Search

Drawing on recent work in the sociology of science, we propose a sociological approach for understanding the process by which statistical methods were originally incorporated into the social sciences in America. In a departure from past accounts, which have viewed early statistical developments in the United States as part of the history of separate academic disciplines, we analyze interdisciplinary relations and local institutional conditions in turn-of-the-century America to elucidate the adoption and use of statistical methods by James McKeen Cattell in psychology, Franz Boas in anthropology, Franklin H. Giddings in sociology, and Henry L. Moore in economics. We argue that these four thinkers were doing boundary work to legitimize their disciplines in a competitive interdisciplinary field, where they confronted the "newcomer's dilemma" of conformity versus differentiation in relation to other disciplines. All four innovators turned to statistical methods to demonstrate compliance with acceptable scientific models and at the same time carve out a distinctive mode of statistical analysis to differentiate their own discipline from the others. Our analysis also shows that these developments occurred only under certain local institutional conditions. Cattell, Boas, Giddings, and Moore were faculty members at Columbia University at a time when the University had gained a competitive lead in the area of statistics over rival universities. Determined to preserve this institutional advantage, Columbia provided a conducive setting for the interdisciplinary process of the incorporation of statistical methods into the social sciences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite their otherwise divergent arguments, pluralist, state-centered, and neo-Marxist "relative autonomy" conceptions of political power in capitalist societies share the view that the "capitalist class" is generally incapable of unified political action. Yet, a striking feature of policy struggles in the United States between 1974 and 1981 was the dominant influence of a well-organized and unified business lobby. I examine business unity and political influence in the context of recent U.S. policy history. Tracing the legislative histories of the unsuccessful Labor Law Reform and Consumer Protection Agency bills of the 1970s, and the successful Economic Recovery Tax Act of 1981, a class-based, corporate power structure perspective is supported. The historical conditions fostering the political mobilization and intraclass cohesion of business in the 1970s, and the theoretical implications of the breakdown of business unity after 1981, are also examined. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Previous research contends that when Talcott Parsons developed the substantive argument of The Structure of Social Action, he turned away from the theoretical emptiness of American social science and drew on the ideas of four European social thinkers -- Weber, Durkheim, Pareto, and Marshall. Such research exemplifies the "content-fit model" of predecessor selection, which assumes that intellectual predecessors are chosen on the basis of a fit between their ideas and the project of the thinker who engages them. This model fails to explain Parsons's exclusion of the American institutionalists, most notably his Amherst teachers Walton Hamilton and Clarence Ayres, whose work fit directly with the argument of The Structure of Social Action. Institutionalist work was also characterized, however, by its negative reputation, particularly at Harvard University in the 1920s and 1930s, where Marshall, Pareto, Durkheim, and Weber were thinkers of growing reputational standing. Examination of Parsons's involvement in the local Harvard network indicates that contemporary reputational judgments decisively affected his choice of intellectual predecessors. This analysis also brings to light the organizational and institutional conditions under which a "reputational model" is required to understand the process of predecessor selection. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study uses data on the contributions of corporate political action committees to evaluate six popular theories of business political partisanship. Two theories are supported by the data: the "Yankee-Cowboy" theory of regional political differences among U.S. corporations and the regulatory environment theory, which views the differential relationship to government regulation as a primary determinant of corporate political behavior. No support is found for four other theories of business political partisanship: the core-periphery theory, the inner-circle theory, the managerialist theory, and the domestic-multinational theory. The four disconfirmed theories are all variants of a perspective known as the theory of "corporate liberalism," which hypothesizes a tendency toward greater liberalism on the part of the more dominant or central corporations in American society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The study of social indicators is valuable for understanding the role that the social sciences play in the political arena. One common pattern is for a particular social indicator to become frozen in place once it takes on political significance, and this can result in ironic consequences. This study traces out the case of indicators of aggregate productivity trends in the United States. These measures were initially developed as part of an underconsumptionist argument that was linked to the political left, but there was considerable debate over different measurement schemes. Over time, one particular measure of trends in aggregate productivity became central for wage negotiations and for government policy. This created a context in which the slower rates of growth of this measure of productivity in the 1970s helped to validate the views of those on the political right who saw the need for greater restrictions on wage gains and government civilian spending. The paper raises questions about the value of this particular measure and ends by emphasizing the problems of locking in place an "objective" social indicator when the reality being measured is in continua! flux. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The effects of the organization of schools on individual student performance have been the focus of investigations for many years. One area of inquiry that has led to mixed results and varied interpretations is research on the effects of ability grouping within schools. The present study has several advantages over previous, research on this question. (a) It is based on a large, national sample. (b) it examines the effects of both school types (some of which serve students selected according to ability) and ability grouping within school types. (c) The analysis involves comparing students who have been separated into ability groups with those who have not been so separated. (d) The analysis and interpretation take into account the effects of ceiling and floor effects of the measures used. The results support the general hypothesis that students in high ability groups gain more and students in low ability groups gain less over a five-year period than they would be expected to gain if they had not been separated into ability groups. It is suggested that one of the reasons similarly strong effects have not been consistently observed in the United States is that we have not collected the kinds of information needed to conduct the type of analysis presented here. However, ability grouping in British and American schools may serve different functions. The several types of schools and the ability groups within them may have more clearly defined "charters" in Great Britain, the higher levels serving to "sponsor" their students' movement toward elite adult statuses more effectively than their American counterparts do. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article reports on the 100th anniversary of the founding of the American Sociological Association, which provides an auspicious occasion for reviewing some if the accomplishments of the "American Sociological Review (ASR)." By examining its most influential articles, one can see ASR's remarkably consistent influence as well as obtain a glimpse if the evolution of sociological scholarship. Citation counts for ASR articles dating back to 1936 were obtained from the online ISI Social Sciences Citation index. The pattern show that the publication of high impact articles varies little from decade to decade despite the regular rotation of editors and broad historical changes in sociological theory and methods. The most frequently cited article in ASR history if Paul Dimaggio and Walter Powell's essay on institutional isomorphism, with some 1,700 citations to date. The list highlights some familiar themes, such as the prominence of functionalist theory before 1970 and the rise of multivariate statistics since that time.