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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]

Within the confines of a relatively brief paper, it is practically impossible to give coverage to all things that could come under the heading of methodology that have developed during the last quarter-century. The following comments, thus, will be directed more to reflecting some major developments and applying a small amount of criticism in a few areas where it seems warranted. Description of particular techniques will be avoided; on the other hand, it is very difficult to think of methodological developments except through the systematization and quantification of the science, and we shall follow the path of least resistance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper presents the address given by the author during the general session of the Midwest Sociological Society's 25th anniversary meeting on April 13, 1962, in Des Moines, Iowa. It discusses the author's experience with the society and his participation in its previous annual conferences. During his term as secretary of the society he has observed the changes in the structure and the functions of the society since its reorganization in 1937. The most important phenomenon having implications for a regional society is the decline in regionalism of American sociology. Regionalism, in the sense that it existed in 1937 has disappeared. The birth of the society have a significant impact on the origins of modern American sociology. The educational institutions established by notable members of the society have contributed to the production of doctor of philosophy degree in sociology.

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]

The objectives of this paper are to propose a new concept for use in attitude studies; to explain one way in which this concept has been operationalized; to suggest an hypothesis for use in further studies of this concept; and to present some preliminary research findings concerning this hypothesis. Social scientists have long been interested in differences and similarities between people holding "liberal" and "conservative" attitudes toward various issues and problems of the day. Countless numbers of research studies have been conducted in this area. Perhaps most interesting among these studies have been several attempts to determine whether people tend to have a general liberal-conservative orientation, or whether we must expect their attitudes to vary in different situations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article presents Peter M. Hall's response to Rosabeth Moss Kanter's comments toward his article "A Symbolic Interactionist Analysis of Politics," published in the 1972 issue of "Sociological Inquiry." The author concludes that Kanter misunderstands his perspective by subsuming it under American liberalism. If there is anything that he is not, it is an American liberal, and if there is anything he is criticizing in American sociology, political sociology, and symbolic interaction, it is consensual, pluralistic, and liberal bias. Hall also does not deny the need to see the totality of the society, its interdependencies, feedbacks, and impacts, in short, society as a system. To settle misconceptions, Hall emphasized that his paper had a special focus and set limits as to its goals and coverage. It was not intended to be a complete analysis of politics nor a complete analysis of American politics.

This article analyzes the Marxist paradigm. In order to develop a coherent perspective, it is necessary for the author to go back to the work of Marx himself, to isolate its basic features and the tensions and ambiguities they involve, and then to assess the work of contemporary Marxists in the light of this heritage. While the central task of this paper is a critical review of the Marxist contribution to political analysis, such a focus must be located within the scope of Marx's theory as a whole, rather than separated out and isolated as one dimension of the theory. Therefore, the author begins with a general review of Marx's social theory and then explore his analysis of the political realm in the light of the societal problems defined by the theory as a whole.

This paper examines the rhetoric found in the referral pamphlets distributed by military academies and homes for the mentally retarded. The material is analyzed from a perspective which views value exchange between client and organization as an initial means of institutionalizing the relations between the person and the service organization. Discussion centers around the heuristic value of economic models in sociological analysis, with particular reference to that non-institutionalized sphere of the division of labor that encompasses service organizations which lack viable client referral mechanisms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents criticism on sociologist Albert Szymanski's research paper "Toward a Radical Sociology." Szymanski is quite direct in setting aside as an ideal the establishment of conceptual frameworks that might ensure the objectivity of sociological knowledge. Central to his position is a rejection of sociologist Max Weber's methodology based on the sharp distinction between empirical judgments and evaluational judgments, a distinction that Szymanski recognizes to be "impeccable" in logic, yet holds to be a "philosophical sophism," and on the assertion that all intellectual disciplines must give strong primacy among their commitments to the ideal of objectivity. Citing the sociology of knowledge truth that all knowledge within the social sciences is in certain respects conditioned by the historical environment within which it is developed, hence not "objective" in the sense of being free of all social partisanship, Szymanski argues that a radical sociology would not be any the less objective were it to accept the constraints of adopting certain "humanistic" commitments among its fundamental values.

This paper discusses sociological issues concerning linguistically homogeneous and linguistically heterogeneous polities. The author notes that linguistically homogenous polities are usually economically mode developed, educationally more advanced, politically more modernized and ideologically-politically more tranquil and stable. Linguistically homogeneous polities tend to be smaller in area (i.e., below 75,000 square miles), to have a higher population density (i.e., above 100/square mile), to have a lower proportion of agricultural population (i.e., less than 66 per cent), and to be more highly urbanized. Highly urbanized polities are defined as those polities in which 20% or more of the population resides in cities of 20,000 or more and in which 12.5% resides in cities of 100,000 or more. Linguistically heterogeneous states tend in the opposite direction in connection with all of these variables, i.e., they tend to be large, of lower population density, of a higher proportion of agricultural population, and to be of a low degree of urbanization. According to some studies, linguistically homogeneous polities tend to have at least a medium per capita gross national product of at least 300 U.S. dollars per year, and they tend to have developed or intermediate economic status.

The article presents information about forum on various sociological issues, published in the March 1, 1968 issue of the journal Southwestern Social Science Quarterly. In a recent article in this journal, Caron R. Waits attempts to fill a "gap in the literature of industrial organization which extends roughly from 1500 to 1700." Despite Waits' many insights into this important transitional period, he offers little toward explaining the underlying forces of the actual process of change. The author could have come more fully to grips with this crucial aspect of his study if he had incorporated Max Weber's concept of the Protestant ethic. One very curious facet of the search for knowledge or understanding is the dilemma one faces when he speculates about what he does not know or understand. For instance, it appears that there are only two ways to obtain insights into the world of the unknown. Professor Roland Warren comments on the paper entitled "The Vertical Axis of Community Organization and the Structure of Power" by John Walton takes up three topics. The first concerns the need for further substantiation of the explanation of changing patterns of community power, which has not been systematically tested.

This article presents information on convention program of the Southwestern Social Science Association and the American Business Writing Association joint conference, held in April 1955, in Dallas, Texas. Some of papers presented in the meetings on various topics like accounting, agricultural economics, business administration, sociology, government, geography are: "A Well-Informed and Better-Guided Student," by William P. Carr; "Recent Developments in Accounting Research," by Charles T. Zlatkovich; "Course Content and Conduct," by Emerson O. Henke; "The Southern Farmer and Foreign Trade," by M.D. Woodin; "The Southern Farmer and Current Agricultural Legislation and Regulation," by William A. Faught; "A Comparison of Riparian and Appropriated Water Rights," by Wells A. Hutchins; "A Comparison of Land-Value Theories and the Everyday Operation of the Land Market," by Robert L. Tontz; "Geography of the Rainforest of Western Pichincha and Esmeraldas, Ecuador," by Luis Freile; and others.

This article presents information on several events organized by the Southwestern Social Science Association, to be held in 1952. The Association will hold its annual convention for 1952 in Dallas, Texas, on April 11 and 12. General headquarters for the convention will be at the Baker Hotel, Commerce and Akard. Arrangement for section luncheon meetings have been made by several sections, including Accounting, Geography, Social Science Introductory Course, and the American Business Writing Association. These will all be held at 12:30 p.m. on April 11. The Southwestern Sociological Society, which constitutes the sociology section of the Association, sponsors each year a program for students in sociology to coincide with the annual meeting. Headquarters and meetings will be held in Baker, on April 11. The general business meeting of the Association is scheduled at 8:00 a.m. on Saturday morning. Full attendance is essential to the continued success of the Association. Section business meetings will he held on Friday afternoon immediately following the presentation of papers and discussions. The members of each section elect a chairman and an associate editor.

The article highlights the concept of political economy coined by well-known socio-economist Horace Greeley. Historians of economic thought, in customarily appointing Henry C. Carey dean of the American School, have generally neglected the high spokesman of discontent, Horace Greeley, founder and editor of the "New York Tribune." Horace Greeley's life and political economy stand out as clearer expressions of a young America in its middle period transition. Greeley was an awakened figure of his time. Never the totally eccentric dreamer he is frequently considered, he found himself aware that narrow parochialisms were breaking up, and he aimed to conform society to the changes under way. He saw his country as the great chance for righting wrongs- and he wished to make it a proving ground for social experimentation. Thus, he devoted his life and his paper to teaching the people to seek freedom by building a wealthy nation in which resources should be correctly utilized and special privileges should be destroyed.

The article presents a review of studies in the physical anthropology of the modern man which concerns papers that have appeared in the period from mid-1969 to mid-1971. This literature review aims to show how much activity there is in each major topic of investigation in the biological study of populations of man that exists, and to pick out any trend in investigation that may be detectable. To limit the range of the study, several topics including behavior studies, psychometric investigations, descriptive osteometry, and epidemiological works relating to particular disease states have been excluded.

Mathematical demography traditionally has been concerned with the dynamics of the growth and structure of a population that is undisturbed by migration. Recently, however, increasing attention has been directed at the relationships between interregional migration flows and the growth and structure of multiregional population systems that are open to internal migration. This paper contributes to that emerging body of knowledge by generalizing the notion of a life table to the multiregional case and showing how such a generalization leads to a mathematical theory of multiregional population growth that is consistent with the currently accepted single-region theory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper pleads for hermeneutic processes to be taken into account in the discussion of role conflict. In order to avoid reification of mechanistic assumptions under- lying cross-pressure models of social action, it is suggested that theory as well as research should take into consideration that norms and behaviour are mediated by interpretative processes. These constitute a level of `social understanding' which can be operationalized in role-conflict terms as three different types of conflict. Reciprocity of perspectives and evaluation, as the main dimensions of interpretation processes, are shown to be the main features of conflicts in role interaction [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the case for social research training at the post-graduate level integrally linked to a social survey research organization. Programs related to social research training should reflect a clear aim in relation both to post-graduate training in sociological method in particular and to postgraduate education in sociology in general. One such program is developed by the Detroit Area Study at the University of Michigan. Three main objectives of this scheme are to establish a highly efficient means of providing young social scientists with an all-round training in the planning and execution of survey research, to provide staff members with an opportunity to pursue social science research and to supply social science data of value to authorities and communities in the area surrounding the university where the program is located. The form which the training takes follows the standard procedures of social survey research. Students' work includes preliminary relevant reading, problem formulation, question drafting, pretest analysis, sampling, interviewing and data processing. In addition each student writes an analysis paper based on part of the collected data.

This is the second of two papers on measurement models in sociology. The concepts of Ordinal Graph and Ordinal Simplex are elaborated and their applicability to some major theoretical problems outlined. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article presents a list of papers on sociology of religion, that appeared in the August 01, 1962 issue of the periodical "Social Compass." Some of the books mentioned in the list are "The Personal and the Functional Element in Pastoral Care," by W.M.I. Van Den Ende, "Pastoral Care and Clinical Training in America. Report of a Three Months Visit," by H. Faber and "The Variety of City Churches," by F.A. Shippey.

In many cases Bayes' theorem is an appropriate algorithm for the aggregation of probabilistic evidence. As with other statistical procedures, there are restrictions that must be taken into account. In the present paper we shall comment on several approaches that have been devoted to one of these restrictions; the incorporation of uncertainty about the true state of a datum. A datum is a variable which can be partitioned into equivalence classes. These classes represent the possible data states which will be also called events. In Bayes' theorem an event is an item of information which will be used for revising the opinion about the relative likelihood of hypotheses. In any specific situation only one of the possible events will be the true event. An event may come from a source whose reporting or observational accuracy is not perfect. An example may illustrate the issue. A medical doctor wants to come to a diagnosis. To achieve this he considers several data. One datum might be the result of a medical test, which has three possible states: positive, negative, inconclusive. If the doctor reports the state of the datum to be positive, he may be wrong by whatever reasons. That is, the report of an event must not necessarily coincide with the actual or true event of the datum under consideration. This kind of uncertainty about the true event in any specific situation is a characteristic of the source. In most cases it will reduce the diagnostic impact of an event. Whenever the report of an event and the true event coincide imperfectly, measures of source inaccuracy must be incorporated into Bayes' theorem. The task can be considered as two stage probabilistic induction. The first step is induction from the reported to the actual event, the second is induction from the actual event to the creditation of hypotheses. This is the reason why Gettys and Willke (1969) speak about "cascaded inference." [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, the authors will critically examine a central, though neglected, aspect of political socialization research--the learning concept. Following a discussion of the current status of the learning concept, they propose a research strategy towards the operationalization of the concept in political socialization research and exemplify the approach with a specific learning paradigm adopted from experimental psychology. In a field such as psychology which evidences a long history of research in the study of learning as a general concept, there is a sharp disagreement as to what precisely is meant by "the learning process." Since psychologists differ with regard to the learning process, the unqualified utilization of the concept within political socialization research is highly questionable. Moreover, the failure to explicate clearly the meaning of the learning process in political socialization research has precluded the establishment of the "empirical import" of the concept. Inclusion of the term "political learning" as an integral element in a synthetic mode of discourse requires that the empirical import of the term be established.

The article presents response of the author on comments made by Kenneth P. Hadden on the article "Migration Attractiveness of Southern Metropolitan Areas" that was published in the September 1969 issue of the periodical "Social Science Quarterly." Hadden's criticism of great width, breadth, depth and scope does raise several salient questions. His exposition to the title of my effort to examine the net migration rates of Southern Standard Metropolitan Statistical Areas' (SMSA) is crucial rather than semantical or trivial. Some, noting the paper's claim that it sought one possible route to explanation of the factors associated with the patterns of net migration might think it obvious migration attractiveness was operationalized by self-definition in terms of its measure. Hadden has evidently penetrated behind this veneer to the study's philosophical and theoretical underpinnings and recognized that the actual objective must have been to study migration attractiveness sui generis rather than to assess the importance of various characteristics of SMSA units on the size, rate, and direction of the net migration patterns of these areas between 1950 and 1960. I stipulate to what Hadden styles an atheoretical orientation in failing to make the theoretical rationale explicit.

The relationship between social class, authoritarianism, and foreign policy attitudes has been re-examined in the light of evidence from a national survey and other studies. These data indicate that, contrary to the suggestion of Hamilton's recent paper, lower class people are not consistently more conciliatory on foreign policy issues than are those of higher social class. The attitudes of lower class people appear to be more consistently characterized by a preference for noninvolvement in foreign affairs. Such a preference for isolation from foreigners is congruent with the ideology which has been called authoritarianism. However, the preference for conciliatory over aggressive foreign policy actions which lower class persons sometimes show is not congruent with authoritarianism. This suggests that, although lower class persons may be more authoritarian, their foreign policy attitudes are determined mainly by other factors. The data reviewed suggest also that foreign policy attitudes can be understood best not in terms of a single orientation toward conciliation versus militancy but in terms of several basic orientations. It may prove useful to characterize specific foreign policy positions in terms of their position on the dimensions of (1) involvement-noninvolvement; (2) dominance-submissiveness; and (3) friendliness-hostility. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents a discussion related to Jack P. Gibbs' work on analytical typologies in criminology. Gibbs treated as problematic an issue that has been closed for students in the field for sometime. The research was competent, its limitations clearly spelled out for the reader, and the results carefully tied to theory. Certainly, none of the others have attracted as much attention. Expectedly, the best scholarship was to be found among the papers on social theory. Unfortunately, most of these were agonizing efforts over where sociology has been and ineffectual attempts to redirect activity in a more promising direction. One has to constantly remind oneself that sociology began with three interests in mind, a distinctive subject matter, social reform, and the application of the scientific method to social behavior; that one is perilously close to forsaking the first two in mindless deference to the last in that important questions go unasked because one cannot attack them scientifically; that the questions one asks are becoming more and more scientific but more and more trivial, and, in so doing, one is, if not becoming psychologists, following psychology down the path to intellectual oblivion.

The article focuses on empirical evaluation of formal theory. In the paper by researchers D.K. Hildebrand, J.D. Laing and H.L. Rosenthal, henceforth HLR, proposed an index to measure the adequacy of a particular kind of theory when confronted with harsh facts. The authors L.A. Goodman and W.H. Kruskal, henceforth GK, presented a critical analysis, together with constructive proposals towards partial mitigation of the flaws and gaps they found in HLR. The authors do not agree with the rationales given in HLR for the independence like denominator of the proposed index. One can, however, take the index as given and ask how it performs. It was noted in GK that the HLR index compares the theoretically empty cells with the multiplicative yardstick probabilities for those cells, and no adequate justification for this comparison was found. This is so for both the unweighted and weighted forms of the index. In GK, some modest ways around this problem was suggested without claiming necessarily wide applicability for the suggestions.

Combining theoretical and empirical materials, this paper outlines why definitions of the situation are an important vehicle for analyzing the conditions under which communications are viewed as authoritative by subordinates in complex work organizations. It investigates an exemplary process of collective action—making orchestra music—as a means of understanding the development as well as the demise of consensually validated expertise. Evaluations of conductors as focal participants arise from musicians' conceptions of appropriate work roles and what they construe as information and knowledge which allow them to engage in lines of concerted action. Finally, the results are discussed with regard to their implications for the study of organizational dynamics generally. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents a pioneer study of contemporary significance in electoral behavior in reference to a paper on this issue written by Roscoe C. Martin. As far as taste is concerned there was a bias at the outset for selecting an article representing a contribution to an empirically based political science. Martin's piece certainly meets that standard. The article is an early attempt to investigate in a systematic, quantitative fashion a problem that has received considerable attention in more recent volumes of the Quarterly and other scholarly journals, the question of voting behavior in state and local elections. Martin's report of the socioeconomic and institutional factors associated with an Austin municipal election in 1933 precedes the major voting studies conducted on the national, state, and local levels by several years, even decades. But it is not enough merely to say that this study broke new ground in an era when political scientists generally took only marginal interest in studying electoral data; it is also worth remarking that Martin did so in a manner that is still significant for contemporary students of voting.

The article presents information on an unpremeditated symposium on the economic theory of Clarence E. Ayres. The article argues that Ayres and the Tower on the campus of the University of Texas are two of the dominant features of the academic landscape in the Southwest. Both have been centers of controversy, ranging in intensity from mild to boiling. It seems that few who have considered either have escaped partisan reaction for, or against. The article informs that this issue of the "Southwestern Social Science Quarterly" deals with four examinations of Ayresian economic theory, which range from bitter attack to capable defense, with a note of mildness in between. Together, they should give the reader a fairly complete view of this scholar's ideas. These papers were not solicited, and there was no idea of a symposium on Ayresian theory, when the first of the four, that by Jack Robertson was received. This paper was soon followed by that of Manuel Gottlieb. Both were highly recommended for publication by economists respected for their competence in the field.

The article focuses on issues related to the publication of the journal "Southwestern Social Science Quarterly," for the period from June 1944-March 1945. The journal has published 22 papers, 30 reviews of books and a number of brief notes on books not given full length reviews. Seven papers dealt with current situations in the Southwestern area of the U.S. Sixteen articles were written by people whose professional relations were largely within the same region.

Presents an introduction to papers related to sociology that appear in the December 1974 issue of the journal "Social Science Quarterly."

The article discusses about several books. Some of them are "The Government of Texas, A Survey," consists of a series of fifteen papers presented at the First Arnold Foundation Conference on Public Affairs edited by S. D. Myres, Jr., Acting Director of the Foundation. The compendium constitutes a survey undertaken as a preliminary step to a more thorough going study of the political institutions of the state inaugurated by the Southwestern Social Science Association. "A History of American Foreign Policy," by John Holladay Latane. For scholarship, liberal interpretation, and agreeable style, the first edition of Latane's American Foreign Policy was preeminent in the field. Mr, Wainhouse has performed a signal service to the teachers and students of American diplomacy in schools and colleges in making Latane's work serviceable once more by bringing it up to date.

The article presents information on the coefficient of profile similarity. Since the second paper on this statistical quantity was published, several psychologists have asked the author to rationalize a procedure which permits the use of all the segments, including segments of zero slope. This note attempts to do just that. Whenever zero slope segments occur in the reference or compared profiles it will be given either a positive or a negative slope. The determination of the appropriate sign is made by reference to some chance operation. The implicit assumption here is that when zero slope segments occur, a very large sample of segments taken from the same individual or group would yield equal -relative frequencies for positive and negative slopes.

The article presents comments of the author on the papers "Toward a Reconciliation of Institutional Economics and Its Critics," by Coldwell Daniel and "Beyond the Market Economy Building Institutions That Work," by Clarence E. Ayres that were published in the March 1970 issue of the periodical "Social Science Quarterly." The author's purpose in writing this comment is to attempt again the reconciliation of institutional and conventional economics. The first step in reconciliation is to differentiate the two theories. Ayres' great contribution to economic theory is his application of scholar John Dewey's instrumental theory of normative value to economics. Ayres' methodology is pragmatic and inductive, and his theory is clearly in the category of normative economics--the theory of what ought to be. It is equally clear that conventional theory uses a deductive methodology and that the resulting theory is positive economics-the theory of what is. It is obviously true that there are positive implications of Ayres' institutional theory and normative implications of conventional theory; but these implications are not essential to the respective theories. If these non-essential implications are eliminated, then Ayres' institutionalism and conventional theory become completely compatible. There are, also, deductive normative economic theories.

This article presents acknowledgement from the author who is the president of the Southwestern Social Science Association, the owner of this journal, to all members of the Society. The author claims that this journal is now regarded as a prestige outlet for publication. He hopes that the program for the scheduled Dallas meeting will attract an even larger attendance than last year. He announced that the program chairmen for the various divisions will soon call for papers from Association's membership, and members of the executive board join with him in urging fullest cooperation in assisting the program chairman, Lorrin Kennamer of the University of Texas, and the various section chairmen to prepare a superb program.