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As sociologists, we engage in history whether or not we see ourselves, professionally, as historical sociologists. These remarks discuss the varieties of ways sociologists use and approach historical scholarship, including history-as-context, analytic comparative/historical sociology, and interpretive approaches. I also reflect on the first fifty years of Midwest Sociological Society to show that, at different moments, the MSS mirrored, propelled, or lagged behind societal change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The sociological study of intellectual recognition has tended to focus on highly cited and highly acclaimed authors and perspectives, while reserving some interest for those who are "forgotten." We know much less about the liminal cases: authors who are in-between fame and oblivion. This paper proposes a way to study intellectual recognition, by examining the liminal case of sociologist Charles H. Cooley. Based on a multilayered (quantitative and qualitative) citation analysis of Cooley's classic work, Human Nature and the Social Order (HNSO), we study the role of intellectual deference in accounting for this liminality. Specifically, we identify two distinct deference processes: acknowledgment and involvement. We argue that Cooley has survived intellectual oblivion by standing on the shoulders of citers, as he has received substantial acknowledgment but decreasing involvement. In the conclusion, we discuss the implications of our paper for the understanding of the making of sociological theory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate the applicability of Parsonian "pattern-variables" in defining a constructed type. Specification of boundaries or cutting-off points of role relationships in Weber's three types of authority systems, while an intriguing problem, is a project too great in scope for a short paper. Instead, for this preliminary attempt, a social system has been selected in which a few crucial role relationships define its character. It is also a system familiar to sociologists. The setting selected is the educational institution at the university level. The type to be defined, "the seat of learning," is perhaps the most "ideal" of ideal types. A number of other constructed type educational institutions might be isolated, e.g., "marriage markets," "sources of status," "diploma mills," or, perhaps, "campus playgrounds." Sets of role relationships could be specified to define any of these types. For purposes of illustration, however, the definition of one type will be sufficient. Four steps are involved in defining the constructed type: (1) selection of the crucial role pairs; (2) the definition of the chosen role relationships by use of the pattern-variables; (3) measurement of the pattern- variable choices; and (4) establishment of boundary points for the pattern-variables themselves. The fourth step will not be completed in this paper; it is felt that the necessary methodological apparatuses are already available. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is an increasing necessity for sociologists to improve their skills in writing sociological research papers. The connection between writing and thinking is close and crucial. Thinking requires symbols, because they are not a sufficient cause of thought but a necessary condition. Therefore, the written version can be brought closer to what one really thinks. Furthermore, writing has a palpability that the ephemeral, spoken word lacks. The concern for effective writing is not a trivial form over content. Good writing is a condition, slowly achieved, of saying what one means to say, of being what one means to be. It is a condition of achieving an adequate professional identity for the community of sociologists.

This paper explores the importance of race and racial attitudes among sociologists by attempting to document the existence of what has been called a "black insiders doctrine" and showing that black sociologists are more likely than their white counterparts to subscribe to this doctrine. Data in this paper are based on a survey questionnaire administered during the winter of 1978. The findings show that: (1) race is a strong predictor in determining how sociologists perceive the role and characteristics of black sociologists and (2) black sociologists do not think highly of whites who study race relations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents a discussion on values in family research. Professor Donald O. Cowgill has attempted to explore the influence of an individual's values upon the selection of a research problem, his research design, the presentation of data and his findings or conclusions. He has done this by a rather extensive examination of literature dealing with migration ranging from the sociologist to the novelist. By and large he exonerates the sociologist, particularly the contemporary sociologist, from this type of bias, although this may actually be an example of the influence of an individual's values or value judgments. it is really impossible to do justice to Cowgill's paper both because of its length and its exhaustive citation of sources. The author believes that two points are pertinent. First, is it ever possible to reduce the question of migration to such simple terms as "Is migration good or bad ?" The second point is the influence of social change on attitudes toward migration. The author holds that research does depend upon the personal predilections of the researcher, but increasingly larger projects seem to depend as much, if indeed not considerably more, upon the value judgments of large foundations which furnish research money.

This paper outlines the career of Maurice F. Parmelee, sociologist, government official, nudist, and author of thirteen books, including the first American criminology text (1918). The contents of the latter are examined and contrasts with contemporary textbooks are noted. Parmelee's career is an anomoly, for although he published abundantly, he faded into sociological obscurity. Some conjecture is offered about scholarly career paths generally, drawn out of the Parmelee case. Finally, the paper argues that historical accounts of the development of American criminology are incomplete, for they fail to mention a number of early figures, including Parmelee. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

in this area. A radical re-tooling of some of his earlier definitions and concepts seems to be needed, if these are to become more appreciated and useful in future research. In short, while he undoubtedly knew his empirical evidence very well, Weber, like many other scientists, experienced some painful difficulties in attempting to classify and label it. The major modification tentatively suggested in this paper is that it is necessary to pay close attention to an extremely sharp contrast between the two variants of the traditionalist concept of domination, patrimonialism vs. feudalism. This basic contrast, crucial in his scientific investigation of cultural differentiations, runs most consistently through an unbelievable wealth of research material accumulated by him. It is an empirical typology of two sets of contradictory historical experiences concerning the origin and development of domination and legitimacy. There is another rather significant and frequently overlooked scientific contribution of Max Weber within the context of this paper. Albert Salomon's witty comment from the 1930's on the Me-long dialogue of Max Weber with the ghost of Karl Marx is now very popular among many radical, establishment, and the-rest-of-us sociologists. In spite of being fashionable to refer to it through the 1960's, no serious attempts were made to account for this many-faceted dialogue. This paper will try to settle one of the very much alive aspects of the same dialogue— hopefully to the lasting satisfaction of all. One morning numerous and valuable conceptual tools suggested by Max Weber, a typological dichotomy of patrimonialism vs. feudalism, has not been sufficiently utilized in modem research and obviously for good reasons. But the theoretical potentialities of this dichotomy seem to be imperative and still go begging particularly in an ever-increasing number of fascinating comparative analyses of durable and large political systems in time as well as in space. A consensus seems to be growing that the former is indispensable for the understanding of the latter, because the durability of patterning, found only in the comparison of things in time, is one of the most crucial prerequisites for contemporary studies of comparing things in space. Wesson (1967) and Eisenstadt (1963) in their admirable generalizing sweep of great historical empires, Blum (1964) and Jacobs (1958) in their specialized areas, could have immensely facilitated their formidable tasks if Weber's dichotomy had been available to them, thus only increasing the welldeserved impact of their contributions. Indeed, this dichotomy of Weber's, similarly to some others, does need just about a total rescue if not resurrection, and no student should be blamed for not digging for it for his own needs. Patrimonial-feudal dichotomy is buried in Webers extremely rough-draft writings on the traditionalist type of domination. In addition to being by necessity a residual type—whatever did not qualify for charismatic or legal-rational types was hastily located here perhaps for the time being—the traditionalist type, as presented by Weber, is one of the most mettled and confusing segments of Ms writings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The problem of the kind of social organization necessary to bring about radical social change was raised by Marx in 1843-1844 in his essay on Hegel's philosophy of law. In this essay Marx specified the kind of social organization capable of bringing about the total, socialist revolution as the proletariat, a class, in society but not of it, conscious of itself and of its enemies, and organized as a party. (See also Marx and Engels, 1848). In the historical development of Marxism, Marx' answer was reinforced, but also narrowed and specified, by Lenin's classical (1902) formulation of the revolutionary cadre party. In a world in which many now talk of revolution, both in the "Third World," and even in modem industrialized countries, it may be of some use to re-examine the question of the kind of social organization involved in generating radical social change, and to reexamine the Marxist answer. My strategy in this paper is to attack the problem indirectly, by reexamining Max Weber's discussion of the role of certain kinds of Protestant groups in the rise of the capitalist world. I shall try to justify this indirect strategy at the paper's conclusion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

When sociologists discuss the analytical concept "integration" they use an implicit conceptual imagery which must be made clear if some of the most common confusions and misunderstandings in this area are to be avoided. The recent discussion of the concept has been vigorous, but a systematic appraisal of the issue is needed. It is attempted in this paper. Our analysis must have two parts: first, we must understand the formal meaning of the concept "integration" as such—its logical properties, as it were, which stem from its nature as a characterization of whole-part relationships; second, we must apply the formal insights gained to a brief review of the analytical uses of the concept in sociological theory; it may then be possible to specify at least some of the conceptual relationships between different types of "integration theories. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the history of science it has often happened that a scholar's ideas are denied full recognition because of that scholar's real or assumed connection to some controversial ideology. The position accorded to Vilfredo Pareto is one illustration of such practice in present-day sociology. This scholar is often said to have been a "Newton of the Moral World," or altogether a fascist ideologist. So Faris informs us that "The book [The Mind and Society] formulates the implicit philosophy of Italian Fascism, advocating the right of the strong to take what they want without apology or appeal to moral principles." In tracing the development of social thought, Bogardus devotes an entire chapter to "Pareto and Fascist Thought," and authoritatively argues that "While fascism has some of its roots in Nietzsche's concepts and other roots in Machiavellianism, yet Pareto's ideas come even closer to giving an adequate basis." Zanden, in turn, interprets Pareto's sociology to be "a philosophy of society, a social creed, determined mainly by violent and ever purely personal passions. The logical fulfillment of this political manifesto is fascism." We need not continue further; analogous affirmations are bountiful in the literature. To be sure, not all sociologists accept this view, but to date little or no systematic effort has been made to resolve the controversy, with the result that many students of sociology are unwitting victims of one of the most cruel intellectual hoaxes perpetrated against their discipline and one of their kind. The present paper proposes to offer a clarification with respect to the alleged connection between Pareto's sociology and fascist ideology. Our approach takes us in two major directions: first, an examination of Pareto's Treatise, his chief sociological work, and second, an examination of a series of letters written to his great friend Pantaleoni during the period when fascism was a political reality in Italy. Before proceeding to present our argument, it may be useful to inquire briefly about the meaning of "fascism," as his critics tend to use that word. A rapid glance at the literature reveals that the following are generally believed to be among the chief characteristics of fascist ideology: distrust of reason, a code of behavior based on "race" and violence, belligerent nationalism, government by an elite, and totalitarianism. Characteristically, these then provide the basis for accusing Pareto of "antirationalism," "anti-intellectualism," "contempt for democracy," and approval of the use of force at all costs. The major portion of this paper will be concerned, therefore, with explicating Pareto's position on these four issues. We shall begin by considering Pareto's alleged antirationalism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sociology has fractured into a number of schools, each claiming to be distinct from the others and to have its own theory. The trouble with the theories is that most of them fail to make their general propositions explicit. Were they made explicit, all the theories would turn out to contain at least the general propositions of behavioral psychology, and the intellectual unification of sociology could begin. The paper discusses the reasons why many sociologists are reluctant to accept this argument. It also discusses other claimants to the status of theory, including "pattern" theories, functional theories (one of which is really behavioral), and the difficulties created by some uses of the concept, social structure. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The rationality that guides the sociological community has generated principles to evaluate members' work. Under the sway of these principles, Georg Simmel surfaces either as a peripheral member of the community or as an outright failure. His critics have argued that his work is "fragmented," that he begins without having formulated "guiding statements," that he is "unsystematic" and "undisciplined." Yet we can discover in Simmel's writings a distinct rationality that upsets this criticism by its transcendence of it. Had these particular critics read his work more carefully they might have discovered that Simmel had anticipated their criticism and had carefully reevaluated its source of authority. In this paper 1 address the problems of discipline and systematic unity in sociological writing in order to unmask the rationality held within the sociological community and to formulate Simmel's unique contribution as a member of that community. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Only a new, direct, systematic, and comprehensively envisaged effort to develop an appropriate terminology would seem to promise a thorough, effective removal of these defects. The proposals offered in this paper stem from an intensive study of Cooley's major works and the fields they represent, his own distinctive conceptual contributions, the basic assumptions pervading his general methodological and theoretic stance, and allied terminological differentiations embodying the same basic views in disciplines other than sociology. Stated simply and directly, the results of this inquiry indicate that Cooley's general sociological orientation is constituted of a configuration of ideas involving idealism, organicism, diversitarianism, nonrationality, the pervasiveness of conflict or opposition, and the constancy of change. Perhaps the best general designation for this configuration of ideas would be romanticism or romantic idealism, as Cooley's respect for and indebtedness to Hegel, Schaeffle, Emerson, and especially Goethe might suggest. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Influenced by the new literary movement and postmodernism, in the 1990s sociologists began to reflexively examine their writings as texts, looking critically at the way they shape reality and articulate their descriptions and conceptualizations. Advancing this thread, in our presidential address we offer an overarching analysis of ethnographic writing, identifying four current genres and deconstructing their rhetoric: classical, mainstream, postmodern, and public ethnography. We focus on the differences in their epistemological, organizational, locational, and stylistic self-presentations with an eye toward better understanding how these speak to their intended audiences, both within and outside of the discipline. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article offers central correctionsn to J. David Lewis' paper "The Classic American Pragmatists As Forerunners to Symbolic Interactionism," that appeared in "The Sociological Quarterly," in the Summer of 1976. Misrepresentations of the views of sociologist George Herbert Mead. The weakness of Lewis' major argument that symbolic interactionists do not follow the position of Mead, but take instead, the position of John Dewey, was pointed out. Lewis' speculative conjecture is evident in his effort to trace the intellectual history some sociologists in the case of symbolic interactionism.

This article examines the attitudes of white sociologists and black students in predominantly white colleges and universities in all geographic regions of the country. Respective attitudes are at sharp variance and produce several kinds of conflict behavior. Tile personal and professional crises experienced by white sociologists when challenged by black students are described, along with the principal grievances of black students against social scientists in the race relations field. Also examined are structural and organizational changes in sociology and in the academic institutions resulting from a particular form of black-white conflict. Attention is given to black-Jewish conflict in sociology as well as to the distinctiveness of black-white relations in Southern colleges and universities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This re-analysis has included additional community studies which meet the criteria of the original research. An attempt has also been made to re-examine the data while taking into account the fact of changing predominance of research methods in use during the period from 1953 to 1964. One conclusion by Walton that "… political scientists compared to sociologists tend to find less monolithic power structures …" (1966b:687) was not sustained by this re-analysis. When the data in Table 4A for the publishing period from 1960 to 1964 are examined, it can be noted that sociologists and political scientists equally found pyramidal power structures in communities. It appears that the use of the entire publishing period from 1953 to 1964 contributed to the erroneous conclusion in Walton's study. Some insights and conclusions which have emerged in this re-analysis are as follows: (1) Sociologists were substantially involved in the study of community power earlier than were political scientists (of the research reports published prior to 1960, eleven were done by sociologists and only one by a political scientist). (2) The decision making and the combined decision and reputational approaches to the study of community power were not represented in the literature before 1960. (3) There appears to be a tendency for use of the decision-only or the combined reputation-and-decision methods to result in finding a coalitional arrangement of community power. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Presents a letter to the editors of "The Sociological Quarterly," about the criticisms against sociologists for their poor writing skills.

Hartmann’s response to the commentaries on his 2016 MSS presidential address from Adia Harvey Wingfield, Annette Lareau, and Vanessa Muñoz. The emphasis is on conflict, different audiences, and the unique role that sociologists in organizations like MSS can play in public engagement. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Reflecting on a carnal ethnography of the fashion modeling market, I consider the analytic gains from observant participation and experimentation with the sociologist's body as a participant in a culture industry. The ambiguities and uncertainties of fashion modeling, as a highly competitive freelance labor form, parallel the risky position of insider ethnographer, in this case as a graduate student 'studying up' among guarded cultural elites. These positions opened an analytic lens into sociological concepts of labor exploitation, value, and social hierarchy. However, in occupying an insider role within a stratified field, observant participants face risks in trying to move beyond their own experiences in order to interview informants. My changing position in the field, from subjugated worker to interviewer, highlights how power and inequality operate in the fashion world. First-person narrative illuminates these analytic payoffs of insider ethnography. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Previous studies of stratification in science have found a consistent positive correlation between the prestige of the departments where scientists received their degrees and the prestige of the departments where they obtained jobs, especially their first jobs. This correlation held regardless of previous research performance. Two limitations associated with these studies are (1) their almost exclusive focus on the hard sciences, and (2) their inability to inform a theoretical comparison between the hard and soft sciences. This study uses data on new sociology Ph.D.s who obtained their first job in Ph.D.-granting departments between 1985 and 1992 in order to assess whether the stratifying mechanisms in the hiring of sociologists are similar to those in the hard sciences. The results are generally consistent with previous findings for the hard sciences and suggest that job placement in sociology values academic origins over performance. The two strongest determinants of the prestige of a first job are the prestige of the Ph.D.-granting department and the selectivity of the undergraduate institution. In contrast, the effects of predoctorate single- or first-authored publications and of mentor's recognition are weak, though significant. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article examines the effect of development and rate of growth on crime rates. Durkheimian and opportunity models claim to explain this relationship. Durkheimian model is more revered and often employed to examine this relationship. It asserts that with growth in size and density, societies evolve more complex divisions of labor. This complexity transforms the dominant mode of social integration from mechanical solidarity with its collective conscience to organic solidarity. The major criticism of the Durkheimian model is its inability to predict or explain differences in crime rates by crime type. It states that industrialization makes more material goods available for theft and the theft rate, other factors remaining the same, should increase proportionately with development. Unlike the Durkheimian model, the opportunity model considers developmental level, not rate of change, necessary to explain crime rates. In conclusion, the foregoing models address the concepts of level and rate of change differently.

A list of sociologists who contributed to this volume of the journal is presented.

Sociology at the University of Minnesota has had a long and distinguished history. From its founding in 1910 many prominent sociologists have taught and have graduated from the department. We present an overview of the growth of the department, and certain influential events which affected the direction of department governance and intellectual development. The department achieved its "Golden Age" under the leadership of F. Stuart Chapin, who chaired the department for nearly three decades (1922 1951). We speculate about the internal and external pressures that have affected the Minnesota department and other sociology departments--over the past two decades, during its period of greatest expansion but of significant tensions as well. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The innovations in sociology are highlighted at the 43rd Annual Meeting of the Midwest Sociological Society in 1979. There is a considerable dissatisfaction among sociologists about the state of the discipline. The task of identifying achievements is complicated by the very mass of available materials. But the present state of sociology may not be as bad as professional shop talk would indicate. It is necessary to put one side those sociologists who are fanatically cultist--that is who believe with fervor in the correctness of their outlook but who are at the same time basically indifferent to work in other streams of sociology. For the self-critical sociologists, the basic issue is whether the community can identify a common core of competent and outstanding work.

In response to Lundman and McFarlane's assessment of what they understand to be conflict methodology, several points of exception and clarification are offered. Conflict methodology is neither a new data collection technology nor an abandonment of professional ethics by sociologists. It is an emerging movement away from the orthodoxy of consensus methodology by sociologists who recognize the ethical and epistemological weaknesses inherent in the dogmas of positivistic science. It proposes an evolutionary epistemology in opposition to the reductionism, operationalism, objectivism, and technocracy of consensus methodology. Conflict methodology affirms the unity of science and the social discourse, the centrality of subjectivity in science, and the emancipatory interest in knowledge, while recognizing the threat to the scientific standing of sociology posed by institutional domination of social research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Disagreements abound between Robert Jones and Robert Perrin over sociologist Emile Durkheim's alleged "misrepresentation" of sociologist Herbert Spencer. Perrin's acceptance and subsequent misuse of Jones' "historicist" approach to sociology threatens to lead sociologists into a disreputable form of inductivism and return them to the worst excesses of presentism. Perrin argues that Jones should have returned to Spencer's own writings, for "Spencer's own words and the full range of his writings are better data for the historicist than are Durkheim's summaries and questionable renditions". Rarely does Perrin attempt to determine the precise Spencerian passage referred to by Durkheim. It is difficult to see how these passages can be evidence for Durkheim's alleged "misrepresentation" of Spencer.

The article presents information about sociologist Lawrence Milton Hepple. Hepple, professor of Sociology of Religion at Methodist National Seminary, Kansas City, Missouri, and formerly associate professor of Rural Sociology at the University of Missouri, died of a heart attack on November 22, 1960, in Kansas. He was born and reared in Missouri, attending high school at Moberly. He received an A.B. degree from Central College in 1932, and M.A. and Ph.D. degrees from the University of Missouri in 1940 and 1946, respectively. His teaching career began in 1942 when he served as instructor in Sociology at the University of Missouri. He became assistant professor of Sociology in 1945, assistant professor of Rural Sociology in 1947, and associate professor of Rural Sociology in 1950. In July 1960, he accepted the position of professor of Sociology of Religion at the new Methodist National Seminary in Kansas City, Missouri. Hepple served as president of the Boone County Mental Health Association, and was chairman of the section on Religion and the Aged in the task force created by the state in preparation for the White House Conference on Aging.

Sociologists need to recognize the distinction between objective and subjective status inconsistency. Objective inconsistency may be defined in terms of an arbitrary manipulation of an individual's status ranks, or it may be defined in terms of the normative expectations linking together the various status dimensions. Subjective inconsistency, on the other hand, involves asking the respondent to decide for himself whether or not he is inconsistent. When objective inconsistency is defined in terms of arbitrary mathematical manipulations, the relationship between these two components of inconsistency (i.e., objective and subjective) is basically an empirical question. However, when objective inconsistency is defined in terms of the normative expectations in a population, and when the respondent shares these expectations, we propose that these two components of inconsistency will be identical. Conversely, they will not be identical when the respondent does not share these expectations. Finally, the implications of defining inconsistency in terms of normative expectations are explored. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sociologists have become aware of the correlation between socio-cultural variables and the development of types of scientific knowledge. Until recently, the systematic study of the importance of these relations for knowledge in the social sciences has been more or less overlooked. To be sure, there was speculation about the impact of social and cultural factors upon the works of previous researchers. Some changes are taking place. Recently, the number of studies has increased and further evidence of increasing interest in the area has been reflected in the publications of several symposia which focus on sociological self-analysis. Furthermore, some lines of inquiry in the study of the discipline are examined.

It is now almost seventy years since Max Weber visited the United States and was inspired to write his delightful and significant essay entitled "The Protestant Sects and the Spirit of Capitalism." (Weber, 1946). I would like to comment on what Weber had to say in that essay concerning American Protestantism, and I would also like to assess Weber's predictions about the future of American Protestantism in the light of certain events since 1904, events that Weber himself might think important to reflect upon were he to come to life again and pay a second visit to this country. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Max Weber's work is seldom beyond criticism, and a good deal of it is controversial. Some regard Weber's main contribution on Economy and Society as too aridly typological, even as they perhaps also concede its very considerable stature. There are those who do Weber less than justice because they are offended by a nationalism that repels them even after all qualifications, such as those suggested by Weber's political prudence and sagacity and impatience with political quackery, have been made. But Weber clearly suffers in part from the very massiveness of his achievement. No one could write so much and on so great a variety of matters as he did without making mistakes. And his nationalism, as has just been suggested in effect, did not inhibit great penetration and understanding of many political and social phenomena. In any ease, given Weber's limitations, given a variety of reservations about his performance, that performance in the end remains so outstanding that for many sociologists Weber is unequivocally the intellectual hero of their field up to the present time—the charismatic figure from the past of sociology. It is no doubt a pious thing to look back on him once again after fifty years, but the following observations are not motivated by piety, commendable as it might be if they were. They are rather motivated by a desire to take a somewhat unconventional look at the structure of Weber's sociological thought and to make some suggestions about wisdom and science in sociology today to which Weber's thought appears to give reinforcement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sociologists often single out the family in our society as a prototype of the primary group. Many emphasize that the family best embodies the denotative properties of smallness, face-to-faceness, duration over time, non-specialized function, and intimacy stressed by Cooley in introducing the concept. The implicit notion is widely held that ties among kin are mutually binding, intimate, and more or less equal, even though casual inspection dictates that relations between most members of the family are not and cannot be equivalent. Husband and wife, for example, engage and share in intimacies that they are not permitted or are unlikely to share with other family members. The range and degree of intimacy and the quality of the ties that each spouse exhibits in his role as parent or that siblings show in relation to each other or to their parents, in fact, underscores that relations, even within the nuclear group, are highly varied. To complicate matters, the quality of ties and relations within the family must inevitably change over time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Science seems to be, among other things, part of man's quest for legitimate extrapolations beyond immediate sense impressions. Though some sociologists seem to think that "going beyond one's data" constitutes a scholarly sort of sin, the whole purpose of a sampling apparatus is precisely to enable a person to make claims regarding parameters from statistical knowledge. Further, the development of scientific theory appears to be of the same order. Science is not a mere cataloging of either true or verifiable statements. Scientific statements cohere in an organized body of interconnected propositions. The basic scientific act is to make a judgment regarding the acceptability of these statements (Kaufman, 1944; esp 39ff). Since a variety of different kinds of statements can be identified, the grounds for acceptance vary according to their nature (Francis, 1969). Further, criteria such as "elegance" and "pragmatic workability," though creating a certain degree of tension at times, rest on different grounds than, say, establishing a probability level for Type I statistical error. In any event, the strain is toward consistency such that neither the statement itself nor the grounds for accepting it are contradicted elsewhere. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sociologists are writing an increasing amount about various parts of higher education. Fundamentally and briefly, these can generally be described as topical, normative, discursive and frequently interesting. The total impact of this growing list must vary with the background of the reader. While each is informative and most contain shrewd insights, the list indicates only a personal and not a theoretical concern with higher education. We have finally begun the scrutiny of the complex organization where most of us are domiciled. That is to say, the publications seem to warrant the inference that more and more sociologists are concerned about higher education, but scarcely any have been cast in a framework commensurate with our state of knowledge and methodological sophistication. When the Academic Man (Wilson, 1942) first appeared, Wilson's style of research was appropriate to the task. It was scholarly, normative in places, insightful and carried the weight of the personal observer. At that time, the theories of organization which could be appropriate to research today were not available. Moreover, in the interim, the dash between theory and research—neither well defined—subsided, and general sophistication in both methods and techniques developed. Some volumes appeared between Wilson and the current crop. Typical of these was The Academic Market Place ( Caplow and McGee, 1958). While a certain effort at systematic research was revealed, most empirical observations seemed somewhat independent of the statistical or sampling design. Certainly more credance could be given to the typologies developed, however related they were to the role of the observant participant. Sociological theories were not particularly advanced during this period. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

David J. Gray, in a recent issue of this journal (1968), expresses a number of value judgments about the current practice of sociology and its dominant ideology. I wish to expand some of Ms points and to issue a cautionary note. Mr. Gray urges sociologists to follow the example of Weber and Durkheim in addressing themselves to problems which are important and not refusing to make judgments about what needs to be done (1968:176-178). Sociologists who attempt to be value free, he maintains, do violence to their vocation in two ways: First, they bind themselves over to the values of others. At the least, they sell their service to those with the most power and money as distinguished from those with the greatest need. Mr. Gray mentions the flowering of lucrative specialties such as industrial and medical sociology and the withering of sociological theory, history of social thought, and the sociology of religion (1968:179). Mr. Gray raises the spectre that this relatively venal prostitution may so debase the profession that "value free" sociologists will come to serve any master no matter how vile, just as physical scientists and engineers served the Nazis (1968:179). In the second place, scientists who abstain from value judgments are prone to glorify method at the expense of substance (1968:182-183). Quantitative and experimental methods are best wherever they can be applied, but they cannot be applied to all the most important questions. To insist that only those inquiries are scientific which use ideal methods condemns sociology to triviality. Mr. Gray suggests that many sociologists, especially those who look upon their work as an occupation rather than a calling, deliberately choose minuscule problems because they are easy to solve by "scientific" methods ( 1968:184). They provide a quick road to advancement in the institutional hierarchy. The wages of sin are death—in this case, the death of a discipline, a death by irrelevance and triviality—the assassins of sociology its very body guards, the advocates of value-free detachment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since the impetus and design of research inevitably derive from a set of assumptions, whether explicit or not, the nature of fact—the categories in which something is captured out of the Deal world"—is dependent upon these assumptions. It is reason enough to suggest that in efforts to advance sociological knowledge at least as much care should be given to explicating the linkages of ideas as to empirical operations. The positivist traditions of sociology have, however, often meant that high-level, "general" or even "middle range" theorizing has been more of an avocation than a vocation for most sociologists, and that much more rigor, energy, and professional skill have in recent decades gone into the empirical aspect of research than into the theoretical. Though the bearings of theory and research upon each other have been usefully discussed and have, in fact, become a kind of credo, almost any published discussion lacking in figures and tables and involving some commentary beyond sheer description has been capable of definition as "theory." Where so little has been expected, relatively little by way of intellectual and other resources has been invested. Consequently, the returns have been small. Even when serious theoretical work has been attempted, it has often received something less than systematic consideration. Such work—some examples undoubtedly more scholarly and sophisticated than others—has been given more or less favorable receptions largely in accord with semantic preferences, generally unspecific "orientations," and degrees of sympathy for speculation as, hopefully and somehow, relevant to real research. Other than to note particular historical events and to cite research findings considered pertinent to some statement or other contained in a discussion, the supporters, sympathizers, and opponents of theorizing have rarely spelled out the criteria by which judgment was delivered. In short, the problems of theory construction have been neglected in favor of the more obviously empirical problems of research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

From the kinds of data to which the term reference group has been applied in the sociological literature, we have traced the diverse criteria implied. We have bypassed an inventory of the definitions made in the name of the term to consider the empirical evidence used to indicate its existence. The initial application by Hyman was to data about a self evaluation due to a person's comparison of his characteristic to others of like or unlike category. The explicit hypothesis in this use was that a characteristic seemingly fixed at the time (e.g., income or personal appearance) might have subjective meanings differing according to the category of others used for self-evaluation. Other researchers have applied the term to data about attitudes or overt behavior of various kinds behind which may be interpreted to lie a comparison of self. Nevertheless, most studies have not established that the referent (whether a social category, group, or value) existed in the minds of the persons studied but have assumed it is measured by the categories associated with statistical differences in their attitudes, evaluations, or overt behavior. Consequently, initially a term to label data obtained by direct questions about the psychological mechanism of self-evaluation of the persons studied, reference group has had its meaning extended to cover interpretations of why persons differed in their attitudes, evaluations, overt behavior. In short, from a term to cover data about how the observed themselves defined the situation, it has become an interpretative term stating how an observer, the sociologist, believed the situation was defined by the observed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Academic sociologists and those trained in sociology have a long university tradition, and even though we are sociologists and professors, we often fail fully to appreciate this tradition in our daffy existence of teaching, research, and other roles. As professors we sometimes forget that we have a long and eminent tradition. We have positions of high status, a status reflected in an often-quoted Swedish statement that "the professor walks second only to the king, who walks next to God." Universities extend as far back as the ninth century, but they were largely specialized institutions dealing with medicine, law, and theology. As groups of schools, faculties, and colleges, universities date primarily from the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, following the accumulation of knowledge largely derived through the rediscovery of Aristotle, Arabian commentaries, and the study of the broader liberal arts. Many universities from which we trace our traditions have existed for as long as nine hundred years: Bologna (1088), the universities of Paris, Oxford, and Cambridge from the twelfth century; Prague (1348); Vienna (1365); Uppsala (1477); Mexico and San Marcos de Lima (1551); and Harvard (1636). Universities today, as compared with the past, have developed well-established innovations, such as the preparation of theses in place of disputations, seminars, electives, laboratories, and separate graduate schools. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Tug concert of class consciousness seems to mean many things to sociologists, perhaps because they have not always agreed on the meaning of one of its elements-class. In contemporary writing the term has been used in five different ways. These, in order of comprehensiveness, are: first, the manifestation of an awareness that a system of stratification exists in society; second, the willingness of a person to designate where he feels he belongs in this system; third, the manifestation of interests in common with others who feel they belong in the same aggregate; fourth, the possession of presumedly accurate knowledge of the interests of the class to which one feels he belongs, and as a consequence, a manifestation of interests similar to these; and fifth, a feeling of solidarity with those who are identified as belonging to one's self-assigned class, and a feeling of estrangement from those not identified as belonging to one's self assigned class. The first three usages are indicative more of class identification than of class consciousness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An area of research in which sociologists and historians would seem to share a rather obvious concern is that of social change. In his presidential address before the joint meeting of the Canadian Historical and Canadian Political Science Association, S. D. Clark emphasized this. "We cannot become students of change," he said, "without becoming historians. It is only by looking at what has happened to societies of the past, and over time, that the sociologist can derive the data on which to build his principles of social change." That is to say that the study of social change requires recognition of processes in time and must deal, insofar as time past is involved, with evidence that is historical. The student of social change must become a historian and the historian, insofar as he is interested in understanding and interpreting general processes, must become a social scientist. When, however, one searches the literature for particular studies of historical social change, one's findings are meager indeed, especially if one's standards, theoretically and methodologically, are reflective of those of contemporary social science, and one's historiographical standards, of contemporary history. If, in addition, one is searching for social change studies of a particular national history, then the material is even more limited. For this reason I have expanded this review, which was originally concerned with the American nineteenth century only, to include two studies of English history, because these two studies include important theoretical and methodological contributions to the study of history and social change in America. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on value assumptions in family research. Family researchers share the assumptions of the scientific profession. With science in general, the family researcher is committed to the assumption that the world a real, natural world exists; that one can know the world through senses; that to know is better than not to know, hence activity in pursuit of knowledge is good. Furthermore, family researchers are concerned that change should emerge from facts, knowledge, and wisdom, not from fear, hysteria or loss of rational behavior. In other words, it is assumed that the world exists, and that man as a part of that world exists, that the world can be known to man, that to know is better than not to know and to know accurately. But this is not the limit of the American family researcher's intellectual rapprochement with the intelligent and informed public. It goes beyond the sharing of assumptions underlying science. To take a closer look at the assumptions of science and social philosophy as they find expression in the work of American family researchers, especially family sociologists, it is found that students have focused their attention on two criteria of success or goals for marriage.

In this article, the author briefly considers some of the changing imagery of American cities and suburbs. Today's urban imagery is no longer concerned with the imagined polarity of countryside and city, which for so long preoccupied Americans. This polarity was succeeded some decades ago by a presumed polarity of city and suburb, a polarity which followed in the wake of a vastly increased sub-urbanization of American cities, and the flight of great numbers of city dwellers to the suburbs in search of fresh air, safe and quiet streets, genuine communal life, better standards of domestic living, and, as American sociologists have so often stressed, more prestigious locales in which to live. But the imagined polarity of suburb and city is already breaking down, and new imagery is beginning to take its place. Americans are now being told in their mass media that soon they will be living in fifteen great, sprawling, nameless communities, which are rapidly changing the human geography of the entire country. They are beginning to have spread before them maps of these vast urban conglomerations, which are not cities but are nevertheless thoroughly urban: super-cities and strip cities. They are being warned that the United States' urban regions are already entering upon a new stage of development, even before most people are aware that urban regions exist at all.

The article focuses on several issues related to working class and industrialization. The development of the industrially retarded regions of the world has reawakened interest in the social consequences of early industrialization. The thinking of present-day scholars concerned with this problem is permeated by two major themes. The first is that the main social effect of early industrialization is the emergence of a class of industrial workers. The second is that this working class undergoes a typical and common development that is set by the intrinsic nature of the industrializing process. Early industrialization is neutral with regard to each of the four basic conditions, which set the character of the classes of early industrial workers. Industrialization does not account for the differences in the composition of these classes, it does not account for the differences in the industrial mileux, it does not account for the differences in outside conditions of life, and it does not account for the definitions used to interpret experience and to organize action. One has to look elsewhere for explanations of the make-up, the experiences, and the conduct of the working classes that come into existence. According to the author, in his judgment students-theorists and research workers alike who seek to use early industrialization to account for the character of the new working class are operating with a false scheme.

Several studies of sociologists show that approximately one-third of sociologists who have received a Ph.D. never publish an article in a sociology journal. A sociologist who publishes an article once every three years is maintaining average productivity of his field. In the United States, only eight sociology departments have at least a productivity rate of one article per person every two years. Several factors affect sociologists' productivity. These include professional age, sex, prestige of university, size of department, financial support, administrative support, and teaching and administrative responsibilities.

The study of researcher Robert Blain about the four function paradigm in sociological study is critiqued. Blain has developed a promising synthetic approach designed to facilitate the development of simple, testable, and quantitative sociological propositions. Furthermore, it is demonstrated that Blain has misread the works of his colleagues in several fundamental ways. Blain has pointed out two aspects of the Parsonian scheme which are conceptually incompatible. Furthermore, Blain is incorrect in maintaining that many functional redundancies exist in the Parsonian scheme. The point which Blain has missed is that the entire four function paradigm has a dual application. It has been applied systematically to each of the four system levels, and then re-applied to the general action system as a whole.