Search

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]

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.

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 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 article explores causes and consequences flowing from conflicts existing between governmental agencies of the United States engaged in the field of intergroup relations. There are three concerns related to the evolution of the problem. The first concerns the differentiation of agencies in terms of both ideology and the typical social work skills of agency personnel. The second relates to the bureaucratic structure of such agencies and its consequences for the actions of agency directors. The final proposition concerns the nature of the competition between agencies for scarce community resources needed to maintain the agency as an ongoing organization. Such conflicts often alienates potential and existing lay support for the intergroup relations program in a community. A second consequence is that the time and energies of agency personnel are consumed with activities unrelated to the stated goals of intergroup relations. Finally, there is often a failure to effect coordination between agencies or to develop an adequate division of labor thus wasting valuable resources.

Action theory's substantive image of social organization, theory building strategy, and methodological tenets are compared with those of interactionism. Despite polemics to the contrary, action and interaction concepts denote a similar image of social organization and personality. As is argued, the principle difference between the two perspectives revolves around the issue of the most appropriate theory building and methodological strategy. The ontological implications of this fact are examined and found not to justify the continued partitioning of social theory into antagonistic metaphysical camps. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An attempt is made to establish primary integration as a major variable in explaining citizen involvement in political life. It is argued that a convincing case requires a demonstration that the variable is both empirically important and theoretically meaningful. The former is examined through data from a sample survey of an English city. Theoretical meaning is established through focusing upon the idea of sociable talk as a key factor in reality construction, including the construction of political events as a proximate worm available for the interest and participation by the individual. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A model facilitating the prediction of organizational persistence or dissolution is presented through a series of propositions. Environmental change, community demands for service, organizational capacity, formalization, and tack orientations are identified as important dimensions in determining the probability of organizational emergence, maintenance, or demise. The emergence and development of Neighbors in Need (NIN); a Seattle, Washington based welfare organization, is described to illustrate the viability of the model. NIN's career pattern shows a persistence beyond the period of environmental disruption because of the long-term progressive nature of the system's stress, NIN's formalization, and its tack specificity. But a reduction in system stress, the adoption of a more disuse goal, and the organization's failure to promote interorganizational relations with the local agencies Indicates the probable demise of the NIN. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A social-psychological perspective, used in the analysis of three cases of nonviolent direct action, combines the ‘exchange theory’ of Homans and the two and three dimensional approaches for the analysis of interpersonal behavior suggested by Leary and Bales. The three dimensions are: dominance-submission, positive-negative, and goal oriented-deviant. Once the behavior of a nonviolent actor has been identified in this three dimensional space. the expected behavior of his opponent can be predicted. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Nonviolent action will produce attitude change to the extent that it satisfies either or both of two prerequisites. It must either interfere with the functions served by the attitudes or it must produce some inconsistency between the attitudes and other orientations of the persons affected by the action. The three major functions served by attitudes are object orientation, ego-support, and ego-defense. For many social attitudes the ego-support provided by attitudes which help define a person's relation to a reference group is especially powerful. Functions may be blocked by a particular set of conditions, which may have little in common with one another. Inconsistencies may occur among different attitudes or among the components of a single attitude. One class of inconsistencies that is of particular Importance occurs when people are persuaded or mildly pressured into action contrary to their attitudes. Each of the sources of attitude change pressure carries its own requirements for producing change and its own mechanisms for protecting attitudes against change pressures. Nonviolent action does not necessarily meet these requirements or overcome the defenses. However, with knowledge of the functional bases and conceptual contexts of the attitudes being challenged it may be possible to utilize the resources present in nonviolent action to increase the likelihood of a desirable impact. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this article is to discuss the Barnard-Simon model with reference to its usefulness in providing theoretical insights into participation in community action organizations. The article is divided into three parts. The first part discusses the Barnard-Simon model and its theoretical relevance for community action organizations. The second part explores several theoretical ideas about participation, organizational viability, and the relative importance of certain classes of variables in community action organizations. The actual development of an organization is the source of data for that discussion. The third part is devoted to the discussion of general implications. The community action organization is rooted in many of the human failings of formal social organizations. The Barnard-Simon model has more immediate and direct behavioral implications, therefore, for this type of organization. The Barnard-Simon model postulates an organization as a coalition of participants or group of participants.

This article focuses on factors related to language choice in those societies which do not have rigid barriers between linguistic groups and which may contain fairly large proportions of the populace with some degree of multilingual ability. Many nations have a considerable number of citizens who live in a multilanguage situation in which they may use more than one language. The use of a particular language may either be taken as a status symbol or as a badge of pretentiousness or it may emphasize intimacy with the respondent or stress social distance. Simon Herman has drawn up a theoretical framework which outlines factors associated with language choices in multilanguage societies. According to Herman, these factors can be divided into three categories. The first is an occasion when social situation is more important than language facility. The second type of occasion is one in which personal needs have high priority. Finally, there is an intermediate type of occasion in which demands of the immediate situation determine language choice.

This article present an exploratory overview of the reciprocal relations between uniformation and language. Uniformation means a set of related processes whereby uniformity and similarity of practices in the various social relationships are established in time and space. And a language is a culturally contrived and socially established system of standardized and conventionalized symbols. Uniformation bears a direct relationship to language. In general, if social uniformation is occurring, it involves language; and if linguistic uniformation is occurring, it affects social processes and social structures. The uniformizing factors are so much a part of a sociocultural milieu, so omnipresent, so inherent in so many of people's daily social situations and experiences, that many of them are unaware of the degree to which they exist, the degree to which people are conditioned and controlled by them, and the degree to which forms of uniformation are voluntarily and involuntarily exemplified in their behavior.

This article focuses on linguistic forms or codes. Changes in the form of the social relation affect both the planning procedures used in the preparation of speech and the orientation of the listener. Different forms of social relations can generate quite different speech-systems or linguistic codes by affecting the planning procedures. These different speech-systems or codes create different orders of relevance and relation for their speakers. Two general types of code can be distinguished: elaborated and restricted. These codes can be defined in terms of the probability of predicting for any one speaker which syntactic elements are to be used to organize meaning across a representative range of speech. They themselves are functions of a particular form of social relationship. The pure form of a restricted code would be one where all words and hence the organizing structure are wholly predictable for speakers and listeners. It defines the form of the social relationship by restricting the verbal signaling of individual differences. Individuals mainly relate to each other through the social position or status they occupy. An elaborated code, where prediction is much less possible at the syntactic level, is likely to arise in that social relationship which raises the tension in its members to select a verbal arrangement from their linguistic resources which closely fits specific referents.

This article presents an analysis of social relation within groups of members. By group it is meant any plural within which observable interaction (mutual stimulation and response) is present among the members. Any namable set of people is a plural, it becomes a group to the extent that its members behave in ways that influence one another. Groups are characterized by relations among members and social relations are a type of product, rather than a sum, as this discussion will show. Sociologists with quantitative inclinations will not find much that is surprising or instructive in this mathematically simple thesis. But many who study groups are unaware of the appropriate use of products rather than sums when considering a set of indices or variables. Much of what will be said is well known to statisticians, but it is now presented in everyday language in order to reach a wider audience. One can think first of a product of two all-or-none kinds of things which logicians call a "logical product" or "intersect" of sets in the new mathematics.

In "Social Behavior" the author showed how many of the emergent properties of the behavior of men in small groups, such as the emergence of a status-system, could be explained by deductive systems employing psychological propositions. In the case of the family farm the author could provide the explanation because he is fairly familiar with the necessary information. With a little research he is sure he could provide a psychological explanation of the appearance of the collective farm in the Soviet Union. This brings the author to a sociologist's difficulties with "history," for it is obvious that explanations of the principal structural features of large scale societies must be in part historical, in that they must make use of information about the past histories of men and nations. The explanations are only in part historical, for they should include an examination of what is happening to these features now. Their usefulness is clear when they have the historical record -- but they seldom have the record. The gaps in the story of individuals and of nations are obviously enormous; and one of the advantages of the study of history is its encouragement of modesty-a willingness to admit there are many things one do not know and never will and accordingly many things one cannot fully explain.

In the present brief article the author cannot attempt a thorough critical analysis of Professor George C. Homans work sociological theory. The author will only comment on a few aspects of it which raise problems particularly significant for the author. His previous books "The Human Group," was carefully limited to the analysis of small-scale social systems, the largest of which was a small local community These are in the nature of the case parts of larger social systems and incapable of anything like the approach to self sufficiency which characterizes a total society. It is the author's own view that the same problem arises with reference to the personality of the individual Elementary social behavior in Homans' sense seems to be elementary not only in sociological, but also in a psychological sense, if by the term psychological in this context one refers to the personality of the individual in the sense of a complex organization of components and their relations. The central question here seems to the author to be one of system-reference. The reference which Homans uses most consistently is that of a restricted class of what are ordinarily called social systems.

"Justice is the good of others," reiterated Aristotle. George C. Homans conceptualizes "social behavior as an exchange of activity, tangible or intangible, and more or less rewarding or costly, between at least two persons." Homans defines the rule of distributive justice in the following words: "A man in art exchange relation with another will expect that the rewards act each man be proportional to his costs, the greater the rewards, the greater the costs-and that the net rewards or profits, of each man be proportional to his investments, the greater the investments the greater the profit. If the statement that rewards are expected to be proportional to cost is meant to imply that the proportion is constant, it is clearly not correct, since people realize that the costs they must incur to obtain certain benefits depend on their scarcity. if this statement, on the other hand is merely meant to imply that people supply increasing rewards to others at increasing costs to themselves in the anticipation of receiving increasing rewards in return, it merely repeats the basic principle of social exchange without adding anything new.

In addition to its stylistic flavor, the work of George C. Homans has two qualities which set it off from the writings of most sociologists. Homans always has in view a set of processes, never a collection of static relations among variables or patterns and he stays close to the concrete actions of men in groups. The processes work themselves out in accordance with simple and readily understood principles of human nature, however abstractly these may be conceived. In keeping with his sense of the concrete, Homans takes the view that social interaction is to be understood on the basis of its immediate antecedents, the behaviors and sentiments of the individuals involved. In particular some of Homans ideas closely parallel several related trends of theoretical development in social psychology which were initially stimulated by a sociologist's writings on "balance." The basic postulate of the balance theories is that there exists a need for the socialized human being to establish and maintain stable and consistent orientations toward the self, other persons, and the non-person environment.

This article presents a logical derivation of pressures for conformity from the logical relationship of conformity to certain interaction states known to be rewarding. Beginning with the fact that for most people, perceived consensus, correct behavioral predictions, and influence are rewarding. The author deduced the relationship between conformity and these interaction states, demonstrating that the rewards of interaction vary with the conformity of the interactors. Pressures for conformity as defined here are therefore seen to be inherent in the interaction situation if it is to be rewarding. The theoretical analysis presented in this article is entirely compatible with the development or existence of a fractionated peer group, so that modal responses of sub-peer groups would be taken as the referent. Here it has simply been taken for granted that the entire peer group of a school represents a single interaction system on some level. Ten hypotheses from the theory were tested on a sample of fifty-one adolescent friendship groups.

For over 300 years the members of the Society of Friends (Quakers) have been making group decisions without voting. Their method is to find a ‘sense of the meeting’ which represents a consensus of those involved. Ideally this consensus is not simply ‘unanimity,’ or an opinion on which all members happen to agree, but a ‘unity’: a higher truth which grows from the consideration of divergent opinions and unites them all. Friends can ‘unite’ in support of action which shows due consideration to the individuality of each member and to their corporate concerns. As an illustration of this method, we will analyze in some detail the group process of a Quaker committee as it worked with a difficult social problem over a period of one year. Before beginning the analysis, we will summarize some of the main points in the process of reaching the ‘sense of the meeting’ as it has been described by Friends and others. Also we will review the functional theory of social interaction which will provide the basis for theoretical analysis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The author attempts to indicate some of the limits of Peter M. Hall's usage of symbolic interactionism, by looking at the issues which he does not address very well in his article, "A Symbolic Interactionist Analysis of Politics." Two traditions in political sociology can be identified: the behavioral and the systemic. The behavioral approach considers the interactions and exchanges among political actors as they struggle for power and influence. The systemic approach, on the other hand, considers the system as a whole, the relation of system parts to one another, and how the overall system maintains itself or disintegrates over time and regulates conflict. The limits of symbolic interaction theory as a paradigm for political analysis can be understood, then, in contrast to a systems perspective. Meaning, that the level of analysis of symbolic interaction theory is micro-sociological because it deals with the behavior and interactions of elements of a system rather than considering the system as a whole.

The theoretical usefulness of a convergence of symbolic interactionism and urban sociology is discussed. A method is proposed for the analysis of large numbers of social identities. Black racial identity, in particular, is considered. Racial identity is found to be far more salient for blacks than for whites, but even for blacks, a number of other identities are seen to be more frequently employed. The notion of a ‘standard package of identities’ is developed, and the utility of such a model for understanding group differentiation and inter-group linkages is explored. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this article will be to outline a symbolic interactionist approach to the study of politics in the United States. In the course of this presentation, the basic assumptions and concepts of the interactionist perspective will be presented, culminating in a model of society as a negotiated order. This model in conjunction with definitions of power and politics will provide the basis for analyzing the processes of power. The article will focus on and emphasize two mechanisms of power, information flow control and symbolic mobilization of support, which have previously been unrecognized and unanalyzed. In the conclusion, the strengths and weaknesses of the approach will be discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article relates the author's experience with eight children in a group relations training. When one came to think about it, they all were exceedingly brave, even suspiciously loyal to stay together, to stay as a group for as long and as intensely as they dig. Every Tuesday afternoon at 4:00, at 4: precisely, they dragged or bounced or hunched into the little seminar room on the second floor, flopped their coats on the backs of the chairs, sat down, jumped up again to jabber about food and then settled in for two hours of talking, joking, thinking and hard work. There were eight of them. As in a round or nursery rhyme, there was in fact a gentle but still sturdy ritual about the meetings. One never spoke in the idiom of organizations and capital government with words like, "having a dialogue" or "confrontas sessions," but there were modestly protective rituals, linguistic and otherwise, a concatenation of preparative actions, somehow required if not actually religious, purposeful and seriously intended, if not obsessively transacted.

An effort is made to extend the scope of the general theory of action to encompass some of the major dimensions of the individual's structure of sell-conceptions. This is attempted through formulation of four subjective ‘senses of self,’ one corresponding to each of the functional problems held in action theory to be essential features of all systems. The senses of competence, self-determination, unity, and moral worth are offered as the individual's subjective interpretations of his standing in relation to his objective problems of adaptation, goal-attainment, integration, and pattern-maintenance. It is argued that these four senses subsume and organize many important but scattered themes in the literature of self theory and general symbolic interactionism. Operational procedures are offered with which these senses may be assessed in empirical research, and some illustrative outcomes are presented from the author's longitudinal study of self-conception changes over the course of retirement. The discussion also touches upon some of the methodological problems encountered in attempting to establish the empirical validation for this kind of theoretical extension. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]