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Collective behavior has been a long standing focal point of sociological interest. From its earliest use by Robert E. Park, the concept has been an expression of the sociologist's concern with various dramatic processes of social control, especially those manifesting rapid social change. While the work of specialists in collective behavior has emphasized the study of very specific and delimited events such as crowds, fashions, and fads, the subject matter of collective behavior has come to include the most crucial society-wide movements and upheavals. Moreover, empirical work in this field has reflected a sophisticated understanding of the difficulties of observing and recording complex aspects of social reality which envelop the observer and resist simplified coding and data-reduction techniques. By contrast, the theoretical relevance of the collective behavior framework has been problematic until recently and open to extensive debate. In fact, there was a period of time, after the initial contributions by Robert E. Park, in which the theoretical disputations about the nature of collective behavior appeared to divert creative energies. As a specialized orientation collective behavior became encapsulated and immune to the theoretical developments in other aspects of sociological thinking. In recent years, say the last five years, there has been a renewed interest in the collective behavior approach. The following papers by Neil Smelser and Ralph Turner, which provided the basis for an American Sociological Association panel, give expression to the search for a new balance between theory and empirical enterprise. These papers and the immediate discussion they provoked indicate that some sociologists are using the rubric to focus on crucial substantive issues of contemporary social change. In part, the dramatic events of the civil rights movement in the United States and the equally dramatic transformation of social structure in the new nations have contributed to this renaissance. In part, the response is defensive against the persistent criticism from outside disciplines concerning the excessive expenditure of intellectual energies on trivial processes of social control. What is important in any case is that collective behavior, although strictly sociological in its approach, supplies a link to the interests of political scientists and historians who have long been concerned with revolutions and mass movements. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Natural history, observational, and interview data from a study of two anti-pornography crusades and the social movement organizations which created and directed them are used to assess nine propositions formulated by Zald and Ash (1966) concerning the structure and dynamics of social movement organizations. The Zald-Ash propositions were formulated from the literature on national, established social movement organizations. This paper explores the applicability of the propositions to those organizations which are small and emerging. The propositions are generally supported. Discrepancies are accounted for by the significant influence of leadership orientation, goal specificity, and incentive structure in determining other structural and dynamic characteristics of small or emerging social movement organizations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Interest in the diffusion of innovations has, in the last twenty years, produced a plethora of research findings, which have been summarized by a number of writers (e.g., Lionberger, 1960; Rogers, 1962, 1967 and 1968; Katz et al., 1963; Jones, 1967; Bohlen, 1064). However, these summaries are basically taxonomic and programmatic rather than theoretic in nature. As the paucity of theoretical work in diffusion studies has been well recognized (cf. Bogers, 1962:300; Robinson and Bailey, 1965:332), there exists a real need for us to search for a general theory pertinent to this field. The aim of the present paper is to discuss a recurrent theme running through many diffusion studies, namely the old concept of adopter-innovation compatibility, and to show how this concept looms as highly suggestive of its utility as a theoretical approach to the studies in the diffusion of innovations and social change. The notion of adopter-innovation compatibility has been utilized in recent diffusion research in two general ways: explicitly and implicitly. We shall therefore discuss first these two different modes in which it has been used and then its implications as a general theory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since its first systematic treatment by Max Weber in Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft in the early twenties, the concept of charisma has been of only limited use to the social sciences. This is so because of fundamental disagreement concerning its meaning and application. In response to this, the present paper offers (1) a brief examination of Weber's contribution, (2) a critical analysis of this position based in part on the recent literature, and (3) a final formulation of the concept. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this paper is to describe the model for a poverty intervention program that purports to work largely inside the system as an organization funded by the Office of Economic Opportunity, yet intends to bring together presently disparate intrasystem and extrasystem components of the community into a single program for social change. This social action approach, conceptualized here as the Overlap model, will be outlined and then for further clarification compared with Saul Alinsky's approach as summarized by Riessman. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

What is required for understanding models of development is a combination of linguistic analysis and sociological analysis. It might well be that what is needed is nothing short of a combination of the logical skills of Wittgenstein and the sociological capacities of Weber. It would be presumptuous of me to claim to have effected such a synthesis. On the other hand, it would be ludicrous of all of us not to at least make an attempt to scale the heights. The word model is as slippery a concept as is currently in use by the social sciences. Even if we can settle on a formal definition of the word, namely, that a model is an isomorphic representation of objects that leads to an unmistakable identification of the expression of the object with the physical object, we are left with a host of substantive issues. There are at least three different fundamental meanings which attach to the term model—meanings which almost put the word in a different universe of discourse each time. First, model is used as a surrogate for levels, or an epistemological statement of how the world is carved up. Second, model is used as a surrogate for strategies. This entails the pragmatics of social change, or how one goes about carving a world up. Third, model is often used as a surrogate for theory, or how the explanation of changes in the world can best be made. What I should like to do here is provide at the outset a framework showing what is entailed in each of these types of models of development and then showing the implications of model-construction for social change. In this paper, I do not take my chore to be other than an accounting of the meaning of development at the macroscopic scale (rather than its microscopic details). Nor do I interpret my chore as a presentation of my own model, since this has been attempted elsewhere. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There has been a great amount of criticism of structural-functional theory, particularly with respect to its supposed inability to deal with social change. Should structural-functional theory be unable to account for the sources of social change, then it is indeed guilty of an implicit ideological commitment to the status quo. If it can be shown that this theory is capable of dealing with social change, then we can accept Merton's statement: … it is the evaluations which permit the pouring of ideological content into the bottles of functionalism. The bottles themselves are neutral to their contents, and may serve equally well as containers for ideological poison or for ideological nectar. The position taken here is that Merton's statement is correct, provided that an important accommodation is made. This accommodation consists in the explicit incorporation of the dialectical process into structural-functional theory. The dialectical process implies a conflict model of society; it is in the tradition of Marx, who argued that without conflict there can be no progress. It adopts the proposition that conflict is empirically both a normal and an essential element in the social structure. In the simplest terms, the dialectic tells us something about the sources of a particular kind of social change. We are not content, as is Dahrendorf, with advocating a conflict model of society as an alternative to functionalism. The goal is nothing less than to reconcile the two approaches. Dahrendorf has himself recognized that the conflict model cannot provide all the answers since society is "Janusheaded." It is extremely difficult to talk about the prediction of empirical outcomes when one is required to look first at an integration model and then turn to the conflict model. It is necessary to construct one model which will qualify the integration model of society so as to give weight (the exact amount is an empirical question) to the disruptive elements in society. A considerable portion of this paper will be devoted to disengaging the dialectic from its ideological moorings and making it trim for sociological analysis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper I shall set down a few ideas that I consider central in the study of collective behavior and conflict, and indicate a few similarities and differences between my views on these subjects and the views of others. I shall organize my remarks around the following questions. (1) What are the defining characteristics of collective behavior? In addressing this question I shall simultaneously be talking about what I consider to be the scope of the field. (2) What are the central problems in this field? (3) What are the ways in which these problems can be most adequately handled? Here I shall outline the "value-added" approach to explaining collective outbursts and movements. (4) To conclude, I shall focus on social movements with political aims, and ask two questions: When is a movement likely to become revolutionary? When is a revolutionary movement likely to become violent? In discussing these final questions, I shall apply some of the variables of the value-added scheme, and introduce the subject of conflict explicitly. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The title of this study is that given to the review of a book in a recent issue of Commentary. It also refers to an important contemporary social movement, namely, mental illness. This is a movement that accords to irrationalism a constantly increasing respectability. An enormous increase in the kinds of conduct classified as irrational has resulted in the past few decades from the work of some of the most highly educated and intellectual students of human behavior. One corollary is a decrease in the kinds of behavior classified as rational. This has been accompanied by a violent attack upon the concepts of reason and individual responsibility, and by attempts to substitute the concepts of irresponsibility and exculpation. These attempts have been successful to a great degree. This paper will concern itself with two problems that mark this social movement. The first problem is that of definition and counting. The second is that of resolving the paradox of irrationalism. It would be tedious to summarize the studies of the past twentyfive years that show that the interest in mental illness is a social movement rather than a scientific development. One of the first, by Kingsley Davis, showed that it possesses a characteristic essential to any social movement. Its proponents conceive it to be a panacea. As a social movement it is in many respects the functional equivalent of religion in the system of traditional middle-class values. The movement is today continuing to propagate middle-class values and ethics under the guise of science. It presents the prototype of the middle-class or upper-class person as being in all important respects equivalent to that of the mentally healthy person. Thus it is not to be wondered at that when psychiatrists and other clinicians (who are professional and upper class ) interview and otherwise "examine" lower-class children, especially delinquent boys, they find that the boys are "emotionally disturbed" or "mentally ill" in some form and to some degree. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A genuinely sociological theory of social change is lacking, but the literature of the social sciences abounds with the elements of such a theory. The present paper deals with one of these elements, namely the change from tribalism to urbanism as a major instance of social change. For this purpose the concepts of culture and civilization are examined, and a plea is made to restore the concept of civilization to its rightful place in the vocabulary of sociologists and anthropologists. In doing this, the intention is not to reduce social change to the process of urbanization, but rather to isolate the sociological element which makes for social change within the supersession of a familial by a territorial society, wherever it occurs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is in two parts. The first section describes the relationship of a number of variables to political status and their relationship to each other. The second section deals with the kind of predictions that might have been made with these data and the relative efficiency of one type of prediction compared to another. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]