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The article presents information on a rebuttal to sociologist Mark Oromaner's paper. Oromaner's critique is a nice illustration of the vacuity of much present day quantitative research in sociology, research which itself is in direct contrast to Erving Goffman's own approach and thus helps to support the author's thesis about Goffman's marginality from the mainstream sociological community. Oromaner attempts what would have to be called a kind of content analysis of Goffman's status, but he fails to take sufficiently into account the actual substance of the citations, which comprise the major evidence for his contention that Goffman is indeed highly regarded. Surely the onto logical existence of a certain number of citations is not adequate evidence of high status. When Oromaner concludes that few contemporary sociologists command more interest within the community of social scientists, the author cannot help but wonder about his semantics. Is it a mere coincidence that he does not refer to Goffman's command of respect? In conclusion, Oromaner's own choice of words reflects the fact that Goffman occupies a marginal place in sociological genealogy, one that is at times more infamous than famous, however frequently his names passes academic lips.

This article presents information on several professional organizations that may be of interest to sociologists. A professional research life is an ongoing process of research investigation, reading research journals, preparing scientific papers, reading papers before professional audiences of various learned societies, and finally publishing articles and monographs. For them to command attention, it is necessary for researchers to make themselves and their work known to colleagues in local, state, regional, national and international circles. The North American sociologist who wishes to be known in national and international circles may join the American Sociological Association and may affiliate with one or both of the leading international sociological associations: the International Sociological Association and Institut International Sociologie. The American Sociological Association (ASA) is a voluntary association of individual members with many categories of membership. Full membership in the ASA requires the holding of a PhD degree in sociology or in some related field, or the completion of 3 years of graduate study in such field. Students are encouraged to join as associates at low fees. The scientific activities of the International Sociological Association are organized in research committees, where scholars who wish to pursue comparative research become part of a network of scientific research, intellectual debate and professional exchange.

This paper examines and compares two of the most significant of the social conceptions--the "situation," as it is applied within symbolic interactionism, and the "frame," as conceived (most notably) by Erving Goffman, in order to demonstrate that they contain widely divergent understandings of the nature of everyday life. It is an exercise that must be seen as a fragment of what is necessarily a lengthier, more complex project that attempts to develop a truer and more comprehensive understanding of the body of Goffman's work, in part by proposing to view it as an American variant of contemporary structuralism and, consequently, by abandoning the common misunderstanding that makes of Goffman a symbolic interactionist. This paper asserts that when Goffman's work is forced into the symbolic interactionist paradigm and made to reflect, and speak to, its special concerns, much of the author's actual meaning and significance is lost, the result being some measure of distortion. Such misreading conceals the fundamental and systematic differences between the theoretical character of Goffman's work and that of symbolic interactionism properly understood.

This article attempts a Sartrean reading of Erving Goffman: a hermeneutics of the texts guided by a Sartrean fore-understanding which will be made explicit. An interpretation in which (as with all readings) the approach contributes as much as the texts. Durkheimian, symbolic interactionist and structuralist currents have been detected in Goffman's output, then, in the attempt to see in his work something which is approachable, something which meshes it into the discourse of the social science disciplines. But not only these, but "existentialism" has been imputed to Goffman. This paper will approach Goffman with a Sartrean fore-understanding, whether Goffman thought that way or not. E.A. Tiryakian, in a paper which defends a humanistic view of the person, briefly draws attention to what he regards as a similarity between Goffman and Sartre, in which neither comes out well: "Goffman no less than Sartre begins with a phenomenological view of the person as a social participant," Tiryakian writes. Some of the difficulty involves viewing the social mask as a mere facade behind which there is nothing. The meaning of this "nothing" is most important, and Tiryakian is right to consider it central.

In this article the author presents his comments on life and works of sociologist Erving Goffrnan. From first to last Goffman's own vision of an intact sphere of reality governed his participation. This vision is of course stated best by Erving himself, most notably in his presidential address, "The interactional order." It can be seen twenty years earlier in the first paper to signal his involvement in a loose confederation at Berkeley in the early 1960s, one that became the basis of a continuing network of "socio-linguistic" activity until this day. The paper, "The neglected situation," was his contribution to a symposium at the 1963 meetings of the American Anthropological Association in San Francisco, and was published the next year in a special number. In this paper, as in his conversation at the time, Ewing welcomed the emerging attention to the social dimension of language, but issued a warning. Research that correlated this or that aspect of speech with this or that aspect of participant and setting would entail an infinite ingress.

The article discusses the cognitive effects of the computational paradigm in the human sciences. Computer applications are known in all sectors of the human sciences. The most common functions served by computers are sorting and counting i.e., clerical or mathematical operations in which the traditional contest of "mind versus machine" tends to turn in favor of the latter. However, the output of mechanical sorting and counting is seldom a finished product: it has to be interpreted and evaluated in a variety of ways, in which the mind regains the upper hand. The situation is different to a particular class of simulations in which the object under study is the mental behavior of the scientist rather than the sociocultural phenomena that he or she has chosen to explore. No one will be surprised at the importance given to the matter of representation. Collecting the various bits and pieces of the database scattered in a given paper is not an easy task. Displaying them as the semiotic base of the formal construct leads to further difficulties, as the exercise brings into focus the extreme variability of scholarly practice in this respect. Given a set of material or textual objects, there seems to be no such thing as a common language in the way they are represented in different papers. Needless to say, arguments are not lacking in defense of variability, the more worthy from a scientific viewpoint being the well-established relation between representation systems and the theories which are made to rest upon them.

This article presents advice on preparations for the publication of research results. The American Sociological Association's preparation checklist for submitting manuscripts to publications serves a useful role in becoming well prepared. Even though this checklist is complete, almost every journal has guidelines that are specific to that journal. These should also be consulted before sending a manuscript for review. Each journal has its own goals and its own preferred style. Most important will be the standards of quality the journal's editors impose upon the articles accepted for publication. The more accurately the writer gauges these considerations, the greater his or her chance of acceptance. A writer may achieve higher prestige and notoriety for publishing a book rather than one or more journal articles. Decisions about whether to publish monographs, texts, edited books, or readings require balancing motives and skills. The decisions should also be timed to appropriate stages in the researcher's professional career. The ideal time to begin interesting publishers in a research monograph is when the research begins or when funds are received to support it. The probability is far higher that the learned paper will receive a rejection from a major journal than that it will be accepted for publication. If a researcher cannot learn how to adjust to having his or her submissions rejected, then he or she will have a difficult time learning from the process of sharing research findings with colleagues. Rejection happens to everyone.

This article presents a commentary on the corpus of Erving Goffman's works, drawing the primary materials from "Frame Analysis." In this article, an assessment is made from an interpretive social science perspective. Additionally, it draws on many of Goffman's primary sources. Utilizing these sources, it is suggested that Goffman does not provide concepts useful for studying social interaction, the interpretation by actors of the behavior of other social actors, the process of framing as it was outlined by Gregory Bateson, or any of the processes of meaning attribution or negotiation of problematic situations as discussed by Alfred Schutz. Rather, it is contended that in "Frame Analysis" Goffman presents a structural analysis of selected and peripheral aspects of everyday experience. The structural tradition that Goffman's work represents is also reflected in linguistics, ethnology, cognitive anthropology, componential analysis, taxonomic construction, and social structural analysis. In commenting on Goffman's work, the paper comments on this structural tradition as well as contrasting it with an interpretive point of view.

In this paper we have raised and answered the question of whether, and under what circumstances, a published prediction will be confirmed, even if there is reaction to the prediction. The problem was stated, and a graphical method for analyzing it was set forth in Section I. In Section II, it was shown that it is always possible in principle to make a public prediction that will be confirmed by the event. This proof refutes allegations commonly made about the impossibility, in principle, of correct prediction of social behavior. In Section III, certain practical problems were examined that arise in actually making predictions. It was shown that correct prediction requires at least some knowledge of the reaction function; that whether publication of a prediction (adjusted for expected reactions or unadjusted) will affect the outcome of an election between two candidates depends on the shape of the reaction function, and that publication of an adjusted prediction will sometimes have more, and sometimes less effect on behavior that publication of an unadjusted prediction. These results were applied in particular to the reaction functions corresponding to "bandwagon" and "underdog" effects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we have examined Goffman's image of the mental hospital as a total institution, using two methods. First, we related his examples from life in mental hospitals to our conceptual models. Second, we used the dimensions of our models to construct Goffman's model of mental illness, and then identify it as a conspiratorial model. We found that while Goffman gives only one example of mental hospital life which fits the model used in concentration camps, he nevertheless gives the impression that a mental hospital is a concentration camp by failing to describe the rights and duties of patients, i.e. the sick role. We have called attention to the peculiar difficulties of maintaining psychiatric patients in the sick role, which results in those demoralized hospitals so vividly described by Goffman. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article reports that the death of Erving Goffman in 1982 inevitably quickened the pace of commentary on his work, and also provided the opportunity to assess the nature and influence of his contribution to the development of sociological knowledge. Nobody has found this latter task effortless, since it raises difficult questions not only concerning the status of Goffman's own work, but also concerning the status of sociological knowledge as a whole. In addition, certain features of Goffman's professional practice have made it difficult to follow the conventional tracks of institutionalized influence. He seems to have entirely eschewed the ritual apparatus of institutional continuity: never editing collections of papers by his students or imitators; never contributing a prefatory endorsement of another's book; discouraging the growth of commentaries and secondary studies of his work; and until 1981, never publicly responding to published criticisms. Such negative practices make it inevitable that consideration of the influence of his work is forced to concentrate on its cognitive rather than its institutional effectiveness, thus neatly removing one of the conventional props of scholarship in the history of disciplinary development.

This article focuses on problems posed by magical thought systems for anthropological theory. Magical thinking is an expression of a cognitive-processing limitation of the human mind. It is that form of non-correlational reasoning utilized when objects and events conceptually affiliate or exclude one another in minds of people. Typically, it involves a confusion of propositions about the world with propositions about language. Correlation and contingency are relatively complex concepts that are not spontaneously available to human thought. The article suggests that anthropologists interested in thought may have mistaken a difference in the content of thought for a difference in mode of thought. Magical thinking does not distinguish one culture from another. Resemblance, not co-occurrence likelihood, is a fundamental conceptual tool of the everyday mind. It should be kept in mind that this paper has been concerned primarily with the kinds of concepts men employ to organize and manipulate information, regardless of the interpretive content of the information processed.

The article presents an interview of sociologist Erving Goffman. On being asked "was there a place for [William] Thomas and [Florian] Znaniecki?", he replied " Well, Thomas and Znaniecki, we all read them, but it was really kind of vulgar social organization, While Znaniecki's [1934] book on methodology was a very fine little effort, paralleling [Talcott] Parsons in many ways. The big thing, The Polish Peasant [Thomas & Znaniecki, 1919-1921/1958], was an influence more on Blumer than on myself; and Blumer's [1939] critique of it was a thing we all read, of course, So there's that kind of influence, But not Thomas and Znaniecki so much as Robert Park. He was sort of the founder of the whole Hughesian tradition. He had a lot of influence on us I think, My teachers were Park, Burgess, and Louis Wirth, And then later on Everett Hughes. But the person I worked for initially, was Lloyd Warner, I was oriented to Social Anthropology at the time. The woman I was living with was a social anthropologist. On being asked "What are, according to you, the main techniques of doing research in Sociology? I sup- pose you have a very special feeling for participant observation," he replied "I haven't done much participant observation over the last decade. I have been mostly involved in writing papers on conversation and that sort of thing, face-to-face interaction in general. I still have to write up a study I did of casino activity. I don't know when I will get to finish that.

The author, in this article, presents his opinion on martial arts and liberal education. In the autumn 1984 issue of "Liberal Education," I published "The Liberal Arts and the Martial Arts," an essay which explored how efforts to rethink the rationales of liberal education might benefit from comparing the liberal arts as developed in the West to certain educational programs, commonly known as the martial arts, developed in the cultures of East Asia. To begin with, I suggested that the distinction embodied in the Japanese contrast between bujutsu and budo parallels an age-old western distinction between strictly utilitarian arts and arts that possess a liberal character. In that earlier paper, then, I used training programs in the martial arts as a source of ideas to enrich our thinking about the liberal curriculum. I did not explore the possible role which actual training in the martial arts might play in contemporary programs of liberal education, nor did I explore the ways in which the philosophy of the liberal arts might provide ideas for enriching instructional programs in the martial arts.

The article focuses on recent studies of body in consumer culture. In his paper "The Discourse of Diet," Bryan Turner drew attention to the role of dietary management in the production of docile, disciplined bodies. Concluding in a speculative vein, Turner remarked that the emerging problem of ageing populations within late capitalist society has pushed a new discourse, demography, to the fore centered on a regime of diet, jogging and cosmetics to control the alienated and disaffected citizens of retirement compounds. Within consumer culture, advertisements, the popular press, television and motion pictures, provide a proliferation of stylized images of the body. In addition, the popular media constantly emphasize the cosmetic benefits of body maintenance. The reward for ascetic body work ceases to be spiritual salvation or even improved health, but becomes an enhanced appearance and more marketable self. The emphasis upon body maintenance and appearance within consumer culture suggests two basic categories: the inner and the outer body. The inner body refers to the concern with the health and optimum functioning of the body which demands maintenance and repair in the face of disease, abuse and the deterioration accompanying the ageing process. The outer body refers to appearance as well as the movement and control of the body within social space. The study of the outer body can thus range from demographic and human ecological aspects down to face-to-face interactions in which appearance, preservation of self and management of impressions become the focus attention.

This article presents information on the green movement. The following is an effort to explore the phenomenon, particularly directed at listeners and readers very used to conceiving of politics in terms of blue and red, market forces, protected by conservative parties and forces with planning and redistribution protected by socialist parties, both of them found in democratic and dictatorial versions. The Greens are obviously different, neither blue nor red, neither dictatorial nor democratic in the parliament- arian sense of that word. In spite of participating in parliamentary elections, mass action, direct democracy, local autonomy, self reliance and so on are obviously closer to their heart. This paper does not claim to have conclusive or any novel answers to the questions on the evolution of green movement but they are certainly worth exploring. The Greens have probably come here to stay and to expand. Hence, three analytical approaches: ideological, historical and sociological; not necessarily compatible, not necessarily contradictory, but well suited to shed some light on the phenomenon.

Chapter 1 of the book "Gender and Close Relationships" is presented. It explores the differences in gender in a relationship and the dimensions that would affect relationships. It also highlights the theories and approaches on the two aspects. The formation of the man to woman relationship is focused in the paper.

The article presents information on religion and sociology. The authors' work on the general theme of globalization and its implications began in the mid-1960s. In a series of publications, initially with Peter Nettl, in the years 1965 to about 1972 grappled with problems which were situated at the intersection of modernization theory and the discipline of international relations, with particular reference to the then popular problem of `the modernization' of Third World societies. Some of the authors' ideas on globalization were developed within, but never limited to, a sociologyeofareligion perspective. (A number of relevant papers, plus others, are to be published in book form separately.) It may be worth saying here that among the issues raised in that context were those of the relativization of societal and other standpoints and the attendant problems of identity, particularly collective identity.

This article presents information on the sociological tradition and a rejoinder by author O.B. Lawuyi and Olufemi Taiwo to the social theories of Akinsola Akiwowo and M. Akin Makinde's. In this paper the authors accept that it is possible to do sociology in African languages. But one have to specify the concepts for doing sociology in African languages, clarify their meanings, suggest their interrelationships in thought and practice, and show how they can be used to understand social phenomena. However, neither Akiwowo and Makinde have sufficiently clarified their concepts for doing sociology in Yoruba. Hence their concepts, as they stand, are unsuited for sociological use. We wish to acknowledge that there is an everyday basis for the use of the concepts they have identified. But, as one shall argue presently, they never adequately specify how one can move from the everyday basis to doing sociology. Their explication of the concepts they have identified is fuzzy. One can direct attention to some neglected possibilities inhering in the conceptual discoveries made by Akiwowo, especially those relating to the importance of language, philosophy and sociological theory to the develop- ment of indigenous sociological theories and paradigms. The focus is on four principal concepts which Akiwowo has appropriated from Yoruba language as pylons upon which to erect a sociological theory informed by the peculiar historical experiences and linguistic categories of an African people, the Yoruba.

The article provides information concerning the history of sociology. Cited in this paper is Alexis de Tocqueville's microsociological processes that made him one of the founding fathers of historical sociology. According to de Tocqueville's theory, these processes generate microsociological phenomena such as inequality, frustration and revolution. It also acknowledges the contribution of scholars to the discipline that include Max Weber, Emile Durkheim and Karl Marx. The author also identifies holism and methodological individualism as two examples of sociological metatheories which permeate the whole history of sociology.

The article presents an introduction to the book "Constructing the Social." In reviewing the contributions to the book, it becomes apparent that the underlying structure of constructionist accounts is the narrative. Chapter 10 presents a story about ageing nurses who uncritically use the unexamined category, age, as the reason for not participating in professional activities. Chapter 4 presents a story about the heterogeneous images of a charismatic leader. Some of the chapters present historical narratives. It is not that the authors of these chapters avoid the rhetoric of science. Some, in fact, make use of quantitative methods. In these cases, the rhetoric of science is employed to reinforce the narrative structure. The papers in this book offer not only a range of exemplars of the social constructionist perspective, but also a representation of the varied phenomena to which the perspective may be applied. The chapters also pose, implicitly or explicitly, an array of theoretical and methodological issues for examination.

The article focuses on the role of religion in public attitudes toward religion news. For this assessment, national and local surveys supplemented by in-depth interviews and content analyses are conducted. From these findings, it is concluded that interest in religion news is widespread, but readership and satisfaction are lower because they are more closely related to the way people perceive religion news is being covered and the way they believe it should be covered. It states that attention to religion news may be part of both a localities and a cosmopolite news orientation. The localities, or traditional approach to religion news is common in small-town newspapers, a more hard news or cosmopolitan approach exists at many larger papers. Likelihood of reading probably is related to whether or not respondents see their local newspaper meeting their own news interests. People with above-average socioeconomic status, members of mainline Protestant churches, and those with no religion may read and even be reasonably satisfied with localities coverage.

This article introduces several research papers on a variety of international perspectives on the social and legal issues involved in defining, preventing, and sanctioning hate crimes. These papers illuminate the American experience with hate crimes by describing the experiences of other countries in ways that provide instructive comparisons. The experiences of the nations described in these papers illustrate how societal attitudes are linked to a particular nation's problem with hate crime and how each nation responds to the problem (or fails to respond) in ways that reflect its specific cultural and legal context.

This article introduces several research papers on different strategies for fighting hate through changing attitudes. Attitudes can be changed through media campaigns designed to change negative stereotypes about minorities, victim-offender mediation sessions designed to help both parties, and a campus program that uses a variety of methods to raise community awareness of hate crimes. The approaches to fighting hate described in the papers share a common focus on the role that intolerance and prejudice have in hate violence. Thus, fighting hate requires changing attitudes that serve as precursors to hate crimes and responding to the emotional needs of victims when dealing with the aftermath of hate crimes.

This article introduces several research papers related to hate crime victims. The impact of hate crimes is multidimensional, extending beyond the physical and psychological harm suffered by the direct victims to the fear such crimes create in others who are (or appear to be) members of the group targeted by hate criminals. The papers in this section document both historical and contemporary examples of the ways in which members of targeted groups have been victimized by hate crimes. In addition to describing the nature and impact of hate crimes, the papers in this section further illuminate the social processes by which people come to be characterized as others outside the mainstream of society. Examining how some groups are labeled as different from the perceived societal norm is essential to understanding the impact of hate crimes on victims.

This article introduces several research papers on hate crime offenders. The papers in this section approach questions on hate crimes using diverse theoretical perspectives and a wide range of methods. Taken together, the results illustrate how developing an adequate understanding of hate crimes requires one to look past the characteristics of the perpetrators to the social context surrounding hate crimes. It has been discovered that hate violence often reflects extant societal and legal norms that legitimize violence against particular groups.

This article introduces several research papers on hate crime. The definition of hate crime involves complex legal and ethical questions about what circumstances should be taken into account in defining whether something is a hate crime and which categories of people should be included in the legal designation of hate crime victim. Similarly, it is questioned as to how can one design policies to facilitate law enforcement recognition and reporting of hate crimes. These papers discuss the complex public policy issues raised by such questions and demonstrates that the creation and implementation of public policies on hate crimes reflect the influence of political and practical considerations as much as strictly legal considerations.

This article introduces several research papers on hate crime laws. The papers collectively describe some of the complexities associated with legislation and judicial interpretations of hate crime laws, including how to define hate crime and hate crime victims, and the challenge of distinguishing between expressive behavior that is and is not protected by the First Amendment. The papers raise important questions like how does law and policy making on hate crimes illustrate the dynamic relationship between societal and legal change. And to what degree does emerging law and policy responses to the historic problem of hate crime reflect growing social awareness of the problem, media attention to the problem and political activism by individuals and groups.

This article presents a preface to the second edition of "Family Theories." The biggest changes in this second edition of the book are due to the various types of feedback that have been received from diverse readership. This readership includes academics publishing theoretical papers, as well as students encountering these theories for the first time. The authors have been excited and humbled by the enthusiastic reception and endorsement the book has encountered. It has been used in both advanced undergraduate courses and graduate seminars with about equal frequency. The order of authorship for this edition is reversed from the original edition. Adding the chapter on feminist theories was difficult because some felt it does not constitute a theoretical but an ideological stance; others felt that feminist theories, although rightfully theories, are not theories about marriage and families but about gender and sex. The metatheoretical discussion from the last chapter has been removed and focus has been more on future directions and theory construction.

This article presents information on the process of internationalisation in sociology. The development of sociology in the twentieth century has itself been a facet of that overall process of internationalisation and has shared in its contradictory tensions. Before 1914, the discipline, like the colonial powers, took upon itself a universal task, the production of a science of society, with all times and peoples as part of its remit. In fact that task was conceived within and coloured by distinct national cultures and French, German, Italian and American sociologies all bore characteristic traits. The contradictions and tensions between internationalisation and the development of national sociologies should therefore be understood as part of an overall process of development. Edward Tiryakian's paper exemplifies a consciousness of and involvement in that process as he seeks to bring American sociology to a greater awareness of the need to look outwards. The justifications he advances for his appeal themselves provide an interesting overview of a sociologist's sense of the importance of the process of internationalisation.

In this article the author acknowledges to his parents for their support. Also, the author express thanks to, his friend Alec Pendle for his lunchtime discussions, to the McColgan family and the Ceeney family, who tolerated author's 'giving forth' on numerous occasions. The author express thanks to members of the Church of Scotland Working Party for rekindling his interest in citizenship. The author thank those who gave a friendly reception to his first substantive paper on citizenship presented to the 2nd International Conference on the Future of Adult Life in Holland. The author also thanks his wife for her companionship and loving support through the difficult times in which the book was written.