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An investigation in a mental hospital that served as a training center for psychiatric residents revealed that periods of high suicide rates among patients tended to follow upon a decrease in interaction between some authority holders and residents and turnover among top-ranking psychiatrists; and tended to be associated with a low ratio of older to new residents. These instances represent conditions in which residents were likely to lack the support that is needed for a feeling of competence in dealing with patients. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The extent to which role performances within an organization are open to observation by others is structurally determined. Observability provides transparency of social arrangements and makes modeling of behavior possible. This paper discusses one aspect of observability, namely, the Provision of control over the behavior of status-occupants. Differential observability in connection with position of authority determines the type of interest role-partners have in the conformity of status-occupants. By applying Merton's distinction between attitudinal, behavioral and doctrinal conformity to his theory of role-set, some mechanisms of social control are identified. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article presents a case analysis of the relationship between role behavior and social structure in two hospital wards. The analysis is based on daily observations made over a three-month period in the medical and surgical wards of a 360-bed research and teaching hospital on the Atlantic seaboard. Informal interviews, as well as a limited number of standardized interviews were used for the formulation of cues suggested by participant observation. Since only one hospital was studied, the comparisons to be made here, between the social structure of the medical team and that of the surgical team, and between the behavior of nurses on the two wards, should not be generalized beyond the case observed without further research. They are presented, however, with the aim of formulating hypotheses about the effect on role behavior of different types of authority structure in the hospital setting. The behavior of the head nurse differed significantly on these two wards.

This article presents information about the book "The Social Transformation of American Medicine," by Paul Starr. That the development of medicine not only is a work of reason but depends on the growth of its authority is no news to sociologists. Yet, no one before Starr has written its history with this in mind, that is, a history based on the premise that medicine cannot fully be understood on its own terms as a social system but must be seen as related to society at large and its institutions. Power and authority, as here understood, do not refer to the relation of individual professionals to their clients but to the relation of the profession as a whole to all of society's social institutions and their changes as well. Starr's concern is with the collective establishment and mobility of a social class, the class of medical professionals. For the sake of summarizing the development of American medicine that Starr presents it is useful to divide it into four stages. American medicine developed from a state of social pluralism to that of monopoly of allopathic medicine, the third stage might be called one of partial government intervention, the fourth, which turned out to follow from attempts at public control, is the beginning of regulation of medicine under private control.

This article presents the authors' comment on John Sibley Butler's review of the book "Minorities and the Military: A Cross-National Study in World Perspective." Butler says in his review that language has traditionally been a divisive force within Belgian society. This conflict over language was voluntarily carried over to military institutions, where there were separate units for the Flemish and the Walloon minorities.

The author says that his point was that the author Nancy Chodorow's small excursion into Marxist rhetoric, in her book, was beside the point of her theory, which is original and fruitful.