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This article report on an attempt to investigate, by questionnaires given to college and high-school students, the hypothesis that the emergence of a "post-modern mind," is being witnessed characterized by world-outlook, different from those held in previous stages of Western society and more particularly. The article intends to investigate whether the religious attitudes suggested as characteristic of the "post-modern mind" do in fact exist. According to a hypothesis, the development of Western society has gone through various stages and that these are associated with distinctive "minds". These "minds" depend, basically, on differing ways of approaching or defining reality. They then pattern the institutional and cultural forms of a given stage of development. The hypothesis also holds, that people in mid-twentieth century are witnessing a change similar in import to the change around 1650, namely, the emergence of a new "mind", radically different in approach from the "modern mind" and already viewing the "obvious" notion of reality previously held as something antiquated and alien.

This article presents information on various papers related to migration. One of the papers discussed is "Venti Anni in Favore dell'Agricoluiura," by G. D'Ascenzio that was published in the December 1964 issue of the periodical "Orientamenti Sociali." The author, basing himself on the agricultural situation in Italy twenty years after the establishment of the Confederazicene Nazionale Coltivatori Diretti, delineates the economic conditions of Italian agriculture, with emphasis on technological progress, social evolution, and psychological, religious and political developments in the field. The most interesting conclusion from a sociological point of view regards the rural migration to urban centers abroad. Notwithstanding the fact that this reduction of the agricultural population is a positive sign of economic advancement, it nonetheless presents various problems of a social, psychological, moral and religious nature. Another paper discussed is "About Reference Group Alienation, Mobility and Acculturation," by G.D. Berreman that was published in a previous issue of the periodical "American Anthropologist." The author submits that many terms and concepts used in the description and analysis of the confrontation of diverse ethnic groups, for example, acculturation, assimilation, mobility, can be used more precisely in light of a deepening of the knowledge of reference groups.

This paper was stimulated by the controversy that has developed over the Moynihan Report and the question of the extent to which the Negro family represents an institutionalization of culturally "deviant" norms. In order to probe this question further, an attempt was made to determine some of the concomitants of discrepancies between the subjectively perceived actual and ideal family role behavior of a sample of Negro males. The results indicate that such discrepancies in family role performance are related to relatively low evaluations of one's own achievements and probability of success in goal striving, as well as relatively higher discrepancies between achievement and aspiration. These findings point to the fact that discrepancies in family role performance of the Negro male are part of a more encompassing perception of failure in the larger arena of goal-striving behavior. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper outlines a framework for studying the social-cultural determinants of family size in 20 low mortality countries of controlled natality. Two broad hypotheses are proposed: (1) Family size varies inversely with the availability of alternatives for the satisfaction of interests presumably satisfied by having children. (2) Family size is smallest under two polar sets of conditions: (a) where the social setting maximizes the individual's expectation that his interests and those of his children will be satisfied, and (b) where the social setting minimizes this expectation. Representative social indicators for making the necessary international comparisons are enumerated, and the steps in their construction discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present paper reports further data relative to cultural influences based upon 708 Draw-a-Man tests collected in Lebanon and Egypt. A cultural explanation of this decrease is suggested. The data in the article seem to indicate that there are cultural handicaps to Draw-a-Man performance in the Near East, but that these handicaps affect children most strongly after age 6. In the opinion of researchers, downward trends in scores are related to deficiencies in the child's experience relative to representation of the human figures, as by dolls, masks, wood carvings, sculpture, paintings, and other pictures. In general, the Near Eastern child's visual experience with human representations is limited.

Definitions of community in current usage are many and usually vague and non-isolating. A definition which would have wide acceptability and utility, would be one which was operational and included people in interaction in a given area. This paper works toward such a definition. It presents a number of criteria considered essential for an operational definition of community. These include: people, sets of interrelated centers, the pooling of information at such centers, and the distribution of the information pooled to people connected to sets of centers. It is suggested that the use of the operational criteria for community will help us to "find" the community in cities. Further, that approaching communities as sets of interrelated centers, generates interesting and testable hypotheses about (1) the relationship between types of communities and culture change and persistence, and (2) the relationship between types of communities and cultural forms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper outlines the history and current status of sociological research involving the delineation, interpretation, and use of rural socio-cultural areas. The authors take the position that such homogeneous areas should be outlined in terms of sociocultural factors that are related to the purposes for which the areas are being delineated. The significance of these areas for research and in action programs is pointed out. Needed research is outlined and some hypotheses are suggested for further testing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the question whether the adjustment of ethnic groups is necessarily through acculturation and increasing conformity, and whether the process will always result in the destruction of the ethnic group as a functioning social subsystem within the larger society. Changes in the behavior of the Mennonite group in Manitoba over a period of seventy years are analyzed as a test case. Ideal types for the parent and host societies are formulated. The early history and recent trends in the Mennonite colonies are described, and Dawson's 1932 conclusions about the acculturation of the Canadian Mennonites are reconsidered. The hypothesis that an ethnic group, particularly a rural group, will necessarily be absorbed by the larger society when forced to adjust itself to the capitalistic economy of the larger society is rejected. It is concluded that adjustment is highly selective, and that, by developing new behavior patterns and institutions unlike those of either the parent or host culture, an ethnic group may be able to prevent assimilation and continue to function as a distinctive social subsystem. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The thesis of this paper is that the ‘culture base’ of the farm folk of Southern Appalachia greatly affects their standards and levels of living. This point of view is developed in a study of three small rural communities of East Tennessee in which the units were matched as nearly as possible in their original base of natural resources but subject to marked cultural variations. One community is somewhat typical of situations having few outside contacts; a second is a cultural island having a relatively high level of living for the area; and the third is a community undergoing definite change as a result of community planning. Major conclusions are: (1) that culture itself is an important variable in determining how human and natural resources are treated; (2) that isolation, physical and cultural, greatly retards change; and (3) that the T.V.A. is succeeding in inducing significant cultural and social change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper describes cultural changes which have occurred since pioneer days in a rural, east Wisconsin German ethnic island. The social process is considered in terms of cultural history, geography, mobility, and enmeshment of the area in the dominant American culture. To determine the nature and degree of changes in ethnic values and attitudes, attention is focused on farming methods, family functions, and cultural conflict. The area has succeeded in making easy adjustments to the American situation and has remained a stable society largely for the following reasons: a traditional pattern of a diversified agriculture, coupled with a willingness to experiment and to conserve soil fertility, a climate and soil suited to this type of farming, acceptance of dairying to assure a cash income, a unique local outlet for excess farm produce, familism, settlement in a large compact group, and contact with an urban culture quite similar to its own. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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What is it in American rural culture that we wish to conserve? In postulating as worthy of conservation (1) survival values and (2) values inherent in familism and territorial localism, we- must attempt to reconcile the dynamics of social change with the values which are considered worthy of preservation. This paper is an appraisal of the significance of the maze of local and national programs which have a bearing on the general problem. My hypothesis is that the primary group derivatives such as democracy, self-reliance, individuality, etc., have historically derived form the primary group and that weakening the primary group will tend to weaken these qualities. Conversely, action to strengthen the primary group will tend to conserve these qualities. Confronted by the fact of social change, we find ourselves attempting to adjust to a moving point, rather than to a fixed star. Since as human beings we cannot be oblivious to the future and are irrepressible planners, the sociologist, at least, should try to see to it that the primary group has a place in the plan for the "World of Tomorrow." [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In contrast to the peculiarly fluctuating Western relationship of religious and political powers, continuously in conflict with each other, the Russian religious structures consistently follow the more common pattern of monistic unity and are characterized by total subordination to the political system. The contrasting structural characteristics warrant a conceptual dichotomy in which dependency and independency of the religious structures occupy opposing ends of a typological scale. Challenging the fashionable view, which leads to the neglect of the cultural context of societal actions, this paper emphasizes the crucial impact of the cultural context in which a particular church*state relationship occurs. The early and unstable Western dualism exploded eventually into various, more or less imperfect pluralistic solutions; while in the foreseeable Russian future any dualistic or pluralistic diffusion of power is highly improbable. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present paper is the last in a series of three, all of which deal with premarital sexual intimacy compared cross-culturally. The cultures involved are an Intermountain area of the United States, which is predominantly Mormon and is relatively conservative or restrictive in its sexual outlook; a Midwestern section of the United States, which may be regarded as somewhat typical of the country as a whole; and Denmark, which, like the rest of Scandinavia, is relatively liberal or permissive in its sex norms. The two previous reports, by means of several statistical measures, demonstrated the sexual restrictiveness of the Intermountain culture and the sexual permissiveness of the Danish culture, as was originally hypothesized. Questionnaires were carefully constructed, translated into Danish, pretested several times on both sides of the Atlantic, revised on the basis of the pretests, and then administered during the spring of 1958 to classes in three universities selected from the three cultures under study.

This article presents a study which examined the impact of vertical social class mobility on family integration in the U.S. U.S. social scientists have published a mass of empirical data establishing the fact that social classes do exist in the country and, furthermore, that membership in a particular social class does tend to predict a wide range of behavior patterns from voting habits to kissing techniques. The study covers an investigation of 78 families. These family units were studied through a combination technique of having participant- observer papers written by student members of the families, using an outline provided by the writer. Interviews were conducted with students where further information seemed to be necessary. All of the cases were studied in the setting of a state university and reflected both patterns of vertical mobility and social class continuity. In general, families with social class continuity seem to have more stability and more sociological closeness than families in which either the entire group or some members of the group have been moving from one social class to another. The initial theory was based on the assumption that if social class is the basic variable which research implicitly assumes, then social class mobility must be one of the most powerful forces affecting family cohesion in U.S. culture.

Although the family in some form or other is universal among human societies, the particular form which the family takes is an aspect of the culture of a society. Different cultures are associated with different kinds of family life. Consequently a country such as the U. S. A., which includes diverse cultural groups, will present a variety of types of family life, complicating the task of education for family life by the fact that school children represent this cultural diversity of family life practices and values. The principal cultural sub-groups in the United States, judged by their differences in family-life patterns, are; Ethnic Groups--Italian-American, Polish-American, Japanese-American, Mexican-American, German-American, etc. Religious Groups--Jewish, Catholic, Protestant, Mormon, Mennonite, etc. Social Class Groups--Upper Class, Middle Class, Lower Class. The cultural differences between middle-class and lower-class or working-class families will be discussed in this paper, together with their implications for family life education in the secondary schools. The material cited is only suggestive. There are other cultural differences which are not mentioned here. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents information about papers "Intellectual and Social Progress in the Ancient Near East," by E.A. Speiser, and "Studies in the History of Culture," presented to Waldo G. Leland, 1942, summarized in the October-December 1942 issue of the periodical "The American Journal of Archaeology." Available evidence points to Mesopotamia as the oldest center of scientific observation permanently recorded, the author holds. This activity includes education and language study, jurisprudence, and the mathematical and natural sciences. These elements are interrelated and based on a concept of society restricting the powers of the State, and recognizing the rights of the individual. Owing to the authoritarian government of contemporary Egypt, science, though notable in several fields, lacked the breadth and balance shown in Lower Mesopotamia, the land of ancient Sumer, in the middle of the fourth millennium B.C.