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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]

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]

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]

The article reports that the Committee on nominations wishes to present set its slate of nominees for the American Sociological Association, 1968-69. In an age of domestic and foreign tensions and crisis, successful social change is a crucial challenge and a welcome opportunity. The 1967 Annual Meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science will be held between December 26-30, 1967, in the New York Hilton and Americana Hotels, New York. Four papers will address the question of what impact social science research has on policy. They will look not only at the deliberate and intended application of social science findings in reaching policy decisions, but at the unintended consequences of social science analysis and the dissemination of results on the data themselves and on the formulation and implementation of public policy. Participants will discuss the uses of social science in societal self-analysis and decision-making, some social consequences of research on education and on racial relations and the reconstruction of social realities in developing areas.

The article informs that the analysis of intellectual folkways has probably not received as much attention in American sociology as it has elsewhere, despite significant treatment accorded to this field, both explicit and implicit, in the work done by certain American scholars.' In view of the shifting basis of the content and technique of knowledge in relation to a changing cultural base, such an analysis would appear to be a matter of special interest and concern to the educational sociologist. The analysis of the intellectual folkways thus appears to serve a dual function. First, not only is it part and parcel of the entire field of the sociology of knowledge, but secondly, the intellectual folkways may be viewed as constituting an extremely sensitized barometer to cultural transition and social change. In this paper, the attempt was made to determine the nature and direction of certain intellectual changes during a particularly crucial period of our history, the period between the years 1920 and 1940, as measured by the selectivity exercised by the reading public in the form of quantities and types of new books published by American publishers during the years specified.

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]

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.

The article explores the causes of competition between creative artists. The author points out that the concept of a creation-space is envisaged as a mathematically more precise and general form of the common notion of a field or area of activity in which the artist has the nature for contribution. Then, the second reason that competition occurs is the notion that no two individuals will occupy the same point in this creation-space, and indeed that when there are many creative artists in a field they will tend to move as far apart as possible so as to fill every corner of the field accessible to them. Finally, the pressure of past excellence on the artist, forcing him to do something outside these filled creation sites, can lead him to wild explorations and distortions.

The article presents various abstracts related to social change, employment and administration. The first one is "Comparative Theories of Social Change." It is a report on a symposium on comparative social change, organized by the Foundation for Research on Human Behavior and financed by the Agency for International Development. The next one is "Job Enlargement," by Paul A. Stewart, which is a case study of the Maytag Company's experience with job enlargement in blue-collar and managerial positions. "The United States Overseas Executive: His Orientations and Career Patterns," by Richard F. Gonazalez and Anant R. Negandi, is the another abstract which presents a study that was undertaken to characterize the overseas executive's orientation, career pattern, social background, military service, mobility and education in the United States. Some other abstracts are "The Faculty Promotion Process: An Empirical Analysis of the Administration," by Fred Luthans; "Managerial Skill and Knowledge," by Kenneth McLennan and "Empirical Sociology in Poland," edited by Jan Szczepanski.

In The Sociological Imagination, C. Wright Mills attempted to point the way toward a more nearly viable sociology by identifying and defining the horns of the dilemma upon which the discipline was, in his estimation, caught. These horns were those of grand theory and abstracted empiricism. On the one hand, Mills believed, are those sociologists whose writings are on such a generalized level that they are unrelated to the sociological and social problems of the empirical world. On the other hand, are those sociologists whose work is so tied to picayune fact-grubbing that the results of their research have no theoretical orientation, are not cumulative, and, therefore, also are not relevant nor of value to the student of public affairs. The Millsian solution to the sociological dilemma was characteristic. He not only demolished its horns but also suggested that sociology could find a greater relevance in the world of affairs if it would follow an imaginative course through their remains. The sociological imagination, derived as it is from American pragmatism, became at once a method for research into empirical reality and for theoretical ordering of the data from that research. The models thus created from historical and contemporary data became open-ended ones of process, dynamic assessment, and strategy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines some of the functions of social conflict in the process of social change. Conflict not only generates new norms and institutions, it may be said to be stimulating directly in the economic and technological realm. Conflict within and between bureaucratic structures provides means for avoiding the ossification and ritualism which threatens their form of organization. Although conflict is apparently dysfunctional for highly rationalized systems, it may actually have vital latent functional consequences. However, not all social systems contain a degree of conflict and strain. Nevertheless, it is noticeable that the rigidity of the system and the intensity of conflict within it are not independent of each other.

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.

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.

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.

Folk sociology undertakes to provide a basic subject field for the historical study of total human society in process and for the empirical study of group behavior in interaction. It is primarily a general sociology on the level of social theory constructed in the framework of a societal continuum with a body of propositions and a series of concepts adequate for scientific inquiry into the interacting causal factors of cultural evolution and the cumulative products of social change. The conceptualization of folk sociology as theory finds its genesis and development resting solidly upon real situations and continuing needs. For, manifestly, some of the essential needs of sound sociological theory, now inseparably interrelated with scientific research, may clearly be identified with a number of needs of contemporary science and society. These needs are reflected in trends and problems both in the development and integration of the behavioral sciences and in the demand for expanding knowledge for understanding contemporary society and for resolving the critical ideological problems of modern civilization.

The problem of change has been of continuing interest to rural sociologists. However, most of the concern for change has been directed toward specific topics such as family living, farm technology, rural institutions, and industrialization. There has been little attempt to relate change in these specific areas to general theories of social change. This has probably been due no less to failings on the part of students of rural life than to the inadequacy of existing theories of change. In a recent article, Wilbert Moore, attempts to show that social change is a respectable topic of concern for sociologists. He would move the chapters on social change from the end to a more central position in textbooks of sociology. Talcott Parsons, after dealing with the structural aspects of society, has become more concerned with its dynamic aspects. He is now teaching a seminar on "Societal Evolution," which is certainly an innovation in the curricula of sociology. These and many other efforts indicate a growing concern for the study of change on the part of sociologists.

Theoretical analysis of change should distinguish between processes which maintain the equilibrium of a system and structural changes wherein a system moves from one state of equilibrium to another. Structural change occurs when disturbances in or around a system are sufficient to overcome the forces of equilibrium. For social systems one source of disturbance is alteration in the relation of the system to its environment which produces deficits in the input of goal attainment to acting units. When such units are performing multiple functions there is pressure toward structural differentiation, an important category of structural change. Differentiation can not occur, however, unless concomitant processes of social reorganization provide facilities for performance of the functions in the new differentiated context and patterns of normative legitimation and support. Successful differentiation involves normative reorganization at four levels: (1) the provision of opportunity through the emancipation of facilities from ascriptive ties; (2) inclusion of differentiated units in higher level collectivity structures; (3) upgrading of norms to higher levels of generality; (4) extension of values to legitimize new functional units. The processes and conditions of differentiation are illustrated by analysis of a case important to rural sociology, the separation of household and producing unit. [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.