Search

A personal narrative is presented which explores the author's experience of working on economic and sociological theory as Marshall Lecturer.

This article discusses the sociological issue of religious and economic symbolism in the western world. Christianity has been conducive to the facilitation of evolutionary contributions because of its ambivalence toward "the world," that is, essentially toward the erotic, toward the intellect, and toward wealth and things economic. Ambivalence is important as compared to simple acceptance because, although the erotic, the intellect, and the production of wealth are all indispensable, they all also involve dangers. Erotic, economic, and intellectual--are both indispensable and dangerous, hence the objects of profoundly ambivalent attitudes. Being ambivalent, Christianity recognized the dangers-often overplaying them-but did not simply reject or, better, did not renounce these potentials for progress. Marxism, especially in the communist versions, is religious or quasi-religious and may or may not be regarded as a version of Christianity. In any case, there is considerable parallelism between Christian symbolism and Marxist ideology, although Marxism is comparatively one-sided or "absolutist."

This article focuses on the relative neglect in the sociological study of law and legal systems. The emphasis on individualism and its negative effect on community appears in a variety of formulas, but they all have to do with the prominence of economic concerns, often of the "capitalistic" order, and with the "utilitarian" pursuit of self-interest. The general tone is pronounced pessimism about the prospects of the kind of society in which these characteristics are prominent. This is where law comes in. From a sociological point of view, law is significant, above all, as an institutional instrumentality of "social control." In the analytical sense, law is a phenomenon of the social system. The four trends of thought that will be discussed are concerned with four different primary aspects of the society as a whole. These aspects are, first, economic problems and structure; second, political; third, integrative aspects, which have to do with the "societal community" and, fourth, the problems of the fiduciary system, which focus to a certain extent on morality.

This paper illustrates that higher education is a system integrated by shared values and is also differentiated according to institutional teaching orientations. This illustration is accomplished through a ‘visual display’ of shared and differentiated teaching goals as faculty reported these in a national survey conducted in 1973. Using these teaching goals, six normative teaching orientations are derived. The six orientations associated with higher educational institutional variation reduce to four types of teaching environments. Relating these environments to each other reflects a system according to the Parsonlan AG1L framework. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article presents a commentary regarding the depiction of Professor J. H. Turner of the symbolic interactionist position of Talcot Parsons. In his paper, Turner advances two simple and straight forward contentions, Parsons is a symbolic interactionist in the way in which he sees human society but for reasons of methodological strategy Parsons proposes to study human society differently than is done by symbolic interactionists. Turner endeavors to support the first contention by arguing that there are basic similarities between Parsons' view and the symbolic interactionist analysis suffers from several forms of theoretical weakness. This article, discusses these two contentions in the light of the symbolic intearactionist position of George Herbert Mead.

In this article the author comments on a book by Jonathan H. Turners and Leonard Beeghleys, entitled "Current Folklore in the Criticism of Parsonian Action Theory." The author agrees that the philosophical views of the freedom of the will never did constitute the primary basis of his own conception of the voluntarism which was an essential aspect of the theory of action. The argument about the dangers of reification of theoretical schemes and the attendant fallacy of misplaced concreteness was singled out as convincing. A suggestion is made for Turner and Beeghley to come up with a specific and concrete illustration of what they mean by their allegations of vagueness. According to the author there has been an increasing conviction that autonomous action of the individual or voluntaristic action is to a degree not fully appreciated by our forebears, that freedom and hence the capacity for voluntarism is a function of organization. This organization is relevant at all lvels of the system of human action.

This article focuses on Prolegomena to a Theory of Social Institutions, an essay by Talcott Parsons first published in the American Sociological Review. Parsons's Prolegomena is an object lesson for those who would read past theoretical work in terms of present-day conceptual categories. Written more than a half century ago, before it became standard sociological practice to differentiate the micro from the macro, a voluntaristic approach from a functionalist approach, a focus on action from an emphasis on social system and social structure, the paper escapes latter-day pigeonholes. Prolegomena shows that the early Parsons upheld a package of ideas that circumvents such polarities by combining what he terms a voluntaristic conception of human action in which the factors of will and effort are central, with a functionalist analysis that views economic, political, educational, and other social institutions as constituting a system that regulates action in relative conformity with the ultimate common values. The goal of the essay is to arrive at social institutions and certain aspects of social structure by beginning with human action, understood subjectively in terms of the means-end schema, and proceeding from there to action systems composed of long and complex [means-end] chains--chains analytically divisible into the conditional factors of heredity and environment, an intermediate sector made up of technological, economic, and political elements, and the sector of ultimate values.

This article examines the sociological work of Georg Simmel and Ferdinand Toennies on social action and the elements of action. Simmel is most generally know to sociologists as the author of the view that sociology should be a special science concerned with forms of social relationship as distinct from other social sciences which are concerned with their content. In introducing the subject, Simmel takes the position that a new science is not normally constituted by the discovery of a new class of concrete facts which has never been the object of scientific analysis before, but by drawing a new line through facts, which brings them into relations to each other which had hitherto not been adequately understood. It is as such a new line drawn through the facts that he wishes his concept form of relationship or social form to be understood. It should proved fruitful to start by inquiring what it is that Simmel primarily distinguishes his form from. It is what he calls content. He is very careful to state that nothing is to be inferred from the terms form and content as such. Their meanings in logic or epistemology must above all be held to constitute at best analogies. The meaning in the present context is to be taken directly from observation of the particular facts.

This article discusses the contributions of Georg Simmel to sociology and the methodological problems of sociology. Simmel as a general social theorist is primarily known as the author of a formula for defining the scope and the subject-matter of sociology, that sociology should be the study of social forms. It is common knowledge that in the earlier stages of self consciousness of sociology as a science, the tendency was strong to conceive it in synthetic or encyclopedic sense, as the systematic statement of all our established generalized knowledge of the concrete social life of man. Simmel was one of the first to revolt against this encyclopedic tendency, strongly advocating that sociology be constituted as a special and not an encyclopedic science. He maintained that there was no concrete class of social phenomena which was not already the subject of social science. Hence the only place for sociology lay, in his opinion, not in the discovery of a new class of phenomena hitherto neglected, but in a new analytical point of view according to which the same concrete phenomena which were the subject matters of other social sciences had not yet been studied. It is in this context that he formulated his famous distinction between social form and content.

The article discusses theory of behaviorism. Like all theories of life, behaviorism makes a fundamental assumption as to the nature of life and that assumption is that the whole world, or universe, is one continuous mechanism, as it were; that everything in human life and civilization can be explained on this basis without introducing the separate agency of any force not obeying the same natural laws as those we know. In psycho-analysis we have a comparatively recent phase of the science of human behavior. The essence of the theory, after it has been stripped of Freud's strong emphasis on sex, which is not essential to our purpose and of some of its mentalistic traits, is that the behavior reactions of the individual are organized into interrelated groups of ideas, or complexes. These complexes are gradually built up by the association of more or less closely related ideas so that a reference to one idea will bring out a large number of those closely associated with it. The psycho-analysts then conceive that complexes are built up which are in more or less direct conflict at some point at which they come in contact. Since the complexes are built up around one central idea it is natural that they should not always be in complete harmony with all sides of a group of ideas built up around a totally different central idea. This conflict of complexes will cause a more or less complete dissociation of the personality of the individual which the individual attempts to overcome either by harmonizing the conflict, or by the repression of one complex or the other.

The article presents a behavioristic conception of the moral order. The term moral is often used in a very limited sense to designate a class of actions which are supposed to depend upon the exercise of the will, and which generally have a good deal of mystical connotation. The article consider the moral order to denote the whole organization of social behavior and as such attempt to analyze it, to bring out its principal characteristics and their relations and in particular to show how the portion of it which might in the narrow sense be called moral or ethical fits in with the rest. It seems reasonable to look at society as we know it from three main viewpoints. In the first place there is its actual societal structure, the facts of the organization of civilization. These facts are all related and intertwined, but just as in the mammalian body we can distinguish a circulatory system, a nervous system, a digestive system, though none of them has any significance by itself, we can pick out three principal phases of societal structure. The principal element in the structure of a society consists in the rites and ceremonies, the ritual. To bring out its relation to the other main elements, this denotes the relation of man to the unknown forces, the supposedly supernatural elements.

A response is offered to the article within the issue by Professor Terry N. Clark on social institutions, or social institutionalization, including the social institutions in U.S. colleges and universities. An overview of Clark's perspective on social roles and social norms, including in regard the relationship between values and the patterns of normative orientation, is provided.

This paper attempts both to ‘bring up to date’ the author's conception of social stratification as set forth in two previous general papers written in 1940 and 1953, and to broaden the field of consideration by giving special attention to the forces pressing toward equality in various respects, as well as the bases of inequality, The position taken is that the erosion of the legitimacy of the traditional bases of inequality has brought to a new level of prominence value-commitment to an essential equality of status of all members of modern societal communities. Inequalities, among units of societal structure which are essential in such fields as economic productivity, authority and power, and culturally based competence, must be justified in terms of their contribution to societal functioning. The balancing of the respects in which all members of the societal community and many of its collective subunits must be held to be equal with the imperatives of inequality constitutes one of the primary foci of the problem of integration in modern society. A few suggestions about the mechanisms by which this integrative process can operate are presented. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on sociologist Arthur L. Stinchcombe's book "Conceptualization of Power Phenomena." The plural of the word "theory" in Stinchcombe's title is appropriate, because he does not attempt to construct sociological theory in the more general sense. Certainly, theory should include the logical structure and conceptual content of such general schemes--of which classical mechanics is a prototype--as well as the framework for the statement of facts and their "mobilization" for particular explanations. Underlying the "logical structure and conceptual content" is the frame of reference within which such theory, and the explanations derivable from it, can be meaningfully stated. Stinchcombe specifically categorizes his approach as "inductive." Toward the end of his book, Stinchcombe emphasizes the concept social system, but he does not exploit its usefulness adequately. One is struck by the Hobbesian character of Stinchcombe's approach to power. One consequence of Stinchcombe's Hobbesian approach to power is the failure to make serious theoretical distinctions between the economic and the political social systems.

This paper analyzes the nature of value-commitments, conceived as a generalized symbolic medium of interchange in the processes of social interaction, in this respect paralleling money, power, and influence. Commitments constitute moral obligations of units of a system of social interaction to maintain the integrity of a value-pattern and to strive toward its implementation in action through combination with non-value factors. Stability of commitments is a basic condition of the compatibility of wide moral freedom with the exigencies of social functioning. Like the other three media, commitments are not bound by a zero-sum condition, but can be expanded, especially through charismatic movements. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents a discussion on culture and social systems. Actions of individual persons in their capacities as members of a social system must be oriented in terms of the meanings of cultural symbol systems, of what is sometimes called patterns of culture. Furthermore, the society itself and various other social systems as object of orientation must also have meanings defined in cultural terms. Moreover, the two sets of meanings, that is, from the point of view of actors as components of their orientation patterns and of the objects to which they are oriented, must to some degree be integrated with each other at the cultural level. Cultural systems, however, are by no means fully integrated but may be regarded as varying from a pole of virtually complete integration to one of a nearly random assortment of meaning components. Furthermore, the actual behavior of individuals, their symbolically oriented action, may be to a widely varying degree congruent with the meanings of the cultural system.

This article presents information on health and illness. The problem of health and illness generally lies at cross-roads between biological and social reference points for the study of human affairs, with the psychological aspect strategically situated somewhere in the middle. If this be true generally, perhaps it is even more so where the older age groups are concerned. In this connection, the biological reference must be extended from the consideration of the relatively short-run state of an individual organism to that of life cycle as a whole. It is well known that, though the average length of human life has greatly increased, for example, during the present century, its maximum span has increased very little, if at all, within the period for which reliable information has been available; and the largest decreases of death rates have been in infancy and childhood. Nevertheless, once past these early critical periods, there is a greatly enhanced probability that an individual will survive until a normal old age.

The article presents a text of a memorandum sent by Talcott Parsons to Henry H. Fowler in 1944 regarding a study on the Japanese economy. The most significant suggestion that Parsons thinks he can make appropos of the plans for study of the control of the Japanese economy is that very special attention should be devoted to the prewar status of small and medium-sized business in Japan and of the prospects for stimulating its postwar development. His reason for special interest in this sector of the economy is not in its economic significance as such, but in its potential significance for the social structure and orientation of the country. It is a very striking feature of Japanese society that in modern times at least there has been no strong locally independent middle class which could form a stabilizing factor in the society. Japanese feudalism was highly centralized lacking a small and moderate-scale gentry with strong roots in the land of their local communities. The Samurai were directly dependent on the Daimyo and controlled from his court, and this circumstance largely explains the fact that it was possible to shift so abruptly from feudalism to a westernized capitalistic economy. There was no Japanese equivalent for the Chinese town-dwelling, land-owning gentry who were the real backbone of the traditional Chinese class structure.

The article reports developments related to sociology as of January 1978. Ben Nelson was professor of sociology and history at the New School for Social Research, who died on September 17, 1977. He had held posts at the University of Chicago, Minnesota, Hofstra College and SUNY at Oyster Bay and Stony Brook. The article also invites suggestions and topics connected with sociologist Max Weber. For example Weber's intellectual predecessors, religious ideological legitimation of power structures, charisma and revolution, nationhood, law and economics, Islam, India, China, Japan, Weber's epistemological impact. Contact information is given, for any sociology department interested in becoming a chapter of Alpha Kappa Delta, the national honor society in sociology in the U.S.