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Cultural traits from China have been slowly entering Europe for more than two thousand years. Some of these, such as gunpowder, the compass and paper have been of outstanding importance while others have created but passing fads. It is impossible to identify all of the influences of Chinese origin which have entered European culture during this long period. Even in the case of clearly recognized Chinese traits the records are inadequate as to many of the details of their westward journey. Despite the incompleteness of our knowledge, a brief survey of the existing in formation throws light on some aspects of European cultural history and on some of the mechanisms of diffusion. There were four main periods of contact between China and the West. The first was the era of silk trade with Rome and the ancient Mediterranean world which lasted from the first century B.C. to the middle of the sixth century A.D. The rise of the Arab Empire in the seventh century began a long period of relations between China and the Near East in which the Moslem world acted partially as a barrier but also as an intermediary between China and Europe. The Mongol Empire of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries made possible brief direct contacts of Europe with China. Modem relations of China and the West began with the Age of Discoveries in the sixteenth century.

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]

One of the primary functions of sociological research is to provide understanding of the process of culture change. In the past, sociologists have been interested in several aspects of the problem, e.g., the invention process, the effects of innovation, and the description of change over extended periods of history. The factor of compatibility was examined as it operated in the acceptance and rejection of several innovations by families in New Haven, Connecticut. The innovations considered were those which survived a culling of several score of possibilities according to criteria imposed by methodological considerations. The innovations meeting these requirements included two types of medical insurance plans, supermarkets, canasta, and television. This paper reports on the investigation of television. An analysis of television revealed that the cultural equipment required for its use included an average education, a minimum income, and a penchant for passive recreation of the spectator kind. Very briefly, the comparison of the accepting and rejecting groups showed that the culture patterns of the accepters coincided with that behavior required for use of television, while the patterns of rejecters diverged.

In this paper we briefly review relevant research on the culture of poverty and set our findings within the general context of culture of poverty arguments. Data from a community survey in a Southwestern city are analyzed using Oscar Lewis' four major culture of poverty dimensions: 1) the individual, 2) the family. 3) the slum community, and 4) the community's relation to society. In our study a sample of 271 black respondents was divided into two groups, here termed the "poor" and the "non-poor." In noting all the broad traits studied in all dimensions taken together, some support for Lewis' culture of poverty was found in less than half of the cases; and in several cases our findings were in direct opposition to culture of poverty predictions. In addition, we have suggested that the majority of those traits that did lend support to Lewis' argument might be better classified as situational conditions of poverty rather than as a part of a bonafide "culture" of poverty. The findings of this paper may call into question the use of the "culture of poverty" perspective as a basis for policy decisions. [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]

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]

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 article examines the Guatemalan census enumeration for 1950 and 1964 and the vital registration from 1945 to 1969. The examination reveals an inconsistency in the ethnic reporting of Ladino and Maya between the two systems. The evidence indicates census misclassification of the Maya population. An adjustment procedure is presented to revise the Ladino and Mayan populations for the two census years. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the position and points out the future directions in Southwestern archaeological research in the U.S. One of the more interesting of the new directions in Southwestern archaeology has been the appearance over the past decade of a series of studies that can be described as examples of the new archaeology. There have been several studies that have focused upon aspects of prehistoric social organization in the Southwest. Some of it was summarized in a recent book specifically designed to explore the nature of social organization.

The article explores the social meaning of cultural revolution and the role of education as a component of generalized change processes. The following are certain avenues of cultural revolution which combine philosophical views and operational means: technological avenue, behavioral avenue, socialistic and humanistic avenues. It suggests that cultural revolution is not an educational topic. In addition, there is no scientific basis on which to conclude the importance of cultural change or revolution as the restorative solution.

The article focuses on the concept of selective culture change. The development of culture consists of three essential things, firstly, although culture grows in response to human needs-physiological, psychological and social, it becomes elaborated beyond such needs. Secondly, no person invents more than the tiniest fraction of the cultural heritage it calls its own, borrowing or the pooling of cultural items through processes of continual diffusion of new items is a major law of cultural growth. Thirdly, any particular culture gets set in its ways, and while it borrows from others, it reinterprets everything borrowed to suit its own peculiar taste. A culture is a functional system of interdependent parts, it is more or less in equilibrium. A change in one part tends to effect changes in all the rest. To introduce an important change in the economy is therefore likely to begin a chain of reactions that may well end in disorganization and death. So a program to change a culture selectively presents serious difficulties but it is possible.

If we agree that social indicators indicate or measure only within the context of a theory of social change, and if we further assume that theories of social change which deal only with social conditions, behavioral interchanges or transactions, and the material environment, are likely to be unsuccessful because they ignore the "mental" side of life, it follows that we will want our theories of social change, and the social indicators associated with them, to incorporate the cultural and group psychological aspects of social behavior. When we look to possible data bases in search of raw material for social indicators of culture and group psychology there are, broadly speaking, two possibilities. Data may be gathered from interviews or from cultural artifacts. But interview response data, because of (a) their reactive character; (b) the difficulty of compiling time-series of responses; (c) the impossibility of making use of historical sources and (d) difficulties of validation against indicators external to the survey research context are, perhaps, less than ideal as a possible basis for social indicator systems. This leaves us with the possibility, and with the problem, of developing group psychological and cultural indicators from an analysis of cultural artifacts: literary documents, films, political speeches and other sources of this sort. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents a study on the introduction of a new term called "cultural lag" in sociology. Cultural lag is defined as a condition of strain or maladjustment produced by the lagging of one of two correlated parts of culture behind the other. The occasion for the lagging of police behind population may be viewed as the structural rigidity of city governmental organization which prevents the adding or retiring of policemen rapidly enough to keep pace with population trends, thus compelling taxpayers in the latter situation to pay more for police protection than is necessary. The illustration of cultural lag presented in sociology is, in the meaning of that phrase, nonsense. Population data are demographic phenomena at the level of sociological analysis, i.e., aspects of social behavior are inferred from population characteristics. An increase in the number of persons in a particular area, a city for instance, whether by natural increase or migration, is not a cultural or superorganic phenomenon.

The war has brought new realization of the terrible consequences of international anarchy. The bankruptcy of nationalism as a system of world organization is proclaimed on every side. People are exhorted to adopt internationalism as a way of life, as though by an act of will we might create a master for the monster, rampant nationalism, which has perhaps reached its climax in modem Germany and Japan. The long, slow processes of cultural growth are disregarded, and people turn with high hope to the magic of conversion as a solution to their problems. With techniques of control developed by modem research people perhaps can increase somewhat the tempo of change but cultural growth is much more an organic than a mechanical process. They are likely to find the obstetrician's techniques are more effective than those of the inventor. They can do much to guarantee the health of the society which is giving birth to a new one, relieve somewhat the pain and anxiety which accompanies it, and prevent birth trauma but if they hurry the process too much we may produce abortion or those very traumatic experiences we seek to avoid.

The author says that important as is the culture and social thought of ancient China as part of China's own intellectual and cultural heritage and as a component of comparative culture, it is functioning also in immediate and practical problems. That fact is one of the key notions prerequisite to understanding China and to judging current policy and program which draw on these ancient sanctions. From the practical point of view as well as the theoretical standpoint cultural development in general, it is pertinent to ask how far Chinese culture has been presented as isolated and indigenous, by those historians of social thought who have been addressing the sociologists and other social scientists of our day, and how far that conception is justified. The geographical situation had its very definite mental counterpart. Indeed, one might even contend that ancient India, the Mesopotamian civilizations, the Mediterranean world, and Europe shared, within the widest limits of variation, one system of human thought, while ancient China presents people with another.

For a number of years, the Institute of Human Relations at Yale University has been conducting a general program of research in the social sciences, with particular reference to the areas common to, and marginal between, the special sciences of sociology, anthropology, psychology and psychiatry. In 1937, as one of the specific research projects on the anthropological and sociological side of this program, the Cross-Cultural Survey was organized. A year of previous experience in collaborating with other social scientists in research and discussion had made it clear to the anthropologists associated with the Institute that the rich resources of ethnography, potentially of inestimable value to workers in adjacent fields, were practically inaccessible to them. Culture is not instinctive, or innate or transmitted biologically, but is composed of habits, that is, learned tendencies to react, acquired by each individual through his own life experience after birth. The conception of cultural change as an adaptive process seems to many anthropologists inconsistent with, and contradictory to, the conception of cultural change as an historical process. The Cross-Cultural Survey can answer specific questions of fact with a minimum of time-wasting labor. It can reveal gaps in the ethnographical record and thus suggest what groups should be restudied and what hitherto unreported data should be gathered in the field. It can subject existing theoretical hypotheses about collective human behavior to a quantitative test and can be used to formulate and verify new social science generalizations.

Houses, roads and telephone lines can be built and rebuilt. Communities cannot. Construction engineers, efficiency experts, classical economists and others who are accustomed to orienting their thinking in terms of logically developed formulas, plans and specifications have been justly accused of thinking of people in very unrealistic terms. The fact that communities cannot be built need not mean resignation to the status quo. Social processes and change can be nurtured. The distinction between plans and quick building or construction, on the one hand and ideas and their slow nurture and unfolding, on the other, is fundamental because experience and history have shown that it is usually lost sight of by impatient people who attempt to change society. Planned revitalizing of community life must take into consideration the cultural backgrounds of the people involved. Existing cultural traits or processes should be used where possible in the nurturing of community development. Cooperatives and other group programs must be developed gradually if the patterns and required group integration for such action are not already in existence.

From the beginnings of culture there has been an intimate web of interrelationships between the family and other institutions because the persons who make up the family are also participants in the economic, religious, and other social activities of a community. Never has the family lived alone. The family as an isolated institution is unrealistic. The exigencies of the struggle for survival from primitive to contemporary societies have required not only that individuals have the additional security which economic and psychological participation in the family life affords, but have demanded as well that several families cooperate in economic activities. Moreover, families have always commingled on ceremonial occasions, whether religious or political, and have combined into larger groups in feuds and warfare. One effective method of studying the impact of culture on the family is through an analysis of how cultural change affects the status and role of woman as wife and mother and, consequently, how it affects family form and function.

The article says that in these days of increasing worship of the myth of race it is especially important to ask what are the real determinants of naturalization. Defenders of Anglo-Saxon heritage, both the well meaning and the masked night-riding varieties, are prone to believe that mainly the Nordic strain of peoples seeks to become naturalized. The lesser breeds are alleged to be content to remain aliens, except when forced by economic pressure and the need of qualifying for certain jobs. The relative percents naturalized of the various foreign-born groups in the U.S. are pointed to in support of this theory. And the inference is drawn that normal interest in naturalization is generally determined by race. Hence it is believed that the Nordics, such as the Germans, English, Scotch, and Scandinavians, are innately better material for American society than the non-Nordics, such as the Russians, Italians, Poles, and other South Europeans. The article presents a sample study of the foreign born made by the writer under the auspices of Yale University. The study highlights that the determinants of naturalization are cultural and not racial in nature.

The concept of cultural lag is meaningless unless it is limited to a single culture pattern at a particular time. Eskimo culture traits cannot lag behind French traits. Portuguese women may wash their milk bottles on sandy beaches in Portugal, but their practice is not lagging behind the American technique involving mechanical devices, nor are they in advance of the practices of other women who may scrub theirs with brushes. In the above paragraph, a clue to the conditions that may produce, if continued, cultural lags, is found. The discovery of lags, the shifting and reshifting of traits, the checking and rechecking of their functions, the general manipulation of culture pattern, all the details involved in the process of rationally and consciously amending and directing the evolution of culture, will have to be done by men trained in the social sciences, and disciplined in the spirit of science and objectivity.

The article offers information about the generalizing models of structure, system, and process for ordering relationships among the cultural data, in the spirit of this modern effort in science. Furthermore, it presents information on the progress in the field of anthropology as well as an explanation of the science of anthropology, the impacts of culture on man's special behavior, and the views of sociologists on anthropology. The author also includes the study of the small but growing tradition within anthropology which is constructing the behavioral, not formal or mental, structures and processes for the social reality of culture, which are operational in defining and empirical but generative in ordering the data.

Following Parson's distinction between cultural and social systems, a tentative model of assimilation which distinguishes social and cultural assimilation is Proposed. This model is tested in an analysis of Puerto Rican migrants to New York City. Both the analytical and empirical data seem to reveal a basis for maintaining that social and cultural assimilation are, to a degree, independent processes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Much of the current social science is based upon the idea that social change characterizes primarily only this times or this generation. This is not true. In order to understand the farm family and the family farm one must be acquainted with the fact that social and cultural change has been a perennial characteristic of the civilization. Everything is always changing in rural life, including the farm family and the family farm. Neither the family farm nor the farm family has been the same from one broad period to another from the Homeric period to date. However, the farm family and the family farm have shown a certain recurrence of patterns although under somewhat different conditions. Forms of family organization, strength of domestic institutions, and forms of social challenge have been very much the same in the primitive, the middle and the late periods of each of the three great swings of Western culture. Furthermore, the family and the family farm are components of larger organizations of culture. What happens to them is generally decisive in many larger affairs.

The article is concerned with Two Principles of social change. The Two Principles centered significantly about a persistent moral bias. Authors witnessed a number of historical instances in civilized society where moral ideas, as well as institutions, seemed distorted by this bias, exhibiting a dramatic partiality towards either the social or individual values. The first of the Two Principles dealt with the emergence of a new kind of morality from a biased institutional order. The second was concerned with how such ideals affect institutions. The cases studied suggested that Compensatory Moral Ideals, reflecting principally values lacking, rather than present, in the existing order, tend to make existing institutions appear immoral, and to direct social reform towards a new order compatible with the values embodied in the Compensatory Moral Ideals. The value of a theoretical construct depends upon in interpreting fact. The Two Principles are, of course, merely hypothetical and must be justified by their usefulness, if possible, in illuminating and rendering intelligible moral history and related problems.

Much is written about American society today--its ills are listed, described, and analyzed. Sooner or later, some suggest, the panacea for all its problems must be found in education. Education has thus become a religion of the twentieth century. Yet if faith in it is to be warranted, there must be more than preachments and listed objectives-there must be evidence that the "good life" is attainable for all. Institutional education in the United States has never charted the direction of society. Generally, it has reflected the culture of which it is a part En fact, school curricula seldom, if ever, even keep pace with the culture, let alone posit the direction of cultural change. Education has seldom dealt effectively with the burning problems of America or world culture on the urgent questions concerning mankind. There is need for concerted action and constructive programming among all professional persons interested in the conditions arising from the demands of a fast-moving society.

Rapid changes have transformed certain aspects of human culture so drastically within the last half-century that very few, if any, persons have the intellectual power to comprehend the radically new situation confronting mankind. In addition, there looms the shadow of nuclear warfare. Men are frightened at this juncture in history and there is little to comfort them. Religion is now much like the sleeve of an outer garment worn thin through too much wiping of a sniffling nose. Social work has lost its lofty vision of a redeemed society and has become content with itself as a profession. Religion and social work, along with all sectors of society, have felt the challenge of the widescale unsettling. Like persons, they have been affected by this sense of alienation. They have come to realize that the traditional society which comfortably nurtured them has been transformed. Both religion and social work, then, are faced with a common predicament. The rapid cultural changes of the last decades, the rise of international threats to human existence, the decay of vital reliance upon transcendent belief systems, the rising impersonality of urbanized living, the failure of politics to win the "good life" for all peoples, the growing fragmentation of professionalism, the overpowering influence of rampant bureaucracy, and other features of an age in transition-these have created the common predicament for religion and social work.

Discusses the political rivalry between Patzcuaro and Morelia in Mexico, and the cultural clash it represents. Rivalry as item in the 16th-century geography of Mexico; Effects of emerging mineral wealth the extended beyond the regions of mining; Stamp on the country left by Vasco de Quiroga and Antonio de Mendoza; Pattern of life represented by the Tarascan Indians; European point of view represented by Mendoza.