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The article comments on papers on national renewal presented by University of the Philippines professor Zeus Salazar and National Secretariat for Social Action research director John J. Carroll as part of the Philippine Sociological Society's "Social Issues '72" public lecture series. The basic issues set forth by the papers are the following. It is held that the existing inequality between the rich and the poor is an obstacle to development. National renewal requires no less than radical changes, apparently the kind which come the day after the revolution. But this may never happen or if it does, it certainly will be long in coming. It will not come as long as one continues holding seminars, discussion sessions, public lecture series, and the like It is highly doubtful that change will ever emerge from the elite sector of society, except as a result of organized pressure from the grassroots, or the masses. The underlying implication here is, bluntly put unless the poor, whose strength lies in their numbers, grab power, they will never have it. Carroll cites the Latin-American experience in land reform.

This commentary uses the papers in this issue to focus on some of the basic research questions in development bureaucracies: What are the range of design requirements for development bureaucracies? What are the best fits between development bureaucracies and their relevant environments? What are the sources of interference within the existing system to development efforts? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents information about socio-political developments in West Germany in 1962. A discussion about health insurance reforms was held on August 23, 1962 by representatives from trade organizations and employers' associations. West German state support has been requested for mothers whose babies have been harmed as a result of using the drug Contergan. The West German paper industry held a strike in response to employers' refusal to raise wages by 12 percent.

Why should government intervene in the housing market? Most economists approach such a question with certain preconceptions about the functioning of private markets and the grounds for public intervention. Since this paper reflects those preconceptions, it is worth stating three of them explicitly at the outset. The first is that there is a strong general case for unregulated markets; known varieties of regulation often tend to reduce efficiency or to interfere with responsiveness to shifts in supply or demand conditions, and for these reasons tend to reduce consumer satisfaction. The second is that the presence of certain market characteristics--monopoly power and externalities are perhaps the most familiar examples--greatly weakens the case for nonintervention. The third is that the presence of special goals which conflict with market outcomes may also weaken the case for unregulated markets; intervention in the labor market through a wage subsidy, for example, is one way to achieve an income redistribution goal. Economists will therefore look for an answer to the question of why government intervention in housing first of all in special characteristics which distinguish housing from other markets, and secondly in any special goals society appears to have which relate closely to housing market outcomes. Knowledge of these special characteristics and goals will help answer not only the question of why--if at all--there should be government intervention but also the question of what forms any intervention might take. These statements suggest the outline of the present paper. The section following this introduction single out two characteristics, labeled "durability" and "neighborhood effects," which distinguish the housing market from most other markets. It defines these characteristics and discusses some of their probable effects on market behavior. The following short section singles out three goals, "equal opportunity," "output stability," and "minimum ... [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The essence of cybernetic organizations is that they are self-controlling, self-maintaining, self-realizing. Indeed, cybernetics has been characterized as the "science of effective organization," in just these terms. But the word "cybernetics" conjures, in the minds of an apparently great number of people, visions of computerized information networks, closed loop systems, and robotized man-surrogates, such as "artorgas" and "cyborgs." Man, the human animal, recoils. Surely this is not the world that Wiener envisaged, where there would at last be a "human use of human beings." But, given the trend of manifest events, is this not the world which is most probably evolving? Those who hold such a view are probably epitomized by the late Amos de Shalit, a nuclear physicist who almost a decade ago contended that we live in a world in which cybernetic applications of computer technology had already progressed to a point at which an autonomous "Turing Machine" or "Uttley Machine" culture is clearly foreshadowed. Thus, in his view, the most man could hope for now is parity with the machine, in terms of domination of the planet. But at the other extreme are those whose view is that the cybernetic vision is largely a mirage, and whose attitude is characterized by the quip "Given enough competent human beings in attendance, any computerized information system can be made to work." The argument of this paper runs in the following termsr (1) That this is a time in human affairs when, in the context of the foregoing analysis, the "radical" point of view is likely to prove to be the "conservative" one: we may well be in the early stages of a "cybernetic revolution" worthy of "1984" and "RUR." Thus, to accept as potential reality what may seem an alarmist view, may turn out to be the only perspective which secures viable options by promoting mankind's welfare. (2) That it is not "too late" to forestall the evolution of a dehumanizing "cybernetic culture," where humans are required to adapt to patterns of organizational efficiency dictated by machine logics. (3) But that we cannot "turn back the clock," nor should we want to. It is only an ameliorative tactic at best to interrupt the orderly utilization of modern technology, especially if there is a socio- economic assessment of impacts made prior to installation. At worst, the arbitrary forestalling of technology utilization may set in motion system dynamics which will prove ultimately counterproductive, even in terms of the value orientations of the human- oriented conservationists. (4) Thus, having both the developed and developing nations in view, the most universally effective social policy is likely that which utilizes to the fullest extent possible the fruits of cybernetic science and system research, in the service of mankind. (5) It follows from this that man's most urgent and pre-emptive need is maximally to utilize cybernetic science and computer technology within a general systems framework, to build a meta- systemic reality which is now only dimly envisaged. Intelligent and purposeful application of rapidly developing telecommunications and teleprocessing technology should make possible a degree of worldwide value consensus heretofore unrealizable. The vision of cybernetic organizations espoused by this paper is therefore that, while we appear to live in a Dicken- sonian "best of times, worst of times" world, cybernetic science, computer technology, and general systems concepts create potential for realization of the former, and elimination of much of what comprises the latter. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on a symposium which is apparently the first collection of papers focused primarily on research in the social psychology and sociology of housing as this relates to problems encountered by practitioners in housing and community development. The short history of social and psychological research on problems of housing exhibits marked shifts in the foci of interest, shifts which seem partly to result from institutional changes in housing. Because this reform context of research led to a focus on the social consequences of defective housing, little attention was devoted to the connections between architectural design and patterns of social life in housing environments not ordinarily considered substandard. This growing interest in social research may result from changes in institutional patterns of housing that have highlighted the sociological and psychological assumptions involved in housing practices. Large-scale housing, in contrast to the construction of a custom-built house or of a few houses, involves a relatively centralized body of decisions, with compact and highly visible results.

The article presents discussions by economists on papers by economists James N. Morgan and James D. Smith that was published in the May 1, 1970 issue of the journal "American Economic Review." The author states that the two papers presented by Morgan and Smith reflect changing times. According to the author, income distribution and especially the distribution at the low end are back in the spotlight as an issue of social policy and appropriately it is eliciting scientific attention. Early in the 1960's, concern with sharing the national economic pie was eclipsed by the urgent concern about the lagging growth of the pie. Economists were wise to focus on the aggregative issues in the early 1960's and it is wise to shift focus onto distributive issues as one enters the 1970's. Now that the U.S. has reaped important benefits of economic growth and high employment, other problems deserve emphasis. Both of the present papers make a contribution to that knowledge. They reflect different methodological approaches and stress different issues. They do share one substantive characteristic, pointing to the importance of labor force participation by the wife as a key determinant of family income and income changes.

In March 1973 President Nixon suspended all federal low income housing programs and instructed the Department of Housing and Urban Development to undertake a comprehensive review of government housing programs and policies. The report of the National Housing Review, completed in October 1973, drew heavily on earlier economic analyses. Both the National Housing review and earlier studies are quite critical of existing housing programs. These studies contain a serious flaw; they give insufficient attention to the nature and extent of racial discrimination in urban housing markets and, thus they fail to consider how these effects should influence housing policy. All of the studies contain the usual obligatory references to racial segregation and comment unfavorably on the high proportion of black households living in substandard housing. None documents the extent and nature of black welfare losses attributable to racial discrimination; none points the serious distortions of the processes of urban growth and development caused by this most serious of market imperfections; and none gives serious consideration to remedies. The principal goal of this paper is to correct this oversight. In order to sharpen these distinctions, however, I first summarize the conventional economic analysis of housing markets and of existing policy, which underlie these studies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents a discussion on trade union activity. Until a decade ago, trade union activity from the standpoint of legal and public sanction involved the problem of extending to voluntary associations those civil rights of the individual, whereby members of such associations could improve their well-being through group action. However, trade union activity in the present day raises entirely different issues of social policy. These arise from the extension of group authority or control, under governmental and public approval, over large segments of industry, if not over the whole economy. These issues involve not alone the question of what form of economic organization is to be desired, or what the essential functions of government should be in a democratic order, but that of how individual and minority rights are to be preserved in a scheme of things progressively subjected to group domination. Professor David A. McCabe's paper is mainly a discussion of the technical feasibility of industry-wide agreements. But McCabe's paper also raises the issue of group power and responsibility in economic life. According to McCabe, industry-wide agreements are based upon unitary bargaining for wages over a wide competitive area.

Medical men in their handling of disease increasingly have recourse to "team-work." Various specialists each make their own diagnosis of the patient, and set out a corresponding course of treatment. It is for sociology (ill-equipped for the task though as yet it may be) to infuse the discussion and treatment of current ills with the quickening spirit of a synthetic science. As a modest contribution to such discussion of the Coal Crisis, the present studies are submitted, though of necessity preliminary and tentative. These studies open with a paper which attempts what may be called a sociological orientation of the Coal Question. Here the coal crisis is viewed as symptom of a deep-seated malady in the body politic. This introductory paper is followed by four others, which sample the manifold contributions to public welfare in general, and the coal question in particular, to be drawn from the physico-chemical sciences, from biology, and from the simpler aspects of social science. The Coal Crisis is but the concentrated expression, and virulent outbreak, of a crisis in Great Britain's national life.

The article presents a report of the editor of the "Journal of Health and Social Behavior," a research journal published by the American Sociological Association, on the number of research articles received and published by the journal in 1970-71. The author informs that the journal continues to receive a large number of manuscripts. As a result, less than fifteen percent of the total manuscripts received could be published. Further, the author informs that the journal has made all efforts to encourage more resubmissions, particularly where the author's apparent inexperience with journal article preparation and the reporting of research findings seems to contribute to the referees' initial recommendations. Moreover, the journal has been partly successful in broadening its scope by including articles on welfare. Meanwhile, papers with a social policy orientation and letters to the editor have also increased in number. The author clarifies that the review process has been kept relatively short but occasional articles have taken inexcusably long periods to evaluate.

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The objective of this paper is to provide a model to deal with multi-dimensional social goals on a regionalized (as well as national) basis and to relate these to each other in the context of a national economic system. Input-Output (Interindustry) Analysis is therefore regionalized and reformulated in a way that connects it to national economic policy variables in a Keyneian framework. Possible multiple objectives and controls are examined and their possible further developments are also sketched in a context of regionalized and social goals that differ from region to region and also from time to time. Various proposals for revenue sharing are exhibited and interpreted in the light of the possibilities this model admits. Special attention is given to the Nixon (President Nixon) and ACIR (Advisory Commission on Intergovernmental Relations) plans in contrast to a multi-goal dynamic and adaptive control-incentive scheme with "saturating" indices of goal attainment. The latter, suggested at the end of this paper, is designed so that it can permit variation between regions while maintaining minimum levels of comparable attainment on goals that are common to more than one region. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It is difficult to generalize about forty papers and as many hours of formal and informal questioning and discussion, engaged in by the more than a thousand informed and thoughtful and articulate members of the National Association of Social Workers (NASW) who attended this Tenth Anniversary Professional Symposium. This note has been sounded, interestingly enough, at a symposium dedicated not to the whole range of NASW interests, but rather to the advancement of practice and knowledge in contrast to social policy and action. The result of this notion that practice enacts policy has been to pose a new model of a social worker who, even as a casework clinician or as a therapeutically oriented group worker, must continuously orient himself to the ways in which his practice methods, his agency structures, his intellectual mindsets may advance or block the carrying out of core values and professional commitments. The social worker is certainly not seen as a medicine man whose one brew is hawked at all possible crossroads and offered as solution to all possible maladies.

The article comments on several of the general problems in the theory of organizations. One of the general problems focused in the article is questioning the extent to which the classical Weberian model of bureaucracy is appropriate for understanding the large variety of forms of organization in societies in general and in developing societies in particular. The article also examines the degree to which organizations were built according to the Weberian model and whether these organizations were conductive in bringing about developmental change, modernization or development.

The distinction between the "normative" and "interpretive" modes in sociology is fundamental. The two views are based on different, indeed irreconcilable, attitudes towards the actor and his capabilities. They lead to profoundly different types of sociology and to different types of sociological explanation. The sociology of science, insulated to some extent from recent developments in sociology, has. developed its own conventional problem areas and controversies. In this paper it is argued, however, that concern about the differences between these positions has obscured the fact that, at least in certain interpretations, they share important similarities. Specifically, as developed, they reflect a normative mode of discourse, while alternative interpretive forms of analysis have been little employed. Thus, an interpretive sociology of science avoids, in principle, two important conceptual difficulties that arise and shape the normative analysis. The first is the distinction between internal and external factors; a distinction which, though deeply built into the normative tradition, would not affect the conceptual structure of an interpretive approach in the same manner. The second refers to innovation. Thus, in an interpretive analysis innovation would be seen not as a special property of scientific action, but as a general property of all social action.

This paper describes a simulation model to estimate the enrollments and expenditures associated with various policy alternatives for the post-secondary education system of a state, with Indiana as an example. Enrollments, operating expenditures, and construction costs axe predicted for every public and private school for each year until 1985. The basic model-building technique employed is regression analysis on historical data, but it is supplemented by other quantitative techniques and by experts' predictions. The model may be used to predict "most likely" future enrollments and costs, to perform sensitivity analyses to better understand the impact of various exogenous variables upon the system, and to evaluate possible policy alternatives. Including all of the schools in a state makes possible the evaluation of policy alternatives such as possible configurations of new two-year public schools, the effect of tuition changes, and the effect of enrollment ceilings for larger state universities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article presents views on the study about the trade policies in developing countries. According to the author the nontariff barrier makes it difficult for the developing country exporter to cope than the exporter in a rich country who has resources, marketing apparatus and quality control. The author also presented that in evaluating alternative growth strategies in developing nations the cost of implementing social and economic objectives relating to income distribution, employment, land reform, spreading of technological and market knowledge and political modernization must always be accounted.

The article presents comments on the article "Measuring Progress Towards Social Goals: Some Possibilities at National and Local Levels," by Nestor E. Terleckyj, published in this issue. In analyzing Terleckyj's paper, the author examines the goals of a nation, and points pout that not all members of a nation have the same goals. For this reason, he feels that there should be a general consensus for which goals are most important for the survival of a country. Furthermore, the author continues on to point out specific parts of the original article and offers criticism for each part.

The article presents some abstracts on published materials concerning labor economics. The first abstract entitled "Wage Rates in Philadelphia, 1790-1830," by D.R. Adams, Jr. concentrates on one geographic area, Philadelphia and develops fairly complete time series of wage rates for a variety of occupations including; ship carpenters, joiners, riggers, sawyers, caulkers, house carpenters, painters, bricklayers, plasterers, stone cutters, masons, common laborers, agricultural laborers, domestics and mariners. The paper entitled "Union Interests in Apprenticeship and Other Training Forms," by J. Barbash focuses on three main environments, craft union apprenticeships, the concern of industrial unions with training concurrent with employment and the labor movement's social policy interests in training. The major thesis of the paper entitled "Wage-Determination Process in United States Manufacturing," by S. Behman is that the employed, particularly skilled workers with inter-industry mobility, influenced the observed magnitudes of wage changes in aggregate manufacturing in the postwar period.

This article presents information regarding the non-partisan municipal elections in Seattle. The forces which determine the physical and economic structure of community may be referred to as ecological, while those that determine the social and political policies may be differentiated as social forces. Obviously social and ecological forces may have a common basis, but for purposes of investigation it is legitimate to make the distinction. Community in its distributive and competitive aspects is an ecological product, but in its social policies and forms of control, it is a political entity. Another element that makes Seattle favorable ground for the study of community controls is the fact that in her political life she has adopted the non-partisan system of municipal elections. Forces which under the old system were concealed in political party organizations, now reveal themselves to public observation. This does not mean to imply, however, that there are no subtle forces at work operating without the knowledge of the public; such a conclusion would be naive. The point is merely that the non-partisan system of election brings into relief many of these forces which were formerly obscured under the partisan system.

The article summarizes views of various economists about neoliberalism in West Germany. Forty years ago several young economists were emphasizing the casual employment relationship characteristic of the new and growing manufacturing industries of the United States. Their studies disclosed an average annual labor turnover in manufacturing of about 100 per cent, and rates of 200-400 per cent were not uncommon. The commitment, which a freshly hired worker and his employer felt toward each other, was usually very limited. There was an employment contract in the sense that the parties had an on-going relationship so long as both remained satisfied. However, the relationship was "casual" in that one of the two usually terminated it fairly quickly. Yet Indian workers have been slow to sever their village attachments, and as a result absenteeism remains high. Current absenteeism rates run about 6-8 per cent in major textile centers; 13-18 per cent in the minor ones; and 10-14 in iron and steel, engineering, cement, matches, leather, and ordnance factories.

This paper presents a limited number of concepts that comprise social action theory. By establishing greater precision in defining the basic concepts as goals, values, norms, means, and social conditions, a reformulation of the "unit-act" is set forth. The interrelationships among these concepts for the manifestation of social volition are discussed in keeping with the voluntaristic orientation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay is intended as an expository paper on how the seemingly abstract social choice models are related to the practical problems of formulating models of economic policy. The flexibility of the social choice models in dealing with the problem of relating ethical propositions to propositions concerning social actions is not widely understood. The paper is divided into five sections. In the first section, it is argued that an economic policy should be viewed as a decision process rather than a decision and that the social choice models are a natural framework for the representations of the concept of a decision process. In addition, it is argued that Arrow's controversial 'Independence of Irrelevant Alternatives' axiom is actually a defining property of a political-economic process. Problems of 'policy formulation' are viewed, then, as problems of 'systems design' with the axiom being used as the defining characteristic of a 'system.' The second section contains a discussion of the concept of an 'ethic' as related to political economic processes.