Suchergebnisse

Presidential address presented to the Society for the Study of Soc Problems, Washington, DC, Aug, 1970, which, in the light of anti-war riots on the U campus & the subsequent repression by the instit's of the free 'ability to inquire,' discusses 'applying sociol to the policy of governing the academic community.' The anti-war feelings of the students are discussed with reference to the student power movement which focusses on 2 issues: sharing the authority, is, allowing students to take part in the decisions which affect their lives, & 'restructuring the U so that students have responsibility commensurate with their power.' The author points out that in the weeks following the campus disruptions of May 1970 when about 760 campuses across the country had strikes or demonstrations, the students were involving themselves with discussion, the holding of meetings, & the creation of new courses of action. These are the real functions of an academic community. In another sense the students are very revolutionary in that 'for a privileged class to seek responsibility is surely revolutionary.' It is for the U's to encourage this trend, to recreate the 'ivory tower' in the sense of the U as a place to work on improving the quality of human life. H. Lachs.

Societal differences in attitudes toward having children have been explained by Alan Macfarlane (see SOPODA 1:2/D0497) as the result of different forms of social organization. Macfarlane contends that large families are seen as a means of obtaining economic security in many poor countries, & that this view is not easily dislodged by family planning campaigns. However, in referring to the high fertility in India, Macfarlane does not make adequate use of cross-cultural fertility data, which show India's fertility to be much lower than that in many countries. Macfarlane's discussion of hunter-gatherer societies is weak, & his examples questionable. The basic flaw in his argument is the conceptual devise of explaining fertility through a distinction between individualistic & peasant societies. D. Dunseath.

An experiment was carried out in which 30 psychol students played trials of a Prisoner's Dilemma game. They also completed a Q giving indicators of their own & their father's soc position, & their att's & knowledge of internat'l affairs, & the Cantril scale measuring expectations of change for the self & the nation. Sex was the only indicator or soc position of the S's themselves which discriminated between them. It was shown to r highly with the level of cooperation in the game, & with knowledge of but not att's to internat'l affairs. For F's, but not for M's, there was a strong negative r between soc position & high expectations of improvement for the nation. It is suggested that the accumulation process undergone in becoming a student is reflected in the cognitive style of the S's. This is shown in responses to opinion questions, which become increasingly homogeneous in spite of the soc background of the R's. In contradistinction, there is the cognitive mode, employed in choosing between strategies of competition & cooperation in the game. This is not so influenced by the student subculture & is more determined by the basic influences on personality such as sex & the soc background & situation. Thus the findings do not support at the individual level the hypothesis of a linear relationship between att's to internat'l affairs & level of cooperation in the Prisoner's Dilemma game; rather, they suggest that the picture is complicated by intervening variables. IPSA.

Within the Marxist tradition historiography has played a particularly significant role in guiding as well as legitimating political choice. Two differing frameworks of historical analysis may be derived from Marx, one involving universal stages of social development, the other closely associated with the concept of the Asiatic Mode of Production (AMP), assuming the existence of alternative paths of historical development. In Russia the Bolshevik faction derived their political program from the former historiographical position, while G. Plekhanov & the Mensheviks took as their first political priority the need to combat the peculiarity & 'Asiatic' character of the Russian historical heritage. This can be seen in the debate over rationalization of land at the 'Unity' Congress of Russian social democracy in 1906. Despite the Bolshevik victory a new historiographical challenge emerged from 1925 on the part of Comintern officials active in China. They believed that Chinese history had been characterized by the AMP, & that therefore the Chinese national bourgeoisie was only a weak offshoot of Western imperialism, incapable of any positive role in a democratic revolution. AA.