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This paper examines a central issue in organizational research and addresses a core theoretical problem in historical and political sociology: The conditions under which social actors that share economic interests mobilize, and their capacity to alter dimensions of the social structure that impinge on those interests. The social actors of concern here are capitalist class fractions and state managers. The capital dependence perspective elaborated here suggests that when the institutional environment no longer ensures an adequate rate of capital accumulation, capitalists mobilize to restructure their environment. The specific focus is on how capitalists and state managers experimented with state business policy to change the politico-legal dimension of corporations' institutional environment in the 1970s and 1980s, and how the new business policy was a response to existing constraints on capital accumulation and a perceived solution to those constraints. The first part of this paper develops a theoretical framework that places the modem corporation in its historical and institutional context. The second part examines changes in state business policy in the 1980s that affect the corporate form. The third part identifies crucial characteristics of the emerging subsidiary form. The fourth part examines empirical data on the corporate form and presents several propositions to guide future research on why corporations are changing their form.

This paper assesses the theoretical and policy significance of one of Robert Merton's most influential contributions to modern sociology, the anomie or ‘strain’ theory of deviant behavior. The enduring theoretical significance of strain theory lies in its sociological completeness. Strain theory preserves the interconnection between culture and social structure which is neglected or defined away by cultural and control theories of deviance. In its emphasis on socially structured contradictions in the relations of consumption, strain theory is also broadly consistent with and complements more conflict-oriented theories of crime and deviance. A major weakness of Merton's argument is its failure to clearly distinguish the etiological significance of the distribution of opportunities (mobility) and the distribution of outcomes (equality), which has led to misinterpretations of the policy implications of strain theory. Ironically, these problems are revealed through a kind of self-criticism that applies the basic tools of Mertonian functional analysis to strain theory. The paper concludes that, ambiguities notwithstanding, for purposes of theoretical integration and substantive insight, strain theory remains an important sociological perspective on deviance, especially when set in the context of Merton's broader sociological legacy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper attempts both to ‘bring up to date’ the author's conception of social stratification as set forth in two previous general papers written in 1940 and 1953, and to broaden the field of consideration by giving special attention to the forces pressing toward equality in various respects, as well as the bases of inequality, The position taken is that the erosion of the legitimacy of the traditional bases of inequality has brought to a new level of prominence value-commitment to an essential equality of status of all members of modern societal communities. Inequalities, among units of societal structure which are essential in such fields as economic productivity, authority and power, and culturally based competence, must be justified in terms of their contribution to societal functioning. The balancing of the respects in which all members of the societal community and many of its collective subunits must be held to be equal with the imperatives of inequality constitutes one of the primary foci of the problem of integration in modern society. A few suggestions about the mechanisms by which this integrative process can operate are presented. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the awareness of sociology interest in community studies and community development. This set of papers is one of many attempts by the authors to reawaken Sociology's interest in community studies and community development. Community is a group of people who share a common territory or ecology. Communities share a common culture and set of institutions involved in the provision of daily needs. But, by far, the most important component of community is interaction among residents about that ecology, that culture, and those institutions. The implication then is that community is built through the promotion of interaction among residents and the elimination, or at least the reduction, of barriers to such interaction. It is through locally oriented interaction that residents work toward improvement of the local social institutions, culture, and ecology; this is how they alter the social forces that most directly affect them. This growth, however, is not due to tax incentives come manly assumed to affect local business climates and growth. The growth is more likely a response to the quality of life in a place and services they provide The paper makes links between these findings and what is commonly thought of as community development.

The article examines how spousal preferences and views on interracial couples are affected by racial status inequalities. It has been argued that racial inequality affects those who prefer Whites, those who prefer Asians, those indicating no racial preferences, and those whose preferences changed through the life course. The dynamics of racialized preferences are explained by introducing the concept of racialized relationship capital, specifically the appeal of Euro-American versus ethnic-racial relationship capital. Because the issues of racial inequality and dominant group determination are often sidestepped, researchers in this tradition have attributed the varying rates of outmarriage to the degree of acculturation or to cultural constraints within minority communities. The article concludes by questioning the popular notion that high rates of interracial marriage indicate successful assimilation for groups such as Asian Americans. As such, this paper represents one of the first attempts to examine the subjective perceptions of racial minorities themselves in order to shed light on the complex dynamics of the effect of racial inequality on the private sphere.

This paper examines membership and participation in neighborhood improvement associations. Individual-level and contextual-level structural variables associated with the community of limited liability model are important for the decision to join associations but not to participate in them. Also, social ties in the community are more important than psychological attachment for both membership and participation. However, neither social ties nor attachment serve as intervening variables in the relationship between structural variables and membership. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper an evaluation of Giddens' theory of structuration is focused on two related issues: first, the degree to which Giddens provides a theory of action which transcends the structure/agency dualism and, second, whether such a transcendence is possible. In the first instance, it is demonstrated that Giddens exaggerates the powers of agents at the expense of structural constraints. Second, it is argued that transcendence of structure/agency dualism and the specification of a definitive ontology of action is not possible and that the merit of structuration theory lies in its use as a sensitizing device for empirical research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyzes how authority can be maintained by structuring reality through continuous violent conflict. Using Lewis Coser's reformulation of Simmers propositions on fostering continuous conflict as a raison d'ètre in sect-like struggle groups as a general frame of analysis, the Stalinist case is then examined in order to evaluate systematically these propositions in a societal context and to specify the morphology of violence as a method of conflict. By examining a societal context, it is noted that instability in the social structure not only can be a condition for the legitimacy of a problematic political leadership and system, but also simultaneously be a consequence of a form of preventive punitive sanctioning, whereby potential threats, both persons and alternative courses of action, are eliminated before they become present dangers. In turn, an official definition of reality, justifying leadership and system, is constructed through the public documentation of a conspiracy, which employs invented categories to demonstrate ideological continuity and fabricates pseudo events to demonstrate indispensability in fulfilling necessary functions. This public documentation of a conspiracy is then used as a facade for a larger plan of social prophylaxis that implicates the public as well as the police in ferreting out tangible and visible enemies to fill the invented categories in the pseudo events. As public complicity conjoins with the official definition of reality, commitment to the leadership and system is acquired. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the role of schedules in social life. It first explains why both the schedule and the clock were introduced to the West through the Benedictine monasteries. Then it brings into locus the main principle underlying the schedule, namely temporal regularity, which involves the standardization of the temporal locations of events and activities and of their rates of recurrence, as well as the rigidification of their durations and sequential structures. Following a discussion of the constraints as well as the conveniences involved in using the schedule, it also examines two other implications of its introduction to the West—an abstract conception and a utilitarian philosophy of time. It ends with a discussion of the role of the schedule in enhancing both mechanical and organic solidarity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Whether one looks at concerns expressed in response to surveys or at the allocation of effort on a day to day basis, teachers and administrators give order a high priority. Order dominates attention because the fundamental character of schools as organizations makes disorder always an imminent possibility. In the first part of this paper, I will consider the reasons that order is consistently problematic in public secondary schools. I will then analyze varying policies for pursuing order in four junior high schools, indicating why different strategies were chosen and with what effects they were practiced. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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]

This paper reviews the current state of knowledge about the effects of industrialization upon systems of social stratification. Taking societies as the unit of observation, we consider the relationships between level of industrialization and (I) the distribution of status characteristics in the population (the structure of stratification) ; (2) the pattern of interrelations among status characteristics (the process of stratification); and (3) the form of linkages between status characteristics and other aspects of social behavior (the consequences of stratification). A set of propositions is specified, a few of which are empirically well established but most of which yet require empirical testing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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]