International encyclopedia of the social sciences volume 15

628 Pages·1968·24.079 MB·English

by  edited by David L. Sills

International
Encyclopedia of the
S O C I AL
S C I E N C ES
Associate Editors
Heinz Eulau, Political Science
Lloyd A. Fallers, Anthropology
William H. Kruskal, Statistics
Gardner Lindzey, Psychology
Albert Rees, Economics
Albert J. Reiss, Jr., Sociology
Edward Shils, Social Thought
Special Editors
Elinor G. Barber, Biographies
John G. Darley, Applied Psychology
Bert F. Hoselitz, Economic Development
Clifford T. Morgan, Experimental Psychology
Robert H. Strotz, Econometrics
Editorial Staff
Marjorie A. Bassett, Economics
P. G. Bock, Political Science
Robert M. Coen, Econometrics
J. M. B. Edwards, Sociology
David S. Gochman, Psychology
George Lowy, Bibliographies
Judith M. Tanur, Statistics
Judith M. Treistman, Anthropology
Alvin Johnson
HONORARY EDITOR
W Allen Wallis
CHAIRMAN, EDITORIAL ADVISORY BOARD
International
Encyclopedia of the
S O C I AL
S C I E N C ES
DAVID L. SILLS EDITOR
15
VOLUME
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International
Encyclopedia of the
S O C I AL
S C I E N C ES

[ C O N T I N U E D]
SOCIOLOGY bers recruited by sexual reproduction within it, and
that persists beyond the life-span of any individual
The articles under this heading provide a broad member by socializing new members into its insti-
introduction to the discipline of sociology: the his- tutions. Any social system has subsystems that are
tory of sociology as an academic field; the major partial systems functionally related to it, such as
strands of thought that have contributed to the human ecological systems and kinship, legal, edu-
current body of theory; and an account of various cational, and ideological or religious subsystems.
early attempts in England and on the Continent to Social institutions are general patterns of norms
provide systematic quantitative knowledge about that define behavior in social relationships. Institu-
human society. All the major subfields of sociology tions define how people ought to behave and legiti-
are represented in the encyclopedia; for a list of mate the sanctions applied to behavior. Contract
articles relevant to sociology, consult the classified is a good example of a social institution: as an
list of articles in the index volume. institution, it consists of quite general norms that
regulate entry into and the consequences of con-
i. THE FIELD Albert J. Reiss, Jr. tractual agreements; it prescribes neither who shall
n. THE DEVELOPMENT OF enter into such agreements nor—within certain
SOCIOLOGICAL THOUGHT Shmuel N. Eisenstadt
institutionally defined limits—what the agreements
in. THE EARLY HISTORY
OF SOCIAL RESEARCH Bernard Lecuyer and shall contain. Finally, social structure, or social
Anthony R. Oberschall morphology, is the integration and stabilization
of social interaction through an organization of
statuses and roles, such as age, sex, or class.
THE FIELD
Sociologists are primarily interested in human
A commonly accepted definition of sociology as beings as they appear in social interaction, i.e., as
a special science is that it is the study of social actors taking account of one another in their be-
aggregates and groups in their institutional organ- havior. The major systems or units of interaction
ization, of institutions and their organization, and that interest sociologists are social groups, such as
of the causes and consequences of changes in insti- the family or peer group; social relationships, such
tutions and social organization. The major units of as social roles and dyadic relationships; and social
sociological inquiry are social systems and their organizations, from such formal or bureaucratic
subsystems; social institutions and social structure; organizations as governments, corporations, and
and social aggregates, relationships, groups, and school systems to such territorial organizations as
organizations. communities or to the schools, factories, churches,
Sociological units. The most inclusive socio- etc., that are components of communities. Although
logical unit is the social system, which is consti- sociologists are principally concerned with human
tuted by the interaction of a plurality of actors beings in social interaction, they are also concerned
whose relations to each other are mutually oriented with social aggregates, or populations, in their
by institutions. A society is an empirical social institutional organization.
system that is territorially organized, with its mem- Sociologists are interested in the analytical prop-
1
SOCIOLOGY: The Field
erties of these sociological units and treat the rela- larly with the work of Georg Simmel and of phe-
tionships among them as problematic. Thus, they nomenologists such as Alfred Vierkandt; more
are interested in such properties of the processes recently, it has included some investigators of small
of institutionalization as legitimation, consensus, groups. The emphasis in formal sociology is on study-
and stratification. They concern themselves with ing societal forms, particularly forms of interaction
elements of social relationships, such as power and or association, such as dyadic relationships. Formal
dominance, or elements of interaction, such as sociology focuses on the "essence" of phenomena
coercion and reciprocity. They investigate the prop- in which form is a principle of individuation and
erties and processes of groups or organizations, organization. The primary goal of this type of soci-
such as their capacity to take collective action ology is description of human groups and processes
toward goals, as in the sanctioning of deviant be- in social relationships. A third school is character-
havior or the allocation of organizational resources. ized as historical—interpretative sociology; its em-
Types of sociological theory. The theories of phasis is as macroscopic as that of formal sociology
sociology make problematic the relationships among is microscopic. Attempts are made to describe the
the analytical properties of the units. The character general features of the history of man, to delineate
of the theory in each case defines the problematics. the different spheres of the historical world, and to
For example, ecological theory in sociology is con- understand ideas as the expression of historical pe-
cerned primarily with the causal interconnections riods or events. The major works of Max Weber and
in the human ecological complex.- technological the German historical school, particularly Weber's
accumulation at an accelerated rate, exploitation methodological writings, have served as a model
of the environment, demographic transition, and for contemporary historical sociology (Aron 1935).
organizational revolution (Duncan 1961; Duncan & However, most writing in contemporary sociology
Schnore 1959). A macrosociological theory, such focuses on relational properties among persons as
as that of Talcott Parsons, originally made prob- social actors (an emphasis characteristic of much
lematic how various value and motivational ori- work in social psychology) or on the relationship
entations of actors are institutionalized and organ- among properties of institutions and organizations
ized as social systems (1951; 1938-1953). In later in societies or social systems (an emphasis that
elaborations of his theory Parsons has focused more practically defines the field of social organization).
on the internal dynamics of social systems, though
Sociology and the other social sciences
he has largely neglected to make external relation-
ships problematic (I960; 1966). The relationship of sociology to the other social
The writings of early sociologists either consisted or behavioral sciences is much debated. Is sociol-
largely in speculation or were grand philosophical ogy, as Comte would have had it, the queen of the
achievements of a synthetic sort that did not lend social sciences—a general social science of soci-
themselves to the development of a body of knowl- eties? Or is it a more specialized social science,
edge which was cumulative and also met the canons one that systematizes problems that can be defined
of science. Over time, most sociologists have come as sociological, as distinct from economic, psycho-
to use what Robert K. Merton (1949) called the- logical, or cultural?
ories of the middle range. These are theories that The most systematic modern attempt to resolve
include a limited number of interrelated concepts this question is found in the writings of Parsons
from which one may derive hypotheses that can be (1938-1953; 1951; I960; 1966). In Parsons'view,
investigated through empirical research. An exam- sociological theory is an aspect of the theory of
ple from Merton's own writings is that of reference social systems and sociology is thereby defined as
group theory ([1949] 1957, chapter 8). a special social science. Sociology is concerned
Schools of sociology. The history of sociology ". . . with the phenomena of the institutionalization
discloses several major strategies for dealing with of patterns of value-orientation in the social system,
its theoretical and methodological problems. To a with the conditions of that institutionalization, and
degree these strategies represent schools within of changes in the patterns, with conditions of con-
sociology, but the lines are by no means firmly formity with and deviance from a set of such pat-
drawn. Human ecologists and demographers are terns and with motivational processes in so far as
concerned with problems that involve the investiga- they are involved in all of these" (1951, p. 552).
tion of social aggregates. They are particularly in- The other major theory of social systems, accord-
terested in the morphological or structural charac- ing to Parsons, is that of economics; it is ". . . con-
teristics of these aggregates, such as age, sex, race, cerned with the phenomena of rational decision-
education, and income. Another school, often char- making and the consequences of these decisions
acterized as formal sociology, is associated particu- within an institutionalized system of exchange rela-
SOCIOLOGY: The Field
tionships" (ibid., p. 550). Within this framework, to relatively independent investigation and formu-
political science is viewed as a synthetic rather than lation as separate bodies of knowledge. Lacking a
a special social science, constructed as it is around commonly accepted sociological theory that would
a restricted set of variables concerned with political permit such rational division of sociology, sociolo-
power rather than around a scientifically distinctive gists have developed fields of interest around the
analytical scheme. major units of sociological inquiry described above
Parsons, furthermore, has defined the theory of and around certain social problems, such as juve-
the social system as but one of three analytical nile delinquency, that have come to constitute fields
sciences of action, the other two being the theory through being viewed in a sociological perspective.
of personality and the theory of culture. The theory Comte's division of sociology into "social statics"
of cultural systems is the particular province of and "social dynamics" dominated much of the
anthropology, and that of personality systems is writing of Herbert Spencer and Lester F. Ward
generic to psychology [see SYSTEMS ANALYSIS, ar- (see especially Ward 1883, volume 1). With the
ticle on SOCIAL SYSTEMS; see also Parsons & Shils emergence of sociology as an academic discipline,
1951; Parsons 1951, chapter 12]. there was a tendency, particularly in American
Sociologists work on problems that are related to sociology, to classify it in a more detailed fashion
the subject matter of other disciplines, both human- into subject-matter fields as a means of organizing
istic and scientific. For the most part, however, the curriculum. At the same time, leading scholars
these problems fall within fields that are part of —particularly when, like Durkheim, they served
sociology, and they are dealt with from a socio- as editors of major journals—felt called upon to
logical perspective. Thus, although problems of divide sociology into "fields" in which a sociological
knowledge are indeed treated by the sociology of perspective was applicable.
knowledge, and although the sociology of knowl- The 1902 volume of L'annee sociologique pre-
edge is in an important sense a branch of episte- sented such a scholarly classification, by Durkheim
mology, it has not developed as an interstitial field and his editorial colleagues, of publications in soci-
between sociology and philosophy. The same may ology. They subdivided sociology into the fields of
be said of such fields as historical sociology and general sociology, religious sociology, juridical and
sociolinguistics, as they have so far been developed moral sociology, criminal sociology and moral sta-
within sociology. tistics, economic sociology, social morphology, and
Historically, some disciplines did emerge as inter- a miscellaneous group including aesthetic sociology,
stitial to their parent disciplines. The most notable technology, language, and war. The editors noted
cases in the history of sociology are human ecology that the Zeitschrift fur Socialwissenschaft, the
(or human geography, as it is called in some coun- Rivista italiana di sociologia, and the Vierteljahr-
tries), demography, and social psychology. Social schrift fur wissenschaftliche Philosophic und Sozi-
psychology, a subfield of both psychology and soci- ologie utilized some other categories. In the Zeit-
ology, is concerned primarily with personalities and schrift, for instance, one finds mass and individual
motivational processes as they relate to the institu- psychology, medicine and hygiene, social history
tional organization of societies. Demography and and social jurisprudence, and social philosophy and
human ecology are somewhat different, perhaps not social ethics. The Rivista included politics, social
qualifying fully as interstitial disciplines. Human psychology, and demography, while the Vierteljahr-
ecology broadly conceived as an aspect of ecosys- schrift included psychology and the science of lan-
tem theory is interstitial to the environmental and guage, aesthetics, and education. Quite clearly, by
social sciences. The development of a theory of the 1902 sociologists had identified most of what were
ecosystem, however, is in a rudimentary state; for to become the major fields of scholarly interest in
that reason much of the work in human ecology is sociology during the next five decades.
carried on within the separate environmental and These fields of sociology were not given any-
social sciences rather than in any border discipline. where near equal attention in every country, nor
Work in demography is carried on largely by soci- did sociologists in any country give more than token
ologists and economists, though more recently bio- attention to some of these fields until quite recently.
medical scientists have joined them in a synthetic Interesting and important contrasts developed
field that is becoming known as population studies. among the countries in the attention given to vari-
ous fields. Some fields that developed quite early
The fields of sociology
in the European countries were given only token
There is no altogether rational division of soci- attention in the United States until World War n,
ology into fields of inquiry that are both derived after which they developed quite rapidly. Among
from a general sociological theory and susceptible the more important of these were political sociol-
SOCIOLOGY: The Field
ogy, the sociology of law, and the sociology of reli- and legal systems were therefore unlikely to be
gion. Among the fields that still receive only occa- investigated.
sional attention in American sociology, as contrasted To be sure, American sociologists gradually began
with the attention given them in some European to investigate problems in some of these fields, but
countries, are the sociology of the creative and per- largely through other generic interests in sociology,
forming arts, of sport, and of language. Apart from such as occupations and professions or the social
shaping the development of the sociology of sci- organization of work, rather than through an inter-
ence, American sociologists have done little work est in comparative institutions or systems. Thus,
in the sociology of knowledge. the sociology of law began largely with studies of
American developments before 1940. The rather lawyers; the sociology of medicine, with studies of
late development in American sociology of some of doctors and the social organization of doctor-
the fields listed above is the result of a variety of patient relationships in hospitals; and the sociology
factors, two of which stand out as particularly im- of the arts through studies of musicians and
portant. First, American universities separate soci- writers.
ology more sharply from some other academic American sociology, however, was almost alone
disciplines than do European universities. This is in its attempts to develop research methodology as
particularly notable in the case of law, which in a special field. Although few of the major tech-
the United States is taught in professional schools niques for gathering and analyzing data were in-
quite separate from the faculties of philosophy, the vented by American sociologists, these techniques
sciences, and the humanities. Indeed, prior to 1940, were readily accepted as part of the sociological
American sociologists had little contact with pro- curriculum and their use became a criterion—
fessional schools other than those of social work sometimes mistakenly applied—for evaluating the
and education. Furthermore, in their drive toward state of "the science." Recently, American sociol-
status as scientific disciplines, all of the social sci- ogists have rather self-consciously developed the
ences in American universities were increasingly field of mathematical sociology, noteworthy more
divorced from the humanistic disciplines and the for its attempts to formalize models of behavior
arts. Even today this is true, so that American soci- or organization by mathematical means than for its
ologists undertake little work on the sociology of theoretical or substantive contributions to sociology.
the creative or performing arts [see, however, Although in European countries human geog-
CREATIVITY, article on SOCIAL ASPECTS; FINE ARTS, raphy continued to develop, it grew primarily out-
article on THE RECRUITMENT AND SOCIALIZATION side of sociology [see GEOGRAPHY]. American soci-
OF ARTISTS]. Since history, more often than not, is ologists, however, developed human ecology, which
defined as a humanistic discipline, American soci- has much in common with human geography. The
ology has been ahistorical. No doubt the fact that only comparable development in Europe was that
many American sociologists took the natural sci- of social morphology in France, under Durkheim
ence model of investigation as a desideratum also and his disciple Maurice Halbwachs.
led to the separation of sociology from both history Up to 1940 American sociology appeared to con-
and the humanities, including philosophy. tain a substantial number of fields of inquiry in
A second major factor accounting for the failure addition to sociological theory and methods of re-
of American sociology to develop some of the prob- search. One cluster included community study,
lems of concern to European sociologists has been with human ecology, rural sociology, and urban
the deliberate neglect of problems of value—of how sociology as major divisions. Another was that of
values are institutionalized and how they are or- social problems, with race relations, poverty and
ganized in American or other societies. While there dependency, and juvenile delinquency being im-
were exceptions, such as the studies of immigrant portant specialties. Social psychiatry emerged as a
groups by W. I. Thomas and Florian Znaniecki special field with a strong interest in mental health;
(1918-1920), American sociologists generally took now it arouses considerably less interest and is
values for granted and were inclined to make regarded as a part of social psychology. Demog-
values problematic only in the limited sense that raphy and the family were the other major areas
they believed a truly scientific sociology had to be of interest during the period before 1940. Sociology
"value-free." Furthermore, they did not generally curricula also included courses that covered rather
think of values as amenable to empirical investiga- broad interests—the main courses of this kind were
tion except when they took the form of personal social institutions, social organization, and social
attitudes or opinions. Comparative studies of values change; after 1945 the subject matter of these
in belief systems such as the ideological, religious, courses was integrated with new special fields.