Search

This paper identifies a newly emerging function for the behavioral scientist and exemplifies its activities by describing and analyzing some recent work in the organizational change area. First, some traditional strategies of change are discussed, followed by a description and analysis of some of the newer change programs associated with the National Training Laboratories, Tavistock Institute, R. R. Blake, C. Argyris, and others. Finally, the "role strains" which inhere in this new action role are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The concept of role differentiation has been used by sociologists to explain a wide variety of social phenomena. Most who have used the concept have assumed that task and social roles are incompatible. The present paper clarifies the conceit of role differentiation and re-evaluates some of the basic evidence. Neither the data originally published by Bales nor data from a number of more recent studies strongly support the proposition that task and social roles are incompatible. The paper also comments on some recently proposed methods for measuring role differentiation. [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]

The article presents abstracts of the papers based on politics in Wales, that were read on May 15, 1971 at the conference held at the Polytechnic of Central London. One of the papers discussed here is titled "Aspects of Politics in Mid-19th-Century Wales." The middle decades of the last century deserve detailed study by the historian of the labor movement for the reason that these were the years when characteristic attitudes to politics among the rural and urban working classes were being formulated. The solidification of these attitudes during subsequent decades helps to explain the relatively slow development of the labor movement in Wales in the 20th century. An examination of some of the formal aspects of the structure of politics in the period 1850-70 in such a way as to expose its underlying social realities enables to understand how and why these attitudes came to be so powerful. The outstanding feature of the formal representative system in 1850 was the extent of the inequalities contained within it. Most of these can be ascribed to the working out of the arrangements of the First Reform Act, but the result of a vast increase in, and a redistribution of, population in the intervening years had been to make them far more pronounced than they had originally been. This was the case in both county and borough constituency, but was most pronounced in the latter.

The article reports that the Committee on nominations wishes to present set its slate of nominees for the American Sociological Association, 1968-69. In an age of domestic and foreign tensions and crisis, successful social change is a crucial challenge and a welcome opportunity. The 1967 Annual Meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science will be held between December 26-30, 1967, in the New York Hilton and Americana Hotels, New York. Four papers will address the question of what impact social science research has on policy. They will look not only at the deliberate and intended application of social science findings in reaching policy decisions, but at the unintended consequences of social science analysis and the dissemination of results on the data themselves and on the formulation and implementation of public policy. Participants will discuss the uses of social science in societal self-analysis and decision-making, some social consequences of research on education and on racial relations and the reconstruction of social realities in developing areas.

This article focuses on the social construction of documentary reality. A documentary reality is fundamental to the practices of governing, managing and administration of this form of society. The primary mode of action and decision in the superstructures of business, government, the professions, and other like agencies, is in symbols, whether words, mathematical symbols or some other. It is a mode of action which depends upon a reality constituted in documentary form. The social scientist's ordinary knowledge of her society originates in and depends upon these documentary forms. This is more, much more, than merely her use of statistical and other information produced by census bureau, departments of health welfare agencies, internal revenue departments and the like. The organization which actuality acquires in the accomplishment of a fact is not simply an explication of an order which is already perceived, though it may sometimes be just that. But it is important to recognize that facts are constructed in a context of telling. The organization that is created aims at this telling and aims therefore at the purposes for which it will be told. The selection of categories and conceptual procedures expresses that structure of relevance.

The article throws light on the life and works of Charles Horton Cooley, a social researcher. Indeed in his lifetime, because of the just estimate of his colleagues, he achieved a recognition which too often comes only post-humously. It is natural that, in reviewing his work, his positive contributions to social theory should receive the principal share of attention, particularly as his thoughts on social research are scattered in five separate papers. The central principle in all that Cooley wrote is that the essential facts of social life are mental. The overt conduct of persons and groups and the forms in which institutions are clothed are simply precipitations of the more fundamental mental phenomena. Furthermore, it is only in minds, which are the loci of the human adjustment process, that the social reality can be apprehended in all its complexity. The mind of the human being and the processes of human interaction are evolutionary emergents precisely because no entities less complex could bring about anything so elaborately organized as social life.

The article discusses the intricacies in conceptualization of sociology. The difficulty for sociology lies in the fact that it often employs everyday words to explain a number of relatively everyday phenomena, and that, in order to do so, it seeks to give the words of everyday language a definite, restricted, and precise meaning. As a matter of fact, not everything is well-ordered within sociology. Sociology has a good deal of knowledge summing up social facts, it has a well developed technique of measurement, but its shortcoming is the absence of coherence in sociological knowledge, a shortcoming which is due to the fact that sociology has not any comprehensive, basic sociological theory. The starting-point for sociological science is the social anthropological observations that people behave habitually in certain situations, and that this habitual behavior varies from community to community in such a way that it is hardly probable that the variations have biological causes. In addition, one might call attention to the common experience that people cooperate and influence each other mutually according to a fixed behavior pattern.

This article deals with two unusual and innovative social science courses, which attempt to create such an environment for learning at the university level. One is an undergraduate course in the Harvard Department of Social Relations; the other is a course in the Harvard Graduate School of Business Administration. Before discussing these courses in detail, it is worth considering some reasons why the social sciences, of all disciplines, can least afford to ignore John Dewey's views on the planning of the educational environment. The social sciences deal with social reality, a social world that is about Americans all the time and yet largely ignored in traditional teaching in the social sciences. The two courses represent educative environments in which students and teachers cooperate to make maximum use of the immediate social context. They are designed to allow realistic confrontation with built-in emotional and cognitive blocks to learning. They demand that the student make a meaningful connection between intellectual concepts, behavior and experience. The interest and excitement generated by these courses, and the subsequent evaluative comments of students, teachers and research personnel, reflect the effectiveness with which they operate.

The article presents a discussion on speculations regarding prospects of human survival, adapted from the transcripts of talks on "The Problem of the Survival of Human Society," during the Third Symposium on Science and Society. It clarifies that survival is connected to the structured nature of ecological systems. In addition, it cites several elements causing indeterminacy of human survival which include the deteriorating consumption-production system, knowledge pollution, and the joint production of good and bad.

The last fifteen years have witnessed an extraordinary development of the neurosciences, towards which converged many professional scientists from other disciplines but which also succeeded in recruiting many of the most talented and ambitious students of biology all over the world. The author believes that this trend towards the massive study of the neurosciences is not a coincidence but, on the contrary, reflects a conscious change in emphasis aimed at achieving results which may help to develop instruments for certain policies. There is nothing abnormal in this circumstance, since scientific activity develops within a given society according to its prevalent rules, objectives and ideologies. As a part of the social system scientific institutions meet specific social needs. Yet, the reorientation of biology towards the neurosciences was steered by a small group of first-rank scientists who seemed to have carefully and independently selected their aims which can even be qualified as capricious, and can in any case be viewed as an instance of the disconnexion between scientific practice and social reality.

The article discusses various issues related to the husband-wife differences. The reciprocal nature of the role of husband and wife in the construction of reality is an assumption made in nearly all theoretical discussions. Authors wish to raise the question of whether feminine construction of reality, the woman's construction of her sex role constellation can exist apart from masculine construction of reality. It is the authors' attempt to investigate some of the similarities and differences in such constructions within the marital dyad. In this article the authors illustrate some of the differences they found in subjective reports of husbands and their wives involved in dual-profession marriages, specifically in cases where the wife is actively engaged in the practice of law or medicine or teaching at the university level. It seems probable that the husband or wife's perception of reality would have much effect on the spouse's internalization process. But the process is not a perfect one, making data from only one spouse most incomplete. In the case of the husband's attitude toward his wife's work, we see at least this pattern in operation in the dissimilar responses: some wives are reluctant to admit that their husbands disapprove of their activities, although their husbands may in fact be against such employment.

The article discusses sociologist Max Weber's views on the problem of objectivity in the social sciences. Weber demonstrated that the conception of objective scientific knowledge in any sense of any empirical subject matter, is indissolubly bound up with the reality both of the normative aspect of action and of obstacles to the realization of norms. Science itself cannot be methodologically grounded without reference to the value element in the relation of wertheziehung. Throughout his works, Weber expressed a concern for the nature of scientific inquiry in the social sciences, and the meaning of the relationship between scientific knowledge and social values. Weber contended that, given the nature of social reality, values are an essential aspect of the subject matter of the social scientist. Although a researcher's choice of problems for investigation is influenced by his own values and the values of his society, Weber insisted upon the freeing of oneself from the influence of implicit subjective factors. He emphasized that the collection, analysis, and interpretation of data must be wertfrei-value free. Weber was well aware of the difficult moral problems that can develop when one attempts to separate his personal life from his scientific life.

The syntheses of consensus and conflict theory which were developed during the sixties served as a healthy corrective for traditional functional theory but did not exhaust theoretical debate. The identification of such syntheses with empirico-analytic tradition (and dominant control systems) calls forth a second (critical) synthesis which is not complementary, but competing. Despite the fact that both are parallel in many respects, the two theoretical syntheses are differentiated on a number of levels: value assumptions, emphases, epistemology and the implications each possesses regarding the nature of sociological activity. Conflicting interpretations drawn from the two competing paradigms promise to define the fundamental issues within sociological theory during the seventies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses sociologist Christopher Bryant's defence of scientific sociology. Bryant rejects the idea that sociology must be exclusively humanistic and he proposed three categories of social reality. Humanistic explanations vary in a number of ways, in directness, in simplicity and according to the persistence of the action referred to. Within humanistic explanation there are levels, continua rather than dichotomies. Most famed sociology is humanistic explanation. That this has not been recognized and is frequently denied is profoundly damaging to the defence of the subject. It leads sociologists to fail to push humanistic explanations to their limits of logical and empirical rigour, it leads them to self condemnation, and provides ammunition to sociology's opponents. Bryant, in keeping with his acceptance of a rather rigid dichotomy, is inclined to accept much of the philosophical case against comparison and generalization. Bryant's argument tends to miss the strongest of the philosophical cases. This involves recourse to a fundamental relativism.

It is my impression that philosopher Edmund Husserl in his later years, and particularly in the Fifth Cartesian Meditation, became increasingly aware of the intersubjective Constitution of consciousness or "pure transcendental subjectivity,"' which placed him on the threshold of sociologist Émile Durkheim's great insight, namely that human consciousness is grounded in or is presupposed by society as a "conscience collective," a moral community, or what is called as the "societal community." It is precisely at the limits of subjectivity that phenomenology encountered the social world; Alfred Schutz, student of Husserl, continued this important sociological direction of Husserl by undertaking to elucidate the complex structure of social reality. In this endeavor, he was not alone but was joined by others who had come into contact with Husserlian thought. The notion of the "transcendental Ego," does not have an otherworldly significance for Husserl, but refers to the subjectivity attained by transcending the "natural attitude."

Certain social realities come to view with such evidence as makes us accept them in an empirical way: we know them to exist. But in spite thereof when we try to define them or at least to shape them within exact concepts, they elude us as intangible beings. Nevertheless the social classes whose role is most important in the organization and in the life of society, have unquestionable reality: we all know that the people, in the countries of modem civilization, are divided into classes; however, in a given moment, we find it impossible to determine in an accurate way their essence or their characteristics. If we have to resort to the sociologists we very soon become convinced that notwithstanding the extraordinary importance social classes must be accorded in sociology, no one has as yet arrived at defining them or at expressing satisfactory concepts thereof. Their ideas in this matter vary in differing degrees in accordance with the school or the doctrine they represent or profess. This article critically examines the points of view adopted by different authors in the defining of the social classes, with the intent of deriving, if possible, from such examination a clear concept of the matter.

The article deals with matters of practical importance to sociology. Sociological studies may be classified into two well defined categories, works based on a consideration of the fundamental problems and hypotheses of sociology, works of social investigation and studies of concrete social facts. The first have for their object the construction of a science of sociology and refer to the content, methods, nature of the science and to possible generalizations or laws of social phenomena. They are almost always of a speculative character, that is to say, rarely are they rooted in investigations or studies of specific social reality but arise from purely ideological efforts often strongly influenced by a determined philosophy. The second class of works has for its object sociological investigation, meaning social morphology and a description and analysis of social facts with or without an attempt to explain them and to obtain from them the data necessary to plan reforms in the organization and functions of human societies. These works are generally empirical. Their value lies in the fidelity of their empiricism and the scientific rigor of methods employed to grasp various phases and social expressions in societies being considered. For many persons, economic, ethnological, ethnographic and historical studies must be classed within their respective disciplines. They do not understand how it is possible to catalogue them as sociology. Also, those who believe that sociology must concern itself exclusively with what exists in society and not with what should exist will consider much that has been and is being written on social questions in the Latin American countries as foreign to sociology.

Religion is here regarded as an externalized adaptation which serves both the individual and society, it is argued that the four major elements of institutional religion- the God concept, Scripture, worship, and theology-provide ready-made solutions to adaptive problems engendered by four cognitive need capacities-the search for conservation, representation, relation, and comprehension-which emerge in the course of mental growth. It is concluded that while religious elements such as the God concept may have arisen, in part at least, out of confrontations between cognitive need capacities and physical or social reality, the religious elements are nonetheless sui generis and are not reducible to the needs and the phenomena that produced them any more than these needs or phenomena are religious in themselves. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Controversy over the nature of man and society, and in particular over the ability of the perspective of the natural sciences adequately to study these phenomena, has continued unabated in the social sciences. Whatever the case, many sociologists seem to find it difficult to theorize adequately and to conduct research incorporating such subjective factors as consciousness, social meanings, interpretations and so on, especially if they are concerned with macro-social phenomena and problems. The most basic assertion of this approach is that society is collectively constructed and maintained by those individuals and groups that it creates and sustains. Social structure, as conceived of here, is simply the sum total of these typifications and the recurrent patterns of interaction established by means of them. The problem of social order is essentially the problem of producing some sharedness of meanings and some co-ordination of the activities of the members of any society sufficient to allow them to achieve what they consider to be adequate gratification of their needs and desires through theft everyday lives.

Evidence on the reflection of social structure, cultural values, and contemporary events in the content of visual art is surveys, and a theoretical interpretation of the social functions of art content is offered. It is concluded that art content reflects not social reality itself, but diverse modes of emotional involvement with social reality. The primary soda! function of art content may be the enhancement of a sense of affective relatedness to impersonal cultural norms and social institutions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents a study which shows how attitudes select facts among 132 students of human relations at the University of Michigan. The study involved a role-playing of personnel's attitudes using the material callled "The Case of the "Old Girls"" to determine the type of interaction that occurred from the students after the termination of the activity and their independent judgment to the behavior of Mr. Jones, a personnel man in the role-playing. Results show that both parties in the role-playing have depicted same number of facts. It also notes the differences between the interviewer (personnel man) and the interviewee (supervisor) in evaluating the interviewer's behavior and in mentioning favorable and unfavorable facts about the old girls.

The article analyzes conformity from the perspectives of task and social requirements. In experiments on conformity, the social factors in the situations are often more compelling than the object presented for judgment. Agreement with an overheard incorrect judgment is often inconsequential, whereas disagreement may carry some negative consequences. Therefore it is understandable that a subject may agree with an overheard incorrect judgment. The equipment consisted of a form board in the shape of a house front with five rectangular gaps to represent doors or windows. For each gap there was a pair of cutouts, similar in shape, one of which was congruent to the gap whereas the other was smaller than the gap. The experiment was administered to two individuals at a time, one of them a naive S, and the E's confederate who answered in accordance with prior instructions. That the social context in which the experiment takes place may affect the results were demonstrated when it was conducted off campus.

The article presents news related to sociological events. The eleventh annual convention of the American Catholic Sociological Society will be held at Fordham University, in New York City, from December 27-29, 1949. Reverend Joseph P. Fitzpatrick is chairman of the committee on local arrangements. Dr. Eva J. Ross represented the Society at the Semaines Sociales, Lille and at the Newman Summer School, Cambridge, England. She spent six days at the research center of Economie et Humanisme at L' Arbresle and attended by invitation the Rencontre Internationale held in England from August 30-September 4, 1949 to discuss the place of the layman in the Church today. Nazareth College, Kalamazoo, Michigan, has been accredited by the National Association of Schools of Social Administration. A Pre-professional Curriculum in Social Service is offered. A High School Teachers institute on Catholic Social and Economic Teaching, sponsored by the Catholic Business Education Association, Midwest Unit, was held at Loyola University, Chicago, from August 16-19, 1949.

Assuming that partial maintenance of a family's identity and the ‘presentation of the family’ to ‘others’ involves information control and reduction of visibility, a survey was conducted to determine bow the housewife controls and stages a ‘presentation of inner symbols’ in the matter of hanging out the family wash. This research sought to determine (1) whether or not covet elements could be detected in clotheslines patterns, and (2) attitudes and social characteristics of housewives and family related to the presence or absence of covertness in clotheslines patterns. Data reveal a high frequency of covert clothesline patterns, such covertness being further evidenced by attitudinal and behavioral ‘inconsistency’ among housewives. The husband's occupational prestige rating, home-ownership, and ownership of an indoor dryer do significantly distinguish among housewives with covert and noncovert clothesline patterns. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Assistant professor and faculty member at The University of Religions & Denominations This paper aims to review religious tourism (also commonly referred to as faith tourism). The subject matter of this study is firstly investigated with respect to content and meaning and then its function and role in three following levels of reality are explored: social, cultural and spiritual. In these threefold levels, religious tourism is recognized as a social construct as well as a cultural and spiritual need which plays an important role in human solidarity and convergence. And finally in a triple conceptual framework, God-seeking, altruism and self-discovery are explained and classified in Islamic view.

This article focuses on the hypothesis that race is given some appreciable weight in determining social reaction, although belief congruence is more important. However, when an especially high level of congruence between the communication relevant beliefs of communicators and target persons is established, target persons will react highly favorably to communicators, giving no appreciable weight to race of communicators. Individuals constituting all samples employed in the present investigation were white male and female students at a midwestern university. One hundred nineteen students were requested to rank order 17 belief statements, each of which was selected because it was known to be congruent with the beliefs of students at the university. Therefore, in a case where communicator target person belief congruence was at a high level, it was shown that for a reaction which is probably more personally and cognitively involving, as well as less subject to experimenter bias effects than "friendship choice," race was not given any appreciable weight in the determination of reaction.