Search

Social roles are the institutionally proper ways for an individual to participate in his society and thus satisfy his needs and wants. But roles are also demands upon the individual, norms that prescribe certain acts and forbid others. Moreover at times role obligations are difficult to reconcile. Thus, the non-com is subject to one set of pressures from commissioned officers in authority over him and to another from his fellow enlisted men. Such competing obligations have been labeled "role conflicts," and several studies exist of verbal responses to hypothetical role conflict situations. Valuable as role conflict may be as an initiator of necessary change, it is not entirely desirable from the viewpoint of the social system either. For, after all, a social system must make provisions for stability as well as for progress. Some control over incompatible claims must exist in every society. If a social system is too flexible, stable expectations cannot exist, and anomie results. Hence, even in a society as the U.S. mechanisms must exist to provide minimum control over role conflicts.

The article presents a study on group leadership. In this era of economic warfare and special pleading by various organized groups in the American social scene it may be enlightening to reflect upon the forces which make for the success or failure of such groups. In designing a formula for success it may be said that achievement by such organizations-whether they be comprised of employers, laborers, farmers, etc.-is a product of three basic factors: the extent to which the aims and objectives of the organization satisfy a definitely felt need among its members, the type of leadership which directs the energies of the organization in obtaining its objectives, and the degree of resistance provided by other groups or impersonal forces. During the recent war period many foremen and supervisors in the bituminous coal-mining industry turned to unionization and sought collective bargaining recognition from the mine operators. This entire movement provides an excellent case study of how the second of these factors for group success, the leadership element, may direct an economic organization into eventual disintegration. An analysis of its development suggests the conclusion that the type of leadership with the highest potential for success is one, which is both spontaneous, i.e., risen from the ranks and single-minded in purpose.

The efforts of Negroes to adjust to their minority status have manifested themselves in many collective endeavors. The present paper proposes to make a beginning toward filling the gap by sketching briefly the origins and functions of fraternal organizations among Negroes. One of them is the secret society. A careful study of the Negro secret society as an institution will throw much light on the processes of acculturation and assimilation. The numerous Negro secret societies in the United States are now and always have been almost exclusively ceremonial, i.e. lodges and fraternal orders. There never has been a Negro secret society which even slightly resembled the Ku Klux Klan. The abortive slave insurrections, even one so carefully planned as Denmark Vesey's, were never made under the banner of a secret society. The first secret society in the United States which emphasized benevolent features was the Odd Fellows. The Odd Fellows merely introduced Negroes to the secrecy feature of benevolent organizations, for people of color had been organizing friendly societies since 1787.

Great credence has been given to the belief that Negroes are naturally inclined toward religion and frequently the cultural possibilities of the race have been evaluated from premises based on this precise belief. No other conclusion about the Negro in America has been so taken for granted as that concerning the innately religious character of his temperament. It is the Leitmotiv of this article, however, that the social milieu in which the Negro lived under the slave system demanded for its maintenance, powerful psychological compensations which were most safely and satisfactorily provided by an exaggerated emphasis on religion. In regard to the older group, all indicated church connection, either Baptist or Methodist, the latter church claiming only three. All but one of the group had at least one slave parent although none of the respondents were old enough to have personal memories of slavery. Such expressions are undoubtedly representative of patterns of thought among Negroes of an earlier generation. Religion is a dominating factor, and it is a personal intimate religion which necessarily relegates the church to an incidental place in the lives of the believers.

The purpose of this study has been an attempt to show the changing role of the college Nisei during the crisis period from the time of the Japanese aggression on Manchuria in 1931 until 1944. The most unusual characteristic of the Japanese population in the United States is the sharp dichotomy of the Issei and the Nisei. The impact of American culture and institutions upon second generation children of immigrant stock has long been the object of careful research by social scientists. Yet perhaps no group offers a more fruitful area for study than the Nisei or second generation Americans of Japanese ancestry. Only in its marginal economic and social position, and its consequent unwillingness to migrate to other sections of the United States, did the college Nisei betray their dependence upon the Japanese community and some of its institutions. The extent of the dispersion of the college Nisei is shown by the respective number of college student bodies having second generation Japanese in 1941, 1943, and 1944.

The article summarizes some of the data and conclusions of a study intended as a first step toward a more adequate definition of the term "American." The study, made under the auspices of the Institute for Research in Social Science at the University of North Carolina, is described as a "lexicographic analysis" of alleged characteristics, ideals and principles of the U.S. citizen. The observers find much in American life to justify the widespread conception of the U.S. as a land of education. They profess to see an almost blind worship of schooling, a belief that knowledge is power and an intense desire to gain that power on a national scale. But some of the observers see another side of the picture. They charge that the principal value of schooling is a money value and one goes to school for financial gain. A number of critics mention the strong frontier tradition, which scorns book learning, culture and the expert. Most of the critics who see the U.S. as dominated by the profit motive see a consequent neglect of the spiritual side of life, including religion, literature and the arts. It is claimed by some that the American religion, however conspicuous it may be in national life, is chiefly a "Sunday religion," which can be conveniently forgotten during the business week.

The growth of personality occurs through adjustment to an ever-increasing number of groups. This process of adjustment consists of accommodation to and assimilation of the attitudes and purposes characteristic of the respective groups. Such is the social nature of man that some degree of disorganization is likely to result if the individual deviates appreciably from group standards, unless he is able to sever his connection in favor of another more consonant with his attitudes. There are trends in the culture of the contemporary U.S. that defy any facile theory of the relationship between social adjustment and personal organization. Values stressed in the home may conflict with those taught in school. Some upholds organized religion while others may deride it, at least by implications, which the young do not fail to comprehend. The competitive process places emphasis upon self-interest, which goes against idealistic teachings. The expansion of secondary groups signifies a trend toward impersonality in social relationships, and modem business and government are far-flung organizations, yet ethical instruction of the conventional type encompasses face-to-face relationships only.

This article deals with the social forces that influenced the U.S. society. Some day the U.S. will have a bureau at Washington, which may go by the name of Anthropometeorology, the Bureau of Human Weather. The Department of Commerce aspires even now to something approaching this function. Business statistics, however, all-embracing as they are, do not yet comprise the whole horizon of man's kenning. The tides in the affairs of men must be charted by experts in sociology, in education and in psychology, as well as in economics. Many difficulties have been experienced by the U.S. but these difficulties with all the ideals is the instability of the foundation on which the far arches rest, of international good-will. One after the another the leaders of humanity are despised and rejected by the very men in whom they had trusted. Nations cannot go very far in international understanding if they do not understand themselves thoroughly. The problem of migration in the U.S. is not simply in a geographical sense, but of migration from group to group. American sociologists cannot find such conditions elsewhere in the world. The phenomena can be studied only in the U.S. Yet it is of vast importance to anyone seeking to analyze the causes of success and failure in the U.S. democracy.

Taking three steps forward and two back ward, the United States has created propaganda machinery in its State Department to interpret American life and policy to the rest of the world. This machinery is being operated under serious handicaps. Americans are suspicious of propaganda as an instrument of government, even when used by themselves, although they accept it in the form of advertising. They have had little experience with it and have been more concerned with guarding against propaganda than in developing affirmative policies for influencing world opinion. Finally, American life is so broad and varied that the propaganda charged with interpreting it is faced with an almost insuperable task. The U.S. government propaganda in peace or in war must be guided by people who are clear about the essential meaning of American life. Not only the official propagandists but the legislators and administrators who sanction them must have an assured belief that the American scheme of living gives a satisfying explanation of the world today and will continue to provide a rationale by which the problems of tomorrow's world can be successfully resolved.

This article evaluates the present and the future of the private welfare agencies in the U.S. Private social welfare agencies have been a total failure in the current society. Voluntary charitable bodies must be given the credit for initiating these whole public and private social welfare structure. But leaders of these agencies have not kept themselves in touch with the catastrophic effects upon society of a continuing industrial revolution which has created submerged proletarian masses who are not reached by the welfare system. From the point of view of the slum-dweller, social work is the rich man's device for casing his own conscience and the social worker is his tool, more interested in playing up to his trustees than in describing to them the inadequate and superficial results of the organization's program. The growth of the chasm between the bulk of working people and welfare system can be blamed on the weaknesses and inefficiencies of that system. In order to hasten the objective of greater local efficiency and to provide standards and financial aid to our many impoverished communities, the report finds it essential that both state and federal leadership should be improved.

The article focuses on the economic conditions in the U.S. in 1896 and 1905. The country managed to reverse its position in the past ten years instead of the crippled industrial and financial state of 1894, with the its principal industries declining, its great corporations drifting into bankruptcy, and its government forced to borrow on terms from Europe to maintain the public credit. The country shows a community with prosperity and whose productive industries had developed such strength. There is the rise in American financial and industrial prestige and the beneficial effects of the European harvest failure of 1897 and the Spanish War of 1898. The establishment of law pertaining to the gold standard for the U.S. in 1900 brings forth economic development for the country.

This article presents information on social and economic legislation passed by the legislatures of various states in the United States in 1891. During the first nine months of 1891 legislative sessions were held in thirty-seven States of the Union, and in two of the Territories. That legislatures no longer hesitate to abridge the freedom of private contract is made evident by the increasing number of laws regulating the manner of wages payments. The important coal-mining interests of several of the interior and Western States were more or less affected by the passage of anti-screen laws, in the interest, whether real or supposed, of the operatives. In the mining of coal in these States it had always been the prevailing custom to adjust the miner's wages upon the weight of his carload of lump coal after it had passed over a screen. This large coal is the most valuable part of the product; but the miners asserted that the fine coal which was dropped through the screen was also merchantable, and that it was a common practice on the part of the operators of mines to sell this portion, as well as the lump coal, although the original purpose of the screen was to separate the slack and dirt from the coal.

This article discusses the book "Looking Backward," by Edward Bellamy, tracing the spirit of nationalism in the U.S. Bellamy, a novelist by profession, is the recognized father of the Nationalist Clubs which have been formed in various parts of the United States within the last twelve months. The American press received the book, from its first appearance, with much favor as a literary performance. Its great cleverness and ingenuity, its contagious earnestness of sympathy with the unsuccessful in the social struggle of to-day, the very vehemence of its denunciation of the existing order, and its assured pictures of the superlative ease and happiness of the year 2000 A.D. won for it particular attention in the city which was its scene. Bellamy's blind adherence to the European type of socialism, regardless of any peculiarity, however important, in the American situation, is seen in the complete annihilation to which he consigns the American State; that is, Massachusetts or California. In his Utopia, the central government, the national power, is everything, certain functions being delegated by it to the municipalities.

This article focuses on the report of the Society for the Study of Social Problems (SSSP) on "Sexual Behavior in American Society: An Appraisal of the First Two Kinsey Reports," edited by Jerom Himelhoch and Syvia Fleis Fava. Editors have assembled 38 selections by sociologists, psychologists, anthropologists, statisticians, public opinion analysts, marriage counselors, psychiatrists, a lawyer, and a minister. In the first part of the report, "Theories and Methods in the Study of Human Sexuality," the reader will find theoretical and methodological critiques of the Kinsey studies. The second part, "Sexual Pasterns and Social institutions," discusses the implications of the findings of the Kinsey group and of other investigators for current knowledge regarding marriage and the family, social stratification, religion and ethics, the law, social change, and psychiatry. One chapter is devoted to articles on sexual behavior in other societies, both primitive and modern. The third part, "The Impact of the Kinsey Reports upon Social Attitudes and Behavior," are found studies of the reception of the Kinsey volumes by public opinion and the mass media and three research reports on the influence of the Kinsey books upon the attitudes and behavior of college students.

This article discusses various issues concerning the relationship between the "Cold War" and the domestic problems of the American society. American social scientists have given little systematic attention to this relationship. It is important to develop the implications of the social problem concept at the world level, and to examine the interdependence of national and international problems. For this purpose, the value-clash definition of social problems is especially useful because it may reduce the effect of bias on the part of the describer-analyst. It is pointed out by some observers that the increased production of military materials for defense against potential Soviet aggression is resulting in a cut in expenditures for domestic programs such as housing, social security, and other forms of social welfare. Heavy commitments for military purposes can prevent the solution of some of the domestic problems, slow the process of solution, accentuate the problems, or even produce additional major problems. Problems previously taken for granted as purely domestic are now international in importance because of their relationship to the world scene.

The article presents information on social developments in the U.S. Turning now to other and different currents of life which affect the ideals and enactment of American democracy, perhaps it would be difficult to find better examples of the inequalities among people, in thought, in education, in susceptibility to leadership of various sorts, in the genuine desire for worthy expression of emotions and motives, and in misguided tendencies, and in the manifestations of stages of ignorance and of intellectual processes, than in this latter day phenomenon of the white robed censors of men. They, too, represent part of the people. They are minorities real enough and active enough to challenge whatever attention may be given them. Their members are among Americans. They are fathers and brothers and American citizens with representative rights; with potential through their children of this and the next generations of intellectual and social progress or of other possibilities. They are of the folks and in proportion as they fail American democracy and civilization fail.

The slogan of the 1960s was social services, the slogan of the early 1970s is separation of services. Early in the 1960s it was apparent that public assistance was under attack, for fostering illegitimacy and fraud and for runaway costs. Unfortunately, social services are the wrong correctives for discrimination, technological change, and fiscal policies that maintain unemployment. Separation of services arises from a recognition that failed to integrate services into public assistance. It arises also from a desire, born in the civil rights and antipoverty movements, to establish the right of clients to receive assistance without being patronized. The locale of integrated services may be shifting from departments of social services to state employment service offices, but individual investigations and mandatory training and other services represent closer integration than anyone in the 1960s imagined or proposed. One must visualize the possibility, then, that separation may not be successful.