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This paper treats structuralist and interactionist perspectives as complementary, in an approach to the dynamics of professional wrestling as a social scene. Both directive or formulating aspects of culture as it is specified for social life and the creativity of human agents in negotiating such constraints from the viewpoint of their particularistic interests are emphasized in an examination of the confirmation and negotiation of identities, the clash and resolution of moral meanings, the calculated transgression of legal tradition, the location of the charismatic hero, and the ritual importance of disorder and crisis in wrestling. As such, the paper is offered as a contribution to an understanding of the sources and movement of meanings in ritual and dramatic forms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It has long been recognized that the study of peasant movements requires two basic methodological rules for its proper understanding: first, the focus of the study must be both on the interaction process which binds the peasantry to its overlord and the social forces that impinge upon both poles of interaction; second, such study must necessarily deal with the historical contexts within which the interaction process between lord and peasant develops. The main purpose of this paper is to apply these two methodological rules to a case study of a) the transformation of a regional power structure and b) the origins and development of a peasant movement that swept an intermontane valley of Peruvian Central Sierra dominated by the hacienda system, transforming it into a region of Indian communities. A second purpose of the paper is to derive certain theoretical generalizations from the empirical case, which can be relevant for the development of a theory of political peasant movements. This article also discusses the role of successful peasant movements in the development process of dependent, unequally developed societies, like Peru.

This paper examines the intraorganizational mobility interests of production workers in manufacturing organizations. Substantial numbers of workers report not only being interested in mobility within their organizations, but many also claim to be actively pursuing that objective. The immediate supervisor is found to be a central figure in their goal achievement plans. [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.

The concept of ‘generalized symbolic media of social interaction’ was introduced by Parsons five years ago in his two articles on the concepts of power and influence. I believe that it represents a theoretical development of the first importance, which has received much less attention—particularly in my own field of social anthropology—than it deserves. The purpose of the present paper is to review and criticize the concept itself and to point out its relevance to certain problems in social anthropology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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]

Psychological development at any age occurs in, and is dependent upon, complex patterns of group relationships and it is vital that these should be studied directly. According to analytical psychologist C.G Jung "individuation does not shut one out from the world, but gathers the world to oneself and relationship to the self is at once relationship to our fellow men." In view of the comparative lack of interest in group analysis shown by analytical psychologists, this research paper aims at intimating, in broad outline, some methods of investigation of, and a few tentative formulations about, the structure and dynamics of analytic groups.

The article presents a study, which aims to explore attitudes via social distance toward groups with varying degrees of acceptance. Nonverbal bodily cues, such as facial expression, orientation, posture, and distance, reflect attitudes as surely as verbal behavior, according to recent experimental evidence. The less the distance a man maintains from another person, the more positive is his attitude towards him. Actual interpersonal spatial behavior has been mirrored in paper-and-pencil figure placement tasks.