirical energy research have a substantial intellectual base upon which to build. Scholarly history contains numerous theories that focus on the relationship between energy and human activity. Presented here is a critical overview of the most prominent of these ‘energetic’ theories of society, followed by an illustration of the severe problems in their theoretical method using several examples. Several recommendations regarding theory development are made. Our objective is to expose those with energy or environmental interests to this intellectual base and to offer guidance for avoiding the shortcomings in that base. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The inquiries of Weber and Parsons into the relationships between value freedom and value-relevance as elements in the methodology of the social sciences are renewed in the present essay. A major foundation of the discussion is provided by the Weber-Parsons distinction between Judgments pertaining to values, value-commitments, and the value-relevance of knowledge, on the one hand, and judgments of fact or logic, schemas of proof, and the value-freedom of intellectual disciplines, on the other hand. However, questions are raised about the methodological claims that value-relevance necessarily represents a relativistic element in a body of knowledge while any universality of its significance can be grounded only in pertinent schemas of proof. The factor of value-relevance is examined in a more differentiated fashion by two applications of the Parsonian four-function paradigm. In the first paradigm, four fundamental elements of the value-relevance of social scientific knowledge are identified. In the second paradigm, four levels in the cultural generalization of the value-relevance specifically of theoretical knowledge are distinguished. At the highest level of generalization, here called philosophical, value-relevance may be framed in transcendental terms that can impart a universality to the substantive significance of knowledge. This proposal is then bolstered by an examination of the ways in which Dilthey and then, with greater generality and precision, Simmel secured value-relevance for their theoretical schemes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The reductionist position of Homans and Skinner has generated substantial debate among sociologists over the past two decades. Much of the debate can be resolved by examining the issues in light of the history of science. A historical analysis suggests that modern sociology has little to lose—and something to gain—by reevaluating its traditional stance on reduction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The relationship between political economy and social problems advanced by S. M. Miller in his presidential address to the Society for the Study of Social Problems is analyzed. Political economy is judged to qualify as ritual drama as much as science or as ideology because (1) political economy reduces Maclver's distributive and conjunctural phenomena to collective phenomena, (2) it fails to grapple directly with political and economic obstacles to its proposed policies, and (3) it does invest these obstacles with symbolism. The function of ritual drama is suggested and the concept is applied to the work of other sociologists. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article examines the role of law in different moral complexes. It discusses the nature of law as categories or index, phenomenon and as an element. It mentions the views of sociologist Wilhelm Dilthey on law as a universal form of human efforts along with religion, science, art, economy and philosophy. It explains the universal nature of the law and mentions that the modes of law for achieving social order and managing social actions are present everywhere. It also discusses Dilthey's illustration of functional problems and social structures as the essential concepts of the law. Also analyzed is the interaction between different levels of the social structure.

This article focuses on the emergence of two different traditions in the sociology of science in the U.S. and Great Britain, the differences resulting from the different backgrounds and professional functions of the sociologists of science in the two countries. In Great Britain, sociology of science is much younger and has had a history very different from that in the United States. British sociologists of science have been much more concerned with critical evaluation of existing research and with attempts at creating a sociology of scientific knowledge. On the whole, they have been critical of structural functional analysis, and their view of science has tended to be much more realistic than in the United States. American tradition preceded the British one, and part of the difference between them is probably due to the fact that the British tradition emerged at a time when the American tradition was in a state of transition and when structural functionalism was also being strongly criticized in the United States.

This article focuses on the sociology of science. The sociology of science is well established as a specialty in research and in teaching. When something is widely defined as a social problem in modern Western society, it becomes a proper object for study. And science is now considered by many to be, if not a social problem itself, the cause of significant social problems. Concern about science from a sociological perspective has produced the development of a specialty that, characteristically, has followed paths similar to the development of scientific specialties generally. At the beginning, the primary theoretical perspective involved what has come to be called Mertonian sociology of science. Mertonian sociology of science is based on the idea that the social institution of science can be studied as any other social institution. As an institutionalized activity, science has goals and proceeds, through the various social processes, to realize its goals. This conception naturally leads to a variety of questions familiar to all sociologists.

Weber's interpretive sociology requires the understanding of motives, affectual states, and actions. These are understandable because they themselves represent or embody interpretations. The Weberian statements are shown to be compatible with a conception of the human individual as a being who interprets subjective experiences in terms of cultural categories and guides his conduct by such interpretations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article presents the author's interpretation of the events and characters from the land of Oz as they apply to the American sociological profession. The author aims to make readers walk along the Yellow Brick Road and try to understand its allegorical meaning for American sociology. The charm about allegory is that it lends itself to a wide, but related, variety of domains within the same society. The field of rural sociology is notorious for its failure to produce grounded theory. It produces bits and fragments of data which industrial and financial capitalists gobble up. The absence of brains here points to the absence of a theoretical paradigm by which to understand the transition of farming to agribusiness. A class paradigm or an organizational paradigm with Marxist dimensions could supply the rural sociologist with a few "brains" but these paradigms are missing in rural sociology. Industrial sociologists should be careful to avoid hurting those whose toil produces the material, ideological, and political culture required to build a decent social life world.

This article focuses on the life story of Jack Seeley as a sociologist. A proper study of Seeley's sociology as a lived practice would be sympathetic in a precise sense, it would honor the terms of that sociology, attempting to understand integrally the full spectrum of personal and social meanings encoded in his life and the dimensions of purpose and tragedy; it would be fully critical and advocative, an agency of loving justice. Each man's life is a gesture of meaning in the social cosmos, and Seeley's life provides one definition of sociology-a definition in the flesh rather than the word, as true definitions are, grown in the day's circumstance rather than inherited. One theme of Seeley's work is to recognize the integrity of the way the personal and the social nestle together, in intimate conjugation, in each human circumstance. Analysis gave Seeley a much richer sense of the complexity of motives which underlie the practices of scholarship and an integral sense of the relation between private and public drama, which came increasingly to be reflected in his work.

Ambiguities in Weber's theory of social action have been compounded in translation into English. American commentators have generally given a psychological twist to Weber's concepts of ‘intended sense’ and ‘understanding,’ in terms of an ‘imputation of motive.’ Weber, on the other hand, distinguishes between the intended sense of an action and the actor's motivation. As a sociologist, he is interested, not in the imputation of motive to the individual actor, but in understanding social action in its ‘context of sense’ in relation to ‘typical’ or ‘cross-sectional’ usages based on ‘consensus,’ that is, in its ‘cultural significance.’ [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article presents Peter M. Blau's response to Michael A. Weinstein's and Deena Weinstein's criticisms on his theoretical orientation of sociology from one rooted in functionalism to an essentially dialectical perspective. In recent years, the idea of a dialectical sociology has become increasingly appealing to a number of European and American sociologists. Dialectical sociology is a distinctive type of general sociology. The defining marks of a general sociology are a view of the nature of social experience and a description of the important units of analysis within that experience. For the dialectical sociologist, the nature of social experience is dualistic. Human existence is interpreted as a series of situations characterized by polarities in decisional processes, relations and cultural objects. Basic to dialectical sociology is the view that human experience is dualistic, not any particular dualism like the Marxian model of class conflict or the classical Chinese description of active and passive principles. The important units of analysis for dialectical sociologists are social Structures such as institutions, formal organizations, stratification systems and modes of solidarity.

This article comments on some sociological concerns about radical sociology as proposed by sociologist Albert Szymanski. The focus of concern with Szymanski's proposals fell upon their propensity for what following sociologist Emile Durkheim, called idol worship, the tendency of undisciplined research to discover little aside from preconceptions associated with its substantive values. Idol-worship seems to be exemplified by Szymanski's use of sociology of knowledge. It conveniently offers him means of avoiding methodological problems and setting aside all matters of objectivity while also impugning the quality and integrity of broad ranges of natural and social science. Aside from some general remarks applying perhaps to all science, Szymanski analyzes specifically the cases of the physical sciences, the biological sciences, economics, conditioning psychology, and Parsonian sociology. For each discipline, he finds that there has been little, if anything, other than sophisticated social partisanship and pursuit of self-interest through the provision of general legitimation or narrowly practical knowledge.

As a means of increasing the theoretical relevance of sensitivity training for sociologists engaged in evaluative pursuits, the concept of role-based sensitivity is suggested for use in an evaluative research perspective. Results of the application of a role-based sensitivity scale, as a pre-training diagnostic device, in a training program for local human relations commissioners, suggest that the area of sensitivity training has potential as an arena for the refinement of sociological role theory and hence is deserving of the increased interest of sociologists. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article presents response to sociologist Amitai Etzioni about political power and the Great Society. Instead of analyzing power in the U.S., Etzioni merely reasserts the dubious assumptions he should be subjecting to critical observation. Strangely, he himself raises the basis for such a critique but then ignores it. Although he admits that a power differential is the deciding factor in the struggle between competing interest groups, although he admits that "important segments of the citizenry are more or less locked out of the political process," he still concludes that power functions pluralistically in the U.S. and that all people need now is a consensus-producing mechanism. In summary, the fundamental flaw in Etzioni's model of power in American society is that it fails to assess the nature of this power from the point of view of the social structure as a whole. Focusing only on the more privileged segments of that structure, his model describes a plurality of competing interests and uses this as evidence for the essential openness and flexibility of the political system.

The article focuses on changing conceptions of the new sociology. Until very recently most of the debate over the future course of sociology occurred, in sociologist Irving Horowitz's terms between the "occupationalists" and the "professionals," both within the "mainline" of the field. Now it is clear that a challenge is mounting from the "marginals," specifically from the anti-sociologists among students. The term "revolutionary movement" is apt in several respects. For one thing, it refers to an increasing demand to transform sociology from a discipline into an actual revolutionary movement in its own right. For another, the model of the revolutionary cadre is increasingly appropriate in understanding the nature and sources of the demand itself. And yet the term "revolution" is apt in another sense; namely, that suggested by Thomas Kuhn's work on "The Structure of Scientific Revolutions." Ironically, Kuhn's work is sometimes cited as support for the revolutionary cause at issue here, although Kuhn's use of the term has little in common with that of the dissidents and, in fact, the two types of revolutions may be mutually incompatible.

The article presents author's replies and some reflections regarding criticism against his earlier essays on sociology. One of the main assertions the author developed in chapters one and two of Essays in Sociological Explanation is that sociology as a field both enjoys and suffers from a great diversity of approaches, outlooks, and schools of thought. The statements by the three reviewers lend strength to this assertion, since each selected such different ingredients from the body of ideas in the book and reacted in such different ways to these ingredients. He takes pleasure in the fact that my ideas have excited such a diversity of responses among the critics. He organizes his remarks under three general headings: the nature and scope of sociology; the character of sociological explanation; and the explanation of change. In chapter two he raised these questions formally and explicitly, and tried to lay out the kinds of norms that sociologists do--or should--observe as they do their own and assess others' work.

The article focuses on the career in the discipline of sociology. It is especially incumbent on the sociological profession to explain fully and honestly to young people just what it is they are thinking of getting themselves into. From time to time, sociologists have undertaken research that would ordinarily lie within the fields of psychology, anthropology, history, political science, and economics. These incursions are often resented by the other, more strictly defined, disciplines. Each of the social and humanistic branches of learning seems to have its distinctive subject matter. The most cursory glance at the easily identified major institutions, social products, and processes reveals that there are indeed such unassigned or unclaimed subjects. Sociology has, to a degree, become the great residual category of the social sciences. It has not one subject, but many. The general sociologist devotes himself to understanding universal social structures, such as groups and publics, and universal social processes, such as competition and cooperation.