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The paper examines the school background of leaders in eight occupational groups: the civil service, foreign service, judiciary, Royal Navy, army, Royal Air Force, Church of England, and clearing banks. These elite groups were studied at four time intervals: 1939, 1950, 1960, and 1971. With the exception of the civil service, no significant change was discernible in the proportion of men who had attended public school. The paper also examines the university background of leaden in five of the groups: the civil service, foreign service, judiciary, Church of England, and clearing banks. Except for the Church of England, no significant change was recorded in the proportion of men who had attended Oxbridge. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper argues that the notoriously disordered and contradictory nature of Pareto's last and greatest work, the Trattato, is largely attributable to the place he was cast in the development of European social thought. Pareto set out to construct a rationalist-positivist model in the tradition of Bentham and Comte. But his acquaintanceship with a rising intellectual tradition, generally associated with the name of Nietzsche, confronted him with psychological and individualist themes which both revealed how little human action is governed by reason, and put in question the hypothetico-deductive model of Western science and its belief in objective truth. Pareto's resulting intellectual uprootedness translated itself into his last work. This work gained the virtue of presenting an original perspective on social behaviour, but suffered at the same time from not finding a methodology appropriate to its new interests. This paper also aims to show the centrality of Nietzsche's influence on Pareto, an influence almost completely neglected in the secondary literature. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It is usually presumed that the function of education is that of selection and that this is the most important conception of education of which sociologists should be aware. This paper presents historical and comparative material from two contrasting societies-Graeco-Roman Antiquity and West Africa in the late Middle Ages-which shows that the selective function was relatively unimportant. The paper concludes by suggesting that educational conceptions take a variety of forms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper is concerned with curriculum decision making in the school and the attempts to apply a sociological analysis to this important area. Its focus is on the 'micro' rather than on the 'macro' decision making process, i.e. within the school rather than within the educational system, though the significance of macro decisions is recognized throughout the paper. Commencing with a discussion of the role that may be played by the study of decision making in curriculum content and method, the paper goes on to suggest some of the orientations that influence such decisions. Six such areas are identified. In the light of these areas four ideological variables are hypothesized. These are finally brought together as components of a model of the autonomy and interrelationship of educational personnel. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper critically examines available theoretical models which have been derived front statistically established patterns of association between contextual and organizational variables. These models offer an interpretation of organizational structure as a product of organizational structure as a product of primarily economic constraints which contextual variable are impose. It is argued that available models in fact attempt to explain organization at one remove by ignoring the essentially political process, whereby power-holders within organizations decide upon courses of strategic action. This `strategic choice' typically includes not only the establishment of structural forms but also the manipulation of environmental features and the choice of relevant performance standards. A theoretical re-orientation this kind away from functional imperatives and towards' a recognition of political action is developed and illustrated in the man body of the paper. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The assumption underlying most philosophical theories of science, that one can apply to any scientific theory the concept of 'truth', is, with its implication of absolute finality, a hangover from the period when Newtonian physics was regarded as an absolute end state. The hidden mourning about the passing of this ideal science gives present philosophical approaches to science and scientific method their common stamp. The alternative seems to be the retreat into a sociological relativism. The paper shows that it is possible to work out a science-theoretical paradigm which avoids the pitfalls of both philosophical absolutism and sociological relativism. It suggests that instead of discussing criteria of a fictitious absolute end-state of knowledge, one might try to discover criteria and conditions for the advance of knowledge, non-scientific and scientific. A theory of this kind has the added advantage that it can be tested by, and can serve as a guide for, empirical studies of sciences and of knowledge generally. The paper also suggests that discussions about 'value-freedom' should be abandoned in favour of enquiries into the use of scientific and non-scientific values in scientific work. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The first purpose of this paper is to indicate the circumstances in which path coefficients may be accepted as adequate guides to the relative importance of anterior (causal) variables in a path analysis. It is shown that weights in a regression equation may be regarded as indicators of importance, in the sense of determinants of proportions of variance, if the (projection of the) variate defined by the equation coincides with a principal component of the anterior variables. The second purpose of the paper is to illustrate the usefulness of employing generalized multiple regression (analysis by canonical correlations) as an aid in the interpretation of a path diagram. The discussion is illustrated by reference to the path analysis which appears in `Ability and Achievement' by Professor 0. Dudley Duncan. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The main object of this paper is to separate several strands in the relationship between the works of Marx and Max Weber. Max Weber has rightly been regarded as Marx's most profound intellectual critic. But there has been much confusion in subsequent literature over the nature and validity of Weber's critique of Marx. This perhaps stems, in part at least, from a failure to distinguish a number of different, although interrelated, themes in Weber's writings. Weber wrote not simply as a critic of Marx, but also in response to the writings and political involvements of the prominent Marxists of his day. Three partially separable aspects of Weber's views thus may be isolated: (a) His attitude towards Marxism in the shape of the main Marxist political agency in Germany, the Social Democratic Party. (b) His views upon the academic contributions of Marxist authors to history and sociology. (c) His views upon what he considered to be Man's own original ideas. These three aspects of Weber's thought may in turn be distinguished from the analytic problem of how far Weber's own understanding of Marx's theory of historical materialism was in fact a valid one. Some of Marx's posthumously published writings, unavailable to Weber, allow us to form a clear judgement on this question. The historical changes in the social and political structure of Germany from the middle to the latter part of the nineteenth century form an essential background to the whole of the paper: Weber's attitudes toward Marx and Marxism cannot be understood out of this context. Weber's work was written not solely in response to a wraith-like "ghost of Marx", but also in response to a force--Marxism--which played a vital political and intellectual role in Imperial Germany. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the community situation of shipyard workers on Tyneside, certain aspects of their orientations to work and general social perspectives, and the relationship of these to each other and to the structure of social relations at work. In terms of their community situation shipyard workers would seem to come close to Lockwood's traditional proletarian type of worker. There is evidence to suggest, however, that these workers' social perspectives are not at all clearly traditional proletarian. The explanation for this is found, at least m part, m the much greater complexity of social relations at work than are accounted for in the model of traditional proletarianism. The paper suggests that existing typologies of the orientations and social perspectives of workers need to be refined by more detailed studies of the structural and relational aspects of both work and community situations. The paper concludes with a brief examination of changes in both industry and community and the likely effect of these on the social perspectives of shipbuilding workers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is intended as a contribution to the formal theory of stratification systems. The paper has five sections. In Section I, a method for analytically inducing an order over a multi-dimensional status is discussed. It is believed that such a technique can aid in the specification of conceptual tasks within stratification theory, as well as serve as a baseline in actual measurements. It is subsequently employed in the axiomatic work of Sections 3 and 4. In Section 2, there is a brief discussion of the axiomatic method as a prelude to the system developed in the following two sections. In Section 3, the axioms are stated. In Section 4, various elementary consequences of the axioms are shown; most importantly, various concepts which are intuitively important in stratification theory are shown to be definable (e.g., a class system with a determinate number of classes). Finally, in Section s, there is a concluding discussion of the picture of stratification which emerges within this work. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

IN A RECENT paper Mr. Runciman concludes by inviting replies to his argument that it is logically and conceptually useful to employ the tripartite distinction between `class' `status' and `power' in the analysis of social stratification. Mr. Runciman does not, of course, deny the existence of links between these three dimensions, but suggests that such links must be seen contingent empirical relationships and not necessary logical ones. I hope that the following paper will provide such a reply. It must be clear that the following criticism is directed, in the main, to those parts of the paper in which Mr. Runciman is concerned with the logical and conceptual problem. The essay in question also contains a clear and valuable assessment of the problems encountered in any attempt to measure the three types of inequality. In the first part of the paper I propose to give a critical assessment of certain central aspects of Mr. Runciman's argument and, in the second part, I will put forward a very brief formulation of what I consider to be a more meaningful alternative view of the relationships between class, status, and power. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyzes the manner in which ethnicity has affected the course of American and Canadian party politics. Specifically, the paper tries to demonstrate that although the social processes involved in the migration of large numbers of ethnics have been relatively similar in both societies, the manner in which the social reality of ethnicity has affected the political structures therein has been quite different. Thus, although successive immigrant groups became the chief political resource of the great American urban party machines, they were able to use the existing political structures for their own purposes. Ethnic groups have derived psychological and more tangible benefits, such as public and party office positions, and have strongly affected the foreign and domestic policy positions of the two major parties. In contrast, Canadian party leaden historically have been able to exploit ethnic cleavages, but rarely have had to play the game of ethnic politics in the maimer of their American counterparts. In fact, ethnicity continues to strongly affect American political structures even as it moves into the realm of an index of more important social facts, while Canadian political structures have remained relatively impervious to ethnic groups despite the fact that ethnicity continues to be a factor of major importance in Canadian social organization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A previous paper (Hinings et al. 1967) described an approach to the study of the structure of bureaucratic organizations based on the creation of scaleable dimensions for multivariate analysis. The present paper considers in detail the process of the scaling of an organizational variable and the use of two multidimensional analyses, namely, factor analysis and multiple regression analysis. These are illustrated by analysis of the operationally defined concept of functional specialization. The central points made are: (i) that any data analysis is a function of a theory of organizational behaviour, an error theory, and a computing algorithm; and (ii) that the choice of a method of analysis necessarily implies a choice of a theory of organizational behaviour. In the case of scaling, Guttiman's scalogram method and item analysis, borrowed from psychological test theory, are compared. They are found to differ more in computing technique and in their representation of error than in their measurement theory. It is pointed out that the multivariate analyses employed are both compensatory theories of organizational behaviour; the implications of this are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Two main definitions of democracy have been used in the analysis of union politics; either as leadership responsiveness to membership opinion, or as the institutionalization of opposition. This paper rejects both definitions, instead defining democracy as the survival of faction. The survival of faction is explained by the pressures which prevent union Executives from destroying it. These pressures fall into twelve categories: political culture; government attitudes and behaviour; membership distribution; industrial setting; economic environment; technology; source of union bargaining power; membership characteristics; membership beliefs; opposition expertise and resources; leadership beliefs; and union structure. The contrasting political histories of the A.E.U. and the N.U.R. are explained by contrasting patterns of constraints. The paper concludes with a formal statement of the characteristics associated with union democracy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper develops systematically the theory of `structural' and `pure' measurement systems falling below the interval and ratio levels. Pure measurement, it is argued, concerns the properties of objects and structural measurement the relationships between objects. The exposition provides the ground-work for a forthcoming second paper on measurement and the structure of sociological theory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents instructions for contributors to the journal "Sociology." Contributions should be typed on quarto sheets, using double spacing, on one side of each page. Authors should submit the top copy and retain a carbon copy. The pages should be numbered serially. The title of the article, the author's name, and a biographical note on him should be typed on a flysheet which can readily be detached from the body of the article. A contributor should also supply an abstract of 100-200 words summarizing the article in such a way that the abstract can be read independently. Contributors are especially requested to ensure that all necessary details are provided in their references. Titles of journals and monograph series may be abbreviated according to the system used in International Bibliography of the Social Sciences. The notes should be typed on a separate page or pages from the text, as should the bibliography. Figures and maps should be drawn in opaque black ink on Bristol board, tracing film, or graph paper with faint blue ruling.

The paper deals with the problem of how people handle random events. Many accounts of the chance element in games and many attempts at general explanations of gambling assume that the actor accepts the events as unpredictable and passively awaits the outcome. A study of people playing roulette in a gaming club suggests that this is far from the case. Playing roulette can be seen as an exercise in 'skill' which depends upon the construction and maintenance of predictive theories. One form of theorizing attributes causal efficacy to the croupier and the game becomes a contest between croupier and player. This is reinforced by the croupiers as they attempt to manipulate their working conditions and status. Players may then adopt a non-arithmetic calculus of win and loss which confirms their theorizing. Losses are the 'entrance fee' to a public entertainment, whilst wins are evidence of a successful working strategy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper discusses recent speculation concerning the normative bond which ties the lower class to the present structure of British society. It focuses on the assertions by some theorists that the normative opposition which can arise 'spontaneously' within the lower class is inherently limited in scope, and that any future class based movements of a radical kind depend on the action of agencies 'external' to the lower class. Some preliminary results are presented from a recent survey of council tenants in Barking, East London, some of whom were on rent strike. This evidence reveals the existence of attitudes 'deviant' to dominant values concerning the ownership and rights of property. In conclusion, the nature of lower class normative opposition is reassessed and it is suggested that the lower class are not as conceptually restricted as is often suggested, and that future possibilities of radical action do not necessarily depend on the activities of the Labour Party or trade unions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reports on a Hungarian study of social class differences in the speech of 65 six year old children from 5 primary schools in Budapest. Speech samples were collected from stories which were elicited by a series of pictures. Five quantitative indices of context-dependence were constructed; and, on the basis of these indices, contexts dependence was related to the child's own social background and to the social composition of the school. It was found that the speech of `advantaged' children was structurally more complex and less context-dependent than the speech of `disadvantaged' children. Overall, the study demonstrates the applicability of the concept of context-dependence in a non- English speaking country, and provides yet another demonstration of the influence of social class differences on speech codes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Ethnosemantics has been described as the study of vocabulary as a guide to the way in which members of a particular culture divide up their universe. Making a selective we of the ethnosemantic approach, the paper examines the relationship between language (nomenclature), social organization and physical-spatial urban form. The particular sphere in which this relationship is investigated is provided by the colonial third culture. By examining the etymology of thirty four key items in the terminological system of the colonial urban settlement and of colonial urbanization in India, insights are gained, not only into the `urban universe' of the colonial community and into the origins of the still-existing physical-spatial urban forms into which this was translated, but also into the structure of social, economic and political relationships which such forms reflect. The ethnosemantic approach to the study of the colonial city is suggested as a useful heuristic device, both for the contribution it makes towards understanding selected aspects of `urbanism', as also for the insights it gives into policy-relevant issues of urban redevelopment. The approach has relevance for urban analysis m other cultural settings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper examines the ways in which language use contributes to the perceived orderliness of social settings. An analysis is made of the accounts made by `progressive' clergymen of their occupations in order to demonstrate the techniques by which the clergymen established, maintained, and legitimated the appropriateness of their occupations. The purpose is to show that the clergymen's very presentation of the facts of their social setting established a context in which what they defined as their occupation became demonstrably rational. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reports an extension of the Aston studies of organizational structure to the field of occupational interest associations. The sample consisted of six trade unions and one professional association. The structural consequences of the democratic institutions of occupational interest associations were examined and a high degree of electoral control over full-time officials was found to be associated with lower levels of the standardization of procedures, and this was related to the theories of Max Weber. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A common phenomenon in sociology (and in other disciplines presumably) is that of the 'taken_for-granted reference'. This is typically an original empirical study, the findings of which become accepted and thereafter acknowledged as valid evidence in support of argument or for the generation of new hypotheses or counter hypotheses without presentation of critical re-evaluation. The extent to which this occurs and how and why it does occur are largely uninvestigated. In this paper, one case of the taken-for-granted reference, which is widely used in studies of social mobility, is subjected to critical re-evaluation in the light of original empirical research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper challenges the type of interpretation of the successful political incorporation of the British working class in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries which stresses normative factors-'deference', craving for respectability, bourgeoisification, religious feelings etc. It corrects misleading statements in some of these accounts and uses historical evidence to stress the importance of objective, structural constraints on working class ability to mobilize on a class basis in the political system prior to 1918. Following this interpretation some points are made about the British political culture on theoretical grounds stemming from Durkheim. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper pleads for hermeneutic processes to be taken into account in the discussion of role conflict. In order to avoid reification of mechanistic assumptions underlying cross-pressure models of social action, it is suggested that theory as well as research should take into consideration that norms and behaviour are mediated by interpretative processes. These constitute a level of 'social understanding' which can be operationalized in role-conflict terms as three different types of conflict. Reciprocity of perspectives and evaluation, as the main dimensions of interpretation processes, are shown to be the main features of conflicts in role interaction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper pleads for hermeneutic processes to be taken into account in the discussion of role conflict. In order to avoid reification of mechanistic assumptions under- lying cross-pressure models of social action, it is suggested that theory as well as research should take into consideration that norms and behaviour are mediated by interpretative processes. These constitute a level of `social understanding' which can be operationalized in role-conflict terms as three different types of conflict. Reciprocity of perspectives and evaluation, as the main dimensions of interpretation processes, are shown to be the main features of conflicts in role interaction [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents an historical and statistical analysis of the pre-professional education of officers of various sectors and levels of the British Army between 1800 and 1971. 'Four eras' in the evolution of educational selectivity in the army commissioning system are identified: 1800-1849---educational criteria irrelevant; 1849-I 870-partial educational selectivity; 1870-1939-examination-dominated selection; 1941 onwards- `scientific' selection. In the light of this historical pattern, it was anticipated that the officer corps would show a heavy dependence on the elite sector of education, although also, over time, a reduction in this dependence. Examination of figures for membership of Woolwich (1855-1939), of Sandhurst (1890-1967), of the army elite (1870-1971), and of the officer corps as a whole (1969) verified these predictions. Officership proves to have been a virtual monopoly of the public schools-amongst whom the major boarding schools were predominant at least up to the Second World War, and even since then public school boys have predominated at every level of the army until quite recently. However, it is also clear that an irreversible decline in the role of the public schools has now set in, and that state sector schools are now taking over the major role in the supply of new officers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper attempts to examine what is involved when language is treated as a phenomenon of theoretic concern for the sociologist. The approach to `meaning' suggested by Wittgenstem is outlined and counterposed to formalized representations of the `semantics' of natural languages. The critical issue of rules of correct use' of language symbols is discussed, and some theoretical problems m describing linguistic competence are raised. Some of these problems are located also in a sociological domain where cultural grammars are theoretical goals of research. It is suggested that since linguistic knowledge is practical knowledge, codifications of it in rule-like form can only be for practical purposes. An alternative approach to the analysis of members' speech practices is proposed wherein the theorist investigates members' methods for resolving the indexical properties of communicative interaction, and treats `rules' and other order-assembly devices as elements of practical reasoning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper develops modes of analysis for three major issues in the study of trade unions as organizations. These are, first, their distinctiveness as a discrete type of organization, secondly, the nature of their membership attachment; and thirdly, their twin rationales of representation and administration. The integration of these analyses within a new framework is then pursued. This framework serves to suggest propositions requiring empirical investigation and reference is made to some results from a preliminary study. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent attempts to develop symbolic interactionist methodologies have sought to treat the interview as an object of sociological enquiry as well as a research instrument. But their accounts in terms of interactional rules and presentation of selves are primarily concerned with reactions to interviews, and the display of the interview setting in talk is treated as a resource rather than as a topic for investigation. Since such a reliance on the availability of phenomena is also a feature of the `natural attitude', lay and sociological usages of the interview share striking similarities. More specifically, both employ the documentary method of interpretation and, in order to claim a correspondence between theft accounts and some external reality, use remedies to counter misunderstandings. On the basis of tapes of selection interviews, the paper examines the competences and policies routinely adopted to provide for the contexting of talk as interview talk. Given that talk serves to display its setting (this is its reflexive character), talk becomes interview talk as members' managed accomplishment of a knowable context. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Analytical methodologies assume 'resolution into simple elements' as a necessary preliminary stage of scholarly investigation. They explicitly, or more often implicitly accept, therefore, that the conclusions reached reflect not only the phenomena analysed, but also the applied system of analytical subdivision. The paper explores and compares the main systems of analysis in current sociology: institutional, class and communal. It suggests a taxonomy of analytical systems and a cross-classification which is introduced to throw light on their conceptual properties at the societal as well as the individual level. It proceeds by discussing the issues of: (A) The societal roots of selection of analytical schemes in sociology; (B) The advantages and blind spots of the specific analytical systems; and (C) Attempts at the integration and reduction of analytical systems in contemporary sociology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the case for social research training at the post-graduate level integrally linked to a social survey research organization. Programs related to social research training should reflect a clear aim in relation both to post-graduate training in sociological method in particular and to postgraduate education in sociology in general. One such program is developed by the Detroit Area Study at the University of Michigan. Three main objectives of this scheme are to establish a highly efficient means of providing young social scientists with an all-round training in the planning and execution of survey research, to provide staff members with an opportunity to pursue social science research and to supply social science data of value to authorities and communities in the area surrounding the university where the program is located. The form which the training takes follows the standard procedures of social survey research. Students' work includes preliminary relevant reading, problem formulation, question drafting, pretest analysis, sampling, interviewing and data processing. In addition each student writes an analysis paper based on part of the collected data.

Past research on educational choice has revealed good correlations between it and social class. Such research has two weaknesses; it fails to specify a mechanism connecting structural attributes and individual behaviour, and it cannot account for deviants. One attempt to remedy these deficiencies is supplied by explanations cast in terms of class values. This paper criticises such explanations, and suggests that the real determinant is to be found in economic differences which are only properly visible over the whole working career. Such economic differences partly cross-cut traditional occupational divisions. Economic experience is projected to construct models of the world which are used in making decisions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the normative expectations which university students have of their lecturers. These expectations clearly centre on the teaching activities of staff, but research and other professional activities are seen to have their place. In many ways, student requirements of their lecturers are being met, yet it is clear that there are felt problems. What underlies student dissatisfaction? There are indeed the oft-referred to problems of communication: student knowledge is limited concerning what lecturers do. Yet in areas where they have knowledge, students are sometimes dissatisfied. Lectures can be 'too theoretical and divorced from real life'. Differences in values are involved. While most staff place value on the communication of theoretically important ideas, many students see study as a means to getting a degree. In addition, student dissatisfaction can be rooted in conflicts of substantive interest. Staff wish to do research. Students require more individual contact. Time for research cannot also be employed for teaching purposes. If students come to have a clearer picture of the competing claims on staff time, they may understand why their requirements are not met. Yet this would not, by itself, do anything to meet those requirements. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the proposition advanced by some commentators that divorce petitioning in England and Wales fluctuates in accordance with the changing real value of legal aid. Direct evidence, from divorce figures and details of legal aid provision, is examined and shown not to fit the hypothesis. Indirect evidence drawn from Magistrates' Court proceedings and income provision by the National Assistance Board also fails to support the proposition. It is concluded that the proposition is false, and that increased divorce petitioning reflects more fundamental social changes than amendments to legal aid provision. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study uses a variety of methods-reactive and unobtrusive--to operationalize the filtering of information during an innovative decision process by a gatekeeper. Specific data are presented on gatekeeping within the focal organization and also between the focal organization and other organizations in its organization set. Theoretically, the paper explores the increased possibilities for filtering information under the uncertain conditions of an innovative decision. Power is discussed both in terms of the resources which form the base of an actor's power and also the tactics of resource use. The focus on decision making as a political process provides an emphasis lacking in current organizational studies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is concerned with the influence of the policy of local education authorities upon educational attainment. We suggest that the influence of local policy has been neglected in the sociology of education and hypothesize that policy variables are likely to be of major importance as determinants of attainment. Evidence drawn from correlations of policy, provision and social-class variables with each other and with various measures of attainment tends to validate this suggestion, and indicates that two `policy- models' of local authority activity may be appropriate: viz, the elite-orientated authority model, in which resources are differentially concentrated on a sponsored elite with consequent high attainment of this elite; and the egalitarian authority model where resources are more evenly spread throughout the school system with consequent `inferior' attainment of an elitist kind, but where the evidence suggests there is higher overall attainment of the total school system product. It would also appear that the determinant of the policy set pursued by an LEA. is the social class background of the area it covers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines in brief the relative significance which has been attached by social scientists to motivational accounts. Particular emphasis is placed upon the early work by C. Wright Mills and the attenuation of his theoretical statement is traced through to contemporary interactionist perspectives. An empirical study is reported which considers two elements in motivational theory: (a) the range of available motives for a particular type of deviancy-in this case sexual deviancy, (b) the relative acceptability of the available motives to powerful others--in this case magistrates. The results are discussed in terms of the significance for the actor of being effectively deprived of the opportunity to describe his behaviour in other than a deterministic vocabulary of motives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Within the past ten years the vocabulary of political sociology has been augmented by the addition of the word 'populism'. Its general acceptance has yet to be achieved; but in the past five years its use has spread enormously. The purpose of the paper is to provide a brief 'biography' of the concept of 'populism', examining the changing way in which the word has come to be used in its lifetime. It is argued that the confusion which has attended the growth in its use is not merely a semantic problem, arising from the inability of various writers to define their terms, but an important indicator of the nature of the phenomenon. The major difficulty is seen as lying in the lack of an acceptable general theoretical framework within which to handle the political development of peasant societies. The notion of such societies as 'part-societies', widespread in current anthropology, is examined as a possible starting point for such a general framework. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Controversy about the process of secularization has consituted the centrepiece of the sociology of religion in recent years. It is argued that this controversy is a particularly important and illuminating site upon which the redirection of the sociological enterprise is being wrought. The major sections of the paper are concerned with the explication of the terms in which the secularization controversy has developed among sociologists and sociologically-inclined theologians. Various relationships between sociological and religious perspectives are explored, the discussion of these being linked in the concluding section with the development of critical sociology and the sociology of the possible. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper looks at the orientations towards work found among computer programmers, a group that has received relatively little attention compared to that shown in clerks and others affected by automation. The range of orientations found among programmers in the study of a computer service bureau is presented, examining the nature and implications of this range, and the way it underlies the descriptive categories used in the bureau. At the same time, the advantages of looking at emergent explanatory dimensions are contrasted with the limitations of applying previously utilized theoretical frameworks in the study of technical specialists working in organizations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper seeks to argue that the widely accepted `class-culture conflict model' is not adequate in describing the relationship between children of different social classes to the social structure of the school. It leads to a number of inferences about the psychological dispositions of working-class children which are questionable. In an empirical study of pupil attitudes towards in general, and the English lesson in particular, it was predicted, in contradiction to what might be expected using the `class-culture conflict model', that these social classes would not differ in respect of general orientation to school but that working-class children would evaluate the English lesson more positively than middle-class children. Hypotheses were also entertained in respect of the influence of type of school on positive evaluation. The results largely confirmed the predictions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The core problems of sociological and philosophical theories of knowledge remain insoluble and unrelated as long as both theories start from static models. The problems can be solved, and the respective theories related to each other, without undue difficulties if the acquisition of knowledge is conceptualized as a long-term process which takes place within societies also considered as long-term processes. This approach has the added advantage of being in closer agreement with the evidence. The paper indicates what needs to be unlearned and what to be learned in order to prepare the way for such a unified theoretical framework which can serve as a guide to, and which can be in turn corrected by, empirical sociological studies of all types of knowledge, scientific and practical as well as non-scientific or ideological. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper attempts to establish that three distinct types of intellectual innovation have been accompanied by, and partly produced by, social processes set in motion by over-production of personnel. Over-production occurs when there is a rapid growth in the number of persons qualified to occupy positions involving expertise, without a corresponding increase in the number of positions available. It generates competition among eligible persons for scarce rewards, which, in turn leads them to seek new audiences for their special services and new sources of economic support. Those experts engaged in competition tend to select and emphasize ideas and techniques which improve their Own career opportunities. As a result, competition promotes intellectual innovation. It is argued that over-production, accompanied by competition for scarce rewards, has been partly responsible for religious innovation in North African Islam, artistic change in nineteenth century French painting, and intellectual development in modem science. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the range of samples used in recent English and American surveys and proposes an alternative to traditional techniques of sampling and significance testing which, it is suggested, may result in substantial savings in time and research resources. Three distinct applications of sequential sampling tests are illustrated by data derived from the Hull Family Survey. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the role situation of managers in book-publishing houses, and in particular the conflicts that different definitions of culture tend to generate. It sees the pattern of authority as tending to exacerbate conflicts by eliminating common strategies of conflict management and reduction. It further considers the general problem created by attempts to impose norms of moral commitment where the ideal is defined by others. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reports an attempt to explore the relationship between the abilities of some ex-Secondary Modem boys and the degree of selectivity to which each had been subjected in being allocated to a non-selective school. It was found that the correlation with arithmetical ability was positive (0.521) whilst the correlation with verbal ability was negative (-0.382). Two possible reasons behind the discrepancy between the correlations are discussed: the pattern of ability found in the sample studied and differential experience of secondary education according to selectivity conditions. It is tentatively suggested that the findings indicate a wastage of arithmetical ability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Sociological Research Unit of the Department of Sociology of Education has been engaged for the past five years upon a study of variations between and within social class in familial patterns of communication and control. This paper examines social class differences in maternal reports of various contextual usages of language. The findings, obtained from a sample of 100 mothers, indicate social class differences in adult-adult and mother-child communication. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]