Showing papers on "Social theory published in 1970"

On the Logic of the Social Sciences

Abstract: For two decades the German edition of this book has been a standard reference point for students of the philosophy of the social sciences in Germany. Today it still stands as a unique and masterful guide to the major problems and possibilities in this field.On the Logic of the Social Sciences foreshadowed the direction in which methodological discussions have traveled since it appeared and anticipated the problems they presently face. Habermas's statement of the principal issues is concise and elegant, and his own original resolution of them is of continuing relevance. He considers the main lines of thought pursued by epistemologists and methodologists of the social sciences, from neo-Kantianism to behaviorism, and from problems of measurement to those of interpretive logic, in a sustained and provocative argument that involves analysis and critique at every point and ends with his own sharply profiled position.Beginning with the turn of the century debates on the distinction between natural and cultural sciences, Habermas discusses the relationship between sociology and history. He takes up the problem of a general theory of social action, focusing first on the nature of "interpretive understanding" and then on the scope and limits of functionalist explanation. In the concluding sections, he draws on psychoanalysis and classical social theory to sketch the outlines of his view of sociology as a critical theory of the present. Along the way he provides a great deal of material that is useful in understanding his own work.Jurgen Habermas is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Frankfurt. On the Logic of the Social Sciences is included in the series Studies in Contemporary German Social Thought, edited by Thomas McCarthy.

Constructing Social Theories.

Abstract: \"Constructing Social Theories\" presents to the reader a range of strategies for constructing theories, and in a clear, rigorous, and imaginative manner, illustrates how they can be applied. Arthur L. Stinchcombe argues that theories should not be invented in the abstract or applied \"a priori\" to a problem but should be dictated by the nature of the data to be explained. This work was awarded the Sorokin prize by the American Sociological Association as the book that made an outstanding contribution to the progress of sociology in 1970.\

Origins of Sociology: The Case of the Scottish Enlightenment

Abstract: Historians of sociology frequently locate its origins in the early years of the nineteenth century and especially in the work of Comte, Mill and Le Play.' They argue that with the growth of a rigorous method in social research and an increasing knowledge of both industrial and non-industrial societies, sociology gradually emerged as an autonomous and disciplined science. In this 'drive towards objectivity'2 sociology sheds its ideological character and polemical intent, and, working in many directions strives for an objective, unbiased and scientific understanding of the social world. Thus British sociology, originating in early nineteenth-century statistics and surveys and strongly motivated by a desire to improve industrial society, especially its working-class segments tended to lose its direction after Spencer and become fragmented into social administration and the study of eugenics. Abrams has recently argued that it was not until the 1930s that British sociology recovered its scientific elan through a direct and negative confrontation with the eugenicist argument thus providing it with its contemporary character: a dominant concern with demography, educational opportunity, mobility and the sociology of poverty.3 So much for the myth. It seems most improbable that an automatic conversion to unsullied objectivity about human society occurs simply because of increasing specialization and sophisticated techniques of data gathering, for as soon as sociology attempts reintegration of its limited empirical findings with a conception of society as a whole and as a process then the work becomes problematic. For the sociologist comes to any study with a perspective and a core of values and as the sociology of knowledge has convincingly shown, perspectives and values have a social referent which lends them the character of an ideology. It is precisely perspective and values which are likely to penetrate the problem of social significance which underpins all empirical research. If this is so, then the history of social theory itself becomes problematic and that instead of some kind of evolutionary march to objectivity one should pose the concept of the broken line: that at different historical moments certain doctrines and theories which will attempt to ascribe

The End of Economic Man: The Origins of Totalitarianism

Abstract: In The End of Economic Man, long recognized as a cornerstone work, Peter F. Drucker explains and interprets fascism and Nazism as fundamental revolutions. In some ways, this book anticipated by more than a decade the existentialism that came to dominate the European political mood in the postwar period. Drucker provides a special addition to the massive literature on existentialism and alienation since World War II. The End of Economic Man is a social and political effort to explain the subjective consequences of the social upheavals caused by warfare.Drucker concentrates on one specific historical event: the breakdown of the social and political structure of Europe which culminated in the rise of Nazi totalitarianism to mastery over Europe. He explains the tragedy of Europe as the loss of political faith, resulting from the political alienation of the European masses. The End of Economic Man is a book of great social import. It shows not only what might have helped the older generation avert the catastrophe of Nazism, but also how today's generation can prevent another such catastrophe. This work will be of special interest to political scientists, intellectual historians, and sociologists.The book was singled out for praise on both sides of the Atlantic, and is considered by the author to be his most prescient effort in social theory.

Status inconsistency theory and flying saucer sightings.

Abstract: The analysis is completed. Through a series of propositions and hypothesized links between the reporting of UFO sightings and a particular kind of social position, the utility of social theory as a basis for explaining phenomena presumed to be in the domain of the physical sciences has been demonstrated. Nothing in the data rejects the possibility that some individuals have, in fact, seen objects propelled from another solar system or that all observations are of ill-understood or misperceived terrestrial phenomena. Empirical science, particularly social science, does not address itself to ultimate truth. What has been attempted here is the employment of a sociological theory to account successfully for observed regularity in patterns of UFO sightings. Another and reasonable, though not necessarily mutually exclusive, procedure for organizing social data might provide an equal degree of explanatory consistency. This analysis merely emphasizes the need to utilize such approaches outside the confines of laboratory groups and the more convenient and established domains of social science. Our analysis has presented just one application of sociological theory to the complex interplay among quasi-scientific phenomena, physical science knowledge, and human behavior in society.

The Logical Adequacy of Homans' Social Theory

Abstract: Weber, Max 1964 The Theory of Social and Economic Organization. New York: The Free Press. Wood, James R. 1967 "Protestant Enforcement of Racial Integration Policy: A Sociological Study in the Political Economy of Organizations." Vanderbilt University, unpublished doctoral dissertation. Wood, James R. and Mayer N. Zald 1966 "Aspects of racial integration in the Methodist Church: Sources of resistance to organizational policy." Social Forces XLV (December) :255-265.

From personal tragedy to social oppression: the medical model and social theories of disability

Abstract: Over the last decade the medical model with its individualized, psychologized and medicalized account of disability has been rejected in favour of a sociological account that views disabil.ity as an oppressive social creation. In these later accounts, the focus shifts from individual impairment to the disabling effects of social organization and structures designed around, and for, non-disabled people. This paper compares and contrasts the conceptual and theoretical approaches of both these models. In the light of these models, disability social policy, particularly as it affects the employment of disabled people, is examined.

The sociology of progress

Abstract: This comprehensive set introduces the fundamental principles of Sociology as propounded by such great figures as Gerth and Mills, Schlesinger, and Homans. Containing classic works of social theory and empirical research, volumes in this set bring together the British, European and American traditions. The whole body of sociological theory is presented in such a way that is valuable and accessible to both students and teachers of Sociology, Political Theory and Geography.

The revolution in English social thought 1880-1914.

Abstract: IN 1958, H. Stuart Hughes justified confining his survey of the reconstruction of European social thought to the western and central Continent by arguing that Germans, Austrians, Frenchmen, and Italians contributed more than Englishmen, Americans, or Russians to "the fund of ideas that has come to seem most characteristic of our own time."' This tendency to neglect English social thought in the generation before the First World War fits well with the prevailing view of the late Victorian and Edwardian periods as a time of decline, a view given now almost classic form by George Dangerfield and newly reiterated by Samuel Hynes, who sees that period as a time of "undifferentiated rebellion." But is it true that, as J. W. Burrow has recently concluded, "England made no distinctive contribution to the rethinking of the fundamental concepts of social thought" in the early twentieth century?2 On the contrary, from the i88o's until 1914 there was in England a genuine, vital revolution in the contents, methodology, and purposes of social thought. An inductive, behavioral social science bent upon effecting practical social reform overthrew a deductive social theory that assumed inherent laws of human nature and society.3 By the end of the nineteenth century, a second industrial revolution, social dislocation, agricultural decline, unemployment, and mounting discontent exerted a persistent and accelerating pressure upon traditional social theory. Throughout the nineteenth century the development of methods of social inquiry testifies to recurrent, though disparately motivated, efforts to reduce complex social phenomena to more manageable, often quantitative form.4 What these efforts

Gemeinschaft, Inner Creation, and Role-Taking (Empathy): III. Charles Horton Cooley on “Social” vs “Spatial” (“Material”) Knowledge:

Abstract: This paper is the third of a series intended to relate Ferdinand Toennies' distinction between Gemeinschaft and Gesellschaft (and all comparable distinctions in social theory) to the difference between (1) intuitional and inferential role-taking (empathy), (2) Erlebnis and Erfahrung experience, and (3) Rorschachian inner creation (movement repsonses) and Rorschachian rationality (form responses). The paper interprets Charles Horton Cooley's concepts of “social” knowledge (or sympathy-as-communion) and “spatial” (“material”) knowledge as intuitional and inferential, respectively. It therefore clusters “social” knowledge with Gemeinschaft, Erlebnis, and inner creation; and “spatial” knowledge with Gesellschaft, Erfahrung, and rationality. The paper treats also of George Herbert Mead's concept of “attitude-taking.” It considers Mead to have confounded intuition and inference, with the result that contemporary Meadians may mean qualitatively different psychological processes when they speak of “role-taking” o...

Rise and Fall of Essentialist Social Theories: Recapitulation and Critique

Abstract: This article is a recapitulation and critique of the rise and fall of essentialist social theories from the Antiquities through the modern period; more emphasis will, however, be placed on modern social theories. The article tries to give an overview of discourses that would cumulatively lead to the eventual development of intercultural discourses. It will also devote a section in which it goes back to the Antiquities in order to test for any subjectivist marks that are identifiable with ancient proto-anthropological representations of the cultural other; and this, in order to see if they are said to lend problems for modern day theories of representation. This article will also note both the lowlights and the highlights of the period under consideration through estimates made from the view point of humanism; it hopes to establish a background against which an interpretive attitude would take shape in later periods which would develop hand in hand with the emergence of critical voices that animate twentieth century discourses. Accordingly, while I take as the lowlights of the essentialism of modernity the institutionalization of discourses that promote monologue and alterity, I take as the highlights the beginning of ruptures in modern train of thoughts; a beginning that is especially marked by the decline of idealist metaphysics and the attendant rise of hope owing to the turning up of critical vantages that seek to help concretize the human spirit in the primacy of openness, interpretation, communication, fusion, etc. Keywords : modernity, anthropology, critique, other, self

A History and Analysis of Radical Activism in Sociology, 1967–1969, with Special Reference to the Sociology Liberation Movement, the Black Caucus, the Executive Council, the War in Vietnam and a Few Other Things*

Abstract: Radical activism in sociology can be explained as reaction against developments in American society, university structure, social theory and the American Sociology Association. Beginning in 1967 with a controversy over a Vietnam resolution, it has grown to include organized opposition through the Sociology Liberation Movement and the separation of the Black Sociologists Association. The assumptions behind sociology as an academic field and an occupation, have been and are being tested and found erroneous by an increasing number of sociologists.

The Uneasy Alliance of Community Action and Research.

Abstract: Since the early 1960s there has been a tremendous ferment over the role of research in community action programs. Much of it involves the possibility that research and action programs are basically incompatible. Some accept the desirability of "action research" but doubt that it is feasible. Others hold that sound research findings are the only hope for social planning and salvation. In all the discussion, however, two crucial issues have not been thoroughly explored. First is the relationship between the funding process and the way social theories are applied to action programs. Second is the nature of the research design apropos a particular institution or action program. These issues form the substance of this paper. I believe that the key obstacles to satisfactory research involvement in social action programs have been: (1) that generalized, global theories have been used to explain specific social problems, and (2) that the rigors of experimental research design have been forced on programs where its use was inappropriate, either because the groundwork for experimentation had not yet been laid or because the field situation was too unstable.

A Paradigm for Causal Analysis

Abstract: LET ME begin with three assertions. First, causal analysis is an important and viable method for theory construction in sociology. Second, the Merton variety of functional analysis in sociology is a unique method of theory construction and is the major alternative to causal analysis. Third, inherent methodological difficulties in Mertonian functional ananalysis in sociology argument for its abandonment. The first of the above assertions constitutes my reason for this attempt to spell out a notion of causal analysis as a method for theory construction in sociology. The appreciation of the second and third assertions requires some discussion of the work of Robert K. Merton and Kingsley Davis. Merton's classic methodological paradigm for functional analysis was put forth in Social Theory and Social Structure in 1949. A number of assertions prior to the statement of the paradigm imply that Merton saw functional analysis as a unique method of theory construction. He claimed that much had been accomplished with its use and much more could be expected. The paradigm was offered as an explicit codification of the procedures used by several sociologists and anthropologists. In this light, then, it is interesting to find that ten years later the president of the American Sociological Association was claiming that the uniqueness of functional analysis in sociology was a myth. In the paper titled "The Myth of Functional Analysis as a Special Method in Sociology and Anthropology," Kingsley Davis (1959) argued that "the definitions most commonly agreed upon make functionalism synonymous with sociological analysis and make non-functionalism synonymous with either reductionist theories or pure description." Davis went on to claim that the ambiguities of the special terminology of functionalism "make the myth that it is a special method a liability," and that the myth should be abandoned. Davis' argument is essentially that of parsimony. If it can be shown that there are no differences between functional analysis and any other kind of analysis in sociology then it is clearly parsimonious to abandon

Rhetoric, region, and social science

Abstract: The scrutiny and criticism of regional rhetoric needs to be encouraged for its own value, and as a larger prerequisite to the analysis and assessment of the larger area of national discourse. In this process the value of relating the public address of a region, not only to the political issues of the time, hut to the unique economic, sociological and geographical conditions of the area needs to be explicated.

Social theories of education in contemporary Britain

Abstract: are developed by educationists, economists, philosophers, political theorists, literary critics, and others. They vary considerably in the explicitness of their assumptions, the logical forms which they take, the concepts which they employ, and in their normative stance. They are not usually &dquo;theories&dquo; in the scientific sense, but tend to approximate to what has been termed metaphysical theories:

Toward a Theory of Applied Sociology

Abstract: : An effort is made to treat systematically all problems related to the uses of sociology in policy and decision-making. The first part of the present report develops a systematic mapping of this problem. The second part deals in detail with one specific theme: the cycle which begins with a concrete problem, translates it into an appropriate research design, and, once findings are available, bridges this gap between knowledge and decision. The third part discusses more briefly some other themes selected, especially the role of social theory and of evaluation in applied social research.

Systemic Dynamic Social Theory

Abstract: (1970). Systemic Dynamic Social Theory. The Sociological Quarterly: Vol. 11, No. 3, pp. 351-363.

Some Notes on Reality-Orientation in Contemporary Societies

Abstract: Alfred Schutz was not a political scientist in the conventional sense of the term, nor a political writer, stating his positions to the varying policy problems of his time. Yet his general social theory and philosophy, a body of thought on which he was working with persevering consistency throughout his entire scholarly life, contains at its core conceptions and categories that are eminently applicable to an analysis of the human polity, and which he himself on several occasions in fact applied to such an analysis.1

De marginale mens

Abstract: 'The marginal man' of R.F. Park and E.V. Stonequist ("The marginal man: a study in personality and culture conflict," In contributions to urban sociology, E.W. Burgess and D.J. Bogue, eds, Chicago, ill: 1964) originates where different cultures clash, where people live on the margin of two or more cultures or societies, not being accepted by either. This marginal position is characterized by uncertainty, but what it really means has never been made clear. In an attempt to put the problem of the marginal man into its structural context and referring to R.K. Merton's reference theory (Social theory and social structure, Glencoe: 1961), a model is proposed: within a social system with a relatively closed structure there are two or more dominant and subordinate groups, each having its own value systems. Through reference to the dominant value system and through anticipatory socialization members of the subordinate group futilely try to adapt themselves to the cultural pattern of the dominant group and to be received into its social structure. The aspirants become frustrated and uncertain, rejected by their own group for repudiating its values, yet unable to find acceptance by the group they seek to enter. They become marginal men, culturally prepared for a position they cannot obtain. A structural lag exists. Individual basic needs of security and stability are satisfied within the social environment, within the group that accepts the person. For the marginal man concept this means: (1) that within a relatively closed social structure aspirant membership shall not be rewarded for the time being; (2) that there is a discrepancy between structural reality and expectations rising from anticipatory socialization; (3) that feelings of security and certainty are being sapped; and (4) that marginal situations and marginal men must be distinguished; marginal situations may not always produce marginal men. Marginal situations are sociologically important. A marginal situation is hierarchically controlled and thus involves certain barriers. When those barriers cannot be bridged, a marginal situation may originate. Modified AA

The conditions of social performance: An exploratory theory,

Abstract: This comprehensive set introduces the fundamental principles of Sociology as propounded by such great figures as Gerth and Mills, Schlesinger, and Homans Containing classic works of social theory and empirical research, volumes in this set bring together the British, European and American traditions The whole body of sociological theory is presented in such a way that is valuable and accessible to both students and teachers of Sociology, Political Theory and Geography

Social Liberal or Cosmopolitan

Abstract: Review: David Miller, National Responsibility and Global Justice, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2007.