Search

This section presents commentaries on the articles The Decline and Fall of Social Class, by Robert A. Nisbet and Recovery of Class Theory, by Rudolf Heberle. According to Bernard Barber of Barnard College, the authors of both articles are agreed that social stratification theory is in need of improvement. He is of the same mind. He agrees strongly with many of their strictures on current theories of social stratification. But he cannot quite accept the solutions they offer for the difficulties. Nisbet seems to recommend the abandonment of the notion of social class for modern society in the U.S., that is what the title of his article suggests. Yet after an excellent critique of current stratification theories, Nisbet cannot go the whole way in abandoning what they are struggling to understand. However, Otis Dudley Duncan from the University of Chicago said that the two articles under discussion do their bit toward the removal of ethnocentric bias in the analysis of stratification, both are explicitly written in a comparative framework. However, one could wish that both authors had been a little more obsessed with method. He is convinced that the issue as between the two papers cannot be resolved on the conceptual level, but requires the explicit acceptance of a common set of methodological criteria for identifying classes and for establishing the determinants, concomitants and consequences of class stratification.

The article discusses the historical differences which have characterized the pulp and paper industry and the stevedoring industry on the Pacific Coast from 1934 to 1948. The International Brotherhood of Pulp, Sulphite and Paper Mill Workers and the International Brotherhood of Paper Makers represented workers in the pulp and paper industry. The two unions negotiate jointly with the Pacific Coast Association of Pulp and Paper Manufacturers in a meeting which usually is held annually. The differences in the nature of the two industries and what they have contributed to the record of peace in the one instance and of conflict and warfare in the other are considered in the article.

The article comments on sociologist Jerome Rabow's article "Displacement of Goals in Applied Social Science." The "Woodlake" program to which professor Rabow refers is a pseudonym for a community program which, for the first three years of its existence, was run under my direction as the Silverlake Experiment. Professor Rabow's failure to mention both the research and publications that have been made on the Experiment may be due to his efforts to preserve the anonymity of the study and thus spare it any embarrassment. However, since the identity of programs tends to come out anyway, it may have been preferable to have dealt candidly with these matters. There are a number of substantive issues that merit consideration, the first of which was Professor Rabow's concern that Silverlake was an unfaithful replication of Provo. In noting this fact he was quite correct, but for far different reasons than he suggests.

The article focuses on irreducability of social change. The essence of the modern theory of biological evolution lies, as Stebbins J. Gould makes clear, not in vistas of stages, unilinear or multilinear, proceeding from primitive and simple to modem and complex types. The real essence of evolution lies in what the theory has to say about the mechanism of change: specifically, about the processes of genetic variation and natural selection. Common ignorance of the real nature of both processes on the part of social scientists is the basis of their frequent supposition that they are in fact dealing with "variations" and "selection" in their studies of kinship, class, tribe, or nation. modern icience But this is their business. The danger in any case does not come from the occasional Stebbins. There are three central ways in which the differences between biological evolutionary change and social change are manifest: the type of data the two disciplines work with; the altogether different role of time in each; and the relation between process and event.

The article describe the shop steward-training program of the International Brotherhood of Pulp, Sulphite and Paper Mill Workers which is operated jointly with the International Brotherhood of Paper Makers. Due to the emergence of trade unionism throughout the U.S. industry, new needs and new jobs were created for international unions. The objective of the training of union stewards in the pulp and paper industry is to stimulate activity among the men and women who represent the local union. The activity will depends upon the local union and the location of the community.

The article focuses on paper of Stebbins J. Gould on evolution theory. It does not offer to on to order existent species into a single sequence of stages, say from simple to complex. It has other, and better, explanations for cross-sectional diversity-diversity that was always embarrassing to cultural evolutionists who sought to fit lateral differentiation into a scheme of sequences. Second, evolutionary theory is not concerned with structural differences among individuals, save as these are of demonstrable significance either in terms of genetic drift or in terms of differential adaptation. On a third point, the experts are not agreed, namely, whether there are clear and anthropomorphically neutral tests of progress, that is, of relative degrees of development or advancement Stebbins chooses his language with care when he says that supporters of the synthetic theory of organic evolution are reluctant to speculate on the course of evolution, or phylogeny, on the basis of the supposed primitiveness or advancement of modern forms of life. Evolutionary theory does not attempt organic and social comparison.

The article examines abstracts of papers submitted but not included in the program of the annual meeting of the American Public Health Association, Medical Care Section, 1962. Some of these are "Experiences and Activities at a Medical Computing Center," by L.D. Cady, M.A. Woodbury, and L.J. Tich and "An Internist's Experiences With Medical Care of Welfare Patients in Proprietary Nursing Homes," by Sidney M. Greenberg. The first abstract focuses on the center that is cooperating with investigators in the area of mathematical and theoretical analysis and statistical data handling and analysis, information coding, keypunching and storage of medical data for further study and retrieval. The second abstract contains observations of the medical, nursing, and administrative practices in four nursing homes as made by an internist responsible for the medical Scare of welfare patients in these homes. In evaluating these activities the recognition and meeting of the patient's total needs was utilized as the criterion of quality of performance.

This section presents abstracts of studies related to sociology presented at the annual meeting of the Pacific Sociological Society held from April 10 to 12, 1958.

The article focuses on a study with the objective of determining whether all graders are influenced by the factor of essay neatness and whether an interaction exists between the writing clarity of graders and the neatness of the essay papers which they grade. It was hypothesized that graders who have neat, clear handwriting will unintentionally lower their evaluation of an essay containing near-illegible handwriting, whereas graders who are themselves messy handwriters will not subjectively penalize the student who turns in an essay containing messy writing. The results of this study indicate that an interaction exists between the handwriting neatness of a grader and the legibility of the essay paper which he wades. Specifically, this experiment shows that graders who have neat handwriting are biased by the neatness of an essay-biased in the direction of giving lower grades to essays that contain messy handwriting. Graders who have messy handwriting however, are not influenced by the neatness of essays. For those who continue to use essay examinations, certain precautions should be taken to lessen the effect of extraneous factors such as handwriting neatness.

The article comments on film-making process. The film-making process requires that a person reduce an abstract idea to a visual form. One must be able to visualize people doing something and then capture that on film. In one sense, film-making is a test of the hypothesis that sociology is a behavioral science. Students should learn how to make theoretically based films for these and the additional reason that thus they can better learn their discipline. By writing a paper, the good student learns his subject. He learns the ideas and that he can control them. But, in writing, he often learns to become a manipulator of words and loses any concern about the behavioral reference they may or may not have. In making a film, however, the student does come face to face with connecting his ideas to human behavior. In film-making, one can delineate a set of roles which, taken together, result in the finished product. There is the producer, the person who has the ultimate responsibility for the film, the one who, nominally at least, has the concept of the entire production.

President Carl C. Taylor is planning for a section on Contributed Papers for the next annual meeting of the American Sociological Society to be held in Chicago from December 28 to 30. This Section is designed particularly for those younger members of the Society, including graduate students, who have not yet had an opportunity to appear on the program in other sections. Therefore, urging that all such papers be submitted not later than November 1, in order that the Committee may have adequate time to consider them carefully and make a selection to be presented at the meeting. If there are sufficient papers of merit there will be two sections of probably three papers each. Papers should be sent directly to the Chairman of the Committee, Katharine Jocher, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill,North Carolina.

The article provides an update on research being conducted by staff of the Industrial Research Unit at the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School of Finance and Commerce as of January 1971. Herbert R. Northrup, Richard L. Rowan and Bernard E. Anderson are examining training programs in the paper industry. Studies in the field of labor policy and collective bargaining are under way under the direction of John E. Abodeely. In addition, a study is under way concerning causes of rejections by union rank and file of contracts negotiated by representatives.

In a recent issue of the journal Review of Religious Research, sociologist Donald N. Anderson presented an attempted replication of a study one of the present authors published in 1962 on the relationship between laymen's participation in ascetic Protestant churches and their political preferences. The present article offers a testable resolution of the discrepancies between Anderson's findings and authors' findings. In addition, it attempts to clarify the distinction between the way Anderson prefers to study religion and the way most sociologists study it. In so doing, a social interaction model of religious influence is presented. This model is shown to afford a better interpretation of the political outlook of Protestants than do certain other models used by students of religious behavior. According to authors, the conclusion of Anderson's paper is devoted to a critique of the way most sociologists conceptualize and measure religion. He rejects what he thinks is their penchant for defining the religious factor as "the residue apparent when such factors as occupation, education, place of birth, etc., have been controlled." Anderson's approach to religion is quite different from the approach of most sociologists.

The article provides an explanation of sociologist Leo Goodman's paper hierarchical models for significance tests in multivariate contingency tables. In several papers Goodman presents and elaborates a system for the analysis of contingency tables that promises to be extremely useful to sociologists. The papers are however, extremely compressed, heavily complex with the cumbersome notation of contingency analysis and are not easily accessible to the student and average research worker. The aim of this article is to explain the logic and procedures of the system in terms the reader may find more comfortable. The Goodman system consists of two parts: a scheme for making significance tests by means of hierarchical models and an extensive discussion of a set of techniques known as log linear models. The two parts are logically and practically distinct. Among the important uses of hierarchical models are the following: tests for the significance of partial correlations, tests for interactions, where the control variable has as many categories as one pleases, tests for higher-order interactions, succinct statements of what is and what is not going on in a contingency table. Since none of these tools have been easily available to the average sociologist, the Goodman system is well worth learning especially because it provides considerable insight into the properties of cross-classifications and the logic of significance tests.

The article focuses on the use of documents as educational material to furnish both factual knowledge and understandings of situations and relationships. Anything that is an original record or a photograph thereof or even an accurate reprint thereof, must be classified as a document for the purpose of this study. Significant documents of many varieties provide pertinent knowledge for educational purposes. The term document cannot be restricted to paper with print or handwriting on it. Local libraries and local or county historical societies are the normal repositories of much of the paper documentary material. The values which may be obtained from documentary material are most when the wide range of material is brought together from most diverse sources. Pictorial documents are often strikingly useful. Maps are valuable as documents, especially those that depict past conditions. The study and effective use of the fundamental documents that have molded our destiny has a definite place in our educational programs.

This section presents abstracts of papers presented at the annual meeting of the Pacific Sociological Society held from April 10 to 12, 1958.

The Committee on Contributed Papers of American Sociological Society had major tasks to prepare a program for three regular sessions at each of which papers would be read their authors; and to prepare a program for two special sessions at which discussion of papers, based on mimeographed abstracts, would be facilitated. Nearly 100 papers or proposed papers were submitted to the committee, from which fifteen were selected to appear on the three regular sessions. The major criterion of selection was quality, but the committee frankly preferred papers dealing with recent empirical research by younger, lesser-known members of the Society. The fifteen papers were arranged into three patterns. Studies in social organization and change; studies in interpersonal and intergroup relations; and studies in methodology.

Divergent planning trends in human service fields are described and analyzed. Highlighted are simultaneous emphases on local high impact and state planning, domain issues in comprehensive planning, and the impact of technology and participation. Each trend is posed as an opportunity for attacking a delimited aspect of human service problems—and as a potential danger if it were given undue emphasis. The authors point to longer run dangers of bypassing state delivery systems, problems of domain encroachment and the need for strengthened executive authority in the public sector which can balance the influence of the technocrat-planner with that of greater citizen participation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents the author's views on a criticism of his research on Ideational and Sensate cultures by sociologist Hornell Hart. Since by its very nature ideational culture is all inner and charismatically collective and anonymous, it naturally does not yield as great a number of individual philosophers, thinkers, artists, or as great a number of scientific discoveries and inventions, or as high a standard of sensate living, as sensate culture, mainly external, does. And yet, so far as an absorption in God and in inner values is of great value, so far is Ideational culture one of the most magnificent forms of culture, and possibly uncomfortable as a settled dwelling for most of the sociologists. In addition, besides a great art and literature, the Mediaeval Ideational culture created Christianity, the backbone, the heart and soul, of Western culture, the very condition of the possibility of later Sensate culture itself. The weight of this single creation of Ideational culture is likely to be greater than that of almost all the philosophers, artists, scientific discoveries, and Sensate planes of living given by the critic.

The article presents the author's comment on sociologist Peter M. Blau's recent article "A Formal Theory of Differentiation in Organizations," published in the April 1970 issue of the journal "American Sociological Review." According to the author, in his article Blau reviews a number of interesting empirical findings, but whether or not they justify theoretical generalizations at a high level of abstraction is a moot question. Moreover, no one can take exception to efforts to construct generalizations which in turn suggest hypotheses for research. Confirmation of such hypotheses obviously lends credence to the earlier generalizations while disconfirmation or a null finding renders them questionable. In this article the author, shows that under certain conditions and given only one of the empirical findings, almost all of the other findings necessarily follow. He does this, first, by constructing a hypothetical model of organizational structure and doing algebraic manipulations on its properties, and, second, by pointing out some difficulties that arise when one controls for organizational size.

The relationship between the quantity and quality of scientific output of 120 university physicists was studied. Although these two variables are highly correlated, some physicists produce many papers of little significance and others produce a Jew papers of great significance. The responses of the community of physicists to these distinct patterns of research publication were investigated. Quality of output is more significant than quantity in eliciting recognition through the receipt of awards, appointment to prestigious academic departments, and being widely known to one's colleagues. The reward system operates to encourage creative scientists to be highly productive, to divert the energies of less creative physicists into other channels, and to produce a higher correlation between quantity and quality of output in the top departments than in the weaker departments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The 1946 Committee on Contributed Papers of the American Sociological Society, has several suggestions to offer: If sufficient interest is shown in the Section of the contributed papers published in a section of the periodical "American Sociological Review," the section should be continued, since it gives opportunity for younger men and women to appear on the program and become known to the Society. More- over, it stimulates the interest of the younger sociologists in the meetings. This year 20 papers were submitted; last year there were only 8. An opportunity to appear on the program of the Society, together with the possibility of publication in the periodical apparently is desired, as evidenced not only by the number of papers submitted but by the fact that both years every participant, upon the acceptance of his manuscript, has immediately signified his intention of being present to read his paper. It would be well for the Committee to be appointed early enough for it to get well underway in the spring. During the last two years, the Committee has been handicapped by not getting underway until the summer or fall.

The article presents information on announcement regarding section on contributed papers for the next annual meeting to be held on December 1, 1945 and December 2, 1945. One session will be devoted to papers contributed by graduate students and others who wish to present research finds but who might not otherwise find a place on the program. the maximum time allowed for each paper will be twelve minutes. Should it again to impossible to hold the annual meetings, an effort will be made to arrange for the publication of those papers selected by the committee.

This article presents the author's comments on the article "Social Mobility and Fertility," by Keith Hope. Hope's claim for an overall lower mobility effect and upward and downward mobility effects is to be questioned. Instead different combinations of strata produce different effects which cannot be attributed to chance fluctuations of the means as Hope intimates. Had Hope begun by carefully examining the impact of movement in and out of the specific pairs of classes and had he looked carefully at the relative effects of different kinds of mobility: income, occupational, educational, and geographic, we would be in a better position to specify mechanisms which link mobility to fertility. Unfortunately, with its modest sample size, the study by J. Berent is inadequate for such a program. While a considerable effort has been put into empirical and theoretical development, the mobility-fertility question requires far more cases than previous studies have employed, and a thorough re-thinking of the contextual aspects of individual mobility and its consequences.