Search

This study describes the objectives, structures, and outcomes of a one-semester, required sociology research capstone course as taught at three institutions. Pre- and postquestionnaires from students, syllabi from instructors, and a random sample of final research papers were analyzed. Results indicate that the main foci of the course are to conduct research, produce a paper or thesis, develop writing and presentation skills, and integrate past learning. Instruction in this course includes numerous best practices from the literature on teaching and learning. There appears to be an underemphasis, however, on helping students to apply theory in their projects. The theses reveal a wide range of topics, methodological approaches, and quality, with the introduction/literature review and discussion/conclusion sections receiving the lowest quality scores. (Contains 5 notes and 4 tables.)

In the course of developing and co-­teaching Social Research Methods (SRM), an interdisciplinary, upper-­division undergraduate course at the University of Illinois at Springfield (UIS), the authors discovered that this type of partnership is ripe ground for exploring integration of anthropology and sociology on epistemological and methodological levels. Their attempt to make disciplinarity and the process of interdisciplinary integration transparent to students has transformed the course, student experience in the joint major, departmental goals, and the authors' own scholarship. This paper describes challenges in the development of the course and provides disciplinary "toolkits" from sociology and anthropology, which are illustrated through a semester-­long, hands-­on project involving a campus racial climate survey.

Sociologists have documented how important place is in people's lives. C. Wright Mills (1959) argued that people must understand that they do not exist in a vacuum, but that their values, beliefs, and behaviors are influenced by the particular time and place in which they themselves exist. The development of this "sociological imagination," as Mills called it, is a key goal for every sociology class (Kaufman 1997). The sociology instructor provides students with a "framework for analyzing how the sociohistoric context in which they live informs their individual choices and chances" (Kaufman 1997: 309). By applying sociological concepts to their everyday lives, students increase their sociological imagination (Mills 1959). In this paper, the author proposes a teaching technique that uses videos featuring local issues to build upon students' connections to "place"; the use of local-focus videos allows students to apply sociological concepts to their everyday lives, thus enhancing their sociological imagination. She begins by describing the setting in which she compared the use of local-focus and more general interest videos in her teaching. She goes on to describe some possibilities for using local-focus videos in other sociology classes. Finally she reports the results of her analysis of student response to the use of local-focus videos in two different courses. (Contains 2 tables and 2 footnotes.)

Sociological production is a situated and embodied activity carried out by individuals inserted in actual social relations. Considering that this feature has an influence upon the content of scholarly literature and that it can be revealed in the scientific text itself, I propound a new interpretation of the writing process of Robert E. Park's "The City," the famous paper he published initially in 1915. Customarily depicted as a manifesto for an autonomous urban sociology, I argue on the contrary that its general economy has to be linked to Park's biographical background. When he affiliated with the Sociology Department at the University of Chicago, Park was brought to teach a course on the social survey. "The City" was to be the academic expression of his point of view on the topic. Park's biographical encounters with some active promoters of the social survey approach are evidenced and their influence on his 1915 essay is carefully analyzed, showing notably that curious intellectual omissions in "The City" can be traced back to these previous encounters. Park's latter texts, and the 1925 revised version of "The City" in particular, are shown to provide the interwar sociologists with a peculiar narrative about the history of sociology: Park's predecessors are deliberately confined in a pre-scientific stage of the discipline and Park's original essay is presented as a seminal research program destined to be later fulfilled by the newly established urban sociologists.

The article presents a sociological view of the press coverage of a sociological convention. The coverage is based on observations carried out by five newsmen-observers who attended the August 1965 American Sociological Association (ASA) meetings in Chicago, Illinois. The general conclusion of this study of the convention was that the confrontation of the sociologist with the representative of the news media was overwhelmingly inadvertent, disconcerting and only partially successful to either party. In terms of efficiency in social communication, it leaves much to be desired and strongly entices one to prescribe therapy. Few suggestions are made in advance of Florida sessions in order to get sociologist into communication with the Miami Press. It is suggested to issue a handbook in advance of the convention to all members of the ASA and once the convention has started, to maintain a special message board near the newsroom which offers a chance for newsmen to indicate their wish to contact writers of papers. It is also suggested the president of the ASA assemble a small, informal committee which would hold daily news briefings alerting them to persons or topics originating outside or inside the formal program of the convention.

This article explores the life and career of sociology writer Ruth Shonle Cavan. Her career is the tale of an extraordinary person seeking and finding congenial outlets for her talents. Her secret seems to be a blend of sound intuition, a probing, inquiring mind, solid preparation, and strong motivation. She combines a clear sense of what is important with a strong drive to understand key issues, to coordinate her insights with others, and finally to fashion the whole into a well crafted book or paper. As a young girl in Tuscola, Illinois, Cavan wrote incessantly. In high school, she wrote for a school literary magazine. In 1916, she entered Millikin University in Decatur, Illinois to become a teacher, but again she was drawn to writing. She enrolled in courses in fiction and expository writing, entered another essay competition, and won first prize. Sociology was more than an outlet for her talents. It provided as well a new way of viewing human beings. She began to see that everyone is subject to vast structural and cultural forces that offer little opportunity for personal control.

Answers to the question just what is the ‘case’ partly defined the fields of sociology and social work in early 20th century Chicago. Drawing on the archives of the University of Chicago, I describe and appraise the way the ‘case’ figured in social work at Chicago and elsewhere. I ask the corresponding question of sociology. Finally, I briefly consider why not much came of social work and sociology ploughing similar territory in ways that served for a time to hallmark their identities. This analysis opens up ways of rethinking how social work and sociological research are distinctive to their fields, and allows a less ‘pre-tuned’ discussion of how practitioners of either might reciprocally pursue their profession. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A number of recent studies have used surveys of neighborhood informants and direct observation of city streets to assess aspects of community life such as collective efficacy, the density of kin networks, and social disorder. Raudenbush and Sampson (1999a) have coined the term “ecometrics” to denote the study of the reliability and validity of such assessments. Random errors of measurement will attenuate the associations between these assessments and key outcomes. To address this problem, some studies have used empirical Bayes methods to reduce such biases, while assuming that neighborhood random effects are statistically independent. In this paper we show that the precision and validity of ecometric measures can be considerably improved by exploiting the spatial dependence of neighborhood social processes within the framework of empirical Bayes shrinkage. We compare three estimators of a neighborhood social process: the ordinary least squares estimator (OLS), an empirical Bayes estimator based on the independence assumption (EBE), and an empirical Bayes estimator that exploits spatial dependence (EBS). Under our model assumptions, EBS performs better than EBE and OLS in terms of expected mean squared error loss. The benefits of EBS relative to EBE and OLS depend on the magnitude of spatial dependence, the degree of neighborhood heterogeneity, as well as neighborhood's sample size. A cross-validation study using the original 1995 data from the Project on Human Development in Chicago Neighborhoods and a replication of that survey in 2002 show that the empirical benefits of EBS approximate those expected under our model assumptions; EBS is more internally consistent and temporally stable and demonstrates higher concurrent and predictive validity. A fully Bayes approach has the same properties as does the empirical Bayes approach, but it is preferable when the number of neighborhoods is small. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article offers information on the community-based participatory research (CBPR) pioneered by settlement house residents and social work researchers. It mentions that the survey of the Nineteenth Ward has been completed by Hull House resident Florence Kelley for a U.S. Department of Labor. It focuses on the discussion of the settlement house program.

The article reports that after careful consideration the Executive Committee has voted to cancel the thirty-ninth annual meeting of the American Sociological Society scheduled for Chicago, Illinois, on December 29-30, 1944. It was also voted to publish the collected papers in a single regular issue of the American Sociological Review. There were weighty reasons for this decision. Chicago, the chosen place of meeting, proved to be the cross roads of all East and West travel. The Executive Committee also voted not to attempt to arrange for another meeting before the time for the next regular meeting. The Committee is agreed as to the desirability of regional meetings wherever they can be held and count on the regional societies to keep up the interest in sociology. In view of the decision to publish the papers it is hoped that they will all be pushed forward to completion. Section chairmen are asked to see that their programs are completed and papers sent in to editors of the American Sociological Review as soon as possible.

Abstract: In this paper we estimate the causal effects on child mortality from moving into less distressed neighborhood environments. We match mortality data covering the period from 1997 to 2009 with information on every child in public housing that applied for a housing voucher in Chicago in 1997 (N =11,680). Families were randomly assigned to the voucher wait list, and only some families were offered vouchers. The odds ratio for the effects of being offered a housing voucher on overall mortality rates is equal to 1.13 for all children (95% CI 0.73–1.70), 1.34 for boys (95% CI 0.85–2.05) and 0.21 for girls (95% CI 0.01–1.04). [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Since this society is oriented toward a specific theory, I thought I ought to say something about theories in general and our little theory in particular. Let me get that off of my chest. I am not overly fond of terms like "theory" and "theorist," both of which seem to suggest the importance of the person who claims the identity more than anything else. They are pompous terms. To the extent that we are thoughtful about what we are doing and how we are going about it, all sociologists are theorists and methodologists. But if that is all we are, then we are literally people of no substance. We have no substantial knowledge of or concern for the empirical world. The little theory we share is extraordinarily empirical. It is, as one of its most prominent practitioners called it, a "grounded theory" (Glaser and Strauss 1967). I confess that several years after receiving my degree I had no real sense of what symbolic interaction was and how it might differ from other theoretical orientations. Arnold Rose enlightened me on this when he asked me to submit a paper for a new collection he was editing (Rose 1962). I was pleased and flattered. Rose was a mentor of mine, and I had never before been asked to contribute to an edited volume. But I was unsure of what would be appropriate for a book about symbolic interaction. I screwed up my courage and asked Arnold: "Exactly what is symbolic interaction?" He shrugged off my ignorance, turned on his heels, and muttered over his shoulder, "It is what they do at Chicago." [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Eviction of renter‐occupied homes is an emerging public health crisis adversely impacting populations already at risk. Although housing quality and home‐owner foreclosures have been linked to health outcomes, the relationship between eviction of renter‐occupied homes and health has not been well established. The demographics and socioeconomic status of renters differs from homeowners, as such any relationship with health outcomes should be distinguished between the two. The aim of this study is to provide a descriptive analysis of the relationship between renter‐specific eviction and unhealthy behaviours at the census tract level. Using data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention 500 Cities Project, the Eviction Lab and the U.S. Census Bureau, this study assesses the relationship between eviction rates and health indicators for 1,267 urban census tracts in Illinois in 2016. Binge drinking, current smoking, no leisure‐time physical activity, obesity and sleeping <7 hr were used as indicators of unhealthy behaviour as categorised by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention500 Cities Project. Unadjusted and adjusted linear regression models were used to assess and describe the relationship between each of the dependent variables and each of the independent variables. All five of the unhealthy behaviour indicators were found to be significantly associated with eviction rates and eviction filing rates after adjustment for confounding variables. This study contributes to the understudied area of research focused on how eviction rates contribute to the social determinants of health for already at‐risk populations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Forty-first Annual Meeting of the American Sociological Society will be held at the Stevens Hotel in Chicago, Illinois, December 28-30, 1946.

This article reports the substantive findings of a project designed to ascertain the attitudes of the members of three professional groups lawyers, political scientists, and sociologists towards the use of concealed listening devices as a means of gathering data for social science research purposes. The focus of this report is on the use of concealed microphones for the purpose of studying the jury in action. It was undertaken in an effort to determine the extent of agreement or disagreement with editors' and commentators' criticisms of the use of a concealed microphone by the Chicago, Illinois-based University of Chicago Law School's Jury Research Team in pursuit of its study of the jury in America. The case in question involves the playing of recordings of jury deliberations made in the spring of 1954 in a U.S. federal court jury room at Wichita, Kansas, at the annual Judicial Conference of the 10th Judicial Circuit at Estes Park, Colorado, in July 1955. The recordings had been made by means of a microphone concealed in the jury room, with the knowledge and consent of the judge and the attorneys involved in the cases, but without the knowledge of the jurymen. This technique was used in the hope that the study of the actual proceedings of a jury in action would add to the knowledge and insights already gained by other means.

The article reports on the first business meeting of the executive committee of American Sociological Society, which was held at Congress Hotel in Chicago, Illinois, on December 29, 1948. The meeting was presided over by sociologist E. Franklin Frazier. Frazier called upon sociologist Ellsworth Faris to read a statement memorializing the late sociologist Arthur J. Todd. Upon the conclusion of this reading, the Secretary read names of sociologists Eduard Benes, T.W. Cape and C.A. Fisher who also died during the year 1948, whereupon members rose in honor of the deceased. The Secretary read minutes of the first meeting of the Executive Committee. Faris moved the approval of actions of the Executive Committee reported in minutes. Sociologist Stuart Chapin seconded the motion. The Society approved it by unanimous vote. The Secretary read minutes of the second meeting of the Executive Committee. P. K. Whelpton moved their approval with Talcott Parsons seconding the motion. The Society approved of them. Reports by the Secretary, Treasurer and Managing Editor were also presented in the meeting.

Minutes of the second meeting of the Executive Committee, at the Stevens Hotel in Chicago, Illinois, on December 29, 1946. The Committee voted to elect Ernest R. Mowrer as Secretary-Treasurer for the term ending December 31, 1947, and as Managing Editor for the balance of the term ending June 30, 1947, and for the two year term ending June 30, 1949, and that Conrad Taeuber is to serve in these positions until he and Mowrer can work out the transfer. The Committee also voted that, in cases in which the Committee on Statistics believes that prompt action is required to assure needed improvement of statistical sources used by sociologists, it is to transmit its recommendations at once to the officers of the Society; and that, in case of an emergency, the President of the Society is authorized to act to lay the recommendations formulated by the Committee before the appropriate authorities. The Committee also stated that the incoming President appoint a Committee to investigate the possibilities of establishing a series of monographs to be published by the Society and that this committee consult with the regional sociological societies in arriving at its recommendations.

The first Business Meeting of the American Sociological Society, was held in the Stevens Hotel in Chicago, Illinois, at 1:15 P.M. on December 29, 1946. President of the Society Carl C. Taylor opened the meeting by announcing an informal meeting for 5:00 P.M. at which the discussion would center around questions concerning the relations of the Society to international organizations such as the United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural Organization and any other matters which the group might wish to discuss. The Secretary announced the names of the members of the Nominating Committee appointed by the incoming President and also the membership of the Resolutions Committee appointed by Taylor. The Chairman explained that the purpose of the meeting was to provide for an opportunity for a relatively full discussion of matters affecting the welfare of the Society and that it was the intention to dispose of the routine business matters as quickly as possible in order that time would be available for full discussion of other matters.

Youth gambling is an increasing concern. As a response, the “Don’t Gamble Away our Future (DGAOF)” program has been implemented among children in central Illinois. We aim to assess the long-term effectiveness of this school-based youth gambling prevention program in Illinois using the data from 2005 to 2009. The intervention included interactive PowerPoint presentations and prevention materials in parent packets. Students aged 8 to 18 years were eligible to participate in the intervention and the questionnaire pre-post knowledge tests (total score 0–9). Students in 5th grade and above also received a gambling behavior screen test using the Modified South Oaks Gambling Screening for Teens (MSOGST) for identifying probable gamblers. Multivariable generalized mixed models were conducted to detect the effects of a 5-year youth gambling prevention program as controlling potential confounders. A total of 16,262 and 16,421 students completed pre-post tests and MSOGST tests, respectively. Of 16,262, half were female, the majority (76.1%) were from senior high school, and 21.3% received the intervention at least twice. The median gap between interventions was 368 days. Students receiving multiple interventions had higher scores on the pre-test as compared to those receiving a single intervention (P<0.001 for all comparisons among groups), and they demonstrated an increasing trend of awareness about gambling over time (P<0.001 for multiple interventions; P = 0.538 for single intervention). The prevalence of problem gambling had decreased among students receiving the intervention twice as compared to receiving the intervention once (7.9% versus 9.4%; OR = 0.89, 95% CL: 0.82–0.97). However, this effect was not confirmed among students receiving the intervention three or more times. In conclusion, the DGAOF program has demonstrated a positive long-term impact on increasing gambling knowledge and partially reducing pathological gamblers through direct training. It suggests that multiple repeated interventions are important for youth gambling prevention. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

During February of 1958 arrangements were completed with the Edgewater Beach Hotel, Chicago, Illinois for the 1959 Annual Meeting of the American Sociological Society. The meetings are scheduled for Thursday, September 3 through Saturday, September 5, 1959. Flat rates for single room is $9.75, for double room flat rates is $16.00, and for dormitory rooms, twin bedded with connecting bath for 4 persons has the tag of $16.00. The Edgewater Beach Hotel, one of Chicago's finest, is located on the lakefront, has a cabana club and swimming pool, and a summer theater in addition to usual hotel accommodations. It is relatively far removed from the downtown district and should afford the Society excellent accommodations in every respect. Information received from the Chicago Convention Bureau indicates that typing and other services will be made available only on a fee basis as follows: badge typists at $10.00 per eight-hour day; stencil typists at $12.00 to $14.00. The Bureau will make available gratis bulletins on "Chicago, Host City to the Nation" listing all of the interesting places to see and pertinent facts about the city; and also "Headline Events in Chicago" which will cover the month of September.

This study investigates the influence of children's delinquency on maternal distress among low-income families using a postmodern theoretical perspective. The data used in this study came from the third wave of the Welfare, Children, and Families project, which is a longitudinal study conducted in three U.S. cities, namely Boston, Chicago, and San Antonio, with N = 1835. The ages of the children range from 5 to 18 years old. The analysis of the data using regression suggests children's delinquency significantly affects maternal distress. The study indicates that employment and religion have positive influences on maternal distress. This study underlines the importance of a postmodern theoretical perspective in the assessment and treatment phases of distress problems among mothers with low-income and leads to practical implications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article I argue that the production of live music shares many formal properties with that of confidence games: specifically, (1) a set of structural relationships in which operators, ropers, insiders, shills and marks are enmeshed, (2) the deployment of carefully planned strategies of deception, and (3) a pattern of success owed in part to the moral and financial motivations of insiders, the willingness of the state to assist in the enterprise, and the desire among victims to be swayed by the production. Drawing on ethnographic research conducted in some of Chicago's most popular blues clubs, I examine these three components of live music production qua confidence game. I also briefly discuss how one group of participants—local blues musicians—reacts to their own performances as musicians/confidence artists. Finally, I conclude by exploring the broader implications this case suggests regarding other types of live music production. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article presents a five-year ethnographic study of informal social control in the Chicago neighborhood "Beltway," where controls at the private and what has traditionally been known as the parochial level are weaker and less important than heretofore assumed. In addition, the parochial and the public arenas are inseparable from each other, not independent as others have argued. Instead, informal social control in Beltway is characterized by what the author calls the "new parochialism," where diminished private and traditionally parochial forms of social control are replaced by a combination of parochial and public controls. The new parochialism is occasioned by wider societal and local changes, and the concept is shown to have theoretical and empirical implications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article takes up the discussion recently stimulated through the volume, A Second Chicago School? That book's connecting postwar Chicago sociology with the "Chicago approach" of mainly the 1910s to 1930s is extended, going back as far as the turn of the twentieth century and also forward to the 1990s, with a view endorsing Simmelian interactionism as opposed to Spencerian utilitarianism. Albion Small, first Chairman of the Chicago Department, introduced a Simmelian sociology to the U.S., and the question arises to what extent this legacy is being realized until today. Using Anselm Strauss as a case in point, the article has two main parts. Part One recapitulates various attempts at understanding the phases and realms of Chicago sociology. The focus is not only on the various "Chicago Schools" that may be separated, but also the differences in the work of three scholars who often are grouped together under the label of Chicago, namely Herbert Blumer, Robert Park, and Everett Hughes. Part Two recollects Strauss's intellectual biography, as life of a scholar determined to make a contribution to modern sociology, in the name of "Chicago interactionism." Strauss's work, however, came to endorse Spencerian-type utilitarianism more than Simmelian-type interactionism from the middle 1960s onwards--thereby joining in with anti-structural functionalism tendencies in American sociology.(n1) [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article describes the contemporary appeal of the Chicago sociology perspective in France, and analyzes the bases of its attraction. Old Chicago sociology/anthropology was a heady and fruitful conjoining of ethnography, urban ecology and geography, interactionist social psychology, and pragmatist epistemology. Using the vocabulary of science, it spoke of the city of Chicago as its laboratory, but what this meant was that its students were exhorted to exit the library in order to roam, observe, and undertake what then were termed case studies and today, urban ethnography. The laboratory was particularly exciting because of the growth in the population in Chicago, Illinois. Immigrants had been flooding the U.S. and its urban centers throughout the late 19th and early 20th century, and Chicago was a nodal point. Within Europe of the period there had also been migrations on a lesser yet also significant scale, especially from the east to the west. In France, Europe, an throughout the world, an intense process of urbanization has been occurring. The challenge has been how to understand and describe the processes and their consequences, other than being publicly appalled. Jammed side by side in these immense cities are clusters and communities of families and peoples differing in languages, religions, ethnic-cultural origins, and social race.

The article focuses on the concept of sociological Marxism. The Midwest meeting in Chicago, Illinois was organized in April 1993 to address the issue of the relevance of sociology in Marxist style of analysis. The papers presented in the meeting were very well received but triggered off much discussion. A key question informing Marxist discourse in recent decades concerned whether or not socialists coming to power could use bourgeois state structures to further their goals. Obviously much of the urgency has gone out of this question. Douglas V. Porpors in his article "The Theoretical Status of Marxism," does not argue that Marxism should be the only perspective employed by sociologists. But he does argue that Marxism does many things that other perspectives simply do not do and that in many instances it does them far better. He provides a convincing rationale for judging a framework on strengths and widths of its positive heuristic across an entire band of problems of disciplinary interests.

Utilizing the Kaufman (1959) and Sutton-Koloja (1960a, 1960b) conceptualization of community, empirical techniques are developed to identify community boundaries. These techniques are unique because they allow simultaneous consideration of boundary and interaction aggregation problems. A sociological conceptualization of community is coordinated with layman respondent's perceptions so empirical data, faithful to both perspectives, may be gathered from community residents. Community boundaries are identified from conditional probability matrices applied to residents identified as business, education, and government leaders in ten rural areas of Illinois. Township boundaries regularly coincide with community boundaries. Techniques developed here appear widely applicable to identifying community and other boundaries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Among major graduate sociology programs, Northwestern University balances quantitative and qualitative approaches In its diverse offerings. The program is student-centered and emphasizes the participation of the student in the definition of intellectual and career objectives. The core program is compact and concentrated in the first year so that students can develop their own research interests in subsequent wears, with close faculty supervision and involvement. Students who are self motivated and have well- developed intellectual interests generally thrive at Northwestern University. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article offers information on a sociologiocal study conducted on the conflict of values in delinquency areas by the Illinois Institute for Juvenile Research. It is based on a hypothesis that in the disorganized city areas delinquency is primarily a product of cultural rather than of personality or psychological processes. Some of the official statistics of delinquency seem to suggest that most children conform to the legal norms of the wider society even in those urban areas where the culture of the local community is relatively favorable to the tranmission of delinquent conduct patterns. The statistics infers that even in this situation variables other than culture are of possibly greater importance in delinquency causation than the customary sociological explanations would concede.

The article presents news and announcements related to sociology. It states that in accordance with the policy of rotating chairmanships of Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island, Vincent H. Whitney, has been promoted to an associate professorship. He has succeeded Harold S. Bucklin as the chairman of the Department of Sociology. The third quarterly bulletin of the Inventory of Research in Racial and Cultural Relations has recently been published jointly by the Committee on Education, Training and Research in Race Relations of the University of Chicago, which is in Chicago, Illinois and the American Council on Race Relations. Purposes of the inventory are to aid those who are engaged in research, in action programs and in policy making in the field of inter-group relations to become better informed about the progress of knowledge and to cooperate more effectively with one another. Reports of research contained in this bulletin are based on replies to questionnaires and abstracts of published studies. The inventory describes completed, on-going and planned research since January 1946.

An examination of 116 small communities in Central Illinois indicates that their ability to provide citizens with adequate goods and services is closely related to their ability to hold population. The outlook for firmness in growth of population, however, is not particularly optimistic, considering the size of some of these communities. If a community is fortuitously located near a large city, its prospects for growth are greatly enhanced. In this case, the community may lose its identity, however, and become a "bedroom' town. Distance from a larger community no longer seems to afford protection to local markets and thus makes it increasingly more difficult for small communities to offer a great variety of goods and services. Although there were marked similarities among these communities, some of them did not fit the pattern. Undoubtedly many factors such as community pride and entrepreneurial spirit account for these differences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article the author propose to examine an hypothesis derived from the field of so-called primitive peoples. It seems to the authors that if they can demonstrate the validity of the continuum in a modem setting the authors shall have made some contribution to any elaboration of the entire theory. The research from which the authors have derived their central hypothesis has been done among so-called primitive societies. It should be noted that the change from a folk to an urban type is essentially analogous to the change from a self-sufficient to a dependent rural community. The essential analogy lodges in the fact that both are changing from more to less homogeneity. As an incident to this study, the authors entertain the hope that the following purposes may be served: a specific understanding of historical process in southern Illinois, a contribution to folk-urban theory, a concrete demonstration of the feasibility of general law in the field of society, whether primitive or modern and a greater rapprochement between the disciplines of anthropology and sociology.

A sample of 77 clergymen and 136 lay leaders, all of them members of the Lutheran Church in America, was taken in northern Illinois. It was found that even in this relatively conservative denomination, clergy, tended to give more liberal responses than laity on a variety of social and political issues. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents the report of the auditor of American Sociological Society for the fiscal year, which ended in November 30, 1948. The report was presented in Chicago, Illinois, on December 18, 1948. The article outlines the extent of verification. The auditor reconciled all cash receipts and disbursements as shown by cash journal with deposits and withdrawals on bank statements. Balance in checking account with confirmation received directly from the State Bank and Trust Company in Evanston, Illinois were also reconciled. All checks cleared by bank with entries in cash journal for payee and amount were compared. Checks for signature, endorsements and bank perforation were examined. Consecutive numbers of checks drawn on State Bank and Trust Company in Evanston, Illinois were accounted for. Cash receipts and cash disbursements records were refooted. Securities at vaults of the State Bank and Trust Company, Evanston, Illinois were examined. The auditor states that the present accounting system is limited to accounting for cash receipts and disbursements. There is no journal or ledger. Hence the usual income statement and balance sheet were omitted. Recommendations for improvements were submitted on January 2, 1948 but they have not been put into effect to date.

The first meeting of the Executive Committee of the American Sociological Society was held on December 27, 1946 at 2 :00 P.M. at Stevens Hotel in Chicago, Illinois. Present were: President of the Society Carl C. Taylor, chairman, Harry Alpert, Leonard Bloom for Calvin Schmid, Austin L. Porterfield, Stuart Queen, Conrad Taeuber, Louis Wirth. Also present: Robert C. Angell, Samuel Stouffer. President Taylor appointed a resolutions committee consisting of Stuart Queen, Louis Wirth, Charles S. Johnson, E. W. Burgess, and Clyde Hart. The reports of the Secretary-Treasurer and Managing Editor were received. The Committee voted to approve the actions taken by the Administration Committee since the last meeting of the Society as reported by the secretary. It also voted to reaffirm the action previously taken by the Executive Committee and to charge a registration fee of $1 at this meeting of the Society. After some discussion of the possible nominees for the position as Secretary-Treasurer and Managing Editor, President Taylor appointed a committee consisting of Stuart Queen, Samuel Stouffer, and Louis Wirth to canvass the situation and report back at the subsequent meeting of the Committee.

The article presents information on professor Robert F. Winch, who has received four E.W. Burgess Award for his significant role in family research. The U.S. National Council on Family Relations (NCFR) honored Winch with the award at the 1968 Annual Meeting of the NCFR in New Orleans, Louisiana. Winch dedicated his career for the study of family sociology and is presently working as professor of sociology at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois. The article also includes information on some of his important works on the sociology of marriage and the family.