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This section presents a bibliography of books on sociology.

For some years, there has been a growing realization among social scientists that the culture concept needs a careful reexamination. Any doubt about this need should have been removed by the recent analytical survey "Culture: A Critical Review of Concepts and Definitions." The present paper is such a reexamination and is a sequel and clarification of an earlier analysis by the writer. The central analytical concept of this paper is indicated by the term symbolic ideas. The advantage of this concept is that it permits the solution of problems regarding the nature of culture which cannot be discovered, stated, or solved by means of any other concept. One of the principal reasons why many basic problems about the nature of culture have not been solved long ago is that analyzers have not been using the proper conceptual tools with which to state clearly the issues. This paper shows that the concept of symbolic ideas should be welcomed as a long-needed tool with which to do this important job.

The article presents information on several books. Some of the books are "The Sociology of the Family," by Dwight Sanderson and Robert G. Foster; "Problems for Parent Educators," edited by Eduard C. Lindeman and Flora M. Thurston; "Studies in Child Welfare"; "Medical Facilities in the United States," by Allon Peebles; "Marriage," by Oliver M. Butterfield; "A Sociological Case Study of a Foster Child," by Walter C. Reckless; "Suggestions for the Sociological Study of Problem Children," by Walter C. Reckless; "The Extent of Illness and of Physical and Mental Defects Prevailing in the United States," by Alden B. Mills; "Conditions of Work in Spin Rooms," by Ethel L. Best; "The Standard of Living at the Professional Level, 1816-17 and 1926-27," by Chase Going Woodhouse; "Habit Training for Children"; "Studies in Child Welfare."

This is an exceptional study of the ways in which those attending a social science convention acquire and use the information obtained there. The authors also pinpoint the information most interesting and useful to the ample of convention attendants, and the impact of this information on scholarly productivity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article presents a photograph of sociologist Howard W. Odum. The photograph is published in the December 1954 issue of the periodical "Social Forces."

Presents three "climate of opinion" studies that illustrate some of the possibilities, as well as some of the problems, that arise when survey analysts turn to the study of effects of social contexts. Description of the studies; Importance of surveys to sociologists; Valuable information that may be obtained from surveys when the right questions are asked; Comparison of the studies.

This paper is addressed to a neglected aspect of that social psychology, namely, the "meaning" for individuals and groups of the nature of the stratification system and of their particular place in it. More specifically, in this paper researchers intend to explore ways in which groups perceive the dynamics of their social class system as measured by their opinions about interests of the participating classes and ways in which those interests lead to social harmony or conflict. This is, then, a study which in the classical literature of sociology would be called an investigation into "class consciousness" but which, because of the ambiguity in the meaning of that term, prefer to speak of as a study of "images of class relations." The setting to which this data relates is the Soviet Union. Although official dogma holds that class relations in the U.S.S.R. are profoundly different from those in "capitalist" countries and that the nation is approaching a classless society, there is ample evidence that Soviet social structure includes a fully elaborated social class system.

Within the field of sociology a controversy exists concerning whether sociologists can any longer be so systematic as to engage in constructing unified theories of the nature of that part of the environment, which is perceived to be social. A social historian, Harry Elmer Barnes, wrote in one of his books that the book brings the history of sociological thought down to the era and stage where systematization was gradually but rather completely replaced by specialization in some more restricted field of description and analysis. It is not likely that there will be many more attempts to create systems of sociology; the era of systematic sociology has come approximately to an end. The paper postulates that the validity of systems is a function of the method of systems; error can be subsumed to be present always in systems. Researchers seek a percentage of compliance with empirical reality, which cannot exceed the conceptual control of the variables perceived, or the establishment of identity of variables with the true data; systems must seek an optimum between restriction to simple but thorough elementary generalities, which can be treated to numerical or logical exhaustion and expanding a radius of variables to and beyond a point prohibiting treatment to numerical or logical exhaustion in order to increase an area of meaning.

In the field of sociology, perhaps one of the most useful devices for the graphic presentation of facts is the cartogram or statistical map. Recently there has been an increasing emphasis on the ecological and statistical phases of social analysis. This development has given the map much greater significance and utility in the methodology of sociology. The cartogram, like many other forms of diagrams, is essentially an illustrative' method by which several sets of facts,-geographical, ecological, magnitudinal, or typical,-are shown simultaneously in such a visually and statistically logical way that the mind can comprehend these facts and their relationships with a minimum amount of time and effort. Although by no means clearly distinct from one another, there are, from a sociological point of view, five types of cartograms, the social base map, the cross-hatched map, the colored map, the spot-map and a composite of two or more of the preceding types. This discussion will be devoted entirely to the spot-map. Notwithstanding that the spot-map is characteristically quite elementary, if not, as some critics say, superficial, yet it can be delineated so that it shows several variables at once with specificity, accuracy and clarity. The purpose of this paper is to discuss two multiple variable spot-maps as typical examples of this method of presenting statistical and ecological data graphically.

The author says that, in the fall of 1915, a committee of students in one of his quiz sections was given as a project the study of the reactions of students to the course. An anonymous questionnaire was prepared with the assistance of the teacher. Replies were received from 119 of the 300 taking the course. This article is based upon the report of the committee. The student usually confers with his quiz master before selecting his topic, and in many cases during its preparation. He is encouraged to choose a group which he can study at first hand in an objective, quantitative, impersonal manner. Needless to say, most of the students taking the first course are not sociology majors. Many of them have chosen no major at all, since they are mostly under-classmen. The effect of the discussion group class in socializing the student is shown by the number of acquaintances made in the class. The investigation given in the study was made about six weeks after the beginning of the quarter. Students were asked if they knew the people sitting on each side of them.

This paper proposes a way to explain the eruption of aggressive racial conflict in the 1950s and 1960s. The concepts of "adding" and "linkage" provided a way for taking a series of factors into account and for fusing them into a functional syndrome. The traditional racial structure is the initial and underlying factor. Against this background racial conflict could develop and become sociologically inevitable when four conditions were fulfilled. First, the group had to become adequately motivated for conflict, thus becoming a conflict group. Next, the conflict group had to discover and create available and usable resources of social power. Third, the prosecution of conflict required the development of organizational devices for mobilizing and focusing these power resources. And fourth, it was necessary to borrow or produce tactical devices for delivering social power in the process of collective struggle. When all these conditions were fulfilled, racial conflict was the only outcome that could be sociologically expected. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The use of systems of simultaneous equations to describe social behavior, extensive in econometrics, appears to have promise for explaining behavior in other social sciences as well. Two problems that may arise with the use of such equations are (1) identification, and (2) estimation. This paper considers the problem of identification and extends the methodology to include a description of the Theil-Basmann method of estimation. A specific model concerning the diffusion of technical innovations is formulated and tested. The results suggest that variables in the model represent an interdependent system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is intended to serve a dual function. First, to point up the need for a different theoretical approach to the specific problem of predicting or explaining the level of worker productivity, and second, to view this specific problem as an example of a general difficulty in sociological theory-building and to offer some suggestions for dealing with this difficulty. As the title indicates, this general problem is the need for "systemic" theories and organic models in sociology. Studies of worker productivity can be said to have focused generally on four kinds of independent variables—internalized factors (what the worker brings to the work situation), task-generated factors (what the worker must do), organizational factors (the formal structural limitations on how the job is done), and interpersonal factors (the worker's informal relations with others on the job). In summary, this paper has been an attempt to indicate that the current state of ordering of the problem of worker productivity is less than adequate.

This paper will address itself to the problem of law as a means of social control. More specifically the question is: To what extent can divorce law be used to prevent defacto family breakup, that is, the situation where marital partners are separated formally or informally. This paper will not concern itself with an equally relevant problem: Is breakup good or bad? If law is to act on human behavior, it should provide an environment which will enable the deviant or potential deviant to internalize the values embodied in the law or it should provide an environment which will force the deviant to conform by systematically placing blocks in his achievement of his deviant values, whenever he violates the law. In searching for environments both social and psychological which lead to breakup one is confronted by an impressive number of items which have been related to breakup. Though the list is long it is thought that all of these factors actually act upon the family members in one of four ways. These have been called defacto breakup by conflict, de facto breakup by indifference, de facto breakup by opportunity, and continuance by fiat.

Medical scientists have predicted that parents will soon be able to pre-select the sex of their children (sex control). Social scientists have in turn projected some its potential soda! consequences in terms of the sex ratio, the birth rate, the proportion of first-born males, and family relationships. This paper will critically assess some of those projections. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the present paper, inmate social roles and social organization in a women's prison will be described in some detail, comparisons of this is informal social structure will be made with relevant literature on the social roles assumed by male prisoners and the social structure inside the prison setting will be viewed in relation to the external environment. The study of deviance in the prison setting has typically been concerned with male forms of deviation. Indeed, with the exception of analysis of the "fringer" role and the recently reported study of a women's prison which describes the homosexual adaptation of female inmates, scientific description and analysis of the informal organization of the adult female prison have been overlooked. This formulation derives from case studies of single institutions and therefore, it is extremely difficult to ascertain the validity of conclusions drawn as previous writers have not explored systematically the interaction of the external culture with the conditions for survival faced by the prison aggregate.

It is general practice in sociology to regard deviant behavior as an alien element in society. Deviance is considered a vagrant form of human activity, moving outside the more orderly currents of social life. Deviation, can often be understood as a normal product of stable institutions, a vital resource which is guarded and preserved by forces found in all human organizations. From a sociological standpoint, deviance can be defined as conduct which is generally thought to require the attention of social control agencies that is, conduct about which "something should be done." Deviance is not a property inherent in certain forms of behavior; it is a property conferred upon these forms by the audiences which directly or indirectly witness them. Sociologically, then, the critical variable in the study of deviance is the social audience rather than the individual person, since it is the audience which eventually decides whether or not any given action or actions will become a visible case of deviation. This research paper attempts to focus the attention on the sociological question: how does a social structure communicate its "needs" or impose its "patterns" on human actors?

The article presents information on a survey within the eleven Southeastern States of the introductory sociology course in U.S. The purpose of the study was twofold: (1) to provide a general factual description of the situation of the introductory sociology course within the Southeastern states and (2) to provide a technique for stimulating interest in one's common problems as teachers. This paper briefly presents the results of the survey. A general social science course is available to freshmen or sophomores in 41 percent of Southeastern institutions. Of these, only two-fifths require that the course be taken by all students in the college. This indicates that the burden of responsibility of the introductory course by no means has shifted to the general social science course. The survey presented 18 objectives of the course for the respondents to rate along a three-point continuum, as very important, of some significance, or as unimportant. One respondent demonstrated the logical interrelation of all 18 objectives, showing that all comprise the fundamental aim of "understanding the society in which the student lives" and that by implication all are involved in the learning process.

The article focuses on the study "Dimensions of Society," by Donald W. Calhoun. The new methodological S-system seems to the author to have five chief uses, for calculating sociological unknowns, both quantitative and qualitative, for proving sociological theorems and corollaries, for checking the formulation of sociological problems, for operationally defining reliable concepts and for systematizing fields of science. The first three uses have developed since the book went to press four years ago and so are new evidence not available to the reviewer. Calhoun notes that S-equations were asserted to be usable for description only and not for calculating unknowns. The term S-system is recommended to replace S-theory as the latter has misled many sociologists into expecting a theory predicting social phenomena instead of a methodological theory in being a system of hypotheses for improved methodology. Since at present the S-system is the only system of symbols in the field of dimensional sociology, the two may be used almost synonymously, but they are not identical.

The article presents some neglected temporal aspects of human ecology. The human ecologist has been interested principally in viewing the territorial distribution which has been a result of this functional distribution. He has concerned himself with concrete examples of spatial organization, spatial dominance, and spatial succession. What people have come to think of in hearing the word temporal used in ecological parlance has been spatial succession. At one time the community exhibits a given spatial pattern. At another time, usually months or years later, the spatial pattern has been changed through the processes of invasion and succession. Tracing historically the development of a given area through such processes has come to mean the temporal aspect of human ecology. To some extent seasonal fluctuations in the movements of symbients have been considered, but almost completely neglected, in both theoretical writings and research in human ecology, have been the daily and weekly movements in space by individuals, rhythmic, cyclical movements by which the available space is utilized.

This article discusses social science and social action in agriculture. The author was with the Bureau of Agricultural Economics when the Department of Agriculture was reorganized in October 1938. He has been with it since then. He had worked with three major agricultural action programs in the years just preceding. Therefore, he feels that his greatest contribution in this paper can be made by discussing research and action in agricultural programs. The author is of the views that many so-called scholars in sociology have not been and are not research men at all. They spend most of their time seeking authoritative documentation of their ideas instead of observing and analyzing social phenomena. Science is not built in this fashion. The science of sociology is being forwarded primarily by research men who are studying living social phenomena, such as crime, poverty, population, community organization, social institutions and agencies, and others. The author does not mean to say that study of the past is not research, nor that deduction has no place in scientific thinking.

Mass data on numbers, places, and kinds of people, and particularly of their movements in space and time, accumulate in the U.S. at an accelerating rate, and demographers have achieved high competence in their analysis of large-scale observations. There is available much objective and statistical material about the populations of states, regions, and nations. The accessibility of this material makes possible the single argument of this paper, which is, to use analogy, that the U.S. population information is like an unfinished painting. This article presents a running sketch of proposals for socio-demographic research with one further comment on the implied conditions of investigation. The search to which each study relates insofar as population analysis is concerned, is two-fold. On the one hand, it is for clusters of factors that operate as patterns within a migration or fertility trend. On the other, it is a search for the of elements which are capable of independent variation.

Early all studies of migration in the general population have found that short distance moves greatly outnumber long distance moves. The distance generalization thus shares with the age-differential generalization the distinction of being one of the few principles in migration theory that is firmly established by research. The thesis of this paper is that an additional fundamental factor is the migrant's knowledge of the labor market. For, given the admittedly major importance of economic motivation in migration, it follows that the more extensive the migrant's knowledge of job opportunities, the wider his choice of possible localities. The thesis examined in the article in relation to the findings of studies that have emphasized different explanations of the distance factor. Since long distance migration is more spectacular than short distance migration, it is to be expected that the importance of long distance moves would frequently be exaggerated. It is concluded that no matter what the method by which distance of migration is measured, short distance moves greatly outnumber long distance moves.

This article provides some recollections of scholars Lester F. Ward and James Dealey. The first thing Ward did, when he appeared each morning, was to read carefully the College paper-the Brown Daily Her aid-a student-sheet with quips, gossip, and especially athletics. The playful element in Ward came out now and then-as when, at the close of the year in chapel, President took occasion to thank the members of the faculty for their attendance, adding that without invidious comparison he should like particularly to express his gratitude to Ward, who had been so constant in his presence. Whereupon Ward nudged me, sitting next him, and remarked: "I deserve no credit for it, as the servant is cleaning up my room at this hour." Dealey was in the front in getting permission to move these books to an accessible place and throw them open to the public. He went to took academy in Buffalo, and thence to Brown University, where he received in turn the A.B. and Ph.D. degrees, and ultimately became head of the department of Political Science.

Sociology and social work, though rooted in independent origins, have had within the past century a development indicative of a complementary and interdependent relationship. Such a position ignores the history of the movements during the latter half of the nineteenth century and interprets the absence of so full an expression of interdependence in the first twenty years of the present century as indicative of no prior relationship. A significant attestation of the relation of sociology and social work in their precursory stages is the fact that the National Conference of Social Work had its inception in the American Social Science Association. Thus far the relation of social science to charities, correction, and philanthropy has been shown to be positive. In the introductory paragraph of this paper it was suggested that the relation of sociology to social work during the first twenty years of the present century was slight. Sociology and social work are referred to as if aspects of the same movement, and the social worker is termed a type of sociologist, in the official records of the first meeting of the American Sociological Society.

Theories of government grow more luxuriantly, perhaps, than any other species of scientific flora, certainly more prolifically than theories in the more exact physical sciences. Those who specialize in the social sciences seem almost bankrupt of practical ideas about government. That is why there are so many and such conflicting theories as to the cause of cancer and the cure of souls, for instance. But profound philosophers and browfurrowed savants often sit down and elaborate schemes of ideal government for ideal, and non-existent, commonwealths. Of course such rule must be quite distant in the future. The correlation between social and ideological phenomena often seems as low as Adoiphe Cone insisted. Christianity, Buddhism and Mohammedanism all appeared among peoples far from powerful or advanced. Little Greece produced marvels of art and mind yet her social life was but slightly influenced thereby. The Romans were far more ignorant and less cultured than either the Egyptians or the Greeks, but they achieved governmental, military, juridical and social machinery of a remarkable character. There is, it is true, a sort of metaphysical ecstasy particularly prevalent among individuals of much more than average intelligence who have turned their backs upon organized religion and mystical theology to believe piously in the soterial and regenerative efficacy of science and present-day scientists.

Locality is a tangible fact with measurable metes and bounds. It is not so with the community and public opinion. These latter concepts are abstractions whose limits are set by arbitrary definitions and imperfect, semi-scientific analysis. It is not the purpose of this paper to attempt a critical analysis of concepts and definitions but rather to point a rough course which may promise a way out of the frustration of a too facile handling of the problem. There is no clear cut road to an understanding of any social phenomena—social science is too young to have marked many paths. Whatever public opinion may be, whatever the community may be, in any significant sense they must be placed as links in a chain of related facts, in a series of events, parts, aspects, or factors of collective behavior. At the risk of seeming to propose merely another concept not much more precise than the former, there is justification in pointing to the possibilities of translation into refined concepts of cultural patterns.

The article presents information on Herbert B. Adams, well known figure in the research of social science. The biographical details which have been selected aim to present the qualities which gave him influence and esteem among students and investigators, rather than to furnish a complete life history. Adams, began his public career with an appointment as fellow in History in the Johns Hopkins University in 1876. He remained in that institution in the progressive positions of Associate, Associate Professor, and Professor until the time of his death in 1901. His base of operations, therefore, remained fixed, but his influence extended over the continent and it is proper that some inquiry should be made respecting the earlier experiences which developed his character and prepared him for leadership in historical studies. His private reading in college was chiefly in connection with the subjects upon which he had to write or debate. History was not a large part of his collegiate training and we might be a little surprised that he afterwards devoted his life to it.

The article describes various functions and uses of public opinion research in comparison with other scientific disciplines. It suggests a new concentration on the development of conceptual frameworks for organizing the current mass of empirical data. After presenting a gist of various schools of thought regarding this area of research, it is stated that public opinion research is a combination of a business, a political device, an instrument of propaganda, an art and other things too. Each function or use of public opinion research has its appropriate place in the contemporary world. It is stated that the public opinion research should only be viewed as a subdiscipline or specialized sub-area of scientific research. Its conceptualization is derived from and has significance only within the theoretical frameworks of more comprehensive sciences such as psychology and sociology. It is stated that Percy W. Bridgman, J.R. Oppenheimer and other theoretical physicists have directed attention to the requirement that science undo its own errors and eliminate or modify its illegitimate concepts. This prescription is applicable especially to social sciences. According to the author, polling data and other types of information on opinion and attitudes are a rich source of basic materials which might be exploited fruitfully so that it could provide a better understanding of socially determined states of mind or mentalities. The article covers opinions of various specialists in connection with the public opinion research and various fields of science.

Howard Odum at his death in 1954 was working on the technicways, a concept comparable to Sumner's folkways-addressed to the relation of technology to social change and social consensus. To Odum the essence of technicways is to be sought in terms of the transition required to give scientific techniques the sanctions of a system of norms. Technicways are the folkways of an age of science. The current neglect of this concept may be due to its embodiment in Odum's theory of folk sociology and in its closeness to Ogburn's social change which Odum apparently accepted. It is a paradox that today in a literate age of social change we have no records of the contemporary origin and development of folkways. This is explained when changing standards are related to scientific and engineering techniques. Another paradox demanding explanation is the incorporation of these techniques within the system of norms. Failure to understand the nature of the technicways leads to two popular fallacies: namely, (1) there exists a total breakdown of standards; (2) technology is in control of the social order. It is the contention of this paper that Howard Odum in the development of the concept technicways, has offered here a lead that takes up where Sumner's folkways left the subject. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Functional explanations are shown to be descriptive or pseudo-explanatory in many in- stances. When genuinely explanatory they can be replaced by causal explanations which make the underlying assumptions clearer. As illustration some occurrences of functionalism in sociology are explained both functionally and causally. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Following the example of other scientists, the social scientists are indicating concern about the state of their disciplines in the secondary schools. In seeking to introduce their subject into the high school sociologists should encourage experimentation in respect to the content and the type of student for whom it will be offered. Upgrading of high school social studies teachers will, of course, be necessary, but an alternative approach to the problem of providing adequate instruction is possible. Teaching sociology in high school raises questions regarding its effect on adolescents, and it is likely to have a variety of consequences for the social system of the high school and the sociological profession. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Quantitative methods in sociology have been under serious development chiefly during the four decades 1920-1960, which corresponds roughly to the professional career of William F. Ogburn. The principal issues regarding quantitative methods which engaged sociologists during that period were: (1) philosophical controversy arising from the assumption (a) that some phenomena are intrinsically and inherently quantitative (e.g., such as most of the subject matter of demography), while (b) other phenomena are intrinsically qualitative. The contrary view regarded quantitative and qualitative aspects of phenomena not as a characteristic of phenomena but purely a matter of what method of observation and recording is adopted. Another issue was (2) the controversy over the relative merits of the "case study" versus the statistical method, especially as regards objectivity, prediction, and other purely scientific objectives, as contrasted with diagnostic and therapeutic objectives. Perhaps the principal problem of quantification was reflected in (3) the controversy over attitude scales and techniques of studying verbal behavior and public opinion, and the relationship of such data to other types of social behavior. All of these developments greatly stimulated interest in sampling techniques, mathematical models, information theory, and machine techniques of processing data. The implications of these developments for sociology as a science are impressive. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is addressed primarily to the consideration of an old ghost in new sheets—what constitutes the sphere of relevant phenomena for the discipline of sociology. The current research and publications on factors in mate selection provide one of several growing collections of data which pose a central question in this regard. The fascination of the biological orientation for sociological explanations is well known. It is an attractive explanation for man's behavior because man is after all a biological organism and what he does must be understood at least in part on this basis. It is the social phenomenon of mate selection which will be utilized here to demonstrate the departure of certain sociologists from analysis of social reality in their search for explanations of social behavior. Personality needs constitute another important factor in mate selection. This refers to needs which the person wants fulfilled and at the same time are most likely to be satisfied within the context of married life. The person chosen as a marriage partner is viewed as the one who, in the estimation of the chooser, is most likely to satisfy these needs.

The concepts of social status or social position and social role are among the most widely used ideas in social science. Although the classical definitions of these concepts and the uses to which they have been put imply a theory of social structure, that theory has never been adequately stated in all of its ramifications. Perhaps the most highly developed use of these terms has been in the description of a social structure in terms of a spatial analogy. Certainly the least developed use of them has been in the analysis of structural change and dynamics. In either case certain limitations apply to the concepts under discussion. The concept of social position or social status as usually defined does not allow adequate description and analysis of the internal structure of a position. The present concept of social position is ill suited to the description and analysis of internal changes which take place in a position. The concept of social position depends on an imperfect spatial analogy since it allows a given individual to occupy two positions in the same social space at the same time.

This paper has three purposes—to develop an approach to the study of intragroup status achievement and leadership which focuses primarily upon the group itself and only secondarily upon the individual members and their personal characteristics, to summarize an application of this approach in a larger study conducted by the writer, which seeks to advance hypotheses concerning the techniques or methods by which the constituent statuses of group structure are achieved by the membership, and to indicate the implications involved for sociological theory and research. There are few, if any, subjects in the social sciences which have been studied as profusely as the achievement of high statuses within the group. Typically, writings in this area are referred to as investigations of leadership, popularity, or "friendship choices." In trying to discover how high statuses are achieved, students have employed a variety of approaches in their research. Mainly, however, they have concentrated upon what may be termed the individual level of analysis.

This article focuses on the approach towards sociology in Europe. It lists works of several sociologists and brings out their area of study. Karl Mannheim is concerned with educational administration. He says the Germans have long speculated as to whether there is a science of sociology, while the French have placed courses and the Americans whole departments of sociology in their universities. Now Germany is convinced that there is sociology and will teach it and he offers a detailed outline of what he thinks the subject should cover. Mark Abramowitsch offers a socialist interpretation of sociology, but criticizes strongly those who do not go beyond Marx in their interpretation of society. He has much to say about the contrast between the proletarian and the bourgeois approaches to social science. Irma Goitein seeks to show Richard Hess' position between Hegelian idealism and Marxian historical materialism, and she finds that he did not seek a synthesis of these viewpoints but rather gyrated between them. Some new letters of Hess are given in the appendix.

The community concept is not so single as it once was, community organization seems to be mixed up with a number of things, whereas it started out as a movement all by itself. Social service has taken its name and in some slight measure begun to copy its democratic ways, adult education is very close to it, and according to one excellent authority is the same thing and should have so recognized itself as long ago as during the World War. The 1929 model of community is not backward in one sociological concept whether one sees it in Chicago, Southern California, Columbia or Connecticut College, namely the culture concept. If the paper deals with Jewish centers, Afro-American districts, a Russian religious sect, or the most effective geographical unit for studying racial influences, the hypothetical community one starts out to find is one inherent in the culture of a people or a group. Never before was the agreement so unanimous, nor the studies so sure in their procedure. There is a feeling of biting into something and the expectancy that studies of communities along these lines will be quite significant.

In this article, the author responds to the comments of sociologist Frederick Teggart on his article. He says it is not quite clear, after reading professor Teggart's comments, to what extent professor Teggart proposes to join issue on what he conceives to be the most fundamental question involved, namely, the possibility and desirability of formulating, with reference to human social phenomena, generalized descriptions like the physiologists' description of the functioning of the human body, which he so aptly uses as an illustration. The author says he agrees with Professor Teggart regarding the desirability, even the necessity, of comparing different societies and their histories in order to discover processes. He says it seems, however, that a type of insight into natural process is gained by the intensive study of single cases-guided and checked no doubt, even though subconsciously, by the general knowledge of other, more or less comparable, cases which the investigator may have. He says his own ideas of fundamental methodology in social science have been clarified somewhat, however, by reading passages in an interesting monograph to which he had access only after the paper under discussion was written.

The article author responds to comments made by various sociologists on his paper on measurement and statistics. The author would like to clarify that he is neither encouraging others to squeeze out all information nor to disregard the consequences. In his article he encourages researchers to select statistics partially on the basis of answering the relevant substantive problems in question. This may require a strong variance measure that simply does not exist for ordinal data. The researcher must know a great deal about the consequences before he can select the appropriate statistical techniques and provide a sound rationale for using them in the face of not having the appropriately scaled variables. This requires a great deal more in the way of reasoning and knowledge of statistics than merely selecting those statistical techniques for which the data precisely meet the scale operations. Given a finite span of numbers, the more ranked categories that are assigned monotonic values, the less the overall error rate is likely to be. That is, the probability of large errors decreases as the number of categories increases.

Popular imagery and various social science theories argue that urban life generates a sense of despair or malaise. While Americans tend to express preferences for small communities, secondary analysis of several American and foreign surveys fails to indicate that community size fosters personal unhappiness. If any result is substantial, it is that the effect, worldwide, is of rural malaise. American and French data do reveal, however, that, after controls for covariates, there is a small trend for the largest metropolises to be disproportionately places of malaise. Breaking down the samples by migration history suggests that this is owing to the ability of some to move to idealized communities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on Louis Wirth, 37th president of the American Sociological Society who died unexpectedly in Buffalo, New York on May 3, 1952, at the age of 54. Born in Germany, Wirth attended the University of Chicago with the intention of studying medicine. Attracted by the teaching of some professors, Wirth chose sociology instead and prepared for a career as a university professor. Chicago conferred Wirth's Ph.D. degree in 1926 and all his professional life was spent at that university except for a short period at Tulane University. Wirth served as president of the American Sociological Society in 1947 and as the first president of the International Sociological Association. Professor Wirth gained distinction in several specialized fields of sociology but his major achievement was to make the transition from the first to the second generation of the Chicago school. This is notable in the fields of both ecology and race relations. In ecology Wirth went from the natural process and the laissez-faire attitudes of his teachers in clinical ecology to an interest in the urban planning movement and the applied field of housing.

The article focuses on the economic interpretation of history. In the first place "economic determinism," as the theory is sometimes styled, does not signify, as some seem to assume, that every item in individual behavior can be accounted for by reference to an antecedent economic factor as sole or decisive determinant. Moreover, social laws are laws of mass phenomena and can not arrogate to themselves omniscience as to the functioning of the individual life. It is an illegitimate though not uncommon perversion of the economic interpretation to stretch it beyond the sphere that social generalization can cover. Not that the events of individual life are uncaused or that they may not in reality answer to precise categories of causation, nor that the occurrences in the social whole come to pass save through the channels of individual lives, but that individual behavior falls outside the field of social science save as it manifests characteristics common to other instances and so capable of serving as data for generalization, or as correlation with some social phenomenon is ascertainable.

The article focuses on the relation between sociology and social work. The sociologist looks down upon the social worker with a goodly measure of contempt. Even the more kindly disposed sociologists look upon the social workers with a good deal of pity as persons who meddle in other people's affairs, and as persons who do their work by rule of thumb. They consider social work as being a hit or miss, trial and error procedure, without having the standing or dignity of a profession and without being based upon scientific principles. The social workers, on the other hand, look up to sociologists as to people--who live up in the clouds, who clothe the simplest ideas in the most cumbersome language and who hide their ignorance of human nature behind polysyllabic, high sounding, more or less meaningless verbiage. Many social workers of excellent repute and ability have a positive dislike for sociology and sociologists, a dislike which cannot quite be accounted for on the basis of an inferiority complex.

The article discusses the book "Matriarchate" and perversion of history. The theory presented in the book had just enough exotic charm and pseudo-historical support to carry it through. Matriarchy, the rule of women, "gynaecocracy"--the "Women's State," its latest protagonists call it--is still going strong. It had not found its tools and its rigid controls. The Homeric poems were still considered entertaining myths, not the epic account and description of an age which we now know to have been real. Hence things which were myths from a much later age were given a weight in the discussion of Greek origins which they have now wholly lost as far as properly trained historians are concerned. The author of the theory was only following the fashion of the time in sorting out bits of fact, fable and tradition, some of which had been floating around in literature for thousands of years, and transforming the half or wholly mythical Amazons into a fullblown theory of a stage when women ruled. He need not be accused of ignorance or naivete because his theory has not stood up under critical investigation by scientific methods not known in his day.

The article focuses on the publication of the fifteenth volume of the book "Encyclopaedia of the Social Sciences." This volume brings to completion the most ambitious effort ever made to synthesize social studies. No previous dictionary or handbook of law, government, or economies can compare with it in scope, in catholicity, or in the scale of cooperative effort. Such a collaborative attempt at encyclopedia organization of knowledge runs afoul of at least four major difficulties. In the first place there is the matter of sheer bulk; in theory, all constituent parts of the subject matter must be treated and there arises as a consequence the nice matter of space allotment, involving exceedingly difficult qualitative as well as quantitative decisions. The ambitious attempt to combine most of the significant parts of all the social disciplines within a single work constitutes at once the justification and the merit of the "Encyclopaedia." It is hoped that the resulting juxtaposition of topics, drawn from various disciplines, will help break down the provincialism which has all too long characterized social studies.

In this article, some joint interviews within the methodology of casework; second to discuss some of the facts about casework which may account for the present interest in joint interviewing and last to consider some of its features and principles. For reasons that may appear obvious but will be discussed more fully later on experience indicates that the family twosome, threesome and so on tend to be interviewed in a casework agency in the following order of incidence from the greatest to the least that the marital or parental pair, the mother-child or father child threesome the family group as a whole sibling two or threesome. There is already the seepage into one's language and the conceptual system of a few means to take a forward step in family diagnosis. Some of these means are being lent by social science. When joint interviews were seen as substantial part of the whole treatment process, it meant that within the joint interview, interaction among the clients and with the worker was promoted. The worker encouraged the expression of hostile as well as positive feelings of conflicted material.

The dependence of modern science on technology is a rational matter. From the simplest retort to the cyclotron, science is integrally dependent on the tools and equipment available. There is, then, a certain rationale in the history of science; concept succeeds concept; science generates science, in an orderly way. But it is not necessarily the only orderly way. For there are certain non-rational factors involved in the growth of science also. In sociology, it is often found textbooks repeating the statement that divorce is a middle-class phenomenon, in spite of the evidence to the effect that it is more characteristic of the lower-middle and lower socio-economic classes. The influence of fashion in both subject and method is an intriguing one. Subjects and methods wax and wane in the interest they evoke. The impact of textbooks seems to the author especially important in the growth of science. Many research scientists look with undisguised contempt on the "mere" textbook writer. The role of the scientific society in the development of the physical sciences has been recognized and documented historically. A similar task has been begun in the social sciences also.

Many years ago the eminent Dutch sociologist, Rudolf Steinmetz, made a vigorous attack on "arm chair" sociology. Being also an anthropologist and ethnographer of considerable experience, Steinmetz felt that the sociological work of his time suffered from a lack of empirical, even descriptive, foundation. Steinmetz therefore demanded a discipline of sociography, which would have a similar relation to sociology as ethnography has to ethnology or cultural anthropology. Unfortunately Steinmetz never made it quite clear what exactly would be the field of sociography as distinguished from geography and related disciplines. The author thinks that the empirical sociologist or sociographer ought to perceive clearly the criteria on the basis of which he selects from the chaos of reality those aspects, which he deems sociologically relevant. This will, of course, depend on the general idea of sociology, which the author has adopted. It would seem that all empirical phenomena in concrete contexts should be studied by the sociologist under the ultimate aspect of their significance for social integration or disintegration.

This article focuses on professor Talcott Parsons' literary works on systematic sociology. According to the author, Talcott Parsons and his followers are pioneers in this recent theory in sociology and have won considerable recognition. Parsons' theoretical system comprises a series of postulates, concepts, and methodological formulations, which are mutually interdependent. The purpose of such a scheme is to develop sociology as a distinctive science with an appropriate conceptual scheme. According to the author, systematic theory is synonymous with scientific theory and is defined as "a body of logically interdependent generalized concepts of empirical reference" tending toward logical closure. Insofar as a body of theory is logically closed, it is systematic in fully explaining the relations between phenomena within a given frame of reference. If the explicit propositions of a systematic theory are not logically closed, it may be reasonably inferred that unstated assumptions or variables are involved in that system.