Showing papers in "American Sociological Review in 1947"

Who is the Criminal

Abstract: Increasingly widespread and seductive movement to revolutionize the concepts of crime and criminal has developed around the fashionable dogma of "white-collar crime." This is actually a particular school among those who contend that the criminologist should study antisocial behavior rather than law violation. The chapter explores the white-collar criminal and find an amazing diversity, even among those flowing from the same pen, and observe that characteristically they are loose, doctrinaire, and invective. A special hazard exists in the employment of the term, "white-collar criminal," in that it invites individual systems of private values to run riot in an area where gross variation exists among criminologists as well as others. Having considered the conceptions of an innovating sociology in ascribing the terms "crime" and "criminal," let us state here the juristic view: Only those are criminals who have been adjudicated as such by the courts. Criminal behavior as here defined fits very nicely into the sociologists' formulations of social control.

The Measurement of Ecological Segregation

Abstract: T HE PURPOSE of this paper is to devise objective and mensurative referents for the ecological concept of "segregation." The basic data utilized in this presentation were taken from the series of census tract bulletins on Population and Housing prepared by the United States Bureau of the Census in connection with the sixteenth decennial census. Out of a total of 6i tracted cities in I940, two samples of 44 and 25 cities, respectively, were selected for analysis. Although the concept of ecological segregation can be applied to any population group or class, data for the Negro population were selected as being particularly appropriate and significant for a report of this kind. Theoretically, there is virtually no limit to the number and variety of indexes of ecological segregation which might be constructed. More than twenty logically sound and computationally feasible indexes have been formulated. The definitions of "complete segregation" and "no segregation" are identical in each case. It must not, therefore, be assumed that any one index is necessarily superior to all others or that all are equally good for all purposes. The basic criterion for selecting a particular

Heuristic and Empirical Typologies: A Job for Factor Analysis

Abstract: T HIS paper has two purposes: (a) to differentiate between what are called "heuristic" and "empirical" typologies, and (b) to show how the empirical typology may be derived and how it may be utilized. It scarcely needs saying that the purpose of the typology, like that of the common noun in general, is to enable the observer to perceive order in the "infinite complexity" of the universe. For example, the abstracting of fluids from the human body as a whole, the abstracting of blood from the other bodily fluids, and the typing of blood enable both understanding and control. Typologies are created by the process of noting homogeneous attributes in heterogeneous phenomena; they are created for the purpose of discovering systems. In terms of function and technique of derivation typologies may be classified as heuristic or empirical.' As contrasted with an empirical typology, a heuristic typology shows the following characteristics: (a) insofar as it is distinguishable from theory, it is deduced from theory; (b) it is constructed for the purpose of enhancing the vision of the researcher (i.e., by facilitating the statement of hypotheses, the conception of testing situations, the ordering of observations); (c) it represents a voluntary distortion of empirical phenomenon by positing extreme forms of relevant characteristics;

Selected Problems of Field Work in the Planned Community

Abstract: AMONG the most widely practiced and least codified procedures of social research are those comprised by the large-scale collection of observational and interview data in communities. A few accounts of participant-observation are available but, in general, a deep silence cloaks many of the concrete problems found in field work. Thus social anthropologists, themselves heavily committed to community research, have recently been indicted for the "limited extent to which . . . (they) have been articulate about their field techniques. .*. 1 The experiences of fieldworkers have not commonly been codified and set forth for all to read. As a consequence, these procedures have largely remained private skills passed on through example and word-ofmouth to a limited number of apprentices. The reasons for this public reticence are not entirely clear. Perhaps so much of what is done "in the field" seems to require only the application of common sense-with which, presumably, social researchers like other folks are liberally blessed-that there appears small point in codifying situations, problems and procedures. Yet it is acknowledged that sociology and anthropology, like

The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism in Norway

Abstract: TEBER'S essay,' The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, has *T continued to interest social scientists in the last decades, probably because it touches on some fundamental problems concerning the economic, religious, and political life of Western societies, and probably because it established so clearly a relationship between religion and other aspects of our cultural pattern. The thesis that Protestantism, and especially the English version of Calvinism, Puritanism, was the parent of modern capitalism has been much discussed. Writers on religion and capitalism following Weber have been much indebted to him in their analyses.2 Weber's thesis has been supported by the authority of such writers as Troeltsch, SchulzeGaevernitz, and Cunningham.3 It has been criticized by Tawney4 and Brentano.5 Furthermore, its subject matter places it in the very center of focus of those problems which are the main concern of intellectual interest today, namely, the relationship of ideas and