International Encyclopedia of the
SOCIAL SCIENCES
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International Encyclopedia of the
SOCIAL SCIENCES
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. Barley, 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 SOCIAL SCIENCES D A V I D L . S I L L S EDITOR
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COPYRIGHT © 1968 BY CROWELL COLLIER AND MACMILLAN, INC.
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LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOG NUMBER 68-10023
MANUFACTURED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
International Encyclopedia of the SOCIAL SCIENCES
[ C O N T I N U E D ]
SANCTIONS Social control involves the process by which a group perpetuates its culture and system of social relations. In what has become an anthropological locus classicus, Radcliffe-Brown (1934) defined the sanction as a social reaction to a mode of behavior that was thereby approved or disapproved. In his view the concept is of primary significance to sociology because sanctions provide an effective instrument for regulating conduct in conformity with social usage. This formulation, however, seems to obscure a number of important points. RadcliffeBrown's argument clearly implies that the sanction, at least in one of its aspects, has a deterrent function. But if this object is to be achieved, logic demands that the sanction must precede the reaction: the sanction must already be in operation when a breach of norm occurs. It seems preferable therefore to define sanctions in terms of a promise of reward for fulfillment of the norms of behavior that are socially recognized and accepted, or in the liability to suffer the consequences that attend their breach. According to this view, the sanction is thus characterized by a quality of latency that is expressed most clearly, in the case of negative sanctions, in a general belief in the continuing likelihood of the execution of the threat. This implies two further properties of the sanction. A sanction cannot be arbitrary or ad hoc: its existence must be generally known, and it must be regular in its incidence. In fulfilling these conditions, the sanction serves not merely to deter; it also indicates the appropriate steps that may be taken to redress the situation when a norm has been infringed or to express approbation when it has been overfulfilled. The sanction is, of course, a concept of funda-
mental importance in jurisprudence and has played a paramount role in different legal theories. But there seems no good reason why its use should be restricted in this way. The legal sanction, manifested in the form of the penalties, remedies, and modes of redress of the law, represents only one particular means of enforcing conformity to norms and restating their validity when they are breached. Each group and subgroup within a society tends to develop its own distinctive pattern of usages and the means of maintaining them without necessary recourse to the municipal law. Sanctions therefore come to operate within every conceivable set of group relationships: they include not only the organized sanctions of the law but also the gossip of neighbors or the customs regulating norms of production that are spontaneously generated among workers on the factory floor. In small-scale communities, or within segments of a large-scale society, informal sanctions may become more drastic than the penalties provided for in the legal code. Thus the concept of sanctions is not merely of jurisprudential interest; it also has immediate sociological relevance to the analysis of the problem of social control. It will be apparent then that social control is achieved through no single mechanism. On the contrary, different principles and processes will frequently be found working together in any given situation. Accordingly, it is only by specifying the character of the sanctions present in the situation that one can isolate the different elements for analytical purposes and give them their proper weighting. The institution of law represents, of course, one major instrument of social control, and it is most usually marked off from other such agencies by virtue of the fact that its sanctions are
SANCTIONS imposed by politically organized society. As Seagle (1941) has observed, for example, it is the fact that the sanction is applied exclusively by organized political government that distinguishes the sphere of law from the spheres of religion, morals, and custom. The mechanism of sanction. The differentiation of the instruments of social control in stateless and state societies and in peasant communities and bands of hunting and gathering people has provided ground for controversy between jurists and anthropologists and among anthropologists themselves. Although their discussions have not always clarified the nature of law in different types of societies, they have been fruitful in opening up the broader sociological problem of social control. Malinowski's position as a pioneer in this field remains undisputed. Working in an island society that lacked any of the familiar machinery for the enactment, administration, and enforcement of law, Malinowski was led to seek elsewhere for the sources of social cohesion. He came to the conclusion that there was a class of rules "too practical to be backed up by religious sanctions, too burdensome to be left to mere goodwill." This constituted the Trobriand "civil law," the binding character of which lay in the sanctions of reciprocity and systematic incidence (Malinowski 1926). Later critics have pointed out that reciprocity is a concept of such wide generality that it cannot usefully serve to delineate the sphere of law. A curious feature of Malinowski's thinking on these matters is that, despite his emphasis on conflict, he appears not to have appreciated that just as the sanction implies the potential breach of norm, so much of law has to be concerned with what may be called the "pathology" of social relations. The emphasis on reciprocity has been important in deepening our understanding of why rules of behavior are accepted in so many areas of social life without the need to resort to formal mechanisms of redress. The question that remains unanswered is what happens when reciprocity breaks down and breach actually occurs. The point had been raised often enough, but it was left to Llewellyn and Hoebel (1941) in their now classic study of the Cheyenne to repair the defect and put the anthropological study of legal sanctions back on its proper path. In their succinct and expressive phrase, "the law has teeth": their procedure was to show that, even in societies lacking instituted juridical bodies, the investigation of instances of "hitch," dispute, grievance, and trouble led directly into the way in which physical coercion was organized. Pospisil (1958), on the basis of his work among
Kapauku Papuans, has suggested that too great an emphasis has been placed upon physical force in defining the character of the legal sanction, pointing out that cultures exist where physical sanctions are practically lacking. This introduces an unnecessary confusion. The crucial question is not the actual mode of coercion employed but recognition of the legitimate authority in which is vested the power of coercion. Such authority is certainly recognized among the Kapauku, although coercion may frequently be achieved by other than purely physical means. Where, in a society lacking developed forensic institutions, rules of conduct may be enforced through the powers of coercion vested in a legitimate authority, I propose to speak of jural rather than legal sanctions, indicating that here we are in the realm of ius, but not of lex. Jural sanctions. Once the criterion of legitimate coercion is adopted, it becomes apparent that primitive societies, lacking the formal machinery of the law, may yet display a remarkable range of sanctions that can be distinguished as jural. It has sometimes been claimed of many of the simplest societies that their social life is dominated by notions of the supernatural: there is a paucity of rules of law that is the reflex of the comprehensiveness of taboo. Such views, however, do not do justice to the facts. Thus it is reported of the Eskimo, for example, that persistent breach of taboo may be met by a shaman's decree of banishment. More strikingly, it is also reported that recidivist homicides may be dispatched by an individual acting at the request of the local community or with its compliance; this individual does not incur vengeance. Another interesting type of jural sanction was reported by Radcliffe-Brown in the Andaman Islands (1922). There, aggrieved persons were apparently able to vent their spleen by destroying any property they could lay their hands on, but unfortunately there are a number of points touching the operation of the sanction which the sources do not make very clear. It is possible that the Andamanese practice was somewhat similar to the custom of kamara reported from the Gazelle Peninsula of New Britain. Kamara took a number of variant forms, but essentially it was a device whereby a person who had suffered injury could damage or distrain the property of someone of acknowledged influence within the community. This individual was expected then to bring pressure on the offender to make retribution. But in general, within the range of primitive societies, the most common mode of redress for wrong is found to rest on the principle of self-help. In these circumstances, the legal initiative lies in-
SANCTIONS variably with the individual or group against whom a wrong has been committed. Yet the exacting of vengeance is not an arbitrary procedure. It has to be carried out according to certain rules and is undertaken only when morally supported by the community or because, indeed, it has been pressed upon individuals or groups by expressions of public approval or disapproval. The principle of self-help involves a point of considerable importance for the discussion of sanctions. This is what Nadel (1947) has called the social range of offenses, where the kind of sanction provoked depends upon the nature of the social units involved in the offense. Thus, in some societies if adultery or homicide occurs within the local lineage it may be regarded more as a sin than as a legal wrong, calling for ritual expiation rather than the application of jural sanctions. If, however, it involves members of different clans within a larger political unit, the offense may be met by a punitive raid or may have to be compounded by payment of compensation. In other words, it is not enough to regard a given sanction simply as the appropriate response to, or mode of redress for, any particular offense. Rather the sanction has to be viewed as it pertains to the set of social relationships involved in any given situation and at a particular moment in time. Failure to see the sanction in these terms can lead to misconceptions and to misguided hypotheses of an either/or character, as in attempts, for example, to correlate the importance of sorcery with the presence or absence of "superordinate justice" (Whiting 1950). Formulations of this kind pose a false dichotomy; they also miss the point that because each individual is the focus of a number of different social relationships, combining in his person a number of different roles, a variety of sanctions may attach to a single act of behavior. Thus, to take an example from our own society, a member of one of the professions who commits a serious breach of professional etiquette faces the possibility not only of prosecution in the courts, but also of being struck off the roll; he may also find that he has sacrificed his position as chairman of the local literary and philosophical society and that his wife and children have lost the good will of friends and neighbors. In other words, there is in all societies a coincidence of sanctions, some of a jural, some of a mystical or other character, all operating simultaneously toward the goal of achieving social control. Thus the problem that has to be faced is only partly the clear demarcation of one kind of sanction from another; more important is the need to classify and analyze the typical situations in which
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the different kinds of sanctions are provoked or achieve dominance. Analytic examples. Some progress in examining the social context of sanctions has been made by Turner (1957) in an analysis of the conflicts operating within the social system of the Ndembu of Northern Rhodesia. Among the various redressive mechanisms known to the Ndembu are informal arbitration, formal courts under the control of chiefs, and certain kinds of public ritual. Turner has suggested that jural machinery is likely to be invoked when a dispute is conducted in terms of an appeal to common norms, or, alternatively, when the dispute itself involves an appeal to different or opposed norms, but it can still be settled fairly easily because there exists "a common frame of values which organize a society's norms into a hierarchy." There are, however, other kinds of conflict, which have their source in the contradictions inherent in the social structure itself. For example, when the rules of nepotic and adelphic succession both operate within a matrilineal system, they tend to promote faction within local groups. If these conflicts are not effectively sealed off, they may lead to the disruption of the group. For disputes of this kind, usually sparked by the breach of some legal or customary norm, jural sanctions are likely to be inappropriate and ineffectual. A court of law, employing rational techniques of inquiry, hears the arguments of the various parties and on its reading of the evidence proceeds to allocate blame to one or the other of the disputants. Such a procedure cannot "relieve the quarrels so as to preserve the threatened relationships." This explains why it is that among the Ndembu and other peoples of the central African "matrilineal belt" so few cases arising out of disputes within the matrilineage come before the tribal courts. These indeed are the kinds of situations par excellence in which the sanctions associated with accusations of witchcraft and sorcery or the wrath of ancestral spirits are predominant and where group unity can be reaffirmed only by ritual means. So, too, in modern Western society the invocation of legal sanctions may be found inadequate for the handling of certain kinds of domestic disputes. A court of law, by concentrating on husband and wife as right-bearing and duty-bearing units, excludes itself from examining a close and complex relationship in its totality; the less rigid techniques of a marriage guidance council or other similar agency may have to be invoked if reconciliation of the parties is the end to be achieved. With the development of recognized courts, a new and important phase has been reached in the
4
SANCTIONS
eternal task of achieving social control. Once forensic institutions have been established, little comes to escape their purview, and there are few matters that may not be the subject of judicial scrutiny. Yet, perhaps for this very reason, it is important to remember, as the last eximple cited itself suggests, that adjudication ma) cover a range of different procedures. The distiiguishing criteria of a court appear to be that it is capable of enforcing the principle of jurisdiction aid that it is led to the apportionment of liability ty the rational assessment of the evidence and a'guments adduced before it. In many African societi<s, informal hearings before village elders and the letection of the causes of personal and natural misfortune by divination share certain of the characteristics of the judicial process, but clearly it would :>e a mistake to equate them with courts. Similarly, as Gluckman (1962) argues, it seems a mistake t) speak of the institutionalized song duels of the Eskimo as "juridical instruments" even though tiey do serve to settle disputes and restore norrral relations between estranged members of the community. It may be true that the result of the contest is a "judgment" in favor of one of the constants, but, so far as can be gathered from the Iterature, the mode of arriving at that judgment las little in common with a judicial process. Here a lack of clear analytical distinctions can blur the important sociological problem of why in different s)cieties, or in different ranges of relationship with'n the same society, different kinds of sanctions may be invoked for similar kinds of breach of n«rm. Nevertheless, the instanct of the Eskimo song encounter does direct attertion to a variety of sanctions occupying a borderland between the realms of law, morals, and tustom. The literature on the song contest does not nake clear how points are scored in the duel, nor does it indicate what part the spectators play in tlis connection. On the other hand, the fact that the tontestants are obliged to accept the taunts, jibes, aid accusations of their opponents without taking aff:ont suggests parallels with forms of licensed "joiing" familiar in the anthropological literature. There is, for example, the system of clan joking relationships described for the Plateau Tonga of Nortiern Rhodesia. Among the Tonga, the clans are th> only enduring units of social organization, and they are linked in a complex arrangement of jokng partnerships. The Tonga explain these relatiorships by reference to some antagonism between the animals from which the clans derive their names or to some legend of origin. Whenever members of such paired clans
meet, they tease one another and indulge in mutual abuse. Joking of this kind occurs in informal situations, but this, like the Eskimo song contests, which are conducted for pure entertainment, has to be seen as a necessary preparation of the stage, so to speak, for those more serious occasions when culturally licensed abuse may be employed as a public sanction. The jural unit of Tonga society is the matrilineal group, but there are many situations where this group is not free to act without destroying the very principle of lineage unity on which the social structure is built. Those who waste their kin's property or commit incest provide instances of this kind. Their offenses are, in a sense, jural wrongs; but they also touch questions of ultimate social morality. For the protection of the community, the sanction of public castigation and ridicule of the offender by his clan joking partner is invoked (Colson 1953). Institutions embracing the "joking" principle are widespread; and they are not confined to tribal societies. It appears that "youth groups" may perform a similar role in some of the rural communities of present-day Spain and Wales (see Peters 1967). Such groups, which initially establish their "irresponsibility" by playing childish pranks as part of their normal behavior, are on occasion able to express the outraged moral feelings of the community by playing offensive practical jokes on those who have offended but who cannot be readily reached by straightforward legal sanctions. These instances, incidentally, illustrate another important mechanism in the process of social control. This is the principle whereby the enforcement of the sanction is thrust upon a "stranger" to the group; it is used in situations involving the unity of the group rather than the claims of aggrieved individuals. Through the medium of the clan joking partners, or the youth group, who are strangers to the adult community by virtue of their customary infantile behavior, the fiction of group cohesion can be maintained and group norms reaffirmed. Function of integration. The importance of the sanction lies, then, as Radcliffe-Brown noted (1934), in its integrative function. The social system is made up of many different kinds of groupings, frequently based on different principles of social organization and serving different sets of interests. Associated with these groupings and with the different and sometimes conflicting sets of social relationships in which their members are involved, there is a wide range of social sanctions, at the back of which are the organized sanctions of the law, supported by the coercive authority of society. Even in those systems where "legal totali-
SANCTIONS, INTERNATIONAL tarianism" has been carried furthest, it is clear, as Lewin (1947) has documented with reference to South Africa, that social control is not achieved exclusively through the operation of the sanctions of the law. Faced with this problem, certain jurists have been led to postulate a "general habit of obedience" to explain why, everywhere in society, laws are more often obeyed than disobeyed. A sociological approach, on the other hand, would stress that the efficacy of law rests, in the final analysis, on the support it receives from the operation of nonlegal sanctions in the various domains of social life. We can see something of the way this process operates in some analyses of the judicial process in African tribal societies. Barotse judges, for example, had behind them the full power and authority of their nation as well as of the British colonial administration. In the handling of disputes, however, the sanctions of morality and custom and, indeed, the whole normative structure of the society are channeled into the judicial process itself. Litigants and judges alike appeal to, and couch their arguments in terms of, the same body of norms. When a man is condemned, it is usually because he has failed to measure up to the standards of behavior that he himself has invoked in his statements to the court (Gluckman 1955). It is, of course, patent that there are important differences between the judicial processes in African societies and those in modern Western societies. Unfortunately the classic studies of the judicial process in Anglo-American systems have concentrated on judicial reasoning in the upper levels of the juridical hierarchy or upon exposing the nonlegal influences that play upon the mind of the judge. What seems to be required for purposes of significant comparison is the more intensive sociological investigation of courts and other similar bodies at the lower levels of the hierarchy, in the context of the communities within which they operate. Such studies might prove to be very important in illuminating the way in which social norms and sanctions are brought into relationship with the legal system. A. L. EPSTEIN [Directly related are the entries JUDICIAL PROCESS; LAW; POLITICAL ANTHROPOLOGY.] BIBLIOGRAPHY BOHANNAN, PAUL 1957 Justice and Judgment Among the Tiv. Published for the International African Institute. Oxford Univ. Press. COLSON, ELIZABETH (1953) 1962 Clans and the Jokingrelationship Among the Plateau Tonga of Northern Rhodesia. Pages 66-83 in Elizabeth Colson, The Plateau Tonga of Northern Rhodesia. Manchester Univ.
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Press. -> First published in Kroeber Anthropological Society, Papers. GLUCKMAN, MAX 1955 The Judicial Process Among the Barotse of Northern Rhodesia. Manchester Univ. Press; Glencoe, 111.: Free Press. GLUCKMAN, MAX 1962 African Jurisprudence. Advancement of Science 18:439-454. GLUCKMAN, MAX 1965 Politics, Law and Ritual in Tribal Society. Oxford: Blackwell; Chicago: Aldine. HOEBEL, E. ADAMSON 1954 The Law of Primitive Man: A Study in Comparative Legal Dynamics. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Univ. Press. LEWIN, JULIUS 1947 Studies in African Native Law. Cape Town: African Bookman; Philadelphia: Univ. of Pennsylvania Press. LLEWELLYN, KARL N.; and HOEBEL, E. A. 1941 The Cheyenne Way: Conflict and Case Law in Primitive Jurisprudence. Norman: Univ. of Oklahoma Press. MALINOWSKI, BRONISLAW (1926) 1961 Crime and Custom in Savage Society. London: Routledge. -» A paperback edition was published in 1959 by Littlefield. NADEL, SIEGFRIED F. 1947 The Nuba: An Anthropological Study of the Hill Tribes in Kordofan. Oxford Univ. Press. PETERS, E. L. 1967 Group Joking Relationships. Unpublished manuscript. POSPISIL, LEOPOLD 1958 Kapauku Papuans and Their Law. Yale University Publications in Anthropology, No. 54. New Haven: Yale Univ. RADCLIFFE-BROWN, A. R. (1922) 1948 The Andaman Islanders. Glencoe, 111.: Free Press. RADCLIFFE-BROWN, A. R. 1934 Social Sanction. Volume 13, pages 531-534 in Encyclopaedia of the Social Sciences. New York: Macmillan. -» Reprinted in Radcliffe-Brown's Structure and Function in Primitive Society, published by Cohen and West in 1952. SEAGLE, WILLIAM (1941) 1946 The History of Law. 2d ed. New York: Tudor. -» First published as The Quest for Law. TURNER, V. W. 1957 Schism and Continuity in an African Society: A Study of Ndembu Village Life. Manchester Univ. Press. WHITING, BEATRICE B. 1950 Paiute Sorcery. Viking Fund Publications in Anthropology, No. 15. New York: Viking Fund.
SANCTIONS, INTERNATIONAL The term "sanction," in its widest sense, means "any measure taken in support of a social order regulating human behavior" (Kelsen 1957, p. 101). The purpose of a sanction is to bring about a behavior considered to be in conformity with the goals and standards of a society and to prevent that behavior which is inconsistent with these goals and standards. Consequently, in its widest sense, a sanction can have the objective of suppressing and terminating a particular form of undesirable behavior and the objective of deterring or discouraging such behavior in the future. The word "sanction" originated in Roman law, where it meant a penalty imposed upon a person who violates the law. The word continues to be used in this narrow
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SANCTIONS, INTERNATIONAL
sense, particularly in municipal law. In international relations, the term is customarily used in the wider sense. It is sometimes asserted, particularly with reference to Austin's definition of law, that international law is not law because it lacks the sanctions of municipal law. That there is a difference of degree is no doubt true, but what is often not recognized is that municipal law, like international law, is basically dependent upon custom and consent, while international law has sanctions comparable with those of municipal law, though admittedly weaker. The organization of sanctions in support of an international order faces a special difficulty not encountered within the state to anything like the same degree. This is the difficulty of enforcing standards against organized groups which, as states, make exclusive claims on governmental authority and on the loyalty and support of their citizens. Even within the state, constituted authorities experience difficulties in enforcing their decisions against organized groups such as trade unions and component political units, as witness the difficulties experienced by the organs of the federal government of the United States in enforcing their decisions against the states. Experience Customary international law has in the past admitted the right of states to take certain measures of self-help in support of their legal claims if it was not possible to achieve satisfaction by negotiation or third-party settlement. These measures included withdrawal of diplomatic representatives, acts of reprisal such as embargo and pacific blockade, display of force, landing of armed forces for purposes of protection of persons and property, and resort to war. Under agreements concluded to meet particular situations, special guarantees were accorded and the right of intervention admitted, as, for example, in the collective guarantee of Belgian neutrality (1839) and the United States guarantee of Cuban independence (1901). Under the Covenant of the League of Nations, the concept that peace should be maintained by the combined forces of peace-loving states was substituted for the principles of balance of power and self-help. "Resort to war" under denned conditions was prohibited. Provision was made under article 10 for joint guarantee of member states against external aggression and in article 16 for sweeping economic and financial sanctions to be applied "immediately" by every member against any state resorting to war in violation of its obligations under the Covenant. The Covenant provisions were seri-
ously weakened by resolutions adopted by the Assembly in 1921 that were intended to take account of the failure of the League to achieve universality. Military sanctions under the Covenant were optional on recommendation of the Council. No serious consideration was given to the application of the sanctions of article 16 until the mid-1930s. The Japanese invasion of Manchuria in 1931 was not treated as a resort to war under the Covenant. The Assembly did, however, recommend to members that they withhold recognition of the fruits of Japan's military action, in line with the announced policy of the United States. This constituted a mild form of sanction, which had, however, no observable practical effect. In 1935, however, Italy's military invasion of Ethiopia was recognized by all except a small minority of members as an illegal resort to war, and limited economic and financial sanctions were applied. These were not adequate, however, to achieve the declared objective of frustrating Italy's military action, and leading members of the League were unwilling, for political reasons, to agree to measures that might have been effective. The Charter of the United Nations adopts a different approach to the problem of sanctions. Like the Covenant, its objective is limited to the maintenance of peace; the Charter prohibits any threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state "or in any other manner inconsistent with the Purposes of the United Nations" (art. 2, paragraph 4). The sanctions envisaged, however, are not automatic, being left to the discretion of the Security Council. In cases of threats to the peace, breaches of the peace, or acts of aggression, it may take decisions requiring members to apply collective measures, including the severance of diplomatic relations, economic and financial nonintercourse, and "action by air, sea or land forces" (art. 42). But the taking of military measures is made dependent on the conclusion of agreements by which members undertake to place forces and facilities at the disposal of the Security Council (art. 43). In addition, a member against whom preventive or enforcement action has been taken may be suspended from "the exercise of the rights and privileges of membership" by the General Assembly upon the recommendation of the Security Council (art. 5), and a member who has "persistently violated the Principles" contained in the Charter may be expelled in like manner (art. 6). The Charter does not confer upon the General Assembly any explicit powers with respect to the imposition of sanctions. It does give to the Assembly the general authority to discuss and make
SANCTIONS, INTERNATIONAL recommendations with respect to any matter within the scope of the Charter (art. 10). In United Nations practice, the Security Council has largely been prevented from using its powers to apply sanctions—its enforcement powers—by the inability of the permanent members to agree. In the early stages of its handling of the Palestine question (1948) it specifically invoked these powers and threatened to use them. In the Korean case, the Council, in the absence of the Soviet representative, recommended assistance to the Republic of Korea and, under this authorization, members took measures of the kind described in articles 41 and 42. More recently, in dealing with policies of racial discrimination by South Africa, the Security Council, by its resolution of December 4, 1963, called upon members to refrain from shipping arms and munitions to that country so long as it practiced this discrimination, which it found was "seriously disturbing international peace and security." The General Assembly, in the exercise of its broad powers under the Charter, has on numerous occasions recommended to members the adoption of various measures of a coercive nature to bring the conduct of particular states into line with standards set by the Charter, international law, and United Nations resolutions. Examples include such recommended measures as the withdrawal of heads of missions to Spain and its exclusion from UN conferences in order to eliminate the Franco regime (1946); an embargo on the shipment of arms and strategic materials in general to North Korea and Communist China to suppress their aggressive action (1951); and an embargo on export of arms and petroleum products to South Africa to achieve the termination of policies of racial discrimination (1963). The measures recommended by the General Assembly have had a range of purposes extending beyond the maintenance of international peace and security, to the implementation of obligations and policies in respect to self-determination and human rights. Provisions for the application of international sanctions are not limited to the constitutions of global international organizations. The Inter-American Treaty of Mutual Assistance, for example, provides that in case of aggression by an American state, the Organ of Consultation may decide that the other signatory states apply sanctions, including political, economic, financial, and military measures. Decisions may be taken by a vote of two-thirds and are binding, except that no member can be required to use military force against its will. In August 1960, the decision was taken to sever diplomatic relations and partially interrupt
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economic relations with the Dominican Republic because of its aggression against Venezuela. Evaluation Experience with organized international sanctions in support of international order has been limited and does not give much encouragement to those who believe in the efficacy of such arrangements. The League system of sanctions was a system of collective security which rested "upon the proposition that war can be prevented by the deterrent effect of overwhelming power upon states which are too rational to invite certain defeat" (Claude 1964, p. 228). It also assumed that an ethical and legal difference existed between military force used by a state to advance its national interests and the use of force by members of an international organization to restrain a state after it has been adjudged guilty of illegal use of force. This experiment was handicapped from the beginning by the League's lack of universality. The limited economic and financial sanctions imposed against Italy showed that international sanctions were technically feasible. The necessary machinery could be organized and decisions could be taken to permit sanctions to become operative promptly and with substantial impact on the transgressor. Their failure was due to political difficulties—the conflicting interests and purposes of the sanctioning powers and the unwillingness of some states to risk war to make sanctions effective. United Nations experience has not been encouraging either. Sanctions against Franco Spain were applied half-heartedly and were soon terminated. In the Korean case, the measures taken to assist the Republic of Korea and to defeat the aggressive actions of North Korea and Communist China were essentially United States measures dictated by United States policy considerations. The United Nations served as a useful framework to provide legitimacy and as a moderating influence. Measures recommended against South Africa to achieve fuller respect by that member for basic human rights have had little observable effect. What conclusions are to be drawn from this and other experience regarding the role of international sanctions in the implementation of international order? Statesmen and scholars have arrived at a variety of conclusions. One conclusion which appears to be widely held is that the theory of international sanctions, particularly as it involves the use of military force, is fallacious. According to this view, no effective pressure can be applied against a state except by another state, and consequently, an international
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SANCTIONS, INTERNATIONAL
order that depends on that form of pressure is a permanent source of conflict instead of a medium of order. As early as 1787 Hamilton wrote in The Federalist: "In an association where the general authority is confined to the collective bodies of the communities that compose it, every breach of the laws must involve a state of war; and military execution must become the only instrument of civil obedience" (No. 15). Another conclusion that has wide support is that forces of coercion which are effective when applied to individuals are not effective, at least not to the same degree, when applied to states. Even those forms which might be expected to be particularly effective, such as embargoes and blockades, may at least temporarily have the opposite effect. In the case of the economic sanctions against Italy, among the immediate effects was a strengthening of popular support for the regime. A view which is widely held by those who stress national interest as the motivating force in international relations is that international sanctions are unrealistic because they require a willingness to accept general commitments for situations which cannot be foreseen in detail and to carry them out under circumstances where the immediate national interest appears to dictate a different course. Thus, in the case of League sanctions against Italy, France was a reluctant participant because of her primary interest in having Italian support against Germany. Many members of the United Nations were reluctant to press sanctions against Communist China in 1950 and 1951 because of their greater concern at the time with the security of western Europe. A more optimistic and positive view regarding sanctions is that while experience to date may not have been encouraging, a system of organized sanctions in support of law and order is the only alternative to anarchy. Scholars and writers who take this view—Quincy Wright and Myres McDougal are examples—argue that our experience with sanctions as applied to organized groups is not so discouraging as is often contended, that sanctions have been effective in deterring undesirable conduct by states, and that with a fuller appreciation of the extent of the coincidence of particular and general interests in public order, sanctions can be expected to become more effective. Problems and prospects It is obvious that the organization and application of international sanctions in support of international order present difficulties that do not exist to the same degree in the case of sanctions in sup-
port of domestic order. With respect to international legal claims, states generally continue to rely upon good faith and reciprocity of interest in compliance, and upon retaliatory measures when these fail. It is primarily for the maintenance of peace and, to an increasing extent of late, for the implementation of certain human rights that organized sanctions are seriously considered. Much study has been given to the organization and application of collective sanctions to these ends, both by private scholars and by official groups. A group of members of the Royal Institute of International Affairs made a study of international sanctions in the light of the League experience of 1935-1936 (1938). During the period when the United Nations was engaged in supporting collective measures in Korea, the General Assembly, by its Uniting for Peace Resolution of November 3, 1950, established the Collective Measures Committee to study methods which might be used to strengthen international peace and security. In its report, published in 1951, it made detailed recommendations for the organization and application of collective measures (United Nations . . . 1951). The scope of the prohibition of the use or threat of force under the Charter, combined with the lack of any effective provision for the enforcement of legal rights, has led some scholars to take the view that unilateral use of force to secure respect for legal rights is permissible as a sanction consistent with "the Purposes of the United Nations" (Stone 1958, pp. 94-95). Others take the view that the Charter does not permit the individual use of force, without United Nations authorization, except as it can be justified as an exercise of the right of selfdefense in case of an armed attack. There is an extensive scholarly literature dealing particularly with the theory and legal aspects of international sanctions, but research and writing have thus far neglected the more practical aspects of the problem. While scholars have explored the legal, organizational, and administrative problems involved in the establishment and operation of a system of sanctions, and furthermore have analyzed the influence of the international political environment on a system of sanctions, relatively little attention has been given to the effects of sanctions upon the delinquent states as well as upon those states joining in their application. It is too readily assumed that the recalcitrant state can be coerced by material pressures into conforming to a desired mode of conduct or into ceasing an undesirable mode of conduct. We need to know more about the effect of sanctions upon the people of the state that is the object of sanctions, and the
SAPIR, EDWARD: Contributions to Cultural Anthropology processes by which that state, once its resistance is overcome, can be restored to good standing in the international community. Furthermore, while the problem of the unequal effects of sanctions upon those states applying them or expected to apply them is recognized, more study needs to be made of the extent of these inequalities and of procedures by which burdens will be more equally shared. It is clear that reluctance to participate in the application of sanctions has in large measure been due to unequal burdens and risks that states have been asked to assume. LELAND M. GOODRICH [See also ECONOMIC WARFARE; INTERNATIONAL CONFLICT RESOLUTION; INTERNATIONAL LAW. Other relevant material may be found under INTERNATIONAL ORGANIZATION; INTERNATIONAL POLITICS;
WAR.] BIBLIOGRAPHY BRIERLY, J. L. 1931 Sanctions. Grotius Society, Transactions 17:67-82. CLAUDE, INIS L. 1964 Swords Into Plowshares: The Problems and Progress of International Organization. 3d ed. New York: Random House. -* The first edition was published in 1956. GOODRICH, LELAND M.; and SIMONS, ANNE P. 1955 The United Nations and the Maintenance of International Peace and Security. Washington: Brookings Institution. KELSEN, HANS 1957 Collective Security Under International Law. U.S. Naval War College, International Law Studies, Vol. 49. Washington: Government Printing Office. KUNZ, JOSEF L. 1960 Sanctions in International Law. American Journal of International Law 54:324-347. McDoucAL, MYRES S.; and FELICIANO, FLORENTINO P. 1961 Law and Minimum Worid Public Order: The Legal Regulation of International Coercion. New Haven: Yale Univ. Press. NIEMEYER, GERHART 1941 Law Without Force: The Function of Politics in International Law. Princeton Univ. Press. ROYAL INSTITUTE OF INTERNATIONAL AFFAIRS 1938 International Sanctions: A Report by a Group of Members of the Royal Institute of International Affairs. Oxford Univ. Press. STONE, JULIUS (1954) 1959 Legal Controls of International Conflict: A Treatise on the Dynamics of Disputes and War Law. 2d impression, rev., with supplement 1953-1958. New York: Holt. STONE, JULIUS 1958 Aggression and World Order: A Critique of United Nations Theories of Aggression. Berkeley: Univ. of California Press. TAUBENFELD, RITA FALK; and TAUBENFELD, HOWARD J. 1964 The "Economic Weapon": The League and The United Nations. American Society of International Law, Proceedings [1964]: 183-205. UNITED NATIONS, GENERAL ASSEMBLY 1951 Report of the Collective Measures Committee. United Nations, General Assembly, Official Records Sixth Session, Supplement no. 13.
9
SAPIR, EDWARD i. CONTRIBUTIONS TO CULTURAL ANTHROPOLOGY David G. Mandelbaum ii. CONTRIBUTIONS TO LINGUISTICS Z. S. Harris
CONTRIBUTIONS TO CULTURAL
ANTHROPOLOGY
Edward Sapir (1884-1939) was one of the founders of modern linguistic anthropology, a main contributor to the development of formal descriptive linguistics, a leading figure in cultural anthropology, and a chief stimulator of studies in the relations between personality and culture. His ideas continue to excite lively interest; his writings are widely read; his one book, Language, and a volume of his papers have continuously been reprinted. The range of his ideas is great. They are founded on an extraordinary breadth of knowledge, which Sapir used with incisive power of thought and subtlety of analysis. He wrote poetry, literary essays, and music as well as scholarly works; all his writings are characterized by an unusual felicity of style. Sapir was born in Pomerania (Germany) and was five years old when his family emigrated to the United States. His intellectual gifts were recognized while he was a schoolboy in New York City. He was awarded scholarships to the Horace Mann School and then a Pulitzer fellowship to Columbia College, from which he was graduated in 1904. He went on to do a year of graduate work in Germanics at Columbia, and at that time his interest in language brought him into contact with Franz Boas. He quickly learned from Boas the great potentialities of the anthropological study of language, and from then on his principal work was in linguistic anthropology. [See the biography of BOAS.] In 1910 Sapir went to Ottawa as chief of the division of anthropology in the Geological Survey of Canada. His 15 years in that post gave him fine opportunities for field research and writing, but it was also a period of relative isolation from the main centers of anthropological work. He welcomed the invitation to join the department of anthropology at the University of Chicago, all the more because his wife had died after a long illness. He came to Chicago with his three children in 1925 and remained at the university for six years; his work and his influence flourished there. He was married again, to Jean McClenaghan, and they had two children. In 1931 he accepted a Sterling professorship at Yale and founded the department of anthropology there. His years at Yale were active and productive until he suffered a series of heart
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attacks in 1937, which ended his life two years later. Sapir's primary work was always in the study of language (his achievements in that field are discussed in the second section of this biography). His writings on other subjects, such as culture, society, and personality, were often done in response to a request for an article on a particular topic or as offshoots of his linguistic studies. Yet a good many of them have been major contributions which still command attention. These writings are of three main kinds—ethnological studies of American Indians, essays on general concepts, and papers on personality in culture and society. Ethnological studies. Sapir's ethnological contributions appeared in steady succession from his earliest writings to some that were published posthumously. Many were brief studies of the kind that provide the necessary groundwork for more general formulations, as the account of Takelma religion, or of a Nootka puberty ceremony, or of Sarsi pottery. In some, a large body of data is summarized and underlying principles demonstrated. For example, in "The Social Organization of the West Coast Tribes" (1915) Sapir showed how the idea of social ranking pervaded many aspects of these societies—how the emphases on inherited privileges and on ritual insignia were linked to that prevailing idea. When Robert Lowie wrote an appraisal of Sapir's work long after Sapir's death, he noted that Sapir was one of the very best of ethnographers—able to immerse himself in the phenomena under scrutiny, plumb them to the depths, and present them deftly and incisively (Letters From Edivard Sapir to Robert H. Lowie, p. 10). Sapir's most substantial contribution to ethnological theory is his monograph of 1916, "Time Perspective in Aboriginal American Culture: A Study in Method." A main objective of field research among American Indians at that time was understanding the actual processes of culture change as against the presumed universal processes, which had been postulated by nineteenthcentury evolutionists. In order to understand how American Indian cultures had actually changed, anthropologists had to reconstruct cultural histories. In this monograph Sapir surveyed the methods useful in such reconstructions; he particularly illuminated the use of inferential evidence, such as that from the study of cultural associations, geographic distributions, cultural strata, and from grammatical and lexical analyses. He presented the logical basis for evaluating different kinds of inferential evidence. The arguments are
closely reasoned; supporting evidence is compactly presented; broad concepts are tersely stated. It is a work that requires close study, and generations of graduate students studied it closely because it was for many years one of the major theoretical pieces on American Indian anthropology. Some of these students found that a single paragraph or even a sentence could open fruitful leads for their own research. In recent years, the shift of anthropological attention to peoples in other parts of the world and the development of interest in other theoretical approaches have lessened the importance of this work, but it held a leading place for some forty years. General concepts. Sapir's less technical, more general essays have had a wider audience; they have a way of including some ideas which appear, decades later, to be at the frontiers of thought. Thus, in "Culture, Genuine and Spurious" (1924), Sapir defined the anthropologist's characteristically objective view of a people's way of life and then went on to distinguish genuine and worthy cultures from spurious and morally shoddy ones. He valued those cultures that encourage harmonious and selfsatisfying lives for the people who live by them, whatever the level of technical achievement and efficiency. He decried those life styles, as of some modern industrial and service workers, in which a person finds little relationship or reciprocal gratification among his various roles and pursuits. This thesis, although strange to anthropology, was true to the intellectual temper of the time. Sapir's special touch is found not only in the evidence he selected and the telling way in which he presented it, but even more in the intriguing ideas he mentioned, as it were, in passing. Thus, he commented on the nexus of self and society, on the place of art in a genuine culture, on the cultural pressures generated by political forces. Of this last matter he wrote, "Our national-political units are too small for peace, too large for safety" ([1924] 1949, p. 330). There is a good deal in this essay that belongs to the 1920s, but there is also a good deal that holds interest still. Other essays clarify fundamental concepts and categories. In "The Meaning of Religion" (1928) Sapir took a subject which, in other hands, is often hackneyed; in his, the subject is treated freshly and lucidly, with proper anthropological objectivity and yet with sympathy. Here also he threw off a number of productive ideas, pointing out, for example, that a basic distinction among religions is exemplified by the contrast between Plains and Pueblo Indian practices. The two types tend to differ "according to whether they find the last court of appeal in mat-
SAPIR, EDWARD: Contributions to Cultural Anthropology ters religious, in the social act, or in the private emotional experience" ([1928] 1949, p. 350). The article "Anthropology and Sociology" (1927a) appeared as a chapter in a book on the social sciences and their interrelations. In it Sapir was not at all concerned with separating the two domains or negotiating boundaries between them. He concentrated instead on the ideas that anthropology can contribute toward an understanding of people and behavior. He began by noting that a main error of earlier theorists lay in taking primitive people to be archaic, unchanging prototypes. Sapir expressed the view that has now become accepted, that "we are to be at least as much interested in the many points of accord between primitive and sophisticated types of social organization as in their sensational differences" ([1927a] 1949, p. 336). These similarities, he continued, are not readily apparent from reconstructions of culture histories of American Indian tribes. It is rather from the "stupendous facts" about common human trends that sociologists will in the long run have most to learn from anthropology. The separate historical explanations are little more than a necessary clearing of the ground for a social interpretation; they are not to be mistaken for the interpretation itself. In his "Time Perspective" (1916) Sapir had provided a major theoretical foundation for the work of historical reconstruction, which then preoccupied most American ethnologists. In the article of 1927 he recognized the work he had done in 1916 as only a preliminary step toward the anthropologist's principal tasks. Another development of Sapir's thought appears in several of the articles he wrote for the Encyclopaedia of the Social Sciences: an emphasis on the relation between individual and society, between personality and culture. This emphasis arose partly because of Sapir's humanist feeling that the proper study of man must include real men and partly because of his realization that formal, nonpersonalized formulations about people can be very misleading unless they are coupled with insights into the real experience and reactions of actual persons. In the article "Group" (1932a), for example, Sapir sketched the essential definition and dimensions of the concept in his clear, succinct way. He outlined three types of classification based on objective observation and three based on subjective engagement of the participant. He noted the bases for group formation and changes, then posed the fundamental question of the bonds that hold together the members of a group. The psychological basis of the group, he observed, must rest on the psychology of specific social relations. Loyal-
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ties to an entire group do not mean that direct relationships between individual and individual have been completely transcended, but rather that the attributes of interpersonal experience have been transferred to the group as a whole. Thus the psychological realities of group participation can best be understood through studies of the actual kinds of understanding and expectation that grow up between two or more human beings when they are brought into significant contact. Culture and personality. Sapir's interest in the interplay of culture and personality dated from the beginning of his anthropological studies. "I remember being rather shocked than pleased," he wrote in a paper of 1938, "when in my student days I came across such statements in J. O. Dorsey's 'Omaha Sociology' as Two Crows denies this'" ([1938] 1949, p. 569). The paper is devoted to an assessment of Two Crows' denial and of what the anthropologist should make of it. Sapir found conventional ethnographic statements inadequate because they were generalized formulas which said little or nothing about variation, conflict, denial, or emotion. Even as a student Sapir recognized that such generalized formulations might be necessary but could not be sufficient for a thorough understanding of behavior. So Dorsey was ahead of his age in recognizing that he was not dealing with an abstracted society or a set of specimens but with a number of human beings who could give themselves the privilege of differing from each other on matters that were, in the conventional anthropological definition, part of the official tribal culture. Sapir was moved to point out the inadequacy of rigidly depersonalized studies in his response of 1917 to A. L. Kroeber's formulation of the concept of the superorganic. In "Do We Need a Superorganic?" he granted that few individuals, as individuals, make a marked impress on social movements, and yet it is always the individual who thinks and acts and dreams and revolts. The difference between social and individual data in behavior studies results from the observer's choice of what to select for systematic notice. Hence it is not valid to draw an abidingly sharp line between the two types of data, since "individual" reactions constantly spill over and give color to "social" reactions (1917, p. 442). This insistence on the significance of the person appears recurrently in Sapir's writings on culture and society. His paper "Speech as a Personality Trait" (1927b) is one instance of this theme; other expressions of it came in a series of papers written in the last decade of his life. In a paper of 1932 he restated the idea that
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the true locus of culture is in the interactions of specific individuals and in the meanings which the participants abstract from these interactions ([1932b] 1949, p. 515). And in an article of 1938 he proposed a research procedure that has only lately been appreciated. Instead of arguing from a supposed objectivity of culture to the problem of individual variation, Sapir recommended that for certain kinds of analyses we should operate as though we knew nothing about culture but were interested in ascertaining what a. set of human beings who are accustomed to live with each other actually think and do in their day-to-day relationships ([1938] 1949, p. 574). This simple discovery procedure, as it turned out, involves complex questions as to when and how it is to be used, but it can also lead to considerable advances in anthropological understanding. As for the interpretation of a particular sequence of behavior as being either social or personal, Sapir's paper of 1934 on this matter shows that the duality of reference is an inevitable part of human experience as well as of the social scientist's method. When one is confronted with familiar circumstances and familiar people, interest is likely to be focused on the individual. With unfamiliar people or situations, in socially distant or casual relations, one's interest is more likely to center on cultural or social observations. Each type of interest "is necessary for the psychic preservation of the individual in an environment which experience makes increasingly complex and unassimilable on its own simple terms" ([1934] 1949, p. 591). Every person must use both frames of reference in his own conduct. In the study of man the anthropologist must also use both, but with explicit awareness of what he is doing, and he must be able to deploy each in ways best suited for analysis and explanation. Sociology and anthropology, Sapir continued, are rooted in the social kind of reference, a kind which perhaps is characteristic of the child's earliest experience with the seemingly irresistible authority and knowledge of his parents. Psychiatry and social psychology proceed more from the personal kind of reference and from the necessity felt to assert oneself significantly. All these are "preliminary disciplines" and provide an invaluable first ordering of research. But sooner or later their obscure opposition of spirit must be transcended for an objectivity which is not merely formal and non-evaluative but which boldly essays to bring every cultural pattern back to the living context from which it has been abstracted in the
first place and, in parallel fashion, to bring every fact of personality formation back to its social matrix. ([1934] 1949, p. 592) For such purposes, the descriptions and classifications of abstracted culture patterns are no longer very relevant, useful as they are to clear the observational ground. The more anthropologists become concerned with interactional meanings and values rather than with segregated traits, Sapir commented, the more a culture seems to take on the characteristics of a personality organization, and the growth of culture is understood in the spirit of the development of a personality. Thus, such ethnological questions as that of clan membership may well become subsidiary to inquiries as to whether a father is in the habit of acting toward his son as an indulgent guide or as a disciplinarian. One result of taking this point of view is that the bizarre or exotic in alien cultures tends to be minimized, while the broad human base on which all culture has developed is revealed more clearly (ibid., pp. 594-595). Anthropologists who appreciate that a culture is not given in a neat package to the child, but is gropingly discovered and assimilated by him, and who can see that a people change their culture with similar groping assimilation, will join with psychologists in phrasing more fruitful questions about culture and behavior ([1932b] 1949, p. 521; [1934] 1949, p. 597). Influence. Sapir taught students of anthropology for only about a dozen years, but his influence on several generations of anthropologists and linguists has been considerable. Hearing him in lectures or discussions could be an exhilarating experience. He was not at all dramatic; his talk was low-keyed and anything but hortatory. But he could give his students glimpses of intellectual vistas the like of which they had neither seen before nor would soon forget. He came to differ with his teacher in anthropology, Franz Boas, on a number of fundamental matters, but Boas always maintained a high respect for Sapir's work. Colleagues and friends of his own generation showed how much they owed to his work by the formal honors they gave him during his life and by the appreciations they wrote after his death at age 56. Parts of his correspondence with two of his friends, Robert H. Lowie and Ruth Benedict, have been published (Lowie & Sapir 1965; Benedict 1959, pp. 45-54, 158-197). These letters between friends contain private banter, trade gossip, and transient comment. But they also tell something of the day-to-day context of Sapir's
SAPIR, EDWARD: Contributions to Linguistics life and work—for example, at one period in Chicago he was teaching as much as fourteen hours a week—and they reflect something of both the warm charm and the occasional friction in his personal relations. The letters to Lowie show Sapir in the course of developing ethnological and linguistic ideas, sometimes surely and swiftly, sometimes haltingly and piecemeal. Those to Ruth Benedict show his sharp insight into the world of poets and poetry, a world seemingly very far removed from the technical universe which he discussed with Lowie but actually interwoven in his personality and his work. In her account of Ruth Benedict's poetry, Margaret Mead has noted that "it was in the vivid, voluminous correspondence with Edward Sapir that her own poetic interest and capacity matured." And in another passage Margaret Mead mentions that among those who benefited most from Sapir's speculations about personality and culture were Ruth Benedict, John Dollard, and herself (Benedict 1959, pp. 90, 209). The memorial volume for him written by some of his students (Language, Culture, and Personality 1941) was reprinted in 1960. In the generation of the students of his students, there is not only quite lively interest in what Sapir had to say, but also a good many who are urging their students to read Sapir. Sapir's death cut short a number of scholarly enterprises, among them the analysis of a large collection of American Indian ethnological data, extensive explorations in Indo-European linguistics, preliminary formulations of linguistic relationships on the largest scale, and extensive ethnological and linguistic notes in Semi tics. Toward the end of his life he turned increasingly to Semitic studies. His father had been a cantor, and he had been raised in the strict tradition of Orthodox Judaism. Although he soon discarded what he felt to be the intolerable restrictions of orthodoxy, he retained his delight in the scholarship and spirit of Judaism. His strong commitment to human rights, opposing all invidious discrimination and oppression, appears in his writing, especially in articles done for general audiences. As the grave world events of the 1930s developed, he participated actively in the defense of these rights. The weight of his scholarly influence is in linguistic anthropology, where the weight of his published contributions also lies. In American Indian ethnology his ideas on method and leads for further research have had notable effect. In the field of culture-personality studies he remains one of the principal pathfinders. For anthropology in gen-
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eral he continues to be a heartening example of how much can be accomplished when a superb mind plays over a wide and richly yielding field. DAVID G. MANDELBAUM [See also ANTHROPOLOGY; COMMUNICATION; CULTURE, article on THE CONCEPT OF CULTURE; INDIANS, NORTH AMERICAN.] BIBLIOGRAPHY The bibliography for this article is combined with the bibliography of the article that follows. II CONTRIBUTIONS TO LINGUISTICS
Sapir was, with Leonard Bloomfield, a founder of formal descriptive linguistics and the distributional method that characterizes it. He developed phonemic theory, the analysis of the sounds of a language according to the pattern of their distribution—that is, the sequence in which sounds occur and are systematized and perceived by the speakers of the language. Phonemic analysis thus recognizes language as behavior resulting from a process of selection. This method of analysis classifies each part of an utterance (sound, morpheme, etc.) on the basis of its environment rather than on the basis of its meaning, phonetic properties, and so forth. The distributional method is important not only because it is self-contained but also because its universe and its terms of reference are so explicit that one can discover all sorts of hidden relations that are observable only as second-order disturbances in the overt distributional system: masked and combined phonemes, neutralized phonemic differences, zeroed morphemes, and the like. To be sure, Sapir did not always formulate aberrant phenomena in distributional terms; he sometimes used formulations drawn from biological processes. While this reduced the incisiveness and generality of the distributional theory he was developing, it did indicate some of the other systemic factors (factors of equilibrium, of dynamics, etc.) that may be required to understand the sources of aberrant phenomena or of the place these phenomena occupy in the descriptive system. These additional factors may even aid ultimately in understanding the source of the system itself. Thus Sapir might say that if, in a given language, a two-vowel sequence never occurs inside a morpheme and only rarely occurs when two morphemes adjoin each other in a word, the language will develop a "protective mechanism" to avoid the two-vowel sequence. Examples of such
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mechanisms are the glottal stop and the French liaison t. Distributional methods came to be widely used in the formulation of linguistic process. Phonemic phenomena were regarded as processes of change (for example, "suppletion," or the replacement of stems in certain word groups, e.g., in am, is, be} that are structural and thus related to the environment in which they occur. Sapir was also one of the originators of the concept of the morphophoneme. The morphophoneme classifies together all those phonemes that replace each other in the paradigm-—that is, the different phonemic shapes that a word or morpheme has as it occurs in different morphemic environments. This concept was also based partly on the speaker's perception of phonemic replacement (Sapir 1933; Sapir & Swadesh 1939). Sapir also did much work in historical and comparative linguistics, tracing the genetic relationships among languages. His interest in pattern and process led him to speak of configurational pressure as a source of change. By configurational pressure he meant that linguistic change (phonemic and morphemic) is influenced by relevant patterns inherent in the language itself. He suggested that configurational pressure is a factor in what he called drift, the process that occurs in a language whose speakers have separated and can no longer imitate ("borrow from") each other, but whose linguistic habits continue in some respects to change in the same way in the separated communities (e.g., Old Norse in Denmark and Iceland). Although this suggestion has not received sufficient study, it does accord with systematizations of linguistic change. In historical linguistics Sapir is particularly noted for a series of intricate analyses of the earliest stages of Indo-European. He based his work partly on the difficult data from Tocharian and partly on the laryngeal hypothesis that reconstructed various laryngeal consonants lost in early Indo-European with consequent changes in neighboring vowels (1937a; 1937b; 1939). Related to this work were his investigations of the similarities and connections of Indo-European to Semitic and other Mediterranean languages. Sapir thought that Indo-European and Semitic might have descended from the same parent stock. Although it was impossible to establish this hypothesis by reconstructions using the accepted comparative method, he could point to many unexpected connections and to a great over-all structural similarity in the earliest stages of both Indo-European and Semitic. Sapir worked with examples of structural simi-
larity in his famous attempt to group the extremely numerous and apparently unrelated families of North American Indian languages into six superfamilies (1929). Most of Sapir's linguistic work (like his ethnological studies) was with American Indians, and his mastery of the data and his analyses of the Indian languages were unequaled. He worked particularly in Navajo, Yana, Nootka, Tlingit, Sarsi, Kutchin, Chinook, Ingalik, Hupa, and Southern Paiute. Z. S. HARRIS [See also LANGUAGE; LINGUISTICS, article on THE FIELD; and the biographies of BLOOMFIELD; SAUSSURE; WHORF.]
WORKS BY SAPIR (1915) 1949 The Social Organization of the West Coast Tribes. Pages 468-487 in Selected Writings . . . . Edited by David G. Mandelbaum. Berkeley: Univ. of California Press. (1916) 1949 Time Perspective in Aboriginal American Culture: A Study in Method. Pages 389-462 in Selected Writings . . . . Edited by David G. Mandelbaum. Berkeley: Univ. of California Press 1917 Do We Need a Superorganic? American Anthropologist New Series 19:441-447. 1921 Language: An Introduction to the Study of Speech. New York: Harcourt. (1924) 1949 Culture, Genuine and Spurious. Pages SOSSSI in Selected Writings . . . . Edited by David G. Mandelbaum. Berkeley: Univ. of California Press. (1927a) 1949 Anthropology and Sociology. Pages 332345 in Selected Writings . . . . Edited by David G. Mandelbaum. Berkeley: Univ. of California Press. (1927b) 1949 Speech as a Personality Trait. Pages 533543 in Selected Writings . . . . Edited by David G. Mandelbaum. Berkeley: Univ. of California Press. (1928) 1949 The Meaning of Religion. Pages 346-356 in Selected Writings . . . . Edited by David G. Mandelbaum. Berkeley: Univ. of California Press. (1929) 1949 Central and North American Languages. Pages 169-178 in Selected Writings . . . . Edited by David G. Mandelbaum. Berkeley: Univ. of California Press. (1932a) 1949 Group. Pages 357-364 in Selected Writings . . . . Edited by David G. Mandelbaum. Berkeley: Univ. of California Press. -> First published in Volume 7 of the Encyclopaedia of the Social Sciences. Sapir also wrote the Encyclopaedia articles "Communication," "Custom," "Dialect," "Fashion," "Language," "Personality," and "Symbolism." (1932&) 1949 Cultural Anthropology and Psychiatry. Pages 509-521 in Selected Writings . . . . Edited by David G. Mandelbaum. Berkeley: Univ. of California Press. 1933 La realite psychologique des phonemes. Journal de psychologie normale et pathologique 30:247-265. (1934) 1949 The Emergence of the Concept of Personality in a Study of Cultures. Pages 590-597 in Selected Writings . . . . Edited by David G. Mandelbaum. Berkeley: Univ. of California Press. (1937a) 1949 Hebrew "Helmet": A Loanword and Its Bearing on Indo-European Phonology. Pages 285-288
SARTON, GEORGE in Selected Writings . . . . Edited by David G. Mandelbaum. Berkeley: Univ. of California Press. (1937b) 1949 [A Book Review of] The Ras Shamra Mythological Texts, by James A. Montgomery and Zellig Harris. Pages 289-293 in Selected Writings . . . . Edited by David G. Mandelbaum. Berkeley: Univ. of California Press. (1938) 1949 Why Cultural Anthropology Needs the Psychiatrist. Pages 569-577 in Selected Writings . . . . Edited by David G. Mandelbaum. Berkeley: Univ. of California Press. (1939) 1949 From Sapir's Desk: Indo-European Prevocalic s in Macedonian and The Indo-European Words for "Tear." Pages 294-302 in Selected Writings . . . . Edited by David G. Mandelbaum. Berkeley: Univ. of California Press. 1939 SAPIR, EDWARD; and SWADESH, MORRIS Nootka Texts: Tales and Ethnological Narratives With Grammatical Notes and Lexical Materials. Philadelphia: Linguistic Society of America. Letters From Edward Sapir to Robert H. Lowie. With an introduction and notes by Robert H. Lowie. Privately published, 1965. Selected Writings of Edward Sapir in Language, Culture, and Personality. Edited by David G, Mandelbaum. Berkeley: University of' California Press, 1949. -» Includes a chronologically arranged bibliography of Sapir's writings, SUPPLEMENTARY BIBLIOGRAPHY
BENEDICT, RUTH 1959 An Anthropologist at Work: Writings of Ruth Benedict, by Margaret Mead. Boston: Houghton Mifflin. -> A selection of Benedict's writings, with extensive commentary by Margaret Mead. [Bibliography: Edward Sapir.] 1938 Psychiatry 1:154157. HARRIS, Z. S. 1951 [A Book Review of] Selected Writings of Edward Sapir in Language, Culture, and Personality. Language 27:288-333. Language, Culture, and Personality: Essays in Memory of Edward Sapir. Edited by Leslie A. Spier, A. Irving Hallowell, and Stanley S. Newman. (1941) 1960 Salt Lake City: Univ. of Utah Press. PRESTON, RICHARD J. 1966 Edward Sapir's Anthropology: Style, Structure, and Method. American Anthropologist New Series 68:1105-1128.
SARTON, GEORGE George Sarton, historian of science, was born in Ghent, Belgium, in 1884 and died in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in 1956. He married Eleanor Mabel Elwes, an English artist, in 1911; their daughter, May, who became a poet and novelist, was born in 1912. As a youth Sarton wrote romantic poems and essays. At the University of Ghent he studied the natural sciences and mathematics, winning a medal for a chemical memoir in 1908 and completing a doctoral dissertation on Newton's mechanics in 1911. He became increasingly interested in the history and philosophy of science and dedicated the rest
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of his life to establishing the history of science as an independent discipline. In 1912 he founded Isis, a scholarly journal for this new field, and continued to be its editor through 1952. After only five issues, publication was interrupted by World War i, but it was resumed in 1919. Meanwhile Sarton had fled Belgium and moved to the United States in 1915. As a research associate of the Carnegie Institution, from 1918 on, he used Harvard's Widener Library and offered a course in the history of science at Harvard, where he became a professor in 1940. The History of Science Society was formed in the United States in 1924; it provided a professional organization for the new discipline and guaranteed the publication of Isis. Isis has published a continuous series of valuable critical bibliographies; the first 79 of these were prepared by Sarton himself. Osiris was founded in 1936 to accommodate studies that were too long for Isis but too short for separate publication. When Sarton was invited, in 1916, to deliver the Lowell lectures, he chose Leonardo da Vinci as his subject. On this occasion he was struck with how little was known about ancient and medieval science leading up to Leonardo, and he decided that a comprehensive history needed to be written. In 1919 he recovered his notes and a good part of his library, which he had had to abandon in Belgium, and two years later he began to write his Introduction to the History of Science (1927-1948). Ultitimately, Sarton did not take this history beyond the fourteenth century; he realized how much time would be required to handle the fifteenth century on the same scale as the earlier centuries and preferred to spend his remaining years on more limited subjects; for example, he wrote A Guide to the History of Science (1952a), The Appreciation of Ancient and Medieval Science During the Renaissance (1955), and Six Wings: Men of Science in the Renaissance (1957). His aim in writing the history of science was not only to establish and define that field of study but also to show its importance for the philosophy of science and for any positive philosophy. Sarton called science "systematized positive knowledge," picturing it as a living, continually developing organism. He maintained that science is the only cumulative and progressive human activity and that the study of the history of mankind must focus on the history of science; any tolerably complete history of civilization must devote considerable space to explaining scientific progress. He believed that the historian of science has a mission to defend the traditions of science, not because they differ essentially from those of other fields, but
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because "they are all that makes life worth living, they are the nobility and the goodness of life" (1952a, p. 15). For Sarton, science has grown "out of the minds and hearts of living men" (1954, p. 67), and its history is therefore often best written in terms of biography. He did not limit his account to the achievements of outstanding scientists, because he found that a number of smaller discoveries usually contributed to the gradual preparation of major ones. He warned that the history of science must not be confused with the history of scientific method, nor be approached from the economic point of view, which overemphasizes applications. Influenced by Comte and Tannery, Sarton repeatedly emphasized that the history of science is the integration of the histories of the separate sciences, not their summation; it is itself a specialty built on a thorough understanding of the methods of science and of history; it covers ancient, medieval, and modern science; and it requires more than the leisure hours of capable scientists or of scholarly historians. The historian of science must be trained in science; indeed, he should be acquainted with all advancing knowledge, not just scientific and historical material. Moreover, Western science cannot be properly understood without an appreciation of the extent of the influence of Islam on Western civilization, and Sarton learned Arabic in order to comprehend this influence. Sarton's history of science, an all-embracing picture of the impact of scientific progress on mankind and of man's environment on science, tells "not only of the spreading light but also of the contracting darkness" (1952a, p. 11). Sarton saw the history of science as a means of understanding science and making it live—creating a philosophy of science that would have continuing validity. He combated the tendency of scientific studies to supplant humanistic ones. He strove to "humanize" science, to reveal its integration with the other elements of our culture, and to instill in scientists some reverence of the past and some awareness of the relevance of the history of science for science as an ongoing activity. The history of science seemed to him the only possible bridge across a growing abyss. Warm and subtly humorous, Sarton made friends throughout the world. He was tireless in his own work and expected similar patience and critical attitudes from others. Sometimes his genuine humility seemed like self-righteousness (e.g., [1931] 1956, p. 109). His lecture courses were popular, but he had few graduate students.
A new generation of historians of science, while appreciative of Sarton's pioneering service, is reassessing his aims and methods. Present-day emphasis is on the structure and development of scientific ideas rather than on the ideas themselves. Sarton has been described as naive about history (Williams 1960, p. 160) and insufficiently selective in his methods, too lost in pedantic minutiae to appreciate their relevance for the overall development. He has been accused by some of stressing the content of science at the expense of its integration into a complex whole. On the other hand, Sarton's interpretation of the history of science is alleged to be incompatible with the compartmentalism of modern science and to stress the cultural framework and the normative implications of science at the expense of its content (Grmek 1965, pp. 140-143). Grmek questioned whether one man can handle the history of science if it is interpreted as broadly as it was by Sarton, but he admitted that collaborative studies by teams of specialists have gained technical insight at the expense of the kind of synthesis that Sarton provided. Clearly, Sarton's critics are in disagreement. However, the monumental scholarly edifice he erected can become a basis for a revision of the historiography of science. C. DORIS HELLMAN [See also SCIENCE, article on THE HISTORY OF SCIENCE.] WORKS BY SARTON
1927-1948 Introduction to the History of Science. 3 vols. Baltimore: Williams & Wilkins. (1931) 1956 The History of Science and the New Humanism. 3d ed. New York: Braziller. -» A paperback edition was published in 1962 by the Indiana University Press. 1952a A Guide to the History of Science: A First Guide for the Study of the History of Science, With Introductroy Essays on Science and Tradition. New York: Ronald Press. 1952fo A History of Science: Ancient Science Through the Golden Age of Greece. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Univ. Press. 1954 The Old World and the New Humanism. Pages 6368 in Man's Right to Knowledge; First Series: Tradition and Change. New York: Muschel. 1955 The Appreciation of Ancient and Medieval Science During the Renaissance (1450-1600). Philadelphia: Univ. of Pennsylvania Press. 1957 Six Wings: Men of Science in the Renaissance. Bloomington: Indiana Univ. Press. -> Published posthumously. 1959 A History of Science: Hellenistic Science and Culture in the Last Three Centuries B.C. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Univ. Press. On the History of Science: Essays. Selected and edited by Dorothy Stimson. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Univ. Press, 1962.
SAUER, CARL O. SUPPLEMENTARY
BIBLIOGRAPHY
AGASSI, JOSEPH 1963 Towards an Historiography of Science. History and Theory, Beiheft 2. The Hague: Mouton. BUCHDAHL, GERD 1965 A Revolution in Historiography of Science. History of Science 4:55-69. The George Sarton Memorial Issue. 1957 Isis 48, part 3. GRMEK, MIRKO D. 1965 Prolegomenes a une histoire generale des sciences. Annales: Economies, societes, civilisations 20:138-146. HELLMAN, C. DORIS 1958 George Sarton: Historian of Science and New Humanist. Science 128:641-644. KUHN, THOMAS S. 1962 The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. Univ. of Chicago Press. -» A paperback edition was published in 1964. STRELSKY, KATHARINE 1957 Bibliography of the Publications of George Sarton. Isis 48:336-350. WILLIAMS, L. PEARCE 1960 [A Book Review of] A History of Science, Vol. 2, by George Sarton. British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 11:159-161.
SAUER, CARL O. Carl O. Sauer, for more than thirty years chairman of the department of geography at the University of California, Berkeley, is one of the most influential figures in twentieth-century geography. The study of cultural geography, especially as it has developed in the United States, owes more to Sauer than to any other man. His concern for the quality of human life in its physical setting, for historical and ecological processes, and for the origins and dispersals of culture traits and complexes that have modified the cultural landscape is in the tradition of German geographical thought, of which Sauer has been a principal interpreter. Born of German ancestry in Warrenton, Missouri, in 1889, he graduated from the local and now defunct Central Wesleyan College in 1908, having earlier studied for a time in a school in Wiirttemberg, Germany, where he had family ties. His attachment to the rural and small-town ways of life and landscape of the Middle West of that period has played an important role in his teaching and writing, and he has frequently returned there for study and reflection. Sauer next studied at the University of Chicago, where the first full-fledged graduate program in geography in the United States had recently been instituted. His PH.D. dissertation, The Geography of the Ozark Highland of Missouri (1920), was acclaimed as a model of regional cultural geography. In 1915 he was appointed to the staff of the new department of geology and geography at the University of Michigan, where in a period of seven years he advanced from the rank of instructor to that of full professor. His work in designing the
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Michigan Land Economic Survey brought him national recognition. He left Ann Arbor in 1923, at the age of 33, to become chairman of the department of geography at Berkeley. Sauer retired from active teaching in 1957, except for occasional graduate seminars and guest lectureships, but his scholarly output has been undiminished. Sauer also served the development of geography outside the university. He played an important role in the early development of land-use mapping in the United States and in the establishment of the U.S. Soil Conservation Service. For a time in the 1930s he was consultant to the President's Science Advisory Board. For many years he served as a member of the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation selection committee, in which capacity he had a unique opportunity to observe and influence a wide range of American scholarship. He has received honorary degrees from Heidelberg University, Syracuse University, and the University of California and medals from the American Geographical Society, the Berlin Geographical Society, and the Swedish Society for Anthropology and Geography. Soon after Sauer came to California, he and many of his students turned their attention to northern Mexico, especially to the historical geography of the settlement of the dry northwestern part. Later he was to concern himself increasingly with tropical Mexico and Central America and, finally, with the Caribbean. Latin America was thus the strategic site for his observation of the interaction between the simpler, peasant cultures and the sustaining earth. Here, where the mark of the past is so deeply imprinted on the land, he found an especially congenial atmosphere for the study of the interplay between habitat and habitant. His careful reconstructions of past Latin American landscapes and economies, based on a combination of archival work and detailed field inspection, are models of historical geography. The Early Spanish Main (1966), an analysis of the Spanish conquest on the islands of the Caribbean and its margins, is their capstone. Several of his publications on Latin American subjects appeared in the University of California monograph series Ibero-American a, which he founded in 1932 with A. L. Kroeber. Sauer's outspoken rejection of environmental "influences" as the focus of geographical inquiry, enunciated in his Morphology of Landscape (1925), was a critical turning point in the development of American academic geography. Instead of the deterministic view that had largely dominated Ameri-
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can geography since the turn of the century, he advocated geographical inquiry into such themes as the man-modified landscape and the origin, spread, limits, and alteration of the elements of that landscape. Holding that all geography is essentially historical, he systematically used any kind of data pertaining to human settlement and activity, and he often found archeological evidence fully as pertinent as written documents. For him the kitchen midden, the colonial archive, the relict plant community or soil profile, and the wisdom of the countryman at work on his hillside garden patch provided information equally relevant to the problems of cultural geography. A recurring theme in Sauer's work is the tremendous importance and antiquity of the domestication of plants and animals. In Agricultural Origins and Dispersals (1952a), he summarized his efforts to locate the principal hearths of domestication and the subsequent routes and extent of* dispersal. Using archeological and ethnographic evidence, Sauer argued that the origins of cultivation must have been in the woodlands rather than in riverine valleys of the world. He made a basic distinction between the agricultural complexes of monsoon Asia and northwestern South America, which are largely dependent on vegetative reproduction by slips and cuttings, and the seed cultures of southwest Asia and of Mexico and Central America. Sauer hypothesized that the earliest form of plant selection involved asexual plant propagation and that it was probably first practiced by the sedentary fishing peoples living around the shallow seas of southeast Asia. The early domestic animals of these peoples were household animals such as the dog, pig, and chicken. Sauer accepted the view that plant selection by seed reproduction came later, and he was influenced by N. I. Vavilov in pointing to China, India, and Ethiopia as Old World centers of seed domestication. He associated herd animals with cereal cultivation and accepted Eduard Harm's theory of a mixed economy in which milking of animals was a culture trait integrally involved in the process and purpose of their domestication, probably for noneconomic ends. His research along these lines has especially attracted the attention of anthropologists and archeologists. Many of his speculations regarding the antiquity of man in the New World, Pleistocene ecology, and the relation of changing sea levels and shore configurations to human occupation sites continue to stimulate new research. Sauer has insisted on the close links of cultural geography with both biology and the earth sciences. He sees man as the ecologic dominant in nature,
intervening more and more decisively to change the balance and nature of organic life. He has, for example, insisted that the problems of increasing world-wide desiccation are caused by agricultural and grazing practices and not by "climate deterioration." He has repeatedly written about the historical processes of biotic destruction and soil depletion as reflections of changing technology and changing attitudes about the earth. Another theme in his writings has been the role of fire, especially of fires set by man, in the modification of the vegetative covering of the earth and the establishment of grasslands. He was the principal organizer of an international symposium held at Princeton in 1955 that focused on "Man's Role in Changing the Face of the Earth" (1956a). Sauer has viewed with misgivings the growing emphasis of some of his colleagues on techniques and tools of analysis that produce quantitative results: he has insisted that the qualities of both human society and the man-made landscape are often other than those that permit quantitative processing (1952b). Leighly has observed that to Sauer the investigation of human beings and their behavior by mechanical processes of organization and computation is as repugnant as the environmental determinism he rejected years earlier (see the introduction by Leighly, to Sauer's Land and Life, p. 6). Human geography, Sauer has said, exists because of the diversification that exists in human ways, and no approach to its questions is more rewarding than that of comparative culture history, soundly based on ecological and geographical principles and concepts. JAMES J. PARSONS [See also DOMESTICATION; ECOLOGY; GEOGRAPHY, especially the articles on CULTURAL GEOGRAPHY and SOCIAL GEOGRAPHY.] WORKS BY SAUER
1920 The Geography of the Ozark Highland of Missouri. Geographic Society of Chicago, Bulletin No. 7. Univ. of Chicago Press. 1925 The Morphology of Landscape. University of California Publications in Geography, Vol. 2, No. 2. Berkeley: Univ. of California Press. 1932 The Road to Cibola. Berkeley and Los Angeles: Univ. of California Press. 1935 Aboriginal Population of Northwestern Mexico. Berkeley: Univ. of California Press. 1938 Theme of Plant and Animal Destruction in Economic History. Journal of Farm Economics 20:765775. 1941 Foreword to Historical Geography. Association of American Geographers, Annals 31:1-24. 1948a Colima of New Spain in the Sixteenth Century. Berkeley: Univ. of California Press.
SAUSSURE, FERDINAND DE 1948& Environment and Culture During the Last Deglaciation. American Philosophical Society, Proceedings 92:65-77. 1950 Grassland Climax, Fire, and Man. Journal of Range Management 3:16-21. 1952a Agricultural Origins and Dispersals. New York: American Geographical Society. 1952& Folkways of Social Science. Pages 100-109 in Minnesota, University of, Social Science Research Center, The Social Sciences at Mid-century. Minneapolis: Univ. of Minnesota Press. 1956a The Agency of Man on the Earth. Pages 49-69 in International Symposium on Man's Role in Changing the Face of the Earth, Princeton, N.J., 1955, Man's Role in Changing the Face of the Earth. Univ. of Chicago Press. 1956& The Education of a Geographer. Association of American Geographers, Annals 46:287-299. 1957 The End of the Ice Age and Its Witnesses. Geographical Review 47:29-43. 1958 Man in the Ecology of Tropical America. Pages 104-110 in Pacific Science Congress, Ninth, Bangkok, 1957, Proceedings. Volume 20: Special Symposium on Climate, Vegetation, and Rational Land Utilization in the Humid Tropics. Bangkok: The Secretariat. 1962a Homestead and Community on the Middle Border. Landscape: Magazine of Human Geography 12, no. 1:3-7. 1962i> Seashore—Primitive Home of Man? American Philosophical Society, Proceedings. 106:41-47. 1966 The Early Spanish Main. Berkeley and Los Angeles: Univ. of California Press. Land and Life: A Selection from the Writings of Carl Ortwin Sauer. Edited by John Leighly. Berkeley: Univ. of California Press, 1963. SUPPLEMENTARY BIBLIOGRAPHY HAHN, EDUARD 1896 Die Haustiere und ihre Beziehungen zur Wirtschaft des Menschen: Eine geographische Studie. Leipzig: Duncker & Humblot. HAHN, EDUARD 1909 Die Entstehung der Pflugkultur. Heidelberg (Germany): Winter. HAHN, EDUARD (1914) 1919 Von der Hacke zum Pflug. 2d ed. Leipzig: Quelle & Meyer.
SAUSSURE, FERDINAND DE Ferdinand de Saussure (1857-1913), Swiss linguist, was the chief forerunner of structural linguistics. He was born in Geneva, where he received his secondary and university education. He was awarded his doctorate at Leipzig in 1880, taught at the Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes in Paris from 1881 to 1891, and taught subsequently at Geneva for the remainder of his career. De Saussure's fame rests almost exclusively on two works—his earliest, the Memoire sur le systeme primitif des voyelles dans les langues indoeuropeennes (1879), and the posthumously published Cours de linguistique generale (1916). The Memoire is a brilliant tour de force, whose basic method foreshadows the fundamental structuralist notion of language as an organized system, the
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central doctrine of de Saussure's mature thought. [See LINGUISTICS, article on THE FIELD.] In the Memoire it is boldly hypothesized that certain apparently divergent aspects of the IndoEuropean system of vowel alternations (the socalled ablaut system, which still survives in English in such vowel changes as the present sing, the preterite sang, the past participle simg) can be explained in accordance with the dominant regularities, if one assumes that certain sounds had formerly existed and produced certain effects before being lost. While this theory of lost sounds, subsequently called laryngeals, was admired in de Saussure's lifetime, the absence of any direct evidence for these sounds prevented its acceptance by scholars. After de Saussure's death the main points of his doctrine regarding the Indo-European vowels received confirmation when a newly discovered Indo-European language, cuneiform Hittite, was shown to have an actual laryngeal consonant (h) in almost all the instances that one would expect to find it on the basis of de Saussure's theory. In one variant or another, the laryngeal theory is now accepted by all IndoEuropean scholars. A far wider influence was exercised by the Cours. This work is based on students' notebooks of the three courses in general linguistics given by de Saussure at the University of Geneva in 1907, 1908-1909, and 1910-1911. Two of de Saussure's leading disciples, Charles Bally and Albert Sechehaye, utilized these as their chief source in putting together the Cours. Given these circumstances of the book's composition, it is not surprising that an extensive exegetical literature has arisen concerning the true nature of de Saussure's doctrine. Godel (1957) published a considerable number of resumes and direct quotations from the notebooks and other unpublished sources, e.g., de Saussure's class notes and letters. It is quite likely that in some instances "fruitful misunderstandings" of de Saussure's ideas have exerted an influence on the development of European linguistic theory. Language as signs. Language is a system of signs and as such forms the central part of a discipline—semiology—which takes the general study of signs as its subject matter. De Saussure thus anticipated the concept of general semiotics, found in the work of Charles Morris and others [see SEMANTICS AND SEMIOTICS]. The sign has two indissoluble aspects, likened to the two sides of the same paper—the signifier (signifianf) and the signified (signifie"). De Saussure felt the need for the double terminology because of the ambiguity of the word "sign" in common usage, which refers
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both to the relation (between a sign and what it designates) and to the physical sign vehicle. The signifier and the signified are, in thoroughgoing mentalistic fashion, the acoustic image and the concept respectively, not the physical sound and the thing meant. The relation between signifier and signified is arbitrary in the sense that any signifier can, in principle, be connected with any signified. Both of these elements are, abstracted from their functioning in signs, unstructured. Language is thus pure form. Although arbitrary in the sense described above, the sign relation in any particular case is a historically imposed one about which the individual has no choice. It is a social fact that in a given community a particular sequence of sounds is connected with a particular concept. Simply because it is arbitrary, there is no reason to change it once established. One can argue the relative merits of monogamy or polygamy, but there is no rational basis for choosing between boeuf and Ochse as designations for "ox." Because language is arbitrary and because there is no social awareness of its true nature, it is never subject to radical change. From the formal nature of the components of the linguistic sign further important conclusions follow. Thus, in the case of the signifier, it is not the particular physical nature of the sound that counts but merely the fact that one sound is distinct from another. A favorite Saussurean simile likens language to a chess game. If the knight is replaced by a different kind of physical object it makes no difference to the game as long as the object is distinct from the other pieces. But if the rules for moving the knight are modified, then the system of chess has been modified in its very nature. This distinction is one aspect of a central Saussurean dichotomy, that between language (tongue} and speech (parole}. Phonetics in its physical aspect belongs to the latter. Likewise in grammar, we have a network of two types of relations, the syntagmatic, the relation between elements which actually occur together in the chain of speech—e.g., a verb and its object—and the paradigmatic, the relation of a present element to one which is not there but has the potentiality of appearance in place of the one chosen. Thus, in the sentence "Black is a color," "white" is a paradigmatic associate of "black," while "is a" constitutes a syntagmatic relation. The grammar of a language (langue) is the set of these two types of relations: it is a social product, never perfect in the individual but only in the mass of speakers (masse parlante). The way individuals actually construct sentences by using
langue constitutes parole. Within langue it is the position within the system that counts, not the physical realization. Thus a grammatical category may even be signaled by nothing (zero}, provided it has a particular place in a network of relations, e.g., the absence of an ending in the genitive plural of feminine nouns in Czech such as zen ("of women") is significant when it is opposed to the nominative plural, zeny. To be is to be related. Synchronic and diachronic study of language. Another dichotomy of fundamental importance in de Saussure's thought is that between the synchronic study of language as a state and the diachronic study of language as change through time [see LINGUISTICS, article on HISTORICAL LINGUISTICS]. These now current terms are terminological inventions of de Saussure. The insistence on the separation of synchronic and diachronic and the emphasis on synchronic states, not only as worthy autonomous subjects for investigation but even as having a certain priority, were perhaps de Saussure's most revolutionary ideas. Linguistics in its recognizably modern form arose in the early nineteenth century as a historical discipline, and de Saussure was the first to state clearly the viewpoint of modern structuralism—that language studied in a single time plane constitutes a systematic set of relations that can be studied without reference to the historic process by which these have come to be what they are. Thus, to revert to de Saussure's figure of the chess game, the man who has seen the entire game up to a particular point has no advantage over the newly arrived bystander in understanding the existing position. In spite of differences in detail, structuralism in linguistics is fundamentally allied with functionalism in social science generally and is part of the same intellectual movement. In the case of de Saussure, his notion of langue, a social phenomenon imposed on the individual, brings him closest to the social functionalism of Durkheim. Although Durkheim cited language as an ideal example of a social institution, there is apparently no evidence of any direct influence of either man on the other. The posthumous influence of de Saussure's ideas in general linguistics was enormous, particularly on the Continent. His work was most directly continued by the so-called Geneva school, which included among its leading figures Albert Sechehaye, Charles Bally, Robert Godel, and Henri Frei and which sponsored the journal Cahiers Ferdinand de Saussure (from 1941 to the present). The glossematic approach developed by the Danish linguist Louis Hjelmsler was founded on Saussurean con-
SAVIGNY, FRIEDRICH CARL VON cepts. De Saussure exercised a more diffuse influence on the chief European structuralist school, that of Prague, by which he was looked upon as a leading pioneer of structuralism in linguistics. JOSEPH H. GREENBERG WORKS BY SAUSSURE Memoire sur le systeme primitif des voyelles dans les langues indo-europeennes. Leipzig: Teubner. (1916) 1959 Course in General Linguistics. New York: Philosophical Library. -» First published posthumously as Cours de linguistique generale.
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SUPPLEMENTARY BIBLIOGRAPHY
BENVENISTE, E. 1962 "Structure" en linguistique. Pages 31-39 in Colloque sur le mot structure, Paris, 1959, Sens et usages du terme structure dans les sciences humaines et sociales. Janua linguarum, Series minor, no. 16. The Hague: Mouton. Cahiers Ferdinand de Saussure. -> Published in Geneva by Droz since 1941. FREI, HENRI 1947 La linguistique saussurienne a Geneve depuis 1939. Word 3:107-109. GODEL, ROBERT 1957 Les sources manuscrites du Cours de linguistique generale de F. de Saussure. Geneva: Droz. WELLS, RULON S. 1947 De Saussure's System of Linguistics. Word 3:1-31.
SAVIGNY, FRIEDRICH CARL VON Friedrich Carl von Savigny (1779-1861) was the founder of the older, romantic branch of the German historical school of law. He was born in Frankfurt am Main of an ancient and wealthy noble family from Lorraine, and his selection of an academic career was unusual for a member of his class. He began that career at the University of Marburg in 1800, teaching Roman law, and became professor of Roman law at Landshut in 1808. Two years later, at the suggestion of Wilhelm von Humboldt, he was appointed professor at the newly founded University of Berlin, where for three decades he had a most successful and influential career in legal teaching and research. From 1842 until the German revolution of 1848 he was Prussian minister for the revision of legislation. In the academic year 1802/1803, Savigny gave a lecture on legal methodology at Marburg (see Juristische Methodenlehre), which shows him still poised between rationalistic and historical jurisprudence. (His student Jacob Grimm recorded this lecture.) However, the lecture contains some of the basic principles of his later doctrine, for example, that jurisprudence must be empirical and that it should be a synthesis of historical and systematic treatments of the law. He first applied these early
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theories in Das Recht des Besitzes (see 1803), a treatise that immediately established his reputation as one of the leading professors of civil law. What contemporary legal scholars saw as the particular significance of the treatise was the way Savigny took from the sources of ancient Roman law the leading principles of the law of possession, demonstrating the superiority of the Roman principles over the modifications that this law had undergone in Continental jurisprudence since the Middle Ages. Savigny's famous pamphlet Vom Beruf unserer Zeit fur Gesetzgebung und Rechtswissenschaft (1814) was published as an argument against the popular demand for the codification of German civil law on the model of the French and the Austrian codes. The pamphlet established the doctrine and program of the early historical school of law. In this pamphlet, as well as in his introductory essay (1815) to the first volume of the Zeitschrift fur geschichtliche Rechtswissenschaft, founded as the organ of the school in 1815, Savigny outlined a new theory of the creation of law, culminating in a strictly genetic conception and analysis of law. Taking off from the ideas of Montesquieu, Burke, and Justus Moser, he asserted that positive law is not a product of reason. From its true basis, the common beliefs of a particular nation, it develops in a continuous, "organic" process as do a nation's language and customs; it is the result of silent, anonymous, and irrational forces, of an implicit consensus, not of an intentional creative effort. Law is, therefore, of the same nature as custom; it is determined by the whole past of the nation and by its peculiar character (what was later called the Volksgeist), and it cannot be changed arbitrarily by legislation. Instead, Savigny advocated the reform of jurisprudence by means of historical research, holding that a strictly genetic study is the only way to conceive and develop contemporary positive law. While some of Savigny's contemporaries (Thibaut, P. J. A. von Feuerbach, Conner, and especially Hegel and his school) rejected his doctrine, the historical school of jurisprudence dominated German universities for nearly half a century. Its program of historical research, though neither wholly nor rigorously fulfilled, made the history of law a scientific discipline, by basing it on the idea of evolution. Savigny's own chief contribution in this field was his Geschichte des romischen Rechts im Mittelalter (1815-1831), which deals with the history of the sources, the literature, and the teaching of Roman law from the fifth through the fifteenth centuries. It initiated the modern study of medieval jurisprudence and has served ever
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SAVING
since, corrected in many respects but unequaled, as the standard work on the history of medieval jurisprudence in Europe. Savigny also wrote a number of historical monographs, mainly on ancient Roman law (collected in his Vermischte Schriften ). In the field of legal dogmatics, Savigny's doctrine re-created, by reviving the study of ancient Roman law, a common field of legal study in the individual German states—the "modern Roman law," or Pandects. His most important dogmatic works, System des heutigen romischen Rechts (1840-1849) and Das Obligationenrecht als Theil des heutigen romischen Rechts (1851-1853), show that the theories that he had put forward in 1814 and 1815 about the nature of law had not produced a radical change even in his own legal dogmatics. His early theories had been provoked by his reaction, influenced by romanticism, against the natural law theories of the French Revolution and of liberalism generally. Later, however, he not only retained the fundamental doctrines of the rationalist jurisprudence of the eighteenth century in his dogmatic teaching but actually made these doctrines the backbone of his legal system. Both of Savigny's works are based on fundamental notions of German natural law theory as well as on Kant's legal philosophy. Within the framework of these categories, Savigny transcended Roman law in many respects, adapting it to modern requirements or developing new solutions, many of which have become influential in German and other legal science; for example, his doctrines of contract and corporation, and particularly his system of private international law—which, like the systems of Story and Mancini, counts among the classic theories in this branch of law. WALTER WILHELM [For the historical context of Savigny's work, see CONFLICT OF LAWS; JURISPRUDENCE; LEGAL SYSTEMS, article on CODE LAW SYSTEMS; and the biographies of BURKE; MONTESQUIEU.] WORKS BY SAVIGNY
(1803) 1848 Von Savigny's Treatise on Possession: Or, the Jus Possessionis of the Civil Law. 6th ed. London: Sweet. -> First published as Das Recht des Besitzes. A 7th German edition, enlarged and revised, was published in 1865 by Heyer. (1814) 1840 Vom Beruf unserer Zeit fur Gesetzgebung und Rechtswissenschaft. Heidelberg: Mohr. ->• Translated from the 2d edition by A. Hayward and published by Littlewood in 1831 as Of the Vocation of Our Age for Legislation and Jurisprudence. (1815) 1850 Ueber den Zweck der Zeitschrift fur geschichtliche Rechtswissenschaft. Volume 1,-pages 105126 in Friedrich Carl von Savigny, Vermischte
Schriften. Berlin: Veit. -> First published in Volume 1 of Zeitschrift fur geschichtliche Rechtswissenschaft. (1815-1831) 1834-1851 Geschichte des romischen Rechts im Mittelalter. 7 vols. Heidelberg: Mohr. -» Volume 1 was translated by E. Cathcart and published by Black in 1829 as The History of the Roman Law in the Middle Ages. 1840-1849 System des heutigen romischen Rechts. 8 vols. Berlin: Veit. -> Volume 1 was translated in 1867 by William Holloway as System of the Modern Roman Law, published in Madras, India, by Higginbotham. An index volume, edited by O. L. Heuser, was published in 1851. 1851-1853 Das Obligationenrecht als Theil des heutigen romischen Rechts. 2 vols. Berlin: Veit. Juristische Methodenlehre, nach der Ausarbeitung des Jakob Grimm. Edited by Gerhard Wesenberg. Stuttgart: Koehler, 1951. ->• Published posthumously. Vermischte Schriften. 5 vols. Berlin: Veit, 1850. -> Contains works first published between 1800 and 1844. SUPPLEMENTARY BIBLIOGRAPHY
GAGNER, STEN 1960 Studien zur Ideengeschichte der Gesetzgebung. Uppsala, Universitet, Acta universitatis upsaliensis, Studia iuridica upsaliensia, No. 1. Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell. -» See especially pages 15-51. GUTZWILLER, MAX 1923 Der Einftuss Savignys auf die Entwicklung des Internationalprivatrechts. Collectanea friburgensia, Vol. 28. Fribourg (Switzerland): Universitats Buchhandlung. KANTOROWICZ, HERMANN 1912 Was ist uns Savigny? Berlin: Heymann. KANTOROWICZ, HERMANN 1934 Savigny, Friedrich Carl von. Volume 13, pages 546-548 in Encyclopaedia of the Social Sciences. New York: Macmillan. KANTOROWICZ, HERMANN 1937 Savigny and the Historical School of Law. Law Quarterly Review 53:326-343. KOSCHAKER, PAUL (1947) 1966 Europa und das romische Recht. 4th ed. Munich: Beck. KUNKEL, WOLFGANG 1962 Savignys Bedeutung fur die deutsche Rechtswissenschaft und das deutsche Recht. Juristenzeitung 17:457-463. STINTZING, RODERICK VON; and LANDSBERG, ERNST (1910) 1957 Geschichte der deutschen Rechtswissenschaft. Volume 3, part 2: Das 19. Jahrhundert, der Historismus in der Rechtswissenschaft. Aalen (Germany): Scientia Antiquariat. -> See especially pages 186-253 of the text section, and pages 94-110 of the notes. STOLL, ADOLF 1927-1939 Friedrich Karl v. Savigny: Ein Bild seines Lebens mit einer Sammlung seiner Briefe. 3 vols. Berlin: Heymann. WIEACKER, FRANZ 1956 Friedrich Carl von Savigny. Zeitschrift der Savigny-Stiftung fur Rechtsgeschichte Romanistische Abteilung 72:1-38. -> Reprinted on pages 107-143 in Franz Wieacker, Griinder und Bewahrer: Rechtslehrer der neueren deutschen Privatrechtsgeschichte, published by Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht, 1959. WOLF, ERIK (1939) 1963 Grosse Rechtsdenker der deutschen Geistesgeschichte. 4th ed. Tubingen (Germany): Mohr. -> See especially pages 467-542.
SAVING See CONSUMPTION FUNCTION; INTEREST; INVESTMENT.
SAY, JEAN BAPTISTE SAY, JEAN BAPTISTE Jean Baptiste Say (1767-1832) was born in Lyons of a cultivated Protestant merchant family. After a sound education and a two-year stay in England, he joined an insurance company. Say was an enthusiastic supporter of the ideas of the French Revolution and took part as a volunteer in the military campaign of 1792. Bookish and inclined to philosophy, in 1793 he joined the editorial board of a new magazine entitled La decade philosophique litteraire et politique, par une societe de republicains, which took as its motto "Enlightenment and morality are as much needed for preserving the Republic as courage was needed for winning it." He soon became the editor-in-chief of the journal, which announced that its aim was "to keep the public informed on everything new concerning literature, science, agriculture, and the arts." In 1799 Say was appointed a member of the Tribunate, under the Consulate. He took part in a competition arranged by the Institut de France on the subject "By what means and what institutions can morality be established in a people?" His contribution, "Olbie: Ou, essai sur les moyens de reformer les moeurs d'une nation," gave promise of his gifts as a moralist and economist. Following up his thesis that "the first book on morality for the Olbians should be a good Treatise on Political Economy" (Oeuvres diverses, p. 593), he set about composing such a work, inspired to a great extent by the ideas expounded by Adam Smith in his celebrated Inquiry Into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, with which Say had become acquainted as early as 1789. Say's book appeared in 1803 and soon had considerable success. In the meantime, Say's disapproval of the Napoleonic regime led to his dismissal from the Tribunate. He moved to a small town in northern France, Auchy-les-Hesdin, to set up a cotton-spinning plant. He stayed there seven years before he sold out in 1813 and returned to Paris. The fall of the empire and the return of the Bourbons permitted him to resume intellectual activity aimed at the general public. In 1815 he began to teach at the Athenee what was probably the first public course of political economy ever given in France, and in the same year he published his Catechisme d'economie politique. Two years later the government established a chair of industrial economy for him (the term political economy still frightened people) at the Conservatoire des Arts et Metiers. Finally, in 1830, the aged master did become professor of political economy at the College de France, in the first chair of its kind to be established. Meanwhile, he had
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published his Cours complet d'economie politique pratique (1828-1829) in six volumes, a work, as the long subtitle indicates, "designed to teach statesmen, landowners and capitalists, men of learning, agriculturalists, manufacturers, businessmen, and in general all citizens, about political economy." Although it has been alleged that Say was a mere expositor and popularizer of Adam Smith's ideas, he did more than merely transmit these ideas. He did, of course, present the ideas that he borrowed from Smith with typical French order and clarity, and he justly complained of obscurity and confusion in Smith's own statements in The Wealth of Nations. Say wanted to produce what he described as "a work in which sound observations were reduced to general principles that could be accepted by any judicious man; in which those observations and principles were so completed and coordinated as to reinforce one another, so that they could fruitfully be studied at any time and in any place" (1803, p. xlviii in 1860 English edition). And this was not merely an interpretative work: at important points Say showed originality, and he undoubtedly contributed to advancing the science of economics. Philosophical position. In his basic philosophy, Say was strongly influenced by the ideological ambience of his time. Like many of his contemporaries, he was at once deist, liberal, and rationalist. In the realm of scientific and doctrinal convictions, however, he showed little toleration but instead a dogmatism that may have been related to his authoritarian nature. This is one of several ways in which he differed sharply from Adam Smith: he was never touched by doubt. As a disciple of the Encyclopedists, he was an intransigent scientist, even a passionate one, and convinced of the predominant influence of economic phenomena in the life of the whole society. On this point, as in the case of the preponderant role of industrial activity in production as a whole, it may be possible to establish a connection between Say's ideas and certain theories of Karl Marx, and in any event, with those of Saint-Simon and the Saint-Simonians. His belief in economics as a science led Say to try to reconcile his naturalism and his rationalism. He was able to do so because he conceived of the laws of nature as necessarily rational (or providential); in this respect, he was adopting a point of view the physiocrats had developed a half century earlier. But it is noteworthy that Say went on to establish similarities between the science of economics and physiology, transposing the latter from the individual to the social level and preferring a
First published as "Die Wende der Philosophic" in Volume 1 of Erkenntnis. (1931) 1961-1962 Causality in Contemporary Physics. British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 12, no. 47:177-178; no. 48:281-298. -> First published in German. (1932) 1959 Positivism and Realism. Pages 82-107 in A. J. Ayer (editor), Logical Positivism. Glencoe, IllFree Press. -» First published in German in Volume 3 of Erkenntnis. (1934) 1959 The Foundation of Knowledge. Pages 209227 in A. J. Ayer (editor), Logical Positivism. Glencoe, 111.: Free Press. -» First published in German in Volume 4 of Erkenntnis. Aphorismen. Edited by Blanche Hardy Schlick. Vienna: Privately published, 1962. -» Published posthumously. Gesammelte Aufsatze: 1926-1936. Vienna: Gerold, 1938. -» Chapters 6, 7, 8, 14, and 15 were written in English. An abridged edition was published in 1948 as Gesetz, Kausalitdt und Wahrscheinlichkeit. Natur und Kultur. Edited by Josef Rauscher. Vienna and Stuttgart: Humboldt, 1952. -> Published posthumously. Philosophy of Nature. New York: Philosophical Library, 1949. -» First published posthumously in German in 1938. SUPPLEMENTARY BIBLIOGRAPHY FEIGL, HERBERT 1937/1938 Moritz Schlick. Erkenntnis 7:393-419. KRAFT, VICTOR (1950) 1953 The Vienna Circle: The Origin of Neo-positivism; a Chapter in the History of Recent Philosophy. New York: Philosophical Library. ->• First published in German.
SCHMIDT, WILHELM Wilhelm Schmidt was born in 1868 in Horde, Westphalia, and died in 1954 in Fribourg, Switzerland. He joined the Divine Word Missionaries (Societas Verbi Divini, or S.V.D.) in 1883 and
was ordained a priest in 1892. From 1893 to 1895 he studied at the University of Berlin, majoring in Oriental languages; he was appointed professor in the St. Gabriel Mission Seminary at Modling, near Vienna, in 1895 and remained there until 1938. He also taught at the University of Vienna, beginning in 1921, and after he left Austria, he taught at the University of Fribourg from 1939 to 1951. He founded the periodical Anthropos in 1906, was director of the Museo Missionario-Etnologico Lateranense in Rome from 1927 to 1939, and was director of the Anthropos Institut at St. Augustin near Bonn from 1932 to 1950. Early in his career, Schmidt was very interested in linguistic studies, but later he turned increasingly to studies in ethnology and the science of religion. The impetus to his work in these latter fields came from his philosophical, theological, and linguistic training and from the observations made by S.V.D. missionaries, especially in New Guinea and Togo. He was influenced as well by the folklorist Andrew Lang, by the Indologist Leopold von Schroder, and by the ethnologists Friedrich Ratzel, Leo Frobenius, Ernst Grosse, C. N. Starcke, Alfred Vierkandt, Edward Westermarck, Franz Boas, and, above all, by Fritz Graebner and his theories of Kulturkreise. In his studies of the evolution and forms of the family, Schmidt followed Grosse in correlating family types with economic activities. He refined Graebner's theory of Kulturkreise, which differentiated between matrilineal and patrilineal societies, seeking to explain their origins on the basis of subsistence patterns; thus, food planters would be matrilineal in descent and residency rules, while nomads would be patrilineal. He agreed with others, such as Havelock Ellis and Westermarck, in offering psychological explanations for exogamy. Also, his arrangements of traits in Kulturkreise are frequently in accord with functionalist ideas (although he did not want to be associated with "functionalism"—see 1944 for his violent criticism of functionalism). Thus totemism is identified with clan exogamy, in contrast with the consanguineal basis of local exogamy; education is linked to initiation ceremonies, which are usually obligatory for all the young men of the tribe, rather than to secret societies, which often constitute an elite and have special requirements for admission. Schmidt was concerned with the variability of individuals and their relationship to society. He asserted that the individual, even among primitives, exerts an influence on the institutions of his community. In his 12-volume work, Der Ursprung der Gottes-
SCHMIDT, WILHELM idee (1912-1955), he made use of extensive material supporting the theory that the Supreme Being occupied a position so superior (compared with spirits and other beings of religious significance) in the religion of primitive hunters and gatherers that this religion may properly be considered monotheistic. Subsequently, such monotheism persisted especially in nomadic pastoral civilizations, while in the Kulturkreise of the matrilineal agricultural peoples and the more advanced totemic hunting cultures, the figure of the Supreme Being was stifled or supplanted by other religious elements, e.g., fertility cults, ancestor worship, magic. Totemism itself was regarded by Schmidt as essentially social; he particularly stressed its significance for clan exogamy. Although totemism does imply a certain reverence for the totem animal, Schmidt did not consider it a religious phenomenon—an actual animal cult. From the time that Schmidt became familiar with Graebner's concept of Kulturkreise (Graebner believed that he established such Kulturkreise for Oceania, including Australia), this concept exerted an influence on his linguistic work. He tried to show that when Australian languages are classified, different groups coincide with totemistic and matrilineal cultures respectively. Furthermore, he attributed certain linguistic phenomena to economic and social change: thus, he felt that the change to uxorilocal residence and the ownership of land by women might result in the learning of a foreign tongue by the men, and thus contribute to the disintegration of the language. Indeed, Schmidt made an even more comprehensive attempt to relate all aspects of linguistic evolution to general cultural evolution, to explain the former largely in terms of the latter, and to set up parallels between linguistic areas and Kulturkreise. Schmidt's influence was far-reaching, especially in the German- and English-speaking regions of the world, where his journal Anthropos was a repository of field data collected by missionaries around the world. Schmidt was also concerned that his findings have a practical application to colonial policy and missionary practice. Many of his publications, especially those dealing with family and social ethics, were addressed to a public wider than the academic one. JOSEPH HENNINGER [For the historical context of Schmidt's work, see ANTHROPOLOGY; and the biographies of BOAS; ELLIS; FROBENIUS; GRAEBNER; RATZEL; WES TERM ARCK. For discussion of the subsequent development of Schmidt's ideas, see HISTORY, article on CULTURE HISTORY; LINGUISTICS, article on HISTORICAL LINGUISTICS; and the biography of KOPPERS.]
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WORKS BY SCHMIDT
1906 Die moderne Ethnologie; L'ethnologie moderne. Anthropos 1:134-163, 318-387, 592-643, 950-997. 1908-1910 L'origine de 1'idee de Dieu. Anthropos 3:125162, 336-368, 559-611, 801-836, 1081-1120; 4:207250, 505-524, 1075-1091; 5:231-246. -» A revised German version appeared in book form in 1912 as Volume 1 of Der Ursprung der Gottesidee. 1910 Die Stellung der Pygmaenvolker in der Entwicklungsgeschichte des Menschen. Studien und Forschungen zur Menschen- und Volkerkunde, Vols. 6-7. Stuttgart (Germany): Strecker & Schroder. 1912-1955 Der Ursprung der Gottesidee: Fine historischkritische und positive Studie. 12 vols. Miinster in Westfalen (Germany): Aschendorff. -> A second edition of Volume 1 appeared in 1926. 1924 SCHMIDT, WILHELM; and KOPPERS, WILHELM Volker und Kulturen. Regensburg (Germany): Habbel. (1925) 1964 Familie. Pages 13-42 in Wilhelm Schmidt, Wege der Kulturen: Gesammelte Aufsdtze. Anthropos Institut, Studia, Vol. 20. St. Augustin bei Bonn (Germany): Verlag des Anthropos-Instituts. -» First published in the Handworterbuch der Staatswissenschaften. 1926 Die Sprachfamilien und Sprachenkreise der Erde. Heidelberg (Germany): Winter. (1927) 1946-1949 Rassen und Volker in Vorgeschichte und Geschichte des Abendlandes. 3d ed. 3 vols. Lucerne (Switzerland): Stocker. -> First published as Rasse und Volk. 1930 Handbuch der vergleichenden Religionsgeschichte zum Gebrauch fur Vorlesungen an Universitdten, Seminaren usw. und zum Selbststudium: Ursprung und Werden der Religion. Theorien und Tatsachen. Miinster in Westfalen (Germany): Aschendorff. 1935 The Position of Women With Regard to Property in Primitive Society. American Anthropologist New Series 37:244-256. (1937) 1939 The Culture Historical Metbod of Ethnology: The Scientific Approach to the Racial Question. New York: Fortuny. -> First published as Handbuch der Methode der kultur-historischen Ethnologie. 1937-1942 Das Eigentum auf den dltesten Stufen der Menschheit. 3 vols. Miinster in Westfalen (Germany): Aschendorff. 1944 Untersuchungen zur Methode der Ethnologie. Anthropos 35/36:898-965. 1952 Entstehung der Verwandtschaftssysteme und Heiratsregelungen. Anthropos 47:767-783. 1955 Das Mutterrecht. Anthropos Institut, Studia, Vol. 10. Vienna: Missionsdruckerei St. Gabriel. -» Published posthumously. Wege der Kulturen: Gesammelte Aufsdtze. Anthropos Institut, Studia, Vol. 20. St. Augustin bei Bonn (Germany): Verlag des Anthropos-Instituts, 1964. SUPPLEMENTARY BIBLIOGRAPHY
BAUMANN, HERMANN 1958 P. Wilhelm Schmidt und Das Mutterrecht. Anthropos 53:212-228. BORNEMANN, FRITZ. 1954 Verzeichnis der Schriften von P. W. Schmidt, S.V.D. (1868-1954). Anthropos 49: 397-432. BORNEMANN, FRITZ 1956 P. W. Schmidts Studien iiber den Totemismus in Asien und Ozeanien. Anthropos 51:595-734. BORNEMANN, FRITZ 1958 P. W. Schmidts Studien iiber den Totemismus in Afrika. Anthropos 53:945-1003.
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BURGMANN, ARNOLD (1954) 1966 P. W. Schmidt als Linguist. Volume 2, pages 287-328 in Portraits of Linguists: A Biographical Source Book for the History of Western Linguistics, 1746-1963. Edited by Thomas A. Sebeok. Bloomington: Indiana Univ. Press. -* First published in Volume 49 of Anthropos. Festschrift: Publication d'hommage offerte au P. W. Schmidt. Edited by Wilhelm Koppers. 1928 Vienna: Missionsdruckerei St. Gabriel. HENNINGER, JOSEPH 1956 P. Wilhelm Schmidt, S.V.D. (1868—1954): Eine biographische Skizze. Anthropos 51:19-60. SEMAINE D'ETHNOLOGIE RELIGIEUSE Comptes rendus. -> Proceedings of meetings held between 1912 and 1929; published in 5 volumes between 1913 and 1930.
SCHMITT, CARL Carl Schmitt, German political theorist, was born in 1888 in Plettenberg in Westphalia. He studied law and obtained his habilitation for public law at Strasbourg in 1916. His subsequent academic career was a successful one: he taught at Greifswald from 1921 to 1922; at Bonn from 1922 to 1928; at Berlin from 1928 until early in 1933; at Cologne during the year 1933; and again at Berlin, from the beginning of the academic year 1933/1934 until 1945. Schmitt is an important representative of a school of thought in German public law which, after World War i, turned away from the German tradition of legal positivism and tried to broaden the scientific study of law and legal institutions by introducing into it historical, sociological, and political considerations. Accordingly, his publications cover a wide variety of subjects: the relationship between written law and judicial decision making, the romantic movement in political thinking during the early nineteenth century, and the history of dictatorship as a political idea and as an institution. He developed a systematic theory of constitutional law and made the history of European public law an object of philosophical investigation. He studied particular issues of constitutional, international, and martial law, and he engaged in polemics over the actual political situation in Germany. Schmitt's participation in the antiliberal intellectual and political movement in Germany did not preclude his making significant contributions to political science. Observing the importance of arbitrary decisions both in the process of adjudication and in systematic jurisprudence, he established the concept of Dezisionismus to designate the fact that any legal order is ultimately based on sovereign decisions. These decisions are based not on positive norms but on the ultima ratio of emergency
decrees [see POLITICAL JUSTICE]. Schmitt traced this philosophy back to Hobbes's doctrine that auctoritas non veritas facit legem (laws are based on authority rather than truth), as well as to what he called the political theology of de Maistre, Bonald, Donoso Cortes, and other counterrevolutionary thinkers. Schmitt believed that the decisionistic method of looking for extreme and critical cases would lead to a new concrete way of thinking about the political order and political action (konkretes Ordnungs- und Gestaltungsdenken). However, the decisionistic method became more than an approach to political phenomena: Schmitt's preoccupation with the "extreme cases," as well as with the counterrevolutionary thinkers' pessimistic view of man, led him to convert the decisionistic method into a moral interpretation of politics and history that, in the turbulent situation in German politics between the two world wars, was to serve as a political ideology. Schmitt defined politics as emerging from the friend-foe constellations that challenge the polity to distinguish between allies and enemies; friendfoe constellations arise in the situations in which civil war or war between states has to be considered an immediate possibility. All human groups, whether of economic, religious, or ethnic origin, may enter into extreme conflicts. The state, therefore, is valued because it is the institution which protects its citizens against the enemy within and without. Schmitt considered this defensive and repressive function of the state to be the precondition and the guarantee of all law and order in human affairs. He interpreted the modern history of continental Europe as a development from the absolute state of the eighteenth century, through the neutral state of the nineteenth, to the total state of the twentieth [see TOTALITARIANISM]. This total state would overcome the neutralization of political power and the cleavage between the state and sqciety that had resulted from nineteenth-century liberalism. Liberalism and democracy were, in Schmitt's view, incompatible political principles, and the institutions of parliamentary government, once based on genuine political discussion and on the efficient functioning of public opinion, had, in twentieth-century mass society, lost their raison d'etre and their legitimacy. The Weimar Republic was, according to Schmitt, a distorted version of what he called a parlamentarischer Gesetzgebungsstaat, a distortion which he attributed to the waning of the nation's political homogeneity, which he considered to be caused in turn by the anarchical pluralism of incompatible political forces. Schmitt did not believe that Germany under the Weimar Republic could become
SCHMITT, CARL politically integrated. He therefore defended the National Socialists' seizure of power as a way of regaining the authority necessary to restore substantive justice. Thus he provided the ideological justification of a new German constitution. Based on the defense of national and racial homogeneity (Artgleichheit^), and guided by the principles of leadership and loyalty, Germany should be rebuilt as a threefold totality comprising (1) a bureaucratic apparatus that included the judiciary, (2) a one-party political movement, and (3) a politically neutralized sphere of professional and communal administration ( Selbstverwaltung ). In matters of international law, Schmitt criticized all global constructions of international legal order and defended a European Monroe Doctrine based on German hegemony. He distrusted concepts of international legal order because they could be used to justify imperialism and illegitimate imperialist intervention in the affairs of foreign states. He also deplored political universalism, because it produced a concept of warfare according to which both the enemy's state and its citizens could be prosecuted as criminals (the difference between the enemy and a criminal being blurred). [See INTERNATIONAL CRIMES.] As Germany approached defeat in World War n, Schmitt tried to discover what historical conditions had once enabled the European states to distinguish between an enemy and a criminal and to conduct war as an honorable duel between honorable adversaries. He believed he had found those conditions in a so-called Nomos der Erde, which originally had been shaped by the jus publicum europaeum. Schmitt believed that this Nomos could be found in a special geopolitical order, based on the division of the world into different areas of influence, dominated by the great European powers. These powers would recognize each other as independent sovereignties united by a common civilization of martial law. Schmitt compared his own role under the Nazi regime to that of Benito Cereno in Herman Melville's story, who, after a mutiny on his slave ship had succeeded, served under the victors as a pirate, unable to disentangle himself from a situation in which protection was contingent on obedience. Schmitt's teaching, however, was often very near to the "mutinous" ideology which destroyed the Weimar Republic and helped the Nazi movement gain power. Yet by making the character of enmity, among citizens as well as nations, the crucial theme of systematic jurisprudence and political thinking, Schmitt created a new awareness of important problems. JiJRGEN FlJALKOWSKI
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[For the historical context of Schmitt's work, see CRISIS
GOVERNMENT;
DELEGATION
OF
POWERS;
LEGITIMACY; NATIONAL SOCIALISM. Other related material may be found under JURISPRUDENCE; POLITICAL SCIENCE.] WORKS BY SCHMITT 1912 Gesetz und Urteil. Berlin: Liebmann. (1919) 1925 Politische Romantik. 2d ed. Munich: Duncker & Humblot. (1921) 1928 Die Diktatur: Von den Anfdngen des modernen Souverdnitdtsgedankens bis zum proletarischen Klassenkampf. 2d ed. Munich and Leipzig: Duncker & Humblot. (1922) 1934 Politische Theologie. 2d ed. Munich: Duncker & Humblot. (1923) 1961 Die geistesgeschichtliche Lage des heutigen Parlamentarismus. 3d ed. Berlin: Duncker & Humblot. 1926 Die Kernfrage des Volkerbundes. Berlin: Diimmler. (1927a) 1963 Der Begriff des Politischen. Berlin: Duncker & Humblot. 1927& Volksentscheid und Volksbegehren. Berlin: Gruyter. (1928) 1957 Verfassungslehre. 3d ed. Berlin: Duncker & Humblot. 1931 Der Hilter der Verfassung. Tubingen: Mohr. 1932 Legalitdt und Legitimitdt. Munich and Leipzig: Duncker & Humblot. 1933 Staat, Bewegung, Volk. Hamburg: Hanseatische Verlagsanstalt. 1934a Staatsgefiige und Zusammenbruch des zweiten Reiches: Der Sieg des Burgers iiber den Soldaten. Hamburg: Hanseatische Verlagsanstalt. 1934£> Uber die drei Arten des rechtswissenschaftlichen Denkens. Hamburg: Hanseatische Verlagsanstalt. 1938a Der Leviathan in der Staatslehre des Thomas Hobbes. Hamburg: Hanseatische Verlagsanstalt. 1938i> Die Wendung zum diskriminierenden Kriegsbegriff. Munich: Duncker & Humblot. 1939 Volkerrechtliche Grossraumordnung, mil Interventionsverbot fur raumfremde Mdchte. Berlin: Deutscher Rechtsverlag. 1940 Positionen und Begriffe im Kampf mit WeimarGenf-Versailles, 1923-1939. Hamburg: Hanseatische Verlagsanstalt. (1942) 1944 Land und Meer. Leipzig: Reclam. 1950a Donoso Cortes in gesamteuropdischer Interpretation. Cologne: Greven. 1950fo Ex captivitate salus: Erfahrungen der Zeit 1945/47. Cologne: Greven. 1950c Der Nomos der Erde im Volkerrecht des Jus publicum Europaeum. Cologne: Greven. 1963 Theorie des Partisanen: Zwischenbemerkung zum Begriff des Politischen. Berlin: Duncker & Humblot. Verfassungsrechtliche Aufsdtze aus den Jahren 1924-1954: Materialien zu einer VerfassungsleJire. Berlin: Duncker & Humblot, 1958. -> Essays originally published between 1924 and 1954, with commentaries by Schmitt on his own earlier articles. SUPPLEMENTARY
BIBLIOGRAPHY
BARION, HANS; FORSTHOFF, E.; and WEBER, W. (editors) 1959 Festschrift fur Carl Schmitt zum 70. Geburtstag. Berlin: Duncker & Humblot. -» Contains a comprehensive bibliography of Schmitt's works and of works about Schmitt, compiled by Piet Tomissen. FIJALKOWSKI, JURGEN 1958 Die Wendung zum Filhrerstaat: Ideologische Komponenten in der politischen Philosophic Carl Schmitts. Cologne: Westdeutscher Verlag.
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FIJALKOWSKI, JURGEN 1965 Das politische Problem der Feindschaft. Politische Vierteljahresschrift 6:105-111. HOFMANN, HASSO 1964 Legitimitdt gegen Legalitdt: Der Weg der politischen Philosophic Carl Schmitts. Neuwied (Germany): Luchterhand. KROCKOW, CHRISTIAN 1958 Die Entscheidung: Eine Untersuchung iiber Ernst Jiinger, Carl Schmitt, Martin Heidegger. Stuttgart: Enke. KRUPA, HANS 1937 Carl Schmitts Theorie des "Politischen," mit einem Verzeichnis der Schriften Carl Schmitts, Leipzig: Hirzel. SCHMIDT, HERMANN 1963 Der Nomosbegriff bei Carl Schmitt. Staat 2:81-108. SCHMITZ, MATHIAS 1965 Die Freund-Feind-Theorie [in der politischen Philosophic] Carl Schmitts. Cologne and Opladen: Westdeutscher Verlag. SCHNEIDER, PETER 1957 Ausnahmezustand und Norm: Eine Studie zur Rechtslehre von Carl Schmitt. Stuttgart: Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt. WOHLGEMUTH, HEiNRicH 1933 Das Wesen des Politischen in der heutigen neoromantischen Staatslehre: Ein methodenkritischer Beitrag zu seiner Begriffsbildung. Emmendingen: Dolter.
SCHMOLLER, GUSTAV Gustav Schmoller (1838-1917), German economist, came from a family of Wiirttemberg civil servants, and he began his own career in the financial department of the Wiirttemberg civil service. This experience gave him practical insights into the administration of a territory with a strong cameralist tradition and may have shaped his belief in the close interrelations between the economy and the government. At the University of Tubingen Schmoller studied Staatswissenschaften, a peculiarly German discipline derived from cameralism, which combines public finance, statistics, economics, administrative science, history, and even sociology. Later he became professor of Staatswissenschaften at the universities of Halle, 18641872; Strassburg, 1872-1882; and finally Berlin, 1882-1913. In the early 1860s Schmoller defended the commercial treaty between France and the German Zollverein. Since he was supporting the point of view of the Prussian government against that of Wiirttemberg, he ruined his career in Wiirttemberg but gained favor with the Prussian authorities. In the Wilhelmian period, Schmoller became one of the most ardent Prussian patriots. He was appointed the official historian of Brandenburg and Prussia in 1887, became a member of the Prussian Staatsrat (state council) in 1884, and the representative of the University of Berlin in the Herrenhaus (upper house) in 1889. He was also a member of several academies (Berlin, Munich, St. Petersburg, Copenhagen, Vienna, and Rome) and
the recipient of honorary degrees from Breslau and Heidelberg. As founder and leader of the Verein fur Sozialpolitik, the association of German academic economists, and as editor or coeditor of several series of publications (Staats- und sozialwissenschaftliche Forschungen, from 1879; Jahrbuch fur Gesetzgebung, Verwaltung und Volkswirtschaft im Deutschen Reiche—later known simply as Schmollers Jahrbuch—from 1881; Forschungen zur brandenburgischen und preussischen Geschichte, from 1888; and Acta borussica, from 1892) he became one of the first great organizers of research in the social sciences. Thus, he dominated the development of economics and of related social sciences in his country; for several decades, hardly a chair of economics was filled without his approval. He and his followers were called the "younger historical school" because their methodological approach was derived from, but also differed from, the approach of the "older historical school" of Roscher, Hildebrand, and Knies [see ECONOMIC THOUGHT]; they were also called the Kathedersozialisten (most nearly translated as academic socialists) because of their sociopolitical aims and were able to influence contemporary social legislation, since Schmoller was close to many high civil servants and to the crown. In his political activities, Schmoller may be called a conservative social reformer. He was a royalist, favored strong government, and displayed the highest respect for the Prussian civil service; but he was also deeply preoccupied with the "social question," the improvement of the condition of the lower classes. He believed that a variety of means should be used to solve this problem: better education of the working classes; governmental regulation of working conditions; cooperatives; and changes in the law, in institutions, and in the attitudes of the ruling classes. He was hostile both to Manchesterism and to Marxism, but he was open to all kinds of reforms that would produce more "social justice," a concept central to his thinking. Contributions to the social sciences. Schmoller's interests embraced history, applied statistics, economic and social institutions and behavior (including social psychology), social anthropology, geography, demography, the theory and practice of economic and social policy, and even ethics and philosophy, but he regarded himself primarily as an economist. His voluminous Grundriss (19001904), comparable in scope, though not in method, to Alfred Marshall's Principles, assembled pieces of all these social sciences into a great mosaic or panorama of the social world, past and present.
SCHMOLLER, GUSTAV The only thing the work lacked was an analytical framework to hold the pieces together. Although Schmoller often claimed to have such a framework, he was basically eclectic. Schmoller's rejection of analytical theory of the Smith-Ricardo type was of the utmost importance for his own thinking and for the development of economics in Germany under his "regime." He believed classical analysis to be useless or at best of minor importance, since it is applicable only to very small and artificially isolated fragments of the social reality that he wanted to perceive in all its many facets. It is not true, as many have asserted and as the term "historical school" suggests, that he wanted to replace analytical theory with purely historical research, but he was convinced that a genuine theory can only be the final outcome of an immense amount of descriptive work on past as well as present events, institutions, and structures. His conception of theory is the central defect in his thought and accounts for most of the weaknesses in his own works and in those inspired by him. It is difficult to decide whether he was led to this position by his inability to grasp the nature of theory or by his ethical disapproval of liberal economic doctrines, which he scorned as "business economics." Reception of Schmoller. Schmoller's view of theory was attacked in 1883 by the Viennese professor Carl Menger, who wrote a treatise on method in the social sciences, Problems of Economics and Sociology (Untersuchungen iiber die Methode der Socialwissenschaften und der politischen Oekonomie msbesondere). Schmoller replied in his Jahrbuch (1883), and Menger renewed the attack in the pamphlet Die Irrihumer des Historismus in der deutschen Nationalokonomie (1884), "which fairly steamed with wrath and of course elicited rebuttal" (Schumpeter 1954, p. 814). This famous Methodenstreit dominated the economic and social sciences in Germany for at least two generations. There can be little doubt that logically Menger was in a far better position. What he advocated as the appropriate methodology for economics was the use of the partial-equilibrium models that have since become the common method of theorists in most parts of the world. Nevertheless, Schmoller was not entirely wrong when he favored a much broader and more differentiated approach. He wanted to grasp all at once what has since become the object of many different branches of the social sciences. As a consequence, he touched on many important things, but often only superficially and seldom with clear insight about the implications of his observations and judgments. He was attacked
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not only by theoretical economists but also by professional historians, such as Georg von Below (1904). Interestingly enough, both the theorists and the historians had basically the same objections to the Schmollerian type of social science: both missed a coherent and systematic approach. The issue, then, was not simply one of theory against history, but of how research in the social sciences ought best to be done. Although Schmoller often stated that his method alone was an "exact" one, even his friends and students agreed that he wrote without precision. The very qualities of Schmoller's work that were criticized in the academic community won him a broad public audience. He took up many urgent issues of the day, examined them from different points of view, and came to general conclusions that many people could agree with. This made him an effective leader of public discussion and a popular, though not a brilliant, academic lecturer. He was at his best when dealing with those issues of social policy (Sozialpolitik*) that urgently required compromise. In political debates he exhibited a considerable amount of personal commitment and civic courage, fighting against aggressive social conservatism (e.g. Treitschke 1875) as well as against the revolutionary position of Lassalle and Marx and their followers. In these debates he made plain his belief in the necessity of more social justice. However, he did not distinguish clearly between the value judgments he made in political debates and the axioms of his scientific thought. This led to another methodological attack on Schmoller, led by Max Weber and Werner Sombart, to eliminate value judgments from the social sciences (see Weber 1910; Sombart 1910). An appraisal of Schmoller. Given his many weaknesses, one asks what made Schmoller the leader of German social scientists during the Wilhelmian period. Undoubtedly, others were stronger as theorists, as historians, or as sociologists. However, except for Max Weber, who was much younger, no one was quite as universal as Schmoller. Moreover, no one combined so many of the personal qualities of a leader: he was charming but dictatorial; confident in his views but able and willing to accept ideas; basically simple in his thinking but with a broad outlook; fully committed to sharply defined positions but prepared to compromise. Much of his influence appears to derive from his ability to express the leading ideas of his time. He swam with the stream of contemporary opinion, not against it, as is obvious in his views on foreign affairs, on which he had no ideas of his own but shared the nationalistic, imperialistic,
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even chauvinistic outlook of the German elite. When the tide of sentiment and opinion turned, shortly after his death in 1917, his views were quickly outdated, and people began to wonder how he could ever have been the great leader he certainly was. His influence on the development of the social sciences in Germany was, on the whole, rather unfortunate. He is mainly responsible for the neglect of economic theory in Germany between 1870 and 1920, and he can be made indirectly responsible for the extreme reaction that produced the subsequent neglect of economic history in twentieth-century Germany. In his attempt to construct a theory mainly by historical methods, he damaged both theory and history, and hampered their development in Germany for nearly a century. Outside Germany, his influence was never considerable, although American institutional economics was based partly on his ideas. WOLFRAM FISCHER WORKS BY SCHMOLLER
1870
Zur Geschichte der deutschen Kleingeiuerbe im 19. Jahrhundert: Statistische und nationalokonomische Untersuchungen. Halle: Waisenhaus. (1874-1875) 1875 Uber einige Grundfragen des Rechts und der Volkswirthschaft: Ein offenes Sendschreiben an Herrn Professor Dr. Heinrich von Treitschke. Jena: Mauke. -» First published in Volumes 23 and 24 of Jahrbiicher filr Nationalokonomie und Statistik. (1874-1897) 1904 Uber einige Grundfragen der Sozialpolitik und der Volkswirtschaftslehre. 2d ed., enl. Berlin: Duncker & Humblot. 1879 Die Strassburger Tucher- und Weberzunft; Urkunden und Darstellungen nebst Regesten und Glossar: Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte der deutschen Weberei und des deutschen Gewerberechts vom XIII.-XVII. Jahrhundert. Strassburg: Triibner. 1883 Zur Methodologie der Staats- und Sozialwissenschaften. Jahrbuch filr Gesetzgebung, Verwaltung und Volkswirtschaft im Deutschen Reiche 7:975-994. 1897 Wechselnde Theorien und feststehende Wahrheiten im Gebiete der Staats- und Socialwissenschaften und die heutige deutsche Volkswirthschaftslehre. Berlin: Biixenstein. 1898 Umrisse und Untersuchungen zur Verfassungs-, Verwaltungs- und Wirtschaftsgeschichte besonders des preussischen Staates im 17. und 18. Jahrhundert. Leipzig: Duncker & Humblot. (1900-1904) 1923 Grundriss der allgemeinen Volkswirtschaftslehre. 2d ed. 2 vols. Munich and Leipzig: Duncker & Humblot. 1913 Charakterbilder. 2 vols. Munich and Leipzig: Duncker & Humblot. -> A collection of biographical essays, including those on Adam Smith, Friedrich List, Adolf Wagner, and Georg F. Knapp. 1918 Die soziale Frage, Klassenbildung, Arbeiterfrage, Klassenkampf. Edited by Luzie Schmoller. Munich and Leipzig: Duncker & Humblot. -» Published posthumously. A revised and augmented edition of the
sociological chapters contained in Schmoller's Grundriss der allgemeinen Volkswirtschaftslehre, 1900—1904. 1921 Preussische Verfassungs-, Verwaltungs- und Finanzgeschichte. Berlin: Tagliche Rundschau. -* Published posthumously. 1922 Deutsches Stddtewesen in alterer Zeit. Bonner Staatswissenschaftliche Untersuchungen, No. 3. Bonn and Leipzig: Schroder. -» Published posthumously. Zur Litteraturgeschichte der Staats- und Sozialwissenschaften. Leipzig: Duncker & Humblot, 1888. -> A collection of articles dated 1863-1883. Zur Social- und Gewerbepolitik der Gegenwart (Reden und Aufsdtze). Leipzig: Duncker & Humblot, 1890. -> A collection of articles dated 1872-1890. Zwanzig Jahre deutscher Politik (1897-1917): Aufsdtze und Vortrdge. Munich and Leipzig: Duncker & Humblot, 1920. -» Published posthumously. SUPPLEMENTARY BIBLIOGRAPHY
BELOW, GEORG VON 1904 Zur Wiirdigung der historischen Schule der Nationalokonomie. Zeitschrift fur Sozialwissenschaft 7:145-185, 787-804. BELOW, GEORG VON 1924 Zur Stellung G. Schmollers in der Geschichte der Nationalokonomie. Schmollers Jahrbuch fur Gesetzgebung, Verwaltung und Volkswirtschaft im Deutschen Reiche 48:315-319. BIERMANN, WILHELM E. (editor) 1922 Briefwechsel zwischen Wilhelm Roscher und Gustav Schmoller. Greifswald: Bamberg. -» Letters dated 1861-1881. BRINKMANN, CARL 1937 Gustav Schmoller und die Volkswirtschaftslehre. Stuttgart: Kohlhammer. BRINKMANN, CARL 1953 Gustav Schmoller. Volume 9, pages 135—137 in Handworterbuch der Sozialwissenschaften. Stuttgart: Fischer. EUCKEN, WALTER 1940 Wissenschaft im Stile Schmollers. Weltwirtschaftliches Archiv 52:468-506. GIDE, CHARLES; and RIST, CHARLES (1909) 1948 A History of Economic Doctrines From the Time of the Physiocrats to the Present Day. 2d English ed. Boston: Heath. -» First published in French. HERBST, JURGEN 1965 The German Historical School in American Scholarship: A Study in the Transfer of Culture. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell Univ. Press. HERKNER, HEINRICH 1924 Zur Stellung G. Schmollers in der Geschichte der Nationalokonomie. Schmollers Jahrbuch fur Gesetzgebung, Verwaltung und Volkswirtschaft im Deutschen Reiche 47:3-10. HINTZE, OTTO 1908 Gustav Schmoller als Historiker. Volume 4, pages 183-191 in Otto Hintze, Historische und politische Aufsdtze. Berlin: Deutsche Biicherei. LANE, FREDERIC C. 1956 Some Heirs of Gustav von Schmoller. Pages 9-39 in Architects and Craftsmen in History: Festschrift fur Abbott Payson Usher. Tubingen: Mohr. MEINECKE, FRIEDRICH 1933 Drei Generationen deutscher Gelehrtenpolitik: Friedrich Theodor Visher.—Gustav Schmoller.—Max Weber. Pages 136-164 in Friedrich Meinecke, Staat und Personlichkeit: Studien. Berlin: Mittler. MELTZEL, C. 1925 Gustav v. Schmoller. Volume 7, pages 251-253 in Handworterbuch der Staatswissenschaften. 4th ed. Jena: Fischer. MENGER, CARL (1883) 1963 Problems of Economics and Sociology (Untersuchungen uber die Methods der Socialwisseuschaften und der politischen Oekonomie insbesondere). Edited with an introduction by Louis Schneider. Urbana: Univ. of Illinois Press.
SCHRIEKE, BERTRAM MENGER, CARL 1884 Die Irrthumer des Historismus in der deutschen N ationalokonomie. Vienna: Holder. -» The main attack against Schmoller and the historical school by an economic theorist and the culmination of the Methodenstreit. MITSCHERLICH, WALDEMAR 1936 Die okonomischen Querschnitte Schmollers. Pages 129-149 in Waldemar Mitscherlich, Die Lehre von den beweglichen und starren Begriffen erldutert an der Wirtschaftswissenschaft. Stuttgart: Kohlhammer. RITZEL, GERHARD 1950 Schmoller versus Menger: Eine Analyse des Methodenstreits im Hinblick auf den Historismus in der N ationalokonomie. Frankfurt am Main: Enz & Rudolph. SALIN, EDGAR 1924 Zur Stellung G. Schmollers in der Geschichte der Nationalokonomie. Schmollers Jahrbuch fur Gesetzgebung, Verwaltung und Volkswirtschaft im Deutschen Reiche 48:307-314. SCHUMPETER, JOSEPH A. 1926 Gustav v. Schmoller und die Probleme von heute. Schmollers Jahrbuch fur Gesetzgebung, Verwaltung und Volkswirtschaft im Deutschen Reiche 50:337-388. SCHUMPETER, JOSEPH A. (1954) 1960 History of Economic Analysis. Edited by E. B. Schumpeter. New York: Oxford Univ. Press. SOMBART, WERNER 1910 Debatte [Uber die Productivitat der Volkswirtschaft]. Verein fiir Socialpolitik, Schriften 132:563-572. SPIETHOFF, ARTHUR 1924 Zum Abschluss. Schmollers Jahrbuch fiir Gesetzgebung, Verwaltung und Volkswirtschaft im Deutschen Reiche 48:321-324. -> This article summarizes a series of assessments of Schmoller's work. SPIETHOFF, ARTHUR (editor) 1938 Gustav von Schmoller und die deutsche geschichtliche Volkswirtschaftslehre: Festgabe zur hundertsten Wiederkehr seines Geburtstages 24. Juni 1938. Schmollers Jahrbuch fiir Gesetzgebung, Verwaltung und Volkswirtschaft im Deutschen Reiche 62:385-757. TREITSCHKE, HEINRICH G. VON 1875 Der Socialismus und seine Conner: Nebst einem Sendschreiben an Gustav Schmoller. Berlin: Reimer. WEBER, MAX 1910 Debatte [Uber die Productivitat der Volkswirtschaft]. Verein fiir Socialpolitik, Schriften 132:580-585, 603-607.
SCHOOLS See ACADEMIC FREEDOM; ADULT EDUCATION; EDUCATION; EDUCATIONAL PSYCHOLOGY; TEACHING; UNIVERSITIES.
SCHRIEKE, BERTRAM When the Dutch anthropologist Bertram Johannes Otto Schrieke (1890—1945) was studying at the University of Leiden, where he finished his studies with a doctor's degree in "languages and literature of the East Indian archipelago," sociology as a discipline was in its infancy in the Netherlands. It was taught only at the University of Amsterdam, where Schrieke attended the lectures of S. R. Steinmetz—through whom he was influ-
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enced by the theories of Max Weber. At Leiden he was a pupil of Snouck Hurgronje, the eminent Islamologist and Arabist; of C. Van Vollenhoven, for adat law; and of other orientalists. His career was to be as diversified as his training. Schrieke was not a theorist. Rather he took exception to existing theories as being too one-sided or too narrow. He held the view that "a culture forms an organic whole, which cannot be split up into different parts as if these components had no relation to each other," an approach not generally shared in the 1920s (Indonesian Sociological Studies, vol. 1, p. 232). As demonstrated by his lifelong work in the social and economic aspects of the history of Indonesia and of Indonesian foreign contacts, Schrieke's forte lay in maintaining a critical attitude toward the generally accepted approaches to these subjects, which relied on archeology and colonial history. In his doctoral thesis, Het boek van Bonang (1916), he analyzed the text of a manuscript, written in Javanese and ascribed to a legendary Muslim saint, which had been in the library of the University of Leiden since the beginning of the seventeenth century. His study of this manuscript, as well as of the early history of the Portuguese and Dutch trade contacts with Indonesia and of the published material on the voyages of Chinese and Arabs in the previous centuries, enabled him to revise the existing theory that the Islamization of the archipelago was the result of penetration pacifique. He came to the conclusion that Islamization, hitherto considered to be primarily the product of trade relations, had been equally influenced by political conflicts and military struggles. In this work he acknowledged his debt to his mentor, G. P. Rouffaer, honorary member of the Royal Institute for Philology, Geography, and Ethnology of the Netherlands Indies at The Hague, whose own work of collecting and comparing source material was an inspiration to Schrieke. Returning later to this problem in parts of a wide-ranging study, "Ruler and Realm in Early Java" (published posthumously, in an English translation only; 1957), Schrieke suggested that it is "impossible to understand the spread of Islam in the archipelago unless one takes into account the antagonism between the Muslim traders and the Portuguese," antagonism which caused the Indonesians to side with the Muslims. During the 1920s, when Schrieke was acting as adviser on native and Arab affairs to the Netherlands Indies government, it was his intention to write a sociological study of the peoples of Sumatra
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based on these ideas. He had written only the first, historical section of the "Prolegomena" to this study (see 1925) when he was called upon to conduct an inquiry into the so-called communist uprisings on the west coast of Sumatra in 1926. In order to explain the success of the communists' tactics, Schrieke incorporated in his report facts relating to the historical background and structure of Minangkabau society and dealt with the impact of the introduction of a money economy. He was thus able to point to the factors in this transitional period which had helped to foster the antigovernment attitude of the population. Here again his natural approach was to gather any relevant data, including the seemingly unimportant and the controversial. In 1955 the parts of his report that deal with the situation underlying the uprisings were published in an English translation, together with the above-mentioned "Prolegomena" and a number of his other publications (Indonesian Sociological Studies, vol. 1). The Fourth Pacific Science Congress, convened at Batavia (now Jakarta) in 1929, afforded Schrieke the opportunity of editing a symposium entitled The Effect of Western Influence on Native Civilisations in the Malay Archipelago, to which his own contribution was "Native Society in the Transformation Period." As director of the Netherlands Indies Department of Education from 1929 to 1933, Schrieke stressed the need for a sociological approach to educational problems. He defended the existing diversified educational system, adapted as it was to serve the needs of a heterogeneous population. He did further field research in applied sociology at the invitation of the Julius Rosenwald Fund, which resulted in Alien Americans (1936). This was an "American Dilemma" avant la lettre: a oneman attempt to study the Negro problem in the United States and to interpret it against the background of other race relations there. Apart from the influence he exerted in sociology and history when he was professor of sociology in the law school at Batavia, from 1924 to 1929, and later at the University of Amsterdam, from 1936 to 1945, Schrieke's ideas can best be traced in the work of J. C. van Leur (1934) and M. A. P. Meilink-Roelofsz (1962). He fostered surveys of research on both Indonesia and the Netherlands Caribbean territories; he also encouraged such surveys in connection with the work of the International Refugee Colonization Society, established in 1938. He also applied his organizational ability as museum director of the 150-year-old Batavian Society of Arts and Letters in 1923 and later, from
1938 to 1945, as director of the ethnological department of the Royal Colonial Institute (now Royal Tropical Institute), Amsterdam. Schrieke died suddenly in London in September 1945 while attending a United Nations conference as a Netherlands government delegate on Indonesian affairs. JOHANNA L. G. FELHOEN KRAAL [See also ASIAN SOCIETY, article on SOUTHEAST ASIA; COLONIALISM; ISLAM; and the biography of SNOUCK HURGRONJE.] WORKS BY SCHRIEKE 1916 Het boek van Eonang. Utrecht: Boer. 1925 Prolegomena tot eene sociologische studie over de volken van Sumatra: Deel I (A. Historisch gedeelte), Schets van de politieke en economische machtsverschuivingen in den Indischen Archipel in de 17de eeuw (Prolegomena to a Sociological Study of the Peoples of Sumatra: Part I [A. Historical Section], Outline of the Shifts in Political and Economic Power in the Indonesian Archipelago in the Seventeenth Century). Tijdscrift voor taal-, land- en volkenkunde 65:90-207. -> For a partial translation, see pages 1-82 of Indonesian Sociological Studies: Selected Writings of B. Schrieke. (1926) 1928 The Evolution of Culture in the Pacific in Relation to the Theories of the "Kultur-Historische" and the "Manchester" Schools of Social Anthropology. Volume 2, pages 2423-2441 in Pacific Science Congress, Third, Tokyo, Proceedings. Tokyo: National Research Council of Japan. 1929 Native Society in the Transformation Period. Pages 237-247 in Bertram Schrieke (editor), The Effect of Western Influence on Native Civilisations in the Malay Archipelago. Batavia (Java): Kolff. 1936 Alien Americans: A Study of Race Relations. New York: Viking. 1938 The Educational System in the Netherlands Indies. Netherlands Indies: Bulletin of the Colonial Institute, Amsterdam 2:14-24. 1948 SCHRIEKE, BERTRAM (editor) Report of the Scientific Work Done in the Netherlands on Behalf of the Dutch Overseas Territories During the Period Between Approximately 1918 and 1943. Amsterdam: North Holland Publishing. ->• Published posthumously. 1957 Ruler and Realm in Early Java. Volume 2, pages 1-267 in Indonesian Sociological Studies: Selected Writings of B. Schrieke. The Hague: Van Hoeve. -»• Published posthumously from Schrieke's Dutch manuscript. Indonesian Sociological Studies: Selected Writings of B. Schrieke. 2 vols. The Hague: Van Hoeve, 1955-1957. -» Contains parts of the 1925 Prolegomena to a Sociological Study of the Peoples of Sumatra, parts of the 1926 report on uprisings on the west coast of Sumatra, and a number of later writings, some previously unpublished. SUPPLEMENTARY
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Foreword by the Editors of "Selected Studies on Indonesia by Dutch Scholars." 1957 Volume 2, pages v-vii in Bertram J. O. Schrieke, Indonesian Sociological Studies: Selected Writings of B. Schrieke. The Hague: Van Hoeve.
SCHULTZ, HENRY LEUR, JACOB C. VAN (1934) 1955 On Early Asian Trade. Pages 1-44 in Jacob C. van Leur, Indonesian Trade and Society: Essays in Asian Social and Economic History. The Hague: Van Hoeve. -» First published in Dutch. LINDGREN, ETHEL J. 1948 Bertram Johannes Otto Schrieke: 1890-1945. Man 48:113-117. H> Includes a bibliography on pages 116-117, prepared by Lindgren and her associates. MEILINK-ROELOFSZ, MARIE A. P. 1962 Asian Trade and European Influence in the Indonesian Archipelago Between 1500 and About 1630. The Hague: Nijhoff.
SCHULTZ, HENRY Henry Schultz (1893-1938), American econometrician, was born in Russian Poland. After attending public schools in New York City and the College of the City of New York, he began his graduate studies at Columbia University in 1916. At Columbia he responded enthusiastically to the influence of Henry L. Moore, but his studies were interrupted by military service in World War i. After the war an army scholarship enabled him to spend the spring and summer terms of 1919 at the London School of Economics and Political Science and at the Galton Laboratory of University College. In London he attended lectures on statistics by A. L. Bowley and Karl Pearson and on economic theory by Edwin Cannan. Once back in the United States, he conducted statistical and economic investigations for, successively, the War Trade Board, the Bureau of the Census, the Bureau of Efficiency, the Institute of Economics, and the Children's Bureau of the United States Department of Labor. His PH.D. thesis, "The Statistical Law of Demand as Illustrated by the Demand for Sugar," was published in 1925, and in 1926 he joined the department of economics at the University of Chicago, where he remained until his death. It was Moore's early investigations into the statistical approximation of Marshallian demand curves (1914; 1917) that had a determining influence on Schultz's career. Under Moore's inspiration, Schultz made intensive studies of the works of those economists—Cournot, Walras, and Pareto -—who had made the most explicit and sophisticated use of mathematics in formulating economic theory. Schultz also studied probability theory and statistics in considerable depth. His years in various statistical and economic research agencies in Washington, 1920 to 1926, no doubt contributed to his sophistication in the use and interpretation of published economic data. When Moore ceased writing in 1929, Schultz was almost the only American economist who com-
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bined a mastery of the theoretical work of Walras and Pareto with an intense interest in empirical studies of demand. He was fully abreast of the revolution in value theory associated with the names of J. R. Hicks and R. G. D. Allen (1934); they also drew their inspiration from Walras and Pareto. Keynesian macroeconomic theory, however, was not of direct significance to Schultz's work, and the lengthy bibliography of his most important book, The Theory and Measurement of Demand (1938, pp. 779-803), contains no reference to Keynes. Schultz published a number of short notes on regression theory and methods and one major article (1930) on the derivation of standard errors of forecast for curves of various types. In Statistical Laws of Demand and Supply (1928), he thoroughly explored the literature on weighted regression—the estimation of a single line or plane of best fit when all variables are subject to error -—and was probably the first to apply such methods to economic data. This book presented supply-anddemand curves for sugar, an internationally traded commodity, and led him to write three articles on methods of measuring the effectiveness of a tariff. His contributions to statistical theory must be regarded as by-products of his intense concern with statistical demand analysis, and the work on the tariff was similarly incidental to his main concern. Schultz also published a number of expository articles on the more general contributions of mathematics and statistics to economic research and in book reviews called attention to significant translations or interpretations of Walras and Pareto and to major works on mathematical economics and statistics. Schultz's lifework is essentially summed up in his monumental 817-page work The Theory and Measurement of Demand (1938). Chapters 1, 18, and 19 together provide an excellent statement of the theory of consumer demand, incorporating the Hicks-Allen and Slutsky extensions of Pareto's basic formulation; Chapters 2 and 3 deal with the logical and theoretical validity of various proposed methods for deriving demand curves from time series and from family-budget data; Chapter 4 contains a statement of the assumptions, methods, and procedures to be used in the empirical section. The empirical section, Chapters 5-17, presents statistical demand analyses for ten major crops along with summary comparisons and interpretations of the results for the various commodities, time periods, and functional forms. Further empirical studies are included in Chapters 18 and 19, on related demands. A fifty-page appendix on ele-
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ments of curve fitting and correlation provides an excellent guide to least-squares regression methods, and there is also an extensive bibliography. In The Theory and Measurement of Demand Schultz emerges as the complete demand analyst of his generation. It would be difficult to point out any other econometric work of large scope written in the 1930s that achieved a better integration of economic theory and statistics with painstaking and realistic attention to institutions, markets, and data. Jan Tinbergen's Statistical Testing of Business-cycle Theories (1938-1939) is one of the few econometric works of the 1930s which would bear comparison with Schultz's masterpiece. While Moore was the first economist in the United States to attempt a creative synthesis of economic theory and statistics as a basis for estimating economic relationships, Schultz achieved a similar creative synthesis at a much higher level of sophistication. Econometricians who have done large-scale empirical investigations, among them Tinbergen, Herman Wold, Richard Stone, Paul Douglas, and Lawrence Klein, have referred to The Theory and Measurement of Demand in terms of the highest respect. Schultz participated in the organizational meeting of the Econometric Society on December 29, 1930, and was active in the affairs of the Society until his death. He was an untiring worker—"his own work day was a 12-hour one or longer, and his work week, 7 days" (H. Gregg Lewis, quoted in Hotelling 1939, p. 101). He appears to have been thoroughly constructive in his relationships with his graduate assistants and colleagues. Several of the students who came under his influence at the University of Chicago (Milton Friedman, Jacob Mosak, Martin Bronfenbrenner, Paul Samuelson, and others) subsequently made outstanding contributions to econometrics and economic theory. KARL A. Fox [For the historical context of Schultz's work, see the biographies of COURNOT; MOORE, HENRY L.; PARETO; WALRAS; for discussion of the subsequent development of Schultz's ideas, see DEMAND AND SUPPLY; ECONOMETRICS.] WORKS BY SCHULTZ The Statistical Measurement of the Elasticity of Demand for Beef. Journal of Farm Economics 6:254— 278. 1925 The Statistical Law of Demand as Illustrated by the Demand for Sugar. Journal of Political Economy 33:481-504, 577-637. 1927a Cost of Production, Supply and Demand, and the Tariff. Journal of Farm Economics 9:192-209. 1924
1927& Theoretical Considerations Relating to Supply. Journal of Political Economy 35:437-464. 1928 Statistical Laws of Demand and Supply With Special Application to Sugar. Univ. of Chicago Press. 1929 Marginal Productivity and the General Pricing Process. Journal of Political Economy 37:505-551. 1930 The Standard Error of a Forecast From a Curve. Journal of the American Statistical Association 25: 139-185. 193la Henry L. Moore's Contribution to the Statistical Law of Demand. Pages 645-661 in Social Science Reseach Council, Committee on Scientific Method in the Social Sciences, Methods in Social Science. Univ. of Chicago Press. 1931& The Italian School of Mathematical Economics. Journal of Political Economy 39:76-85. 1932 Marginal Productivity and the Lausanne School: A Reply [to J. R. Hicks]. Economica 12:285-296. 1933a Frisch on the Measurement of Utility. Journal of Political Economy 41:95-116. 1933b Interrelations of Demand. Journal of Political Economy 41:468-512. 1935 Interrelations of Demand, Price and Income. Journal of Political Economy 43:433-481. 1938 The Theory and Measurement of Demand. Univ. of Chicago Press. 1939 A Misunderstanding in Index-number Theory: The True Koniis Condition on Cost-of-living Index Numbers and Its Limitations. Econometrica 7:1-9. SUPPLEMENTARY BIBLIOGRAPHY CHICAGO, UNIVERSITY OF, DEPARTMENT OF ECONOMICS 1942 Studies in Mathematical Economics and Econometrics: In Memory of Henry Schultz. Edited by Oskar Lange et al. Univ. of Chicago Press. -» Includes a bibliography on pages 32-33. DOUGLAS, PAUL H. 1939 Henry Schultz as Colleague. Econometrica 7:104-106. HICKS, J. R.; and ALLEN, R. G. D. 1934 A Reconsideration of the Theory of Value. Economica New Series 1:52-76. HOTELLING, HAROLD 1939 The Work of Henry Schultz. Econometrica 7:97-103. -» Includes a bibliography of Schultz's works. LINK, GEORGE K. 1942 Henry Schultz: Friend. Pages 3-10 in Chicago, University of, Department of Economics, Studies in Mathematical Economics and Econometrics: In Memory of Henry Schultz. Univ. of Chicago Press. MOORE, HENRY L. 1914 Economic Cycles: Their Law and Cause. New York: Macmillan. MOORE, HENRY L. 1917 Forecasting the Yield and the Price of Cotton. New York: Macmillan. TINBERGEN, JAN 1938-1939 Statistical Testing of Business-cycle Theories. 2 vols. Geneva: League of Nations, Economic Intelligence Service. -> Volume 1: A Method and Its Application to Investment Activity. Volume 2: Business Cycles in the United States of America: 1919-1932. YNTEMA, THEODORE O. 1942 Henry Schultz: His Contributions to Economics and Statistics. Pages 11-17 in Chicago, University of, Department of Economics, Studies in Mathematical Economics and Econometrics: In Memory of Henry Schultz. Univ. of Chicago Press.
SCHUMPETER, JOSEPH A. SCHUMPETER, JOSEPH A. Joseph Alois Schumpeter (1883-1950) was born in Triesch, Moravia, into a middle-class family. His education at the Theresianum in Vienna was, however, aristocratic, as was the influence of his stepfather, a high-ranking officer in the AustroHungarian army. His extraordinary mind ranged over many fields—classics, history, law, the history of art, sociology, mathematics, and economics. He mastered several of these scholarly fields, but it was in economics that he made important original contributions. Schumpeter's first marriage, to an Englishwoman, took place in 1907; it lasted only a few months and ended ultimately in divorce. His second wife, whom he married in 1925, was an Austrian; she died in childbirth in the same year, and for a long time after her death Schumpeter withdrew from social life. He married again in the United States, in 1937, and was survived for a few years by his widow. Academic career. Schumpeter spent most of his life as an academic. His first position, in 1909, was in Czernowitz (now in the U.S.S.R.). For him this was a somewhat exotic place, and he had a happy time there—including in his activities a duel with the university librarian over the rights of students to have freer access to books. Czernowitz must have provided an intellectually lively atmosphere, since the Austro—Hungarian monarchy seems to have used it as a sort of glamorous exile for its "young Turks." From Czernowitz Schumpeter moved to Graz, in Styria, a provincial capital whose lack of a frontier type of excitement was compensated for by its proximity to Vienna. During his tenure at Graz, Schumpeter visited the United States for the first time, as an exchange professor at Columbia University. After an interlude of political and business activity, he returned, in 1925, to academic life as professor of public finance at the University of Bonn. He remained at Bonn, except for one year in Japan and at Harvard, until 1932. Then, when internal political dissension prevented him from obtaining the chair of economics at Berlin, he went to Harvard. He stayed at Harvard until his death. Schumpeter was elected president of the American Economic Association shortly before his death. He was also a founding member and president of the Econometric Society: although he himself did not become well qualified either in mathematical economics or in econometrics, he enouraged the development of both.
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Nonacademic activities. Schumpeter's forays into nonacademic life were as many-sided as his academic interests. In 1907 he became a junior partner in a law firm in Cairo. In 1918 he was for a brief time a member of the German socialization commission, and in 1919 he became minister of finance in the government of the new Austrian Republic. Both of these governmental positions were offered him despite the fact that he was not a socialist, because of his intellectual and professional qualifications and possibly because of his friendship, dating back to his student days, with Otto Bauer, the famous Austrian Marxist. Later he became president of a small Austrian bank. The Cairo law practice was a success. On the other hand, hardly anyone could have solved Austria's financial problems, given the domestic and international environment; and the same was true of the bank, whose failure was only one of the first in the series of Austrian bank failures that culminated in the collapse of the Creditanstalt. Even before the disintegration of the Austro-Hungarian monarchy, Schumpeter had written "The Crisis of the Tax State" (1918). In this work he anticipated the problems that Austria would face at the end of the war and predicted that political incompetence would vitiate possible solutions to her economic difficulties. The book still has relevance for the making of economic policy: it develops the theme that the state, as guardian of the common interest, is the necessary counterpart of the individual, particularly in a liberal capitalist economy, and it discusses the crucial role of budget and fiscal policy in the well-being of the economy. Schumpeter's interest in public policy continued when he was no longer in a policy-making position. Many of his articles for the Osterreichische Volkswirt and the Deutsche Volkswirt as well as some of his lectures at Bonn and Harvard dealt with such urgent current problems as tax policy, depression policies, and the New Deal; he was convinced that the New Deal was slowing down "natural" recovery. Schumpeter as teacher. Despite all his interest in policy, practical affairs, sociology, and history, Schumpeter's primary love was economics as a scholarly pursuit, and he was anxious to make good training in economics available to students. While in Germany he became involved in discussions of curricular reform, arguing that the training of economists and lawyers should be strictly separated; otherwise neither group would be adequately trained. His lectures at Bonn, ostensibly on public finance, were actually in large part discus-
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sions of Book v of Marshall's Principles and other theoretical topics. At Harvard he taught one of the first modern courses in pure theory. His lectures were never dull; often they were brilliant. But what distinguished Schumpeter's lectures and seminars most was neither their brilliance nor their organization (which occasionally left something to be desired); rather, it was his persistent effort on all occasions, formal or informal, to make it possible for students to work out their own ideas. In nine years of attending his lectures and seminars in Bonn and at Harvard, I remember only two occasions when he talked about his own work and then only at the prodding of his students. He spent much time with his students outside the classroom. In Bonn he frequently went on walks with them, discoursing, interrupting his walk suddenly to jot down an idea. At Harvard he regularly met his students socially. He also circulated a sheet of paper during each lecture on which six students signed up to see him. He was not the kind of teacher who provided his students with clear-cut answers, to the despair of the less-gifted students. But for others this method had a delayed effect that years later would make them sit up and exclaim, "So this is what Schumpeter meant!" The Schumpeterian system Because of Schumpeter's many-sided gifts and the variety of fields to which he contributed, it is difficult to trace his intellectual ancestry. His teachers at the University of Vienna included Friedrich von Wieser, E. von Phillipovich, and E. von Bohm-Bawerk. But among all economists, he had the greatest esteem for Leon Walras, and he thought very highly of English and American economists, particularly F. Y. Edgeworth and John Bates Clark. The similarity of Schumpeter's thought to Marx's has frequently been noted, although Marx's influence on Schumpeter may have been overestimated because of Schumpeter's ability to admire and understand Marx even when he disagreed with him. Schumpeter was more aware than many other theoretical economists, the most notable exception being Marx, that economic reality is only a part of total reality. The division of the economic from the noneconomic was for him purely a matter of scientific convenience. He contributed significantly to the understanding of noneconomic, particularly sociological, phenomena, as in his synthesis, Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy (1942). If his work lacks the mathematical precision he urged
upon others, this was not the result of unclear thinking but of the complexity (one might almost say the messiness) of the problems he tackled. Any brief characterization of an elaborate and subtle system is necessarily something of a caricature. Bearing this limitation in mind, Schumpeter's vision of the economic process might be summarized as follows: There is only one single historical reality, which consists of unique "events." To understand this reality one must always be aware of its quality of uniqueness. But one must also realize that events are related to each other, not just simultaneously but over time. Simultaneous relationships are the subject of equilibrium theory; intertemporal relationships are the subject of dynamic theory. Both equilibrium theory and dynamic theory are necessary to explain any event at any given moment of time. Statics and dynamics. The essential difference between statics and dynamics—a dichotomy that Schumpeter distinguished from the dichotomy between stationary and evolutionary—is not fully expressed by stating that dynamics involves time and statics does not. For Schumpeter static, or equilibrium, theory deals with processes of adaptation that are found in reality: he believed he could identify particular periods in history in which the economic system was "in the neighborhood of equilibrium." His equilibrium, however, has no normative content; it is not in any sense an ideal state of affairs, a golden age. It follows, therefore, that the dynamics that concerned Schumpeter was not the time sequence of adjustment to some change that had somehow occurred. Rather, he sought to discover what causes the movement away from equilibrium, what is responsible for the destruction of equilibrium. For reasons of scientific convenience, he centered his attention on those disruptions of equilibrium that arise inside the economic system, although he believed that equilibrium can also be disrupted by forces outside the economy, such as wars or natural catastrophes. (While for Marx, and certainly for Lenin, wars arise from the inner contradictions of capitalism, Schumpeter stressed the essentially pacific and constructive nature of capitalism and its evolution.) Business cycles. The distinction between statics and dynamics is fundamental to Schumpeter's ideas on the business cycle. It explains not only why a recession, being an adaptive phenomenon, must follow a boom, but also why a boom requires a different explanation from a recession. It shows
SCHUMPETER, JOSEPH A. both why historical data are needed to arrive at an explanation and how such data are fitted into a general framework and thereby become meaningful. It explains in what sense business cycles are essential to progress: business cycles occur because equilibrium is destroyed by innovations, and the economy must adapt to the destruction before there can be any further innovation. Finally, the distinction accounts for the institutional requirements that must be met if an economy is to remain dynamic. The essential institutional arrangements are two: first, scope for the operation of innovators, the Schumpeterian entrepreneurs; and second, the possibility for innovators to break into the circular flow of the economy, this being achieved through the creation of credit. Credit creation permits the entrepreneur to take resources out of the income stream for productive purposes before he has contributed anything to the income stream. Schumpeter distinguished three types of business cycles, each of whose length depends on the disturbance that brought it about. He named the cycles for pioneers in business cycle theory. The shortest, the Kitchin cycle, is identified with inventory accumulation and decumulation lasting about three years. The medium cycle, of about 8-11 years, usually referred to as the business cycle, he named for Clement Juglar, and he related it to individual innovations, such as new textile machines, dynamos, electric motors, radios, and refrigerators. The long cycle, named for Kondratieff, is caused by the appearance of major innovations, such as railroads or electrification, which cannot be carried through in one "juglar." Thus, long-run trends become part of cyclical phenomena and, indeed, can be understood as the result of shorterrun changes. Schumpeter believed that each cycle consists of four phases. He characterized the recovery and recession phases as adaptive processes, while the upswing and depression phases represent movements away from the neighborhood of equilibrium, caused, respectively, by innovation and by such extrinsic and inessential phenomena as speculation, panics, or poor economic policies. The upswing and recession phases are essential to the capitalist process, but the depression and recovery phases are not. Since the acute social and personal hardships occur in the inessential phases, policy can eliminate them. Development of Schumpeter's system. Beginning in 1908, Schumpeter published a series of books in which he progressively developed these economic theories. His first major book was Das
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Wesen und der Hauptinhalt der theoretischen N ationalokonomie (1908), which was probably conceived during his days as a graduate student and written in Cairo. It was a brilliant statement of general equilibrium theory, making clear both what static theory could explain and what it could not. This was followed in 1912 by The Theory of Economic Development, which contained the first important vision of the "Schumpeterian system"— a term he would have abhorred. The book dealt primarily with dynamics—the entrepreneurial function, the role of the banking system, and the creation of credit. Finally, in Business Cycles (1939), he fleshed out the bones of theory with historical material. Moreover, Business Cycles contains numerous partial mathematical models. Assessment of the system. Schumpeter's detailed discussion of historical data in the context of his theory has, of course, led to criticism of his interpretation of particular facts. Also, it has been suggested that his emphasis on the innovating entrepreneur tends to limit his theory to the past. Schumpeter himself felt that reality fitted his three-cycle schema better than his theory warranted, since nothing in his theory required or even suggested any particular regularity of timing. He also felt that he had accomplished his task if he had adequately explained capitalism from the eighteenth century to the early twentieth century, and he apparently agreed that in the future trustdominated capitalism and planned socialism might make his theory obsolete. Many years later Schumpeter wrote that he was "trying to construct a theoretic model of the process of economic change in time, or perhaps more clearly, to answer the question how the economic system generates the force which incessantly transforms it" (Essays, pp. 158-159). Because of this, and despite his own skepticism about the future relevance of his theory, Schumpeter's approach retains its usefulness in underdeveloped as well as in developed countries, and in socialist as well as in market economies. In order for there to be economic development, the Schumpeterian problem of when to introduce a change, when to introduce an investment, must be solved. There is nothing automatic about the introduction of new investments, and planners, in both market and socialist economies, must think like Schumpeterian entrepreneurs if their plans are to lead to self-sustaining growth. If a theory is understood to be a collection of formulas that can be applied with a minimum of analysis and thought, then Schumpeter's theory is indeed obsolete. But if it is understood to be a
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view of the economy that enables a policy maker to ask pertinent questions and develop appropriate programs of action, then the relevance of Schumpeter's thought to any changing economy cannot be doubted. Other economic writings Schumpeter's contribution to the history of economics, like his contribution to economic theory, developed over many years. The posthumously published History of Economic Analysis (1954) is an elaboration of his much earlier Economic Doctrine and Method (1914). Both are histories of economic theories, which Schumpeter believed develop in the same manner as do theories in the natural sciences. In other words, economic theories, unlike philosophies, are not self-contained and develop over time in a cumulative fashion. The History of Economic Analysis was published from an unfinished manuscript. It is, by any standard, an outstanding intellectual achievement. While it met with detailed criticism (for example, Schumpeter was charged with having been less than fair to the neoclassical economists), it is, of course, impossible to say to what extent these criticisms would have been avoided if Schumpeter had lived to finish the work. Schumpeter also wrote many articles on monetary theory, relating monetary theory to his general view of development. As early as 1917, when it was not common to do so, he discussed money in relation to national income and economic policy. While he was writing a book on monetary theory, Keynes's Treatise on Money appeared. Schumpeter admired the Treatise and insisted that all his students read it, but he felt that its substance required a complete rewriting of his own work. Sociological writings Schumpeter considered from a sociological point of view a variety of phenomena that others had interpreted in mainly economic terms—imperialism, social classes, taxation, socialism, and even the entrepreneur. He attempted to relate economic phenomena to the larger social context. Thus, for example, he rejected the view that economic explanations can adequately account for the phenomenon of imperialism, which is an "atavism" of social structure and of emotional habits of an individualpsychological nature, and he stressed that any explanation of the entrepreneur must include the social and political conditions necessary for him to fulfill his functions. Schumpeter brought together his sociological and economic analyses primarily in Capitalism,
Socialism, and Democracy (1942), a work remarkable for its style as well as for its vision. Essential to his argument is his analysis of Marxian doctrine. Schumpeter did not think that capitalism shows the inherent contradictions that Marx claimed would lead to the immiserization of the masses and to revolution; nor does capitalism per se lead to imperialistic adventures or to wars. But he sympathized with the Marxian idea that the achievements of capitalism, which Marx himself had praised so highly, have their own inherent logic: because capitalism has a historic function to perform, it will come to an end as the function disappears. Socialism is possible, perhaps even inevitable, but what Schumpeter meant by socialism is different from what is commonly understood by the term. Socialism is denned by Schumpeter as "an institutional pattern in which the control over means of production and over production itself is vested with a central authority—or, as we may say, in which, as a matter of principle, the economic affairs of society belong to the public and not to the private sphere" (1942, p. 167). This is quite consistent with the fact that "some freedom of action must be left, and almost any amount of freedom might be left, to the 'men on the spot,' say, the managers of the individual industries or plants" (p. 168). It is noteworthy that the definition does not necessarily include ownership of the means of production. Schumpeter made short shrift of the numerous reasons that have been adduced to prove the approaching collapse of capitalism. He argued that capitalism cannot be even approximately identified with perfect competition and, therefore, to criticize it for monopolistic practices or for temporary recessions misses the point. "Capitalism . . . is by nature a form or method of economic change and not only never is but never can be stationary" (1942, p. 82), and most criticism overlooks this essential fact. The Achilles' heel of capitalism lies elsewhere, namely in its achievements. The very success of capitalism will bring about its doom for two reasons : as societies grow richer, and production and productivity increase spectacularly, the need for further growth and for the specific contribution of the entrepreneur will disappear. Administrators can deal with what will become essentially routine problems, and the desiderata of economic life will shift. At the same time, the successes of capitalism will lead to an increasingly hostile intellectual environment, to a trahison des clercs, in which entrepreneurs will find it increasingly difficult to fulfill
SCHUMPETER, JOSEPH A. their essential function. Schumpeter was also prepared to consider that the process of innovation might itself become more and more routine. He foresaw the eventual triumph of socialism, but he thought its chances for success and indeed its relevance negligible in precisely those situations where most people believed (and still believe) it necessary—to make poor economies grow. Economically, capitalism has performed miracles, and in another fifty to one hundred years it will have created such a powerful productive machine as to eliminate poverty. (Indeed, Schumpeter's own projections—in Chapter 5—have already been far surpassed.) Culturally, capitalism has brought about the spread of a rational and pacific view of the world: "Modern mathematicoexperimental science developed . . . not only along with the social process usually referred to as the Rise of Capitalism, but also outside . . . of scholastic thought and in the face of its contemptuous hostility" (1942, p. 124). The same is true of painting and literature. Schumpeter also discussed the problem of the transition to socialism. The socialism that can work is one that comes "in the fullness of time," when the problem of poverty has been solved by the preceding creation of a powerful productive economy. Schumpeter believed that he and Marx were basically in agreement on this point: Evolution was for him [Marx] the parent of socialism. He was much too strongly imbued with a sense of the inherent logic of things social to believe that revolution can replace any part of the work of evolution. . . . The Marxian revolution therefore differs entirely, in nature and in function, from the revolutions both of the bourgeois radical and of the socialist conspirator. It is essentially revolution in the fullness of time. . . . To say that Marx, stripped of phrases, admits of interpretation in a conservative sense is only saying that he can be taken seriously. (1942, p. 58)
If socialism is built on a powerful productive economy, then the problems of transition will be negligible; if this condition does not obtain, these problems of transition may jeopardize the success of socialism. Schumpeter also considered the rationality of socialist decision making, first discussed by Enrico Barone in 1905, and the human problems involved. .According to Schumpeter, socialism can be run on democratic lines. His definition of democracy may not, however, command general assent—an "institutional arrangement for arriving at political decisions in which individuals acquire the power to decide by means of a competitive struggle for the people's vote" (p. 269). What will actually
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happen will depend on many accidents as well as on the inherent logic of social (including economic) evolution: ". . . there is little reason to believe that. . . socialism will mean the advent of the civilization of which orthodox socialists dream. It is much more likely to present fascist features. That would be a strange answer to Marx's prayer. But history sometimes indulges in jokes of questionable taste" (p. 375). It is difficult to present Schumpeter's thought in a brief form: its complexity is such that the many pages Schumpeter himself devoted to it are entirely necessary. This complexity might have prevented the development of a Schumpeter school, even if he himself had not actively discouraged its formation. Moreover, it is not easy to locate Schumpeter in a history of economic analysis: although he was an Austrian by birth and training, he was not an "Austrian" economist. He belongs to that recent trend in economics that is characterized by an absence of schools of economic thought, though not of good economists. The economists Schumpeter himself trained will never put reality into the straitjacket of any particular theory; they will be able to use any logical theory while remaining conscious of the variety and uniqueness of the real social and economic problems. WOLFGANG F. STOLPER [See also BUSINESS CYCLES; CAPITALISM; ECONOMIC THOUGHT, article on THE AUSTRIAN SCHOOL; ENTREPRENEURSHIP; and the biographies of BOHMBAWERK; CLARK, JOHN BATES; EDGEWORTH; MARX; WALRAS; WIESER.] WORKS BY SCHUMPETER Das Wesen und der Hauptinhalt der theoretischen N ationalokonomie. Leipzig: Duncker & Humblot. (1912) 1934 The Theory of Economic Development: An Inquiry Into Profits, Capital, Credit, Interest, and the Business Cycle. Harvard Economic Studies, Vol. 46. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Univ. Press. -» First published as Theorie der wirtschaftlichen Entwicklung. (1914) 1954 Economic Doctrine and Method: An Historical Sketch. London: Allen & Unwin. -» First published as Epochen der Dogmen- und Methodengeschichte. (1918) 1954 The Crisis of the Tax State. International Economic Papers 4:5-38. -> First published as Die Krise des Steuerstaats. (1919-1927) 1951 Imperialism and Social Classes. New York: Kelley. -» First published as "Zur Soziologie der Imperialismen" (1919) and "Die sozialen Klassen im ethnisch homogenen Milieu" (1927). A paperback edition was published in 1955 by Meridian. 1939 Business Cycles: A Theoretical, Historical, and Statistical Analysis of the Capitalist Process. 2 vols. New .York and London: McGraw-Hill. -» An abridged version was published in 1964. 1908
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(1942) 1950 Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy. 3d ed. New York: Harper; London: Allen & Unwin. -» A paperback edition was published by Harper in 1962. (1954) 1964 History of Economic Analysis. Edited by E. B. Schumpeter. New York: Oxford Univ. Press. -» Published posthumously. Aufsdtze zur okonomischen Theorie. Edited by Arthur Spiethoff and Erich Schneider. Tubingen (Germany): Mohr, 1952. Aufsdtze zur Soziologie. Edited by Arthur Spiethoff and Erich Schneider. Tubingen (Germany): Mohr, 1953. Dogmenhistorische und biographische Aufsdtze. Edited by Arthur Spiethoff and Erich Schneider. Tubingen (Germany): Mohr, 1954. Essays. Edited by Richard V. Clemence. Cambridge, Mass.: Addison-Wesley, 1951. -> Contains essays first published between 1909 and 1950. Ten Great Economists: From Marx to Keynes. New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1951. -» Contains essays first published between 1910 and 1950. A paperback edition was published in 1965. SUPPLEMENTARY BIBLIOGRAPHY HABERLER, GOTTFRIED 1950 Joseph Alois Schumpeter: 1883-1950. Quarterly Journal of Economics 64:333372. HABERLER, GOTTFRIED 1951 J. A. Schumpeter, 18831950. Pages 24-47 in S. E. Harris (editor), Schumpeter: Social Scientist. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Univ. Press. HARRIS, SEYMOUR E. (editor) 1951 Schumpeter: Social Scientist. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Univ. Press. KESSLER, MARTIN 1961 The Synthetic Vision of Joseph Schumpeter. Review of Politics 23:334-355. SCHUMPETER, ELIZABETH B. 1950 Bibliography of the Writings of Joseph A. Schumpeter. Quarterly Journal of Economics 64:373-384. SMITHIES, A. 1951 Memorial: J. A. Schumpeter, 18831950. Pages 11-23 in S. E. Harris (editor), Schumpeter: Social Scientist. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Univ. Press. SPIETHOFF, ARTHUR 1949 Josef Schumpeter: In Memoriam. Kyklos 3:289-293. -» Dated 1949, but published after Schumpeter's death in 1950. WRIGHT, DAVID McCoRD 1950 Schumpeter and Keynes. Weltwirtschaftliches Archiv 65, no. 2:185-196.
SCHUTZ, ALFRED Alfred Schutz (1899-1959) was born in Austria, studied at the University of Vienna, and from 1939 until his death lived in New York City, where he was professor of philosophy and sociology at the New School for Social Research. His principal philosophical work consisted of the application of Edmund Husserl's phenomenology to the problems of social reality, while his major methodological contribution was an attempt to relate phenomenological concepts to the sociology of Max Weber. He believed that the cardinal problem for the social sciences is the study of the world of daily life, of the common-sense reality that each individual shares with his fellow men in a taken-for-granted
manner, and both his major intellectual efforts focused on this problem. As Schutz saw it, the task of the phenomenological philosopher concerned with social reality is to uncover, describe, and analyze the essential features of this mundane world; and consequently all of his writings, beginning with The Phenomenology of the Social World (1932), take the reality of everyday life as a point of departure and as a subject for detailed examination. For Schutz, the world of common-sense reality rests on certain basic epistemological presuppositions: that the mundane world exists, that man and his fellows exist in that world, and that man can communicate with Others. In daily life, men take for granted the reality of their experience: they assume, naively, that they share the same world with all other "normal" perceivers; and they assume that were they to change places with Others, they would see the world in essentially the same way the Others do. Upon analysis, it is found that these fundamental presuppositions imply a number of structural characteristics. (1) The "biographical situation" of the individual depends on his particular location in the social world as he himself defines it and as he interprets that location in terms of his previous experiences. The biographical situation is unique to the individual, although it includes typical features he does share with Others. (2) Commonsense man possesses a "stock of knowledge at hand." It includes elements handed down to him by Others, parents and teachers among them, and it is in a typically organized form. This knowledge is accepted without question as generally valid, though it is always potentially questionable. (3) The spatial coordinates of "here and there" are essential features of the social matrix by which the individual locates himself. The individual's own body is the reference point in terms of which he locates himself as "here" and the Other as "there." (4) The "alter ego" is given to the individual as a being like himself in a mundane world. Moreover, the Other exists simultaneously with the self, his thought is grasped in a vivid present, and alter ego's speech and the individual's listening coexist in a relationship that is the essence of intersubjectivity. (5) Ego's world, as an intersubjective social reality, includes alter egos with different temporal and spatial characteristics: predecessors, or those who lived before him and are known to him through report; contemporaries, who share the same temporal world; consociates, or those who are alive at the same time and who also share ego's spatial segment of the world through face-to-
SCHUTZ, ALFRED face relationships; successors, who will live after he dies, including those who will be born only after he is dead. The social world is as much constituted by consciousness of predecessors and successors as it is by contemporaries and consociates. To explain the structural relationships that hold among all of these aspects of social order, a theory of social action is necessary. Schutz distinguished between "action" and "act." Action is understood as purposive conduct projected by the actor; an act is denned as accomplished action. Action has a subjective form as well as an objective form: purposively refraining from doing something is no less action than overtly behaving in one way or another. What is of decisive importance to Schutz's conception of action is his view that action is grounded in the interpretative consciousness of the actor. It is at this point that Schutz turned to Weber, in particular to his conception of interpretative understanding (Verstehen^ and to his postulate of the subjective interpretation of meaning. To understand social action is to grasp the meaning which the actor gives to or bestows upon his action, to comprehend what that action means to him. The "subjective" interpretation of meaning signified for Weber what the actor means by his action, not, as Schutz stressed, some private idiosyncratic and unverifiable domain. In Schutz's adaptation of Weber, subjective interpretation of meaning appears primarily as a fundamental typification of the common-sense world. All men in mundane life, then, practice Verstehen, but there is a distinction between Verstehen (1) as an experiential form of commonsense knowledge, (2) as an epistemological problem, and (3) as a distinctive method of the social sciences. Schutz believed that it was the great merit of such men as Durkheim, Pareto, Marshall, and Veblen, and above all of Weber, to have developed the technique that "consists in replacing the human beings which the social scientist observes as an actor on the social stage by puppets created by himself, in other words, in constructing ideal types of actors" (Collected Papers, vol. 2, p. 17). The social scientist, according to Schutz, proceeds as follows: [He] observes certain events within the social world as caused by human activity and he begins to establish a type of such events. Afterwards he coordinates with these typical acts typical because motives and in-order-to motives which he assumes as invariable in the mind of an imaginary actor. Thus he constructs a personal ideal type, which means the model of an actor whom he imagines gifted with a consciousness. . . . The social scientist places these constructed types in
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a setting which contains all the elements of the situation in the social world relevant for the performance of the typical act under inquiry. Moreover, he associates with him other personal ideal types with motives apt to provoke typical reactions to the first ideal type's typical act. So he arrives at a model of the social world, or better at a reconstruction of it. (ibid., pp. 17-18) Action is never an isolated phenomenon; it has its phenomenological "horizons" of relevance and relatedness to social reality, and it has its "motivation." As already noted, typical acts have two kinds of motives, "in-order-to" motives and "because" motives. The first are explained in terms of the actor's goals and ends; the second, in terms of his background and disposition. The in-order-to motive is "the future state of affairs to be realized by the projected action," and the project itself is determined by the because motive, which in turn is dominated by the past tense. Other people's acts can be fully understood only insofar as their because and in-order-to motives are known, but since this is impossible, it must suffice to know their typical motives, including their reference to typical situations, typical ends, typical means, etc. (ibid., pp. 11-12). The temporal disequilibrium between the two orders of motive suggests a larger problem in the conception of the ego. According to Schutz, the ego cannot seize its own immediacy; it can capture itself only as an object of a reflexive act. Schutz here came close to George H. Mead's distinction between the "I" and "me" aspects of the self. He pointed, however, to a larger implication of the distinction, for man is understood as a being who presents himself to Others, takes his place in the social world, and, finally, knows himself only in a partial and fragmentary way. Such fragmentation is itself a primordial typification of reality. Schutz's philosophical position has significance for the choice of models to be used in the social sciences, and it suggests, in particular, that the use of natural science models is not satisfactory. He believed that the natural and social sciences differ qualitatively: the natural sciences investigate objects that are constructs of the first degree, i.e., objects in the field of the scientific observer; the social sciences are properly concerned with second-degree constructs, i.e., objects that not only are themselves in a world but that also have a world. The human beings who are the central concern of the social scientist are interpreters of their own lives and actions. The task of the social scientist is to comprehend the world of daily life (Lebenswelt) from which these lives derive their significance, and the phenomenological approach
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—its concern with essential structure, with founding relationships, with "sedimentation" of meaning, and with the uncovering of root presuppositions— provides the means by which social science may reconstruct mundane reality. At the same time, the use of Verstehen and of the subjective interpretation of meaning may lead to valid knowledge. Although Schutz's work is profoundly indebted to Husserl and Max Weber, it has affinities with that of other European thinkers, Henri Bergson and Georg Simmel in particular. In the AngloAmerican tradition, Schutz found the thought of Santayana, Whitehead, and James especially congenial. The sociologists who influenced him the most were Cooley, Thomas, and Mead. All these men stressed the activity of the actor and his action in relation to the experiential world. It was Schutz's distinctive achievement to develop these intellectual orientations by centering on the paradigm of action instead of the traditional theme of perception and by approaching both actor and action by way of the typifications of common-sense life. In the last decade, Schutz's work has aroused increasing interest among both philosophers and social scientists in the implications of phenomenology for a humanistic sociology and a theory of man. MAURICE NATANSON [See also KNOWLEDGE, SOCIOLOGY OF; SOCIAL STRUCTURE, article on SOCIAL STRUCTURAL ANALYSIS; VERSTEHEN; and the biographies of COOLEY; HUSSERL; MEAD; SIMMEL; THOMAS; WEBER, MAX.] WORKS BY SCHUTZ (1932) 1967 The Phenomenology of the Social World. Evanston, 111.: Northwestern University Press. Collected Papers. 3 vols. The Hague: Nijhoff, 1962-1965. -> Volume I : The Problem of Social Reality. Volume 2: Studies in Social Theory. Volume 3: Studies in Phenomenological Philosophy. SUPPLEMENTARY
BIBLIOGRAPHY
BERGER, PETER; and LUCKMANN, THOMAS 1966 The Social Construction of Reality: A Treatise in the Sociology of Knowledge. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday. GURWITSCH, ARON (1957)1965 The Field of Consciousness. Pittsburgh: Duquesne Univ. Press. -» First published in French. NATANSON, MAURICE (editor) 1963 Philosophy of the Social Sciences: A Reader. New York: Random House. NATANSON, MAURICE 1966 The Phenomenology of Alfred Schutz. Inquiry 9:147-155. SPIEGELBERG, HERBERT (1960) 1965 The Phenomenological Movement: A Historical Introduction. 2d ed. 2 vols. Phaenomenologica, Vols. 5-6. The Hague: Nijhoff. STONIER, ALFRED; and BODE, KARL 1937 A New Approach to the Methodology of the Social Sciences. Economica New Series 4:406-424. ZANER, RICHARD M. 1961 Theory of Intersubjectivity: Alfred Schutz. SociaZ Research 28:71-93.
SCIENCE i. ii. in. iv.
THE HISTORY OF SCIENCE THE PHILOSOPHY OF SCIENCE THE SOCIOLOGY OF SCIENCE SCIENCE-GOVERNMENT RELATIONS v. SCIENTISTS vi. SCIENTIFIC COMMUNICATION
Thomas S. Kuhn Michael Scriven Bernard Barber Don K. Price Warren O. Hagstrom Norman Kaplan and Norman W. Storer
THE HISTORY OF SCIENCE
As an independent professional discipline, the history of science is a new field still emerging from a long and varied prehistory. Only since 1950, and initially only in the United States, has the majority of even its youngest practitioners been trained for, or committed to, a full-time scholarly career in the field. From their predecessors, most of whom were historians only by avocation and thus derived their goals and values principally from some other field, this younger generation inherits a constellation of sometimes irreconcilable objectives. The resulting tensions, though they have relaxed with increasing maturation of the profession, are still perceptible, particularly in the varied primary audiences to which the literature of the history of science continues to be addressed. Under the circumstances any brief report on development and current state is inevitably more personal and prognostic than for a longer-established profession. Development of the field. Until very recently most of those who wrote the history of science were practicing scientists, sometimes eminent ones. Usually history was for them a by-product of pedagogy. They saw in it, besides intrinsic appeal, a means to elucidate the concepts of their specialty, to establish its tradition, and to attract students. The historical section with which so many technical treatises and monographs still open is contemporary illustration of what was for many centuries the primary form and exclusive source for the history of science. That traditional genre appeared in classical antiquity both in historical sections of technical treatises and in a few independent histories of the most developed ancient sciences, astronomy and mathematics. Similar works—together with a growing body of heroic biography—had a continuous history from the Renaissance through the eighteenth century, when their production was much stimulated by the Enlightenment's vision of science as at once the source and the exemplar of progress. From the last fifty years of that period come the earliest historical studies that are sometimes still used as such, among them the historical narratives embedded in
SCIENCE: The History of Science the technical works of Lagrange (mathematics) as well as the imposing separate treatises by Montucla (mathematics and physical science), Priestley (electricity and optics), and Delambre (astronomy). In the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, though alternative approaches had begun to develop, scientists continued to produce both occasional biographies and magistral histories of their own specialties, for example, Kopp (chemistry), Poggendorff (physics), Sachs (botany), Zittel and Geikie (geology), and Klein (mathematics ). A second main historiographic tradition, occasionally indistinguishable from the first, was more explicitly philosophical in its objectives. Early in the seventeenth century Francis Bacon proclaimed the utility of histories of learning to those who would discover the nature and proper use of human reason. Condorcet and Comte are only the most famous of the philosophically inclined writers who, following Bacon's lead, attempted to base normative descriptions of true rationality on historical surveys of Western scientific thought. Before the nineteenth century this tradition remained predominantly programmatic, producing little significant historical research. But then, particularly in the writings of Whewell, Mach, and Duhem, philosophical concerns became a primary motive for creative activity in the history of science, and they have remained important since. Both of these historiographic traditions, particularly when controlled by the textual-critical techniques of nineteenth-century German political history, produced occasional monuments of scholarship, which the contemporary historian ignores at his peril. But they simultaneously reinforced a concept of the field that has today been largely rejected by the nascent profession. The objective of these older histories of science was to clarify and deepen an understanding of contemporary scientific methods or concepts by displaying their evolution. Committed to such goals, the historian characteristically chose a single established science or branch of science—one whose status as sound knowledge could scarcely be doubted—and described when, where, and how the elements that in his day constituted its subject matter and presumptive method had come into being. Observations, laws, or theories which contemporary science had set aside as error or irrelevancy were seldom considered unless they pointed a methodological moral or explained a prolonged period of apparent sterility. Similar selective principles governed discussion of factors external to science. Religion, seen as a hindrance, and technology, seen as an occasional prerequisite to advance in instrumenta-
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tion, were almost the only such factors which received attention. The outcome of this approach has recently been brilliantly parodied by the philosopher Joseph Agassi. Until the early nineteenth century, of course, characteristics very much like these typified most historical writing. The romantics' passion for distant times and places had to combine with the scholarly standards of Biblical criticism before even general historians could be brought to recognize the interest and integrity of value systems other than their own. (The nineteenth century is, for example, the period when the Middle Ages were first observed to have a history.) That transformation of sensibility which most contemporary historians would suppose essential to their field was not, however, at once reflected in the history of science. Though they agreed about nothing else, both the romantic and the scientist-historian continued to view the development of science as a quasi-mechanical march of the intellect, the successive surrender of nature's secrets to sound methods skillfully deployed. Only in this century have historians of science gradually learned to see their subject matter as something different from a chronology of accumulating positive achievement in a technical specialty defined by hindsight. A number of factors contributed to this change. Probably the most important was the influence, beginning in the late nineteenth century, of the history of philosophy. In that field only the most partisan could feel confident of his ability to distinguish positive knowledge from error and superstition. Dealing with ideas that had since lost their appeal, the historian could scarcely escape the force of an injunction which Bertrand RusseJl later phrased succinctly: "In studying a philosopher, the right attitude is neither reverence nor contempt, but first a kind of hypothetical sympathy, until it is 'possible to know what it feels like to believe in his theories." That attitude toward past thinkers came to the history of science from philosophy. Partly it was learned from men like Lange and Cassirer who dealt historically with people or ideas that were also important for scientific development. (Burtt's Metaphysical Foundations of Modern Physical Science and Lovejoy's Great Chain of Being were, in this respect, especially influential.) And partly it was learned from a small group of Neo-Kantian epistemologists, particularly Brunschvicg and Meyerson, whose search for quasi-absolute categories of thought in older scientific ideas produced brilliant genetic analyses of concepts which the main tradition in the history of science had misunderstood or dismissed. These lessons were reinforced by another deci-
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sive event in the emergence of the contemporary profession. Almost a century after the Middle Ages had become important to the general historian, Pierre Duhem's search for the sources of modern science disclosed a tradition of medieval physical thought which, in contrast to Aristotle's physics, could not be denied an essential role in the transformation of physical theory that occurred in the seventeenth century. Too many of the elements of Galileo's physics and method were to be found there. But it was not possible, either, to assimilate it quite to Galileo's physics and to that of Newton, leaving the structure of the so-called Scientific Revolution unchanged but extending it greatly in time. The essential novelties of seventeenth-century science would be understood only if medieval science were explored first on its own terms and then as the base from which the "New Science" sprang. More than any other, that challenge has shaped the modern historiography of science. The writings which it has evoked since 1920, particularly those of E. J. Dijksterhuis, Anneliese Maier, and especially Alexandre Koyre, are the models which many contemporaries aim to emulate. In addition, the discovery of medieval science and its Renaissance role has disclosed an area in which the history of science can and must be integrated with more traditional types of history. That task has barely begun, but the pioneering synthesis by Butterfield and the special studies by Panofsky and Frances Yates mark a path which will surely be broadened and followed. A third factor in the formation of the modern historiography of science has been a repeated insistence that the student of scientific development concern himself with positive knowledge as a whole and that general histories of science replace histories of special sciences. Traceable as a program to Bacon, and more particularly to Comte, that demand scarcely influenced scholarly performance before the beginning of this century, when it was forcefully reiterated by the universally venerated Paul Tannery and then put to practice in the monumental researches of George Sarton. Subsequent experience has suggested that the sciences are not, in fact, all of a piece and that even the superhuman erudition required for a general history of science could scarcely tailor their joint evolution to a coherent narrative. But the attempt has been crucial, for it has highlighted the impossibility of attributing to the past the divisions of knowledge embodied in contemporary science curricula. Today, as historians increasingly turn back to the detailed investigation of individual branches of science, they study fields which actually existed
in the periods that concern them, and they do so with an awareness of the state of other sciences at the time. Still more recently, one other set of influences has begun to shape contemporary work in the history of science. Its result is an increased concern, deriving partly from general history and partly from German sociology and Marxist historiography, with the role of nonintellectual, particularly institutional and socioeconomic, factors in scientific development. Unlike the ones discussed above, however, these influences and the works responsive to them have to date scarcely been assimilated by the emerging profession. For all its novelties, the new historiography is still directed predominantly to the evolution of scientific ideas and of the tools (mathematical, observational, and experimental) through which these interact with each other and with nature. Its best practitioners have, like Koyre, usually minimized the importance of nonintellectual aspects of culture to the historical developments they consider. A few have acted as though the obtrusion of economic or institutional considerations into the history of science would be a denial of the integrity of science itself. As a result, there seem at times to be two distinct sorts of history of science, occasionally appearing between the same covers but rarely making firm or fruitful contact. The still dominant form, often called the "internal approach," is concerned with the substance of science as knowledge. Its newer rival, often called the "external approach," is concerned with the activity of scientists as a social group within a larger culture. Putting the two together is perhaps the greatest challenge now faced by the profession, and there are increasing signs of a response. Nevertheless, any survey of the field's present state must unfortunately still treat the two as virtually separate enterprises. Internal history. What are the maxims of the new internal historiography? Insofar as possible (it is never entirely so, nor could history be written if it were), the historian should set aside the science that he knows. His science should be learned from the textbooks and journals of the period he studies, and he should master these and the indigenous traditions they display before grappling with innovators whose discoveries or inventions changed the direction of scientific advance. Dealing with innovators, the historian should try to think as they did. Recognizing that scientists are often famous for results they did not intend, he should ask what problems his subject worked at and how these became problems for him. Recognizing that a historic discovery is rarely
SCIENCE: The History of Science quite the one attributed to its author in later textbooks (pedagogic goals inevitably transform a narrative), the historian should ask what his subject thought he had discovered and what he took the basis of that discovery to be. And in this process of reconstruction the historian should pay particular attention to his subject's apparent errors, not for their own sake but because they reveal far more of the mind at work than do the passages in which a scientist seems to record a result or an argument that modern science still retains. For at least thirty years the attitudes which these maxims are designed to display have increasingly guided the best interpretive scholarship in the history of science, and it is with scholarship of that sort that this article is predominantly concerned. (There are other types, of course, though the distinction is not sharp, and much of the most worthwhile effort of historians of science is devoted to them. But this is not the place to consider work like that of, say, Needham, Neugebauer, and Thorndike, whose indispensable contribution has been to establish and make accessible texts and traditions previously known only through myth.) Nevertheless, the subject matter is immense; there have been few professional historians of science (in 1950 scarcely more than half a dozen in the United States); and their choice of topic has been far from random. There remain vast areas for which not even the basic developmental lines are clear. Probably because of their special prestige, physics, chemistry, and astronomy dominate the historical literature of science. But even in these fields effort has been unevenly distributed, particularly in this century. Because they sought contemporary knowledge in the past, the nineteenth-century scientist-historians compiled surveys which often ranged from antiquity to their own day or close to it. In the twentieth century a few scientists, like Dugas, Jammer, Partington, Truesdell, and Whittaker, have written from a similar viewpoint, and some of their surveys carry the history of special fields close to the present. But few practitioners of the most developed sciences still write histories, and the members of the emerging profession have up to this time been far more systematically and narrowly selective, with a number of unfortunate consequences. The deep and sympathetic immersion in the sources which their work demands virtually prohibits wide-ranging surveys, at least until more of the field has been examined in depth. Starting with a clean slate, as they at least feel they are, this group naturally tries first to establish the early phases of a science's development,
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and few get beyond that point. Besides, until the last few years almost no member of the new group has had sufficient command of the science (particularly mathematics, usually the decisive hurdle) to become a vicarious participant in the more recent research of the technically most developed disciplines. As a result, though the situation is now changing rapidly with the entry both of more and of better-prepared people into the field, the recent literature of the history of science tends to end at the point where the technical source materials cease to be accessible to a man with elementary college scientific training. There are fine studies of mathematics to Leibniz (Boyer, Michel); of astronomy and mechanics to Newton (Clagett, Costabel, Dijksterhuis, Koyre, and Maier), of electricity to Coulomb (Cohen), and of chemistry to Dalton (Boas, Crosland, Daumas, Guerlac, Metzger). But almost no work within the new tradition has as yet been published on the mathematical physical science of the eighteenth century or on any physical science in the nineteenth. For the biological and earth sciences, the literature is even less well developed, partly because only those subspecialties which, like physiology, relate closely to medicine had achieved professional status before the late nineteenth century. There are few of the older surveys by scientists, and the members of the new profession are only now beginning in any number to explore these fields. In biology at least there is prospect of rapid change, but up to this point the only areas much studied are nineteenth-century Darwinism and the anatomy and physiology of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. On the second of these topics, however, the best of the book-length studies (e.g., O'Malley and Singer) deal usually with special problems and persons and thus scarcely display an evolving scientific tradition. The literature on evolution, in the absence of adequate histories of the technical specialties which provided Darwin with both data and problems, is written at a level of philosophical generality which makes it hard to see how his Origin of Species could have been a major achievement, much less an achievement in the sciences. Dupree's model study of the botanist Asa Gray is among the few noteworthy exceptions. As yet the new historiography has not touched the social sciences. In these fields the historical literature, where it exists, has been produced entirely by practitioners of the science concerned, Boring's History of Experimental Psychology being perhaps the outstanding example. Like the older histories of the physical sciences, this literature is
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often indispensable, but as history it shares their limitations. (The situation is typical for relatively new sciences: practitioners in these fields are ordinarily expected to know about the development of their specialties, which thus regularly acquire a quasi-official history; thereafter something very like Gresham's law applies.) This area therefore offers particular opportunities both to the historian of science and, even more, to the general intellectual or social historian, whose background is often especially appropriate to the demands of these fields. The preliminary publications of Stocking on the history of American anthropology provide a particularly fruitful example of the perspective which the general historian can apply to a scientific field whose concepts and vocabulary have only very recently become esoteric. External history. Attempts to set science in a cultural context which might enhance understanding both of its development and of its effects have taken three characteristic forms, of which the oldest is the study of scientific institutions. Bishop Sprat prepared his pioneering history of the Royal Society of London almost before that organization had received its first charter, and there have since been innumerable in-house histories of individual scientific societies. These books are, however, useful principally as source materials for the historian, and only in this century have students of scientific development started to make use of them. Simultaneously they have begun seriously to examine the other types of institutions, particularly educational, which may promote or inhibit scientific advance. As elsewhere in the history of science, most of the literature on institutions deals with the seventeenth century. The best of it is scattered through periodicals (the once standard book-length accounts are regrettably out-of-date) from which it can be retrieved, together with much else concerning the history of science, through the annual "Critical Bibliography" of the journal Isis and through the quarterly Bulletin signaletique of the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, Paris. Guerlac's classic study on the professionalization of French chemistry, Schofield's history of the Lunar Society, and a recent collaborative volume (Taton) on scientific education in France are among the very few works on eighteenth-century scientific institutions. For the nineteenth, only Cardwell's study of England, Dupree's of the United States, and Vucinich's of Russia begin to replace the fragmentary but immensely suggestive remarks scattered, often in footnotes, through the first volume of Merz's History of European Thought in the Nineteenth Century.
Intellectual historians have frequently considered the impact of science on various aspects of Western thought, particularly during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. For the period since 1700, however, these studies are peculiarly unsatisfying insofar as they aim to demonstrate the influence, and not merely the prestige, of science. The name of a Bacon, a Newton, or a Darwin is a potent symbol: there are many reasons to invoke it besides recording a substantive debt. And the recognition of isolated conceptual parallels, e.g., between the forces that keep a planet in its orbit and the system of checks and balances in the U.S. constitution, more often demonstrates interpretive ingenuity than the influence of science on other areas of life. No doubt scientific concepts, particularly those of broad scope, do help to change extrascientific ideas. But the analysis of their role in producing this kind of change demands immersion in the literature of science. The older historiography of science does not, by its nature, supply what is needed, and the new historiography is too recent and its products too fragmentary to have had much effect. Though the gap seems small, there is no chasm that more needs bridging than that between the historian of ideas and the historian of science. Fortunately there are a few works to point the way. Among the more recent are Nicolson's pioneering studies of science in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century literature, Westfall's discussion of natural religion, Gillispie's chapter on science in the Enlightenment, and Roger's monumental survey of the role of the life sciences in eighteenth-century French thought. The concern with institutions and that with ideas merge naturally in a third approach to scientific development. This is the study of science in a geographical area too small to permit concentration on the evolution of any particular technical specialty but sufficiently homogeneous to enhance an understanding of science's social role and setting. Of all the types of external history, this is the newest and most revealing, for it calls forth the widest range of historical and sociological experience and skill. The small but rapidly growing literature on science in America (Dupree, Hindle, Shryock) is a prominent example of this approach, and there is promise that current studies of science in the French Revolution may yield similar illumination. Merz, Lilley, and Ben-David point to aspects of the nineteenth century on which much similar effort must be expended. The topic which has, however, evoked the greatest activity and attention is the development of science in seventeenth-century England. Because it has become the
SCIENCE: The History of Science center of vociferous debate both about the origin of modern science and about the nature of the history of science, this literature is an appropriate focus for separate discussion. Here it stands for a type of research: the problems it presents will provide perspective on the relations between the internal and external approaches to the history of science. The Merton thesis. The most visible issue in the debate about seventeenth-century science has been the so-called Merton thesis, really two overlapping theses with distinguishable sources. Both aim ultimately to account for the special productiveness of seventeenth-century science by correlating its novel goals and values—summarized in the program of Bacon and his followers—with other aspects of contemporary society. The first, which owes something to Marxist historiography, emphasizes the extent to which the Baconians hoped to learn from the practical arts and in turn to make science useful. Repeatedly they studied the techniques of contemporary craftsmen—glassmakers, metallurgists, mariners, and the like—and many also devoted at least a portion of their attention to pressing practical problems of the day, e.g., those of navigation, land drainage, and deforestation. The new problems, data, and methods fostered by these novel concerns are, Merton supposes, a principal reason for the substantive transformation experienced by a number of sciences during the seventeenth century. The second thesis points to the same novelties of the period but looks to Puritanism as their primary stimulant. (There need be no conflict. Max Weber, whose pioneering suggestion Merton was investigating, had argued that Puritanism helped to legitimize a concern with technology and the useful arts.) The values of settled Puritan communities—for example, an emphasis upon justification through works and on direct communion with God through nature—are said to have fostered both the concern with science and the empirical, instrumental, and utilitarian tone which characterized it during the seventeenth century. Both of these theses have since been extended and also attacked with vehemence, but no consensus has emerged. (An important confrontation, centering on papers by Hall and de Santillana, appears in the symposium of the Institute for the History of Science edited by Clagett; Zilsei's pioneering paper on William Gilbert can be found in the collection of relevant articles from the Journal of the History of Ideas edited by Wiener and Noland. Most of the rest of the literature, which is voluminous, can be traced through the
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footnotes in a recently published controversy over the work of Christopher Hill.) In this literature the most persistent criticisms are those directed to Merton's definition and application of the label "Puritan," and it now seems clear that no term so narrowly doctrinal in its implications will serve. Difficulties of this sort can surely be eliminated, however, for the Baconian ideology was neither restricted to scientists nor uniformly spread through all classes and areas of Europe. Merton's label may be inadequate, but there is no doubt that the phenomenon he describes did exist. The more significant arguments against his position are the residual ones which derive from the recent transformation in the history of science. Merton's image of the Scientific Revolution, though long-standing, was rapidly being discredited as he wrote, particularly in the role it attributed to the Baconian movement. Participants in the older historiographic tradition did sometimes declare that science as they conceived it owed nothing to economic values or religious doctrine. Nevertheless, Merton's emphases on the importance of manual work, experimentation, and the direct confrontation with nature were familiar and congenial to them. The new generation of historians, in contrast, claims to have shown that the radical sixteenth- and seventeenthcentury revisions of astronomy, mathematics, mechanics, and even optics owed very little to new instruments, experiments, or observations. Galileo's primary method, they argue, was the traditional thought experiment of scholastic science brought to a new perfection. Bacon's naive and ambitious program was an impotent delusion from the start. The attempts to be useful failed consistently; the mountains of data provided by new instruments were of little assistance in the transformation of existing scientific theory. If cultural novelties are required to explain why men like Galileo, Descartes, and Newton were suddenly able to see wellknown phenomena in a new way, those novelties are predominantly intellectual and include Renaissance Neoplatonism, the revival of ancient atomism, and the rediscovery of Archimedes. Such intellectual currents were, however, at least as prevalent and productive in Roman Catholic Italy and France as in Puritan circles in Britain or Holland. And nowhere in Europe, where these currents were stronger among courtiers than among craftsmen, do they display a significant debt to technology. If Merton were right, the new image of the Scientific Revolution would apparently be wrong. In their more detailed and careful versions,
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which include essential qualification, these arguments are entirely convincing, up to a point. The men who transformed scientific theory during the seventeenth century sometimes talked like Baconians, but it has yet to be shown that the ideology which a number of them embraced had a major effect, substantive or methodological, on their central contributions to science. Those contributions are best understood as the result of the internal evolution of a cluster of fields which, during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, were pursued with renewed vigor and in a new intellectual milieu. That point, however, can be relevant only to the revision of the Merton thesis, not to its rejection. One aspect of the ferment which historians have regularly labeled "the Scientific Revolution" was a radical programmatic movement centering in England and the Low Countries, though it was also visible for a time in Italy and France. That movement, which even the present form of Merton's argument does make more comprehensible, drastically altered the appeal, the locus, and the nature of much scientific research during the seventeenth century, and the changes have been permanent. Very likely, as contemporary historians argue, none of these novel features played a large role in transforming scientific concepts during the seventeenth century, but historians must learn to deal with them nonetheless. Perhaps the following suggestions, whose more general import will be considered in the next section, may prove helpful. Omitting the biological sciences, for which close ties to medical crafts and institutions dictate a more complex developmental pattern, the main branches of science transformed during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries were astronomy, mathematics, mechanics, and optics. It is their development which makes the Scientific Revolution seem a revolution in concepts. Significantly, however, this cluster of fields consists exclusively of classical sciences. Highly developed in antiquity, they found a place in the medieval university curriculum where several of them were significantly further developed. Their seventeenth-century metamorphosis, in which university-based men continued to play a significant role, can reasonably be portrayed as primarily an extension of an ancient and medieval tradition developing in a new conceptual environment. Only occasionally need one have recourse to the Baconian programmatic movement when explaining the transformation of these fields. By the seventeenth century, however, these were not the only areas of intense scientific activity, and the others—among them the study of electricity
and magnetism, of chemistry, and of thermal phenomena—display a different pattern. As sciences, as fields to be scrutinized .systematically for an increased understanding of nature, they were all novelties during the Scientific Revolution. Their main roots were not in the learned university tradition but often in the established crafts, and they were all critically dependent both on the new program of experimentation and on the new instrumentation which craftsmen often helped to introduce. Except occasionally in medical schools, they rarely found a place in universities before the nineteenth century, and they were meanwhile pursued by amateurs loosely clustered around the new scientific societies that were the institutional manifestation of the Scientific Revolution. Obviously these are the fields, together with the new mode of practice they represent, which a revised Merton thesis may help us understand. Unlike that in the classical sciences, research in these fields added little to man's understanding of nature during the seventeenth century, a fact which has made them easy to ignore when evaluating Merton's viewpoint. But the achievements of the late eighteenth and of the nineteenth centuries will not be comprehensible until they are taken fully into account. The Baconian program, if initially barren of conceptual fruits, nevertheless inaugurated a number of the major modern sciences. Internal and external history. Because they underscore distinctions between the earlier and later stages of a science's evolution, these remarks about the Merton thesis illustrate aspects of scientific development recently discussed in a more general way by Kuhn. Early in the development of a new field, he suggests, social needs and values are a major determinant of the problems on which its practitioners concentrate. Also during this period, the concepts they deploy in solving problems are extensively conditioned by contemporary common sense, by a prevailing philosophical tradition, or by the most prestigious contemporary sciences. The new fields which emerged in the seventeenth century and a number of the modern social sciences provide examples. Kuhn argues, however, that the later evolution of a technical specialty is significantly different in ways at least foreshadowed by the development of the classical sciences during the Scientific Revolution. The practitioners of a mature science are men trained in a sophisticated body of traditional theory and of instrumental, mathematical, and verbal technique. As a result, they constitute a special subculture, one whose members are the exclusive audience for, and judges of, each other's work. The problems on which such
SCIENCE: The History of Science specialists work are no longer presented by the external society but by an internal challenge to increase the scope and precision of the fit between existing theory and nature. And the concepts used to resolve these problems are normally close relatives of those supplied by prior training for the specialty. In short, compared with other professional and creative pursuits, the practitioners of a mature science are effectively insulated from the cultural milieu in which they live their extraprofessional lives. That quite special, though still incomplete, insulation is the presumptive reason why the internal approach to the history of science, conceived as autonomous and self-contained, has seemed so nearly successful. To an extent unparalleled in other fields, the development of an individual technical specialty can be understood without going beyond the literature of that specialty and a few of its near neighbors. Only occasionally need the historian take note of a particular concept, problem, or technique which entered the field from outside. Nevertheless, the apparent autonomy of the internal approach is misleading in essentials, and the passion sometimes expended in its defense has obscured important problems. The insulation of a mature scientific community suggested by Kuhn's analysis is an insulation primarily with respect to concepts and secondarily with respect to problem structure. There are, however, other aspects of scientific advance, such as its timing. These do depend critically on the factors emphasized by the external approach to scientific development. Particularly when the sciences are viewed as an interacting group rather than as a collection of specialties, the cumulative effects of external factors can be decisive. Both the attraction of science as a career and the differential appeal of different fields are, for example, significantly conditioned by factors external to science. Furthermore, since progress in one field is sometimes dependent on the prior development of another, differential growth rates may affect an entire evolutionary pattern. Similar considerations, as noted above, play a major role in the inauguration and initial form of new sciences. In addition, a new technology or some other change in the conditions of society may selectively alter the felt importance of a specialty's problems or even create new ones for it. By doing so they may sometimes accelerate the discovery of areas in which an established theory ought to work but does not, thereby hastening its rejection and replacement by a new one. Occasionally, they may even shape the substance of that new theory
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by ensuring that the crisis to which it responds occurs in one problem area rather than another. Or again, through the crucial intermediary of institutional reform, external conditions may create new channels of communication between previously disparate specialties, thus fostering crossfertilization which would otherwise have been absent or long delayed. There are numerous other ways, including direct subsidy, in which the larger culture impinges on scientific development, but the preceding sketch should sufficiently display a direction in which the history of science must now develop. Though the internal and external approaches to the history of science have a sort of natural autonomy, they are, in fact, complementary concerns. Until they are practiced as such, each drawing from the other, important aspects of scientific development are unlikely to be understood. That mode of practice has hardly yet begun, as the response to the Merton thesis indicates, but perhaps the analytic categories it demands are becoming clear. The relevance of the history of science. Turning in conclusion to the question about which judgments must be the most personal of all, one may ask about the potential harvest to be reaped from the work of this new profession. First and foremost will be more and better histories of science. Like any other scholarly discipline, the field's primary responsibility must be to itself. Increasing signs of its selective impact on other enterprises may, however, justify brief analysis. Among the areas to which the history of science relates, the one least likely to be significantly affected is scientific research itself. Advocates of the history of science have occasionally described their field as a rich repository of forgotten ideas and methods, a few of which might well dissolve contemporary scientific dilemmas. When a new concept or theory is successfully deployed in a science, some previously ignored precedent is usually discovered in the earlier literature of the field. It is natural to wonder whether attention to history might not have accelerated the innovation. Almost certainly, however, the answer is no. The quantity of material to be searched, the absence of appropriate indexing categories, and the subtle but usually vast differences between the anticipation and the effective innovation, all combine to suggest that reinvention rather than rediscovery will remain the most efficient source of scientific novelty. The more likely effects of the history of science on the fields it chronicles are indirect, providing increased understanding of the scientific enterprise itself. Though a clearer grasp of the nature of
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scientific development is unlikely to resolve particular puzzles of research, it may well stimulate reconsideration of such matters as science education, administration, and policy. Probably, however, the implicit insights which historical study can produce will first need to be made explicit by the intervention of other disciplines, of which three now seem particularly likely to be effective. Though the intrusion still evokes more heat than light, the philosophy of science is today the field in which the impact of the history of science is most apparent. Feyerabend, Hanson, Hesse, and Kuhn have all recently insisted on the inappropriateness of the traditional philosopher's ideal image of science, and in search of an alternative they have all drawn heavily from history. Following directions pointed by the classic statements of Norman Campbell and Karl Popper (and sometimes also significantly influenced by Ludwig Wittgenstein), they have at least raised problems that the philosophy of science is no longer likely to ignore. The resolution of those problems is for the future, perhaps for the indefinitely distant future. There is as yet no developed and matured "new philosophy" of science. But already the questioning of older stereotypes, mostly positivistic, is proving a stimulus and release to some practitioners of those newer sciences which have most depended upon explicit canons of scientific method in their search for professional identity. A second field in which the history of science is likely to have increasing effect is the sociology of science. Ultimately neither the concerns nor the techniques of that field need be historical. But in the present underdeveloped state of their specialty, sociologists of science can well learn from history something about the shape of the enterprise they investigate. The recent writings of Ben-David, Hagstrom, Merton, and others give evidence that they are doing so. Very likely it will be through sociology that the history of science has its primary impact on science policy and administration. Closely related to the sociology of science (perhaps equivalent to it if the two are properly construed) is a field that, though it scarcely yet exists, is widely described as "the science of science." Its goal, in the words of its leading exponent, Derek Price, is nothing less than "the theoretic analysis of the structure and behavior of science itself," and its techniques are an eclectic combination of the historian's, the sociologist's, and the econometrician's. No one can yet guess to what extent that goal is attainable, but any progress toward it will inevitably and immediately enhance the signifi-
cance both to social scientists and to society of continuing scholarship in the history of science. THOMAS S. KUHN [Other relevant material may be found in the biographies of KOYRE and SARTON.] BIBLIOGRAPHY
AGASSI, JOSEPH 1963 Towards an Historiography of Science. History and Theory, Beiheft 2. The Hague: Mouton. BEN-DAVID, JOSEPH 1960 Scientific Productivity and Academic Organization in Nineteenth-century Medicine. American Sociological Review 25:828-843. BOAS, MARIE 1958 Robert Boyle and Seventeenth-century Chemistry. Cambridge Univ. Press. BOYEE, CARL B. (1939) 1949 The Concepts of the Calculus: A Critical and Historical Discussion of the Derivative and the Integral. New York: Hafner. -> A paperback edition was published in 1959 by Dover as The History of the Calculus and Its Conceptual Development. BUTTERFIELD, HERBERT (1950) 1957 The Origins of Modern Science, 1300-1800. 2d ed., rev. New York: Macmillan. -> A paperback edition was published in 1962 by Collier. CARDWELL, DONALD S. L. 1957 The Organisation of Science in England: A Retrospect. Melbourne and London: Heinemann. CLAGETT, MARSHALL 1959 The Science of Mechanics in the Middle Ages. Madison: Univ. of Wisconsin Press. COHEN, I. BERNARD 1956 Franklin and Newton: An Inquiry Into Speculative Newtonian Experimental Science and Franklin's Work in Electricity as an Example Thereof. American Philosophical Society, Memoirs, Vol. 43. Philadelphia: The Society. COSTABEL, PIERRE 1960 Leibniz et la dynamique: Les textes de 1692. Paris: Hermann. CROSLAND, MAURICE 1963 The Development of Chemistry in the Eighteenth Century. Studies on Voltaire and the Eighteenth Century 24:369-441. DAUMAS, MAURICE 1955 Lavoisier: Theoricien et experimentateur. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France. DIJKSTERHUIS, EDWARD J. (1950) 1961 The Mechanization of the World Picture. Oxford: Clarendon. -» First published in Dutch. DUGAS, RENE (1950) 1955 A History of Mechanics. Neuchatel (Switzerland): Editions du Griffon; New York: Central Book. -» First published in French. DUHEM, PIERRE 1906-1913 Etudes sur Leonard de Vinci. 3 vols. Paris: Hermann. DUPREE, A. HUNTER 1957 Science in the Federal Government: A History of Policies and Activities to 1940. Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap. DUPREE, A. HUNTER 1959 Asa Gray: 1810-1888. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Univ. Press. FEYERABEND, P. K. 1962 Explanation, Reduction and Empiricism. Pages 28-97 in Herbert Feigl and Grover Maxwell (editors), Scientific Explanation, Space, and Time. Minnesota Studies in the Philosophy of Science, Vol. 3. Minneapolis: Univ. of Minnesota Press. GILLISPIE, CHARLES C. 1960 The Edge of Objectivity: An Essay in the History of Scientific Ideas. Princeton Univ. Press.
SCIENCE: The Philosophy of Science GUERLAC, HENRY 1959 Some French Antecedents of the Chemical Revolution. Chymia 5:73-112. GUERLAC, HENRY 1961 Lavoisier; the Crucial Year: The Background and Origin of His First Experiments on Combustion in 1772. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell Univ. Press. HAGSTROM, WARREN O. 1965 The Scientific Community. New York: Basic Books. HANSON, NORWOOD R. (1958)1961 Patterns of Discovery: An Inquiry Into the Conceptual Foundations of Science. Cambridge Univ. Press. HESSE, MARY B. 1963 Models and Analogies in Science. London: Sheed & Ward. HILL, CHRISTOPHER 1965 Debate: Puritanism, Capitalism and the Scientific Revolution. Past and Present No. 29:88-97. -> Articles relevant to the debate may also be found in numbers 28, 31, 32, and 33. HINDLE, BROOKE 1956 The Pursuit of Science in Revolutionary America, 1735-1789. Chapel Hill: Univ. of North Carolina Press. INSTITUTE FOR THE HISTORY OF SCIENCE, UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN, 1957 1959 Critical Problems in the History of Science: Proceedings. Edited by Marshall Clagett. Madison: Univ. of Wisconsin Press. JAMMER, MAX 1961 Concepts of Mass in Classical and Modern Physics. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Univ. Press. JOURNAL OF THE HISTORY OF IDEAS 1957 Roots of Scientific Thought: A Cultural Perspective. Edited by Philip P. Wiener and Aaron Noland. New York: Basic Books. -» Selections from the first 18 volumes of the Journal. KOYRE, ALEXANDRE 1939 Etudes galileennes. 3 vols. Actualites scientifiques et industrielles, Nos. 852, 853, and 854. Paris: Hermann. -> Volume 1: A I'aube de la science classique. Volume 2: La loi de la chute des corps: Descartes et Galilee. Volume 3: Galilee et la loi d'inertie. KOYRE, ALEXANDRE 1961 La revolution astronomique: Copernic, Kepler, Borelli. Paris: Hermann. KUHN, THOMAS S. 1962 The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. Univ. of Chicago Press. -> A paperback edition was published in 1964. LILLEY, S. 1949 Social Aspects of the History of Science. Archives internationales d'histoire des sciences 2:376-443. MAIER, ANNELIESE 1949-1958 Studien zur Naturphilosophie der Spdtscholastik. 5 vols. Rome: Edizioni di "Storia e Letteratura." MERTON, ROBERT K. (1938) 1967 Science, Technology and Society in Seventeenth-century England. New York: Fertig. MERTON, ROBERT K. 1957 Priorities in Scientific Discovery: A Chapter in the Sociology of Science. American Sociological Review 22:635-659. METZGER, HELENE 1930 Newton, Stahl, Boerhaave et la doctrine chimique. Paris: Alcan. MEYERSON, EMILE (1908) 1964 Identity and Reality. London: Allen & Unwin. -» First published in French. MICHEL, PAUL-HENRI 1950 De Pythagore a Euclide. Paris: Edition "Les Belles Lettres." NEEDHAM, JOSEPH 1954-1965 Science and Civilisation in China. 4 vols. Cambridge Univ. Press. NEUGEBAUER, OTTO (1951) 1957 The Exact Sciences in Antiquity. 2d ed. Providence, R.I.: Brown Univ. Press. -> A paperback edition was published in 1962 by Harper.
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NICOLSON, MARJORIE H. (1950) 1960 The Breaking of the Circle: Studies in the Effect of the "New Science" Upon Seventeenth-century Poetry. Rev. ed. New York: Columbia Univ. Press. -» A paperback edition was published in 1962. O'MALLEY, CHARLES D. 1964 Andreas Vesalius of Brussels, 1514—1564. Berkeley and Los Angeles: Univ. of California Press. PANOFSKY, ERWIN 1954 Galileo as a Critic of the Arts. The Hague: Nijhoff. PARTINGTON, JAMES R. 1962— A History of Chemistry. New York: St. Martins. -» Volumes 2-4 were published from 1962 to 1964; Volume 1 is in preparation. PRICE, DEREK J. DE SOLLA 1966 The Science of Scientists. Medical Opinion and Review 1:81-97. ROGER, JACQUES 1963 Les sciences de la vie dans la pensee francaise du XVIIIe siecle: La generation des animaux de Descartes a. FEncyclopedie. Paris: Colin. SARTON, GEORGE 1927-1348 Introduction to the History of Science. 3 vols. Baltimore: Williams & Wilkins. SCHOFIELD, ROBERT E. 1963 The Lunar Society of Birmingham: A Social History of Provincial Science and Industry in Eighteenth-century England. Oxford: Clarendon. SHRYOCK, RICHARD H. (1936) 1947 The Development of Modern Medicine. 2d ed. New York: Knopf. SINGER, CHARLES J. 1922 The Discovery of the Circulation of the Blood. London: Bell. STOCKING, GEORGE W. JR. 1966 Franz Boas and the Culture Concept in Historical Perspective. American Anthropologist New Series 68:867-882. TATON, RENE (editor) 1964 Enseignement et diffusion des sciences en France au XVIIIe siecle. Paris: Hermann. THORNDIKE, LYNN (1923-1958) 1959-1964 A History of Magic and Experimental Science. 8 vols. New York: Columbia Univ. Press. TRUESDELL, CLIFFORD A. 1960 The Rational Mechanics of Flexible or Elastic Bodies 1638-1788: Introduction to Leonhardi Euleri Opera omnia Vol. X et XI seriei secundae. Leonhardi Euleri Opera omnia, Ser. 2, Vol. 11, part 2. Turin (Italy): Fussli. VUCINICH, ALEXANDER S. 1963 Science in Russian Culture. Volume 1: A History to 1860. Stanford Univ. Press. WESTFALL, RICHARD S. 1958 Science and Religion in Seventeenth-century England. New Haven: Yale Univ. Press. WHITTAKER, EDMUND 1951-1953 A History of the Theories of Aether and Electricity. 2 vols. London: Nelson. -> Volume 1: The Classical Theories. Volume 2: The Modern Theories, 1900-1926. Volume 1 is a revised edition of A History of the Theories of Aether and Electricity From the Age of Descartes to the Close of the Nineteenth Century, published in 1910. A paperback edition was published in 1960 by Harper. YATES, FRANCES A. 1964 Giordano Bruno and the Hermetic Tradition. Univ. of Chicago Press. II THE PHILOSOPHY OF SCIENCE
The general topic of the philosophy of science can be divided into subareas by subject matter: the philosophy of physics, the philosophy of biology, the philosophy of the social sciences, and so
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on. But it may also be divided into discussion of structural problems in science, on the one hand, and substantive problems within specified sciences, on the other. Structural problems are those traditionally associated with such topics as scientific inference, classification, explanation, prediction, measurement, probability, and determinism. Substantive problems arise when a question is asked such as "How can learning theory be axiomatized?" or "How should anxiety be defined?" Substantive problems, as a class, merge gradually into abstract scientific problems, which are properly handled by scientists themselves. The substantive philosophy of science usually requires some professional training in the relevant field, whereas the structural philosophy of science may require only a general scientific education. Both require professional training in philosophy or, to be more specific, in logic, broadly conceived (that is, not only in classical or in symbolic logic). The history of science is also of very great importance to the philosopher of science, for it provides him with more numerous and more diverse examples of conceptual schemes and theories than he could ever find in contemporary science, and such schemes and theories are his raw data. It will be seen, then, that a large part of the philosophy of science stands to scientific theorizing, classifying, and so on, as experimental design stands to scientific experimenting. For the philosophy of science is simply the discussion of general criteria for theories, classifications, and the rest, and is necessary as long as the intuitions or assertions of scientists about what constitutes good procedure are in conflict or might be improved by analysis. Curiously enough, however, many scientists reject the philosophy of science as irrelevant to their own activities, although they constantly talk it and teach it and illustrate its relevance in their work, sometimes under the title "methodology" and sometimes just as advice without a title. It is only the hyperspecialized, rock-ribbed empiricist who can entirely avoid discussing the subject in his scientific work and teaching, and even he usually contradicts himself by espousing operationism as the epitome of empiricism—a rather elementary mistake which would have grave consequences for the validity and utility of his results if he acted on it. Often the antagonism of science to philosophy seems due to a low tolerance of ambiguity, and particularly to insecurity about involvement with the more debatable and less decidable issues of philosophy. This is surely an immature reaction, unless it can be shown that
these issues need not be raised in the teaching and practice of science. This article will provide (a) a brief discussion of those aspects of the structural philosophy of science which have special relevance for the social sciences and (£>) some reference to substantive issues in the philosophy of particular social sciences. In general, these aspects will be intertwined, in order to illustrate the immediate relevance of the structural topics to substantive isues. Main concerns of the philosophy of science. Science has been said to be concerned with observation, description, definition, classification, measurement, experimentation, generalization, explanation, prediction, evaluation, and control of the world. This list is of course much too comprehensive; to be at all useful it has to be narrowed down in the course of examining individual scientific activities (for instance, instead of analyzing description in general, we might ask what kind of describing is scientific, as opposed to poetic). In any case, there are as many (though probably no more) points of view about main topics in the philosophy of science as about main topics in any of the sciences. If the area of dispute sometimes appears greater than it is, this is because when a subtopic in philosophy is settled, it is given a new name and called a science. Philosophy is the mother of sciences and has spawned physics, astronomy, symbolic logic, economics, and psychology, among other subjects. The domain of fundamental and still unresolved conceptual disputes at any time is called philosophy and, of course, bears the cross of conflict. But, perhaps for that very reason, it is a residue that eternally regenerates, is perpetually fertile. The social sciences began with a similar handicap; what was well known about human behavior was called common sense, and only the muddy residue was left for psychology and the other social sciences to clarify. It is no wonder that a subject is difficult and debatable when it is defined to exclude the easy and certain. Because "science" is a term for an activity as well as for a body of knowledge, we ought not to be surprised if it is continuous with the prescientific activities directed to the same ends, and if these, in turn, are an extension of prelinguistic adaptive behavior. This synoptic view of man's cognitive development and current equipment should—and, I believe, does—provide some criteria for good scientific practice. We can begin by applying it to the various procedures connected with scientific concept formation: observation, description, definition, and classification, with meas-
SCIENCE: The Philosophy of Science urement and generalization as closely related activities. Concept clarification. It is now widely accepted in the philosophy of science that we must qualify or reject the traditional idea that the basic data from which the scientist forms his hypotheses and classifications are provided by a faculty of observation which is somehow independent of science. Not only has the attempt by sense-data theorists and phenomenologists to identify these basic data been a total failure, but the failure begins to appear explicable. We have come to see the "observation language"—the nonscientific language in which such basic data were supposed to be reported —as really just a "theory language," with somewhat higher interjudge reliability than more abstract language, yet still subject to perceptual errors in its application and even to pervasive errors caused by infiltration by unnoticed theory. When errors of the latter kind are recognized, we may redescribe our observations or we may retain the old language and simply reinterpret it, perhaps metaphysically. Thus Feyerabend has pointed out (in conversation with the author) that the expression "The sun is rising," although it originally incorporated a false astronomical theory, has been retained as a statement of pure observation. So there is no absolutely basic observation level on which all theory rests and, even more clearly, no sharp distinction between observation and theories. We must think instead of a constant interaction and exchange between observation, which seems immune from correction, and speculative theory. Indeed, the development of new instruments may simply render observable the hitherto unobservable (as when the electron microscope was developed) or the observed mistaken (as when it became possible to measure the curvature of the seemingly flat earth). Does this relativization of the distinction between observation and theory destroy the distinction's utility? Not at all. Indeed, it strengthens our understanding of the hierarchical structure of science as a whole when we realize that observables of the nth level (for instance, in neurophysiology) may include some hypothetical constructs from the (n + l)th level (in this case, individual psychology). What leads us, then, to introduce concepts at a given level? Not just the pressure of their existence on our blank brain. Rather, the preconscious selective effect of certain environmental and internal pressures began the process of concept formation in our ancestors, as in other organisms—a sequence of events that can be summarized as "dis-
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crimination under drive conditions." The preverbal organism comes to react to certain stimulus configurations that represent ingestibles or predators, and it is simply an extension of this process when an interpersonal vocabulary is introduced to refer to these configurations. The psychologist refers to both the preverbal and the verbal stages of this process as concept formation, and although many philosophers prefer to restrict the term to the verbal stage, there is no doubt that the verbal stage develops from the preverbal one, whether or not it becomes qualitatively different in the course of development. [See CONCEPT FORMATION.] Definition. Given the pragmatic view of concept formation outlined above, it is very natural to abandon classical definition theory (in which a definition is a set of logically necessary and sufficient conditions for the use of a term) and to adopt instead an approach based on the notions of indicator and of indicator clusters. The rationale for such an approach may be stated as follows. Within a formal system, such as mathematics or an invented language, we can find examples of classical definitions, but seldom, if ever, can we find them within a natural language or the language of a developing science. The reason for this is simply that natural phenomena are extremely untidy, and a language for referring to them must be flexible enough to accommodate this untidiness if it is to be scientifically useful. For instance, the concepts "subject," "length," "response," "group," "aggression," and "temperature" cannot be given classical definitions (other than trivially circular ones). But we have no serious difficulty in learning or teaching these concepts, which we do by giving paradigm examples, contrasts, and explicitly approximate or conditional definitions. Any paradigm provides us, if it can be successfully analyzed, with a set of sufficient conditions for the application of the term, but it is not possible to insist that paradigms, let alone analysis of them, can never turn out to be erroneous. So the sense in which these conditions are sufficient is still not that of logical sufficiency. It is still more obvious that we often cannot specify any properties that are logically necessary for the application of the concept. We therefore adopt the notion of "weighted indicators," or criteria—that is, properties which are relevant to the application of the term, but in varying degrees. Some of the properties may, in some cases, be virtually necessary; some small groups of them may be sufficient; but these are special cases. The clustering of these properties in property space indicates an entity for which it is useful to have
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a name, but there is typically considerable scatter and no sharp boundary to the cluster (the so-called open texture of concepts). The charm of a concise translation (that is, of a classical definition) is not often provided by the cluster approach, but it does preserve that most valuable feature of classical theory—a reliable verbal response that can be successfully taught. Contrasting and approximating, which are the other procedures involved in specification of meaning, depend on the psychological superiority of discrimination skills over absolute recognition skills and involve no new logical points. At this point, it should be stressed that there are two elements in the theory of definition: the pragmatic and the literal. We have been talking about the limitations of the literal theory of definition as a kind of translation. But there is the independent question of how one can best—that is, most usefully—select the terms that one will mention in the definition, whether it is a translation or a cluster of indicators. A famous answer to this has often been taken as both literal and pragmatic, which makes it nonsensical instead of good pragmatic advice of a limited range of applicability. I refer to operationism (for which see especially Bridgman 1927). There are, of course, some areas where it is to be taken very seriously as advice, and psychology is one of them. (In theoretical physics, contrary to the common impression, it is extremely rare to seek or find operational definitions.) But if operationism is taken as requiring that definitions actually contain nothing but operations, then it is absurd, a category error —and, in addition, it is self-refuting, since the concept of an operation cannot be defined operationally. Definitions should therefore be of such a kind that we can apply some independently determinable criteria to decide when the defined term should be used (we can, if we wish, call the process of determining whether these criteria apply "operations"). But we cannot require that the only content of definitions should be operations, or we find ourselves caught in the dilemma of deciding when we have only one operation and, hence, only one concept. . . and so on. Classification. The traditional requirements for classification also need to be relaxed. Instead of the Aristotelian requirement of exclusive and exhaustive subcategories, we must settle for minimized overlap and maximized coverage, balancing these desiderata against considerations of simplicity and applicability. The development of a scientific classification scheme is essentially a remapping of property space, using a new system of
coordinates or a new projection. Hence, assessment of the scheme's value very much depends, as in the map analogy, on the purposes for which it is intended (which may be as diverse as fast labeling, representation of a new theoretical insight, and easy recall) and very little on the idealized and context-free notion of "cutting Nature at the joints," which was the goal of earlier taxonomists (and which still admirably expresses the feeling inspired by a successful classification scheme). Measurement. The urge to measure is a kind of conditioned reflex among empirically trained scientists, and with some reason. Measurement requires—or, when developed, provides—an intersubjectively reliable procedure for applying the potentially infinite descriptive vocabulary of number. For describing any continuous variable we need such a vocabulary, and for describing many discrete variables it is exceedingly useful because it creates the possibility of applying some mathematical apparatus. But the social scientist all too often assumes that scaling and measuring will make it likely that we can discover useful laws. In fact, many scales disguise the existence of regularities, and many others fail to reveal them. The descriptive utility of a scale must be considered independently of its theoretical fertility, for the two considerations may lead in different directions. The proliferation of scales, like the proliferation of statistical analyses, often merely clogs the channels of communication. There is no magic about numbers per se, and only hard thinking and good fortune, in combination, achieve a worthwhile new scale. The same is true of classification. The cluster concept is peculiarly suited to the needs of statistical scaling and to those of statistical inference in general. [See CLUSTERING; SCALING.] Evaluation. The notion of measurement phases quite gradually into that of evaluation. "Pecking order," "peer-group ranking," and "intelligence quotient" can all, in certain contexts, appear as value-impregnated scales. This is often disputed by those who think "value" is a dirty word. Social scientists are peculiarly susceptible to the charms of the Weberian myth of a value-free social science, which rests on a one-sided interpretation of the distinction between facts and values. In its more defensible form this distinction amounts to the assertion that (a) evaluation depends on establishing certain facts; and (£>) evaluation goes beyond the facts on which it depends. To this it can be objected that evaluation may well result in facts, albeit facts different from those with which it begins. Thus Consumer Reports can often substantiate
SCIENCE: The Philosophy of Science evaluations such as "Brand X is the best dishwasher on the market today" on the basis of performance data plus data about the consumers' wants. And that evaluation, when suitably supported, simply states a fact about Brand X. It is one thing to be cautious about importing dubious value premises into an argument; it is another to suppose that all value premises or conclusions are dubious, "mere matters of opinion." It is not at all dubious that dishwashers should get the dishes clean, that clocks should keep good time, and so on. It may simply be a fact that Brand X of dishwasher excels at its task. Since the evaluation is nothing more than a combination of these facts, it is itself a fact, although it is also an evaluation. Precisely this analysis applies to myriad issues in the social sciences—evaluation of the relative merits of protective tariff barriers and direct subsidies or of different forms of treatment for dysfunctional neurosis, to name only two examples. Of course, there are many other issues where only a relativized answer is possible, since legitimate differences of taste exist (that is, differences where no argument can establish the superiority of any particular taste). But this in no way distinguishes evaluation from theoretical interpretation. It will not do to say that "in principle" these differences can be resolved in the theoretical area when more facts are available, but not in the evaluation area. Not only are there very fundamental disagreements about the function of theory that make this improbable, but additional facts often reduce value disagreement. In any case, relativized answers, which are still value judgments, admit of no disagreement, and therefore do not involve subjectivity. It is simply naive to suppose that fields must, if they are to be regarded as objective, always contain answers to questions of the form "Which is the best X?" Neither mathematics nor engineering has this property, or any corresponding property with respect to "Which is the true solution to X?," where the conditions of X are incompletely specified. As to the final defense of the distinction between fact and value—that a particular choice of ultimate values, or ends, cannot be proved true—three answers apply: (1) No such choice has to be proved true, only relevant. (2) No one has yet produced a demonstrably ultimate value, and it seems clear that the hierarchical model is as inappropriate here as it is in epistemology. (There are no ultimate, or basic, facts, only some that are more reliable than others; and all can—under pressure—be given support by appeal to others.) (3) In the case of moral values, where some need for a single
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answer can be demonstrated, there is a perfectly good way of handling any moral disputes that are likely to arise in the social sciences. This is by appealing to the equality of prima-facie rights— the fundamental axiom of democracy. Justification of this is itself one of the most important tasks of the social sciences and requires contributions from game theory, political science, economics, sociology, and psychology, as well as from the obvious candidate, anthropology. It is the problem of deciding on the best system of sublegal mores—insofar, of course, as any answer is possible. But this type of problem is already familiar: it is an efficiency problem. Indeed, the social sciences have for too long been reticent about pointing out the extent to which it is possible both to give answers to moral problems and to refute some of the current answers to them. For some reason, the sound point that there are many areas of morality where there cannot yet be any proof of the superiority of a particular answer is taken to imply that acting as if any answer were correct is defensible. But of course the only defensible position in such a situation is a compromise or, if possible, a suspension of action. In my opinion, the axiom of equal primafacie rights can be shown to be superior to any alternative, and also to be capable of generating a complete moral system. It achieves both of these ends by being the only such axiom that can be satisfactorily supported, and of course it roughly coincides with the Golden Rule and other basic maxims (details of this line of argument will be found in Scriven 1966). At any rate, it is time that the possibility of this kind of "strategic ethics" was examined by all the strategists who have sprung up to look at other kinds of social interaction in terms of the language of games. In summary, the scientific approach to evaluation necessarily involves both applied science (finding the best solution to a practical problem) and pure science (finding the best estimate, hypothesis, or experimental design). Moreover, the element of evaluation enters into much "straight" measurement—that of intelligence, creativity, and social acceptability, for instance. The reason for this is as simple as the reason for introducing new classifications: we have to order our knowledge if we are to use it efficiently. It follows that the most appropriate kind of order is determined by the use to which that knowledge is to be put. One might put the point paradoxically and say that all science is applied science. The application may be to efficient explanation, accurate prediction, or improvement of the world, but it is still—in one important
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sense—an application. Nor can we assess (that is, evaluate) theories or instruments unless we have some analysis of their proposed use. Data analysis. There are obviously limitations on the memory storage capacity of the human brain that would make it impotent in the face of even a modest amount of data about the path of a projectile or a planet, if these data were presented in discrete form. But if we can find some simple pattern that the data follow, especially if it is a pattern that we are familiar with from some other, preferably visual, experience, then we can handle it quite easily. (The preference for visual models is due to the vastly greater channel capacity of the visual modality; the notion of "handling" involves more than simple recovery, and even that involves more than storage capacity, since it includes look-up and read-out time.) This simple point can be taken as the start for a complete data-processing approach to the aspects of structural philosophy of science that remain to be discussed. It also pervades the parts already discussed, for the introduction of concepts is itself a device to cope with the "buzzing, blooming confusion" of sense experience. Generalizations and laws. The simplest examples of the cognitive condensation described in the preceding section are laws and generalizations. They are so necessary that we are prepared to forgive them a very high degree of inaccuracy if only they will simplify the range of possibilities for us. Contrary to Karl Popper's view, which stresses the equivalence of a law to the denial of counterinstances, the present view suggests that we are rightly very unimpressed by counterinstances in this irregular world, and extremely thankful if we can find a regularity that provides a reasonable approximation over a good range of instances. This is as true in the physical sciences as in the social, for the laws of gases, the laws of motion, gravitation, radiation, and so on, are all merely approximations at best. There are occasional exceptions (for example, the third law of thermodynamics), but the important feature of a law is that it introduces a pattern where none was before. In this sense its truth is its utility, not its lack of error. A great deal has been made in the literature of the fact that a law will support counterfactual inferences while an accidental generalization will not (Nagel 1961, pp. 68-73; compare Strawson 1952, pp. 85, 197, 200). On the present view, all this means is that we think natural laws are true of continuing or pervasive phenomena, i.e., of the nature of things. All other attempts to give logical analyses of the concept of law—for instance,
the view that laws cannot contain reference to particular entities, or must support predictions— seem to me simply arbitrary. Explanation. The task of explanation is the integration of "new" phenomena (whether subjectively or objectively new makes no difference) into the structure of knowledge. Typically, this consists in fitting these phenomena into a pattern with which we are already familiar. But explanation is not simply reduction to the familiar. Indeed, it may involve reducing the familiar to the unfamiliar, as Popper (1963, p. 63) has pointed out. But it must involve reducing the uncomprehended phenomenon to phenomena that are comprehended, and it is hardly surprising if this sometimes increases the sense of familiarity. It has long been argued that the way in which explanation is performed in science always involves subsuming the phenomenon to be explained under a known law [see SCIENTIFIC EXPLANATION]. In view of the known deficiencies in our scientific laws, explanation, if this theory were acceptable, would in any case be a rather imprecise affair. But the restriction to laws is too confining, unless one treats the term "law" so loosely that it covers almost any statement except a pure particular. The real danger in this model of explanation—the "deductive" model, as it is usually called—is that it seems to support the view that explanations are closely related to predictions. In contrast, the "pattern" model of explanation, which I prefer, allows for retrospectively applicable patterns as well as for those which can be grasped in advance , of their completion. It happens that this is very important in the behavioral sciences, since there is, and always will be, a real shortage of "two-way" laws (that is, laws that both predict and explain). This has typically been treated by social scientists as a sign of the immaturity of their subject; but in fact it is simply a sign of its nature and is very like the situation in the "messier" areas of the physical sciences, especially engineering. When a bridge fails, or a mob riots, or a patient commits suicide, there are often a number of possible explanations, of which only one "fits the facts." We thus have no difficulty in saying that this one is the explanation, although the facts available before the event were not enough to permit us to tell what would happen. Indeed, it may be that the chances in advance were very strongly against the actual outcome, and that we would therefore have been entitled to make a well-founded scientific prediction of the event's nonoccurrence. It is not helpful to suggest in such cases that we are explaining by deduction from a law. What sort of
SCIENCE: The Philosophy of Science law? That some factors can cause others? That only certain factors cause a certain effect? These are indeed general propositions, but they do not look much like laws of the usual kind, and they do not support any predictions at all. It is not in the least important whether or not we call them laws, but it is important to understand that we often support explanations by appealing to general claims that will not support predictions. Prediction. On the other hand, it is often possible to predict on the basis of laws that do not explain. Any reliable correlation, however little we understand it, will give us a basis for predicting (that is, of course, provided there is temporal separation between the two correlated factors). To be able to predict, we need only to be able to infer that an event must occur at some conveniently remote time in the future. To explain, on the other hand, we have only to show why something occurred, not necessarily that it had to occur. For a long time it was thought that the only way we could be sure to avoid ad hoc explanations was to require that (a) the grounds for the explanation be known to be true and (fo) these same grounds imply only one possible outcome, the event or phenomenon to be explained. But there are many ways in which we can show that a particular explanation is correct in a particular case without having to show that the factors mentioned in the explanation would enable one to infer the explained event. For example, we may demonstrate the presence and operation of a particular cause by exhibiting some clues that uniquely identify its modus operandi. Of course, we may still have reason to believe that there are certain other factors present which, in conjunction with the factors we have identified, would enable us to make a formal inference that the event we have explained was bound to occur. But in many cases we do not know what those other factors are, and we do not know the laws that would make the inference possible. In fact, our belief that we may still be able to make this inference merely indicates that we believe in determinism. It certainly does not prove that a good scientific explanation demonstrates the necessity of what it explains. No doubt it is tempting to remark that a complete explanation would have this property, but even this approach is wrong. In the first place, there are many so-called complete scientific explanations that do not have it. Second, this approach recommends a use of the term "complete explanation" that has the unpromising property of identifying mere subsumption under a generaliza-
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tion as complete explanation. But the genius of Freud, for instance, was not manifested by proving that the "explanation" of obsessive behavior in a particular neurotic was that this behavior was common in neurotics. Rather, he claimed to show a causal connection between certain other factors and obsessive behavior; and a causal connection is neither as strong nor as weak as a high correlation, it is simply quite different. Causes. We are often able to identify causes in the social sciences without being able to give the laws and other factors in conjunction with which they operate to bring about their effects. The basic control group study is a case in point. It may give us excellent grounds for supposing, let us say, that a particular drug accelerates the subjects' rate of response, but it does not tell us what other factors are necessary conditions for this effect. Of course, we know that it is some set of the factors which are present, but we do not know which set. In more complex cases, even though a particular factor does not reliably lead to this effect, we may establish it as the cause simply by elimination of the alternative possible causes, either through their absence or through the presence of clues showing that, although present, they could not have been active this time. Of course, causal explanations are incomplete in the sense that there are always further interesting questions about the phenomenon that we would like answered. But this is also true even when we can subsume the explanation under a law: for instance, we can ask why the law is true. But causal explanations are often complete in the sense that they tell us exactly what we need to know, for our interest in a phenomenon is often very specific. Thus explanation is a context-dependent notion; explanations are devices for filling in our understanding, and the notion of the explanation makes sense only when there is a standard background of knowledge and understanding, as in the normal pedagogical development of an academic subject. Understanding. The key notion behind that of explanation, and hence that of cause, is understanding. It must not be thought of purely as a subjective feeling; the feeling is only something associated with it. The condition of understanding itself is an objectively testable one; in fact, it regularly is tested by examinations, which are supposed to stress the detection of "real understanding," not just rote knowledge. Understanding is integrated, related knowledge; more generally—so that the definition will apply to the understanding possessed by machines, animals, and children— it is the capacity to produce the appropriate re-
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sponse to novel stimuli within a certain range or field. It is a characteristic of tests for understanding that they present the student with new problems, and the possession of understanding is valuable just because it does embody this capacity to handle novelty. Approaching it in this way, we see immediately that the question of how the brain can provide this capacity is of interest not only from a neurophysiological point of view but possibly also as a way of obtaining better insight into the nature of understanding itself. In fact, a remarkable overlap emerges between the requirements of efficient storage and understanding, as it is commonly conceived. Efficient storage, both to economize on storage capacity and to facilitate fast recovery and input, must use mapping, modeling, and simplifying procedures. But these are exactly what we use in the process of trying to understand phenomena, even in the more pragmatic process of trying to improve our classifications, descriptions, and predictions. Thus, to mention one example of how fruitful this conception is, the idea of simplicity, which has often been recognized as a criterion for satisfactory scientific theories, can be seen as equivalent to the familiar notion of economy, not as some mysterious aesthetic requirement. Nor is the whole aim of understanding to be seen as a concession to human weakness; for the most sophisticated and capacious computers we shall ever design will be hard pressed to store even part of the brain's data and will therefore have to employ procedures that economize on storage space. Putting the matter more strongly, a simple map stores an infinity of facts with very little complication in the read-out procedures, in comparison with list storage, and an enormous improvement in speed of readout (that is, of recall); it also handles a quantity of information that would be beyond the capacity of ordinary list storage. (The difference between the use of models and the use of mnemonics is that the model stores an indefinite number of facts, which the mnemonic does not, and the model stores them in a way that is more directly related to truth.) Models, from analogies to axiomatizations, are the key to understanding. [See VERSTEHEN.] Experimentation. The use of applied science for the purpose of controlling reality has its counterpart within the methodology of science itself in the area of experimentation. Thus applied science is to pure science as experimentation is to pure observation. In each case the armory of relevant methods is importantly different: the "purer" subjects are more concerned with understanding and
description; the more applied ones, with causation and manipulation. Indeed, it does not appear possible to give an analysis of "cause" without some reference to manipulation, though a great deal can be said before coming to the irreducible element of intervention or action. [See CAUSATION.] A number of topics have not been discussed here, although they are closely related. For example, the problem of the reduction of one science or theory to another is a combination of a problem about explanation with one about definition. I have also said very little, even implicitly, about the issue of free will versus determinism, and wish only to state that it now seems possible to reconcile the two positions, provided we first make a distinction between predictive and explanatory determinism. In conclusion, I should stress my conviction that there is very little in the social sciences that does not have a parallel in the physical sciences, but it has not been to these parallels that social scientists have turned for paradigms. They have turned instead to the absurdly oversimple paradigms of Newtonian mechanics and astronomy. Even there, the significant fact is that the problem of predicting the motion of pure pointmasses, moving under the sole influence of the very simple force of gravity, passes from the realm where solutions and predictions are possible to the realm where solutions give way to (at best) explications as soon as the number of bodies is increased from two to three. It is surely absurd to imagine that the forces acting on human beings are simpler than those involved in the "three-body problem." And if this is so, then we need a new "methodology of the complex domain," perhaps along the lines indicated above. MICHAEL SCRIVEN [Directly related are the entries CAUSATION; EXPERIMENTAL DESIGN; MODELS, MATHEMATICAL; MULTIVARIATE ANALYSIS; POSITIVISM; PREDICTION; PROBABILITY; SCIENCE, article on THE HISTORY OF SCIENCE; SCIENTIFIC EXPLANATION; STATISTICS, article on THE FIELD; SYSTEMS ANALYSIS, article OU GENERAL SYSTEMS THEORY; VALUES; VERSTEHEN;
and in the biographies of COHEN; GALTON; HUME; KOYRE; PEARSON; PEIRCE; SCHLICK; WEBER, MAX; YULE.] BIBLIOGRAPHY Contemporary philosophers of science can be roughly classified as either post-positivists (who form the majority) or linguistic analysts. For examples of work by leading post-positivists, see Popper 1934; 1957; Carnap 1950; Reichenbach 1951; Hempel 1952; 1965; Braithwaite 1953; Nagel 1961; Feyerabend 1962; Kemeny & Snell 1962; Suppes & Zinnes 1963. There are many important topics on which
SCIENCE: The Philosophy of Science these authors disagree, but it seems fair to say that among the predecessors they would be prepared to acknoivledge are such founders of modern positivism as Karl Pearson, Moritz Schlick, and Ernst Mach. Other outstanding earlier writers who, although somewhat untypical of the field, have contributed to the philosophy of science in general, not just the post-positivist branch of it, include C. S. Peirce, Max Weber, N. R. Campbell, P. W. Bridgman, and Harold Jeffreys. Works by philosophers of science who use at least some of the methods of the linguistic analysts, even if they would not all classify themselves as such, include, in the study of the physical sciences, Toulmin 1953; Polanyi 1958; in the study of the social sciences, Dray 1957; Winch 1958; Kaplan 1964; Scriven 1966; and, in the field of measurement and probability, Ellis 1966; Hacking 1965. Certain trends in the history of science, particularly in the emphasis, developed in Butterfield 1950 and Kuhn 1962, and by Alexandre Koyre, on autonomous conceptual schemes as units of progress, have influenced the philosophy of science. These trends have in turn been influenced by philosophical works such as Feyerabend 1962; Hesse 1963. Among the extremely valuable contributions to the philosophy of science made by practicing social scientists, special note should be taken of Simon 19471956; Skinner 1953; Meehl 1954; Stevens 1958; Chomsky 1966. Of the general treatises available in 1966, only McEwen 1963 and Kaplan 1964 are concerned principally with the social sciences, although Nagel 1961 and Hempel 1965 deal with them to some extent. Lazarsfeld 1954; Natanson 1963; Braybrooke 1966 are interesting collections that focus exclusively on the social sciences. As an introduction to the philosophical problems of the social sciences, Kaplan 1964 is to be recommended to layman and expert alike, although the work takes an approach somewhat different from that presented in this article. BRAITHWAITE, R. B. 1953 Scientific Explanation: A Study of the Function of Theory, Probability and Law in Science. Cambridge Univ. Press. -» A paperback edition was published in 1960 by Harper. BRAYBROOKE, DAVID (editor) 1966 Philosophical Problems of the Social Sciences. New York: Macmillan. BRIDGMAN, P. W. (1927) 1946 The Logic of Modern Physics. New York: Macmillan. BUTTERFIELD, HERBERT (1950) 1957 The Origins of Modern Science, 1300-1800. 2d ed., rev. New York: Macmillan. -» A paperback edition was published in 1962 by Collier. CAMPBELL, NORMAN R. (1920) 1957 Foundations of Science: The Philosophy of Theory and Experiment. New York: Dover. -> First published as Physics: The Elements. CARNAP, RUDOLF (1950) 1962 The Logical Foundations of Probability. 2d ed. Univ. of Chicago Press. CHOMSKY, NOAM 1966 Cartesian Linguistics: A Chapter in the History of Rationalist Thought. New York: Harper. DRAY, WILLIAM (1957) 1964 Laws and Explanation in History. Oxford Univ. Press. ELLIS, BRIAN 1966 Basic Concepts of Measurement. Cambridge Univ. Press. FEIGL, HERBERT; and SCRIVEN, MICHAEL (editors) 1956 The Foundations of Science and the Concepts of Psychology and Psychoanalysis. Minnesota Studies in the Philosophy of Science, Vol. 1. Minneapolis: Univ. of Minnesota Press. FEYERABEND, P. K. 1962 Explanation, Reduction and Empiricism. Pages 28-97 in Herbert Feigl and Grover Maxwell (editors), Scientific Explanation, Space, and Time. Minnesota Studies in the Philosophy of Science, Vol. 3. Minneapolis: Univ. of Minnesota Press.
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HACKING, IAN 1965 Logic of Statistical Inference. Cambridge Univ. Press. HEMPEL, CARL G. 1952 Fundamentals of Concept Formation in Empirical Science. Volume 2, number 7, in International Encyclopedia of Unified Science. Univ. of Chicago Press. HEMPEL, CARL G. 1965 Aspects of Scientific Explanation, and Other Essays in the Philosophy of Science. New York: Free Press. HESSE, MARY B. 1963 Models and Analogies in Science. London: Sheed & Ward. JEFFREYS, HAROLD (1931) 1957 Scientific Inference. 2d ed. Cambridge Univ. Press. KAPLAN, ABRAHAM 1964 The Conduct of Inquiry: Methodology for Behavioral Science. San Francisco: Chandler. KEMENY, JOHN G.; and SNELL, J. LAURIE 1962 Mathematical Models in the Social Sciences. Boston: Ginn. KUHN, THOMAS S. 1962 Ihe Structure of Scientific Revolutions. Univ. of Chicago Press. -> A paperback edition was published in 1964. LAZARSFELD, PAUL F. (editor) (1954) 1955 Mathematical Thinking in the Social Sciences. 2d ed., rev. Glencoe, 111.: Free Press. McEwEN, WILLIAM P. 1963 The Problem of Socialscientific Knowledge. Totowa, N.J.: Bedminster. MEEHL, PAUL E. (1954) 1956 Clinical Versus Statistical Prediction: A Theoretical Analysis and a Review of the Evidence. Minneapolis: Univ. of Minnesota Press. NAGEL, ERNEST 1961 The Structure of Science: Problems in the Logic of Scientific Explanation. New York: Harcourt. NATANSON, MAURICE (editor) 1963 Philosophy of the Social Sciences: A Reader. New York: Random House. POLANYI, MICHAEL 1958 Personal Knowledge: Towards a Post-critical Philosophy. Univ. of Chicago Press. POPPER, KARL R. (1934) 1959 The Logic of Scientific Discovery. New York: Basic Books. -» First published as Logik der Forschung. POPPER, KARL R. 1957 The Poverty of Historicism. Boston: Beacon. POPPER, KARL R. 1963 Conjectures and Refutations: The Growth of Scientific Knoivledge. New York: Basic Books; London: Routledge. REICHENBACH, HANS (1951) 1959 Probability Methods in Social Science. Pages 121-128 in Daniel Lerner and Harold D. Lasswell (editors), The Policy Sciences: Recent Developments in Scope and Method. Stanford Univ. Press. SCRIVEN, MICHAEL 1956 A Possible Distinction Between Traditional Scientific Disciplines and the Study of Human Behavior. Pages 88-130 in Herbert Feigl and Michael Scriven (editors), The Foundations of Science and the Concepts of Psychology and Psychoanalysis. Minnesota Studies in the Philosophy of Science, Vol. 1. Minneapolis: Univ. of Minnesota Press. SCRIVEN, MICHAEL 1959 Truisms as the Grounds for Historical Explanations. Pages 443-475 in Patrick L. Gardiner (editor), Theories of History. Glencoe, 111.: Free Press. SCRIVEN, MICHAEL 1962 Explanations, Predictions and Laws. Pages 170-230 in Herbert Feigl and Grover Maxwell (editors), Scientific Explanation, Space, and Time. Minnesota Studies in the Philosophy of Science, Vol. 3. Minneapolis: Univ. of Minnesota Press. SCRIVEN, MICHAEL 1965 An Essential Unpredictability in Human Behavior. Pages 411-425 in Benjamin B.
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Wolman and Ernest Nagel (editors), Scientific Psychology: Principles and Approaches. New York: Basic Books. SCRIVEN, MICHAEL 1966 Primary Philosophy. New York: McGraw-Hill. SIMON, HERBERT A. (1947-1956) 1957 Models of Man; Social and Rational: Mathematical Essays on Rational Human Behavior in a Social Setting. New York: Wiley. SKINNER, B. F. (1953) 1964 Science and Human Behavior. New York: Macmillan. STEVENS, S. S. 1958 Problems and Methods of Psychophysics. Psychological Bulletin 55:177-196. STRAWSON, P. F. 1952 Introduction to Logical Theory. London: Methuen; New York: Wiley. SUPPES, PATRICK; and ZINNES, JOSEPH L. 1963 Basic Measurement Theory. Volume 1, pages 1-76 in R. Duncan Luce, Robert R. Bush, and Eugene Galanter (editors), Handbook of Mathematical Psychology. New York: Wiley. TOULMIN, STEPHEN 1953 The Philosophy of Science: An Introduction. London: Hutchinson's University Library. -» A paperback edition was published in 1960 by Harper. WINCH, PETER (1958) 1963 The Idea of a Social Science and Its Relation to Philosophy. London: Routledge; New York: Humanities. Ill THE SOCIOLOGY OF SCIENCE
If the sociology of knowledge is defined as the part of sociology that studies the nature of and relations between different types of idea systems, on the one side, and the relations between these idea systems and a variety of institutional (or social-structural) and personality factors, on the other, then the sociology of science is one part of the sociology of knowledge. It is the part that specializes in defining the nature of scientific ideas and in describing their relations both to other kinds of ideas (e.g., ideological, philosophical, aesthetic, religious) and to various institutional and personality factors. Parsons (1951, especially chapter 8) has given us what is still the best analytic definition of idea systems in general and their several specialized subtypes, although further analysis and operational specification of his classification are necessary. The sociology of science, as is the case with all sociology, general or special, is primarily interested in the construction of a set of highly generalized, systematic, and relatively exhaustive concepts and propositions of relationship. In this enterprise it uses data from all historical periods and all cultures, since its main concern is not with history as such, but with establishing sociological concepts and propositions. The history of science, although it always should use such explicit sociological concepts and propositions, often does not, preferring
its traditional, less examined, and frequently common-sense ways of treating its materials. In either case, the history of science, both advertently and inadvertently, may be productive of materials or even of new concepts and propositions for the sociology of science, but this is not its essential task. Thus, the sociology of science and the history of science overlap but do not coincide. The sociology of science, finally, is interested both in fundamental scientific ideas themselves and in the application of these fundamental ideas, or of more empirical ideas, to technology. In its study of technology, again, the sociology of science uses both historical and contemporary data, drawn from a variety of cultures, regardless of the original purpose for which these data were collected, so long as they serve its primary goal of constructing a system of analytic concepts and propositions. The social nature of science. One of the basic working assumptions of structural-functional theory in sociology is that man's behavior in society is a response to certain functional problems that he confronts in his nonsocial and social environments. On this assumption, sociology sees man's scientific behavior as his response to the functional problem created by his need to have adequate adjustive knowledge of the physical, biological, and social aspects of the empirical world. Such knowledge is indispensable for some form of adjustment to that world in its three essential and different aspects. Everywhere, as archeology, ethnology, history, and sociology have severally demonstrated, man in society has a certain amount of this scientific knowledge. The amount, of course, varies a great deal among societies. In other words, science, as Malinowski recognized (1916-1941), is a matter of degree, with some societies having only a relatively small amount and others having a great deal more. This, indeed, sets some of the essential problems for the sociology of science. For it is not only the universal occurrence of at least a small amount of scientific knowledge, but also the patterns of variation in the degree of development of such knowledge in different societies, and variations at different stages in the evolution of a single society, that the sociology of science has undertaken to explain. In order to explain the degree of development of science considered as a complex whole, it is necessary to distinguish its component cultural, social, and psychological parts, for each of these can develop at somewhat different rates in different social situations. It is useful to define at least four general components of science as a whole,
SCIENCE: The Sociology of Science each of which has a measure of autonomy: substantive scientific ideas; scientific methodology, including both ideas and instruments; scientific roles; and motivational and reward systems for scientific roles. Let us consider, again because this sets important problems that the sociology of science has been trying to explain, how each of the components varies along certain dimensions. Substantive scientific ideas vary along three dimensions: of generality, or abstractness, as it is also often called; of systematization; and of exhaustiveness for the relevant aspects of the phenomena. We may say that the more abstract, the more systematic, and the more nearly exhaustive a set of substantive scientific ideas is, the greater the degree of its scientific development. Among the interesting problems that the sociology of science tries to explain is the question of why the physical sciences on the whole have developed more rapidly in all three respects than have the biological sciences and why these, in turn, have developed more rapidly than the social sciences. Within each of these broad sectors of science, moreover, further variation in the degree of development of specialized subsciences poses similar problems for explanation. For example, the more rapid recent development of economics than of political science or sociology can be explained, in part, by the greater accessibility of data on price phenomena than of data on people's political and social norms and actual behavior. This greater accessibility is due, in turn, and again in part, to the more pressing felt needs that governments and business firms have for price data. Knowledge about the ideas and instruments (or technology) that make up scientific methodology also varies in its degree of development. It is clear that modern science has made great advances over earlier science in the sophistication of its knowledge about such essential methodological matters as the character of concepts and classifications, the logic of comparison and inference, and the functions of contrived and natural experimentation. Modern science is also at a great advantage over earlier science in the degree of its access to ordering and measuring facilities. Mathematics is, of course, the most important of such facilities, and its development has been of very great moment in the closely related development of all the sciences, although, again, to varying degrees among the several sciences, for interesting sociological reasons. In addition to mathematics, such instruments as thermometers, high-speed electronic computers, and a thousand others have contributed significantly to the advances of the sciences. Both
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the development of these measuring facilities and their adoption by the several sciences are important focuses for research in the sociology of science. Since they may develop sometimes as a direct result of changes in scientific ideas, but also sometimes independently, methodological ideas and instruments have various types of relationships with substantive scientific ideas. When they develop to some extent independently, as in the cases of the telescope or the computer, for example, methodological ideas and instruments may at certain times play the leading part in the development of a whole sector or subsector of science. Or again, it is an important sociological fact about the prospects of the social sciences that their ability to borrow a great deal of the methodological sophistication developed in the other sectors of science is a key asset for their own development. There is also considerable variation among societies in the degree of differentiation and specialization of social roles for engaging in the many types of scientific behavior, in the proportion of members of the society engaged in these roles, in the kinds and amounts of support given to these roles, and in the degree of institutionalization of scientific roles. The sociology of science has been much concerned with these essential problems of the social organization or role component of science, so much so that we shall take them up below, in a separate and detailed discussion. Finally, motivational and reward systems for scientific roles also vary among and within societies. They differ in the type of rewards, in the strength of motivation, and in the degree of diffusion of adequate incentives throughout the population as a whole. Again, we shall consider this matter more fully below. The development of science Viewed in the long perspective, science shows a history of continuity and cumulation from the earliest prehistory of man to the present. However, this history has been marked by quite different rates of development in different times and places. It is this unevenness in its progress, viewed in terms of shorter perspectives, that calls for explanation by the sociology of science. As the sociology of science has itself made progress, a few basic principles of explanation have come to appear sound. One is the principle that no single cultural, social, or psychological factor, such as religion or economic forces, can account for the growth of science as a whole or any of its several components or subsciences. Another such principle
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is that not even any single combination of factors, such as the religious and the economic, or the political and the educational, is sufficient for the tasks of the sociology of science. This is not to say that there are not some combinations of factors more favorable than others for certain kinds of specific development in science, as our discussion of the Protestant ethic will illustrate. There definitely are such favorable combinations, and the sociology of science has improved its ability to discover them by accepting the principle that certain types and rates of development may come from one set of factors (or one set of values of these factors taken as variables) and that other types and rates may come from a different set of factors (or a different set of variables-values). The following discussion will consider some of the major factors that affect the development of science. They exert their influence on science always in combination, and the relative weight of the influence of each may vary in different specific instances. Structural and cultural differentiation. The greater the degree of structural differentiation in a society, that is, of the specialization of roles between the major institutional sectors and within them as well, the more favorable the situation for the development of science. Greater structural differentiation provides the necesary situation not only for a variety of highly specialized scientific roles but also for their highly specialized ancillary and supporting roles in other institutional sectors. Besides role differentiation, differentiation within culture, that is, in the various systems of ideas in society, is also favorable to the development of science. For example, as Charles Gillispie (1960) has shown, the development of what he calls "the edge of objectivity" of scientific ideas has increased as these ideas have progressively been differentiated from moral ideas about man's place in the universe. The more that values, ideologies, aesthetic ideas, and philosophical ideas are distinguished both from one another and from substantive scientific ideas, the easier it is to see the special problems of each and to develop each and all of them. Value systems. Certain values which the modern world tends to take for granted, but which have not existed in many past societies, certainly in nothing like the same degree, are much more favorable to the development of science than are their opposites. The high value the modern world puts on rationality as against traditionalism, on this-worldly activities as against other-worldly activities, on libertarianism as against authoritarianism, on active striving as against passive adapta-
tion to the world, and on equality as against inequality—all these values support the development of the several components of science. Sometimes the support is direct, as in the case of the values of rationality and this-worldly interest, values which are especially powerful in combination, as they are in the modern world. Libertarianism is essential for academic freedom, which is one kind of important foundation for scientific progress. Sometimes the support from values is indirect, as when the value of equality increases the amount of social mobility and thus helps to select better talent for scientific roles. Instrumental needs. Scientific knowledge is power, that is, power to adjust more or less satisfactorily to the nonsocial environment and to the internal and external social environment. Some scientific discovery and technological innovation, then, is a response to immediate instrumental needs for adjustment to what are defined as dangerous and harsh environments. Certainly this must have been an especially large influence on the development of science in the early stages of human society, when every bit of scientific knowledge was of great instrumental importance in a threatening and severe physical and social environment. But even powerful modern industrial societies respond strongly to their instrumental needs for science. Whatever their values in regard to science, they feel an urgent need to use it to strengthen their national defense, promote industrial and agricultural growth, and improve the health of their populations. Some scientists deplore this "exploitation" of science, that is, this encouragement of science "not for science's own sake." But the instrumental needs of even already powerful societies are defined by their citizens as more important under some circumstances than the value considerations that are preferred by scientists and by those who share the values that support science directly. Finally, the nonindustrial or underdeveloped societies of the present also push the acquisition of science for urgent instrumental needs, to cope with "the revolution of rising expectations" in their populations. Economic factors. A variety of economic structures, needs, and resources, often combined with one or more other social factors, have had very large direct and indirect influences on the development of science. There is no blinking this fact, no matter how much some scientists may think it stains the "purity" of science and regardless of whether one thinks some Marxist sociologists of science have exaggerated it. Only a few of the myriad effects of economic activities on science
SCIENCE: The Sociology of Science can be given in illustration here. As Merton has shown (1936; 1939), in the case of seventeenthcentury England, for example, the growing maritime interests, both commercial and naval shipping, were in need of more reliable techniques of navigation. The existing techniques included neither good chronometers nor any sure way of determining longitude at sea. These economic and military-political needs were a direct stimulus, through prizes offered for discoveries and inventions, to basic discoveries in astronomy and on the nature of the spring. Or again, earlier, in sixteenthcentury Europe, economic needs for more powerful methods of pumping water out of mines than were provided by the existing Archimedean screw pumps led to work by Evangelista Torricelli and Vincenzo Viviani on the relations between atmospheric pressure and water level. On the basis of this work, successful suction pumps for industrial use were constructed. But this scientific work also led to the invention of the barometer by Torricelli, to the creation of a vacuum by Otto von Guericke, and to a whole host of scientific experiments and results with the so-called "air pump" by Robert Boyle and his colleagues in the newly founded Royal Society. This example shows how economic needs, science, and technology affect each other in complex and often mutually beneficial ways. In the modern world, both industrial organizations and governments in all societies have provided many kinds of support for science in order to pursue economic interests and needs. Direct support exists in the form of governmental and industrial research laboratories; indirect support is given through tax provisions and other subsidies to both the universities and industry. One of the largest areas of governmental response to economic needs has been agricultural research, which is largely biological research but also includes the physical and social sciences. It should be noted that both "capitalist" and "socialist" societies and both "planning" and "nonplanning" societies have supported science through their responsiveness to the economic interests of special groups in the society and of society as a whole. The desirability of using science to meet economic needs and increase economic resources is no longer anywhere in question among the societies of the modern world. Political structures and needs. Political and economic factors have often tended to be closely combined in their effects on science. Of course, the political factor has also had a great influence on science separately, for example, because of the military needs that governments have had. After the recent history of the part that governments have
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played in the development of atomic science for politico-military needs, this point hardly needs further illustration. But this connection between politico-military needs and science is far from new. Governments have always sought to increase military firepower through the development of science. Research on the nature of metals, on the causes of chemical reactions and explosions, and on the mathematics of the curves of ballistic missiles has been spurred by military needs. Religion. Values and religion are closely connected in every society. A religion that supports modern values, which in turn favor science, is, of course, a strong support for the development of science. This specific connection is what Merton has sought to demonstrate in his analysis of the relations between the complex of values and religious beliefs that constitute the Protestant ethic, on the one hand, and the great development of seventeenth-century English science (1936; 1939). The values and beliefs of the Protestant ethic have now been secularized and diffused to many social milieus other than the ones in which they originally arose. In their secular form they are even more powerful supports for the development of science. The relations between a religion and science are always, it should be carefully noted, complex and at partial cross purposes. Thus, although the general beliefs and values of the liberal forms of Protestant Christianity have been favorable to the development of science, even these liberal elements have sometimes protested against specific scientific discoveries that have apparently contradicted basic doctrines of their own. Thus, as Gillispie (1951) has shown, some liberal Protestants who still held to the Biblical conceptions of miraculous floods and other catastrophes were opposed to the notion of geological uniformitarianism when this new scientific idea was first developed in the early nineteenth century. And, a little later, as Dupree (1959) and Lurie (1960) have suggested, there was the same kind of resistance for a while to Darwin's discovery of uniformities in the development of man and the other animal species. In analyzing the relations between religion and science, the sociology of science treats them both as complex phenomena and looks for specific connections between their specific components. The educational system. The maintenance and development of science is facilitated by an educational system that is sufficiently specialized for, and sympathetic to, the growing science of its time. For example, as we may learn from BenDavid (1960), new educational institutions developed for that purpose played an essential role in
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the development of French science during the early nineteenth century and in Germany a little later. All the modernizing countries of recent times, from Russia to the small and weak African countries, have greatly strengthened their educational systems at all levels because of their desire to improve their science. Before modern times, the universities were not the home of scientific development, which they have since become. As late as "the Great Instauration" of science in seventeenth-century England, the universities were still indifferent or hostile to science, but a variety of other extremely favorable social conditions helped science to flourish. This hostility continued for some time. Now, of course, a university that is hostile or indifferent to science can exist only in a society, or in one of its parts, that is content to remain a scientific backwater. Social stratification system. A system of social stratification that emphasizes the value of equality and that, in fact, realizes a high degree of social mobility for the members of a society seems to be more favorable for the development of science than is the opposite, or closed, type of system. By providing a greater degree of equality for talent, wherever in the society it originates, the open type of system can provide greater resources of talent for manning scientific posts. Of course, if scientific roles are not highly valued, rising talent will go elsewhere, but the two factors in combination—a high value on science and the openness of the channels of social mobility—are very favorable to the development of science. In the modern world, both of these conditions have been realized in ever greater measure in the older industrial societies. And the newly modernizing societies, as Dedijer (1961) has described them, are making great efforts to bring them into being almost overnight. Differentiation of the scientific role In relatively undifferentiated societies, past or contemporary, there are few roles for full-time "intellectuals," as we may roughly characterize all those whose special function is to deal in some kind of idea system. However, as societies become less simple and more structurally differentiated, the role of intellectual enlarges and is occupied by at least a few individuals on a full-time basis and with support from a variety of sources: a religious organization, the political magnates, or inherited wealth. Certainly in Greece by the fifth century B.C., the role of intellectual had emerged and was occupied with great distinction by men who have influenced all subsequent thought—men like Plato and Aristotle. It should be noted, however, that the
ideas with which such intellectuals dealt were relatively much less differentiated than ideas are in the modern world. On the whole, the intellectual still deals alike with religious, scientific, ethical, political, and philosophical ideas; indeed, the term "philosophy" covers all knowledge, all types of ideas. But it is not until the beginnings of the modern world that this further process of differentiation occurs, that is, differentiation between types of ideas, and makes way for the specialized roles dealing wholly or primarily with scientific ideas. This differentiation of the scientific role from other intellectual roles was slow in occurring, even in the modern world. In seventeenth-century England, the new science was still called "the new philosophy." And the oldest scientific society in the United States, founded in 1743 by Benjamin Franklin, among others, was called the American Philosophical Society. So little differentiated was the specialized role of scientist and so few were those who occupied this role, by whatever name and with whatever means of support, that it was not until the nineteenth century that the very term "scientist" was coined (by the Rev. William Whewell, in England in the 1840s). The process of differentiation of the role of scientist went slowly until the middle of the nineteenth century because of the difficulty of finding sources of support for it in the securely established social organizations and arrangements. Beginning in the sixteenth century, newly founded scientific societies provided various necessary facilities and supports for scientists, but only a handful of fulltime jobs. Governments did something more, but still there were very few full-time positions in government museums or research organizations. Some distinguished scientists, men like Franklin and Boyle, supported themselves on inherited or earned wealth. Others worked at nonscientific jobs as well, or alternated between scientific and other activities; such a scientist was Antoine Lavoisier. Very little was done by the universities and colleges of the time; not until the nineteenth century, and in most places only in the latter half of that century, did they open their doors wide to scientists. Full institutionalization was achieved, then, when universities, various governmental organizations, and many industrial firms recognized their great need for science, and established regular and permanent roles and careers for scientists. In addition, a variety of special research institutes, endowed by foundations, trade associations, and other special interest groups, or sometimes operated by private individuals for profit, provided further and ever more specialized jobs for scientists.
SCIENCE: The Sociology of Science The necessity and the legitimacy of the scientific role were increasingly acknowledged. One rough measure of the establishment of the scientific role in the modern world is the quantitative increase in the numbers of those who occupy the role. As Derek Price (1963) has shown, during the last 300 to 400 years there has been an exponential growth rate in the number of scientists in the modern world. Starting from very small numbers, to be sure, the rate of growth is such that there has been a doubling of the number of scientists in something like every 10 to 15 years. Because of the nature of exponential growth rates, the recent increase in the number of scientists has been especially large. Price estimates that about 90 per cent of all the scientists who have ever lived are still alive today. Given this growth rate, as well as other reasons, it is small wonder that the place of science in the modern world is not yet as settled as many would like. There is, unfortunately, no room here to treat some other aspects of the social organization of science. Such matters as patterns of authority, of collaboration, and of careers in scientific work have recently been well studied by Glaser (1964), Hagstrom (1965), and Zuckerman (1965), among others. Motivations and rewards for scientists The mere existence of social roles is not enough for their full institutionalization. Adequate and legitimate motivations in those who occupy the roles, and adequate and legitimate rewards from those who support the roles, must also exist. On the whole, in the modern world, and especially in the societies that modernized early, these motivations and rewards exist in sufficient measure. What little evidence we have on the motives of wrorking scientists indicates that, as in all other social roles, a variety of motives in different combinations is at work. For example, because the role of scientist now provides considerable stability, security, and prestige, many scientists are motivated in some measure to achieve these goals. Also, because specialization in basic scientific research provides considerable autonomy to the working scientist, many are motivated to achieve the independence and self-control that the role makes possible. In future social-psychological research on motivation for the scientific role, it will be desirable to keep in mind both the multiplicity of motives that can engage the competent scientist and the way in which the nature of his role structures certain typical combinations of motives. It would be interesting to establish the precise role
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of much-vaunted "curiosity" in the motivation of scientists. And it would also be desirable to use a typology of different scientific roles, along the lines suggested by Znaniecki (1940), such as theorist, experimenter, synthesizer, and similar functional types, to see if various typical combinations of motives exist in these different scientific specialties. As for rewards, the scientific role is now given satisfactory measures of such rewards as security, prestige, and money income to attract its fair share of the talented members of modern societies. As compared with those in business occupations, scientists tend to be rewarded with relatively more prestige for professional standing and relatively less money income. Among scientists themselves, and among the lay public to a lesser extent, there has developed a very elaborate set of symbolic rewards for differential prestige bestowed for differential achievement in science. The awarding of titles, prizes, medals, offices, and eponymous distinctions symbolizes the existing hierarchy of differential prestige. A Nobel Prize in any of the four scientific fields in which it is granted is only the best-known of the symbols of scientific achievement. The reward of prestige in science is given primarily for originality in scientific discovery, but, since it is sometimes difficult to appraise the degree of originality, sheer productivity may carry off the honors. Like other men in other roles, scientists are deeply concerned about the just distribution of rewards for their activities. Despite the norm of humility that prevails among them and that does influence their behavior, they are motivated to achieve credit for being original, just as businessmen are motivated to receive credit for making a profit. As a result of their concern, as Merton (1957) has so well shown, scientists take pride in priority of discovery and often engage in bitter quarrels over claims to priority. In sum, the role of the scientist is subject, as are all social roles, to a structured set of motivations and rewards, some of which are similar to those in other roles and some of which are different. The scientist is in no sense a "selfless" creature above and beyond the influences of his social role. During the last decade there has occurred the beginning of systematic research on what is called "the image" of the scientist that the public at large and various segments of the whole society, such as youth or the scientists themselves, actually hold. A favorable image of a social role is, of course, an important reward for those who fill it. The evidence accumulated by this research shows, on the whole, that the image of the scientist is a favorable one.
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But as Mead and Metraux (1957-1958) and Beardslee and O'Dowd (1961) have shown in their research, there are some negative tones in the picture—a fear and dislike for some of the characteristics and consequences of the scientific role. In short, there is some ambivalence toward scientists. In certain quarters, this admixture of negative feelings has been much deplored, despite the fact that such feelings probably exist for every social role. Because all social roles probably work at least some negative consequences for some people in some situations, it is Utopian to expect a wholly positive image for scientists or for those who occupy any other social-role category. Communication among scientists Since one essential ingredient in the development of science is the combination of already existing ideas, effective communication among scientists is an indispensable part of scientific activities. One of the important social inventions in the early modern period in science was the creation of local, national, and international societies and journals as means for the speedier and more general communication of scientific work within the community of scientists. In order to "keep up" in any branch of science, that is, to learn about the new ideas he can use to discover still further new ideas, the working scientist now has to spend a valuable part of his time with the professional journals, carefully studying a few and scanning many others. In addition to reading the journals, scientists communicate at the meetings of professional associations, both formally and informally. Here, too, as science has developed, there has been a proliferation of specialized groups to match the specialized journals and the specialized activities they report. And, finally, through informal visits, letters, telephone calls, and preprint mimeographed materials, scientists strive to maintain the effective communication without which their activities would be slowed down and even stopped. In his description of the exponential growth rates for different aspects of science, Price (1963) has also shown that there has been a doubling in the number of scientific journals every 10 to 15 years over the last three or four centuries. Because of this large increase, much of it necessary because of the growth of new scientific specialties, there has been some concern among scientists about the possibility of an excess of information; for some scientists, just "keeping up" has become ever more difficult. In response to this felt difficulty, abstracting services have been created and have multiplied, but still the problem of excessive and inefficient
communication is felt to persist. At the present, therefore, various groups of scientists are trying to codify and computerize the processes of what is called "information retrieval" in science. So far they have not had very great success, partly for reasons suggested below. [See INFORMATION STORAGE AND RETRIEVAL.] The structure and functions of communications processes among scientists present an obvious set of problems for the sociology of science—one on which much remains to be done. One interesting suggestion from general sociological ideas and from the research that has been done by Herbert Menzel (1959) is that scientists themselves sometimes think in terms of too rational a conception of the communication process; that is, they may be expecting too much from the journals and the formal meetings. In addition to these formal, manifest, and planned communication processes in science, there are the informal, latent, and unplanned ones. Scientists cannot always know precisely what they want and merely push a computer button to get it. Often, through "milling around" at meetings, through chance visits, through indirect channels, they get essential information which they can recognize as essential only when they get it. As a journey into emergent novelty, science must use both planned and unplanned patterns of communication. One of the newer and more interesting focuses of research in the sociology of science is the question of the function of each pattern of communication for different scientific needs and the distribution of these patterns among the different social situations in which scientists find themselves. [See DIFFUSION, article on INTERPERSONAL INFLUENCE.]
The processes of scientific discovery In contrast with an individualistic, "heroic" conception of the processes of scientific discovery that has prevailed in some quarters, though less now than formerly, the sociology of science has sought to redress the balance of our understanding of these processes by demonstrating that they have essential social components. Starting with the fact of the cumulative nature of science, sociologists have pointed out that the established body of scientific ideas and methodologies at any given time itself has the most important influence on setting problems for scientists to solve and on providing leads for their solution. This determining effect of the established ideas and methods is the source of the innumerable examples of the pattern of independent multiple discovery in science. Given the prerequisites of a discovery in the established body
SCIENCE: The Sociology of Science of science, it is almost inevitable, as Ogburn (1922) and Merton (1961) have argued and demonstrated from the history of science, that independent multiples will occur. Some discoveries, of course, break somewhat more sharply than others with the fundamental notions of the established science; they have more emergent novelty. These are what Kuhn (1962) has called "scientific revolutions." However, even these are far from ex nihilo. Although cumulative in important measure, they also set new directions for the relevant fields and specialties in science. Recent theory and research in the sociology of science have also qualified the older picture of the processes of scientific discovery as based entirely on foresight, planning, rationality, and ready acceptance. These characteristics certainly can be seen in large measure in most discoveries. But, in addition, in many discoveries there is an admixture of the unplanned, the nonrational or irrational, and the obstructive, contributed by the discoverer himself or by others. These characteristics manifest themselves in the pattern of serendipity in discovery and in the pattern of resistance by scientists themselves to certain scientific discoveries. The serendipity pattern occurs, and in actual research it occurs very often, when the researcher comes by happy chance on something he was not looking for, that is, some anomaly that presents him with the unexpected opportunity to change his preconceptions about his research and make a new discovery (Barber 1952, pp. 203-205). The resistance pattern occurs when the scientist refuses to accept his own or someone else's discovery because of theoretical or methodological preconceptions, the force of superior authority or prestige, or the prejudices of particular schools of thought (Barber & Hirsch 1962, chapter 32). Of course, there has always been some resistance to scientific discoveries on the part of cultural and social institutions outside science. Religion, political and economic interests—indeed, the whole range of social factors that interact with science— have under some conditions opposed one or another scientific idea or requirement, just as they have also supported others. An important task for the sociology of science is to analyze specific sources of acceptance and resistance for specific types of scientific ideas and needs. Science as a social problem Like the relations among any of the parts of society, the relations between science and various other parts of society are often inharmonious, as the participants in these relations see them, or
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dysfunctional, as the objective observer sees them. Thus, sociology can also study science as what it calls, in general, "a social problem." There are two aspects of science as a social problem. In one aspect, science is an activity whose participants feel, in some important measure, angry or hostile to society because their values and needs are not being properly met or respected. For example, scientists resent what they define as unnecessary controls on their work: they complain about insufficient financial support for their preferred types of research; they deplore politically imposed secrecy; and they try to throw off all nationalistic and other parochial limitations on their research and communication activities. However much these frustrations may be necessary in the light of other social needs than those of science, to scientists they are social problems calling for protest and reform. A variety of organized and unorganized means of protest now exist among scientists to cope with these problems. In another aspect, science is a social problem to various social groups who consider some of its consequences harmful to themselves and who therefore want to restrict or even eliminate science. Over both the short run and the long, many of the consequences of science are in fact harmful to various social groups. However unintended in most instances, these harmful consequences raise the issue of the social responsibilities of scientists, who are in part their source. It has come to be seen that responsibility for the harmful social consequences of science belongs not directly with scientists but with the several established social and political processes for handling social problems. It has also come to be seen that scientists can play a variety of useful roles in these social and political processes. If scientists have no absolute responsibility for the troubles they help to bring, neither are they absolved from all concern. A number of social and political arrangements are now being worked out to permit scientists to act as expert advisers on the technical aspects of the social problems they have helped to bring into being or that they can foresee arising out of their activities. BERNARD BARBER [See also DIFFUSION; INNOVATION; KNOWLEDGE, SOCIOLOGY OF; MEDICAL CARE, article on ETHNOMEDICINE; TECHNOLOGY; and the biographies of OGBURN; WEBER, MAX; ZNANIECKL] BIBLIOGRAPHY BARBER, BERNARD 1952 Science and the Social Order. Glencoe, 111.: Free Press. -» A paperback edition was published in 1962 by Collier.
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BARBER, BERNARD 1956 Sociology of Science: A Trend Report and Bibliography. Current Sociology 5, no. 2. BARBER, BERNARD; and HIRSCH, WALTER (editors) 1962 The Sociology of Science. New York: Free Press. -> Contains 38 selections and a bibliography. BEARDSLEE, DAVID C.; and O'Dowo, DONALD D. 1961 The College-student Image of the Scientist. Science 133:997-1001. BEN-DAVID, JOSEPH 1960 Scientific Productivity and Academic Organization in Nineteenth-century Medicine. American Sociological Review 25:828-843. DEDIJER, STEVAN 1961 Why Did Daedalus Leave? Science 133:2047-2052. DUPREE, A. HUNTER 1959 Asa Gray: 1810-1888. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Univ. Press. GILLISPIE, CHARLES C. 1951 Genesis and Geology: A Study in the Relations of Scientific Thought, Natural Theology, and Social Opinion in Great Britain, 17901850. Harvard Historical Studies, Vol. 58. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Univ. Press. -» A paperback edition was published in 1959 by Harper. GILLISPIE, CHARLES C. 1960 The Edge of Objectivity: An Essay in the History of Scientific Ideas. Princeton Univ. Press. GLASER, BARNEY G. 1964 Organizational Scientists: Their Professional Careers. Indianapolis, Ind.: BobbsMerrill. HAGSTROM, WARREN O. 1965 The Scientific Community. New York: Basic Books. KUHN, THOMAS S. 1962 The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. Univ. of Chicago Press. LURIE, EDWARD 1960 Louis Agassiz: A Life in Science. Univ. of Chicago Press. MALINOWSKI, BRONISLAW (1916-1941) 1948 Magic, Science and Religion, and Other Essays. Glencoe, 111.: Free Press. -> A paperback edition was published in 1954 by Doubleday. MEAD, MARGARET; and METRAUX, RHODA 1957-1958 Image of the Scientist Among High-school Students. Science 126:384-390, 1200; 127:349-351. MENZEL, HERBERT (1959) 1962 Planned and Unplanned Scientific Communication. Pages 417-441 in Bernard Barber and Walter Hirsch (editors), The Sociology of Science. New York: Free Press. MERTCN, ROBERT K. (1936) 1962 Puritanism, Pietism and Science. Pages 33-66 in Bernard Barber and Walter Hirsch (editors), The Sociology of Science. New ' r ork: Free Press. MERTON, ROBERT K. (1939) 1957 Science and Economy of 17th Century England. Pages 607-627 in Robert K. Merton, Social Theory and Social Structure. Glencoe, 111.: Free Press. -> First published in Volume 3 of Science and Society. MERTON, ROBERT K. 1957 Priorities in Scientific Discovery: A Chapter in the Sociology of Science. American Sociological Review 22:635-659. MERTON, ROBERT K. 1961 Singletons and Multiples in Scientific Discovery. American Philosophical Society, Proceedings 105:470-486. OGBURN, WILLIAM F. (1922)1950 Social Change, With Respect to Culture and Original Nature. New edition with supplementary chapter. New York: Viking. PARSONS, TALCOTT 1951 The Social System. Glencoe, 111.: Free Press. PRICE, DEREK J. DE SOLLA 1963 Little Science, Big Science. New York: Columbia Univ. Press.
ZNANIECKI, FLORIAN 1940 The Social Role of the Man of Knowledge. New York: Columbia Univ. Press. ZUCKERMAN, HARRIET A. 1965 Nobel Laureates in the United States: A Sociological Study of Scientific Collaboration. Ph.D. dissertation, Columbia Univ. IV SCIENCE-GOVERNMENT RELATIONS
The spectacular achievements of scientists during World War n not only made science obviously more important as an instrument of national policy but also gave it a role of greater independence and initiative in the economic and political systems of the world. At least since the Enlightenment, it had generally been assumed that the advancement of science would contribute to social and political progress, but the specific role of science, and of scientists, in economic affairs had generally been thought of as subordinate to that of the entrepreneur or manager and, in matters of government policy, to that of the politician and bureaucrat. Especially in the Englishspeaking countries, the way of thinking initiated by Bacon, and re-emphasized by Franklin and Jefferson, assumed that scientific progress would be maintained by the patient accumulation of facts required for the solution of practical problems, and that research should therefore be supported as incidental to particular industrial enterprises or governmental programs or as a by-product of the system of higher education. Among leading scientists, this assumption had come to seem less obviously true in the late nineteenth or early twentieth century, in view of the superior accomplishments in fundamental science of various countries in western Europe. The success of Napoleonic France in creating, under governmental auspices, strong institutions for the support of basic science as well as technology, and the state-encouraged systematic advancement, late in the nineteenth century, of research in the universities and industry of Germany, made British and American scientists begin to doubt that the inductive and applied approach in the laboratory and the complete independence of science from political issues and governmental support were still the best means of advancing science. These doubts were confirmed by the institutional innovations of World War n, which, particularly in the United States, put science in a quite different relation to government. In its military application, it was no longer merely an instrument for the improvement of weapons at the request of military planners; it was a source of independent initiative in the invention of entirely new systems of weapons, to which war planners were forecd to adapt
SCIENCE: Science-Government Relations their strategies and diplomats their systems of international relations. Similarly, industrial research or development was no longer to be undertaken only at the initiative of the individual inventor or supported only on the basis of the calculation of the individual corporation; government planners began to look on it as a possible instrument by which government might foster the growth of the national economy and the solution of major social problems, and local communities became eager to foster it as an incentive to the development of their prosperity. Even more important, political leaders no longer assumed that basic research would be adequately supported as a by-product of the system of industrial enterprise or private education; in the United States, where private universities were most jealous of their independence from political control, the federal government was called on to support, on an unprecedented scale, the basic research carried on in universities and in industrial laboratories. At the same time, scientists and scientific societies began to think of their role in society, not as one of detachment from governmental affairs and not as one of subordination to industrial managers and bureaucrats, but as one of responsibility for the nature of policies and of the institutional system in which science would be fostered and protected. As a result, the relationship of science to government took on a new degree of significance and interest in the eyes of social scientists. Since the fostering of science was to be a deliberate policy of government, the sociologists and psychologists were concerned with the identification of the types of personality and the nature of the educational and social environment that would develop creativity and encourage innovation (Research Conference . . . 1963; Roe 1953). In practical terms, they had to deal with the new systems of communication and computation, the management of laboratories, the relationship of scientists to administrators, and the status of professional and scientific groups in the social and political system (Hill 1964). Since science was considered a potent force for economic growth, economists were led to study the criteria for the allocation of resources for the support of research and development (Nelson 1959). The relation of science and technology to the business cycle, the processes of innovation, and the relationship of business to government in the advancement of technology posed problems quite different from those of either classical or Marxian economics. Students of politics and administration were
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similarly required to consider how far the new techniques of operations research and other methods developed by scientists could go in determining political issues, and what effect they would have on the traditional values and on legal and political processes. These theoretical questions had their practical parallels within government: the relationship of scientific to administrative personnel within the civil service, the status of scientists as advisers to political executives or as participants in political action, and the extent to which representative legislative bodies should organize themselves to deal directly with scientists and with issues concerning the support and application of science (Gilpin & Wright 1964; McCamy 1960). Major areas of concern Problems like those mentioned above had their greatest impact, of course, in the major nations, notably the United States, the United Kingdom, the nations of western Europe, and the Soviet Union, but during the 1950s they also began to be a concern of those interested in the economic and political development of other countries. Let us note three of the major fields in which these new problems arose and then consider their effect on scientific institutions, on governmental institutions, and on the nature of their relationship. Science and military strength. The success of scientists in creating weapons that were not merely improvements on existing weapons systems but entirely beyond the imagination of military planners gave scientists quite a different status in government. Military strength could no longer be measured mainly in terms of mass armies and a system of industrial mobilization for the manufacture of munitions. It depended on the rate of scientific advance and the innovating ability of scientific institutions. Accordingly, a substantial portion of the budgets of major countries came to be devoted to military research and development programs, and scientists and scientific institutions came to have a large share in the control of such programs. As a result, the expenditures for research and development by government increased sharply, both in actual amounts and in proportion to other sources of support. In the United States, for example, total expenditure on research and development in 1940 (public and private) was well under $1 billion, the government share of the total was certainly less than one-fifth, and the military services provided much less than the Department of Agriculture. In 1964 the federal government provided about $15 billion, roughly two-thirds of
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the national total, but spent four-fifths of its funds through private corporations and universities. About $14 billion of the government total was contributed by the Department of Defense, the Atomic Energy Commission, and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, the three agencies whose motive for expenditure was most clearly the strengthening of national power and international prestige (U.S. National Science Foundation, Federal Funds . . .). The newest and most powerful weapons systems have been developed, not in the traditional military laboratories, but in technological institutions directed by civilians. In the United States during World War n, the Office of Scientific Research and Development, a civilian agency within the Executive Office of the President, set up an extensive network of contractual relations with universities and industrial corporations, and the Manhattan District of the Army Engineers, which finally developed the atomic bomb, followed the same general pattern (Hewlett & Anderson 1962). As a result, the postwar structure of weapons research and development was one involving heavy reliance on private institutions by the military services, the Atomic Energy Commission, and (later) the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. In the planning of these programs, considerable influence was exercised by advisory committees representing the private scientific institutions. Their influence was greater in the decisions relating to the support of basic research, but it carried considerable weight even in the development of weapons systems (Price 1954). Scientists in wartime proved to be useful not merely in developing particular weapons but also in devising more effective systems and procedures of tactics and strategy. Operations research applied rigorous and quantitative methods to the solution of problems faced by the military commander, the industrial manager, or the political executive. Such work was organized either within the regular framework of the military services or under the sponsorship of independent research corporations. The flexibility of the contracting method in the United States was shown when the government proceeded to sponsor the creation of private corporations, supported by government funds, for the purpose of assisting governmental authorities in making major decisions on government administration or policy (U.S. Bureau of the Budget 1962). Of these new institutions the RAND Corporation, set up to serve the Air Force, was perhaps the best known, and the techniques that it developed, drawing on the skills of social as well as physical scien-
tists, became important tools for the civilian executives in the Defense Department who sought, in the 1960s, to exercise more effective control over military affairs. [See MILITARY POLICY.] Science and economic growth. Soon after World War n, even those countries committed to the preservation of private economic enterprise had also committed themselves to a policy of maintaining a high degree of employment and fostering economic growth and prosperity. To these countries and others, it was obvious that some of the most dynamic economic growth was taking place in branches of industry which had been stimulated by the advance of technology for military purposes —notably, electronics, aircraft, plastics, and computers. Economists accordingly took note of the extent to which scientific research and technological development, as well as capital investment, contributed to economic growth. Accordingly, one of the principal motives which led governments to support scientific research was the belief that research and technical education were major factors in the increase in productivity (Denison 1962). Even though economists may not agree on the precise percentage of economic growth which may be attributed to technological advance and the improvement in technological and managerial education, the belief in their efficacy has helped to persuade the United States and most nations of western Europe to increase their research and development expenditures in recent years at a much more rapid rate than their gross national product (Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development 1963, p. 22). In the United States the state governments and local business organizations have been persuaded that federal research subsidies have much to do with the location of new industries in their respective areas, and accordingly the expansion of universities and research laboratories has taken on an importance within the American political system much like that of the traditional forms of public works (such as the improvement of harbors or the building of dams). At the same time, economists have become more skeptical about the extent to which research undertaken for military purposes will have useful byproducts for the civilian economy. In western Europe, where various countries have undertaken to plan the development of the economy, including those sectors carried on by private industry, efforts have been made to develop scientific research as a means of economic growth (Parliamentary and Scientific Conference . . . 1965). The National Economic Development Council of Great Britain and
SCIENCE: Science-Government Relations the Commissariat au Plan of France, for example, have set up special relationships with their respective national organizations for the planning of scientific research expenditures. In the United States, on the other hand, it proved more difficult to build up federal government research and development programs specifically for the purpose of assisting in the development of private industry. The opposition of private business interests restrained the expansion of certain programs of scientific research and technological assistance in the Department of Commerce, for example, even while federal research support was being increased in other fields relating to the private economy, notably in agriculture and natural resources. The apparent influence of science and technology in advancing economic growth led naturally to the hope that science could play an important role in the advancement of the underdeveloped countries. This hope found expression in the programs of the several specialized agencies of the United Nations, notably UNESCO, the Food and Agriculture Organization, and the World Health Organization. It became an important element also in the foreign aid and technical assistance programs of various individual nations—notably the United States, which was able to draw on its century of experience in agricultural education and research. [See ECONOMIC GROWTH.] The health sciences. Some of the most striking practical accomplishments of the sciences have been in the fields of medicine and public health, and the medical profession and hospitals accordingly have been involved in the research programs supported by government to a rapidly increasing degree. In the United States the National Institutes of Health (NIH) of the U.S. Public Health Service became during the 1950s the principal supporter of biological and medical sciences, not merely in the United States but throughout the world. American universities were receiving grants for basic research in even larger amounts from the NIH than from the military services or the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, and NIH grants throughout Europe had begun to add significantly to the research funds available to university scientists and to encourage the development of new patterns of research organization. The official health programs supported by grants from the U.S. government and from the World Health Organization continued and extended the earlier international programs for the eradication of disease of such charitable organizations as the
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Rockefeller Foundation and developed them further with the help of techniques developed or advanced by wartime research programs. The success of such efforts in reducing the death rate intensified concern with the problem of a population increasing at a rate which seemed to threaten the food supply and the economic progress of the various underdeveloped regions, especially the newly independent countries of Asia and Africa. [See PUBLIC HEALTH.] Institutions of basic science Universities, which in their organization still retain traces of their medieval ecclesiastical origin, are in most countries the principal institutions for the conduct of basic research. In the major countries of continental Europe, they generally came under the patronage of the state, and their programs of scientific and technological research were seen as serving national purposes. Particularly in France and Germany, strong centers of fundamental research were thus developed with government support at a time when the ancient British universities were still dominated by classical studies and were generally uninterested in the advancement of science, and American institutions of higher learning were either denominational colleges or state institutions preoccupied with comparatively low levels of vocational and technical education (Ashby 1958; Cohen 1963). The twentieth-century progress of science in the United Kingdom came in the basic sciences and mathematics at Cambridge (and later Oxford) and even more notably in some of the newer universities that even in the nineteenth century had been concerned with technological training and the needs of industry. A major share of the cost of these universities was taken over by the national treasury but was channeled through the University Grants Committee in such a way as to insulate the universities from political control. In the United States, basic research before World War ii was carried on mainly by the major universities, private or state, which received extensive assistance from the philanthropic foundations in the form of grants for special research projects. The leadership of the scientific societies and some of the philanthropic foundations had, by World War n, been persuaded that the nation should greatly increase its emphasis on fundamental research (U.S. National Science Foundation 1960). The patterns that had been developed by the grantmaking programs of the private foundations were influential in determining the system of government support for such research in private and state
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universities after 1945. That system supplied funds from several executive departments and agencies to universities and private corporations, under a system in which panels and committees of advisers from the private institutions were given great influence in the allocation of grants for specific projects. At the same time, the President's Science Advisory Committee, its members drawn mainly from private institutions, put great emphasis on a policy of keeping basic research and the teaching of graduate students closely connected within the universities, a policy that in addition to its pedagogical advantages had the merit of strengthening the autonomy of the academic and scientific community (U.S. President's Science Advisory Committee 1960). The Soviet Union, on the other hand, chose to divide the functions of higher education from those of advanced research and generally to assign them to separate institutions. Research was directed through a system headed by the Committee on the Coordination of Research and Development, the Academy of Sciences, and corresponding academies for the several constituent republics (DeWitt 1961, pp. 434-435). In theory, the entire program is under the guidance of the principles of dialectical materialism; in practice, this guidance seems to affect the conduct of research least in the physical sciences, more in the biological sciences, and still more in the social sciences and humanities. Scientists in administration and politics Basic as well as applied research is conducted not merely in universities but also in government laboratories set up to further the purposes of particular departments or ministries. The way in which their work, as well as the work of scientists in industry and universities, will be related to government policy and government programs depends to a great extent on the status, within the political system and the administrative service, of men trained in the sciences and related professions. In the Soviet Union, the break with traditional systems of education and the great emphasis on scientific and technological training cleared the way for the advancement of scientists and engineers to positions in the higher ranks of the bureauracy, and their advancement was further encouraged by the absence of separate cadres of private business managers and of institutions for their education. By contrast, the career administrative systems of western Europe and the United Kingdom have been comparatively resistant to the promotion of scientists and engineers to high administrative positions. In Germany, for example, a
legal education remains the normal basis for administrative advancement, and in Great Britain the highest class of the civil service is still dominated by permanent officials whose education was in history, the classics, and related fields of knowledge. The personnel system of the United States, which lacks an elite corps and encourages exchanges between the civil service and private life at all levels in the hierarchy, has made it comparatively easy for scientists and men with technological education to rise to high administrative positions. The continuous interchange between governmental and private careers makes the government service a much less distinct part of society, and the distinction between governmental and private careers is further confused by the recent growth of the practice of contracting with private corporations and universities for the performance of government functions, especially research and development programs. As a result, the leading scientists, based in private institutions, who are called on to serve in a part-time or advisory capacity within the structure of government acquire an unprecedented degree of influence. In the United States this advisory function takes the institutional form of a hierarchy of advisory committees, some of a continuing nature and some ad hoc, set up in the principal civilian agencies and military services, and in the White House itself. The most difficult administrative problems relating to the use of such committees have to do with their relationship to the main line of administrative authority, including the full-time staff. The first tendency after World War n was to look to the parttime advisers alone for the principal policy and administrative decisions, notably in the major advisory committee attached to the Executive Office of the President and the Office of the Secretary of Defense. But with the abolition of the Research and Development Board of the Department of Defense and the eventual substitution of a much more powerful individual officer, the director of defense research and engineering, and with the transformation of the President's Science Advisory Committee by the provision of a full-time chairman supported by a full-time staff, a more effective relationship was devised between the part-time adviser and the full-time official, and more sophisticated concepts were worked out with respect to the particular ways in which part-time advisers could most usefully be employed (Gilpin & Wright 1964). The entire system is under the powerful influence, and often the detailed control, of congressional committees that have been making direct
SCIENCE: Science-Government Relations use of independent scientific advisers, especially through the mechanism of the National Academy of Sciences. In countries with parliamentary forms of government the general response to a similar need was the creation of interministerial committees to deal with government-wide scientific problems, often drawing on the advice of committees including private scholars. Thus in the Federal Republic of Germany an interministerial committee exists side by side with an advisory council on science and the humanities and a committee on cultural policy and publicity of the parliament. Similarly, in France an interministerial committee reporting to the premier is advised by a consultative committee of scientists and economists, both committees being served by a single secretariat (the Delegation Generale a la Recherche Scientifique et Technique). The Delegation Generale works closely with the national planning agency (Parliamentary and Scientific Conference . . . 1965). In the United Kingdom the Advisory Council on Scientific Policy was set up to advise the lord president of the council, who was responsible for the general program of civilian science in Great Britain. The lord president's responsibilities were later transferred to a newly created minister for science, whose functions were divided in 1964 by the newly elected Labour government between a minister for science and education and a minister for technology. Unlike the United States or the major countries of western Europe, the United Kingdom has no standing parliamentary committees dealing with particular scientific and technological programs, but it has the informal Parliamentary and Scientific Committee, including members of both houses of Parliament and representatives of more than one hundred scientific and technical organizations, to further the processes of consultation and the exchange of information between the worlds of politics and science. The interest of national governments in science policy has been furthered by studies conducted by various international organizations. The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization have all urged more comprehensive and consistent policies for the support and the coordination of scientific programs, and for more responsible forms of organization to deal with science at high policy levels. Similar international discussions led to the formation of more effective international associations for the promotion of the several sciences, most
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of them being grouped under the International Council of Scientific Unions with the support of UNESCO, and to the formation of international organizations for the conduct of scientific programs. Some of these latter organizations were set up for the operation of specific temporary programs, such as the International Geophysical Year, and others provided regional organizations for tasks too expensive or complex for single nations to undertake (for example, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, the European Atomic Energy Community, and the European Space Research Organization). The conviction that scientists have a moral and political responsibility for the consequences of their research led many of them to abandon their old posture of political indifference or neutrality and to organize to take part in public affairs not merely as subordinate advisers but as active participants. This conviction led to the formation of many organizations for public education and the expression of policy opinions, their status and methods of operation depending greatly on the degree of freedom permitted to voluntary associations by the philosophy and traditions of the various countries. In the United Kingdom and western Europe, the leadership of such organizations tended before World War n toward a socialist or Marxist political philosophy. Since 1946 this tendency has been counterbalanced by theoretical arguments and organizing efforts in support of scientific freedom and against political control of research or economic enterprise. A good example is the program of the Congress for Cultural Freedom. In the United States, the political activity of scientists has been less influenced by ideology and less committed to particular political parties; it has concentrated more on specific policy issues and on the fostering of interest in public affairs within the scientific community (Price 1965). DON K. PRICE [See also NATIONAL SECURITY; POLICY SCIENCES; TECHNOLOGY, article on TECHNOLOGY AND INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS.] BIBLIOGRAPHY
Some of the principal sources in the field are government reports and documents. International Science Report deals with the organization of science in various countries (the first two reports dealt with India and Germany.) The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development has published a series of Country Reviews on the policies for science and education, and a series of Country Reports on the organization of scientific research of various European countries. The most useful bibliographies are U.S. National Science Foundation, Office of Special Studies 1959 and Current Projects in Economic
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and Social Implications of Science and Technology, a survey issued annually since 1957 by the foundation. U.S. data on the financing of research appear in the annual series of the U.S. National Science Foundation, Federal Funds for Research, Development, and Other Scientific Activities. In the United States a valuable additional source of data is the hearings and reports of various congressional committees, notably the Appropriations Committee of each house, the House Committee on Science and Astronautics, the Senate Committee on Aeronautical and Space Sciences, the committees of the two houses on government operations, and the Joint Committee on Atomic Energy. Discussions of continuing problems may be found in the periodicals Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, Minerva, and Science. ASHBY, ERIC 1958 Technology and the Academics: An Essay on Universities and the Scientific Revolution. London and New York: Macmillan. Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. -» Published since 1945. COHEN, I. BERNARD 1963 Science in America: The Nineteenth Century. Pages 167-189 in Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr. and Morton White (editors), Paths of American Thought. Boston: Houghton Mifflin. DENISON, EDWARD F. 1962 The Sources of Economic Growth in the United States and the Alternatives Before Us. New York: Committee for Economic Development. DEWITT, NICHOLAS 1961 Education and Professional Employment in the U.S.S.R. Washington: National Science Foundation. DUPREE, A. HUNTER 1957 Science in the Federal Government: A History of Policies and Activities to 1940. Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap. GILPIN, ROBERT; and WRIGHT, CHRISTOPHER (editors) 1964 Scientists and National Policy-making. New York: Columbia Univ. Press. GREAT BRITAIN, COMMITTEE OF ENQUIRY INTO THE ORGANISATION OF CIVIL SCIENCE 1963 [Trend Report]. Papers by Command, Cmnd. 2171. London: H.M. Stationery Office. HEWLETT, RICHARD G.; and ANDERSON, OSCAR E. JR. 1962 A History of the United States Atomic Energy Commission. Volume 1: The New World: 1939-1946. University Park: Pennsylvania State Univ. Press. HILL, KARL (editor) 1964 The Management of Scientists. Boston: Beacon. HITCH, CHARLES J. 1958 Character of Research and Development in a Competitive Economy. Pages 129139 in Conference on Research and Development and Its Impact on the Economy, Washington, D.C., 1958, Proceedings. Washington: National Science Foundation. HITCH, CHARLES J.; and McKEAN, R. N. 1960 The Economics of Defense in the Nuclear Age. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Univ. Press. HOGG, QUINTIN M. 1963 Science and Politics. London: Faber. H> The author is Viscount Hailsham. International Science Report. -» Published since 1962 by the National Science Foundation, Office of International Science Activities. KIDD, CHARLES V. 1959 American Universities and Federal Research. Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap. KUHN, THOMAS S. (1962) 1963 The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. Univ. of Chicago Press. McCAMY, JAMES L. 1960 Science and Public Administration. University: Univ. of Alabama Press. MERTON, ROBERT K. (1936) 1962 Puritanism, Pietism and Science. Pages 33-66 in Bernard Barber and
Walter Hirsch (editors), The Sociology of Science. New York: Free Press. Minerva (London). -» Published since 1962. NATIONAL RESEARCH COUNCIL, COMMITTEE ON SCIENCE AND PUBLIC POLICY 1964 Federal Support of Basic Research in Institutions of Higher Learning. Publication No. 1185. Washington: National Academy of Sciences—National Research Council. NELSON, RICHARD R. 1959 The Economics of Invention: A Survey of the Literature. Journal of Business 32: 101-127. ORGANIZATION FOR ECONOMIC COOPERATION AND DEVELOPMENT 1963 Science, Economic Growth and Government Policy. Paris: The Organization. ORGANIZATION FOR ECONOMIC COOPERATION AND DEVELOPMENT, ADVISORY GROUP ON SCIENCE POLICY 1963 Science and the Policies of Governments: The Implications of Science and Technology for National and International Affairs. Paris: The Organization. ORGANIZATION FOR ECONOMIC COOPERATION AND DEVELOPMENT Country Reports on the Organisation of Scientific Research. -» Published since 1963. ORGANIZATION FOR ECONOMIC COOPERATION AND DEVELOPMENT Country Reviews. PARLIAMENTARY AND SCIENTIFIC CONFERENCE, SECOND, VIENNA, 1964 1965 Science and Parliament. Paris: Council of Europe and Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. PECK, MERTON J.; and SCHERER, FREDERICK M. 1962 The Weapons Acquisition Process: An Economic Analysis. Boston: Harvard Univ., Graduate School of Business Administration, Division of Research. PRICE, DON K. 1954 Government and Science: Their Dynamic Relation in American Democracy. New York Univ. Press. -» A paperback edition was published in 1962 by Oxford University Press. PRICE, DON K. 1965 The Scientific Estate. Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap. RESEARCH CONFERENCE ON THE IDENTIFICATION OF CREATIVE SCIENTIFIC TALENT 1963 Scientific Creativity: Its Recognition and Development. Edited by Calvin W. Taylor and Frank Barren. New York: Wiley. ROE, ANNE 1953 The Making of a Scientist. New York: Dodd. Science. -> Published since 1883 by the American Association for the Advancement of Science. SNOW, CHARLES P. 1961 Science and Government. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Univ. Press. UNIVERSITIES-NATIONAL BUREAU COMMITTEE FOR ECONOMIC RESEARCH 1962 The Rate and Direction of Inventive Activity: Economic and Social Factors. National Bureau of Economic Research, Special Conference Series, No. 13. Princeton Univ. Press. U.S. BUREAU OF THE BUDGET 1962 Report to the President on Government Contracting for Research and Development. Washington: Government Printing Office. U.S. NATIONAL SCIENCE FOUNDATION 1960 A Study of Scientific and Technical Manpower; A Program of Collection, Tabulation, and Analysis of Data of the National Science Foundation: A Report . . . . U.S. House of Representatives, 86th Congress, 2d Session. Washington: Government Printing Office. U.S. NATIONAL SCIENCE FOUNDATION Federal Funds for Research, Development, and Other Scientific Activities. -> Published since 1950/1951. Volumes 1-12 were published as Federal Funds for Science.
SCIENCE: Scientists U.S. NATIONAL SCIENCE FOUNDATION, OFFICE OF SCIENCE INFORMATION SERVICE Current Projects in Economic and Social Implications of Science and Technology. -» Published since 1957. U.S. NATIONAL SCIENCE FOUNDATION, OFFICE OF SPECIAL STUDIES 1959 Bibliography on the Economic and Social Implications of Research and Development. Washington: The Foundation. U.S. OFFICE OF SCIENTIFIC RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT 1945 Science: The Endless Frontier. Washington: Government Printing Office. U.S. PRESIDENT'S SCIENCE ADVISORY COMMITTEE 1960 Scientific Progress, the Universities and the Federal Government: Statement. Washington: Government Printing Office.
SCIENTISTS
The word "scientist" was introduced into the English language around 1840 to distinguish those who seek empirical regularities in nature from philosophers, scholars, and intellectuals in a more general sense (Ross 1962). Mathematicians and logicians are usually regarded as scientists, although mathematics ceased being regarded as an empirical science by 1890-1910, and today the rubric also covers specialists in the social sciences almost without qualification. Other European languages have no terms strictly equivalent to "scientist." The French savant, Italian scienziato, German Wissenschaftier, and Russian ucheny also refer to philosophers, historians, and other systematic scholars. The absence of a verbal distinction is sometimes reflected in the organization of science and scholarship; for example, philosophers and historians are included in the Soviet Academy of Sciences. Persons in a wide variety of statuses and roles are described as scientists or identify themselves as scientists in English-speaking societies today. In a narrow sense, a scientist is a man of scientific knowledge—one who adds to what is known in the sciences by writing articles or books. This is perhaps the only sense in which the word should be used without qualification. However, "scientists" also engage in applied research, attempting to make discoveries which will lead to new industrial, medical, and agricultural products or processes; in industrial development, applying scientific knowledge to specific problems of innovation in production; and in the routine testing and analyzing of commodities and processes. Such persons are called applied scientists and are not easily distinguished from engineers and technicians. Persons called scientists may also engage in teaching science in institutions of higher education, in writing accounts of science for laymen, and in administration. Finally, a scientist may be defined as a person
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who has received a college degree in a scientific field. The population of scientists. Estimates of the number of scientists vary according to the definition of the term and are, in any case, difficult to make. In the United States around 1962, there were more than one million persons with scientific or technical degrees, more than 275,000 members of professional scientific societies, more than 118,000 persons listed in American Men of Science, and roughly 100,000 engaged in basic or applied scientific research. The number of persons making substantial contributions to knowledge is, of course, much less than 100,000. The United States leads the world in the number of scientists. Between onefourth and one-third of all scientists may be Americans, and most of the remainder are in the other industrialized nations. (For example, seven leading industrial nations accounted for more than 80 per cent of the articles abstracted in Chemical Abstracts in 1960. There is naturally an even greater concentration of scientific languages: English, German, Russian, and French accounted for more than 90 per cent of the more than ten thousand articles abstracted in Index Chemicus for 1963.) Many scientists move to the United States from other nations, industrialized as well as underdeveloped, to obtain better conditions for performing research; this concentration has caused concern among leaders in many nations. The numbers cited above are changing rapidly. The growth in the number of scientists since the later Middle Ages has been exponential; thus, the scientists living in 1960 probably constituted more than 90 per cent of all those who ever lived (Price 1963). The rate of growth around 1960 would double the number of research scientists in roughly fifteen years. This rate of growth, however, must decline within the next generation in developed nations. In the United States in 1952, about half of the science doctorates were received in the physical sciences and mathematics, about 22 per cent in the biological sciences, and about 28 per cent in the social sciences, including psychology. The relative proportions in these major subareas of science have not changed much in the last half century. Social scientists constitute a much larger proportion of scientists in the United States than they do in most other nations. Evolution of scientific roles. The concept of the scientist developed only with the professionalization of science in the first half of the nineteenth century; previously, scientific activities were a subsidiary aspect of other social roles. Florian Zna-
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niecki (1940) has written a concise sociological account of the historical differentiation of scientific roles. In most preindustrial societies, science has been the activity of practical actors. In ancient and medieval Europe, scientists were academic and often religious teachers. Beginning about the time of Galileo's move in 1611 from the University of Padua to the court of Cosimo de' Medici in Florence, scientists left the universities, and during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries the amateur scientist flourished: either the gentleman scientist, like Robert Boyle, or the middle-class amateur, like Joseph Priestley. Scientists again became established in universities after the French Revolution. The twentieth century has seen the rapid growth of research establishments in business firms and government agencies. Of Americans receiving the doctorate in 1958, 56 per cent of the physical scientists, 31 per cent of the biological scientists, and 19 per cent of the social scientists took employment in industry or government. In the United States, most basic research is conducted in academic settings, but most of it is conducted in nonacademic research institutes in the Soviet Union and in some western European nations. Scientific careers Roughly 90 per cent of American physical scientists, and slightly smaller proportions of biological and social scientists, are men. Like other professionals, they are recruited disproportionately from upper-middle-class families; but, unlike others, they are much less likely to be from Roman Catholic families and more likely to be from Protestant or Jewish families than would be expected by chance. During the interwar years, a small number of small liberal arts colleges contributed a disproportionately large share of those who went on to become scientists. Much of this resulted from selective recruitment into these colleges, but some probably resulted from their distinctive scholarly ethos. The growth of scientific education has been accompanied by a growth in the proportion of scientists produced by large public and private undergraduate institutions. Education. Scientific education was revolutionized in nineteenth-century Germany by the dissertation: the requirement that the student conduct original research before receiving a degree. This innovation was soon copied in other nations. Today scientific education is prolonged and highly specialized, especially in its later stages. The dissertation research is usually conducted in a quasiapprenticeship relation with a university professor, and students often make significant contributions to the research of their professors. Almost all
American graduate students in the sciences receive stipends for this work. The median number of years elapsed between the bachelor's degree and the doctorate for Americans receiving the doctorate in 1957 was six in the physical sciences, seven in the biological sciences, and eight in the social sciences (see Berelson 1960 on this and other aspects of graduate education). Although many American universities give advanced training in the sciences (110 gave doctorates in chemistry in 1960), students tend to be concentrated in those institutions best known for basic research; the 15 universities with highest prestige accounted for almost half the doctorates in the sciences in 1957. The best graduate schools tend to recruit students from the best undergraduate schools, and their students are much more likely to be employed in leading universities than are graduates of institutions of lesser renown. Among those receiving advanced degrees, those who do best academically and identify most closely with their professors are most likely to go on to do research and teaching in universities; government and industrial laboratories tend to recruit those who do less well and are less committed to a research career. Career mobility. There is now considerable mobility between universities and research establishments in government and industry; for example, more than one-third of American chemists have been employed in at least two of the three locales (Strauss & Rainwater 1962, chapter 6). The barriers to mobility of this sort were much greater before World War n and apparently are still great in most of the countries of western Europe. There is much less mobility between the major fields of science because of the specialized education required to enter any one of them. Scientists in all types of establishments are likely to combine research with other activities; a large majority of scientists combine research with such other activities as teaching, administration, and technical consultation. Vertical mobility takes different forms in different locales. Advancement in universities does not usually involve a qualitative change in the nature of the work; it still involves teaching and research. In government, and especially in industry, vertical mobility often involves advancement to administrative positions and the abandonment of research; many firms recruit managers for line operations from among their research scientists (Kornhauser 1962, chapter 5). Incentives and occupational personality Scientists in basic research are strongly motivated to solve intellectual problems that they re-
SCIENCE: Scientists gard as intrinsically important, but the most important social incentive for them is their desire to obtain recognition from their colleagues for their research accomplishments. This desire leads the scientist to publish his results, and it influences his decisions in the selection of research problems and methods. Scientists compete strenuously to be the first to publish discoveries, and simultaneous discoveries by two or more scientists occur frequently. When there is some question about which scientist made a discovery first, a priority dispute may arise. The frequency of such disputes and the intense bitterness which often accompanies them are telling evidence of the value scientists place upon the esteem of their colleagues (Merton 1957; 1963); however, priority disputes have become less frequent in the twentieth century. Industrial and governmental research establishments which conduct applied or secret research make it more difficult for their scientific employees to be recognized, and such establishments must offer relatively high salaries to scientists in order to induce them to accept this deficiency. Values and personality. Compared with nonscientists, scientists are more inclined to prize the recognition of their colleagues and their professional autonomy above the rewards of income, organizational power, and community prestige. They are nevertheless among the most prestigious occupational groups. "Scientists" were ranked third in prestige among 90 occupations—just behind U.S. Supreme Court justices and physicians—by a cross section of the U.S. population in 1963; some scientific specialties were, however, ranked a good deal lower. There is some evidence that these distinctive occupational values characterize scientists even as university undergraduates (Rosenberg 1957; Davis 1966). Many of the distinctive personality characteristics of scientists also appear to be produced more by selection than by university or occupational socialization. Scientists tend to be highly intelligent; possessors of U.S. doctorates in the sciences have a mean IQ of over 130 (from a population with mean 100 and standard deviation 20), which is not much different from the mean IQ of similarly qualified persons in other fields or the mean IQ of medical and law school graduates (Price 1963, chapter 2). Although the evidence is sketchy and incomplete, and although there is much variation among scientists, it also appears that physical and biological scientists tend to be "intensely masculine," to avoid close interpersonal contacts, and to avoid and be disturbed by emotions of hostility and dependency. These characteristics may help generate the scientist's desire for recognition for
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his accomplishments from his colleagues. Physical scientists tend to like music and dislike poetry and art. As might be expected, creative scientists are unusually hardworking, to the extent of appearing almost obsessed with their work (see Research Conference . . . 1963 for summaries of studies on the personality characteristics of scientists). Stereotypes of scientists held by high school and university students are in crude accord with these psychological findings (Mead & Metraux 19571958; Beardslee & O'Dowd 1961). It has been argued that the values of the Puritans —rational mastery of one's environment, worldly activity for the glorification of God, and individualism—helped to motivate them to pursue science in seventeenth-century England, and have resulted, even today, in a higher valuation of science among Protestants than among Roman Catholics; ihis is a matter of dispute, however (Merton 1939; Feuer 1963). In any case, scientists today are among the least religious groups in the American population, with respect to both religious beliefs and religious practices. Those in the behavioral and biological sciences, where religion and science are most likely to come into conflict, are least likely to be religious. Scientists also tend to support parties of the left in national politics. With regard to both religion and politics, there is evidence that the more productive scientists are less conservative than the less productive. Scientific productivity. It is generally difficult to account for variations in scientific productivity in terms of personality or background variables. There is great variation in productivity; the probability that a scientist will produce n or more papers (if he produces at least one) is roughly proportional to 1/n, and 50 per cent of the papers are written by about 6 per cent of the scientists (Price 1963, table 2, p. 45). The best background predictors of scientific productivity are the times required to get the doctorate and college grades, but these account for little of the variation. Contrary to common belief, productivity does not decline with age until advanced ages, 60 or over, are reached. Social contexts may have greater effects on productivity, but these effects are not readily distinguished from the selectivity of the contexts themselves. Graduates and faculty of leading universities are more productive than others. Scientists who have adequate facilities and research assistance are more productive than those who do not, and those who maintain continuity in their research topics are more productive than those who do not. However, the kinds of contacts with colleagues and the quality of specialization make a difference. Scientists who perform multiple func-
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tions, combining research with teaching or administration, have been shown to be more productive than those who devote full time to research. Scientists who have frequent contacts with colleagues possessing different research interests are more productive than those with few contacts or contacts only with others of very similar interests. Social isolation especially is associated with low productivity for most scientists; this is a major handicap for scientists working in underdeveloped nations. The organization of science Scientists engaged in basic research are necessarily given considerable autonomy. If they are not free to evaluate the truth or falsehood of theories or the adequacy of research findings, science ceases to exist; and scientists also are usually free to select research problems and techniques within broad limits. Such autonomy exists in many universities and in a few governmental arid industrial establishments. University departments place some restrictions on this freedom; for example, some research in logic or statistics may be felt to be not "really" mathematics, and scientists in mathematics departments may be discouraged from performing it. This may produce organizational strains, and these strains are sometimes resolved by the differentiation of existing disciplines and departments. The number of recognizably different scientific disciplines probably trebled between 1900 and 1960, and the formation of new disciplines shows no signs of stopping. The autonomy of basic scientists conflicts with a frequent need to engage in cooperative research. Traditionally this conflict has been resolved by forming temporary teams of freely collaborating scientists or teams of a professor and his students. More recently, in fields like nuclear physics, cooperative research has been formalized; permanent groups of professional scientists are formed in which authority is centralized and a formal division of labor is established. In most fields in universities, however, the traditional forms of teamwork are much more common than such formally organized groups. Industry and government. The importance that scientists place upon purely scientific goals, their desire to be autonomous, and their sensitivity to the responses of their disciplinary colleagues produce strains when they are employed by industrial and governmental agencies to help achieve practical goals. For example, the desire to select their own research problems leads them to resist accepting directions from organization superiors. Also, scientists tend to prefer working in units with their
disciplinary colleagues to working in professionally heterogeneous groups that are organized on the basis of industrial functions; and the desire to inform others of their discoveries conflicts with requirements of industrial and military secrecy. The typical industrial incentives of salary and power are less important for scientists than for other categories of employees, and, if scientists accept these incentives as primary, their commitments to scientific values and their scientific competences may be eroded. Various ways have evolved for accommodating industrial organization and the typical organization of the scientific community (Kornhauser 1962). Industrial scientists are selected from among those most willing to accept the importance of industrial goals, and occupational socialization furthers this acceptance. In addition, industrial research organizations are often differentiated into fundamental research units and units more directly involved in practical tasks, and scientists are assigned to different units on the basis of interests and skills. Research supervisors are recruited from among superior scientists and tend to use persuasion more than formal direction. "Parallel hierarchies" of advancement may be offered, so that some scientists are promoted to positions giving them greater autonomy in research, while others are promoted to administrative positions. Finally, the patent system and similar procedures make it possible for scientists to publish some research findings while safeguarding the proprietary interests of firms in discoveries. These types of accommodations make possible the incorporation of scientists into industry without the sterilization of science. Professional societies. In addition to their work establishments, scientists as scientists are organized into a wide variety of societies and associations. Most of the vast number of such groups are devoted to a specialized subject matter, and their major activities involve the communication of discoveries through meetings and journals. The oldest societies and those with highest prestige, like the Royal Society of London and the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, are interdisciplinary, and membership in them is by election. Such groups engage in facilitating scientific communication, but they also play important roles in formulating the science policies of national governments. So also do large national groups that are open to almost all scientists, such as the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the British Association for the Advancement of Science, and the Deutscher Verband Technisch-Wissenschaftlicher Vereine. While there has been a tendency for the scien-
SCIENCE: Scientists tific "society" to give way to the professional "association," none of these types of organizations is directly involved with questions of wage rates and working conditions. At most, these groups forward the occupational interests of scientists by protecting job titles through state licensing and certification, by elevating educational standards, and by lobbying for increased governmental support. There are a few trade unions for "scientists," but engineers and technologists dominate them and they are relatively ineffective. What is a scientist? The concept of the scientist was originally formulated primarily to distinguish specialists in the natural sciences from philosophers, historians, and other intellectuals; the distinction began to emerge as clear and significant only around 1800. Today the differences between philosophy and an empirical, generalizing, value-free science are clearly recognized. It is known that the pursuit of science requires the full-time efforts of its workers, and provisions for scientific employment are abundant. Perhaps we have succeeded only too well in distinguishing scientists from other intellectuals. Today our major difficulties involve distinguishing scientists from engineers and technicians. Even when a scientist is clearly a man of knowledge, his knowledge is apt to be highly specialized and communicable to few others, even within his own discipline. Are scientists intellectuals? Or are they a culture (or cultures) apart? C. P. Snow's 1959 book, The Two Cultures and the Scientific Revolution, stimulated extensive public discussions of this (the essays in Holton 1965 are a good sample of the result). Perhaps university professors find it too easy to discover a cleavage between scientists and others. Taking a longer view, one might conclude that scientific knowledge and the scientific approach to the world have been dispersed very widely and deeply in the populations of industrialized nations. Most of us have been deeply influenced by scientists in what we believe and how we believe. The willingness of populations to tolerate and support scientists may be some testimonial to this influence. WARREN O. HAGSTROM [See also CREATIVITY, article on SOCIAL ASPECTS; ENGINEERING; INTELLECTUALS; KNOWLEDGE, SOCIOLOGY OF; and the biography of ZNANIECKL] BIBLIOGRAPHY
BARBER, BERNARD; and HIRSCH, WALTER (editors) 1962 The Sociology of Science. New York: Free Press. ->
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The articles by Beardslee & O'Dowd (1961), Mead & Metraux (1957-1958), Merton (1939; 1957) are reprinted in this collection. Includes a bibliography. BEARDSLEE, DAVID C.; and O'DowD, DONALD D. 1961 The College-student Image of the Scientist. Science 133:997-1001. BERELSON, BERNARD 1960 Graduate Education in the United States. New York: McGraw-Hill. DAVIS, JAMES A. 1966 Undergraduate Career Decisions. Chicago: Aldine. FEUER, LEWIS S. 1963 The Scientific Intellectual: The Psychological and Sociological Origins of Modern Science. New York: Basic Books. HAGSTROM, WARREN O. 1965 The Scientific Community. New York: Basic Books. HARMON, LINSEY R. 1965 Profiles of Ph.D.'s in the Sciences: Summary Report on Follow-up of Doctorate Cohorts, 1935-1960. Publication 1293. Washington: National Academy of Sciences-National Research Council. HOLTON, GERALD (editor) 1965 Science and Culture: A Study of Cohesive and Disjunctive Forces. Boston: Houghton Mifflin. -» First published in Volume 94 of Dsedalus. KORNHAUSER, WILLIAM 1962 Scientists in Industry: Conflict and Accommodation. Berkeley: Univ. of California Press. MEAD, MARGARET; and METRAUX, RHODA 1957-1958 Image of the Scientist Among High-school Students. Science 126:384-390, 1200; 127:349-351. MERTON, ROBERT K. (1939)1957 Science and Economy of 17th Century England. Pages 607-627 in Robert K. Merton, Social Theory and Social Structure. Glencoe, 111.: Free Press. -> First published in Volume 3 of Science and Society. MERTON, ROBERT K. 1957 Priorities in Scientific Discovery: A Chapter in the Sociology of Science. American Sociological Review 22:635-659. MERTON. ROBERT K. 1963 Resistance to the Systematic Study of Multiple Discoveries in Science. Archives enropeennes de sociologie 4:237-282. PRICE. DEREK J. DE SOLLA 1963 Little Science, Big Science. New York: Columbia Univ. Press. RESEARCH CONFERENCE ON THE IDENTIFICATION OF CREATIVE SCIENTIFIC TALENT 1963 Scientific Creativity: Its Recognition and Development. Edited by Calvin W. Taylor and Frank Barren. New York: Wiley. -» Includes a bibliography on pages 391-407. ROSENBERG, MORRIS 1957 Occupations and Values. Glencoe, 111.: Free Press. Ross, SYDNEY 1962 "Scientist": The Story of a Word. Annals of Science 18:65-85. SNOW, C. P. 1959 The Two Cultures and the Scientific Revolution. Cambridge Univ. Press. SNOW, C. P. 1964 The Two Cultures: And a Second Look. 2d ed. Cambridge Univ. Press. -> An expanded version of Snow 1959. STRAUSS, ANSELM L.; and RAINWATER, LEE 1962 The Professional Scientist: A Study of American Chemists. Chicago: Aldine. U.S. NATIONAL SCIENCE FOUNDATION 1965 Scientific and Technical Manpower Resources: Summary Information on Employment Characteristics, Supply and Training, prepared by Norman Seltzer. NSF 64-28. Washington: Government Printing Office. ZNANIECKI, FLORIAN 1940 The Social Role of the Man of Knowledge. New York: Columbia Univ. Press.
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SCIENCE: Scientific Communication VI SCIENTIFIC COMMUNICATION
The term "scientific communication" refers to the exchange of information and ideas among scientists in their roles as scientists. Menzel (1958, p. 6) defines it as "the totality of publications, facilities, occasions, institutional arrangements, and customs which affect the direct or indirect transmission of scientific messages among scientists." It is distinguished from everyday communication about physical reality in that it has reference to a particular body of generalized, codified knowledge. Ideally, each and every communication contributes to the corpus of accepted knowledge identified as science. This is accomplished chiefly by extending the boundaries, by modifying previously held hypotheses, and by introducing additional precision, clarification, or verification of existing knowledge. Although the preferred means and the practices associated with scientific communication have undergone change in the last few centuries, full and open communication of scientific results has always been a foundation sto.ie of modern science. With the establishment of the academies in the seventeenth century, word-of-mouth exchange of information and informal meetings were very quickly supplemented by informal correspondence and exchange of letters concerning scientific work and, later, by a quasi-institutionalized arrangement embodied in the office of secretary or correspondent; finally, these were followed by formal journals containing the proceedings of meetings and other communications. The scientific enterprise of that era was small enough to permit reasonably adequate communication on the basis of the small number of journals and the occasional publication of books, supplemented by face-to-face interaction and correspondence by letter. The so-called "communications explosion" in science is new primarily in the sense that it is now widely recognized as a problem. But as Price (1963) has pointed out, the amount of scientific publication has been growing exponentially, doubling every ten to fifteen years over the past three centuries. While there is no universal agreement, one of the more "conservative" estimates is that there are over thirty thousand scientific journals presently in existence and that there are more than a million papers published in them each year (Gottschalk & Desmond 1962; Bourne 1962). The sheer number of papers being produced annually has brought open recognition of a number of serious communication problems. Among the more important ones are the time lag between the completion of a paper
for publication and its appearance in a journal; the increasing difficulty of "keeping up with the literature"; and the increasing difficulties in searching the literature and retrieving relevant information. For these as well as a number of other reasons centering on a growing awareness of the importance of science for national welfare, economic growth, and even survival, interest in the communications problems of science has mushroomed since the 1950s. The communications explosion within science has given rise to concerted efforts to deal with the problem on many fronts, especially with the aid of new technological advances. Through the use of computers and a variety of other technical devices, efforts are being made to facilitate the storage and retrieval of information, and considerable progress is being made along these lines (see Stevens 1965). However, some questions have been raised about this approach in terms of the changing functions of scientific communication. While professional librarians, documentalists, editors, linguists, abstractors, mathematicians, and others now broadly characterized as information experts seek to improve the effectiveness of scientific communication largely by technical means, social scientists have begun to examine the social aspects of the scientific communications process. The study of scientific communication Despite the growing interest in and support for studying the scientific communications system, there is still little systematic knowledge about it. A review of what is known must, therefore, be guided by a broad conceptual scheme rather than restricted to the specific questions now thought to be crucial for an understanding of the subject. The scheme has three major components: the functions of scientific communication, for scientists as well as for science generally; the various channels through which communications flow; the intervening variables or situational factors which influence the relationships beween channels and functions. Functions of communication. Menzel (1958) lists a number of functions performed by scientific communication: (1) providing answers to specific questions; (2) helping the scientist to stay abreast of new developments in his field; (3) helping him to acquire an understanding of a new field; (4) giving him a sense of the major trends in his field and of the relative importance of his own work; (5) verifying the reliability of information by additional testimony; (6) redirecting or broadening his span of interest and attention; and (7) obtaining critical response to his own work. He notes, too,
SCIENCE: Scientific Communication Merton's seminal discussion (1957) of the importance to scientists of professional recognition—a major reward for scientific achievement which is also carried by the communications system of science. An understanding of these functions helps to pinpoint specific problems in the communications process and calls attention to the importance of the many different forms of communication behavior in which scientists engage. This is undoubtedly an important first step in going beyond the purely technical aspects of the storage and retrieval of scientific information, and studies concerned with these functions should lead not only to a better understanding of the communications process in science but also, it is hoped, may have practical utility in suggesting ways to improve the process. One of the most important functions of communications for science as a whole is to provide a cumulative record of the "certified" knowledge which exists at any given point in time. Without such a record it is doubtful that science could continue to develop as a viable system. This record constitutes the point of reference for each scientist, providing him with the foundation from which he may make his own contributions toward extending what is known. This is not to imply that what is already in the record is immutable. Quite the contrary—the record is always subject to change in the light of new evidence, newly available techniques, and new discoveries. But whether a contribution is an extension of previously accepted knowledge or a new interpretation of what is already known, it is always and necessarily a matter of the record. The current communications crisis raises questions about the nature of this record as well as about a number of widely held assumptions concerning the nature of the scientific communications process. For example, the fact that a paper has been published has usually implied that it has been reviewed by a jury of competent peers. However, there is at least the suspicion that the continued proliferation of journals has inevitably "watered down" the rigor of professional review. It is not even always possible to establish a simple correlation between the quality of any particular scientific paper and the reputation of the particular journal in which it appears. In any case, the quality of papers published is becoming an increasingly important problem. No matter how much retrieval procedures may be improved, the question of what is worth retrieving deserves much more attention. Another major assumption has been that once a paper is published, not only is it accessible to the
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scientific community, but also it will actually be read by the scientists concerned. However, the flood of publications has tended to undermine the accessibility of relevant papers, at least within the traditional communications practices. Not only may a single paper be buried in the flood of all papers published, but accessibility is also impeded by the growing trend toward increased specialization of journals, so that relevant papers may appear in sources not normally reviewed. Finally, the flood of publications has made it impossible for any one scientist to read more than a small fraction of what is potentially relevant. Some preliminary studies indicate that perhaps only about 25 scientists may actually read any particular paper which is published. Further, an increase in the amount of information in the field tends to place greater strain on the integrative capacities of theory in that field, so that relationships among the contributions of different scientists become more difficult to determine. As a body of knowledge becomes "disorganized" in this way, the significance and even the validity of new contributions are more difficult to assess, and effective scientific communication may become a property only of small networks of scientists working on the same specific topics rather than of an entire discipline (Hagstrom 1965). Channels of communication. The growing awareness of informal or relatively private channels of communication among scientists (U.S. President's . . . 1963; Schilling 1963-1964; Kaplan 1964) is but one aspect of the general problem of the different channels of communication and the different functions of each. The various channels of scientific communication are usually thought of as ranging from the most formal to the most informal, in terms of the degree to which the information flowing through them is codified and generally available to all scientists. It is perhaps more useful, however, to think of them as ranging from structured or planned channels which are known about in advance (such as journals, books, and even announced meetings) to unstructured channels through which information is accidentally acquired (such as finding useful information in the literature while searching for something else, or a casual conversation which yields unlooked-for information). A further complication must be introduced insofar as we are dealing with a highly fluid situation in which yesterday's unstructured channels become tomorrow's structured ones. The ease with which one can talk by telephone to a colleague three thousand miles away may make this a far more effective means of finding particular bits
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of information than the ordinarily accepted techniques of searching the literature. While precise knowledge of the proportion of information important to scientists acquired through various channels is still lacking, everything we know indicates that there is a much greater reliance on "accidental" and unstructured channels than has formerly been realized. Menzel (1958, p. 47) emphasizes that "it becomes imperative to consider the information network as a system. . . . What is little better than an accident from the point of view of an individual may well emerge as a predictable occurrence from a larger point of view." While it is possible to try to match different channels with the different functions performed by scientific communication as discussed above, in practice such an exercise appears to be futile. Each of the functions listed can be, and apparently is, actually served by many different channels. Thus, it is entirely possible that the answer to a specific question can be found in an article in a published journal, in a preprint which arrived in the morning mail, during the course of a telephone conversation with a colleague about some other matter, or in a chance encounter in the corridors outside a scientific congress. A review article might be the best single source for providing a sense of the major trends in a field, but one might also get the same results, and often more quickly, from talking to a number of colleagues closely involved in the field. In the present circumstances, it seems safe to say that merely exploring one channel or source (especially a traditional one) is not necessarily the most effective way of treading through the maze of messages being communicated. Participation in structured channels. The literature of science, primarily journals, constitutes the most important structured channel of communication within science; roughly two-thirds of the scientists studied by several investigators cited the journals as the most important single channel through which they learned of new developments in their fields of primary interest (Menzel 1958; 1960). To keep up with secondary fields, scientists typically turn first to recent textbooks and then to abstracts and review articles for guidance (Menzel 1958). The degree to which a body of knowledge is theoretically well-organized seems to influence the concentration of important information in specific channels; Menzel found chemists (a relatively well-organized field) reporting that two-thirds of the articles they read would be found in the three journals they listed as "most important," while zoologists (a relatively unorganized field) reported that only a quarter of their reading would
be found in three such journals. He found also that an average of 8.18 journals was needed to account for 75 per cent of the nominations of "three most important journals" by chemists, while the comparable figure for zoologists was 15.76 journals (1960). Price (1963, table 2, p. 45) suggests that 6 per cent of the men in a field will produce half the published literature in that field and 2 per cent will produce about a quarter of it. Reasoning after Lotka (1926) that the number of scientists producing n papers is proportional to 1 /n2 ( an inversesquare law of productivity), he calculates that the average scientist should produce about 3.5 papers during his working career. Meltzer (1956), however, found that U.S. physiologists had produced an average of four to five papers (including chapters in books and coauthored papers) within three years, and Schilling (1963-1964) seems to arrive at an even higher figure for the lifetime productivity of bioscientists. Such figures are not directly related to the use of the literature; Price (1963) finds that the "half life" of a given article is about 15 years; that is, half of the articles cited by papers published in a given year will be less than 15 years old. Various other studies indicate that the half life in use is much shorter than this; more than half of the withdrawals from two technical libraries studied were less than five years old, and more than half of the "reading acts" by scientists in a U.S. government laboratory were devoted to materials less than two months old (Menzel 1960). The amount of time a scientist devotes to the use of structured channels probably varies greatly with situational factors, although little is known about this at present. On the basis of some 25,000 random-time observations of 1,500 U.S. chemists, Halbert and Ackoff (1958) conclude that nearly 50 per cent of their subjects' time is spent in some form of communication and a third of it in specifically scientific communication. Roughly 10 per cent of the chemists' time is spent in general discussion, slightly less than this in receiving information orally, the same amount in reading unpublished materials, and about 5 per cent is spent in reading published materials. Estimates of the proportion of reading done for "specific uses" rather than for "general interest" vary from 20 to 80 per cent, and they are probably influenced heavily by the ways in which the data were gathered as well as by situational factors (Menzel 1960). A number of studies report that the average amount of time per week spent in reading published materials is about five hours, but situational
SCIENCE: Scientific Communication factors are again highly important. Scientists in basic research seem to devote only half as much time to reading as do scientists in applied research; however, the former are much more concerned with archival literature, while the latter make greater use of unpublished literature (Menzel 1960). Tornudd (1958) suggests that physical isolation from channels of oral communication produces greater dependence among Danish and Finnish scientists upon published literature, and the rate at which a field is developing seems also to be important—the more rapid the advances, the greater the reliance upon relatively unstructured channels (Menzel 1958). Schilling's study of bioscientists (1963-1964) found that age is unrelated to dependence on written, as compared with oral, channels; the bioscientists typically rate the latter as only half as important as the former. Moreover, women in the biological sciences seem slightly more dependent on the literature, probably because they have fewer opportunities to engage in unstructured communication : they visit other laboratories less often, hold fewer professional offices, and receive fewer preprints. As the amount of published literature increases, scientists are turning to other structured channels as well as to unstructured channels. Orr (1964) notes a steady increase in the number of meetings and conferences held in the biomedical sciences each year since 1927, an increase in the attendance at such meetings, and a slight increase since 1947 in the percentage of research funds used for travel. Menzel's study of 76 scientists (1958) found that they attended an average of 2.5 meetings per year, and Garvey (see American Psychological Association . . . 1964) found that psychologists in an academic setting attended an average of three per year, while those in a government laboratory averaged about two. Yet Menzel notes that relatively few scientists admit obtaining significant information from the formal presentations at meetings and concludes that "the functions of scientific meetings are not those which ostensibly motivate the bulk of their programs, but other forms of communication —symposia, corridor meetings, the presence in one room of those interested in a single area . . ." (1960, vol. l,p. 47). Unstructured communication. Unstructured (sometimes called informal or unplanned) communication among scientists often provides specific information which a scientist knows he needs, but probably its major importance lies in providing him with useful information which he did not know existed. Scientists generally report between 65 and
11 5
90 per cent success in locating needed information in the literature (Menzel I960; Tornudd 1958), but they obviously cannot estimate their success in obtaining information of which they are unaware. Such unknown information varies from the specific (a new experimental technique) to the general (news that another individual is working on a particular problem), but it is almost always obtained, directly or indirectly, "by accident." Considering the usual delays in publication and the general difficulties involved in keeping abreast of the literature, it is presumptive evidence of the efficiency of unstructured channels that only about one scientist in five reports ever having received information "too late"—that is, information which would have influenced the course of his research had he received it sooner (Menzel 1960). Menzel notes four major unstructured channels through which information reaches scientists: a scientist informs a colleague of his current interests and is given an item of pertinent information in return; a colleague conveys information which he knows the scientist will be interested in; a colleague volunteers the information while they are together for a different purpose; and he finds a useful item of information in the literature while searching for something else. In all but the last, the scientist is dependent on his colleagues, who will know of his needs and interests only if he tells them or if they are indicated by his previous publications. The effectiveness with which a scientist uses these channels, then, would seem to be related both to his ability to make his needs known and to the frequency with which he comes into contact with other scientists in his field. The flow of professional recognition. Unstructured channels can operate effectively only so long as scientists feel the need to assist each other and share the values of "communism" and "disinterestedness" which encourage them to share their findings freely, without regard for personal gain (Merton [1949] 1957, pp. 556-560). Yet personal gain of an honorific nature is involved; Merton has referred to this as professional recognition (1957), and Storer (1966) has suggested that it is "competent response" to a contribution. If information flows in one direction through the various channels of scientific communication, response to it flows in the other. Anything which signifies the value, to one or more scientists, of information received from others—eponymy, prizes, election to professional office, footnotes, even personal thanks—serves to sustain the scientist's motivation through confirming the goodness of his work and his successful performance as a scientist. Glaser (1964) has docu-
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merited some of the consequences for the motivation and career plans of scientists when there is a lack of "adequate recognition," but work on the various channels through which recognition flows has barely.begun (Kaplan 1965a). Improving scientific communication The extent and success of efforts to speed and to make more effective the dissemination of information in science vary greatly by fields. In physics, the weekly Physical Review Letters has made it possible to bring brief announcements of recent findings to readers, usually within a month of submission, and there is a variety of other newsletters, data-card services, and regular announcements of work in progress which are now being established in different fields. The American Psychological Association's Project on Scientific Information Exchange in Psychology represents a major effort to develop and then apply new information to the improvement of communication within the field of psychology. Another technique, facilitated by the use of highspeed computers, is the citation index, which enables one to trace the influence of a given paper forward in time; this will apparently be of value to historians and sociologists of science as well as to those concerned with the substantive content of the materials cited (Institute for Scientific Information 1964). The suggestion that archival publication be partially replaced by central depositories, from which materials may be acquired on request after learning of them through title lists and abstracts, has not yet met with success; the obstacles to its adoption apparently lie more in the desire of scientists to be assured that their contributions will go to a "guaranteed" audience (as when published in a journal) than in the technical problems involved (U.S. President's . . . 1963). Suggestions have also been made toward providing greater opportunity for scientists to make use of unstructured channels of communication: encouraging attendance at meetings and visits to other institutions, arranging teaching duties so as to leave some days free for travel, and allowing more time at announced meetings for discussion sessions (Menzel 1958). Such suggestions are basically concerned with increasing the amount of personal contact among scientists, and their success will probably be contingent upon the amount of funds available for such purposes. It may be predicted that the study of scientific communication will become increasingly important as the difficulty of disseminating information widely and rapidly mounts. The field requires much
more work in conceptualizing the nature of the communications network and its relation to the social structure of science, as well as in the collection of more data. While much of the concern expressed today about problems of scientific communication focuses on developing new techniques for the storage and retrieval of information, and while some concern is focused on the social aspects of the communications process, very little attention has been devoted to the underlying problem of what should be communicated and in what form. Finally, there is little doubt that each scientist will have to bear a greater responsibility for the transfer of information and not leave it largely to the professional documentalist. As a recent analysis of the problems of scientific communication (U.S. President's . . . 1963, p. 1) notes, "The technical community generally must devote a larger share than heretofore of its time and resources to the discriminating management of the ever increasing technical record. Doing less will lead to fragmented and ineffective science and technology." NORMAN KAPLAN AND NORMAN W. STORER [See also CONFERENCES; DIFFUSION, article on INTERPERSONAL INFLUENCE; INFORMATION STORAGE AND RETRIEVAL.] BIBLIOGRAPHY AMERICAN PSYCHOLOGICAL ASSOCIATION, PROJECT ON SCIENTIFIC INFORMATION EXCHANGE IN PSYCHOLOGY 1964 The Discovery and Dissemination of Scientific Information Among Psychologists in Two Research Environments. American Psychological Association, Project on Scientific Information Exchange in Psychology, Report No. 11. American Psychologist 21, no. 11. -* This issue (November, 1966) contains eight articles on scientific communication, particularly in the field of psychology. BARBER, BERNARD; and HIRSCH, WALTER (editors) 1962 The Sociology of Science. New York: Free Press. BOURNE, CHARLES P. 1962 The World's Technical Journal Literature: An Estimate of Volume, Origin, Language, Field, Indexing, and Abstracting. American Documentation 13:159-168. GLASER, BARNEY G. 1964 Organizational Scientists: Their Professional Careers. Indianapolis, Ind.: BobbsMerrill. GOTTSCHALK, C. M.; and DESMOND, W. F. 1962 Worldwide Census of Scientific and Technical Serials. Paper delivered at the annual meeting of the American Documentation Institute. Unpublished manuscript. HAGSTROM, WARREN O. 1965 The Scientific Community. New York: Basic Books. HALBERT, MICHAEL H.; and ACKOFF, RUSSELL L. 1958 An Operations Research Study of the Dissemination of Scientific Information. Pages 87-120 in International Conference on Scientific Information, 1958, Preprints of Papers for the International Conference on Scientific Information, Washington, D.C., November 16-21, 1958. Area i. Washington: National Academy of Sciences-National Research Council.
SCIENTIFIC EXPLANATION INSTITUTE FOR SCIENTIFIC INFORMATION 1964 The Use of Citation Data in Writing the History of Science, by Eugene Garfield et al. Philadelphia: The Institute. -> Constitutes a report of research for the U.S. Air Force Office of Scientific Research under contract AF 49(638)-1256. INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON SCIENTIFIC INFORMATION, 1958 1958 Preprints of Papers for the International Conference on Scientific Information, Washington, D.C., November 16-21, 1958. Areas i-viii. Washington: National Academy of Sciences-National Research Council. KAPLAN, NORMAN 1964 Sociology of Science. Pages 852-881 in Robert E. L. Paris (editor), Handbook of Modern Sociology. Chicago: Rand McNally. KAPLAN, NORMAN 1965a The Norms of Citation Behavior: Prolegomena to the Footnote. American Documentation 16:179-184. KAPLAN, NORMAN (editor) 1965& Science and Society. Chicago: Rand McNally. LITTLE [ARTHUR D.] INC. 1959 Basic Research in the Navy. 2 vols. Cambridge, Mass.: Arthur D. Little, Inc. LOTKA, ALFRED J. 1926 The Frequency Distribution of Scientific Productivity. Journal of the Washington Academy of Sciences 16:317-323. MELTZER, LEO 1956 Scientific Productivity in Organizational Settings. Journal of Social Issues 12, no. 2: 32-40. MENZEL, HERBERT 1958 The Flow of Information Among Scientists: Problems, Opportunities and Research Questions. Unpublished manuscript, Columbia Univ., Bureau of Applied Social Research. MENZEL, HERBERT 1960 Review of Studies in the Flow of Information Among Scientists. 2 vols. in 1. Unpublished manuscript, Columbia Univ., Bureau of Applied Social Research. MERTON, ROBERT K. (1949)1957 Social Theory and Social Structure. Rev. & enl. ed. Glencoe, 111.: Free Press. MERTON, ROBERT K. 1957 Priorities in Scientific Discovery: A Chapter in the Sociology of Science. American Sociological Review 22:635-659. ORR, RICHARD H. 1964 Communication Problems in Biochemical Research: Report of a Study. Federation Proceedings 23:1117-1132. PRICE, DEREK J. DE SOLLA 1963 Little Science, Big Science. New York: Columbia Univ. Press. SCHILLING, CHARLES W. 1963-1964 Informal Communication Among Bioscientists. Parts 1-2. Unpublished manuscript, George Washington Univ., Biological Sciences Communication Project. STEVENS, MARY E. 1965 Automatic Indexing: A Stateof-the-art Report. National Bureau of Standards Monograph No. 91. Washington: Government Printing Office. -> Includes a bibliography of 662 items on pages 183-220. STORER, NORMAN W. 1966 The Social System of Science. New York: Holt. TORNUDD, ELIN 1958 Study on the Use of Scientific Literature and Reference Services by Scandinavian Scientists and Engineers Engaged in Research and Development. Pages 9-65 in International Conference on Scientific Information, 1958, Preprints of Papers for the International Conference on Scientific Information, Washington, D.C., November 16-21, 1958. Area i. Washington: National Academy of SciencesNational Research Council.
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U.S. PRESIDENT'S SCIENCE ADVISORY COMMITTEE 1963 Science, Government, and Information: The Responsibilities of the Technical Community and the Government in the Transfer of Information; a Report. Washington: Government Printing Office.
SCIENTIFIC EXPLANATION There is little disagreement that explanation is a major aim of science; there is much about the conditions that a proposed explanation must satisfy. Most of this disagreement, especially in history and in the social sciences, concerns the so-called nomological and deductive models of satisfactory explanation. There is also a more general controversy: many—perhaps most—scientists and philosophers maintain that these models clearly apply to the natural sciences and should apply to the social sciences as well, while others insist that they do not apply to any science, natural or social. For the most part, however, I shall bypass this controversy and discuss the applicability of the two models to the social sciences. But first let us raise the logically prior question "What is an explanation?" There are three traditional answers to this: (1) to explain is to remove perplexity; (2) to explain is to change the unknown to the known; (3) to explain an event or type of event is to give its causes. The first two answers have the virtue of reminding us of the psychological conditions that frequently obtain when we request an explanation. But this virtue is, in a way, the defect of these two approaches: they are too psychological, in the sense that they do not stipulate the logical conditions that must obtain before we have a satisfactory explanation. Clearly, not every way of removing perplexity can count as an explanation. Again, it should be noted that both of these approaches fail to point out that when we explain an event or type of event, we attempt to relate it to others like it and to give a systematic account of phenomena which will show how they are interrelated. In short, these answers fail to emphasize the systematic interconnection between explanation and theory construction. The third answer does not share in these defects. The thesis that to explain an event is to give its cause is one that goes back to Aristotle and has been defended at length by Mill (1843) and other distinguished logicians. But this approach, whatever its virtues, cannot count as an adequate theory of explanation. At best it is a partial account of the explanation of events, but not of regularities, dispositions, and other types of phenomena
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which we try to explain. Moreover, since the term "cause" is not in itself a very clear one, a theory which builds on it without attempting any explication of it is not a reliable guide. However, many philosophers and social scientists have been convinced by the arguments offered by Hume and his followers that a causal statement entails a lawlike one, i.e., that a statement of the form "Event A caused event B" entails a statement of the form "Events like A regularly precede and are contiguous with events like B." If this analysis be granted, then the approach to explanation which emphasizes causation is compatible with the deductive and nomological models. Nomological and deductive models. Supporters of the nomological model of scientific explanation insist that no event or regularity is explained by a proposed explanation unless it contains a scientific law (nomos is Greek for law). Supporters of the deductive model accept this but go further; they maintain that an event or regularity is explained if a sentence describing that event or regularity is deduced from a set of premises containing (a) a scientific law and (b) any other premises that may be required to make the deduction logically correct (provided, of course, that these premises are true). Thus, given a sentence P that can be used to describe an event, the nomological model states that the event is not explained by a series of sentences Sl, S 2 , • • • , Sn unless this series contains a scientific law. To this the deductive model adds that if S-L , S2, • • • , Sn contains one or more laws, and if P can be deduced from S a , S 2 , • • • , Sn, then 8-1,82, '' • , Sn is a satisfactory conjunction of explaining sentences. This assumes that P stands for a sentence describing a particular event. When we want to explain not an event, but a trend or a regularity, all the sentences needed, both descriptive and explanatory, would of course be far more complex, but the over-all form of the explanation would stay the same. On occasion some defenders of the deductive or the nomological models add that the explaining premises S x , S2, • • • , Sn must contain or constitute a theory. But this addition does not clarify matters at all, because the meaning of the term "theory" is itself unclear. Sometimes the term is applied to any systematically interconnected set of sentences; sometimes it appears to mean the same as "hypothesis"; sometimes it is used interchangeably with "law." Clearly, if "theory" and "law" are to be used interchangeably, acceptance of either the deductive or the nomological model requires us to believe that when we explain, we appeal to or use a theory. Since the term "theory" has so many
uses, it is perhaps best to avoid using it in this context and to say simply that the premises of nomological and deductive explanations contain laws. Candor demands, however, the admission that we are far from a completely satisfactory statement of either model. Thus, in the nomological model the meaning of "law" is just as much in dispute as that of "theory," while in the deductive model the kinds of sentences that may appear in the series Sj, So, • • • , Sn need to be specified in greater detail. On the other hand, there is little point in being concerned with such details if this whole approach to explanation is not valid. To see whether it is, I shall try to remove some misunderstandings about the nature of the nomological and deductive models, and in so doing to counter some of the arguments against them and admit the truth of others, at least in qualified form. Do the models involve determinism? Both the deductive and the nomological models have been criticized on the grounds that they involve commitment to determinism. But this criticism is irrelevant. One may accept either model and still be agnostic about the thesis that every event is covered by laws—a thesis frequently given as one specification of determinism. Thus, philosophers who accept this thesis frequently argue that any sentence truly descriptive of an event is in principle deducible from some series of sentences containing one or more laws. But clearly this is not the same as claiming, with the supporters of the nomological and deductive models, that if a sentence truly descriptive of an event is deduced from a series of sentences containing a law, then the event is explained. Of course, many defenders of the nomological and deductive models do accept an even stronger version of determinism than the thesis that every event is covered by laws. But they often accept it as a "guiding principle of inquiry," to use C. S. Peirce's phrase. Thus, they may insist that the scientist should not merely seek a variety of general laws for explaining various events and regularities but should construct and confirm one general theory that would explain all events and regularities, or at least all those within the purview of a particular science. But obviously a guiding principle is not the same thing as an article of faith, and many supporters of the nomological and deductive models agree that there may very well be no such general theory or theories for scientists to discover. Can social scientists use the models? The deductive and nomological models are sometimes
SCIENTIFIC EXPLANATION criticized on the grounds that social scientists have not succeeded in confirming any laws and therefore cannot use either model. To this it can be objected that some social scientists at least claim to have discovered laws, and that in any case only true or completely acceptable explanations, of which social scientists admit to having provided very few, are supposed to conform to the models' requirements. But though the criticism as it stands is irrelevant, it does indicate that it is not enough to consider only true explanations or fully acceptable ones; we must consider not only the truth of proposed explanations but also their degrees of acceptability. Clearly, when a scientist proposes an explanation and employs a generalization, he obviously does not know that the generalization is true and, hence, that he is in possession of a law. The nomological and deductive models must therefore be supplemented, as follows. Let us use the term "lawful statement" to denote any highly confirmed lawlike statement—that is, any statement that (a) would be a law if it were true and ( b ) has in fact been found to hold true on numerous occasions. Explanations containing such statements have, other things being equal, a high degree of acceptability, and many of them also turn out to be true explanations—that is, the lawful sentences that they contain are true. But, of course, explanations that at one time were highly acceptable because the lawlike sentences they contained were at that time highly confirmed may turn out to be false (a classic case of this is Newtonian mechanics). This distinction between explanations that are acceptable at a given time and true explanations that simply conform to the deductive model is not ad hoc. Rather, it corresponds to the distinction, usually applied to statements, between "true" and "well confirmed." Here it may be objected that social scientists do not refer to laws and, hence, that it is misleading to appeal to laws when discussing the logic of social scientific explanation. But this objection is a weak one. Social scientists tacitly employ many laws that are so well known that no special reference to them is needed. Furthermore, it should be emphasized that many social scientists do in point of fact refer to laws—economists, for instance, to Say's law of markets, and sociologists to Michels' "iron law of oligarchy." It may also be objected that the distinction between a highly confirmed generalization and a lawlike one is artificial. But once again the answer is readily available. Thus, in everyday life we would not treat the generalization "All American presidents are Christian" as lawlike
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or as a candidate for a law, even though all the evidence to date for it is positive and, in that sense, it is well confirmed. Observe further that the distinction we are discussing here is parallel to, although admittedly identifiable with, the frequently made distinction between causal statements, on the one hand, and statements of mere association, or statements of correlations which may be spurious, on the other. What, then, are we to make of proposed explanations that do not contain lawful statements? We certainly do not always know on what law, if any, an investigator has based his explanation of certain data, even if we are inclined to accept what he says. As an argument against the nomological and deductive models this is not a very strong one, since most social scientists would admit that such proposed explanations should be replaced by more carefully stated ones. Besides, if the acceptability of such an explanation depends, as it usually does, on the degree to which it approximates a nomological or a deductive explanation, then it cannot be called an alternative to these latter, but merely an inferior substitute for them. Motivational explanations. It is a commonplace that social scientists offer motivational explanations, but it is not at all obvious how such explanations should be interpreted from a logical point of view. Note first that when a motivational explanation is offered, there is no necessary commitment to the thesis that there are private internal entities called motives which are responsible for behavior or action; all that is involved is some reference to the wants, preferences, or aims of the individual or group whose action is being described or explained. In this sense all Freudian theory, for instance, makes tacit or explicit reference to motives, and so do all explanations by economists that refer to the utility of the agent or group whose behavior is being discussed. Similarly, tacit reference is made to the aims of a person when sociologists or social psychologists appeal, in order to make sense of his behavior, to the reference group with which he identifies himself. What then are we attributing to a person when we attribute a motive to him? The answer can readily be suggested: we are attributing to him a disposition to behave in a certain way or a disposition to prize certain outcomes over others. But this constitutes another possible objection to the nomological and deductive models. When a motivational explanation is offered, no appeal is made to a general law about the way human beings behave but, rather, to a dispositional statement about an individual. But it is very difficult to give the exact grounds upon which we can distinguish
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between laws and dispositional statements. Admittedly, it seems possible to do without general laws if we restrict our attention to those cases in which the action seems to have been inspired by only one motive and in which there is no need, for explanatory purposes, to consider what the agent thought about the alternative ways available to him for the satisfaction of his motive. But when we consider the more usual cases of action—action performed out of many motives and action after deliberation about alternatives—-it will not do to consider only the agent's disposition. Can we handle both these latter cases by reference to law? The answer is not clear. Some social scientists have thought it plausible to assume, as at least a first approximation, that insofar as people are rational, they try to maximize expected utility. But many suspect that the generalization tacitly appealed to here is a disguised tautology. Nevertheless, the defense of this generalization, or of alternatives to it, indicates that in order to explain actions for which there are many motives, some social scientists do look for laws and, hence, act in accord with the deductive model. Others suggest that we should not seek general laws but construct ideal types instead [see TYPOLOGIES]. To construct an ideal type explanation for an action A by a person P is (1) to impute at least one motive, T, to P; (2) to list the alternatives confronted by P; (3) to show that an action of the same type as A is a rational one—perhaps the only rational one—for P to perform, given T; (4) to show that performing A, given alternatives A,, A 2 , An, is an efficient way of satisfying T. If, given the same motive and set of alternatives, P does not perform A, defenders of the ideal type approach would suggest that we must institute a search for the factors making for irrationality on the part of P. One argument against this version of the ideal type model of explanation is that the motive imputed to the agent may in fact be the wrong one; another is that the model is incomplete unless the terms "rational" and "efficient" are explicated. Moreover, ideal type explanation sometimes appears to depend on a general law about the behavior of 'rational agents and, hence, to approximate either the deductive model or, at least, the nomological one. Functional explanations. Conclusions similar to those drawn above can, I think, be applied to so-called functional explanations, for these either lack prima-facie acceptability or, when they have it, are not evidently at variance with the deductive or nomological models. Thus, a common type of functional "explanation" may state merely that a certain institution plays an indispensable role in
a society. Such a statement provides us with nothing more than a necessary condition and, hence, lacks prima-facie acceptability as an explanation. However, the stronger types of functional explanation do show that, holding certain things constant, the presence of a certain mechanism is a sufficient condition for the existence of a certain state of affairs. In my opinion, explanations of this type conform to the deductive model, for to say that S is a sufficient explanatory condition for T is, I think, equivalent to saying that the statement "If S, then T" is not only true but also lawful. Of course, we need more complex laws than the ones thus far discussed if we are to provide descriptions and explanations of events in systems that are purposive and self-corrective. But it is far from obvious that this requires a special kind of explanation called ideological, or functional, explanation, and even less obvious that societies—-at least complex ones—can be analyzed in teleological terms. Certainly, societies are not totally purposive, nor do such purposes as they may sometimes be said to have (making war, for example) always remain the same. At most, societies may tend to reorganize themselves in order to keep certain properties constant. But it is hard to say which properties these are [see SYSTEMS ANALYSIS, especially the article on SOCIAL SYSTEMS]. Causal explanation. It has been maintained at least since Aristotle that to explain an event is to give its causes. But this does not necessarily involve controverting the nomological or the deductive models, since it can be argued that to give the causes for an event is to present a deductive explanation containing a causal law. Given this approach, we may then try to explicate the uses of the term "causal law." A statement is occasionally called a causal law if it specifies either a sufficient condition or necessary and sufficient conditions for a certain type of occurrence. In logic, such a statement may take any of these forms: (1) if A then JB; (2) A if and only if B; (3) A is a function of B (when A and B stand in the place of terms designating measurable properties). Deterministic laws, which describe how a system, with states that are described mathematically, evolves over time, are also called causal laws. Finally, the term "causal" is applied to laws of the form "if A then B" when (1) A denotes a type of event that comes just before an event of type B; (2) A and B are events or episodes in bodies or agents that are spatially contiguous; (3) the occurrence of A is to be considered a sufficient condition for the occurrence of B even though an event of type B might occur without one of type A
SCIENTIFIC EXPLANATION preceding it. Stimulus-response generalizations frequently meet these three criteria—criteria that represent perhaps the most legitimate use of the term "causal law." Not all explanations that appeal, whether overtly or tacitly, to the notion of cause make use of causal laws in any of the senses discussed above. Accordingly, it is not evident that all causal explanations should conform to the nomological model, and still less to the deductive. Nevertheless, the view I am advocating has good philosophical precedent. At least since Hume many philosophers have argued that to assert of an event, A, that it caused another event, B, is equivalent to appealing tacitly to a law of the form "Events of type A are sufficient conditions of events of type B and precede them." This view is not completely persuasive. Often we say that an event A caused an event B when we mean only that the event A was a necessary condition for the event B. Also, we sometimes refer to an event A as the cause or a cause of an event B when we mean to assert that A was either a sufficient or a necessary condition for the occurrence of B only when conjoined with other such conditions. Moreover, when we say that A caused B, we are often unprepared to specify a general law relating events of type A to events of type B. Thus, we might be convinced that a given remark had caused the hearer to blush, but we might not be ready at the same time to cite a general law about the relation between remarks and- blushing. Nevertheless, it does seem that when we specify a cause for an event and believe that this specification provides us with an explanation of the event, we tacitly commit ourselves to some generalization, however vague. Thus, to revert to the illustration given above, a person who insists that X blushed because Y said something might be challenged by Z to the effect that X didn't blush the last time he heard a similar remark, and that therefore the present remark couldn't have been responsible for his blushes. But this observation, though it helps to diminish the distance between explanations that contain causal laws and explanations that merely appeal to the notion of cause, does not abolish that distance completely. Whether it can ever be abolished is still under debate. Statistical explanation. The status of statistical explanation, and its relation to nomological and deductive explanation, are topics subject to much philosophical controversy. Statistical explanations are explanations containing lawlike statements based on observation of statistical regularities and/or on the statistical theory of probability. It is generally accepted that probabilistic statements, as interpreted in the sci-
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ences, cannot be finally confirmed or even disconfirmed by observational evidence. It is also accepted that we cannot deduce from any statistical generalization a statement to the effect that any particular event must occur. [See PROBABILITY.] It is not so widely recognized, however, that the problem of statistical explanation is much harder to deal with in the case of statistical generalizations that are either spatially or temporally restricted. Thus, if we knew that 90 per cent of the people in Milwaukee are Democrats and that 85 per cent of all living graduates of Yale University are Republicans, we could not use these generalizations as they stand to explain the voting habits of Yale graduates living in Milwaukee. It is therefore most important, when discussing statistical explanations, to appeal to the nomological, and not the deductive, model, for clearly we cannot expect to construct deductive explanations on every occasion when we use statistical generalizations for explanatory purposes. However, it would be a mistake to think that we can never have a deductive explanation under these circumstances, for we may deduce a statistical generalization from a conjunction of two or more other statistical generalizations. It is important to note that we have not discussed the very complex but relatively typical situation that arises when social scientists who are using statistical data in an attempt to distinguish between the effects of several factors note that one factor is more relevant than the others for the purpose of explaining the phenomenon. Discussion of this and other such situations has been omitted because their logic is under much dispute. Many of the issues involved have been considered by Nagel (1952), though for some of the problems that are raised by statistical data and their analysis, the interested reader should consult works by Blalock (1964) and Boudon (1965; see also Ando etal. 1963). Amplifying the models. We have discussed some objections to the nomological and deductive models; it is now time to consider amplifying them in order to meet these objections. Let us begin by emphasizing the trivial point that we never explain an event as such, but only selected aspects of it. In other words, it is not the event itself that is explained but the event under a given description. Thus, if a person sits aown on a. tack and yells, we may say that he yelled because he sat on the tack. But we obviously are not ready to claim that we can explain the specific pitch or duration of the yell in the same terms. Observe, however, that an explanation may be totally satisfactory once we specify what aspect of the event we are trying to explain. This is of special
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relevance to the discussion of historical explanation. Historians have often noted that any event can be described in many ways and that some explanations of events are satisfactory only if the events are described schematically. Thus, we might be able to explain that a group migrated because it hoped to improve its lot but not be able to explain why it migrated on a specific date and to a specific country. Some historians, noting that there seems to be no end to the detail in which a given event can be described, have concluded that, for this reason, no event can ever be explained, nor can the causes of an event be fully specified. Against this view, I would like to urge that we discuss not the explanation of an event but the explanation of an event under a given description. This would allow us to accept some explanations as totally satisfactory even if we wanted to replace them with explanations of the same event under a more refined description. Finally, it should be noted that in order to give an explanation of an event of a certain type, it is not necessary to cite laws or theories about events of that type. This is often overlooked in discussion of how to explain certain social phenomena; for instance, many social scientists seem to believe that in order to explain instances of crime or divorce, they need a general theory of crime or divorce. But this is dubious. To explain why a man slipped on a banana peel, we do not need a general theory of slipping. Rather, the laws that we need to cite are general laws in which terms like "slipping" do not occur. The essential point is that in order to explain an event, we often must redescribe it in terms of a given theory; moreover, two events that in ordinary life are both classified under the same general term may, for purposes of explanation, have to be described differently and explained by different general theories. To take an everyday example: A man who hurries to meet a friend and a man who flees to avoid disaster may both be running, yet the explanations for their behavior are different. More complicated examples, requiring explanations based on abstract theories, would require that the events needing explanation be redescribed in terms drawn from those theories. Although this type of redescription was not required in our example, the point remains that two events ordinarily classified as instances of the same type may have different explanations. The same applies to explanations involving not events but groups, epochs, social systems, and societies; we must specify what aspects of these entities we want to have explained. SIDNEY MORGENBESSER
[Directly related are the entries CAUSATION; EXPERIMENTAL DESIGN; FUNCTIONAL ANALYSIS, article OU VARIETIES OF FUNCTIONAL ANALYSIS; PREDICTION;
SCIENCE, article on THE PHILOSOPHY OF SCIENCE. Other relevant material may be found in HISTORY, article on THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY; MOTIVATION; MULTIVARIATE ANALYSIS; POSITIVISM; STATISTICS,
DESCRIPTIVE; and the biographies of COHEN; PEIRCE.] BIBLIOGRAPHY
ANDO, ALBERT; FISHER, F. M.; and SIMON, HERBERT A. 1963 Essays on the Structure of Social Science Models. Cambridge, Mass.: M.I.T. Press. -» See especially pages 5-31 and 107-112. ARGYLE, MICHAEL 1957 The Scientific Study of Social Behaviour. London: Methuen. BLALOCK, HUBERT M. JR. 1964 Causal Inferences in Nonexperimental Research. Chapel Hill: Univ. of North Carolina Press. BOUDON, RAYMOND 1965 A Method of Linear Causal Analysis: Dependence Analysis. American Sociological Review 30:365-374. BRAITHWAITE, R. B. 1953 Scientific Explanation. Cambridge Univ. Press. BROWN, ROBERT R. 1963 Explanation in Social Science. Chicago: Aldine. BUNGE, MARIO 1959 Causality: The Place of the Causal Principle in Modern Science. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Univ. Press. -> A paperback edition was published in 1963 by World. CHRIST, CARL F. 1966 Econometric Models and Methods. New York: Wiley. -» See especially the Foreword by Jacob Marshak. COHEN, MORRIS R.; and NAGEL, ERNEST 1934 An Introduction to Logic and Scientific Method. New York: Harcourt. -» The first part of the original text was published in a paperback edition in 1962 by Harcourt, under the title An Introduction to Logic. DRAY, WILLIAM 1957 Laws and Explanation in History. Oxford Univ. Press. FEIGL, HERBERT; and MAXWELL, GROVER E. (editors) 1962 Scientific Explanation, Space, and Time. Minnesota Studies in the Philosophy of Science, Vol. 3. Minneapolis: Univ. of Minnesota Press. H» See especially pages 231-273, "Explanation, Prediction and 'Imperfect Knowledge,'" by May Brodbeck. FODOR, JERRY A.; and KATZ, JERROLD J. (editors) 1964 The Structure of Language: Readings in the Philosophy of Language. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: PrenticeHall. GIBSON, QUENTIN B. (1960) 1963 The Logic of Social Inquiry. New York: Humanities. GREENWOOD, ERNEST 1945 Experimental Sociology: A Study in Method. New York: Columbia Univ. Press. HEMPEL, CARL G. (1952) 1963 Typological Methods in the Social Sciences. Pages 210-230 in Maurice A. Natanson (editor), Philosophy of the Social Sciences: A Reader. New York: Random House. HEMPEL, CARL G. 1965 Aspects of Scientific Explanation, and Other Essays in the Philosophy of Science. New York: Free Press. KAPLAN, ABRAHAM 1964 The Conduct of Inquiry: Methodology for Behavioral Science. San Francisco: Chandler. LOWE, ADOLPH 1965 On Economic Knowledge. New York: Harper.
SCREENING AND SELECTION MADDEN, EDWARD H. 1962 Philosophical Problems of Psychology. New York: Odyssey. -> See especially Chapter 3. MILL, JOHN STUART (1843) 1961 A System of Logic, Ratiocinative and Inductive: Being a Connected View of the Principles of Evidence and the Methods of Scientific Investigation. London: Longmans. -» See especially Book 6. MORGENBESSER, SIDNEY 1966 Is It a Science? Social Research 33:255-271. NAGEL, ERNEST (1952) 1953 The Logic of Historical Analysis. Pages 688-700 in Herbert Feigl and May Brodbeck (editors), Readings in the Philosophy of Science. New York: Appleton. -* First published in Scientific Monthly. NAGEL, ERNEST 1961 The Structure of Science: Problems in the Logic of Scientific Explanation. New York: Harcourt. -» See especially pages 582-588. POINCARE, HENRI (1908) 1952 Science and Method. New York: Dover. -» First published in French. POPPER, KARL R. (1934) 1959 The Logic of Scientific Discovery. New York: Basic Books. ->• First published as Logik der Forschung. REICHENBACH, HANS 1951 Probability Methods in Social Science. Pages 121-128 in Daniel Lerner and Harold D. Lasswell (editors), The Policy Sciences: Recent Developments in Scope and Method. Stanford Univ. Press. SCHOEFFLER, SIDNEY 1955 The Failures of Economics: A Diagnostic Study. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Univ. Press. SEGERSTEDT, TORGNY T. 1966 The Nature of Social Reality. Copenhagen: Munksgaard. SKINNER, B. F. 1953 Science and Human Behavior. New York: Macmillan. TOULMIN, STEPHEN E. 1953 The Philosophy of Science: An Introduction. London: Longmans. -» A paperback edition was published in 1960 by Harper. WINCH, PETER 1958 The Idea of a Social Science and Its Relation to Philosophy. London: Routledge; New York: Humanities. WOLMAN, BENJAMIN B.; and NAGEL, ERNEST (editors) 1965 Scientific Psychology. New York: Basic Books. -» See especially "Concerning an Incurable Vagueness in Psychological Theories," by Benbow F. Ritchie, and "Mathematical Learning Theory," by Richard C. Atkinson and Robert C. Calfe.
SCIENTIFIC MANAGEMENT See ADMINISTRATION, article on THE ADMINISTRATIVE FUNCTION; AUTOMATION; BUSINESS MANAGEMENT; OPERATIONS RESEARCH.
SCREENING AND SELECTION Screening and selection procedures are statistical methods for assigning individuals to two or more categories on the basis of certain tests or measurements that can be made upon them. Of concern usually is some desired trait or characteristic of the individuals that cannot be measured directly. All that can be done is to obtain an estimate for each individual from the results of the available tests
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and then to make the assignment on the basis of these estimates. The central statistical problem is to evaluate the properties of alternative schemes for utilizing the available data to make the assignments in order to choose the scheme that best achieves whatever objectives are considered to be most relevant for the particular application. For example, some educational selection schemes may be regarded in this light. The individuals might be high school students and the categories "admit to college" and "do not admit to college." The desired trait is future success in college, but only tests at the high school level are available. (As will be seen, many examples of selection and screening are somewhat more complex than this, particularly in their use of more than one level of screening. In this educational context one might instead use three categories: "admit," "put on waiting list," and "do not admit.") Denote by N the number of individuals to be assigned and let c be the number of categories. For any individual, let Y denote the unknown value of the desired trait and let X a , • • • , Xp denote the measurements or scores that can be obtained and used as predictors of Y. The screening or selection procedure is a scheme that specifies in terms of X-i, • • • ,XP how each individual is to be assigned to one of the c categories. The screening may be done at one stage—that is, all the measurements X ± , • • • , Xv become available before an individual is assigned—or it may be multistage. The advantage of a multistage procedure is that it may allow some individuals to be assigned at an early stage or, at least, to be eliminated from contention for the categories of interest, thus permitting the resources available for performing the tests to be concentrated on fewer individuals in the later stages. The terms screening and selection are largely synonymous, although in particular applications one or the other may be preferred. Sometimes, in order to avoid the possible connotation that certain categories may be more desirable than others, a neutral term such as allocation is used. The term classification has a different shade of meaning, referring to the identification of which of several distinct distributions each individual belongs to (in taxonomy, for example, classification involves the assignment of an organism to its proper species) [see MULTIVARIATE ANALYSIS, article on CLASSIFICATION AND DISCRIMINATION]. Various formulations of screening and selection problems have been proposed and investigated. A bibliography containing more than five hundred references has been given by Federer (1963). Of
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special interest is the case c — 2, in which the individuals are separated into two categories, a selected group and the remainder; the success of the screening procedure is judged by the values of Y for the individuals in the selected group. This article will be primarily devoted to this case of two categories. The case where N is large This section deals with the case of separation into two categories where either the number, N, of individuals is large enough for their Y-values to be considered as forming a continuous distribution or, alternatively, the N individuals themselves are considered as a random selection from a conceptually infinite population. The object of the screening procedure is to produce a distribution of Y-values in the selected group that is, in an appropriate sense, an improvement on the original distribution. For example, one might want the selected group to have as high a median Y as possible. In many applications, tiie feature of the distribution of Y that is considered most important is its mean. For example, in a plant-breeding program, Y might stand for the crop yield of the individual varieties, and the purpose of the program might be to select a set of varieties whose mean Y is as high as possible. The difference in the mean Y for the selected varieties from that of the original group is referred to as the "advance" or the "gain due to selection." Cochran (1951) summarized the mathematical basis for selection procedures designed to maximize the mean Y in the selected set. He showed that the optimum selection rule to use at each stage should be based on the regression of Y on the X's that are known at that stage. In the case where the joint distribution of these variates is multivariate normal, this regression is the linear combination of the X's that has maximum correlation with Y. [See MULTIVARIATE ANALYSIS, articles on CORRELATION.]
Plant selection. In a plant-breeding program for improving the yield of a particular crop, a large number of potential new varieties become available in any year. These are tested in successive plantings, and the better-yielding types in each planting are selected to produce the seed for the next sowing, until finally a small fraction of the original number remain as possible replacements for the standard varieties in commercial use. Finney (1966) and Curnow (1961) have carried out an extensive theoretical and numerical investigation of a fairly general type of selection procedure that is particularly applicable to plant
selection. The problem is to reduce in k stages an initial set of N candidates to a predetermined fraction, TT, called the "selection intensity," using a fixed total expenditure of resources, A. At stage r (I ^ r ^ k), the candidates selected at stage r — 1 are tested, using resources Ar, to obtain for each a score, X r , which estimates Y with a precision dependent upon A , ; the fraction, P r (0 < Pr ^ 1), having the highest scores are selected, and the remainder are discarded. Stage 0 consists in selecting at random a fraction, P ( ,, of the initial set. The problem is to choose Pr and Ar to maximize the expected mean Y-value in the selected group, subject to AT + • • • + A7c = A and P0 P t • • • P/£ = TT , where A and TT are given. The authors found that approximately optimum results were obtained with Ar = A/k, P,. = \/TT, for r — 1, • • • , k, called the "symmetric" scheme, usually with P0 — 1, although in some circumstances a value P0 < 1 effected further improvement. Three or four stages at most were sufficient. In the context of plant selection, the N candidates are the new crop varieties produced in a particular year, and the resource expenditure, A, is the area of land available for testing, which must be divided into separate portions for varieties being tested for the first time, varieties selected on the basis of last year's tests to be tested in stage 2, and so on. For example, suppose N = 200 varieties are started in a two-year program to select 8 to compare with the standard commercial types (thus, TT = .04). Then at the end of each year, V-04 = ^ of the varieties should be selected—-that is, 40 at the end of the year 1 and 8 at the end of year 2— with equal areas of land to be divided among the 200 varieties in year 1 and the 40 varieties in year 2. Drug screening. In drug screening, the problem is to screen a large supply of chemical compounds by means of a biological test, usually in laboratory animals, in order to select for further testing the few that may possess the biological activity desired. Here Y stands for the unknown activity level of a compound (averaged over a conceptual population of animals), estimates being provided by the test results, X t , X 2 , • • • . The distribution of Y in the population of compounds available for screening will usually have a large peak at Y = 0, since most of the compounds do not possess the activity being sought unless a specific class of compounds chemically related to known active compounds is being screened. The number of compounds available for testing usually exceeds the capacity of the testing facilities; therefore, part of the problem in drug screening is to determine the optimum number, N, of compounds to screen in a given period of time.
SCREENING AND SELECTION The mean Y in the selected group does not have as much relevance in drug screening as it does in plant selection. Instead, a value, a, is usually specified such that a drug is of interest if its activity equals or exceeds level a. The screening procedure is then designed to maximize the number of compounds in the selected group having Y ^ a, usually subject to the requirement that the total number of compounds selected over a certain period of time is fixed. Davies (1958) and King (1963) have considered in detail this approach to the statistical design of drug-screening tests. Educational selection. The consideration of selection procedures to allocate school children to different "streams" is necessarily much more complex than in the applications considered above. For one thing, there can be no question of rejection; the object, at least in principle, is to provide the education most suitable for each child. Furthermore, it can be expected that the characteristic Y of each child will be altered by the particular stream in which he may be placed. An admirable discussion of the problems was given by Finney (1962), who described, as an illustration of the methodology, a simplified mathematical model of the educational selection process then in operation in the British school system. Finney considered university entrance as a twostage selection process: the first stage is the separation of students at the age of 11+ into those who will receive a grammar school education and those who will go instead to a secondary school, and the second stage is university entrance. Denoting by X-L the composite score of all test results available at the first stage, by X2 the composite score at university entrance, and by Y the "suitability" of a student for university study as determined by his subsequent university grades, Finney considered Y, X,, and X2 to have a multivariate normal distribution with correlation coefficients estimated from available data. He studied the effects that varying the proportion of students admitted to grammar school, as well as the relative proportions admitted to universities from the two types of school, had on the average value of Y in the selected group and on the proportion of university entrants having Y ^ a. Interesting numerical results are presented, but the main feature of the paper is its demonstration of how the approach can bring about a clearer insight into the issues involved in a selection process. The case where N is small Rather different methods of approach have been developed for selection when the number N is small
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enough so that the individual values of Y, rather than their distribution, may be considered. The object of the selection procedure is expressed in terms of the Y's; for example, the object may be to select the individual with the largest value of Y, to select the individuals with the t largest values, or to rank the N individuals in order according to their values of Y. These are special cases of the general goal of dividing the N individuals into c categories, containing respectively the nl: individuals with the highest values of Y, the « Includes a bibliography.
SEASONAL ADJUSTMENT OF TIME SERIES See under TIME SERIES.
SECHENOV, IVAN M. SECHENOV, IVAN M. Ivan Mikhailovich Sechenov (1829-1905), Russian physiologist, neurologist, and founder of objective physiological psychology, was born the son of a small landowner in the village of Tyoply Stan (now Sechenovo) in Simbirsk Province (now Arzamas Region). Taught first by private tutors, he mastered German and French in addition to Russian. At 14 he entered the St. Petersburg Military Engineering School. He served from 1848 to 1850 as a field engineer in a Kiev brigade. Then he resigned his military commission and from 1850 to 1856 studied medicine at the University of Moscow. He spent the next three and a half years doing postgraduate research and studying physiology, chemistry, and physics at Berlin, Heidelberg, Leipzig, and Vienna. Among his teachers were Johannes Miiller, Emil DuBois-Reymond, Hermann von Helmholtz, Carl F. W. Ludwig, Robert W. Bunsen, and Heinrich Magnus. Sechenov returned to Russia in 1860 to become at first adjunct and then full professor of physiology in the St. Petersburg Medico-Surgical Academy. Ten years later he resigned from that institution, giving as the reason, according to his Autobiographical Notes (1907), his distaste for its administrative policy and citing specifically the veto of his proposal to appoint Ilya I. Mechnikov to a vacant chair. (Mechnikov presumably was turned down because he was a Jew; later, in 1908, he won the Nobel prize.) For a while, Sechenov was without a professorial position and worked in the chemistry laboratory of his friend Dmitri Mendeleev, but he was soon appointed professor of physiology at the University of Odessa. He left that university in 1876 for the University of St. Petersburg and stayed there until 1888, when he resigned —alienated again by the academic atmosphere of St. Petersburg—and in 1889 moved finally to the University of Moscow. In 1862 Sechenov took a year's leave to do experimental work in the laboratory of Claude Bernard at the College de France. There he discovered "central inhibition," namely, that spinal reflex movement may be "inhibited"—diminished or stopped—by the stimulation of higher-neural inhibitory centers. Further experimentation led to the important conception of higher-neural action as an interplay of excitation and inhibition. [See NERVOUS SYSTEM, article on STRUCTURE AND FUNCTION OF THE BRAIN.] This view was taken over wholly by Pavlov and more recently has won increasing acceptance as a result of direct microelectric neural
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probing. Sechenov's report on inhibition was published in German and French (1863a). Sechenov's physiological contributions soon became part of Western science. This is not true of his psychological essays—"Reflexes of the Brain" (1863b), "Who Must Investigate the Problems of Psychology, and How" (1873a), "Elements of Thought" (1878), and a number of others—which presaged the systems of psychology of Pavlov and Bekhterev and radically affected the world views not only of such distinguished men of science as Mendeleev, Mechnikov, Vladimir O. Kovalevskii, and Arkadii K. Timiriazev but also of such widely known men of letters as Turgenev, Gorki, and Tolstoi. Translated in part into French in 1884 and into English only in 1935, the radical Sechenov system of psychology was for years almost unknown outside Russia and had no influence whatever on Western and American thought in the field, from Wundt through James to Watson and the neobehaviorists. Only in 1950, in the second edition of Boring's A History of Experimental Psychology (1929), is Sechenov first mentioned in English in any significant sense. Recently, in A History of Psychology, by Esper (1964), a ninepage passage is devoted to his contributions, and it is asserted that Sechenov "wrote the first 'objective' psychology and became the first 'behaviorist' of modern times" (p. 324). Briefly stated, Sechenov's psychological system rests on five interrelated theses: (1) A consistent physical monism: Sechenov held that psychology will become a science only insofar as it studies the muscular and neural action of the psyche. He asserted that no "conceivable demarcation [from a scientific point of view] can be found between obvious somatic, i.e., bodily, nervous acts and unmistakable psychical phenomena" (1873b, p. 151). (2) Physiological and psychical reactions are both considered to be reflex actions: in Sechenov's words, "All movements bearing the name of voluntary in physiology are reflex in a strict sense" ([1907] 1965, p. 109), and a thought "is the first two-thirds of a psychical reflex" ([1863Z?] 1935, p. 321). (3) The reflex as the mechanism of association: "An association is," according to Sechenov, "an uninterrupted series of contacts of the end of every preceding reflex with the beginning of the following one" (ibid., p. 312). The actual experience of an event and the memory of it are both represented by identical psychical reflexes but are evoked by different stimuli.
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(4) The psychic as associative in genesis and central neural in mediation: perception and ideas emerge from associations of reflexes and their integration in the sensory sphere; both association and integration are mediated by the central nervous system. (5) A radical environmentalism: the largest part of thoughts and ideas, 999 parts out of 1,000, as Sechenov would have it, derives from training, and only a minimal part is due to heredity. Of these five theses, the first and last do, of course, have roots in earlier Western thought; the middle three are essentially original contributions by Sechenov. GREGORY RAZRAN [See also the biographies of BEKHTEREV and PAVLOV.] WORKS BY SECHENOV
1863« Physiologische Studien iiber die Hemmungsmechanismen fur die Reflexthdtigkeit des Riickenmarks im Gehirne des Frosches. Berlin: Hirschwald. -*• Also published as "Etudes physiologiques sur les centres moderateurs des mouvements reflexes dans le cerveau des grenouilles" in Volume 19 of the Annales des sciences naturelles. (1863b) 1935 Reflexes of the Brain. Pages 263-336 in Ivan M. Sechenov, Selected Works. Moscow: State Publishing House for Biological and Medical Literature. -» First published as "Refleksi golovnogo mozga" in Volume 3 of the journal Meditsinskii vestnik. (1873a) 1935 Who Must Investigate the Problems of Psychology, and How. Pages 337-391 in Ivan M. Sechenov, Selected Works. Moscow: State Publishing House for Biological and Medical Literature. -» First published as Komu i kak razrabatyvat' psikhologiiu? 1873b Psikhologicheskie etudy (Psychological Studies). St. Petersburg: Sushchinskii. (1878) 1935 Elements of Thought. Pages 401-498 in Ivan M. Sechenov, Selected Works. Moscow: State Publishing House for Biological and Medical Literature. -> First published as "Elementy mysli" in the journal Vestnik evropy. (1907) 1965 Autobiographical Notes. Washington: American Institute of Biological Sciences. -» First published posthumously as Avtobiograficheskie zapiski. Izbrannye filosofskie i psikhologicheskie proizvedeniia (Selected Physiological and Psychological Works). Moscow: Akademiia Nauk SSSR, 1947. Selected Works. Moscow: State Publishing House for Biological and Medical Literature, 1935. SUPPLEMENTARY BIBLIOGRAPHY
BORING, EDWIN G. (1929) 1950 A History of Experimental Psychology. 2d ed. New York: Appleton. -> See especially pages 635-636 on I. M. Sechenov. BUDILOVA, E. A. 1954 Uchenie I. M. Sechenova ob oshchushchenii i myshlenii (Sechenov's Views of Sensations and Thinking). Moscow: Akademiia Nauk SSSR. ESPER, ERVIN A. 1964 A History of Psychology. Philadelphia: Saunders. IAROSHEVSKII, M. G. 1961 Problema determinizma v psikhofiziologii XIX veka (The Problem of Determinism in the Psychology of the 19th Century). Dushanbe
(U.S.S.R.): Dushanbinskii Gosudarstvennyi Pedagogicheskii Institut. RAZRAN, GREGORY 1965 Russian Physiologists' Psychology and American Experimental Psychology: A Historical and a Systematic Collation and a Look Into the Future. Psychological Bulletin 63, no. 1:42-64. SHATERNIKOV, M. N. 1935 The Life of I. M. Sechenov. Pages ix-xxxvi in Ivan M. Sechenov, Selected Works. Moscow: State Publishing House for Biological and Medical Literature.
SECTS AND CULTS The term "sect" is used in the sociology of religion to designate a particular kind of religious group. This usage is both more precise and more technical than the use of the word in everyday speech. It is part of a typology of religious groupings which has been found useful in the study of religious movements and bodies. The term "cult" has also been given a special technical meaning as part of this typology, but it has remained less precisely defined, less useful, and less used in empirical research. Church and sect In his study of the relationship between Christianity and the world, Ernst Troeltsch (1912) examined the tensions, problems, and dilemmas that confronted the Christian church as it attempted to come to terms with four aspects of classical civilization : family life, economic activity, politics and power, and intellectual endeavor. He found this history characterized by two major tendencies which exhibited themselves in varied forms over a long period of time. The first was the tendency to come to terms with secular society and culture, although often with considerable qualification, and generally to compromise with the world; the second, a highly significant rejection by a minority of the whole spirit of compromise and an opposition to important aspects of the secular culture and its institutions. These tendencies found organized expression in two basic and contrasting sociological types, which Troeltsch called the church and the sect. The church represents the majority reaction and involves within its structure considerable variation of accommodation and compromise. It defines itself as the established expression of the relation between God and men, the institutional channel of divine grace, whose mission it is to enter the world in order to sanctify it. Thus, the church attempts to dominate the world with its values and is eventually dominated by the world to one extent or another. The church is characterized by what is vir-
SECTS AND CULTS tually membership on the basis of birth for the children of believers, although formally all are members through baptism. Thus, the practice of infant baptism is characteristic of churches, and churches become educational agencies. The church is the means for the administration of grace and exhibits the theological and sociological concomitants of this function: dogma and hierarchy. It is universal in its aspirations and addresses itself to the conversion of all. Consequently, its social structure is inclusive and often coincides with geographical or cultural entities or, as in the Middle Ages, with a whole civilization—Christendom. The sect, as defined in the sociological literature since Troeltsch, represents a contrapuntal ideal type to the church form of social organization. It is a voluntary society of strict believers who live apart from the world in some way. Its foundation upon contracted or upon freely elected membership marks a sharp contrast with the ecclesiastical body of the church, as does its smallness of size and its spirit of austerity and asceticism. The sect expresses defiance of the world or withdrawal from it, a greater or lesser rejection of the legitimacy of the demands of the secular sphere. It emphasizes a conversion experience prior to joining. Sociological theory presents the church as the ideal type of religious body accommodating to the world and the sect as the ideal type of the protest group, protesting both the church's accommodation to the world and the world itself. The sect's refusal to compromise with secular values and institutions may find expression in either an active or a passive form. Hence there are two fundamental sect types: the militant oppositionist sect, which is active in its antagonism to the world, and the passive sect, which prefers withdrawal to militant defiance. Accommodation of sects. H. Richard Niebuhr (1929), Liston Pope (1942), and others have delineated the sequential pattern in the course of which sects themselves are accommodated to the secular society and make their own compromise with the world. The birth of children to the sectaries, the better adjustment to conditions of life, including an increasing prosperity, and the passage of time itself—all contribute to a routinization of the sect into an established sociological entity which has accepted the social world in which it exists. Niebuhr observed that the sect, if defined rigorously in the terms presented here, cannot last beyond the founding generation. Pope's study would indicate that often considerable accommodation occurs in the lifetime of the founding generation. The routinized sect has been given the
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name of denomination. Here once again, as in the use of the term sect, a word of common speech is given a more precise and technical designation. The typical picture presented in a number of sociological studies is that of the establishment of sects as protest groups against accommodation to the world and then their gradual acceptance of the world and their routinization as a reconciled part of it. This process is often associated with increasing wealth and respectability for the membership, in part at least the fruit of their ascetic and austere sectarian behavior. Established sects. However, the work of J. Milton Yinger (1946) and Bryan R. Wilson (1959; 1961) has shown that not all sects, by any means, go through this sequence from sect to denomination arid lose their earlier spirit of militancy and segregation. Some sects are successful in maintaining themselves over a long period of time in an established condition of opposition, or at least nonacceptance, with respect to secular society and its values. They become established sects, which, despite changes in their composition and milieu and the passing of the founding generation, retain a sectarian organization and an antagonistic or withdrawn posture in the face of the world. Of these established sects two types may be seen. There are those which secede from the world in a literal geographic sense and live in a territorial isolation in which they attempt to establish total communities after the model of their own values. The Amish, Hutterites, and others offer examples. There are also established sects such as the Jehovah's Witnesses and Christadelphians which remain within the general urban society and which nevertheless successfully maintain their opposition to it. Although such groups have not separated themselves geographically, they are separate in less palpable but not any less real ways, and they succeed in keeping their membership apart from genuine, intimate nonsectarian social participation. Sect ideology. All sects display a considerable degree of totalism in dominating the lives of their membership. Ideological domination is usually supplemented and supported on the social level by measures which set the group apart, such as endogamy, limitations on the forms of participation with outsiders, refusal to take part in significant common societal activities (military service, saluting the flag, or medical practice), peculiar habits of eating and abstinence, and with some groups, even peculiarities of dress. Related to these social forms of segregation is the notion of the sect members as comprising the "elect," some kind of religious elite.
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Social bases of sectarianism Sects are opposition groups, and they arise in opposition to the accommodation of churches or developing denominations, in rejection of some other aspects of their milieu, or in some combination of the two. Troeltsch has shown that the sect form asserted itself early in the Middle Ages. It is to be seen in the period of the Gregorian agitation (c. 1080) when the sectarianism of the Albigensians spread in Italy and France. This movement had complex social and religious sources. It was greatly affected by the reform efforts and struggles of Pope Gregory vii; it expressed the opposition of the devout laity to what they considered immorality and simony in the church; and it also represented the aggressive reaction of new urban classes against the established order in both church and city. This correspondence and interpenetration of religious and social interests has often been found associated with the origin and formation of sects. It has often been observed in the sociological literature that the sect is a lower-class protest phenomenon. The conditions of life of different social strata influence the psychological make-up and need dispositions of their members. Consequently, social classes and strata develop different religious needs and sensibilities. Niebuhr stated that the religion of the disinherited may be observed in the rise of many sects and that Christianity was at first the religion of those who had little stake in the civilization of their time. Troeltsch concluded that all really creative religious movements are the work of lower strata. Niebuhr stressed the importance of economic success in the transformation of protesting sects into denominations and pointed to the fact that the churches of the poor sooner or later become churches of the middle class. Functions of the sect. The sect exhibits complex functions in society. It often offers an outlet for strains and frustrations incumbent upon lowerclass status and for the condition of being socially and economically disinherited. In allowing catharsis, it at the same time provides a meaningful community, together with a set of values that promotes a personal reorganization of the members' lives and often their eventual reincorporation into the general society. Not only may the sect reconcile the disinherited to their situation through the various compensations of this-worldly community and other-worldly expectations, but it may also bring new meaning to them in its reinterpretation of their life experience. In doing this it may socialize its members in virtues which lead to economic and
worldly success. Moreover, the sect, with its close community of human beings and its new values which give meaning to life, offers a way out of anomie to many who have been disorganized in the impersonal milieu of the modern city. When the founding generation passes away, the established sect continues to perform similar functions for individuals who are attracted to it and provides for its born members the setting for acting out their established values. Sects may take on a number of new functions when their social composition and their specific social situation change over time. When established organizational conditions offer insufficient expression to the religious needs of people or when established institutions fail to meet needs of particular strata and groups at all, it is easy for charismatic leaders to arise and organize a following. Such developments issue in movements of protest of a marked sectarian character. The charismatic leader as a rallying focus and an active initiator plays a strategic role in the origin of sects and often impresses his own self-interpretation upon the group as the model for its behavior and beliefs. The accommodation and routinization of churches and the development of sects into denominations is often the occasion for schism, which is an important source of sectarian movements. Moreover, conditions and social change within the general society, altered economic status for particular groups, urbanization, increased mobility— geographic and psychological—and other phenomena associated with industrialization all contribute to the rise of sects. The sect as a sociological ideal type is therefore to be understood as the embodiment and expression of rejection of some significant aspect of secular life. It represents a protest against compromise with the society and its values and the institutional development of the church itself as an aspect of this accommodation. It is charismatic, lay, egalitarian, and voluntaristic religion in contrast to the established, professional, hierarchical, and ascribed religion of the church. In this typology the sect represents an ideal type: empirical reality and specific historical development present a greater variety than does the typology itself. Allied types of religious protest Many protest movements display sectarian characteristics but to different degrees and often in somewhat different respects. Most of the important protest movements in Christianity, while highly influenced by sectlike elements, endeavored to achieve organizational forms which also involved many of the characteristics of the church. Thus the
SECTS AND CULTS Reformed churches of the Protestant Reformation vary along a complex continuum from Anglicanism with its episcopate and quite ecclesiastical structure, at one end, to the sectlike organizations of the Baptists, at the other, with interesting combinations of church and sect attributes characterizing the inbetween groups, for example, the Churches of the Standing Order in colonial Massachusetts. Joachim Wach (1944) has called a number of them independent groups and has pointed out that they vary in form from churchlike hierarchical structures to egalitarian covenants of laymen. However, not all protest is secessionist in intention, nor does protest necessarily issue in separate organization outside the established bodies. Monasticism and the later religious orders offer an outstanding example of protest groups which remain within the older ecclesiastical body. Monasticism exhibits a number of sectarian qualities: it establishes a separate community, practices austerity and asceticism, and employs segregating rules and peculiarities of dress. Like the geographically isolated sects, it creates its own distinct community but remains dependent upon the larger body for replacement of personnel. In its origin Christian monasticism was both a protest against the accommodation of the church and a rejection of the world. Its relationship to the sacramental church was ambiguous, and it could have become a secessionist movement. But in the rule of Basil in the East and of Benedict in the West, it was reintegrated formally and solidly into the structure of the church. Here it continued to play a role of witness and to advocate reform. Moreover, it placed its enormous energy at the disposal of the church for missionary and other activity. In the High Middle Ages, the Franciscan movement represented a similar tendency. It was contained within the church at first by the personal character of its founder. Later on, its integration into the church was the cause of a great struggle in which both schism and heresy as well as reintegration of the order into the church resulted. Moreover, the routinization process from sect to denomination is also found in the history of religious orders. Such routinization is often the cause of schism and divisions and the rise of reforming leaders of the charismatic type. The Mormons. A religious body of a marked sectlike character which seeks geographical isolation may, when circumstances are propitious, develop into an entity resembling an ethnic group or even a nation. The Mormons, a sectlike group choosing to imitate the Biblical model of Israel, found themselves in circumstances where such recapitulation took on realistic significance. Perse-
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cuted and driven from their settlements, achieving victories and suffering defeats, the Mormons built up in a decade and a half a folk tradition and mentality of their own. In moving to the West they found a vast unoccupied expanse of land upon which they could expand their vision of an earthly kingdom of God to imperial dimensions. As a result - the semiecclesiastical organization which developed was at the same time the organized core of a Mormon people held together by kinship ties, common beliefs and values, a common history of achievement and suffering, and a common homeland. The Mormon "Zionism" of the nineteenth century had led to a development from near sect to near nation. When the Mormons applied for admission of their state of Deseret to the federal union, they attempted to find a political form for their achievement which stopped just short of nationhood; and in times of stress and conflict, frankly separationist sentiment was widespread (O'Dea 1954). Churches have also become the core of ethnic groups, as under the Turkish millet system in the Middle East, which granted a degree of political autonomy to religious communities. Typological study of sects Wilson has shown that it is possible to distinguish types of sects on the basis of their ideological orientations. He does this within the context of Protestantism on the basis of the sect's self-definition, specifically its conception of its calling and mission. He distinguishes first the conversionist sect, which seeks to convert others and thereby to change the world; second, the adventist sect, which expects drastic divine intervention and awaits a new dispensation; third, the introversionist sect, which is pietistic in its orientation, withdrawing from the world to cultivate its inner spirituality; and the gnostic sect, which offers some special esoteric religious knowledge. Such sects will experience the effects of routinization differently and will also exhibit different structural tendencies to some degree (Wilson 1959; 1961). Moreover, since the terms church and sect are ideal-typical constructions, what is observed in real life situations only approximates the specifications of the theoretical definitions. Such ideal-typical concepts have an analogical character and are most useful for observation, analysis, and interpretation when utilized with flexibility. This analogical character of the Troeltschian concepts is best seen in the behavior of churches when placed in circumstances which elicit sectlike behavior from them. The Roman Catholic church in the United States in the nineteenth century found itself a minority
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religion, largely lower class in character, constituted in its vast majority by ethnic groups of recent immigrant origin, and therefore of lower prestige in the general American society. Moreover, the value system of American society was largely derived from Protestantism, and the various forms of Protestantism constituted something like an unofficially established national religion. The Roman Catholic church responded by separating itself from the surrounding Protestant world in a wide range of activities and by constructing its own institutional contexts for education from the primary grades through the university, for social welfare work, for hospitals and other institutions for aid, and for sports and entertainment. Moreover, the mentality of American Catholics took on a number of sectlike attributes, such as apartness and defensiveness, rigorism in morality, and militancy in religious identification. While this situation was in part conditioned by the defensive character of post-Tridentine Catholicism in Europe and by the Irish background of so many American Catholics, there is no question of the importance of American conditions in bringing about a sectlike result. It is significant in this connection that the first heresy conflict in many decades to be seen in American Catholicism concerned a student center at Harvard University which displayed a militant sectarian response to secularism in the intellectual sphere and against the church's accommodation to the secular world. This group ended in heresy and excommunication (O'Dea 1961). What has evolved from the time of Troeltsch is a typology of religious groups which has proven its utility in description and analysis in the sociological study of religion. It may be summarized briefly as follows: The church is the embodiment of institutional religion and accommodation to the world. It gives rise to protest groups and movements. These may vary from reformed churches to independent groups to sects, or they may give rise to groups which remain within the older body, affecting and reforming it in various ways. Sects may be either actively in opposition or passive and withdrawing with respect to the world. They may be geographically isolated, or they may exist within the general society, practicing forms of social separatism. Sects may go through a process of social mobility and routinization and develop into denominations, accepting in one way or another the secular society and its values. The sect may also institutionalize its oppositionist character and become an established sect. Under propitious circumstances a sect or near sect can develop into a
new ethnic or quasi-ethnic entity; it can become a people. While this typology has been useful and represents the contributions and insights of a number of sociologists and scholars, it remains unsatisfactory. Like all ideal type concepts, it is unwieldly to use in analysis and possesses severe limitations with respect to refinement or adaptation to mathematical use. What is necessary is to analyze these ideal-typical constructs and to state their components in terms of factors or variables. This would mean replacing the global concept with a number of dilemmas or choice points which give rise to one kind of organizational tendency rather than another or, in a like manner, breaking up the ideal types into tendencies which vary from group to group along a series of continua. A similar kind of analysis was made by Talcott Parsons with respect to the ideal type conceptions of Tonnies (Geraeinschaft and Gesellschaft^), which he broke down into five pattern variables. Such factors or variables would make it possible to compare groups with respect to a number of characteristics instead of the present, more cumbersome process of using ideal types as an analytical model. The cult. To this already complex typology, von Wiese and Howard Becker (1932) have added the cult. While this term has been less clearly defined, it has been most generally used in the scholarly literature to designate a more loosely organized and more individualistic group than those already discussed (this usage must be distinguished from the scholarly use of the world cult to refer to the ritual act of worship). Based on individual concerns and experiences, the cult is often transient, its membership often highly fluctuating. Belonging to the cult often does not involve an acceptance of common discipline and need not necessarily preclude membership in other kinds of religious groups. Both theosophy and New Thought have been labeled as cults. Wilson (1961) considers the cult a gnostic sect and, in his study of Christian Science in Great Britain, shows a group that combines aspects of bureaucratized organization with characteristics of both sect and cult. What is involved in this type of group may be best understood by returning to Troeltsch's original treatment, with which this article began. American sociologists have tended to make only a partial use of the paradigm of analysis introduced by Troeltsch and to develop only the implications of the churchsect dichotomy. Troeltsch, however, emphasized another kind of religious reaction to accommodation to the world
SECTS AND CULTS and routinization in the development of religious forms of expression. He speaks of mysticism, which is found particularly when the formalization of worship and doctrine makes individual religious experience difficult and unfruitful within the established forms. Just as the sect tends to be a lowerclass phenomenon (the religious form of those without a stake in the social system), so mysticism is characteristic of the educated classes. It has been an element enriching the life of the established religious bodies, as it has also been an expression of protest against them. It is of great significance in the development of the religious life of the Catholic church and was a tremendously important element in the Reformation and in post-Reformation Protestantism. When it does affect the lower classes and when found in religious movements of the poor, it often involves emotional excesses and a taste for heterodox novelties. The religious experience of worship and a relationship to the Deity, the gnostic experience involving secret knowledge and skill not available to all, and the mystical effort to achieve a personal relationship with God outside the established forms of worship and even of language are all obviously related. Consequently, some element of mysticism may be found in varied versions of the religious experience, although religious traditions placing their emphasis upon law often discourage mysticism, evidently fearing its antinomian possibilities. Sects in non-Christian cultures. Most of the work on sects in the sociological literature concerns Christian groups. It is obvious, however, that the typology refers to aspects and characteristics of religious groups and movements to be found outside the Christian tradition. Wach has pointed out that Zoroastrianism and Mahayana Buddhism have produced ecclesiastical bodies which fit the Troeltschian definition of the church in its main outlines and that groups in Islam and Confucianism have evolved semiecclesiastical bodies. Monasticism has been developed in a number of quite different religious and cultural traditions. Sects which fit many of the characteristics we have presented above may also be found in the other world religions. For example, in Islam the rise of Wahhabism represents an active oppositionist sect, while Bahai arose as a sect of the passive withdrawing character. Sectarianism in politics. Finally, it should be noted that the typology given here is to some extent applicable to organizations other than those of a religious character. Groups with situationally transcendent ideals seem to display similar organ-
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izational types. This may be seen in political parties with some degree of utopianism in their programmatic aspirations. For example, social democratic parties in Europe were formed upon situationally transcendent ideals and in opposition to existing conditions. A degree of success both for membership and officialdom led to a process of routinization and accommodation analogous to that experienced by a church in the religious sphere (Michels 1911). As a consequence, protest movements developed, such as the Spartacus group in Germany, or even the Third International. Thus, the basic variables involved in this typology would appear to be found whenever organized expression of interests based upon situationally transcendent aspirations occurs. THOMAS F. O'DEA [Directly related are the entries MILLENARISM; RELIGIOUS ORGANIZATION. Other relevant material may be found in COLLECTIVE BEHAVIOR; MASS PHENOMENA; SOCIAL MOVEMENTS; and in the biographies of MANNHEIM; TROELTSCH; WEBER, MAX.] BIBLIOGRAPHY
BERGER, PETER L. 1954 The Sociological Study of Sectarianism. Social Research 21:467-487. BESTOR, ARTHUR E. JR. 1950 Backwoods Utopias: The Sectarian and Owenite Phases of Communitarian Socialism in America: 1663-1829. Philadelphia: Univ. of Pennsylvania Press. CLARK, ELMER T. (1937) 1949 The Small Sects in America. Rev. ed. Nashville, Tenn.: Abingdon-Cokesbury. COHN, NORMAN (1957) 1961 The Pursuit of the Millennium: Revolutionary Messianism in Medieval and Reformation Europe and Its Bearing on Modern Totalitarian Movements. 2d ed. New York: Harper. FRANCIS, E. K. 1950 Toward a Typology of Religious Orders. American Journal of Sociology 55:437—449. FREND, WILLIAM H. C. 1952 The Donatist Church: A Movement of Protest in Roman North Africa. Oxford: Clarendon Press. JOHNSON, BENTON 1957 A Critical Appraisal of the Church-Sect Typology. American Sociological Review 22:88-92. JOHNSON, BENTON 1961 Do Holiness Sects Socialize in Dominant Values? Social! Forces 39:309-316. MANN, WILLIAM E. 1955 Sect, Cult and Church in Alberta. Univ. of Toronto Press. MANNHEIM, KARL (1929-1931) 1954 Ideology and Utopia: An Introduction to the Sociology of Knowledge. New York: Harcourt; London: Routledge. -» A paperback edition was published in 1955 by Harcourt. Part 1 was written for this volume. Parts 2-4 are a translation of Ideologic und Utopie (1929); Part 5 is a translation of the article "Wissenssoziologie" (1931). MICHELS, ROBERT (1911)1959 Political Parties: A Sociological Study of the Oligarchical Tendencies of Modern Democracy. New York: Dover. -» First published as Zur Soziologie des Parteiwesens in der modernen Demokratie.
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MUELDER, WALTER G. 1945 From Sect to Church. Christendom 10, no. 4:450-462. NIEBUHR, H. RICHARD (1929) 1954 The Social Sources of Denominationalism. Hamden, Conn.: Shoe String Press. -> A paperback edition was published in 1957 by World. O'DEA, THOMAS F. 1954 Mormonism and the Avoidance of Sectarian Stagnation: A Study of Church, Sect, and Incipient Nationality. American Journal of Sociology 60:285-293. O'DEA, THOMAS F. 1961 Catholic Sectarianism: A Sociological Analysis of the So-called Boston Heresy Case. Review of Religious Research 3:49-63. POBLETE, RENATO; and O'DEA, THOMAS F. 1960 Anomie and the "Quest for Community": The Formation of Sects Among the Puerto Ricans of New York. American Catholic Sociological Review 21:18-36. POPE, LISTON 1942 Millhands and Preachers: A Study of Gastonia. New Haven: Yale Univ. Press; Oxford Univ. Press. TROELTSCH, ERNST (1912) 1931 The Social Teaching of the Christian Churches. 2 vols. New York: Macmillan. -» First published as Die Soziallehren der christlichen Kirchen und Gruppen. A paperback edition was published in 1960 by Harper. WACH, JOACHIM (1944) 1951 Sociology of Religion. Univ. of Chicago Press. WEBER, MAX (1906)1946 The Protestant Sects and the Spirit of Capitalism. Pages 302-322 in Max Weber, From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology. New York: Oxford Univ. Press. -> First published in German. WEBER, MAX (1915) 1946 Religious Rejections of the World and Their Directions. Pages 323-359 in Max Weber, From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology. New York: Oxford Univ. Press. -» First published in German. WHITLEY, OLIVER R. 1955 The Sect-to-Denomination Process in an American Religious Movement: The Disciples of Christ. Southwest Social Science Quarterly 36:275-281. WIESE, LEOPOLD VON (1924-1929) 1932 Systematic Sociology: On the Basis of the "Beziehungslehre and Gebildelehre" of Leopold von Wiese. Adapted and amplified by Howard Becker. New York: Wiley. -> First published as System der allgemeine Soziologie. WILSON, BRYAN R. 1959 An Analysis of Sect Development. American Sociological Review 24:3-15. WILSON, BRYAN R. 1961 Sects and Society: A Sociological Study of the Elim Tabernacle, Christian Science, and Christadelphians. Berkeley: Univ. of California Press. YINGER, J. MILTON (1946) 1961 Religion in the Struggle for Power: A Study in the Sociology of Religion. Sociological Series, No. 3. Durham, N.C.: Duke Univ. Press.
SECURITIES MARKETS Securities markets exist in more than sixty countries and on all continents. They have grown in number and importance with the increase in the number and size of corporations, the volume of government debt instruments, and the diffusion of ownership of corporate and government securities. Securities markets are organizations of security
dealers and brokers whose operations reduce the cost of transferring ownership of government and corporate bonds and stocks and increase the liquidity of these assets. The reduction in transaction costs is achieved by the specialization of these organizations in transmitting information relevant for the decisions of potential buyers and sellers, by the provision of standardized contracts with respect to their purchase, sale, and financing, and frequently by furnishing specialized facilities for the execution of security transactions. Securities markets—especially organized exchanges—increase the liquidity of securities by providing almost continuous information regarding market prices, maximum bids, and minimum offers. Liquidity is increased in the sense that owners of securities can have greater knowledge of the current market value of their securities. This reduces the risk of incorrectly assessing the value of one's securities. This increase in liquidity is important not only for holders of existing securities but also for issuers of new securities who are raising capital for their enterprises. Securities markets, especially those operating through major exchanges, have some of the characteristics of perfectly competitive markets. The things that are bought and sold—shares of common stock of the General Motors Corporation, for example—are perfect substitutes for each other, and the dissemination of information on market prices is accurate, extremely rapid, and very widespread. Information relevant for appraising the prospects of a corporation is also widely available. Further, there are many buyers and sellers, most of whom buy and sell in quantities insufficient to have a significant impact on the price. Although large institutional investors can temporarily raise the price of shares of even very large corporations by placing large "market" orders (and conversely depress the price of shares by selling), this impact can be greatly diminished by spreading the orders over a period of time. The liquidity of even very large holdings of common stock was dramatically illustrated in recent years by the sale of millions of shares of Ford Motor Company stock by the Ford Foundation with no apparent large impact on prices. Security prices are highly sensitive to information bearing on the prospective profitability of the corporations whose shares are involved. The opportunities to profit from changes in the prices of securities have attracted the attention and the money of millions of investors and speculators and have generated many points of view about ways to predict future security prices. Th^ numerous points of view fall into two general categories: (1) efforts
SECURITIES MARKETS to predict the profitability of firms by forecasts of general business conditions, by forecasts of costs, revenues, and profits for particular industries, and by analyses of the competitive position of particular firms, and (2) efforts to predict future prices by an analysis of the historical course of prices themselves. This latter point of view has been subjected to considerable analysis by academic economists and statisticians (Cootner 1964), and the predominant view among academic economists is that historical analyses of prices do not enhance one's ability to predict prices. In the short run, prices are believed by many to follow a "random walk." [See MARKOV CHAINS.] This academic view is at variance with the views of many members of the financial community. The view that prices follow a random walk is consistent with a market in which numerous pieces of relevant information bearing on future prospects are frequently generated and widely and rapidly disseminated. The pieces of information themselves, however, must be causally unrelated to the historical course of security prices. Another essential condition is that prices adjust "instantaneously" to new information, since gradual adjustment would create trends. Organized exchanges. The most important securities markets in terms of the value of securities traded are organized exchanges. Such exchanges differ from less formal markets in that they centralize communication and trading, impose rules for the admission of persons or firms privileged to trade in securities, impose rules with respect to the securities that can be traded, and closely regulate the procedures used. By far the largest securities market in the world in terms of the dollar volume of securities traded is the New York Stock Exchange. This exchange, started in 1792 as an informal organization of 24 merchants and auctioneers dealing in securities, has grown throughout most of its history. At the end of 1966 there were 1,366 members of the exchange, most of them associated with approximately 660 organizations, including single proprietorships, partnerships, and corporations. About 1,200 companies with approximately 1,600 different issues of stock were listed, and the more than 10,000 million shares listed had an aggregate value of more than $495,000 million. In addition, about 500 companies and government agencies with approximately 1,200 different issues of bonds were listed, and these bonds had an aggregate market value of approximately $120,000 million. At the end of 1966 there were more than 250 listings of foreign securities, including both stocks and bonds,
137
having an aggregate value of more than $9,000 million. The value of securities listed on the New York Stock Exchange at the end of 1966 was more than four times as great as the value of securities listed on the world's second largest exchange, The Stock Exchange (of London), which trades a larger number of issues and has more than twice as many members. The New York Stock Exchange accounts for more than 90 per cent of the dollar volume of trading on the 18 organized exchanges in the United States, and this proportion has been maintained for many years (U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission 1963a). The number of members of the New York Stock Exchange has been fixed in recent years. Memberships, called "seats," are bought and sold. The price of a seat in 1966 was approximately $250,000. In 1875 seats sold for as little as $4,250, and in 1929 they reached an all-time high of $625,000. To be eligible for membership, persons must meet standards established by the exchange with respect to age, citizenship, character, and knowledge of the securities business. About one-half of the members of the New York Stock Exchange belong to organizations whose primary purpose is to act as brokers on behalf of those wishing to buy or sell listed securities. These members are paid according to a fixed shedule of brokerage fees averaging roughly one per cent of the value of the security bought or sold, although the fees vary somewhat in a prescribed manner according to the number of shares and the aggregate value of shares or according to whether the securities traded are stocks or bonds. About one-fourth of the members are "specialists." They are important in the operation of the New York Stock Exchange and other American exchanges, but other devices are used outside the United States, except in Japan, to perform the specialist's function. The specialist receives information from brokers regarding offers to sell and to buy at various prices. Each specialist concentrates his activities in a small group of securities, and brokers wishing to transact business on behalf of the public typically deal with one or another of the specialists handling the stock in question, although brokers may deal directly with other brokers. The specialist secures for the seller the highest available bid and for the bidder the lowest available offer. When there is a wide discrepancy between the highest bid and the lowest offer, the specialist has the responsibility, neither fully enforceable nor precisely defined, to use his own capital to maintain a "reasonably continuous" mar-
138
SECURITIES MARKETS
ket in such a stock. The specialist is also permitted to buy and sell securities for the account of others, thus acting as a brokers' broker. Regulations of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) require that the specialist must execute orders on behalf of the public prior to executing them for his own account. Part of the justification given for the existence of the system of specialists is that their trading on their own behalf increases liquidity and reduces the likelihood of large changes in prices between successive transactions. A detailed investigation of the impact of specialists on prices during the period immediately following the assassination of President Kennedy in 1963 revealed that specialists vary widely in their trading practices and in their impact on prices (U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission 1963fo). A substantial number of specialists traded so as to diminish volatility, and a substantial number so as to increase it. Approximately one-fourth of the members of the New York Stock Exchange are either odd-lot dealers or "floor brokers." The former buy and sell blocks of stock of less than 100 shares (odd lots) from brokers representing the public. The latter assist brokers from the commission houses when the volume of business exceeds their capacity to handle it. Most transactions involve a small enough volume of stock so that the ordinary market mechanism can be used without having a large impact on prices. Transactions, however, which involve very large numbers of shares and dollars are often handled through specialized procedures designed to lessen this impact. The most important type of block distribution is a "secondary distribution" (the sale by an underwriter or group of underwriters of a large volume of stock not for the benefit of the corporation whose shares are being sold), but "exchange distributions" (within brokerage houses) and other specialized means of dealing with large volumes of stock are growing in importance. Although the details of these various specialized methods differ, they have in common an effort to accumulate orders to buy from large numbers of investors over a period of time in order to match the large volume of stock that is being offered by a single seller. For instance, in mid-1964, 250,000 shares of a stock selling for $33 were offered by a single seller. The stock was distributed within one day through the facilities of a single brokerage organization whose customers bought all the stock. The individual purchases were bunched and executed as a package on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange. They were represented as a single
transaction through the national and international communications system that virtually instantaneously transmits information on stock prices. This particular method of distributing stock is known as an "exchange distribution." The number of shares traded as a percentage of the number of shares listed has been declining secularly. Around 1900, the number of shares traded in a year was approximately 200 per cent of the average number of shares listed in that year, and as recently as 1929 the number of shares traded during a year exceeded the average number listed. Since World War n the number of shares traded in any year has never exceeded 25 per cent of those listed, and in recent years only about 15 per cent of listed shares have been traded in any year. In order for the shares of a company to achieve initial listing on the New York Stock Exchange, the company must demonstrate earning power, after charges and taxes, of $1.2 million annually; must have net tangible assets of $10 million, or more than $10 million in market value for publicly held shares; and must have at least 600,000 shares publicly held and not fewer than 1,500 owners, each of whom must own at least 100 shares. Similar though less stringent criteria are applied for delisting a stock. For numerous periods between January 1926 and December 1960 average rates of return to investors investing equal amounts of money in each of the common stocks listed on the New York Stock Exchange were generally higher than earnings in alternative investments, such as government and corporate bonds, savings accounts, and mortgages (Fisher & Lorie 1964). For the entire 35-year period, the average annual rate of return (compounded) to a tax-exempt investor, with reinvestment of dividends, was 9.0 per cent. Without reinvestment of dividends the rate was 6.9 per cent. During the decade of the 1950s, the average annual rates with and without reinvestment were about 15 per cent. (Rates of return with reinvestment may be higher, lower, or the same as without reinvestment. The rate of return is based on the relationship between a change in the value of assets and the volume of assets initially invested. Reinvestment increases both the change in value and the amount invested, and the effect on the rate of return depends on the relative magnitude of these increases.) Data are also available on the variability of rates of return (Fisher 1965). Considering all possible purchases and sales, at monthly intervals, of all common stocks on the New York Stock Exchange
SECURITIES MARKETS for the period 1926-1960, it was found that slightly over three-fourths of the transactions were profitable and over half provided rates of return in excess of 9 per cent. Of course, this past experience is not a certain guide to the future. The Stock Exchange (of London) lists more than 9,000 different securities that had at the end of 1963 a market value of approximately $125,000 million, about a third of which was represented by debt instruments of the government of Great Britain, Commonwealth governments, local councils, and nationalized industries. The Stock Exchange had about 3,400 members in mid-1964. The relative importance of foreign shares is greater for this stock exchange than for the New York Stock Exchange. The major difference in the method of operation of The Stock Exchange—-and almost all exchanges outside the United States— as compared with the New York Stock Exchange is that brokers who buy and sell securities on behalf of the public deal with jobbers who own securities and act as wholesalers. These jobbers, who do not deal directly with the public, serve much the same purpose as the specialist on the New York Stock Exchange, but the specialist in the United States typically has a dual role—broker and dealer— while the jobber in London operates solely as a dealer adding to or depleting his inventory of the securities in which he trades. There are about 280 firms of brokers and about 65 firms of jobbers operating on The Stock Exchange. A jobber may deal in any listed security, but most specialize in certain groups of shares, or "markets." The chief markets are as follows: giltedged (government issues and other securities grouped with them); banks and insurance; shipping; foreign government bonds; American and Canadian shares; breweries; commercial and industrial; iron, coal, and steel; financial, land, and property; investment trusts; rubber and tea plantations; oil; South African mines; Rhodesian, Canadian, Australian, and miscellaneous mines; West African mines; cables and transportation. Rates of return on British shares between 1919 and 1963, averaged by 11-year periods, were substantially higher in most of these periods—excluding wartime—-than rates on consols—-government bonds with no maturity date (Merrett & Sykes 1963). For the entire period, the rates on shares were 8.0 per cent in money terms and 5.8 per cent in real terms, while the comparable rates for consoles were 1.4 per cent and —1.4 per cent. There are other important exchanges in the world, but none approaches in importance either the New York Stock Exchange or The Stock Ex-
739
change (of London). Among the other leading exchanges are the Stock Exchange of Paris, the Brussels Stock Exchange Commission, the Zurich Stock Exchange (the leading Continental market), the Dusseldorf and Frankfurt stock exchanges in the Federal Republic of Germany, the Milan Stock Exchange, the American Stock Exchange (United States), the Toronto and Montreal exchanges in Canada, and the Melbourne Stock Exchange. There are many regional exchanges in the countries whose leading exchanges are listed above, and there are many exchanges in other countries as well. The largest of these exchanges is not more than about one-fifth the size of The Stock Exchange (of London) or one-twentieth the size of the New York Stock Exchange, and most are much smaller. The mechanisms of these various exchanges differ, but the principles underlying their operation are very much like either The Stock Exchange or the New York Stock Exchange. Information about many of these exchanges can be found in Spray (1964). Over-the-counter markets. Unlike the organized exchanges, the over-the-counter market is informal and permits unlimited right of entry by securities and virtually free access of persons into the business of dealing in unlisted securities. At the end of 1963 over 3,300 firms listed with the SEC dealt in unlisted securities. The over-the-counter market differs from the organized exchange in many ways. There is no fixed schedule of fees for buying and selling securities. Dealers more frequently buy and sell from inventories and derive their profit from markups on this inventory. Dealers and brokers are informally organized in the National Association of Security Dealers (NASD). Under pressure from the SEC, the NASD began to publish in February 1965 wholesale or 'inter-dealer" quotations for the 1,300 issues on its national list. Accurate information on retail prices is not yet available for the over-the-counter market. The SEC estimates that as of December 31, 1962, about 4,500 stocks in about 4,100 domestic companies were quoted only in the over-the-counter market (U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission 1963a). These stocks had an aggregate value of about $90,000 million, almost half being constituted by stocks in banks and insurance companies. The value of stocks traded over-the-counter was only about one-fourth of those traded on the New York Stock Exchange but far exceeded the value of stocks traded on any other American exchange. The volume of stock trading over-the-counter is estimated to have grown about eightfold between 1949 and 1961, reaching $40,000 million in the
140
SECURITIES MARKETS
latter year. Although most of the very large companies are traded on listed exchanges, this is not true of stocks in banks, insurance companies, and mutual funds, which are frequently large and seldom listed. (In 1964, a Disclosure Act was passed by Congress which may substantially increase the listing of stocks in banks and insurance companies.) In recent years a so-called third market has increased in importance. This market involves trading in shares listed on exchanges, but the trading takes place in the over-the-counter market rather than through the exchanges. The only definitive estimate of the volume of such trading indicates that in 1961 about $2,000 million worth of stocks listed on the New York Stock Exchange were traded over-the-counter. This constituted almost 4 per cent of trading on the New York Stock Exchange. This percentage is undoubtedly increasing. The third market is growing in importance because the brokerage costs on the exchanges are fixed and do not permit quantity discounts, despite the lower cost per share of handling large orders. The overthe-counter market has no fixed schedule of fees and thereby permits large buyers and sellers to consummate transactions at lower cost than is possible on the exchanges. The increased importance of institutional investors, who frequently trade in large volumes, has contributed to the growth of the third market. Outside the United States, most trading in securities is probably through exchanges, but some
Table 1 — Distribution of total market value of individually held stock, by income class, 1960 Per cent of total market va/oeb
Adjusted gross income" Less than $5,000
12.4
$5,000
13.9
-$9,999
$10,000 -$14,999
11.4
$15,000 -$24,999
14.0
$25,000 -$49,999
15.9
$50,000 -$99,999
12.9
$100,000-$149,999
4.8
$150,000-$199,999
3.3
$200,000 and over
11.5
Total
100.1
a. Excludes income not subject to federal income tax. b. Percentages do not add to 100 because of rounding. Source: Crockett & Friend 1963, p. 156.
is over-the-counter and through institutions such as commercial banks. In most foreign countries, listing requirements and permission to trade on exchanges are less restrictive than in the United States. Share ownership. In the United States the number of individuals owning stock directly has risen from about 6 million in 1954 to about 20 million in 1966. This ownership is widely distributed among all income groups, as is indicated by Table 1. Somewhat more is known about the importance of stock ownership by institutions. Such ownership has increased rapidly both absolutely and as a percentage of all stocks, as is indicated by Table 2. Information regarding share ownership in 60 different countries is contained in a study by the
Table 2 — Estimated holdings of NYSE-listed stocks by financial institutions and relation to total value (billions of dollars) 7949
J956
7961
7962
7963
7964
7965
Life
1.1
Non-life
1.7
2.3 4.5
4.0 7.7
4.1 7.1
4.6 8.2
5.3 9.5
6.4 10.1
1.4 1.6
7.1 4.0
17.2 5.6
15.4 5.3
18.6 5.7
21.8 6.6
26.5 5.6
0.5
*
5.3 0.4 0.2
18.7 1.1 0.7
17.9 1.0 0.8
22.6 1.3 1.1
27.5 1.6 1.5
32.5 1.9 1.9
1.1 1.1 1.0
2.4 4.1 3.1
3.7 7.2 5.6
3.3 6.7
4.0 8.3 5.9
4.5 9.5 6.8
5.1 10.1 7.7
* 0.2
1.0
1.9
1.7
2.2
2.6
3.2
0.2
0.3
0.4
0.4
0.4
0.5
68.7
82.9
97.6
111.5
Type of institution Insurance companies:
Investment companies: Open-end Closed-end Non-insured pension funds: Corporate Other private State and local government Nonprofit institutions: College and university endowments Foundations Other Common trust funds Mutual savings banks Total Total market value of all NYSE-listed stock Estimated per cent held by all financial institutions
9.7 76.3
12.7%
34.6
73.7
5.0
219.2
387.8
345.8
411.3
474.3
537.5
15.8%
19.0%
19.9%
20.2%
20.6%
20.7%
Less than $50 million. Source: New York Stock Exchange 1967.
SECURITIES MARKETS New York Stock Exchange (1962). Three facts stand out: (1) there is no information about share ownership in most countries; (2) for all countries for which information is available, the number of shareholders is growing rapidly; and (3) share owners constitute a larger portion of the populations of western European countries, Japan, and the United States than of other sections of the world. In Great Britain, it is estimated by the Wider Share Ownership Council that at the end of 1963 there were about 3.5 million individuals owning stocks directly and that about two-thirds of all adults of the United Kingdom owned stocks indirectly through various institutions. Institutional investors are of greater relative importance in Great Britain than in the United States. British institutions own about 50 per cent of all the securities listed on The Stock Exchange (of London) while the comparable figure for American institutions on the New York Stock Exchange is about 20 per cent. The greater importance of institutions in the United Kingdom is accounted for primarily by the fact that their insurance companies are not so narrowly restricted with respect to the ownership of shares. Japan had about 4.5 million individual share owners in 1963, over eight times as many as were estimated for 1946. The regulation of securities markets. In the United States, securities markets are regulated to some extent by state laws, but by far the most important regulation stems from the following federal statutes: (1) The Securities Act of 1933. (2) The Securities Exchange Act of 1934. (3) The Public Utility Holding Company Act of 1935. (4) The Investment Company Act and the Investment Advisers Act, both of which became effective in 1940. (5) The Securities Act of 1964. (For an extensive bibliography on the first four of these statutes, their amendments, and judicial decisions and administrative rulings derived from them, see Dun ton 1963.) Provisions of the federal statutes are administered by the SEC, which was established in 1934. The Securities Act of 1933 requires the disclosure of financial information judged by the SEC to be relevant for the evaluation by investors of the prospects of corporations issuing new securities. The Securities Exchange Act of 1934 regulates securities markets and the operations of security brokers and dealers. It requires registration of securities exchanges and of securities traded on such ex-
141
changes; it restricts borrowing by brokers and dealers; it prohibits manipulation of prices of securities; it requires periodic filing of reports on listed securities and the provision of specified information and statements soliciting proxies. Exchanges make rules governing the conduct of their members, and the SEC passes upon the adequacy of such regulation. The over-the-counter market was brought within the purview of the SEC through a section of the Securities Exchange Act authorizing national associations of security dealers to regulate their members. The NASD, authorized under the Securities Exchange Act, has an extensive set of rules governing the conduct of its members. The Securities Act of 1964 extends to the larger over-thecounter issues the regulations governing registration of securities, financial reporting, and the issuance of proxies that apply to issues listed on exchanges. About 2,000 over-the-counter issues are affected. The Public Utility Holding Company Act of 1935 was designed to eliminate or control public utility holding companies that either operated in or sold securities in interstate commerce. The Investment Company Act and the Investment Advisers Act provide for the registration and regulation of investment companies and investment advisers in order to insure a code of conduct and a level of financial responsibility acceptable to the SEC. Since enactment of the Securities Act of 1933 and the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, the dissemination of financial information by corporations has greatly increased, and the practices of firms buying and selling securities or advising investors have changed significantly. Much of this change has taken place through self-regulation by the organized exchanges and through the NASD. The impact of these changes and the adequacy of existing regulation were subjected to exhaustive study by a special group established by the SEC, which the Congress had directed to conduct such a study. The study (U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission 1963Z?) consists of five volumes covering the operation of exchanges and the adequacy of existing regulation, the over-the-counter market, the qualifications of persons in the security industry, security credit, mutual funds, and other matters. A great deal of information, much of it quantitative, is contained in the so-called Special Study, but there is controversy as to whether there was an adequate factual basis for the recommendations that wer First published as Newcomers: The West Indians in London. Chapters 2 and 3 analyze geographical distribution and discrimination in housing. GLAZER, NATHAN; and MOYNIHAN, DANIEL P. 1963 Beyond the Melting Pot: The Negroes, Puerto Ricans, Jews, Italians, and the Irish of New York City. Cambridge, Mass.: M.I.T. Press. GORDON, MILTON M. 1961 Assimilation in America: Theory and Reality. Dsedalus 90:263-285. GORDON, MILTON M. 1964 Assimilation in American Life: The Role of Race, Religion, and National Origin. New York: Oxford Univ. Press. GRIER, GEORGE; and GRIER, EUNICE 1964 Obstacles to Desegregation in America's Urban Areas. Race 6, no. 1:3-17. HODGKIN, THOMAS L. 1956 Nationalism in Colonial Africa. London: Muller. -> Part II, Chapter 1 deals with the new towns of Africa. JOHNSON, CHARLES S. 1943 Patterns of Negro Segregation. New York: Harper. KUPER, LEO; WATTS, HILSTAN; and DAVIES, RONALD L. 1958 Durban: A Study in Racial Ecology. London: Cape; New York: Columbia Univ. Press. -> A study of compulsory segregation in South Africa. LE TOURNEAU, ROGER 1957 Les villes musulmanes de I'Afrique du Nord. Algiers: Maison des Livres. LIEBERSON, STANLEY 1963 Ethnic Patterns in American Cities. New York: Free Press. LINCOLN, CHARLES ERIC 1961 The Black Muslims in America. Boston: Beacon. -» A paperback edition was published in 1962. MCENTIRE, DAVIS 1960 Residence and Race: Final and Comprehensive Report to the Commission on Race and Housing. Berkeley and Los Angeles: Univ. of California Press. OSOFSKY, GILBERT 1966 Harlem: The Making of a Ghetto. New York: Harper. PARK, ROBERT E. (1916-1939) 1952 Human Communities: The City and Human Ecology. Collected Papers, Vol. 2. Glencoe, 111.: Free Press.
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SEIGNIORAL ECONOMY
PARK, ROBERT E.; BURGESS, ERNEST W.; and MCKENZIE, RODERICK D. 1925 The City. Univ. of Chicago Press. POLL, SOLOMON 1962 The Hasidic Community of Williamsburg. New York: Free Press. SCHNORE, LEO F. 1965 The Urban Scene: Human Ecology and Demography. New York: Free Press. SCHNORE, LEO F.; and EVENSON, PHILIP C. 1966 Segregation in Southern Cities. American Journal of Sociology 72:58-67. SHEVSKY, ESHREF; and BELL, WENDELL 1955 Social Area Analysis: Theory, Illustrative Application, and Computational Procedures. Stanford Univ. Press. SJOBERG, GIDEON 1960 The Preindustrial City: Past and Present. Glencoe, 111.: Free Press. SOUTHALL, AIDAN (editor) 1961 Social Change in Modern Africa. Oxford Univ. Press. TAEUBER, KARL E.; and TAEUBER, ALMA F. 1965 Negroes in Cities: Residential Segregation and Neighborhood Change. Chicago: Aldine. THEODORSON, GEORGE A. (editor) 1961 Studies in Human Ecology. Evanston, 111.: Row, Peterson. -> The ecological context of segregation. VAN DEN BERGHE, PIERRE L. 1960 Distance Mechanisms of Stratification. Sociology and Social Research 44: 155-164. WILNER, DANIEL M.; WALKLEY, ROSABELLE P.; and COOK, STUART W. 1955 Human Relations in Interracial Housing: A Study of the Contact Hypothesis. Minneapolis: Univ. of Minnesota Press. WIRTH, Louis 1928 The Ghetto. Univ. of Chicago Press.
SEIGNIORAL ECONOMY See MANORIAL ECONOMY. SELECTION See SCREENING AND SELECTION. SELF CONCEPT Historically, the domain of investigation subsumed under "self concept" by psychologists and sociologists was a major concern of theologians, philosophers, political essayists, playwrights, and novelists. Since differences in defining the domain exist even today, it is hazardous to start with a definition without first preparing ground on which terms of the definition can be built. This task is undertaken here through a glance at the status of the self concept in contemporary psychology and through a brief report of representative conceptions by various writers, noting convergences and differences. With an adequate definition, developmental and experimental research can be reviewed to derive leads for a conception of self that is scientifically based, rather than one that suggests "my word against your word." Current status and historical background Especially since the 1940s, problems related to self concept have surged forth as indispensable
and legitimate topics for scientific study in psychology and sociology. The interest in self can be appreciated better if we consider the years of its relative disuse, and even disrepute, in the mainstream of psychology between 1900 and 1940. These years correspond roughly to the period of dominant concern with asserting the scientific nature of psychology by shying away from any concepts associated with the philosophical origins of psychology. The brave new world of scientism was represented by the models of Wundt and Titchener and by the behaviorism of Watson. The first asserted that the prime task of scientific psychology was the discovery of mental elements and then the laws of their compounding; the second, that the scientific task was a search for elemental reflexes and principles of their linkages. Each model, in its own terminology, advocated its approach as the only way to lay solid foundations for the ultimate explanation of more complicated forms of behavior. Even then, the picture was not entirely monolithic. There were always those in search of unifying, integrating concepts to handle problems of the consistency of the person and the continuity of this consistency over time. The memorable chapter on self by William James (1890) maintained its impact on psychology and social science even during the period in question. James analyzed the self in terms of its constituent parts, as the sum total of what the individual considers himself and his to possess, including his body, his traits, characteristics, abilities, aspirations, family, work, possessions, friends, and other social affiliations. James neatly boiled down the problem of the maintenance of self-esteem into a formula (Selfesteem = Success/Pretensions) that served as the basis of many formulations and much research by psychologists and sociologists. Among his other insights, James anticipated the core of modern formulations on reference groups. He wrote of the individual's "image in the eyes of his own 'set,' which exalts or condemns him as he conforms or not to certain requirements that may not be made of one in another walk of life" [1890, vol. 1, pp. 294-295; see also the biography of JAMES]. Among other influential contributors was James Mark Baldwin, who gave an interactionist account of self development, epitomized in his formulation : "The ego and the alter are . . . born together" ([1895] 1906, p. 338). Some years later, the development of self through social interaction was elaborated by the sociologists Charles H. Cooley (1902) and George Herbert Mead [1913; see also INTERACTION and the biographies of BALDWIN; COOLEY; MEAD].
SELF CONCEPT Of course, even in the first half of the twentieth century, there were the "personalistic" psychologists, such as Mary W. Calkins and Wilhelm Stern, who insisted that self-reference was characteristic of all psychological activity. Such formulations would find an ardent advocate later in Prescott Lecky's Self-consistency (1945). But the experimental mainstream was a psychology that had banished the self and other integrative concepts. [Cf. Airport 1943; see also PERSONALITY: CONTEMPORARY VIEWPOINTS, article on A UNIQUE AND OPEN SYSTEM; and the biography of STERN.] As a result, it never came to grips effectively with problems of human motivation (e.g., Koch 1956) nor with regularities in human behavior on the conceptual level of functioning (Schneirla 1946; 1951). Research results were fragmentary and attempts to put the fragments together proved inconclusive and even contradictory, showing little resemblance to the characteristic consistency of the person as he pursues the satisfaction of his needs for food, sleep, and sex and as he works and plays with his fellows. As a rule, the person searching for food is not guided by hunger alone; he is also guided by what he considers to be proper food, the place where it is located, and the atmosphere where it is eaten. The tired traveler looking for a hotel is not merely concerned that the bed be like his own bed at home or perhaps a bit more comfortable. He is equally, if not more, concerned with the class of the hotel, whether it is on a par with his standing in life, and how his friends, employer, or sweetheart will react when he announces where he is staying. Ordinarily, the search for a sex partner is not guided merely by the urge for any sex object immediately available, who will serve to reduce tension and restore the homeostatic level. The episodes of sexual activity, beginning with the search, are also guided by proving one's worth and status as a man or woman both to oneself and to others. Therefore, the individual's self is involved in more than striving to raise one's prestige, status, or self-esteem. Typically, self becomes involved in the operation of motivational urges, whether the individual is aware of it or not. The pervasive presence of self factors is expressed well by Shoben: "In any case, self-involved behavior seems close to impossible to explain on the basis of a tension-reduction model, and the postulation of self-involvement seems necessary to account for the pursuit of long range goals so typical of human motivation" (1962, p. 771). [See MOTIVATION, article On HUMAN MOTIVATION.] The regulation of behavior by self is not restricted to motivational activity. Self concerns
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enter as regulating factors into many psychological processes: judging, perceiving, learning, remembering, thinking, planning, and decision making. In performing a task, level of performance is not determined solely by the nature of the problem (difficulty or ease, for example). The goals one has erected for oneself in general, the place of the particular task in one's scheme of goals, and one's standing relative to others on the task all enter the picture and affect one's performance. During his development, the individual comes to stand in established reciprocities with others, as high, low, or equal; friendly or unfriendly; dominant or subordinate. When stabilized, these reciprocities form patterns producing regularity and consistency in the individual's dealings with others. In series of encounters with others, the individual develops self-identity, in various respects, which is reflected in consistency in his dealings with others and with situations from day to day. In different situations, relevant components of the self are aroused, lending to his behavior characteristic modes of reacting to, and coping with, situations. In brief, the growing interest in a self concept reflects the search for integrative concepts, particularly in motivation, where empirical work has tended to be fragmentary. Studying motives separately has fallen short in providing an adequate account of human motivation. The self enters into the operation of human motives as a regulative factor. So, too, self enters into other psychological processes. Involvement of the self in these processes is reflected in the consistency of the person and its continuity from day to day. In fact, self involvement in particular aspects of the kaleidoscopic stimulus world is the basis for the experience of continuity in personal identity. Usages of self concept For reasons mentioned, problems of self or ego came irrevocably to the foreground as a legitimate area of investigation. Yet exactly what the concept covers, its relation to other integrative concepts (e.g., role, ego, personality) are still not crystallized. A convenient summary of different usages is presented in Hall and Lindzey (1957, pp. 467-499). Not including the primarily psychiatric and clinical conceptions in our consideration, a major definitional divergence is represented between those who differentiate between the concept of self and the concept of ego and those who use the concepts of self and ego interchangeably. Ausubel (1952), Chein (1944), Hilgard (1949), Murphy (1947), and Symonds (1951) are among those
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Body imagevisual image of I one's appearance C in space
{
self-attitudes Other non-ego>elf-ideals I I involved skills, 5elf-motives f ~ EGO + \ habits, memories, >elf-values and so on
Auditory images of one's name Kinesthetic sensations Visceral tensions Personal memories
= PERSONALITY
Figure 7 Source: Adapted from Ausubel, David P., Ego Development and the Personality Disorders, 1952, Grune & Stratton, Inc. Reproduced by permission.
who propose to use the concepts of self and ego in a differentiated way. Allport (1943), Snygg and Combs (1949), M. Sherif and Cantril (1947) are among those who use the words self and ego interchangeably. Self differentiated from ego. An account of all the possible variations in differentiating the ego concept from the self concept is not within the scope of this article. It will suffice to examine representative ways in which they are differentiated. Murphy's definitions of self and ego in his monumental Personality (1947) provide one example: "Self: The individual as known to the individual" (p. 996); and "Ego: Group of activities concerned with enhancement and defense of the self" (p. 984). Here, "self" is used to mean the object consisting of so many attitudes and feelings in regard to the person himself, and "ego" is used to refer to the associated processes or activities. Ausubel offers still another example. His diagram of the relationship of self, ego, and personality (Figure 1) clarifies his differentiation (1952, p. 13). It may be fair to summarize Ausubel's schema by saying that the self is made up primarily of perceptual components, and ego consists of these and affectively charged conceptual components (selfideals, self-values, etc.). But a clean separation between perceptual and conceptual components does not seem to fit into the ongoing developmental picture. As the child acquires labels and categories of language, "the self becomes less and less a pure perceptual object, and more and more a conceptual trait system" (Murphy 1947, p. 506). Once the child starts acquiring language the body image becomes increasingly invested with value attributions that vary from culture to culture and from class to class (e.g., modesty in exposure, cleanliness, desirable body proportions, proper items to cover and adorn the body). Likewise, in building a self-picture the place of one's name is not restricted to auditory images: as McDougall noted, it soon becomes a handle to which many attributes are tied. Anthropologists have reported
cases in which personal names are changed at important transitions in people's lives. For example, A. R. Radcliffe-Brown (1922, p. 119) reported the change of name of Andamanese girls at the time of first menstruation. Likewise, Rivers reported the case of a Melanesian culture in which "on marriage both man and woman change their names and assume a common name" (1914, p. 347). Self interchangeable with ego. Some authors seem to use either the concept of ego or the concept of self to cover a broad range. For example, Shoben defines "self" as "a relatively stable organization of values that mediates and focuses behavior" (1962, p. 771). George A. Miller defines "ego" as "the individual's conception of himself" (1962, p. 347). In view of this terminological malaise, it might be preferable to discard the labels "self" and "ego," fraught as they are with historical entanglements, and to use new terms not so encumbered. The new term proposed by Allport to replace the self and ego concepts is "proprium" (1961, p. 127). However, contemporary social psychologists, concerned as they are with the development of the personal identity of the individual—its enhancement and defense in social relations—seem to get along in their conceptualization without being concerned over the terminological differentiation between ego and self (Krech, Crutchfield, & Ballachey 1962; Newcomb, Turner, & Converse 1965; Secord & Backman 1964; Sherif & Sherif 1956). A characterization of self concept On the basis of the foregoing considerations and surveys of theoretical and empirical literature, several propositions seem warranted. Self (or ego) is not innate, as are the individual's organic urges—such as hunger and sex— which are subject to homeostatic regulation of the organism. Self (ego) is the product of interaction, from infancy onward, with the individual's physical and social environment. This interaction is associated with novel and familiar sensations: pain, resistance, acceptance, rejection, and gratification. The proposition that self is a developmental forma-
SELF CONCEPT tion is one of the most widely documented generalizations among investigators from the nineteenth century on, despite variations in the specifics of their accounts. There is also agreement that this psychological formation of the human individual is not a unitary structure, appearing full-blown. It develops first as a perceptual system based on the differentiation of one's body and its parts from its surroundings. It becomes progressively a more complex conceptual system, consisting of evaluative categories with associated traits or attributes. New classifications and qualities (e.g., adolescence, old age, acquisition of new interpersonal roles and social status) continue to be incorporated in the system during the life span (cf. Murphy 1947, pp. 489 ff.; Snygg & Combs 1949, pp. 78-79). To emphasize the multifaceted character of the person's identity, William James (1890) analyzed this uniquely human formation in terms of the person's "selves." However, various components of the self formation are interrelated; different components may be mutually supportive or conflicting, depending on the situation. To underscore both the multifaceted nature and interrelated nature of self components, it is preferable to use a generic concept (self) subsuming the components, referring to the latter by terms other than the various "selves." Therefore, the components are referred to as attitudes or self-attitudes, to specify that they pertain to relatedness of self to objects and persons important to the individual. Here, the term "attitude" is used to refer to more or less lasting evaluative categories of the person. (More transitory internal states may be referred to by other terms, such as "set," "expectation," or "bodily urge.") The definition of "attitude" here is similar to that given by Smith, Bruner, and White: "We define an attitude as a predisposition to experience a class of objects in certain ways, with characteristic affect; to be motivated by this class of objects in characteristic ways; and to act with respect to these objects in a characteristic fashion" (1956, p. 33). [See ATTITUDES.] Combining these fundamental points, the characterization of self (ego) is as follows: Self is a developmental formation in the psychological makeup of the individual, consisting of interrelated attitudes that the individual has acquired in relation to his own body and its parts, to his capacities, and to objects, persons, family, groups, social values, goals, and institutions, which define and regulate his relatedness to them in concrete situations and activities.
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The attitudes that compose the self system are, therefore, the individual's cherished commitments, stands on particular issues, acceptances, rejections, reciprocal expectations (roles) in interpersonal and group relations, identifications with persons or values, and personal goals for the future. When any of these—singly or in varying combination— enter as factors in ongoing psychological activity, owing to their relevance, behavior acquires characteristic directionality (positive or negative), becomes more consistent and selective, and is less bound by the ups and downs of the immediate situation. Ego involvement simply means involvement of such an attitude in ongoing psychological activity. Ego-involved activity is characterized by highly sensitized mobilization of the individual's psychological processes (discrimination, perception, learning, remembering, problem solving, decision making, and so on). Ego-involved activity, revealing aspects of an individual's personal identity, has been demonstrated empirically in many studies since the 1940s. (Note again the terminologically unhappy fact that these studies are almost always presented as studies of ego involvement, not self involvement.) Defining, as they do, the individual's identity relative to objects, persons, groups, and situations around him, these self-attitudes determine the individual's experience as an active agent, principal actor, or executor when they participate in ongoing psychological activity. Therefore, it is not parsimonious to posit separate psychological concepts to account for experience of the person as executor and doer (cf. Ausubel 1952, pp. 41-46). Thus, the unique formation that takes shape as the self or ego of the human person consists of a set of components that define his stabilized bearings in relation to the physical and social surroundings. They define his ties, his reciprocal expectations of his rights and responsibilities, and his motivational—emotional claims relative to objects as well as other persons, groups, and institutions. They define his stands and commitments relative to the social issues that are important to him. All of these components of the individual's self set him apart as a person in diverse ways and capacities with a sense of unique self-identity. The stability of the person's self-identity is, therefore, dependent on the stability of the ties, roles, commitments, and orientations that compose it. They provide anchorages relative to which he gauges his personally felt status, security, and prestige, and his maintenance or gain in position in the social scheme of which he is a part. His experience of success or failure arises relative to
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them. Hence, maintenance and continuity of the stability of these anchorages from day to day become matters of utmost importance in the dynamics of his motivational scheme. Disruption of the stable anchorages that define the person's bearings relative to his surroundings arouses tensions, referred to as the state of uncertainty or anxiety, that are distressing or even unbearable. Experimental evidence shows that the loss of stable anchorages in the person's surroundings arouses feelings of uncertainty and insecurity, causing him to flounder about in efforts to restore his sense of personal stability. The experience of loss of his bearings makes an individual more susceptible to conforming to social influences to which he would ordinarily pay less heed (M. Sherif & Harvey 1952). Similarly, disruption of stabilized personal ties, loss of acceptance by groups that he values, or lack of stable ties with others generate intense feelings of aloneness and personal rejection. Communications that advocate points of view divergent from the strong commitments incorporated in the self system arouse dismay, irritation, and tension. The committed person finds such communication more divergent from his stand, more unreasonable, and more obnoxious than does a person who is less committed. Thus, self-attitudes are resistant to communication designed to change them. Formation of self (ego) Based on extensive surveys of research on child development (M. Sherif & Cantril 1947; Murphy 1947), this account notes a sequence of major events marking ego formation. Differences in age of occurrence and forms are to be expected in differing cultural and socioeconomic conditions. Neither early observations of individual children nor modern studies of groups of infants provide evidence for innate self-identity. The infant's behavior is readily attributable to bodily states (hunger or sleep, for example) or the duration of immediate environmental stimulation. In fact, consistent differentiation and localization of the body parts require repeated experiences in localizing stimulation, meeting obstacles arousing unpleasant sensations, and exploring both body parts and environment. The earliest manifestations of self-awareness appear during this "perceptual stage" (Murphy 1947), in which the body is perceived apart from the surroundings. [See INFANCY, article on INFANT DEVELOPMENT; SENSORY AND MOTOR DEVELOPMENT.]
Cases of prolonged isolation in childhood suggest that ego formation beyond the stage of a per-
ceived body depends upon interaction with other persons who are members of a social and linguistic community (cf. Lindesmith & Strauss 1949). This accords with early theoretical accounts and modern formulations based on research conceiving of self as a product of interaction with others (e.g., Wallon 1934; Piaget 1932). Facilitations and resistances, acceptances and punishments by persons who care for the child are landmarks for the developing self. Through such interactions, the child begins to acquire spoken language, at first slowly, then at a rapidly accelerating pace (during the second or third year of life). The acquisition of language is the single event most responsible for producing the consistency in behavior that requires postulation of a self system. [See LANGUAGE, article on LANGUAGE DEVELOPMENT.] When the child is able to designate self and others through personal pronouns, a name, or verb forms, even the bodily self is delineated more sharply from its surroundings. Henceforth, the body itself is classified and endowed with attributes (favorable or unfavorable) through interaction on a verbal level. The striking variations in boundaries and properties of body image found in persons of different sex, age, culture, and states of bodily injury led Fisher and Cleveland (1958, p. 367) to postulate that the body image is best conceived as "a representation of attitudes and expectancy systems" related to the body and other persons. [See BODY IMAGE.] Consistency in behavior is greatly enhanced through verbal interaction and conceptual classification, as research findings on the appearance of discriminatory responses by and toward American Negro children show so clearly (Clark & Clark 1947; Horowitz 1944). Very young children responded to skin-color differences but not preferentially. However, in a society systematically discriminating against Negroes, white and Negro children exhibited consistent preferences for light skin color by the age of 5. While not every aspect of linguistic behavior is ego-involving, the child's instrumental mastery of language has general results that apply equally to the formation of categorical and attributive links between self and others (Lewis 1963). It liberates behavior from the total dictation of fluctuation in momentary bodily needs and the physical variations in external stimulation. From extensive research with children and cases of brain damage, Luriia concluded that "adoption of a verbal rule at once modifies the nature of all subsequent reactions . . . the stimulus in question becomes not a mere signal but an item of general information,
SELF CONCEPT and all subsequent reactions depend more on the system it [stimulus] is taken into than on its physical properties" (1961, p. 44, italics in original). The family and other adults in charge of the child's routine exert profound influence through their words and deeds on the nature and quality of the classificatory schemes defining what he is and is not. However, in line with G. H. Mead's theoretical scheme, the research of Piaget (1932) demonstrated that stability in the child's relatedness is attained slowly and, most decisively, in the company of other children. Little children behave consistently in dealings with others, according to rules or dictums handed down by authority figures, but easily lapse from them in the absence of authority. By participating in play with other children, the child has the greater opportunity to grasp notions of reciprocity with others and of mutual adherence to rules governing the give and take. [See DEVELOPMENTAL PSYCHOLOGY, article on A THEORY OF DEVELOPMENT.] Thus, a series of experiments and "age-norm" studies (reviewed in Sherif & Sherif 1956) reveal that consistency in competing with others, in cooperating with others, in expressing sympathy at another's distress, in responsibility for self and others, and in setting goals for one's own performance appear gradually as the child participates in social and cooperative forms of play in contrast to earlier side-by-side or parallel play. Slowly—and with confusion—the classificatory schemes defining self and others acquire longer dimensions in time and space. The immediate is located with reference to increasingly greater ranges of past and future (Lewis 1963). Geographical ranges of self-relatedness increase gradually from the perceptual scope of the child ("my house") to more distant and unseen, but conceptualized, places and the people in them. The scope of time, place, and kind of persons included in categories for self and not-self varies enormously, along with their qualitative nature, according to prevailing social, cultural, material, and socioeconomic environments. The common property of self components in socialized members of all societies is the regulation of behavior within bounds of acceptability defined by the particular organizational and value systems of those groups with which the person identifies himself. Consistent evaluations of one class of objects (persons) and differential (sometimes invidious) evaluations of others is evidence of an ego component—an attitude relating self to that stimulus domain. The conception of self components (attitudes) as categorical schemes for evalua-
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tion, including a latitude for acceptance and a latitude of rejection by the person, has led directly to operational procedures for assessing the person's ego involvement in various respects (Sherif, Sherif, & Nebergall 1965; Sherif, Sherif, & Kent 1967). In addition, all known cultures present periods or stages in human development requiring alteration of the self concept as it is formed at the time. The years of transition from childhood to adulthood and the years of old age are two such periods. These particular transitions are marked by bodily changes that impel a change in self. Self and reference groups or sets Research attempts failing to include explicit environmental factors have yielded inconclusive correlations between the person's self-ratings at two different points in time and subjectively circular accounts of self (Wylie 1961). In analyzing the "presentation of the self" in a variety of social situations, Goffman concluded that the person's characteristic consistency is a "collaborative manufacture" involving social arrangements and supporting performances by people within them (e.g., 1956, p. 253). Even advocates of a "phenomenal self" as determinant of all behavior could not ignore that much personal consistency and many changes in personal identity that occur with age or with taking on occupations and different social status are directly related to stabilities and changes in the social environment. But individuals are differentially selective of their social environments, and modern social systems are extraordinarily complex and changing. A particular individual could develop within varying combinations of groups and institutions with differing values, rates of change, and stability. Owing to his advanced conceptual abilities, man may relate himself to persons and groups not present, spatially or temporally. Therefore, unless the person is a fully integrated member of only one group and unless the social situation is fully structured as to socially desired outcomes, there is a need for concepts relating self to environmental events that may not be contemporaneous or spatially present. One such concept is that of reference groups or sets; these are defined as groups or classifications of people to whom the individual relates himself psychologically or to which he aspires to belong (Sherif & Sherif 19 56; see the 1948 edition). The concept of reference group, linking self components to environmental structures not necessarily present, is a distinctly human concept,
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as the student of animal behavior J. P. Scott observed (1953, p. 69). It is unnecessary in studying subhuman behavior. It is probably unnecessary for analysis of self in an isolated, illiterate group. Only in differentiated societies is it possible that groups of actual membership may be anchors for self-identity. From the research viewpoint, the concepts of self as a constellation of attitudes linked with identifiable reference groups and sets provide tools for integrating behavioral (individual) and sociocultural levels of analysis (Sherif 1962). A sharp dichotomy between individualistic and cultural (group) determination of behavior resists both argument and analysis but yields to research evidence that groups and populations have properties related to the development of self-other attitudes; self—other attitudes, in turn, display dimensional and classificatory features not necessarily identical with sociocultural prescriptions, but greatly clarified when related to them. Reference groups and self appraisal. Asked to answer "Who am I?" the person's usual response is his name and social classifications, sometimes modified by adjectives placing him within the category (cf. Bugental & Zelen 1950; Kuhn & McPartland 1954). The social labels are typically exhausted before idiosyncratic responses appear. The psychological import of this rather prosaic finding is vast: Each social category carries a complex of characteristics and positions within it that etch the specifics of a self image whether the individual actually belongs to that category or not. The bulk of the population of the United States, identifying themselves as "middle class," display a constellation of attitudes related to a middle-class position whether their individual socioeconomic levels warrant the designation or not (Centers 1947). Female college students who come from conservative families and, in time, take a liberal college student body as their reference group change their attitudes in diverse respects, not merely in identifying themselves with a particular college. However, those retaining a primary group reference, while classifying themselves as students, do not change at all (Newcomb 1950). Groups, populations, and sets of people live in differing material and social environments that give focus to a complex of social values, setting bounds for the self-radius of persons who classify themselves as "belonging" within them. Thus, in the United States, the conceived range of achievement for self (from minimum to maximum) and the nature of personal goals varies systematically according to socioeconomic level and sociocultural
composition of reference sets; the range of achievement is most similar with respect to certain material possessions uniformly portrayed as success symbols in mass communication (Sherif & Sherif 1964). While upper-class youth are more likely to have high self-esteem than lower-class youth, the largest differences in self-esteem occur between groupings differentiated by both class and distinctive religious—ethnic cultures in the United States. Values cherished by youth in different socioeconomic and religious groupings differ, but there are marked similarities among them that indicate that they are all, nonetheless, members of the same society (Rosenberg 1965). The reference-group concept permits specification of the particular group or set of people on whom the individual depends in appraising himself and others. In complex and changing societies, these people may not be readily identified by socioeconomic classification or geographical location. When the person locates himself within a set or group of people, the relative status of this group in the social organization and his own position within it serve as standards (anchors) for his appraisals of performance by himself and others. In an experiment that served as a model for numerous others, Chapman and Volkmann (1939) showed that one's level of aspiration is anchored in the status of his own reference set relative to other reference sets. University students spontaneously raised or lowered their predictions for self when the group with whom they compared self was respectively "inferior" or "superior" to their own reference sets. When anchored in the person's reference set, self-attitudes exert a stabilizing effect on performance. The relevant experiments have all used special instructions or varied tasks to assess the effects of ego involvement, and the findings hinge on the researcher's prior knowledge of values that are prized by the subjects' reference set (for example, for college students high intelligence, good university records, and contribution to science). The outcome of such experiments has been the repeated demonstration that such manipulations, arousing the person's mettle to prove his worth, result in greater consistency (less variation) of behavior in setting goals for performance, in selfconfidence, in various personal characteristics, in learning, and in forgetting (see Allport 1943; M. Sherif & Cantril 1947). [See REFERENCE GROUPS.] Discrepant group membership. While existence in an interacting group affects the individual's self concerns whether he takes stock of himself on their terms or not, attitudes relating self to others
SELF CONCEPT are most predictable when the group is also the person's reference group. Siegel and Siegel (1957) found that over a period of time a person's attitudes coincided most with the values of groups that were also reference groups for him. A person who lived with a group whose values were at variance with his reference set was affected by it, but his attitudes resembled those of the reference set more closely. Judgments of one's standing (rank) relative to others and of the rank assigned to self by others differ for those who are tied to the immediate group and those whose reference sets are outside of it. A study of small task groups in an isolated military base showed a general tendency to overestimate one's own rank and the rank that others would assign one. As a result, self-ranking and estimated ranking by others were more closely related than either were to actual ranks made by fellow members. However, those whose self-rankings disagreed most with the rank assigned them by others in the group were preponderantly married men with higher military rank and educational level. As a result, they were less tied to the reactions of the work group in rating themselves and tended to use standards from their other reference sets (Reeder, Donohue, & Biblarz 1962). Salience of different groups. "I, who for the time have staked my all on being a psychologist, am mortified if others know much more psychology than I. But I am contented to wallow in the grossest ignorance of Greek. . . . Had I 'pretensions' to be a linguist, it would have been just the reverse" (James 1890, vol. 1, p. 310). The problem of self—reference-group relationship stated succinctly by James still holds the greatest promise for future research. All components of the self are not equal in importance to the individual over time, and their relative importance varies in different situations. For every person, there is some order or hierarchy in the constellation of self values such that the ways, the time, and the relative frequency with which he becomes ego-involved differ systematically from person to person. Differences of this sort between individuals acquire some rational pattern when the hierarchy of their self-values is related to the relative importance of their various reference sets. Adolescence and marginality. The period of adolescence in modern societies may serve as a prototype for study of the problem. During the prolonged and ill-defined transition from childhood to adulthood in Western industrialized societies, the adolescent is betwixt and between ref-
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erence groups, much like a "marginal man." Lack of stable anchors for self arouses experiences of uncertainty and conflict. Grownups provide few ready-made paths for the transition that fully satisfy the adolescent's growing urges and his desire to prove himself adult. At this same time, he is provoked by the uncertainties of his standing. Scanning his environment for some stable anchor for self-identity, he turns increasingly toward agemate groups and sets. Even though his parents be loved and valued, the result is reduced emphasis on parental capability and overestimation of the worth of age-mate capacities, as Prado (1958) has shown experimentally. Absorption of self-identity within the organizational pattern and values developed in age-mate groups varies with the availability and stability of other reference ties (family, school, community, etc.); however, the adolescent's hierarchy of ego attitudes is closely linked to the values of his informal groups. When these values conflict with adult prescriptions, the defiance of adult standards, including legal violations, is self-justified by measuring oneself relative to the values of the youth group [Sherif & Sherif 1964; see also ADOLESCENCE]. Multiple group membership. Like many adults in multifaceted, complex societies, the adolescent belongs to multiple groups whose values may conflict. The member of multiple groups with contradictory values frequently faces situations of choice in abiding by the values of one reference set at the expense of the other. Still more painfully, he or she may form ego attitudes relative to different reference groups whose simultaneous arousal is bound to produce psychological conflict, uncertainty, and confused search for resolution. Such, for example, is the plight of many women today who conceive of themselves simultaneously as women and mothers in traditional terms and as modern, independent women on a par with men (Seward 1946). Choice situations provide one index of the salience of the individual's self-attitudes. For example, during the crisis over desegregation in Little Rock, Arkansas, ministers faced the choice of speaking out against violence, as ministers of brotherly love, or of remaining silent in keeping with the standards of their segregationist congregations. Only a few of them chose to speak out in congruence with their ministerial self-identity (Campbell & Pettigrew 1959). Stability and change of ego attitudes. Numerous instances of change in ego attitudes have been mentioned in this article. Stability may be at-
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tributed in large part to the regularity and continuity of the person's social setting. Yet resistance to change inheres in their formation and functioning as well. Changing attitudes that form part of the person's relatedness to other persons, groups, and values amounts to changing part of the selfidentity, which is the epicenter of experienced personal stability, even though it may not be an integrated harmonious structure. Disturbance of self-attitudes once they are formed is psychologically uncomfortable and even painful. Resistance to change increases in proportion to the degree of personal commitment on the matter in question. When a person is highly involved in the matter in question, he is less likely to change his attitude readily and, when he does, is likely to change less than persons to whom the attitude is of moderate importance. In matters of high ego involvement, the individual is very discriminating in accepting proposals that differ even slightly from the values he has come to cherish as defining the attributes of himself and other persons who count in his eyes; he is prone to reject all those seen as different. Thus, his categorization of ego-involving material reveals broad latitudes of rejection in comparison with the narrow, but cherished, range of acceptance. Attempts to persuade him otherwise are likely to fall within the range that he has already rejected categorically as unlike himself and, therefore, to exert no lasting effects other than, perhaps, to reaffirm the correctness of his self conception. On matters of less consequence, he is more amenable to change and innovation, because he has not committed himself against such a broad range of discrepant values (Sherif, Sherif, & Nebergall 1965; Sherif, Sherif, & Kent 1967). By studying the relative importance of a person's reference groups, their values, and his position within them, the degrees of a person's ego involvement in various respects may eventually become more amenable to research. MUZAFER SHERIF [Directly related are the entries IDENTITY, PSYCHOSOCIAL and PERSONALITY, article on PERSONALITY DEVELOPMENT. Other relevant material may be found in ATTITUDES; INFANCY; INTERACTION; LIFE CYCLE; PERSONALITY, article on THE FIELD; REFERENCE GROUPS; SOCIALIZATION.] BIBLIOGRAPHY ALLPORT, GORDON W. 1943 The Ego in Contemporary Psychology. Psychological Review 50:451-478. ALLPORT, GORDON W. 1961 Pattern and Growth in Personality. New York: Holt.
AUSUBEL, DAVID P. 1952 Ego Development and the Personality Disorders. New York: Grune & Stratton. BALDWIN, JAMES M. (1895) 1906 Mental Development in the Child and the Race: Methods and Processes. 3d ed., rev. New York and London: Macmillan. BUGENTAL, JAMES F. T.; and ZELEN, SEYMOUR L. 1950 Investigations Into the "Self-concept." I. The W-A-Y Technique. Journal of Personality 18:483-498. CAMPBELL, ERNEST Q.; and PETTIGREW, THOMAS F. 1959 Racial and Moral Crisis: The Role of the Little Rock Ministers. American Journal of Sociology 64:509-516. CENTERS, RICHARD (1947) 1952 The American Class Structure: A Psychological Analysis. Pages 299-311 in Society for the Psychological Study of Social Issues, Readings in Social Psychology. Rev. ed. Edited by Guy E. Swanson et al. New York: Holt. CHAPMAN, DWIGHT W.; and VOLKMANN, JOHN A. 1939 A Social Determinant of the Level of Aspiration. Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology 34:225-238. CHEIN, ISIDOR 1944 The Awareness of Self and the Structure of the Ego. Psychological Review 51:304314. CLARK, KENNETH B.; and CLARK, MAMIE P. 1947 Racial Identification and Preference in Negro Children. Pages 169-178 in Society for the Psychological Study of Social Issues, Readings in Social Psychology. Edited by Theodore M. Newcomb and Eugene L. Hartley. New York: Holt. COOLEY, CHARLES H. (1902) 1956 Human Nature and the Social Order. Rev. ed. In Charles H. Cooley, Two Major Works: Social Organization and Human Nature and the Social Order. Glencoe, 111.: Free Press. -> Each title reprinted with individual title page and pagination. A separate paperback edition was published in 1964 by Schocken. FISHER, SEYMOUP.; and CLEVELAND, SIDNEY E. 1958 Body Image and Personality. Princeton, N.J.: Van Nostrand. GOFFMAN, ERVING (1956) 1959 The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday. HALL, CALVIN S.; and LINDZEY, GARDNER 1957 Theories of Personality. New York: Wiley; London: Chapman. HILGARD, ERNEST R. 1949 Human Motives and the Concept of the Self. American Psychologist 4:374-382. HOROWITZ, EUGENE L. 1944 Race Attitudes. Pages 139247 in Otto Klineberg (editor), Characteristics of the American Negro. New York: Harper. JAMES, WILLIAM (1890) 1962 The Principles of Psychology. 2 vols. New York: Smith. KOCH, SIGMUND 1956 Behavior as "Intrinsically" Regulated : Work Notes Toward a Pre-theory of Phenomena Called "Motivational." Volume 4, pages 42-130 in Nebraska Symposium on Motivation. Edited by Marshall R. Jones. Lincoln: Univ. of Nebraska Press. KRECH, DAVID; CRUTCHFIELD, RICHARD S.; and BELLACHEY, EGERTON L. 1962 Individual in Society: A Textbook of Social Psychology. New York: McGraw-Hill. -» First published in 1948 as Theory and Problems of Social Psychology, by Krech and Crutchfield. KUHN, MANFORD H.; and MCPARTLAND, THOMAS S. 1954 An Empirical Investigation of Self-attitudes. American Sociological Review 19:68-76. LECKY, PRESCOTT (1945) 1951 Self-consistency: A Theory of Personality. Rev. ed. New York: Island Press. LEWIS, MORRIS M. 1963 Language, Thought and Personality in Infancy and Childhood. New York: Basic Books.
SELIGMAN, C. G. LINDESMITH, ALFRED; and STRAUSS, ANSELM 1949 Social Psychology. New York: Dryden. LURIIA, ALEKSANDR R. 1961 The Role of Speech in the Regulation of Normal and Abnormal Behavior. New York: Liveright. MEAD, GEORGE H. 1913 The Social Self. Journal of Philosophy 10:374-380. MILLER, GEORGE A. 1962 Psychology: The Science of Mental Life. New York: Harper. MOUSTAKAS, CLARK (editor) 1956 The Self. New York: Harper. MURPHY, GARDNER 1947 Personality: A Biosocial Approach to Origins and Structure. New York: Harper. NEWCOMB, THEODORE M. 1950 Social Psychology. New York: Dryden. NEWCOMB, THEODORE M.; TURNER, RALPH H.; and CONVERSE, PHILIP E. 1965 Social Psychology: The Study of Human Interaction. New York: Holt. PIAGET, JEAN (1932) 1948 The Moral Judgment of the Child. Glencoe, 111.: Free Press. -> First published in French. PRADO, WILLIAM M. 1958 Appraisal of Performance as a Function of the Relative Ego-involvement of Children and Adolescents. Ph.D. dissertation, Univ. of Oklahoma. -* Summarized in Sherif & Sherif (1964). RADCLIFFE-BROWN, A. R. (1922) 1948 The Andaman Islanders. Glencoe, 111.: Free Press. REEDER, LEO G.; DONOHUE, GEORGE A.; and BIBLARZ, ARTURO 1962 Conceptions of Self and Others. Pages 69-78 in Bartlett Stoodley (editor), Society and Self. New York: Free Press. RIVERS, W. H. R. 1914 The History of Melanesian Society. 2 vols. Publication No. 1 of the Percy Sladen Trust Expedition to Melanesia. Cambridge Univ. Press. ROSENBERG, MORRIS 1965 Society and the Adolescent Self-image. Princeton Univ. Press. SCHNEIRLA, T. C. 1946 Problems in the Biopsychology of Social Organization. Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology 41:385-402. SCHNEIRLA, T. C. 1951 The "Levels" Concept in the Study of Social Organization in Animals. Pages 83— 120 in Conference on Social Psychology at Crossroads, University of Oklahoma, 1950, Social Psychology at the Crossroads. Edited by John H. Rohrer and Muzafer Sherif. New York: Harper. SCOTT, JOHN P. 1953 Implications of Infra-human Social Behavior for Problems of Human Relations. Pages 33—73 in Conference in Social Psychology, University of Oklahoma, 1952, Group Relations at the Crossroads. Edited by Muzafer Sherif and M. O. Wilson. New York: Harper. SECORD, PAUL F.; and BACKMAN, CARL W. 1964 Social Psychology. New York: McGraw-Hill. SEWARD, GEORGENE 1946 Sex and the Social Order. New York: McGraw-Hill. SHERIF, CAROLYN W.; SHERIF, MUZAFER; and NEBERGALL, R. E. 1965 Attitude and Attitude Change: The Social Judgment-Involvement Approach. Philadelphia: Saunders. SHERIF, MUZAFER 1962 The Self and Reference Groups: Meeting Ground of Individual and Group Approaches. New York Academy of Sciences, Annals 96:797-813. SHERIF, MUZAFER; and CANTRIL, HADLEY 1947 The Psychology of Ego-involvements, Social Attitudes and Identifications. New York: Wiley; London: Chapman & Hall.
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SHERIF, MUZAFER; and HARVEY, O. J. 1952 A Study in Ego Functioning: Elimination of Stable Anchorages in Individual and Group Situations. Sociometry 15: 272-305. SHERIF, MUZAFER; and SHERIF, CAROLYN W. 1956 An Outline of Social Psychology. Rev. ed. New York: Harper. -» First published in 1948 with Muzafer Sherif as the sole author. SHERIF, MUZAFER; and SHERIF, CAROLYN W. 1964 Reference Groups: Exploration Into Conformity and Deviation of Adolescents. New York: Harper. SHERIF, MUZAFER; SHERIF, CAROLYN W.; and KENT, DONALD 1967 Attitude, Ego-involvement and Change. New York: Wiley. SHOBEN, EDWARD J. JR. 1962 Behavioral Aspects of the Self. New York Academy of Sciences, Annals 96:765— 773. SIEGEL, ALBERTA E.; and SIEGEL, SIDNEY 1957 Reference Groups, Membership Groups, and Attitude Change. Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology 55:360-364. SMITH, M. BREWSTER; BRUNER, JEROME S.; and WHITE, R. W. 1956 Opinions and Personality. New York: Wiley. SNYGG, DONALD; and COMBS, ARTHUR W. 1949 Individual Behavior. New York: Harper. SYMONDS, PERCIVAL M. 1951 The Ego and the Self. New York: Appleton. WALLON, HENRI 1934 Les origines du caractere chez I'enfant. Paris: Boivin. WYLIE, RUTH C. 1961 The Self Concept: A Critical Survey of Pertinent Research Literature. Lincoln: Univ. of Nebraska Press.
SELF DETERMINATION, NATIONAL See INTERNATIONAL POLITICS; NATION; NATIONALISM.
SELIGMAN, C. G. Charles Gabriel Seligman (1873-1940) was one of that remarkable group of young biological scientists (among them, W. H. R. Rivers, C. S. Myers, and William McDougall) who, under A. C. Haddon's inspiration, established scientific field work as the basis of professional anthropology in Great Britain during the first quarter of the twentieth century. Seligman's research broke ground for Malinowski's field work in Melanesia between 1914 and 1918 and for Evans-Pritchard's work in the Sudan twenty years later. Seligman drifted into anthropology by chance. Originally trained as a physician, he had embarked on research in medicine when, in 1898, he learned of Haddon's plans for the Cambridge Expedition to the Torres Strait and volunteered to join it. At first Seligman confined himself to medical investigations, but his colleagues soon drew him into their anthropometric and ethnological studies. On
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returning to England in 1899, he resumed his medical research until, in 1903, he met a wealthy American businessman, Major Cooke Daniels, and persuaded him to finance the expedition to New Guinea that resulted, inter alia, in The Melanesians of British New Guinea (1910). It was only after this expedition that he finally committed himself to anthropology by accepting the first lectureship in ethnology (in 1913 it became the chair of ethnology) established at the University of London. In 1904 he married Brenda Z. Salaman, who collaborated in all his later field research and in many of his major publications. Her influence on their joint work was important: while Seligman himself had, for example, little interest in the minutiae of kinship custom, his wife, under the influence and instruction of Rivers, became adept in this branch of anthropology and took the responsibility for it. The Seligmans carried out a series of officially sponsored expeditions, to Ceylon in 1907-1908 to study the Veddas (see 1911) and their first expedition to the Sudan in 1909-1910. They made two further trips to the Sudan in 19111912 and 1921-1922. In the intervals between these expeditions, while preparing their results for publication, Seligman continued his pathology researches and received for them, in 1911, the coveted distinction of a fellowship of the Royal College of Physicians, as well as other medical honors. In 1919 he also became a fellow of the Royal Society. Like Haddon and Tylor, whose conception of a "science of culture" he admired, Seligman regarded anthropology as embracing every aspect of the life of the simpler societies (1926). He approached field work in the spirit of a Darwinian natural historian, considering a living society in terms of its geographical and historical setting as well as in terms of its racial composition, cultural make-up, and psychological foundations. Gifted also with a sensitive aesthetic judgment, Seligman built up a choice private collection of early Chinese art, notably of ceramic and bronze ware, and was thus drawn into research on Chinese history and civilization, a subject that was peculiarly congenial to his somewhat reserved temperament. During World War I he joined the Royal Army Medical Corps and was, with Rivers, assigned to the staff of a hospital for victiihs of shell shock. Clinical experience convinced him of the general soundness of Freudian theory, and in later essays he applied psychoanalytical and related theories to the problems of ethnology.
Descriptive ethnology. Two features are characteristic of Seligman's anthropological and ethnological contributions: they are exploratory rather than definitive in aim, and they concentrate on factual data as opposed to theoretical interpretations and generalizations. Seligman's expedition to New Guinea set the pattern for his later ethnological work. Its aim was to establish the distinctive racial, social, and cultural features of the peoples of this region, with a view to their ethnological classification. All available sources were utilized, including the works of travelers, government reports, and notes and memoranda provided by long-resident missionaries and administrators, but the chief emphasis was on information obtained from native informants and eyewitness description. Considering that the field work took less than a year and was carried out either in pidgin English or with the aid of often inadequate interpreters, the results are impressive. Malinowski (1922) paid tribute to the excellence of Seligman's observations. The data were for the most part new to anthropology. Where they were doubtful or defective, this was scrupulously indicated. Though Seligman made no attempt to investigate any subject in the depth achieved by the next generation of ethnographers, he did deal quite exhaustively with some topics (e.g., totemism), and he did not fail to draw penetrating conclusions, as in his elucidation of the powers and authority of chiefs. Seligman's 1910 book remains a "basic and systematic work" on Melanesia (Elkin 1953, p. 47). It covers, in varying detail, every significant facet of tribal life: the geographical setting, racial cornposition, kinship and family structure, chieftainship and rank, property, trade, warfare, morals, magic and religion, material culture, feasts and ceremonies. It contains an important and comprehensive account (contributed by F. R. Barton) of the kula-type trading voyages of the Motu and an outline of Northern Massim culture on which Malinowski, and subsequently Reo Fortune, built. [See OCEANIAN SOCIETY.] The field work that resulted in the two joint works entitled The Veddas (1911) and Pagan Tribes of the Nilotic Sudan (1932) followed the same procedures as those used by Seligman in New Guinea. The Veddas represents a valiant attempt to salvage what could still be found out about the culture and mode of life of the remnants of the aborigines of Ceylon, and it remains a standard work. The results of the Sudan venture, however, turned out to be more important. The three
SELIGMAN, C. G. Sudan expeditions, prepared for with exemplary thoroughness and supported by both the Sudanese government and British learned societies, were pioneer undertakings in every sense. In this huge territory, still barely pacified, living and traveling conditions were arduous. Communication with informants, in Arabic, was difficult; the Seligmans had only a working knowledge of the language and the southern Sudanese often no more than a smattering of it. Nevertheless, the Seligmans opened up an area until then ethnologically uncharted. The works they published between 1911 and 1932 about this research made ethnological history. In particular, it was Seligman's description of the cult of Nyakang and the divine kingship of Shilluk (see 1911) that, as Evans-Pritchard commented, "brought . . . [divine kingship] to the notice of Sir James Frazer and into the main stream of ethnological theory" (1948, p. 1). Pagan Tribes summed up the results of the field research of the Seligmans and other investigators during the twenty years following the first expedition. Seligman espoused the theory that successive waves of pastoral Hamites had, in the distant past, spread via the Horn of Africa westward and southward, mingling with the autochthonous Negro population to produce the Nilotes (Shilluk, Dinka, Nuer, etc.) and Nilo-Hamites (Bari, Lotuko, etc.) and the chain of peoples in the Great Lakes region stretching through the Hima elements (e.g., in Ankole) to the Masai, all distinguished by their greater or lesser adherence to pastoralism (1913). Conjectural as the theory of Hamitic migration may be, the ethnic classification remains valid, as its continued use (e.g., in the Greenberg language classification) testifies. The theory became a cornerstone of Seligman's synoptic review of the peoples and cultures of Africa (1930). These are divided into six major ethnic clusters—the Bushmen and Hottentots, the true Negroes of west Africa, the Hamites (eastern and northern), the Nilo-Hamites and Nilotes, the Bantu, and the Semites. It is a singular feat of compression and still the best over-all introduction to African ethnology. [See AFRICAN SOCIETY, article on SUBSAHARAN AFRICA.]
Historical ethnology. Seligman's concern with historical ethnology grew naturally out of his descriptive studies. It was also a response to the challenge of the extreme diffusionist theories advocated by Elliott Smith and Rivers. Seligman flatly rejected these theories, contrasting them with genuinely historical reconstruction based on geo-
graphical connections and evidence derived from material culture and institutional relationships (1927). Thus, when he himself carefully considered the evidence for the supposed Egyptian origin of divine kingship in Africa, he came to the conclusion that its most characteristic features go back to an "old and widespread Hamitic belief" to which some specifically Egyptian elements only later became attached (1934). [See KINGSHIP.] It was in the pursuit of these and other historical and distributional associations that Seligman undertook his investigations into prehistory (e.g., of Egypt and the Sudan) and his studies of artifacts and objets d'art. Coupled with his passion for Chinese art and civilization, these studies culminated in his joint paper, with H. C. Beck, on Chinese glass (1938). Here Seligman sought to clarify the routes and modes of transmission by which various products and technical skills reached China from western Europe even before the second century B.C. Physical anthropology. The investigations in physical anthropology that formed for Seligman the necessary basis for the organization of cultural and historical data now appear relatively crude. Without such modern techniques as genetic analysis of blood groups, he obtained anthropometric and anthroposcopic data that have only limited validity. Cross-cultural psychology. Seligman's psychological investigations began with the application of sensory discrimination tests to the Veddas; the results were discouraging. Later he became convinced that the psychology of the unconscious was the key to many fundamental problems of anthropology, and in his first presidential address to the Royal Anthropological Institute he stressed "the Dorderland where social anthropology, psychology, and genetics meet in common biological kinship" (1924, p. 13). (He reverted to this theme in his Huxley Memorial Lecture in 1932). He enlisted the aid of field ethnologists, psychoanalysts, orientalists, and a variety of other specialists, as well as laymen, in the pursuit of these inquiries. Malinowski was one of the many who owed his introduction to psychoanalysis to Seligman (Malinowski 1927, preface). Guided by Freud's theory, Seligman produced evidence from many different cultures for the universality of such "type" dreams as those involving the loss of teeth, flying, and raw meat. He found that conventional interpretations of such dreams often implicitly recognized their symbolic nature. He inferred that there is in the unconscious of all
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peoples "a proved common store on which fantasy may draw" in the construction of myth and ritual beliefs and even of technical processes (1924, p. 41). His interpretation of magical rites was that they are "symbolic dramatizations" that drain away unconscious anxiety and that are thus comparable to neurotic symptoms. Taking a different perspective, he assembled cross-cultural evidence to test the universality of the stages of individual psychosexual development postulated in Freudian theory. Emphasizing the scanty and conflicting nature of the ethnological data then available, he concluded that they tended to confirm rather than to refute (as Malinowski maintained) the Freudian hypothesis (1932). Also impressed with Jung's extrovertintrovert dichotomy of temperamental types, he applied it in tentative studies of art styles, of the national character of the Japanese, and of psychosis in different cultural settings (1931). He concluded that psychosis was rare in stable primitive societies but tended to emerge as a result of conflicts engendered by contact with European culture, conflicts he connected also with the then incipient nativistic movements now called cargo cults. These studies claimed no more than to demonstrate the significance of psychoanalysis for anthropology at a time when there was a strong reaction in British anthropological circles against such an application of psychoanalytic theories. [See CULTURE AND PERSONALITY.] Just as Seligman rejected all-embracing diffusionist explanations of ethnological connections, so also he was chary of evolutionist constructions of the kind favored by Frazer and L. H. Morgan. With his strong biological bias, he saw living mankind as a single species with common and uniform mental and physical capacities and dispositions but distributed over the globe in racially diverse and culturally varied communities in different phases of historical development. Though Malinowski's functionalism grew up directly under his eyes, and not without his sympathy, he never aligned himself with this movement; he was too much of an empiricist. The task of scientific ethnology, as he saw it, was to approach particular areas and particular problems by as many methods and from as many angles as could serve to reveal useful data and throw light on them. MEYER FORTES [Other relevant material may be found in the biographies of FRAZER; HADDON; MALINOWSKI; RIVERS; TYLOR.]
WORKS BY SELIGMAN
1910
The Melanesians of British New Guinea. Cambridge Univ. Press. 1911 SELIGMAN, C. G.; and SELIGMAN, BRENDA Z. The Veddas. Cambridge Univ. Press. 1913 Some Aspects of the Hamitic Problem in the AngloEgyptian Sudan. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland 43:593-705. 1918 SELIGMAN, C. G.; and SELIGMAN, BRENDA Z. The Kababish: A Sudan Arab Tribe. Harvard African Studies 2:105-185. 1924 Anthropology and Psychology: A Study of Some Points of Contact. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland 54:13-46. 1926 Anthropology. Volume 1, pages 131-143 in Encyclopaedia Britannica. 13th ed. Chicago: Benton. 1927 [A Book Review of] Psychology and Ethnology, by W. H. R. Rivers. Nature 120:685-687. 1928 The Unconscious in Relation to Anthropology. British Journal of Psychology 18, part 4:373-387. 1929 Temperament, Conflict and Psychosis in a Stoneage Population. British Journal of Medical Psychology 9, part 3:187-202. (1930) 1957 Races of Africa. 3d ed. Oxford Univ. Press. 1931 Japanese Temperament and Character. Japan Society of London, Transactions and Proceedings 28: 124-138. 1932 Anthropological Perspective and Psychological Theory. The Huxley Memorial Lecture. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland 62:193-228. 1932 SELIGMAN, C. G.; and SELIGMAN, BRENDA Z. Pagan Tribes of the Nilotic Sudan. London: Routledge. 1934 Egypt and Negro Africa: A Study in Divine Kingship. The Frazer Lecture for 1933. London: Routledge. 1938 SELIGMAN, C. G.; and BECK, H. C. Far Eastern Glass: Some Western Origins. Stockholm, Ostasiatiska samlingarna, Bulletin no. 10:1-64. SUPPLEMENTARY BIBLIOGRAPHY
ELKIN, ADOLPHUS P. 1953 Social Anthropology in Melanesia: A Review of Research. Oxford Univ. Press. EVANS-PRITCHARD, E. E. 1948 The Divine Kingship of the Shilluk of the Nilotic Sudan. Cambridge Univ. Press. FORTES, MEYER 1941 Charles Gabriel Seligman. Man 41, no. 1:1-6. HADDON, A. C. 1934 Appreciation. Pages 1-4 in Essays Presented to C. G. Seligman. Edited by E. E. EvansPritchard et al. London: Routledge. HUNTINGFORD, GEORGE W. B. 1953 The Northern Nilo— Hamites. Ethnographic Survey of Africa, East Central Africa, Part 6. London: International Africa Institute. MALINOWSKI, BRONISLAW (1922) 1960 Argonauts of the Western Pacific: An Account of Native Enterprise and Adventure in the Archipelagoes of Melanesian New Guinea. London School of Economics and Political Science, Studies, No. 65. London: Routledge; New York: Button. -» A paperback edition was published in 1961 by Button. MALINOWSKI, BRONISLAW (1927) 1953 Sex and Repression in Savage Society. London: Routledge; New York: Harcourt. -> A paperback edition was published in 1955 by Meridian. MYERS, C. S. 1941 Charles Gabriel Seligman. Royal Society of London, Obituary Notices of Fellows 3:627646. -» Includes a bibliography of Seligman's works.
SELIGMAN, EDWIN R. A. SELIGMAN, EDWIN R. A. Edwin Robert Anderson Seligman (1861-1939), American economist, was editor-in-chief of the Encyclopaedia of the Social Sciences from 1927 to 1935 and McVickar professor of political economy at Columbia University from 1904 to 1931. He was born in New York City, where his father was a banker prominent in national and international circles. Until the age of 11, Seligman was educated at home, his tutor being Horatio Alger, Jr. From the Columbia Grammar School Seligman entered Columbia College, shortly after his fourteenth birthday, and received his A.B. in 1879. He became proficient in the German, French, Italian, Spanish, Russian, and Dutch languages. After attending the universities at Berlin, Heidelberg, and Paris, in 1882 he began graduate studies in economics at Columbia and, "to have a second arrow in the quiver," also studied law. In 1884 he received both an M.A. and an LL.B., and in 1885, his PH.D. Also in 1885 Seligman was admitted to the New York bar and was appointed lecturer in economics in the newly formed faculty of political science at Columbia University. Three years later he became adjunct professor of political economy; in 1891 he was appointed professor of political economy and finance, a post he held until 1931. He served for many years as chairman of the department of economics. In the 1920s Seligman received honorary doctoral degrees from the universities of Paris and Heidelberg. Seligman's immense energy, wide-ranging interests, and sense of social responsibility led him to participate in the work of academic, governmental, and civic organizations and committees, especially those promoting social reform. He was a member of the Social Reform Club of New York City, the Educational Alliance, the Political Economy Club, Greenwich House (a settlement house), and the Society for Ethical Culture and served as president of the last two organizations and as chairman of the Bureau of Municipal Research. He was secretary of the Committee of Fifteen, whose 1902 report, The Social Evil, revealed the economic links of corruption between prostitution and the New York City police. Seligman was a leader in the founding of the American Economic Association (AEA) and served as its president from 1902 to 1904. He also served a term as president of the National Tax Association, from 1913 to 1915. He helped to establish both the City Club of New York, which has worked for the improvement of civic conditions since its founding in 1892, and the American Association
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of University Professors (AAUP), in 1915; he was AAUP president from 1919 to 1920. Seligman was an effective champion of academic freedom. He was the chairman of the AEA committee that wrote the first report on this subject in the United States, the occasion being the dismissal of Edward A. Ross from Stanford [see the biography of Ross], and he was also chairman of the AAUP committee that in 1915 wrote the fundamental Report on Academic Freedom. In the field of his specialty, public finance, Seligman was also active: he was a member of special tax commissions of New York State in 1906 and 1930; chairman of the Mayor's Commission on Taxation and Finance, New York City, 1914-1916; expert adviser to the New York State Joint Legislative Tax Committee, 1919-1922; member, with Bruins, Einaudi, and Stamp, of the League of Nations Committee on Economics and Finance, 1922-1923, which produced the report Double Taxation; and, in 1931, consultant to the government of Cuba. When the study of political economy at Columbia became more specialized, Seligman accepted responsibility for the then neglected field of public finance, but he also developed a continuing interest in the history of economic doctrine. This interest led to his giving a course on this subject and to his famous collection of books, pamphlets, and other items on economics, now in the Columbia University library. He was one of the small group of scholars that established economics as a recognized discipline in the United States. Seligman's intellectual influence was wide, several of his books being translated into more than one of the leading languages. It has extended to the present, largely through his contributions to the history of economic thought, reflecting the stimulus he received at Paris, and through the clarity and appropriateness of his conceptual and categorizing contributions. The former achievement is illustrated by his article "On Some Neglected British Economists" (first published in 1903; see [1886-1925] 1925); the latter, by the introductory chapter of The Shifting and Incidence of Taxation (1892), "The Classification of Public Revenues" (see 1895), and his analysis of ability-to-pay and faculty concepts in taxation ( see 1928). More than one present-day treatise, particularly in Europe, refers frequently to Seligman's conceptual and historical contributions. Although Seligman did not entirely escape error in attempting to apply the newly developing price theory to the substantive part of Shifting and Incidence, he did enliven the doctrinal atmosphere with his vigorous approach and equally vigorous coun-
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terthrusts when challenged. His exchanges with Francis Y. Edgeworth were enlightening. Seligman's treatise was a pioneering achievement in its treatment of the history of doctrine and in its arrangement and development of a difficult subject. Seligman's writings on taxation, quite influential in their day, are less cited now, either because the paths he opened up were later explored further by so many, or because the terminology he originated soon passed into common use, or because the reforms he advocated were adopted. Among his useful contributions were his Progressive Taxation in Theory and Practice (1894), The Income Tax (1911), and his writings on the property tax, all of which also embody his desire, arising from the contrast between his American and European training, to build a bridge between the deductive and the historical—comparative schools, with emphasis on the latter, which he felt had been neglected in the United States. Seligman also wrote extensively outside public finance. Some of these contributions were widely accepted for many years, especially The Economic Interpretation of History (1902), which proved influential in developing analysis in this area. Among his interests in applied economics were problems of railroads, unemployment, the fur and jewelry trades, installment selling, agriculture, and resale price maintenance. It was this catholicity of interest, together with an exceptional erudition and a broad acquaintance with scholars of many countries, that enabled Seligman, toward the close of his career, to make one of his most notable contributions, as a chief promoter of, fund raiser for, and editor-in-chief of the English-language Encyclopaedia of the Social Sciences, to which he also contributed articles and biographies. Seligman, formal in the lecture room, was a man of warm temperament, with an intense personal interest in the material and intellectual welfare of his students. Through them and through his own writings, he opened up the field of public finance in the United States both to scholarship and to measures of reform. CARL S. SHOUP
(1894) 1908 Progressive Taxation in Theory and Practice. 2d ed., rev. & enl. Princeton, NJ.: American Economic Association. (1895) 1928 Essays in Taxation. 10th ed., rev. New York: Macmillan. (1900-1925) 1925 Studies in Public Finance. New York: Macmillan. (1902) 1934 The Economic Interpretation of History. 2d ed., rev. New York: Columbia Univ. Press. -» A paperback edition was published in 1961. (1905) 1929 The Principles of Economics, With Special Reference to American Conditions. 12th ed. New York: Longmans. (1911) 1914 The Income Tax: A Study of the History, Theory, and Practice of Income Taxation at Home and Abroad. 2d ed., rev. & enl. New York: Macmillan. 1926 Social Theory of Fiscal Science. Political Science Quarterly 41:193-218, 354-383. 1927 The Economics of Instalment Selling: A Study in Consumers' Credit, With Special Reference to the Automobile. 2 vols. New York and London: Harper. 1928 Double Taxation and International Fiscal Cooperation. New York: Macmillan. 1929a Autobiography. Volume 2, pages 117-160 in Felix Meiner (editor), Die Volkswirtschaftslehre der Gegenwart in Selbstdarstellungen. Leipzig: Meiner. W29b The Economics of Farm Relief: A Survey of the Agricultural Problem. New York: Columbia Univ. Press. 1930 What Are the Social Sciences? Volume 1, pages 3-7 in Encyclopaedia of the Social Sciences. New York: Macmillan. 1932 Income Tax. Volume 7, pages 626-639 in Encyclopaedia of the Social Sciences. New York: Macmillan. 1932 SELIGMAN, EDWIN R. A.; and LOVE, ROBERT A. Price Cutting and Price Maintenance: A Study in Economics. New York and London: Harper. 1934 Public Finance. Volume 12, pages 637-646 in Encyclopaedia of the Social Sciences. New York: Macmillan. SUPPLEMENTARY BIBLIOGRAPHY
[The Bibliography of] Edwin Robert Anderson Seligman. 1931 Pages 25-43 in Columbia University, Faculty of Political Science, A Bibliography . . . 1880-1930. New York: Columbia Univ. Press. DORFMAN, JOSEPH (editor) 1941 Seligman Correspondence. Political Science Quarterly 56:107-124, 270-286, 392-419, 573-599. DORFMAN, JOSEPH 1946-1959 The Economic Mind in American Civilization. 5 vols. New York: Viking. DORFMAN, JOSEPH 1955 The Department of Economics. Pages 161-206 in Ralph G. Hoxie et al., A History of the Faculty of Political Science, Columbia University. New York: Columbia Univ. Press. Edwin Robert Anderson Seligman, 1861-1939: Addresses Delivered at the Memorial Meeting Held on December the Thirteenth, 1939. 1942 Stamford, Conn.: Overbrook.
[See also INSTALLMENT CREDIT; TAXATION.] WORKS BY SELIGMAN (1886-1925) 1925 Essays in Economics. New York: Macmillan. 1887 Two Chapters on the Mediaeval Guilds of England. Baltimore: American Economic Association. (1892) 1927 The Shifting and Incidence of Taxation. 5th ed., rev. New York: Columbia Univ. Press.
SEMANTICS AND SEMIOTICS Semiotics is the study of sign phenomena. Specialized research into natural human language— the semiotic phenomenon par excellence—constitutes linguistics; within linguistics, semantics is
SEMANTICS AND SEMIOTICS concerned with the conveyance of meaning by the grammatical and lexical devices of a language. According to the theoretical, descriptive, and historical slants of linguistic investigation, semantic problems respectively assume a general, synchronic, or diachronic character. The self-evident systematicity of grammatical phenomena has always been conducive to their relatively reliable semantic analysis. When it comes to the looser domain of vocabulary, however, the obscurity of the underlying structure quickly embroils semantic analysis in some of the more inconclusive epistemological controversies of social science. While vast supplies of raw semantic data repose in dictionaries of various languages, there is no consensus among linguists on a coherent theory in accordance with which this material can be analyzed and compared for purposes of generalization. Definition and components of sign. The key term in semiotics is "sign." By all accounts, a sign must consist of at least (1) a perceptible impact on one of the senses of the "receiver" and (2) a content that is signified. First distinguished by the Stoic philosophers, then recognized in European medieval literature as signans and signatum, these minimal components of the sign have reappeared in modern theory under such labels as signifiant and signifte (Ferdinand de Saussure) or "sign vehicle" and "designatum" (Charles W. Morris). (Under appropriate contextual conditions, the absence of a signans itself functions as a "zero" sign vehicle. It is often utilized in language with great effectiveness.) A particular occurrence of a sign is customarily called a "token," while the class of all occurrences of the sign is called the "type." According to this usage, the total number of words in a text is the number of word tokens, whereas the number of different words in the text is the number of word types. Signs may be classified by the sense on which the sign vehicle impinges: they can be visual, auditory, etc. A sign may then have equivalent sign vehicles in the same or another modality. Full equivalence is illustrated by a plain transposition cipher (based on a novel utilization of the same graphic system) or by a light blinking and a buzzer sounding in response to the same Morse code impulses. The correlation, on the other hand, between written and spoken language is far from one-to-one. Designation and denotation. A crucial issue for most students is the distinction between what particular sign tokens denote, or refer to, and the
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constant capacity of the sign type to denote, or refer. The former relation has been treated under the heading of "denotation," or reference; the latter has been called "designation," or meaning (in the narrow sense). Thus, the designatum (2a) of a sign type—what the sign designates—can in theory be specified by (2b) the conditions under which, or the "objects" with reference to which, the tokens of the sign would be said to denote in a truthful way. Every sign by definition designates something, but some signs have no real things, or "denotata," to refer to (e.g., unicorn}, and every sign may on occasion be used without denoting (e.g., milk when no actual milk is being referred to) or without denoting truly (e.g., milk used with reference to water). A perceptible discrepancy between what a sign type designates (2a) and the denotatum of one of its tokens (2fr) seems to be involved in such effects as metaphor and irony, as well as in perversions of communication (lying). If the designatum is thought of as the class of denotata for which the sign vehicle is a name, the specification of the designatum can correspondingly be visualized as extensional (by enumeration of the members of the class, i.e., the denotata) or as intensional (by stating the properties shared by all members of the class, and only by them). The ability of living beings to form intensional class concepts—an ability which has not so far been mechanically simulated or abstractly reconstructed—reaches the most extraordinary proportions in man. There is evidence that concept formation proceeds with particular efficiency if there are signs present for which the concepts can become the designata. The theoretical distinction between (2a) designata and (2fo) denotata is also essential for accommodating the fact that something can be a true denotatum of more than one simple sign (e.g., car and vehicle} or of various compound signs (e.g., female sheep — ewe}. "Reductionist" approaches. The minimal account of signs in terms of sign vehicles and designata has been variously enriched; the richer schemes have in turn been subjected to reduction along several lines. Two further factors of the sign, essential in some accounts, such as that of Charles S. Peirce, are (3) the interpreter, or the individual for whom the pairing of a sign vehicle and a designatum functions as a sign, and (4) the interpretant, corresponding to the interpreter's (perhaps unconscious) reaction to a sign. One way of explicating this reaction is to understand "interpretant" as the interpreter's private translation of a sign into other signs. Anticipating the discovery
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of neurological correlates of "understanding" and similar psychological phenomena, some theorists have apparently identified the interpretant of a sign with its translation into the (still unknown) neurological code. Related in spirit is the effort of experimental psychologists to specify the meaning of a sign in terms of attitudes taken toward it, emotions induced by it, or further signs automatically evoked by it—as displayed, for example, in a semantic differential (Osgood et al. 1957) or a free-association test. Thus, whereas the designatum of a sign was traditionally understood to be given by the verbal definition of the sign, behavioristic psychology has endeavored to bypass the designatum (2a) in favor of the effect of the sign (4), regarding the latter, if not as more accessible to study, then at least as the less objectionable construct. A kindred suspicion of constructs has moved skeptical empiricists—in eighth-century India as in twentieth-century England and America—to reject designata as needless entities and to account for the use of sign tokens (acts of "reference") merely in terms of the sign vehicle (1) and the actual denotatum or "referent" (2b). Such impoverished theories may cover certain "straightforward" uses of natural language and may serve the rationalization of scientific discourse. But an account that fails to treat the designatum as a component of the sign, distinct from both its denotatum and its interpretant, cannot adequately deal with such phenomena as reasoning or humor, and is therefore incommensurate with the complexity and subtlety of human semiotic abilities. In general it should be admitted that the denial of the sui generis nature of communicative activity and the reduction of sign phenomena to some more general kind of behavioral phenomenon have produced no marked success in either theory or research practice. A sign type is not always— perhaps only rarely—correlated with a class of specific stimuli or of overt responses. Nor is a sign token a counterfeit or avowed "substitute" for a "real" thing; it is, at most, a "representative" of the real things for purposes of communication qua communication, and in contrast to the case of other substitutes, the real thing will not do where a sign is required. When we reflect, furthermore, that the denotata of most sign tokens of language are neither "real" nor "things" nor even necessarily existent, it becomes evident that if sign tokens "stand for something," they do so in a way that differs from other modes of substitution. Symbolic and less-than-symbolic signs. A sign with an intensional class for a designatum and without contiguity or similarity between its vehicle
and its denotata is called a symbol. Other, less fully developed forms of sign may be classified as indices, icons, names, signals, and symptoms. A sign is said to be an index rather than a symbol insofar as its sign vehicle is contiguous with its denotatum, or is a physical sample of it (a swatch of cloth as a sign of the color or an onomatopoeic word as a sign for an animal sound). In the case of some indices the contiguity between the sign vehicle and the denotatum is suggestive rather than literal, as in a directional arrow which guides the viewer's eyes toward a target. In general, when a sign vehicle is paired with a denotatum as a matter of necessity, the involuntary, mechanical nature of this connection may be viewed as an abstract analogue of physical contiguity; automatic, nonarbitrary signs are hence said to be merely "symptomatic" rather than fully symbolic. Natural languages have been observed to contain indexlike signs which conventionally direct the listener's attention to a time, a place, a participant in the discourse, or a part of the interlocutor's field of sight. These are studied under the heading of "deictics" or "shifters"; English examples are now, here, I, this. When there is a geometric similarity between a sign vehicle and its denotata, the sign is said to be iconic. Such similarity would be exemplified by a system in which, let us say, large things are signified by long words, small things by short words, or in which plurality of denotata is signified by repetition of the sign vehicle. A realistic painting is a highly iconic sign; in human language the role of iconicity is marginal. A theory of signs which conceives of a designatum as an intensional class must also allow for a more "stunted" type of sign which has an extensional class as its designatum. Such signs are generally called "(proper) names." The individuals, whether one or many, which are truly denoted by a proper name have no common property attributed to them except "answering" to that name. For discourse about signs it is necessary to use signs for referring to signs. For this purpose a sign vehicle is commonly employed as an index of its own sign. In discourse about languages it has long been found useful to discriminate between the use of signs and the mention of signs. A sign employed as a name for itself is commonly said to be used "metalinguistically"; a specialized language for communication about another language (the "object language") is called a "metalanguage." Overlapping semiotic functions. In a particular communicative act a token may at the same
SEMANTICS AND SEMIOTICS time function as a symbol and as a less-thansymbolic sign. Thus, a sign token may trigger, mechanically or conventionally, some action on the part of the receiver; it then functions as a "signal." In many languages, the imperative is a grammatical device for endowing a symbol with signal value, but a complex symbolic sign without special markers (e.g., I am ready) may function secondarily as a signal for some action. Similarly, an interjection of pain, to the extent that it has a coded form in the language (e.g., English ouch vs. German em), is conventionalized and hence symbolic; insofar, however, as it is uttered involuntarily, it is a symptomatic (indexical) sign. Every layman develops considerable skill in synchronizing the "symbolic" analysis of speech with a judgment of voice quality, tempo, and other involuntary aspects of the utterance as symptoms of the speaker's state. Specialists have learned to interpret in depth certain "covert," involuntary statistical properties of speech to which ordinary hearers may not respond even on an unconscious level. Not only do symbolic functions overlap with symptomatic and signaling sign functions, but the sign may, primarily or secondarily, serve altogether noncommunicative functions as well. Superimposed upon linguistic utterances with symbolic value may be aesthetic or magical functions (poetry, incantations). Contrariwise, behavior patterns and artifacts intended for other primary purposes may acquire a signlike aspect: a garment, worn to provide warmth, may by its shape symbolize the wearer's acceptance of, or rebellion against, the conventions of society; an automobile, primarily a means of transport, may by the redness of its color symbolize its user's status as fire chief. The development of general and comparative semiotic research would seem to depend to a large extent on the inclusion of such "mixed" semiotic phenomena. Paradigmatic relations between signs. Two or more signs each or all of which can occur in the same context are said to form a paradigmatic set. Membership in such a set helps to determine the identity of a sign, since the definition of its sign vehicle and its designatum may be formulated in terms of the discrete differences between them and the vehicles and designata of other signs in the same set. Students of language have capitalized on the paradigmatic nature of their material by organizing the description of sign vehicles and designata around those minimal distinctive differences of sound and meaning which contrast one item with another within the total system. In the investigation of vocabulary, this approach has led
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to the concept of "word fields," i.e., semantically related groups of words, and has yielded a sizable literature since it was initiated in the 1930s by Jost Trier. However, the more populous and amorphous a paradigmatic set of elements, the less certain is the organization of their contrastive features. Hence word-field studies are beset by a strong streak of impressionism, exacerbated by the concentration of research on early stages of languages for which the benefit of native speakers' intuitions cannot be drawn upon. Being different from each other is, of course, only the most general relation between signs in a paradigmatic set. More specific relations are determined by the conditions under which two signs are interchangeable: symmetrically in the case of perfect synonyms, asymmetrically in the case of superordinates and subordinates (e.g., gun-rifle), and at the cost of reversing the truth value of the message in the case of antonyms. The way in which these more specific relations organize a set of terms may be different in various languages. Thus, two languages may have terms for "cattle," the difference between them being that in one of the languages, but not in the other, "cattle" includes "sheep" as a subordinate. Proceeding from their experience with folk classification in the field of kinship, anthropologists (particularly in the United States) have analyzed selected sectors of vocabulary in the form of taxonomies—systems in which all terms are governed by a subordinate-superordinate relation (Conklin 1962). It still remains to be shown whether this descriptive format is easily applicable to lexical domains less closely structured than those dealing with kinship, color, weather, illness, plants, and animals. It is clear, moreover, that studies of lexical systems oversimplify the problem unless they take full account of the omnipresent facts of polysemy, grammatical specialization, and phraseological specialization (discussed below). Meanwhile the introduction of certain nonsymmetrical operations to supplement the traditional algebra of classes promises to reduce some of the counterintuitive excesses of earlier sophisticated nomenclature analysis (Lounsbury 1964). Sign tokens in sequence. The patterning of sequences in which sign tokens may be transmitted ranges between two extremes. At one pole lies the impossibility of predicting a sign's occurrence from a preceding sign; at the other extreme lie systems with a completely predictable sequence, such as the alternation of red and green at an automatic traffic signal. A sign system like human language is vastly more intricate than these models because of two groups of factors: the interde-
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pendence of paradigmatic and sequential patterning, and the complexity of the sequential patterning itself. The latter is the subject matter of syntax, which was revolutionized in the late 1950s, when it was shown by means of newly developed mathematical tools that the syntactic structure of natural languages had been only vaguely characterized and that its complexity had been seriously underestimated (Chomsky 1957). Several attempts have already been made to develop semantic theories compatible with the new approach to syntax (Katz & Fodor 1963; Weinreich 1966). Compositional effects; class meanings. It is a feature of natural language that signs combined in appropriate ("grammatical") ways yield compound designata; thus the designatum of the phrase shy unicorn includes the properties of unicorns as well as of shy things. Compound signs can be formed which are not only virtually unlimited in complexity but which are capable of being interpreted regardless of whether their denotata are real, or not necessarily real, or even explicitly mythical. In this way languages contribute to the continual expansion of their own universes of discourse. The possibility of constructing a represented world regardless of its actual or conceivable existence is utilized, with different degrees of extravagance, in verbal art. Semantic play through carefully controlled deviations from literal conceivability of the representation is an essential ingredient of literature, especially of modern poetry. Traditionally, only those sign combinations were considered whose semantic effect could be explained as a logical product of the designata. Twentieth-century logicians, with the help of the higher calculus of functions, have accounted for a much greater range of combinatorial semantic effects. Even this more elaborate apparatus, however, does not seem sufficient to account semantically for every type of sign combination in language (Weinreich 1963). The utilization of the same linguistic material in multiple, overlapping semiotic functions is also observed in the case of idioms—compound signs which are not resolved into their constituent designata but function with a simplex designatum of their own. Thus, to pull X's leg has a complex meaning derived by a transparent process from the meanings of pull, leg, and -'s; but when it means "to hoax X playfully," the meanings of the constituents are disregarded. In a rationalized lexicographic system the selection of items to be treated as idioms must be weighed against the "cost" of increasing the number of elementary units in the system and the alternative of specify-
ing additional subsenses for each constituent of an idiom, coupling them with the indication that they evoke each other. The standard patterns of sign compounding in a language are characterized by specialized "slots" (for example, for subjects and for predicates), and the vocabulary items are in turn specialized as to their privileges of occurring in the various "slots." As a result, different word classes (nouns, verbs, etc.) tend to acquire appropriate "class meanings," for instance, the constant use of verbs to represent "action" endows the verb with a concomitant meaning of action. This automatic component, first analyzed systematically in medieval Europe under the heading of consignificatio, or "modes of signifying," exercises so powerful an influence on our mentality that doubts have been voiced whether the semantic implications of the syntactic form obligatory in one's native language can be transcended at all, or at least easily, in thinking. But specific claims about the grip of lexical and syntactic meaning-systems on thinking, advanced particularly by Wilhelm von Humboldt (and popularized in America by Edward Sapir and Benjamin L. Whorf), have turned out to be either unresearchable in their circularity or—in the few instances which permitted experimentation—to be unsubstantiated by the factual evidence. Grammatical specialization. As long as sentences of natural languages were characterized in terms of a small number of "slots," many of the corresponding paradigmatic sets of words were so large as to exclude any hope of their being semantically characterized. With the advent of transformational analysis in the 1950s the specification of the structure of sentences became more articulated. As the kinds of word-classes proliferated, the sizes of the classes shrank in inverse proportion. Seizing on the prospect of utilizing these results, a search was instituted for distinctive semantic features in the words belonging to small grammatical subclasses (e.g., Apresian 1962). Statements of a word's membership in a particular set of small grammatical subclasses were also proposed as substitutes for the more elusive, properly semantic description of the word. Previously, the tendency had been to view the correlation of meanings of words (or submeanings of polysemous words) with grammatical properties as a point on which natural languages deviate from the ideal sign system; now they came to be explored as perhaps the most workable principle for significantly organizing a vocabulary. Correspondingly, there arose the problem of explaining what this universal trait of languages contributes to the effectiveness of communication.
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Phraseological specialization. Human languages also deviate from the theoretically ideal sign system in that the same sign vehicle can function with different designata in different contexts; thus, white belongs to different paradigmatic sets in the contexts paint, skin, wine, magic. To the extent that some common meaning factor can be extracted, we may speak of several submeanings of a single polysemous word, white. The verb to bank, on the other hand, appears to have completely unrelated designata depending on whether its object is money, a fire, an airplane, or whether it is followed by the preposition on (i.e., "to rely"). Instead of sweeping such effects under the rug, attempts are being made to use them as the foundation for a formal analysis of vocabulary. The most challenging problem is to find ways of classifying and grouping the features of phraseological specialization that appear to be so profoundly specific to individual words. Toward a general semiotics. Although no sign system equals language in the variety and overlapping of semiotic devices employed, it has been instructive to embed the study of natural language in a broader investigation of sign phenomena of all kinds, including substitutes for language (for example, flag codes) and extensions of language (gesture patterns, chemical formalism, etc.). Observation of "mixed" phenomena—behavior and cultural institutions, whose primary purpose is other than communication, utilized for semiotic purposes—has also contributed insights for a general theory of signs. The accomplishments of the research program in general semiotics proposed by Charles S. Peirce and Ferdinand de Saussure have not been spectacular, unless one classifies the achievements of cybernetics under this heading; moreover, such allegedly basic semiotic concepts as the tripartition of the field into syntactics, semantics, and pragmatics have turned out to be of little use in connection with natural sign phenomena. On the other hand, general semiotics has furnished useful tools for comparing human language with animal communication; this may in turn produce new conceptions of the origin of language. URIEL WEINREICH
Structural Lexicology). Pages 141-162 in Problemy strukturnoi lingvistiki. Moscow: Akademiia Nauk SSSR. CHOMSKY, NOAM 1957 Syntactic Structures. The Hague: Mouton. CONKLIN, HAROLD C. 1962 Lexicographical Treatment of Folk Taxonomies. Pages 119-141 in Conference on Lexicography, Indiana University, 1960, Problems in Lexicography. Bloomington, Ind.: The University. -» Published also as Volume 28, no. 2, part 4 of the International Journal of American Linguistics. GIPPER, HELMUT; and SCHWARZ, HANS 1961— Bibliographisches Handbuch zur Sprachinhaltsforschung. Cologne (Germany): Westdeutscher Verlag. IVANOV, V. V. 1961 lazyk v sopostavlenii s drugimi sredstvami peredachi i khraneniia informatsii (Language in Comparison With Other Means of Information Transmission and Storage). Akademiia Nauk SSSR, Institut Nauchnoi Informatsii, Doklady na konferentsii po obrabotke informatsii, mashinnomu perevodu i avtomaticheskomu chteniiu teksta No. 7. KATZ, JERROLD J.; and FODOR, JERRY 1963 The Structure of a Semantic Theory. Language 39, no. 2:170— 210. LOUNSBURY, FLOYD G. 1964 The Structural Analysis of Kinship Semantics. Pages 1073-1093 in International Congress of Linguists, Ninth, Cambridge, Mass., 1962, Proceedings. The Hague: Mouton. MORRIS, CHARLES W. 1938 Foundations of the Theory of Signs. Univ. of Chicago Press. OSGOOD, CHARLES E.; Suci, G. J.; and TANNENBAUM, P. H. (1957) 1961 The Measurement of Meaning. Urbana: Univ. of Illinois Press. PEIRCE, CHARLES S. 1932 Collected Papers. Volume 2: Elements of Logic. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Univ. Press. SAUSSURE, FERDINAND DE (1916) 1959 Course in General Linguistics. New York: Philosophical Library. -» First published posthumously, in French. TRIER, JOST 1931 Der deutsche Wortschatz im Sinnbezirk des Verstandes: Die Geschichte eines sprachlichen Feldes. I. Von den Anfangen bis zum Beginn des 13. Jahrhunderts. Heidelberg (Germany): Winter. ULLMANN, STEPHEN (1951) 1959 The Principles of Semantics. 2d ed., rev. Glasgow: Jackson. -> Contains useful summaries of traditional views and a bibliography. WEINREICH, URIEL 1963 On the Semantic Structure of Language. Pages 114-171 in Conference on Language Universals, Dobbs Ferry, N.Y., 1961, Universals of Language. Cambridge, Mass.: M.I.T. Press. -» Contains a comprehensive bibliography. WEINRICH, URIEL 1966 Explorations in Semantic Theory. Current Trends in Linguistics 3: 395-477.
[See also COMMUNICATION; COMMUNICATION, ANIMAL; KINESICS; LINGUISTICS. Other relevant material may be found in the biographies of BLOOMFIELD; PEIRCE; SAPIR; SAUSSURE; WHORF.]
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BIBLIOGRAPHY APRESIAN, lu. D. 1962 O poniatiiakh i metodakh strukturnoi leksikologii (On the Concepts and Methods of
SEMIOTICS See SEMANTICS AND SEMIOTICS.
Nassau William Senior (1790-1864), British economist, was the eldest son of the vicar of Durnford in Wiltshire. He was educated at Eton and at Magdalen College, Oxford. At Oxford he met Richard Whateley (later archbishop of Dublin), a
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rugged opponent of tradition who became Senior's lifelong friend and exerted considerable influence on him. Senior entered Lincoln's Inn in 1813 to read for the bar; in 1817 he became a certified conveyancer and was called to the bar two years later. Although he earned his living by the practice of his profession, the law was by no means his only interest. Senior's childhood and youth had been spent in his father's country parish, which meant that early in his life he had become familiar with the poverty and pauperization of agricultural laborers that had occurred during the Napoleonic wars. This experience made a deep impression on him and was undoubtedly one of the reasons for his enduring interest in economics. In 1823 he became a member of the Political Economy Club, to which he was introduced by James Mill; he was active there in discussions with his fellow economists. Shortly after, in 1825, he became the first holder of the Drummond professorship of political economy at Oxford. During his five-year term he published a number of important short works on economics, starting with an analysis of ambiguous economic terms that was published as an appendix to Whateley's Elements of Logic (Senior 1826). He published some of his lectures, on such subjects as methodology (1827), the theory of money and international trade (1830a), and population and wages (1829; 1830£>). These lectures, together with the others given during his first term in the Drummond chair, were assembled and published as An Outline of the Science of Political Economy in 1836. As soon as they appeared, they established Senior's reputation as an economist. Role in Whig public policy By 1830 Senior was well known to leading Whig politicians; he was invited by Lord Melbourne to investigate the laws relating to trade combinations, and Lord Howick suggested he examine the problems of Ireland. His memorandum on trade combinations was not published, but that on Ireland appeared in 1831 as A Letter to Lord Hoxuick: On a Legal Provision for the Irish Poor, Commutation of Tithes, and a Provision for the Irish Roman Catholic Clergy. In this pamphlet he advocated the transfer of some of the property of the Anglican church to the Roman Catholic church in Ireland, and as a consequence he was forced to resign the chair of political economy at King's College, London, to which he had only quite recently been appointed. For the next ten years Senior was constantly engaged in public affairs. He was chief adviser to the Whig party on economic problems, although
his advice was by no means always followed. A pamphlet he wrote in 1835, On National Property and on the Prospects of the Present Administration and Their Successors, can be regarded as an unofficial manifesto of the more advanced Whigs: it urged, inter alia, the reform of municipal corporations and the admission of dissenters to universities, and again recommended the transfer of some property of the Anglican church to the Roman Catholic church in Ireland. Senior was also a member of several commissions: the Poor Law Inquiry Commission, in 1833; the commission that investigated factory conditions, in 1837; the Royal Commission on the Distress of the Hand-loom Weavers, in 1841; and later, in 1857, the Royal Commission on Popular Education. Each time he was a member of a commission he wrote a substantial part of the commission's report. In his work for the Poor Law Commission, which won great praise, one of his closest collaborators was Edwin Chadwick. With the fall of the Whig administration in 1841, Senior returned to more theoretical economics. In 1847 he was appointed to the Drummond chair of political economy at Oxford for a second five-year term. His intention of organizing his ideas into a treatise on political economy during these years was not to be fulfilled. Only a few of the lectures were published (1847; 1852), but a large part of the unpublished lectures of this period survive in manuscript. They are remarkable for their attack on the hypothetical economic man of Ricardo's imagination (Bowley 1937). In the later years of his life Senior was a keen traveler; he was particularly interested in the revolutionary disturbances of 1848 in France and Italy, where he had numerous friends among the liberals. He also visited Greece, Turkey, Egypt, and Malta. He kept journals of these visits and of those to Ireland, some of which were subsequently published. Senior's wide circle of friends included most of the leading Whigs of his day as well as such intellectuals and writers as Lord Jeffrey, Sidney Herbert, Macaulay, and Thackeray. Among the "philosophical radicals," his closest friends were the Austins and Grotes and, among men with whom he worked, Sir George Cornewall Lewis, Lord Howick, Chadwick, Sir James Stephen, and, of course, Archbishop Whateley. He knew well such French liberals as Alexis de Tocqueville, Guizot, and Faucher, and in Italy he was much appreciated by Cavour. Senior was a Whig rather than a philosophical radical, but his conviction that man has a natural tendency to improve himself, provided unwise institutions do not discourage him, may well have
SENIOR, NASSAU WILLIAM
developed from his association with the disciples of Bentham. It was this view that led to his controversy with Mai thus. Senior's proposals for poorlaw reform included the abolition of outdoor relief to the able-bodied, for he believed this sapped the virtues of thrift and independence and also depressed wages. However, he hoped the destitute sick, the aged, and children would be looked after out of public funds in hospitals, almshouses, and orphanages, not in mixed workhouses. In general, he believed that the government had a duty to intervene whenever it could do good: expediency should determine the occasions, not a priori rules. Contribution to economic theory During his life Senior's activity in the sphere of social and economic reform was more visible than his work on economic theory. His contribution to the latter, however, was considerable. In contrast to his younger and more famous contemporary, J. S. Mill, Senior's approach to Ricardian theory was essentially critical. His analysis of definitions in the appendix to Whateley's Logic (1826) shows how important precision in definition was to him. Concern with rigorous definition led him to make significant changes in the theory of value. Jevons was greatly impressed with this work and considered that he had anticipated the theory of marginal utility in important respects. Senior was clearly influenced by J. B. Say, and in connection with the analysis of degrees of competition in relation to value, he was also influenced by Samuel Bailey. Senior was less successful with the theory of wages than with the theory of value. He realized that the wages-fund theorem was incomplete, since the determinants of the size of the fund had not been explained, but despite much effort he was unable to solve this difficulty. His best-known contribution to economic analysis is his abstinence theory of capital. It emerged from his attempt to find a definition of capital that would make capital coordinate with labor in the explanation of the influence of real costs on value; this was an important step in the process of separating the labor theory of value from orthodox economics. The theory stated in his Outline of the Science of Political Economy (1836) became an integral part of English capital theory. It was accepted by Marshall as well as by Jevons; the former, however, substituted the neutral term "waiting" for "abstinence." The theory also influenced Continental and American economics, In the Outline, Senior fully accepted Ricardo's theory of land rent while observing that the laws of increasing and diminishing returns are not logically symmetrical. He generalized the analysis to
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cover all cases of factors in fixed supply, including natural abilities, and hinted at the concept of quasi rent. This resulted in difficulties in the identification of factor incomes and the relation of rents to costs. Influenced by the German economist Hermann's review of the Outline, Senior attacked the problem again in the 1847-1852 lectures. He accepted Hermann's view that land and capital are species of the same genus, arguing that they are indistinguishable in practice and that the distinguishing attribute of land is not its scarcity but its immobility (Bowley 1937). These theoretical developments necessarily affected the treatment of capital. In the later lectures capital was defined as "any wealth destined to be used productively," including land. This productive use, i.e., capital accumulation, requires "abstinence" as well as the gifts of nature and industry. Abstinence was explained as "the conduct of a person who either abstains from the unproductive use of what he can command or designedly prefers the production of remote to that of immediate results." Frugality, Senior explained, is the "mere refraining from the use of a commodity," but "providence" is "the employment of labour to produce remote results" (quoted in Bowley 1937, pp. 160161). It must be observed that Senior's distinction between frugality and providence, although apparently similar to the Keynesian distinction between saving and investment, was not made for the purpose of analyzing the level of economic activity. Senior's contributions to the theory of money and international trade are of less interest today than his other analytical work, but they provided a number of useful clarifications and qualifications to the theory of his time. The discussions of scope and method were contained in various published lectures given at the time of his first and second Drummond professorships and in his Outline. His views developed considerably during his life, and the Four Introductory Lectures on Political Economy (1852) are a valuable contribution to the nineteenth-century literature on the subject. MARIAN BOWLEY [For the historical context of Senior's work, see the biographies of MALTHUS; RICARDO; SAY; for discussion of the subsequent development of his ideas, see the biographies of JEVONS; MARSHALL.] WORKS BY SENIOR
1821
Essay on the Application of Capital to Land, With Observations Showing the Impolicy of Any Great Restriction of the Importation of Corn, and That the Bounty of 1680 Did Not Lower the Price of It, by a Fellow of University College, Oxford. Quarterly Review 25:467-504. -» Published anonymously.
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(1826) 1951 Appendix: On Certain Terms Which Are Peculiarly Liable to Be Used Ambiguously in Political Economy. Pages 227-239 in Nassau W. Senior, An Outline of the Science of Political Economy. New York: Kelley. -> First published as an Appendix to Richard Whateley's Elements of Logic. (1827) 1831 Introductory Lecture on Political Economy. 3d ed. London: Murray. (1828) 1931 Three Lectures on the Transmission of the Precious Metals From Country to Country and the Mercantile Theory of Wealth. Series of Reprints of Scarce Tracts in Economic and Political Science, No. 3. London School of Economics and Political Science. 1829 Two Lectures on Population. With a correspondence between the author and the Rev. T. R. Malthus. London: Saunders. (1830a) 1931 Three Lectures on the Cost of Obtaining Money, and on Some Effects of Private and Government Paper Money. Series of Reprints of Scarce Tracts in Economic and Political Science, No. 5. London School of Economics and Political Science. (1830&) 1959 Three Lectures on the Rate of Wages. With a preface on the causes and remedies of the present disturbances. New York: Kelley. 1831 A Letter to Lord Howick: On a Legal Provision for the Irish Poor, Commutation of Tithes, and a Provision for the Irish Roman Catholic Clergy. London: Murray. 1835 On National Property and on the Prospects of the Present Administration and Their Successors. London: Fellowes. (1836) 1951 An Outline of the Science of Political Economy. New York: Kelley. (1837) 1844 Letters on the Factory Act as It Affects the Cotton Manufacture, Addressed to the Right Honourable President of the Board of Trade. London: Fellowes. 1847 A Lecture on the Production of Wealth. Oxford: Combe. 1852 Four Introductory Lectures on Political Economy. London: Longmans. 1859 A Journal Kept in Turkey and Greece in the Autumn of 1857, and the Beginning of 1858. London: Longmans. Conversations and Journals in Egypt and Malta. London: Low, 1882. Historical and Philosophical Essays. 2 vols. London: Longmans, 1865. Industrial Efficiency and Social Economy. Essays edited by S. Leon Levy. New York: Holt, 1928. Journals, Conversations and Essays Relating to Ireland. London: Longmans, 1868. Journals Kept in France and Italy From 1848 to 1852: With a Sketch of the Revolution of 1848. 2 vols. London: King, 1871. SUPPLEMENTARY BIBLIOGRAPHY BOWLEY, MARIAN 1937 Nassau Senior and Classical Economics. London: Allen & Unwin. -> Contains a bibliography of Senior's published and unpublished writings. LEVY, S. LEON 1943 Nassau W. Senior: The Prophet of Modern Capitalism. Boston: Humphries. ROBBINS, LIONEL 1952 The Theory of Economic Policy in English Classical Political Economy. London: Mac-
millan.
SCHUMPETER, JOSEPH A. (1954) 1960 History of Economic Analysis. Edited by E. B. Schumpeter. New York: Oxford Univ. Press. TAUSSIG, FRANK W. (1896) 1932 Wages and Capital: An Examination of the Wages Fund Doctrine. London School of Economics and Political Science.
SENSES i. OVERVIEW ii. CENTRAL MECHANISMS
F. A. Mote Ragnar Granit
OVERVIEW
In any consideration of behavior it is important to have knowledge of the senses, for the first step in an organism's adjustment to its environment is sensory stimulation. The behavior of primitive organisms is simple and limited; this is so partly because their receiving mechanisms are of such a nature and so structured that the organisms can sense only gross changes in their restricted environment. Higher forms of life have more numerous, more complex, and more sensitive mechanisms; therefore, it is possible for them to react to more environmental changes as well as to changes of wider range and greater subtlety. At the human level the mechanisms have become so specialized, and the environment is so complex, that to understand much of man's most significant behavior, it is necessary to know about the receptor systems by which he senses and adjusts to his varied and changing world. Classification of senses Although it is popularly believed there are only five senses, there are actually more. No specific number can be stated because it will vary from one listing to another, depending upon the criteria used to classify the senses. A set of criteria often used consists of the kind of subjective experience involved—visual, olfactory, tactile, etc.—the type of stimulus, and the sense organ, or receptor. Table 1 outlines this scheme. The nature of sensory experiences The stimulation of a sense organ results in a unique kind of experience, and the differences in kind are what we identify in speaking of auditory, taste, and other types of sensations. The traditional five senses of sight, hearing, taste, smell, and touch have been defined this way since the time of Aristotle, but it has long been known that these do not make the complete list, since sensations of warmth, cold, heat, and pain—in addition to
SENSES: Overview
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Table 1 — Scheme for classifying senses Subjective experience
Stimulus
Vision Hearing
Electromagnetic radiations Pressure of sound waves
Taste
Various substances in solution
Smell
Various vaporized materials
Touch
Deformation of skin, mucous membrane, internal organs, etc., by stretching, pulling, and similar stimulation Pressure in excess of that required for touch, distension of internal organs, etc. Contact by stimulus above "physiological zero," radiant heat, elevation of temperature of surrounding medium Contact by stimulus below "physiological zero," lowering of temperature of surrounding medium Various electrical, thermal, mechanical, chemical, and other agents, e.g., electric shock, radiant heat, puncture, some acids, etc. Linear and rotational acceleration, head and body position and movement
Pressure ("deep," i.e., subcutaneous and internal pressure) Warmth
Cold
Pain
Vestibular (equilibrium, labyrinthine)
Kinesthesis (movement "muscle sense")
and
Movement of muscles, tendons, and joints
touch—can be aroused when the skin is stimulated. Even when these are included, the list is still far too short because movement, pressure, fatigue, nausea, and many others that could be named are experienced as sensations just as much as, let us say, taste and sight. In addition to the differences in kind of sensation from one sense to another, there are also differences in quality within each sense. Not only is taste as a class of sensations different from sight, but the taste quality of sweetness is different from that of sourness, and the visual quality of whiteness different from that of other colors. The number of sensations and their variations and combinations is infinite. To order the domain of the sensations, Hermann von Helmholtz introduced the concept of modality, which is denned as the class of sensations, all of which are alike.
Receptor Rods and cones of the retina Hair cells of the organ of Corti of the inner ear Taste cells in taste buds of the tongue Bipolar neurons of olfactory nerve in olfactory epithelium in upper nasal cavity Free nerve endings
Pacinian corpuscles in subcutaneous tissue and internal organs Receptor uncerfain or disputed
Receptor uncertain or disputed
Free nerve endings
Cristae of semicircular canals and otoliths of macula of utricle and sacule (all parts of nonauditory portion of inner ear) Various receptors in muscles, tendons, and joints, e.g., spray-type nerve endings and free nerve endings in muscular tissue and joints, Golgi tendon organs, modified Pacinian corpuscles
Intensity. The basic aspects of sensation are intensity, sensory modality, and sensory quality. First, let us briefly consider sensation intensity. Most sense organs are specialized; that is, they are composed of receptor elements whose threshold of excitability is lower for one form of energy than for any other. This particular type of energy is known as the adequate stimulus. Receptors will react to other stimuli—for example, the application of an electric current or pressure on the eyeball will arouse visual sensations—but the energy required is greater; such stimuli are often referred to as inadequate. Absolute threshold. The minimum amount of the adequate stimulus necessary to excite a sense organ is called the absolute threshold. For some senses the energy required is extremely small; for instance, at the absolute threshold for human vi-
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sion the rods can respond when they absorb only 6-10 light quanta, and it has been calculated that movements of the eardrum of the order of 10~9 cm. can excite the auditory system. Differential threshold. The senses, however, do more than detect the presence or absence of stimulation; they respond to differences in stimulus magnitude. As the value of the stimulus is increased above the absolute threshold, the sensation experienced becomes more intense—the light becomes brighter and the sound louder. But it is also important to know how much difference there must be so that one light can be seen as brighter than another or what change in sound frequency is required in order to be able to recognize that two tones differ. This is the problem of the differential threshold, defined as the just noticeable difference in stimulation. The size of the differential threshold is a measure of receptor sensitivity; when the just noticeable difference is small, sensitivity is high, when this difference is large, sensitivity is low. Work of Weber and Fechner. E. H. Weber's research in the 1830s and 1840s led him to conclude that the just noticeable difference in stimulus intensities, AI, depends upon the ratio of their magnitudes, that is, AI = Ii/L, and that for a given class of stimuli the ratio is constant. Thus, if a light intensity of 11 units can be discriminated as just noticeably brighter than one of 10 units, then a light intensity must be of 110 units to be discriminated from one of 100 units, and so on—the constant ratio being ^ in this example. Although he knew the value of the ratio varied from one class of stimuli to another, Weber believed it was constant for any given class, a generalization that has usually been found to hold true for only a part of the total range of magnitude for any stimulus class. Gustav Fechner applied Weber's findings about intensities of stimuli to intensities of sensation, assuming that a just noticeable increase in stimulus intensity meant there was a constant increment in sensation intensity. He believed the quantitative relationship between stimulus and sensation was logarithmic, and in 1860 he expressed this in his famous psychophysical law: S = k log I, where S is sensation intensity and I is stimulus intensity (Boring 1942). [A more detailed treatment of thresholds, the relationship between stimulus magnitude and sensation intensity, and the problems and methods involved in their measurement will be found in PSYCHOPHYSICS ; see also the biographies of FECHNER and WEBER, ERNST HEINRICH.] Sensory modalities. Although the importance of sensation intensity has always been recognized, most of the interest in the senses has centered
about the problems of sensory modality and the quality differences within a modality. Our daily experiences seem to provide the answer to the question "What is there about the stimulus, the sense organ, or the nervous system that explains sensory modality?" To common sense it appears self-evident that, although the nervous system transmits neural activity to the brain, where sensory experience occurs, the essential factor that accounts for sensory modality is the stimulussense organ relationship. This determines which experience takes place in the brain. Thus, the color of the grass stimulates the eye, and we have the sensation of greenness; the singing of the bird falls on the ear, and we hear; the skin senses the warmth of the sunshine and the cool of the shade. In order to experience a particular sensation, it is simply a matter of the natural stimulus exciting the appropriate sense organ. However, it is not only the "natural" stimulus that can arouse a given sensation. For example, a blow on the head will evoke visual sensations and make the ears ring; the usual stimulus for dizziness is spinning or rotating the body, but rotating the visual field will have the same effect; a very warm stimulus may be felt as cold when applied to a cold-sensitive spot on the skin—the "paradoxical cold" phenomenon. These examples demonstrate an important fact: no matter how it is excited, whenever a specific sense organ is stimulated, the sensation is always the same. Yet it is not necessary for the sense organ itself to be stimulated in order for its appropriate modality of sensation to be experienced. For instance, when the optic nerve is cut, a flash of light is seen, and after amputation of an arm there may be reports of touch, itching, pain, and other sensations that are felt as coming from the missing hand and fingers. [See BODY IMAGE.] Doctrine of specific nerve energies. If neither a particular stimulus nor stimulation of a particular sense organ is essential, then there must be something about the nervous system that is the necessary factor determining sensory modality. It is this conclusion that Johannes Miiller stated in his doctrine, or law, of specific nerve energies (Boring 1942). It was Miiller's hypothesis that each sensory nerve has its unique "energy," or quality. Miiller's hypothesis declares that sound is sensed because of the unique specific energy of the auditory nerve, smell because of the specific energy of the olfactory nerve, and the other sense modalities because of similar specific energies—and the modalities differ because the specific nerve energies are different. Although no property of sensory nerves has ever been found which supports the specific-energy
SENSES: Overview concept, Miiller's doctrine has been very influential in theory and research upon the senses. It led investigators to look for specialized receptors which, when they activate their sensory nerve, arouse a particular type of sensation [see MULLER, JOHANNES]. Problem of special receptors. For most of the senses an interrelationship can be found which involves an adequate stimulus, a specialized receptor, and a specific modality of sensation. Light stimulates the rods and cones of the retina, and we see; substances stimulate the taste buds of the tongue, and we taste. Relations of this sort can be found for many modalities. However, such information about some senses is uncertain, and our knowledge of how sensations evoked by stimulation of the skin are mediated is an example of this. The skin is not uniformly sensitive but has "spots" of sensitivity that respond to touch, temperature, etc. Under most conditions no temperature is felt at a given cutaneous region; it is at "physiological zero." Upon being stimulated point by point by a stimulus above this zero value, warmth is not felt at all points nor is cold when a stimulus below this value is used; warm and cold sensations are only reported upon stimulation at certain spots, and the number and location of these are different for the two kinds of stimuli. This finding has been interpreted as indicating the existence of a special receptor for warmth and a different one for cold at each temperature-sensitive spot. A similar interpretation has been proposed for touch, one type of receptor to serve for hairy skin and another type for hairless. Because of their number and nearness to pain-sensitive spots, the free nerve endings are considered to mediate pain. Although the free nerve endings usually are not considered to be specialized receptors, when they are appropriately stimulated, touch and temperature will also be sensed (Weddell 1955). The cutaneous senses have sometimes been discussed in terms of a conception of modality which implicitly assumes there must be four morphologically distinct types of receptors. But the fact that all the cutaneous modalities can be evoked by stimulating the free nerve endings casts doubt upon the necessity to assume distinct receptor types. The meaning of cutaneous sensation also requires clarification. "Touch," "warmth," "cold," and "pain" do not designate unique sensations perceived in isolation; such terms refer to the predominant experience aroused by particular stimuli. A stimulus above physiological zero applied to the skin evokes warmth as the primary feeling, but the stimulus is also felt as a touch at a particular location, and it is perceived as having temporal and spatial charac-
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teristics. This example also illustrates an important phenomenon, that of sensory interaction. The inputs from sensory systems interact at the higher nervous centers and are integrated there so as to give us our perceptions of the environment. [See SKIN SENSES AND KINESTHESIS.]
Sensation quality. To speak of sensation is also to speak of sensation quality; the two are inseparable. Visual sensations are white, or gray, or red, or yellow; a pain is "dull," or "aching," or "throbbing"; and similarly for all the senses. The usual method of investigating sensory quality has been to search for the aspects of the stimulus which correlate with quality and variations in quality. For many of the senses some of the most important correlations are known and the factors involved have been studied for many years. For vision the wave length of the light and color quality are correlated; sound frequency correlates with pitch, and the pattern of overtones with the characteristic timbre of musical instruments and the voice; lightly stroking the skin evokes the touch quality of tickling, and so on. Much of our knowledge about the senses consists of information of this sort, and many of the most important generalizations and theories about the senses, such as the Young-Helmholtz theory of color vision and the place theory of pitch for hearing, are explanations of sensory quality [see HELMHOLTZ]. Receptor-quality correlations. Obviously, before there can be any satisfactory scientific understanding, the receptor and the quality that are involved in the stimulus-quality correlation must be known. For some senses our knowledge about one or the other of these is questionable. In the case of thermal sensitivity the stimulation is temperature above or below physiological zero, and the sensory quality is warmth or cold, but since there is uncertainty about how thermal sensitivity is mediated, little that is conclusive can be said about any correlation. In the case of olfaction there is the opposite difficulty; here there is no question about the receptor, but anywhere from three to nine classes of odor qualities have been proposed. Since agreement has not been reached about the analysis of the qualities, here too no satisfactory stimulus—quality correlation can be established. Localization in the brain. When it became clear that Miiller's specific nerve-energy concept was not tenable, the only reasonable alternative hypothesis seemed to be one which he had considered as a possibility, namely, that when a sense organ is stimulated, its sensory nerve sets up excitation in a particular region in the brain; there is specificity because nerves from different sense organs go to different regions. Specificity does exist in the sense
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SENSES: Overview
that the optic-nerve radiations terminate in the occipital lobe of the brain, and hence this is the visual center; the auditory nerve ends in the temporal region, and this is the auditory center, and so on. However, although occasionally someone has entertained the possibility of something like them, no "green center," "warm center," or "center" for sweet tastes or flowery odors and the like has been found. Such a conception of specificity is too simple. [See NERVOUS SYSTEM, article on STRUCTURE AND FUNCTION OF THE BRAIN.]
Methods and findings Within this century the most significant contributions to the understanding of the senses have come from electrophysiological investigations. By appropriate techniques the responses of individual receptors and of single nerve fibers can be studied as the stimuli are varied. Under most conditions of stimulation the electrical changes recorded from a single nerve unit are a series of discharges, all of the same size, and the unit is therefore said to show all-or-none response. As intensity of stimulation is increased or decreased, it is not the magnitude of discharge of the nerve that varies, but its frequency; and when records are taken from several units, it is found that variation in stimulus intensity is also reflected in the number of units responding. The frequency of unit discharge and the number of units excited are considered to be the basic neural correlates of the dimension of sensation intensity. Recent research on the electrophysiology of taste has provided data and information which show that some of the ways of looking upon sensation and sensation quality must be reconsidered. That the taste cell of the taste bud is the receptor for taste has long been known, and although from time to time different classifications of primary taste qualities have been proposed, it was finally agreed that there are four: sour, salty, sweet, and bitter. Most of the taste buds are found in small elevations on the tongue known as papillae. Individual papillae have been found which respond exclusively to salt, to sour, and to sweet, but most are stimulated by substances which evoke more than one quality. Recordings have been made of the electrical activity of single units of the nerves supplying various animal taste buds when these are being stimulated by weak acids, sodium chloride, sugar, quinine, and other substances that evoke the different primary taste qualities in the human subject. Such records show that most units respond to more than one substance, and from one unit to another there is variation in the degree of response to different substances. For example, one
unit might respond to both hydrochloric acid and sodium chloride, but in a different degree to each; another unit might respond to the same concentration of these, but to another degree for each, and in addition it might respond to quinine. A third unit might, again, respond to both the acid and the salt at the same concentration, and to still a different degree for each, and to sucrose as well. Thus, although many units may respond to stimuli for the primary taste qualities, each may have its own response "spectrum," or characteristic pattern of sensitivity. Such findings do not support a simple view of four basic receptor-cell or nerve-unit types corresponding to the four taste qualities. "Sweet," "sour," etc. are probably best considered as descriptive headings for taste qualities, rather than as terms signifying any sort of entity. It appears then that neither the responses of individual cells nor of single neural units determine taste quality—it is the patterning of sensory nerve activity which provides the basis for taste discrimination (Pfaffmann 1962). Electrophysiological methods have been used to investigate the individual receptor elements, the nerve pathways, and the cortical centers for all the senses; information that could have been obtained in no other way has been gathered. By such methods new discoveries have been made which show that some of the traditional views and theories about the senses are too simple and inadequate. [See NERVOUS SYSTEM, article on ELECTROENCEPHALOGRAPHY.l
In the past the senses were studied for the purpose of explaining sensations and their qualities. Now there is less emphasis on this, and the senses are being studied in and for themselves in order to gain knowledge about their properties and their processes. Work undertaken with this new purpose is not only giving us better knowledge of sensations and qualities but it is also giving us a larger view of the senses and the part they play in the behavior of organisms. F. A. MOTE [Directly related are the entries HEARING; PAIN; SKIN SENSES AND KINESTHESIS; TASTE AND SMELL; Vl-
SION. Other relevant material may be found in ATTENTION; NERVOUS SYSTEM, article on STRUCTURE AND FUNCTION OF THE BRAIN; PSYCHOPHYSICS; and in the biographies of FECHNER; HELMHOLTZ; HERING; MULLER, JOHANNES; WEBER, ERNST HEINRICH; WUNDT.] BIBLIOGRAPHY BORING, EDWIN G. 1942 Sensation and Perception in the History of Experimental Psychology. New York: Appleton.
SENSES: Central Mechanisms GELDARD, FRANK A. 1953 The Human Senses. New York: Wiley. PFAFFMAN, CARL 1962 Sensory Processes and Their Relation to Behavior: Studies on the Sense of Taste as a Model S R System. Volume 4, pages 380-416 in Sigmund Koch (editor), Psychology: A Study of A Science. New York: McGraw-Hill. PIERON, HENRI (1945) 1952 The Sensations: Their Functions, Processes, and Mechanisms. New Haven: Yale Univ. Press; London: Miiller. -» First published as Aux sources de la connaissance: La sensation, guide de vie. SYMPOSIUM ON PRINCIPLES OF SENSORY COMMUNICATION, ENDICOTT HOUSE, 1959 1961 Sensory Communication: Contributions. Cambridge, Mass.: M.I.T. Press. WEDDELL, G. 1955 Somesthesis and the Chemical Senses. Annual Review of Psychology 6:119-136. II CENTRAL MECHANISMS
Physiology had very little precise information concerning central mechanisms of sensation until the advent of the micromethods of modern neurophysiology. The well-known basic facts concerning specific cortical projection areas for vision, hearing, etc., more properly belong to the conceptual sphere of functional anatomy and pathology. This article will attempt to make some sense out of the less accessible results dealing with the organization of sensory messages and their transmission as revealed by microtechniques in terms of single fibers and individual cells. The central mechanisms of sensation come into operation at the first synapse which the neural message encounters on its way from the sense organ. In the eye and the ear, for instance, this synapse is located in the periphery at the base of the receptors themselves. For afferents leading from receptors in the skin, the synapse is found in the spinal cord and in its upper extension, the medulla oblongata. In the eye the message is twice reorganized before it reaches the optic nerve, at the synapse of the receptor and bipolar cells and at the synapse of the bipolar and ganglion cells. There, some "sharpening" of the information takes place, aided as we shall see, by the mobility of the eye. Skin and muscular afferents are synaptically connected in the spinal cord to elaborate reflex systems that in turn are controlled by internuncial cells (interneurons) run by centripetal circuits that can redirect, inhibit, or facilitate the passage of information. The sense organs whose central mechanisms have been most carefully studied are the eye, the ear, and the muscle spindles. These will be used to illustrate some of the leading principles that have emerged from such work. Let us first consider the extremely high sensitivity of the sense organs. If this sensitivity were
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always fully utilized and its effect transmitted to the cortex, the higher centers would be at the mercy of an impulse barrage that would depolarize their neurons to a level fatal for organized life. Obviously situations exist in which full sensitivity is needed, as in extreme twilight vision for the eye, or in the minute adjustments of muscle length made by the spindle organs. But the eye must also be able to function in brightest sunlight, and most muscular movements are coarse and would be disturbed by excessive spindle discharges, which as we know, are returned reflexively to the muscles in which these organs are situated. These two examples suffice to show that sensitivity must be regulated. Much of the most important work on central afferent mechanisms has been devoted to the elucidation of both local and distant (or centripetal) controlling mechanisms that act internally on the neurons or receptors themselves. These are distinct from well-known external mechanisms, such as pupillary reflexes and activities of the stapedius and tensor tympani muscles in the middle ear. An important restrictive peripheral mechanism requiring brief mention is the adaptation of the receptors that is expressed in a reduction of impulse frequency as a function of the length of time of stimulation (Adrian 1928). The so-called light and dark adaptation of the retina is a borderline case: there is a peripheral shift from rod, or scotopic, vision based on rhodopsin to cone, or photopic, vision as the level of illumination increases, but neural mechanisms within the retinal center itself are also deeply engaged in the adaptive adjustments of the sensitivity of the eye. The details of their mode of operation are not as well known as one could desire. Their existence, however, is well established by several workers (summarized in Granit 1962). Relays and transmission. At an earlier time, the different synaptic stations traversed by a message were regarded merely as relays, a loosely defined function quite apart from the complications alluded to above. We realize today that afferent messages from different receptors at a relaying neuron may be mixed in different ways by the manner in which their afferent terminals converge and that controlling mechanisms interfere at each station, either to specify, amplify, or partially or wholly block a message. Nevertheless, there is always some relay function involved, in the sense that even a modified impulse message must be transmitted to the next station with some fidelity as to its "quantity." Since impulse frequency (in addition to the number of active cells) is a most important determinant of quantity or intensity, clearly there must be a mechanism for relaying it
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with a good margin of safety. One factor making a relay reasonably reliable is "synaptic density." A relay could be made to transmit with an equal margin of safety without a dense synaptic projection, but in such systems facilitatory or inhibitory controls would be relatively more important in deciding under what circumstances maximum output would be permitted. At each relay, impulse frequency is translated at the cell membrane into miniature synaptic currents which can be recorded (through microelectrodes introduced into the cell and connected to amplifiers) as miniature potentials (see Eccles 1957; 1964). These indicate depolarization when the input is excitatory and the opposite, or hyperpolarization, when the input is inhibitory. Several sense organs have both inhibitory and excitatory afferents, the classical example being the large spindle afferents with reciprocally connected inhibitory and excitatory terminals to the protagonist and antagonist ventral horn cells, respectively. In an excitatory relay of substantial synaptic density, the miniature synaptic currents are in one direction, all depolarizing, and hence will produce a graded change, the depolarizing current, often recordable in terms of electrical potential. Eccles (1957; 1964) calls it the postsynaptic excitatory potential. It will be translated into an impulse discharge. Imitating this process by injecting current through the tip of an intracellular electrode, one finds impulse frequency directly proportional to current strength (Granit et al. 1963). At the next relay these impulses will produce an amount of excitatory current dependent upon the frequency of discharge and the synaptic density. Is this process also directly proportional to impulse frequency? Indirect evidence supports this proposition (see below). The relay function of an afferent neuron lying in the path of the message to the cortex thus consists in translating an impulse barrage into depolarizing current and that once again into an impulse barrage and so on alternately at each subsequent station. Since proportionality is maintained, the message can be transmitted without distortion of the relative order of magnitude. The lemniscal path seems to exhibit the simple relay function described (Mountcastle 1961). The proportionality constants relating depolarizing current strength to impulse frequency are known to vary, and thus if they happened to be large, a sensory effect could be stepped up by amplification; if not, the initial frequency of discharge may be reproduced at the end station in its original version. When more complex functions are considered, the simple picture drawn above of a pure relay
function ceases to be sufficient. Transmission will then be greatly influenced by internuncial cells that "take orders" from elsewhere. A large number of them characteristically fire rapid bursts of impulses when stimulated by a single shock. When tested for their impulse-producing capacity by injected currents, these cells have been proved to possess very large proportionality constants, meaning that very small amounts of current elicit fast frequencies of discharge. Such cells are therefore well suited for "biasing," in the positive or negative direction, the relays upon which they impinge. Specific and diffuse afferents. When a sense organ has to deliver specific information of a more discriminative nature referring to spatial localization or some modality, this information is arranged spatially with considerable precision both at intermediate and at end stations. Topographic differentiation by means of somatotopic afferents is thus a major analytical tool of the physiological organization by which input is differentiated. In vision the physiological maps are particularly precise. The eyes, for instance, are represented by alternate layers in the geniculate body in such a manner as to join corresponding points of the retinal field in identical layers. The information, thus organized, is delivered to a cortical map of great precision. For touch, Woolsey (1952) has worked out detailed cortical charts by the method of evoked potential. Even quality may in some systems be mapped out. This is the case in the cortical area for tonal representation (Tunturi 1950). Examples could be multiplied to show how information on the structure of bodily space is charted in this manner by localized signals. Differentiation by the basic principle of maintaining the topography of sensory impulses from sense organ to cortex is, however, not the only afferent mechanism known. There are also cells which serve diffuse or nonspecific functions. This concept is not easy to define with precision. Perhaps the best way of defining a diffuse afferent system is to call it "a system of cells on each of which afferent fibers of several modalities converge," or if the afferents be of one modality, "cells receiving projections from an extensive section or area of the body." Magoun's (1950) concept of the ascending reticular system is of the former type, in which neurons in the brain stem receive terminals from afferents representing a large number of different modalities, as proved in unit analysis by Moruzzi and his co-workers (Scheibel et al. 1955). Of the other type is the spinothalamic system, whose thalamic neurons have receptive fields which may include one half or the whole of the
SENSES: Central Mechanisms body (Mountcastle 1961). They may, however, have terminals from two modalities (if pain be a modality) because nociceptive stimuli also discharge the cells which are sensitive to mechanical stimulation of the skin. In the retina the giant ganglion cells have branches that collect information across an area with a diameter of maximally 1 mm., representing several hundred thousand receptors, both rods and cones. Within the tactile system of the gracilis nucleus of the dorsal-column afferents, there are separate cells for localized messages and for highly convergent information coming from a large area. What function should be assigned to diffuse systems? Only a partial answer can be given. For the reticular activating system, Starzl, Taylor, and Magoun (1951) suggest (as does the name itself) that it plays the role of keeping the brain alert and active, since somnolence occurs when this portion of the brain stem is removed. Granit (1955), drawing attention to the widespread spontaneous activity of nerve cells, has made two suggestions: (1) that the diffuse sensory input serves an energizing function; that is, it maintains some basic depolarization by random impulses which is necessary for the upkeep of spontaneous activity in the higher centers; and (2) that spontaneous activity in its turn is necessary as a background for the central recognition of inhibition. As we shall see below, inhibition is necessary in discrimination, but it needs a background of central excitation in order to be "informative." In studying intracellularly the afferent input from stretch receptors, we have been able to demonstrate (Granit et al. 1964) that, unless the cell (a motoneuron) is depolarized to some extent, both inhibitory and excitatory effects of stretch tend to be dissipated as sheer noise consisting of miniature potentials at the cell membrane, while in slightly depolarized cells, excitations really excite and inhibitions really inhibit. The final cell. The neurophysiologist whose understanding depends on interpreting "spikes" (impulses) or membrane events (synaptic activation noise, membrane potential) has no experimentally based philosophy as to which, if any, of his indices comes close to the conceptual world of psychology. So far he has done best on spikes and has been tacitly inclined to imagine that unless a cortical cell delivers spikes, it is of but modest interest in the nervous machinery designed for discrimination of one message from another. Yet, while he is recording from the "final cell" in a cortical layer, no neurophysiologist is likely to believe that he is doing anything more than sampling one link in an organization of cortical cells that, ac-
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cording to the anatomist Ramon y Cajal (1923), consists of a "cortical sector" (a "cone" would have been a more appropriate term) with its top downwards. Within this sector the cells are linked vertically. Physiological research (see below) has recently been able to make valuable use of Ramon's concept. The role of inhibition. Impulse recording made it possible for the first time to assign definite tasks to nervous inhibition in the elaboration of the sensory message. Previously, central inhibition had been measurable only in reflex work, using muscular contraction or secretion as indices. Graded excitation (depolarizing current) has its equivalent antagonist in graded inhibition (hyperpolarizing current), often recordable by the intracellular technique as the "inhibitory postsynaptic potential" (Eccles 1957; 1964). However, most information of interest for the present theme has been obtained in terms of a reduction of impulse frequency. Inhibition within a sensory system achieved functional prominence in the vertebrate retina for the first time when it was shown that the off-discharge at cessation of illumination was preceded by inhibition and easily inhibited by reillumination (Granit & Therman 1935; Hartline 1938). The retina is our most highly developed sense organ, and if natural stimulation of it by light could stop a discharge as well as start it, then surely inhibition is of first importance. The on-off pattern of discharge delivered by the individual optic nerve fibers was later also seen in the auditory system (Bremer 1943). However, in vision its significance is far better understood, apparently because the spatial element of the organ of sight is more accessible to analysis. From the beginning it was held that the on-off units of the retina would blaze the trail of a moving object with a recognizable spike pattern and that, similarly, contours would be emphasized because both regular and small, irregular eye movements light it up with on-off spikes. It has since been shown in precise experiments (Ditchburn 1955) that if the image on the human retina is maintained stationary by appropriate optical arrangements compensating for slight, unavoidable eye movements, then it also tends to fade out. The on-off element, and likewise a smaller number of pure "on" and pure "off" elements, represents a receptive field of convergence together with an analyzer residing in the nervous structure between receptors and the ganglion cell whose message is recorded. The size and organization of the receptive field were first studied, with the aid of small spots of light, by Hartline (1940) in the frog and
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then in the cat (Kuffler 1953), where they were found to be differentiated to the extent that they possess a center that is either "on" or "off." In both cases the surrounding part of the field had the opposite character. In the goldfish the receptive field has also been investigated with respect to wave-length sensitivity, and it has been found that this antagonism between center and periphery with respect to on and off may also be an antagonism in terms of spectral regions of sensitivity. The overlapping mosaic of receptive fields thus forms a dynamic interaction pattern which, transmitted up the optic nerve, can do justice to the infinite variety of form, movement, and color that a moving animal has to interpret and that it ultimately reproduces in the form of a stable world of sight. In this act inhibition is just as vital as excitation. Recurrent inhibition. Recurrent inhibition is another significant and apparently common process in the organization of the sensory (and motor) message because it rejects unwanted components, emphasizes differences of "quantity" within a complex message, and apparently also stabilizes a steady discharge. Its basis is the common occurrence in all centers of recurrent collateral fibers returning directly or across an interneuron to the cell or cell system from which the parent fiber emerged. Most of our knowledge of this process, inasmuch as it consists of precise measurements, derives from cells as different as vertebrate ventral horn cells and the horseshoe crab (Limulus) ommatidia. In the latter case (Hartline & Ratliff 1958) the afferent large axon from each ommatidium sends fibers with inhibitory axo-axonic synapses to adjacent axons. Assume that an image is focused onto some ommatidia with irradiated light unavoidably spreading across surrounding ones. The ommatidia in focus will fire at higher frequencies than those in the surrounds. The recurrent inhibition has proved to be proportional to impulse frequency and hence the focal cells will inhibit those in the neighborhood more than the latter can inhibit them. As a consequence the image will be sharpened by "contrast." Nature has preserved, as it were, the idea of recurrent, or "lateral," inhibition (in Hartline's terminology) through countless ages of phylogenetic development; recurrent fibers are found in most centers, both motor and sensory. In the ventral horn cells (Granit & Renkin 1961), in addition to "motor contrast," a stabilizing effect on the discharge frequency in tonically active cells can be demonstrated. While in the Limulus the mechanism appears to be wholly automatic, in the ventral horn cells it is provided with an internuncial neu-
ron, the so-called Renshaw cell, and hence is facultative (for a summary, see Granit 1963). These cases of recurrent inhibition are the only ones analyzed in detail, but further developments can be expected, since qualitative work has already been done, for instance, in the hippocampus, in the olfactory bulb, and in the gracilis nucleus. Lateral inhibitory effects delimiting the area stimulated have also been described under the heading "surround" or "afferent inhibition" by Mountcastle (1957) and his co-workers. Thus Powell and Mountcastle (1959), recording from the somatic cortical area of the macaque monkey, have found skin fields in which a central nucleus of excitation to touch was surrounded by an inhibitory zone. The mechanism in this case may well be recurrent inhibition improving at each relay definition of locality. Inhibition also apparently plays a decisive role in sharpening up information about quality. In some optic nerve fibers the spectral response in terms of threshold sensitivity appears restricted to, say, the red, green, or blue wave lengths. This is the so-called modulator type of response. The dominator type of response is sensitive across the spectrum. The modulator bands are now generally held to be caused by inhibition sharpening up color specification. Broad and narrow bands of spectral sensitivity have also been recorded from higher visual stations. A recent discussion of the neural mechanisms specifying wave length has been given by Granit (1962). As to specification of tonal quality, Galambos (1954) points out that inhibition in this system also restricts the originally broad sensitivity of the peripheral acoustic mechanism to a narrow band, a process that is likely to take place already within the cochlea. Tonal bands of different width, also depending upon the frequency range which the nerve fibers carry, are thus delivered to both the visual and the auditory cortical area. Centrifugal control. The sense organ in which centrifugal control is best understood is the muscle spindle; this organ is located within a spindle of thin muscles (so-called intrafusal muscle fibers) that are provided with special efferent fibers that can be stimulated both artificially and across natural reflex or supraspinal connections. Under such circumstances the intrafusal muscle fibers contract and thereby stretch the sensory spindle endings, which respond by discharging afferent impulses. There is a large literature in this field (Leksell 1945; Granit 1955) which cannot be reviewed here. Relevant in this connection is the principle of centripetal determination of the level of sen-
SENSES: Central Mechanisms sitivity in terms of spindle length. This is of fundamental importance because from the spindle the afferent impulses run to ventral horn cells, setting up efferent impulses to—among others—the large muscles in which the spindles are located; these muscles in turn are forced to contract until the tension on the sense organ is relieved. Thus, the length at which the muscle operates is determined by centrifugal control of spindle length, an interesting case of a centrally controlled sense organ which at the same time is a motor organ. There is also a considerable literature on the olivo-cochlear Rasmussen bundle of efferent fibers, which exert a direct inhibitory effect that can be recorded both in auditory single fibers and at the cochlea. Both crossed and uncrossed olivo-cochlear fibers exert inhibitory effects, but their significance cannot yet be said to be fully understood. A possibility is that they play a role in binaural localization. (For the relevant literature see Galambos 1956; Fex 1963.) The retina is likewise provided with centrifugal fibers, which is hardly surprising because it is a true nervous center in spite of its peripheral localization, and as pointed out above, centripetal control of nervous centers is common. The scant literature in this field has been summarized by Granit (1962). Cortical analysis. At the level of detail alluded to in this brief review, analyses are restricted to the study of the organ of sight (see Hubel & Wiesel 1959; 1963; Jung & Kornhuber 1961). Hubel and Wiesel have made a thorough investigation of the receptive fields of cortical cells stimulating the eye (of a cat) by small visual objects influencing the firing of single cortical units. The receptive fields in the cortex were found to be organized either with excitatory on- or inhibitory off-centers in the middle, the surrounds being of opposite character (see above for similarly organized retinal receptive fields). The cortical receptive fields are more elongated than the retinal ones, and they are oriented in different directions. The antagonism between center and periphery of the cortical receptive field makes stimuli covering the whole field or diffuse illumination relatively ineffective. The same properties make these fields extremely sensitive to form, size, position, and orientation of the stimulus and likewise sensitive to directional movement of a spot of light across the retina; this is easily understood, considering that a moving spot can traverse elongated fields in different directions. Some units were binocular, others monocular. Recalling that Powell and Mountcastle (1959) had found that tactile cortical regions are colum-
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nar in shape with similar responses to a microelectrode which apparently penetrates one of Ramon's sectors (see above) from above downward, Hubel and Wiesel (1963) made an analysis of receptive visual fields in a similar manner. They found a number of columns in the visual area in which receptive-field orientation was maintained, suggesting that columns of ordered sequences of field orientation are actually part of the central sensory mechanism, defined, of course, in functional terms. RAGNAR GRANIT [See also NERVOUS SYSTEM, articles on STRUCTURE AND FUNCTION OF THE BRAIN and ELECTROENCEPH-
ALOGRAPHY. Other relevant material may be found in HEARING; PAIN; PSYCHOLOGY, article on PHYSIOLOGICAL PSYCHOLOGY; SKIN SENSES AND KINESTHE-
sis; TASTE AND SMELL; VISION.] BIBLIOGRAPHY
ADRIAN, EDGAR D. (1928) 1934 The Basis of Sensation: The Action of Sense Organs. London: Christophers. BREMER, FREDERIC 1943 Etude oscillographique des reponses sensorielles de 1'aire acoustique corticale chez le chat. Archives Internationales de physiologic 53: 53-103. DITCHBURN, R. W. 1955 Eye-movements in Relation to Retinal Action. Optica acta (London) 1:171-176. ECCLES, JOHN C. 1957 The Physiology of Nerve Cells. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press. ECCLES, JOHN C. 1964 The Physiology of Synapses. Berlin: Springer. FEX, J. 1963 Crossed Cochlear Efferents Activated by Sound Through Both Ears. Acta physiologica scandinavica (Stockholm) 59 (Supplement 213) :41 only. GALAMBOS, ROBERT 1954 Neural Mechanisms of Audition. Physiological Reviews 34:497-528. GALAMBOS, ROBERT 1956 Suppression of Auditory Nerve Activity by Stimulation of Efferent Fibers to Cochlea. Journal of Neuro-physiology 19:424-437. GRANIT, RAGNAR 1955 Receptors and Sensory Perception. New Haven: Yale Univ. Press. GRANIT, RAGNAR 1962 The Visual Pathway. Pages 535796 in Hugh Davson (editor), The Eye. Volume 2: The Visual Process. New York: Academic Press. GRANIT, RAGNAR 1963 Recurrent Inhibition as a Mechanism of Control. Pages 23-37 in Progress in Brain Research. Volume 1: Brain Mechanisms. Amsterdam and New York: Elsevier. GRANIT, RAGNAR; KELLERTH, J. O.; and WILLIAMS, T. D. 1964 "Adjacent" and "Remote" Postsynaptic Inhibition in Motoneurones Stimulated by Muscle Stretch. Journal of Physiology 174:453-472. GRANIT, RAGNAR; KERNELL, D.; and SHORTESS, G. K. 1963 Quantitative Aspects of Repetitive Firing of Mammalian Motoneurones, Caused by Injected Currents. Journal of Physiology 168:911-931. GRANIT, RAGNAR; and RENKIN, BARBARA 1961 Net Depolarization and Discharge Rate of Motoneurones, as Measured by Recurrent Inhibition. Journal of Physiology 158:461-475. GRANIT, RAGNAR; and THERMAN, P. O. 1935 Excitation and Inhibition in the Retina and in the Optic Nerve. Journal of Physiology 83:359-381.
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HARTLINE, H. K. 1938 The Response of Single Optic Nerve Fibers of the Vertebrate Eye to Illumination of the Retina. American Journal of Physiology 121:400415. HARTLINE, H. K. 1940 The Receptive Field of the Optic Nerve Fibers. American Journal of Physiology 130: 690-699. HARTLINE, H. K.; and RATLIFF, FLOYD 1958 Spatial Summation of Inhibitory Influences in the Eye of Limulus, and the Mutual Interaction of Receptor Units. Journal of General Physiology 41:1049-1066. HUBEL, D. H.; and WIESEL, T. N. 1959 Receptive Fields of Single Neurones in the Cat's Striate Cortex. Journal of Physiology 148:574-591. HUBEL, D. H.; and WIESEL, T. N. 1963 Shape and Arrangement of Columns in Cat's Striate Cortex. Journal of Physiology 165:559-568. JUNG, RICHARD; and KORNHUBER, HANS (editors) 1961 Neurophysiologie und Psychophysik des visuellen Systems. The Visual System: Neurophysiology and Psychophysics. A symposium. Berlin: Springer. -» Contributions in English, German, and French. KUFFLER, STEPHEN W. 1953 Discharge Patterns and Functional Organization of Mammalian Retina. Journal of Neurophysiology 16:37-68. LAPORTE, Y.; LUNDBERG, A.; and OSCARSSON, O. 1956 Functional Organization of the Dorsal Spino-cerebellar Tract in the Cat. II: Single Fibre Recording in Flechsig's Fasciculus on Electrical Stimulation of Various Peripheral Nerves. Acta physiologica scandinamca (Stockholm) 36:188-203. LEKSELL, L. 1945 Action Potential and Excitatory Effects of Small Ventral Root Fibres to Skeletal Muscle. Acta physiologica scandinavica (Stockholm) 10 (Supplement 31):1-84. MAGOUN, H. W. 1950 Caudal and Cephalic Influences of the Brain Stem Reticular Formation. Physiological Reviews 30:459-474. MOUNTCASTLE, VERNON B. 1957 Modality and Topographic Properties of Single Neurons of Cat's Somatic Sensory Cortex. Journal of Neurophysiology 20:408— 434. MOUNTCASTLE, VERNON B. 1961 Some Functional Properties of the Somatic Afferent System. Pages 403-436 in Symposium on Principles of Sensory Communication, Endicott House, 1959, Sensory Communication. Cambridge, Mass.: M.I.T. Press. POWELL, T. P.; and MOUNTCASTLE, V. B. 1959 Some Aspects of the Functional Organization of the Cortex of the Postcentral Gyrus of the Monkey: A Correlation of Findings Obtained in a Single Unit Analysis With Cytoarchitecture. Johns Hopkins Hospital Bulletin 105:133-162. RAMON Y CAJAL, S. 1923 Studien iiber die Sehrinde der Katze. Journal fur Psychologic und Neurologic 29: 161-181. SCHEIBEL, M. et al. 1955 Convergence and Interaction of Afferent Impulses on Single Units of Reticular Formation. Journal of Neurophysiology 18:309-331. STARZL, T. E.; TAYLOR, C. W.; and MAGOUN, H. W. 1951 Collateral Afferent Excitation of Reticular Formation of Brain Stem. Journal of Neurophysiology 14:479496. TUNTURI, ARCHIE R. 1950 Physiological Determination of the Arrangement of the Afferent Connections to the Middle Ectosylvian Auditory Area in the Dog. American Journal of Physiology 162:489-502.
WOOLSEY, CLINTON N. 1952 Patterns of Localization in Sensory and Motor Areas of the Cerebral Cortex. Pages 193-206 in Milbank Memorial Fund, The Biology of Mental Health and Disease. New York: Hoeber. -» A discussion of Woolsey's article appears on pages 206-225.
SENSORY AND MOTOR DEVELOPMENT Sensory and motor functions are basic to all behavior. In its simplest form, the stimulusresponse unit of behavior is composed of a receptor (sense organ), neural impulses traveling over afferent, central, and efferent pathways, and some resultant form of motor (muscular) response. The sense organs respond selectively to various stimuli (visual, auditory, olfactory, thermal, tactual, proprioceptive, chemical, and gravitational), and the resulting responses most often involve some form of muscular reaction appropriate to the nature of the stimuli received. Developmentally, the earliest forms of behavior are simple sensorimotor reflexes. With growth, maturation, and differentiation, the senses become more acute, and the muscles become stronger and function more smoothly. At the same time, the central nervous system matures, with its increasingly meaningful accompanying sensory perceptions, and the motor responses become better organized, while many of the reflexes give way to behaviors under voluntary control. During the period of earliest development, when the changes are most rapid, there is a close coordination between structure and function. Gradually the functions become relatively independent of the structures. As the rate of growth slows, the structures differentiate, and the functional processes become increasingly complex; that is, once the basic structures are formed, there is little or no correlation between their normal variations in structural complexity or maturity and the increasing complexity and diversification of motor coordinations, perceptions, and other mental processes. Neural and cortical development. Conel's studies of the postnatal development of the human cerebral cortex (1939-1963) have been well summarized by Eichorn (1963) and by Eichorn and Jones (1958), who also point out that changes in the histologic structure coincide with developmental changes in neural function as expressed in the electroencephalogram. At birth and even at one month the cortex is very immature, with fragile cell processes, no Nissl bodies, and very few neurofibrils. The greatest cortical development occurs
SENSORY AND MOTOR DEVELOPMENT in the primary motor area of the upper trunk, leg, hand, and head, followed in order by primary somesthetic, visual, rhinencephalon (olfactory), and auditory areas, with other parts still very immature. By three months there are marked advances in the number of nerve fibers, both exogenous and associational, with greatest development in the motor area of the hand, frontal eye fields, and striate cortex (Gruner 1962). There is also over this period a rapid advance in myelinization of the neural fibers. This myelinization serves to channel the neural impulses along fibers and to reduce random spread of impulses across neurons. Again, at six months there is marked development, particularly in motor areas controlling the hand and upper trunk, leg, and head, while visual and somesthetic sensory growth is accelerated. Between 6 and 15 months the motor areas of the brain show less marked growth, with the order of maturity being hand, upper trunk, head, and leg. The primary visual area by now is second to the motor, with the visual association areas more developed than the somesthetic association areas. Parallel with these histological changes, Eichorn and Jones (1958) point out that at birth the electrical activity of the cortex is very slow and irregular, with the greatest regularity in the region of the most mature cortical structure. It is possible, however, to induce some rhythmic EEC patterns in the neonate and in the month-old infant, while between one and three months there is a shift of the EEC from random activity to some patterned slow activity in the visual and auditory sensory areas of the brain. Fetal development. We find, too, a definite parallel between early behavior and the neural histology and electrical functions in these early months. The very first actions of the fetus, according to Hooker (1943), are muscular: the rhythmic beating of the heart in the third week of gestation. This, however, is a preneural action of the heart muscle. A response (presumably neural) to stimulation was first observed at eight weeks and consisted of a lateral bending of the neck which moved the head away from a hair touching the area of the cheek. Carmichael (1946) has given an excellent account of this early fetal development. He points out the gradual involvement of the entire body and the appearance of reflexes until, by 26 weeks of gestation, the reflexes necessary to life are usually present. These reflexes include functioning of the respiratory, circulatory, and digestive systems as well as the sense organs that respond to light, sound, touch, body position, and so on.
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Sensory development Because the infant's repertoire of responses is so limited, it is difficult to obtain exact information about sensory acuities. However, it is possible to observe and record such behaviors as visual regard, pupillary reflexes to light, startle, and changes in activity level to sounds and tactile stimulation. More recently, sensory reactivity has been recorded by observing changes in EEC and in heart rate and by such devices as observing eye nystagmus to moving striped patterns (Eichorn 1963; Fantz & Ordy 1959). It is evident that the intact full-term newborn in some degree sees, hears, and responds to pressure, touch, taste, and change in temperature. There is evidence from his behavior and from the structures of the nervous system that of his various senses, vision is most developed. Vision. Changes in visual acuity during the first month appear to be very slight. As observed in a standard test of infant development, soon after birth the infant will briefly regard a large moving object (such as a person) nearby and directly in his line of vision. A little less often he will regard a small bright red object in motion, when it is held about eight inches above his eyes (Bayley 1933; White, Castle, & Held 1964). At about two weeks his gaze may follow this moving object (a red plastic ring) across his visual field—right to left or the reverse (Bayley 1933). At three weeks his eyes may follow a moving person two or three feet away. At about one month he follows the red ring with up and down eye movements and, a little later, as it is moved slowly in a circle (18 to 24 inches in diameter). At six or seven weeks the infant appears to inspect his surroundings when carried in an upright position, and he turns his eyes toward the red ring at a thirty-degree angle when it is moved into his field of vision from the side. By the fourth month the infant's retina is able to accommodate to objects at varying distances in an almost adult fashion (Haynes, White, & Held 1965). In experimental situations several investigators have found very early evidences of differentiation of visual stimuli. Several studies have shown (Berlyne 1958; Fantz 1958) that infants three to four months of age indicate preference for (that is, spend more time looking at) patterned stimuli as contrasted with plain ones. Fantz and Ordy (1959) have shown that infants under five days of age will look more at black and white patterns than at plain-colored surfaces. Doris and Cooper (1964,
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p. 456) have reported a clear correlation between age and brightness discrimination among 16 infants 4 to 69 days of age. They tested this by observing nystagmic eye movements to a moving field of black and white stripes. [See PERCEPTION, article On PERCEPTUAL DEVELOPMENT; VISION, article On EYE MOVEMENTS.] These findings are in general agreement with the responses to visual stimulation observed in the infant mental scales. Continuing with the Bayley Scale (Bayley 1933), at around two months the baby blinks at the shadow of a hand passed quickly across his eyes, he visually recognizes his mother, and his eyes follow a moving pencil; at two and one-half months he searches with his eyes for a sound, and he regards a one-inch red cube on a table when he is held upright; at three and onehalf months his eyes follow small objects, such as the red ring, a teaspoon, and a ball, as they move across the table before which he is held in a sitting position. A typical four-month-old's occupation is to inspect his own hands; at four and one-half months he regards a pellet one-quarter inch in diameter; at five months he discriminates between strangers and familiar persons (largely visually, it would appear, from the expressive nature of his gaze). This evidence of visual discrimination of patterned objects shows advancement when at twelve months he looks with interest at colored pictures in a book. Many of his behaviors in the second year give evidence of his utilization of visual discriminations as he imitates motions, builds towers of cubes, adjusts round, square, and triangular blocks into their appropriate form-board holes, and goes on to more complex operations. Increasing visual acuity in the first few months of life for premature and full-term infants has been assessed by Brown (1961). Another source of information on visual development comes from the studies of ophthalmologists. Keeney (1951) has tabulated functional development of vision and binocularity for a series of ages from the third fetal month to nine years. Many of his items are identical with, or closely similar to, those already noted. We may add sensitivity to light at the seventh fetal month and a series of visual acuity fractions starting at one year, when visual acuity is about 6/60 with imperfect fusion. At two years it is at least 6/12. At two and one-half years more mature mechanisms of accommodation result in improved acuity. At three years vision is about 6/9, at three and onehalf years fusion capacity is improving, at four years vision is near 6/6. At five years ocular pursuit is inferior to fixation, and at five and one-half
years fusion is well established and accurate. By six to six and one-half years ocular pursuit is accurate, and the average child can discriminate letters and word symbols and begin to read. Thereafter up to the age of nine, ability to tolerate prism vergences develops and continues to increase. [See VISION.] Thus, we see that even though vision is present at birth and, relative to the other senses, advanced, acuity in one aspect or another continues to increase, at least up to nine years. The changes are more rapid at first and become slower with advancing age. The eye is the most highly developed and complex of the sense organs, and we find, accordingly, that the development of visual acuity is a function of several variables, including the simple ones, brightness and hue; patterned vision, which is related to degree of complexity of both qualitative and quantitative variables; and depth discrimination, both monocular and binocular, together with the development of accommodation and convergence. Much remains to be done in clarifying and identifying the developmental aspects of all of these. In the senses generally, and most acutely in vision, the pure sensory aspects of development are confounded with perception and the meaningful and adaptive responses to the stimuli which are presented for the study of sensory discrimination. Hearing. The developmental pattern of auditory acuity is in many ways similar to that of vision. The normal newborn infant responds, by reflex startling, to a sharp, loud clack or the ringing of a bell near his ear (Bayley 1933). Ten days after birth he reacts to the lesser sound of a rattle and at twenty days to the sound of a softly speaking voice. The localization of the source of a sound is incipient in the two-and-a-half-month-old who may be seen to search with his eyes for the bell or rattle when sounded outside his field of vision. By three months his eyes will turn from the bell to the rattle and back, when they are sounded alternately while held eight inches apart in his field of vision. The four-month-old will turn to the right and the left to see the bell which has been rung opposite first one ear and then the other. There is evidence of rapid cortical development in the auditory area of the cortex in the first four months. Normal acuity appears to be well developed by this age (Wever 1949). Further changes in hearing appear to be primarily perceptual. The six- to seven-month-old is interested in producing sound. He bangs his hand or a toy on the highchair and listens. He babbles and repetitiously tries
SENSORY AND MOTOR DEVELOPMENT out syllables. At eight to nine months he listens selectively to familiar words and begins to respond appropriately to simple commands. Auditory acuity varies according to the pitch of the sound (Wever 1949, p. 364). However, this variation in pitch sensitivity appears to be a function of individual differences rather than development in the infant and child. After thirty years there is some decrement in auditory acuities, and this is greater for increasingly higher pitches (Wever 1949; Sommers, Meyer, & Fcnton 1961). [See HEARING.] Tactual and pain sensitivity. There is evidence of increasing sensitivity to pain in the first four days of life (Lipsitt & Levy 1959) and probably for a somewhat longer period of infancy. Schludermann and Zubek (1962) found no changes in pain sensitivity from age 12 through 50, though decrements occurred after that age. The young infant clearly reacts to tactual stimulation. However, skin sensitivity also appears to increase with age. For example, Ghent (1961) studied tactual thresholds in the hands of children 5 to 11 years old and found that sensitivity increased over this age range. She also found a sex difference, with girls showing greater sensitivity and approaching the adult level of sensitivity at an earlier age. [See PAIN; SKIN SENSES AND KINESTHESIS.]
Motor development The development of motor coordinations, evidenced first in simple reflexes, appears to depend on the interactions of muscular response to stimulation, growth and increasing strength of the muscles, and the development of coordination through practice. All of these are interdependent. Practice strengthens the muscles and stimulates their growth. It also promotes learning, for example, through the simultaneous stimulation of visual and muscle senses in the eye-hand coordinations involved in reaching, grasping, and manipulating small objects. In newborn infants these coordinations are seen in such reflex responses as head lifting, various postural adjustments to body position, crawling, and reflex grasping. Soon, between one and two months, we observe playful bursts of activity in the form of arm and leg thrusts. As the muscles grow stronger, the infant is able to hold his head erect, to push his chest up by his arms, to turn from his back to his side at four months, and to sit, at first with support and by six months, alone (momentarily). By three months his hands are no longer tightly fisted, and he holds a small toy with a grasp which is no longer entirely reflex.
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The six-month-old will reach for a toy with one hand. (Earlier he tends to "close in on" an object, using both hands simultaneously.) He shows early manual coordination in rotating his wrist, in partially using his thumb in opposition to his fingers, in grasping, and in trying to pick up pea-sized pellets. The eight-month-old sits alone steadily, may be starting to crawl or creep, and picks up small objects with complete thumb opposition. By nine months he can get himself into a sitting position and pull to a standing one by his crib rail. The ten-month-old creeps with agility and can often walk with help, sit down, and bring his hands together for games like pat-a-cake. The one-year-old can take a few steps alone. In the next six months he will be able to throw a ball, walk backwards, and walk up and down stairs with help. The two-year-old walks up and down the stairs without holding on, and by three years he jumps from small heights, runs, walks on tiptoe. The four-year-old can walk a line and can hop a few steps on one foot. Individual variability. There are of course, large individual differences in the age at which children become able to do these things, as well as differences in the skill and smoothness of motor coordinations. Motor skills after early infancy are very largely determined by practice. Furthermore, there is great specificity in skills. Evidently each motor function must be practiced in order for it to be performed with skill. Ability to catch a ball cannot be used to predict ability at the high jump or the broad jump. Bayley (195la), for example, found that for ages 4-2,- to 12 years, scores on a battery of ten tests of manual dexterity were unrelated to strength and showed correlations of about .40 with scores on jumping (sum of three tests) and of .28 with scores on balance (sum of five tests). Scores on jumping, balance, and strength tended to correlate with each other at around .30 for most ages. Similarly, Espenschade (1940) found for children of 13 to 17 years no relation between gross and fine motor skills, though similar gross motor activities were moderately related. For example, scores on the dash usually correlated near .60 with those for the broad jump, near .40 with the jump-andreach, and near .40 with the distance throw. Consistency over time. Correlations showing the degree to which scores are consistent over time, on total motor tests, are only moderate in young children. For example, in the Berkeley growth study Bayley (1935) found that correlations of scores at 27 and 30 months with scores at six younger age levels in the first two years are, with two exceptions, below .40. At later ages, between
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SENSORY AND MOTOR DEVELOPMENT
4 and 12 years, these Berkeley children's scores on the manual dexterity tests again show only moderate consistency over time. Scores on the 1-| year test showed correlations of .29 with scores at 4| years, .50 at 5-| years, .49 at 6|, .55 at 7J, and .49 at 8| years. Espenschade (1940) gave a series of motor tests to 160 children tested at six-month intervals between the ages of 13 and 17 years. She found a fair degree of consistency over a fouryear period for most individual children. Glassow and Kruse (1960) found similar stability in relative scores for girls aged 6 to 14 years, with the running and jumping scores more stable than scores for throwing. Inconsistency in these cases may be attributed to the fact that scores in adolescents tend to be related to the degree of physical maturity and strength. As measured by scores on standard tests of motor abilities, motor skills are seen to increase continuously through infancy and childhood. The increases are greatest in the first 18 months, after which the rate appears to decelerate gradually (Bayley 1951a). Sex differences. There is no sex difference in motor-test scores during the first 12 years (Bayley 1939). However, after this age the girls' scores tend to stabilize while the boys' scores continue to increase (Espenschade 1947). This continued increase in boys' scores is correlated with their continuing growth in strength (Govatos 1959). Furthermore, both strength and scores in gross motor abilities are correlated in boys with their degree of physical maturation (Jones 1944; Clarke & Harrison 1962). Those who are accelerated in puberal development are stronger and more skilled in gross motor coordinations than their more slowly maturing age peers. It is also true that the more muscular boys, with strongly masculine physiques, are stronger than those with less masculine builds (Bayley 1951£>). [See INDIVIDUAL DIFFERENCES, article on SEX DIFFERENCES.] Specificity. In general, after the first 15 months of age, motor skills evidence much specificity (Bayley 1951£>; Espenschade 1947; Letter 1961). It is evident "also that motor skills are very responsive to practice and training (Clarke & Henry 1961; Clarke & Petersen 1961). This appears to be evident even in the very young (Holt 1960). Within normal limits and the limits of muscular strength, it should be possible to increase specific motor skills considerably through practice. NANCY BAYLEY [See also DEVELOPMENTAL PSYCHOLOGY; INFANCY; SENSES. Related material on child development may
be found in INTELLECTUAL DEVELOPMENT; LANGUAGE, article on LANGUAGE DEVELOPMENT; MORAL DEVELOPMENT; PERSONALITY, ALITY DEVELOPMENT.]
article OU
PERSON-
BIBLIOGRAPHY
BAYLEY, NANCY 1933 Mental Growth During the First Three Years: A Developmental Study of Sixty-one Children by Repeated Tests. Genetic Psychology Monographs 14, no. 1. BAYLEY, NANCY 1935 The Development of Motor Abilities During the First Three Years. Washington: Society for Research in Child Development. BAYLEY, NANCY 1939 Mental and Motor Development From Two to Twelve Years. Review of Educational Research 9:18-37, 114-125. BAYLEY, NANCY 195la Development and Maturation. Pages 145-199 in Harry Kelson (editor), Theoretical Foundations of Psychology. Princeton, N.J.: Van Nostrand. BAYLEY, NANCY 1951& Some Psychological Correlates of Somatic Androgyny. Child Development 22:47-60. BAYLEY, NANCY; and ESPENSCHADE, ANNA 1944 Motor Development From Birth to Maturity. Review of Educational Research 14:381-389. BAYLEY, NANCY; and ESPENSCHADE, ANNA 1950 Motor Development and Decline. Review of Educational Research 20:367-37'4. BERLYNE, D. E. 1958 The Influence of the Albedo and Complexity of Stimuli on Visual Fixation in the Infant. British Journal of Psychology 49:315-318. BROWN, C. A. 1961 The Development of Visual Capacity in the Infant and Young Child. Cerebral Palsy Bulletin 3:364-372. CARMICHAEL, LEONARD (editor) (1946) 1954 Manual of Child Psychology. 2d ed. New York: Wiley. -> See especially pages 60-185, "The Onset and Early Development of Behavior." CLARKE, DAVID H.; and HENRY, FRANKLIN M. 1961 Neuro-motor Specificity and Increased Speed From Strength Development. American Association for Health, Physical Education, and Recreation, Research Quarterly 32:315-325. CLARKE, H. HARRISON; and HARRISON, JAMES C. E. 1962 Differences in Physical and Motor Traits Between Boys of Advanced, Normal and Retarded Maturity. American Association for Health, Physical Education, and Recreation, Research Quarterly 33:13-25. CLARKE, H. HARRISON; and PETERSEN, KAY H. 1961 Contrast of Maturational, Structural, and Strength Characteristics of Athletes and Nonathletes 10 to 15 Years of Age. American Association for Health, Physical Education, and Recreation, Research Quarterly 32:163-176. CONEL, JESSE L. 1939-1963 The Postnatal Development of the Human Cerebral Cortex. 7 vols. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Univ. Press. DORIS, JOHN; and COOPER, LOWELL 1964 Brightness Discrimination in Infancy. American Psychologist 19: 456 only. EICHORN, DOROTHY H. 1963 Biological Correlates of Behavior. Volume 62, pages 4-61 in National Society for the Study of Education, Yearbook. Part 1: Child Psychology. Univ. of Chicago Press. EICHORN, DOROTHY H.; and JONES, HAROLD E. 1958 Maturation and Behavior. Pages 211-248 in Georgene H. Seward and John P. Seward (editors), Current
SEQUENTIAL ANALYSIS Psychological Issues: Essays in Honor of Robert S. Woodworth. New York: Holt. ESPENSCHADE, ANNA 1940 Motor Performance in Adolescence. Society for Research in Child Development, Monographs 5, no. 1. ESPENSCHADE, ANNA 1947 Motor Development. Review of Educational Research 17:354-361. FANTZ, ROBERT L. 1958 Pattern Vision in Young Infants. Psychological Record 8:43-47. FANTZ, ROBERT L.; and ORDY, J. M. 1959 A Visual Acuity Test for Infants Under Six Months of Age. Psychological Record 9:159-164. GHENT, LILA 1961 Developmental Changes in Tactual Thresholds on Dominant and Non-dominant Sides. Journal of Comparative and Physiological Psychology 54:670-673. GLASSOW, RUTH B.; and KRUSE, PAULINE 1960 Motor Performance of Girls Age 6 to 14 Years. American Association for Health, Physical Education, and Recreation, Research Quarterly 31:426-433. GOVATOS, Louis A. 1959 Relationships and Age Differences in Growth Measures and Motor Skills. Child Development 30:333-340. GRUNER, JEAN E. 1962 Histological Study of the Maturation of the Nervous System. Developmental Medicine and Child 'Neurology 4:626-639. HAYNES, HAROLD; WHITE, BURTON L.; and HELD, RICHARD 1965 Visual Accommodation in Human Infants. Science 148:528-530. HOLT, K. S. 1960 Early Motor Development: Posturally Induced Variations. Journal of Pediatrics 57:571-575. HOOKER, DAVENPORT 1943 Reflex Activities in the Human Fetus. Pages 17-28 in Roger Barker, Jacob S. Kounin, and Herbert F. Wright (editors), Child Behavior and Development: A Course of Representative Studies. New York: McGraw-Hill. JONES, HAROLD E. 1944 The Development of Physical Abilities. Volume 43, pages 100-122 in National Society for the Study of Education, Yearbook. Part 1: Adolescence. Univ. of Chicago Press. KEENEY, ARTHUR H. 1951 Chronology of Ophthalmic Development: An Outline Summary of the Anatomical and Functional Development of the Visual Mechanism Before and After Birth. Springfield, 111.: Thomas. LIPSITT, LEWIS P.; and LEVY, NISSIM 1959 Electrotactual Threshold in the Neonate. Child Development 30:547-554. LOTTER, WILLARD S. 1961 Specificity or Generality of Speed of Systematically Related Movements. American Association for Health, Physical Education, and Recreation, Research Quarterly 32:55-62. SCHLUDERMANN, E.; and ZUBEK, JOHN P. 1962 Effect of Age on Pain Sensitivity. Perceptual and Motor Skills 14:295-301. SOMMERS, RONALD K.; MEYER, WILLIAM J.; and FENTON, ANN K. 1961 Pitch Discrimination and Articulation. Journal of Speech and Hearing Research 4:5660. WEVER, ERNEST G. 1949 Theory of Hearing. New York: Wiley. WHITE, BURTON L.; CASTLE, PETER; and HELD, RICHARD 1964 Observations on the Development of Visuallydirected Reaching. Child Development 35:349-364.
SENSORY DEPRIVATION See PERCEPTION, article on PERCEPTUAL DEPRIVATION.
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SENTIMENTS See ATTITUDES; VALUES. SEPARATION See FAMILY, article on DISORGANIZATION AND DISSOLUTION. SEPARATION OF POWERS See CONSTITUTIONAL LAW, article on DISTRIBUTION OF POWERS; FEDERALISM; PRESIDENTIAL GOVERNMENT.
SEQUENTIAL ANALYSIS Sequential analysis is the branch of statistics concerned with investigations in which the decision whether or not to stop at any stage depends on the observations previously made. The motivation for most sequential investigations is that when the ends achieved are measured against the costs incurred (including the cost of making observations), sequential designs are typically more efficient than nonsequential designs; some disadvantages of the sequential approach are discussed later. The term "sequential" is occasionally extended to cover also investigations in which various aspects of the design may be changed according to the observations made. For example, preliminary experience in an experiment may suggest changes in the treatments being compared; in a social survey a small pilot survey may lead to modifications in the design of the main investigation. In this article attention will be restricted mainly to the usual situation in which termination of a single investigation is the point at issue. In a sequential investigation observations must be examined either one by one as they are collected or at certain stages during collection. A sequential procedure might be desirable for various reasons. The investigator might wish to have an up-to-date record at any stage, either for general information or because the appropriate sample size depends on quantities that he can estimate only from the data themselves. Alternatively, he may have no intrinsic interest in the intermediate results but may be able to achieve economy in sample size by taking them into account. Three examples will illustrate these points: (1) An investigator may wish to estimate to within 10 per cent the mean weekly expenditure on tobacco per household. In order to determine the sample size he would need an estimate of the variability of the expenditure from household to house-
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hold, and this might be obtainable only from the survey itself. (2) A physician wishing to compare the effects of two drugs in the treatment of some disease may wish to stop the investigation if at some stage a convincing difference can already be demonstrated using the available data. (3) A manufacturer carrying out inspection of batches of some product may be able to pass most of his batches with little inspection but may carry out further inspection of batches of doubtful quality. A given degree of discrimination between good and bad batches could be achieved in various ways, but a sequential scheme will often be more economical than one in which a sample of constant size is taken from each batch [see QUALITY CONTROL, STATISTICAL for further discussion of such applications]. The most appropriate design and method of analysis of a sequential investigation depend on the purpose of the investigation. The statistical formulation of that purpose may take one of a number of forms, usually either estimation of some quantity to a given degree of precision or testing a hypothesis with given size and given power against a given alternative hypothesis. Economy in number of observations is typically important for sequential design. Some details of particular methods are given in later sections. Sometimes a sequential investigation, although desirable, may not be practicable. To make effective sequential use of observations they must become available without too great a delay. It would not be possible, for example, to do a sequential analysis of the effect of some social or medical policy if this effect could not be assessed until five years had elapsed. In other situations it may be possible to scrutinize the results as they are obtained, but only at very great cost. An example might be a social survey in which data could be collected rather quickly but in which a full analysis would be long and costly. History. An important precursor of the modern theory of sequential analysis was the work done in 1929 by Dodge and Romig (1929-1941) on double sampling schemes. Their problem was to specify sampling inspection schemes that discriminated between batches of good and bad quality. The first stage of sampling would always be used, but the second stage would be used only if the results of the first were equivocal; furthermore, the size of the second sample and the acceptance criteria might depend on the first stage results. Bartky (1943) generalized this idea in his "multiple sampling," which allowed many stages, and his procedure
was very closely related to a particular case of the general theory of sequential analysis that Wald was developing simultaneously. This theory, developed for the testing of military equipment during World War n, is summarized in Wald's book Sequential Analysis (1947). It represents a powerful exploitation of a single concept, the "sequential probability ratio test," which has provided the basis of most subsequent work. Related work proceeding simultaneously in Great Britain is summarized by Barnard (1946). Whereas Wald's theory provided the specification of a sampling scheme satisfying given requirements, Barnard's work was devoted to the converse problem of examining the properties of a given sequential scheme. Barnard drew attention to the close analogy between sequential inspection schemes and games of chance. Indeed, some of the solutions to gaming problems provided by seventeenth-century and eighteenth-century mathematicians are directly applicable to modern sequential schemes. Postwar theoretical development, stimulated primarily by Wald's work, has perhaps outrun practical applications. Many recent workers have apparently felt that the standard sequential theory does not provide answers to the right questions, and a number of new lines of approach have been attempted. Sequential estimation. Suppose that in a large population a proportion, p, of individuals show some characteristic (or are "marked") and that in a random sample of size n the number of marked individuals is X. Then the proportion of marked individuals is X/n. By standard binomial distribution theory, the standard error of X/n is \/p(l — p)/n. The standard error expressed as a proportion of the true value is therefore \/(l — p)/np, and when p is small this will be approximately (np)~*. Now np is the mean value of X = n(X/n}. Intuitively, therefore, one could achieve an approximately constant proportional standard error by choosing a fixed value of X. That is, sampling would be continued until a predetermined number of marked individuals had been found. This is called a "stopping rule." The sample size, n, would be a random variable. If p happened to be very small, n would tend to be very large; an increase in p would tend to cause a decrease in n. This procedure is called "inverse sampling," and its properties were first examined by Haldane (1945). At first sight it seems natural to estimate p by X/n. This estimator is slightly biased under inverse sampling, and some statisticians would use the modified estimator (X — l ) / ( n — 1), which is unbiased. Others feel that X/n is preferable despite
SEQUENTIAL ANALYSIS the bias. In most practical work the difference is negligible. Inverse sampling is one of the simplest methods of sequential estimation. One could define different stopping rules and for any particular stopping rule examine the way in which the precision of X/n varied with p; conversely, one could specify this relationship and ask what stopping rule would satisfy the requirement. If a random variable is normally distributed with mean ^ and variance cr2, a natural requirement might be to estimate /JL with a confidence interval of not greater than a given length at a certain probability level. With samples of fixed size, the length of the confidence interval depends on cr, which is typically unknown. The usual Student t procedure provides intervals of random and unbounded length. Stein (1945) describes a two-sample procedure (with preassigned confidence-interval length) in which the first sample provides an estimate of cr. This estimate then determines the size of the second sample; occasionally a second sample is not needed. This scheme leads naturally to a general approach to sequential estimation. Suppose that, as in inverse sampling, one proceeds in a fully sequential manner, taking one observation at a time, and stops when the desired level of precision is reached. This precision may be determined by customary standard error formulas. Anscombe (1953) showed that in large samples this procedure will indeed yield estimates of the required level of precision. Thus, suppose an investigator wished to estimate the mean number of persons per household in a certain area, with a standard error of 0.1 person, and he had little initial evidence about the variance of household size. He could sample the households until the standard error of the mean, given by the usual formula s/^/n, fell as low as 0.1. A practical difficulty might be that of ensuring that the sampling was random. Sequential hypothesis testing. Suppose that one wishes to test a specific hypothesis, H n , in such a way that if H0 is indeed true it will usually be accepted and that if an alternative hypothesis, H l5 is true H0 will usually be rejected. In the most elementary case HO and HT are simple hypotheses; that is, each specifies completely the probability distribution of the generic random variable, X. Suppose fo(x') and fi(x) are the probabilities (or probability densities) that X takes the value x when H0 and H! are true, respectively. Sequential probability ratio test (SPRT). Wald proposed the following method of sequential hypothesis testing. Independent observations, Xj, are taken sequentially and result in values, xi:. Define
189
two positive constants, A n and A t . At the nth stage, calculate I In
/ 1 \ ^1 / '
fon ~ f o ( * l )
I I ( >%n )
' ' ' fo(*n) '
If fi,,/f,m ^ A 0 , accept H O ; if f 1 n /f n n ^ A l 9 reject H 0 . If A,, < f 1? ,/fon < A-t, take the next observation and repeat the procedure. Wald called this procedure the "sequential probability ratio test" (SPRT). The ratio f,,,/f I I B ) normally called the "likelihood ratio," plays an important part in the Neyman—Pearson theory of hypothesis testing, a fact that probably largely explains Wald's motivation. The likelihood ratio also occurs naturally in Bayesian inference [see BAYESIAN INFERENCE]. Let a be the probability of rejecting H0 when it is true, and let ft be the probability of accepting H0 when H t is true. It can be shown that A 0 ^ /?/(! — a) and Ax ^ (1 - ft} f a and that the SPRT with A0 = ft/(I - a) and A, - (1 - ft}/a will usually have error probabilities a' and ft' rather close to a and ft. (The inequalities arise because sampling usually stops when the bounds A0 and A x are slightly exceeded rather than equaled.) The number of observations, n, required before a decision is reached is a random variable. Wald gave approximate formulas for E 0 (n) and Ei(n), the mean number of observations when H0 or Hl is true. Wald conjectured, and Wald and Wolfowitz (1948) proved, that no other test (sequential or not) having error probabilities equal to a' and ft' can have lower values for either E 0 (n) or Ei(n) than those of the SPRT. As an example, suppose that H0 specifies that the proportion, p, of "marked" individuals in a large population is p0 and that H1 states that p is p^ where p, > p0. At the nth stage, if x marked individuals have been found, the likelihood ratio is
Sampling will continue as long as I
are functions of p0, p^, a, and (3. The SPRT can thus be performed as a simple graphical procedure, with coordinate axes for x and n and two parallel boundary lines, x = a0 + bn and x = «! + bn (see Figure 1). The successive
Figure 1 — Sequential probability ratio test for binomial sampling
values of X are plotted to form a "sample path," and sampling stops when the sample path crosses either of the boundaries. Graphic solutions with parallel lines are also obtained for the test of the mean of a normal distribution with known variance and for the parameter of a Poisson distribution. The SPRT is clearly a powerful and satisfying procedure in situations where one of two simple
hypotheses is true and where the mean number of observations is an appropriate measure of the sampling effort. Unfortunately, some or all of these conditions may not hold. A continuous range of hypotheses must usually be considered; the hypotheses may not be simple; and the variability of the number of observations, as well as its mean, may be important. Suppose that there is a single parameter, 6, describing the distribution of interest, and further suppose that H0 and H± specify two particular values of 9: 0,, and 6,. For every value of 0, including 00 and 0!, quantities of interest are the probability, L(0), of accepting H0 (called the "operating characteristic" or O.C.) and the average number of observations, E0(n) (called the "average sample number," ASN, rather than the "average sample size," for obvious reasons). Approximate formulas for both these quantities are found in Wald's book (1947). The O.C. is an approximately smooth function between 0 and 1, taking the values L(0 0 ) = 1 - a, L(00 = (B (see Figure 2). The ASN, that is, E«(n), normally has a maximum for a value of 0 between 00 and 6l (see Figure 3). In the binomial problem discussed above, for example, the maximum ASN occurs close to the value p = b, for which, on the average, the sample path tends to move parallel to the boundaries. It is remarkable, though, that in many situations of practical interest this maximum value of the ASN is less than the size of the nonsequential procedure that tests H0 ASN
A
Figure 2 — Typical form of operating characteristic (O.C.)
Figure 3 — Typical form of average sample number curve
SEQUENTIAL ANALYSIS and H! with the same error probabilities as the SPRT. Closed procedures. It can be shown in most cases that an SPRT, although defined for indefinitely large n, must stop some time. Individual sample numbers may, however, be very large and the great variability in sample number from one sample to another may be a serious drawback. Wald suggested that the schemes should be "truncated" by taking the most appropriate decision if a boundary had not been reached after some arbitrary large number of readings. The properties of the SPRT are, however, affected unless the truncation sample size is very high, and a number of authors (Bross 1952; Armitage 1957; Anderson I960; Schneiderman & Armitage 1962) have recently examined closed procedures (that is, procedures with an upper bound to the number of observations) of a radically different type. In general, it seems possible to find closed procedures which are only slightly less efficient than the corresponding SPRT at H0 and H x but which are more efficient in intermediate situations. (For an account of the use of closed procedures in trials of medical treatments, see Armitage 1960.) Frequently the hypotheses to be tested will be composite rather than simple, in that the probability distribution of the observations is not completely specified. For example, in testing the mean of a normal distribution the variance may remain unspecified. Wald's approach to this problem was not altogether satisfactory and recent work (for example, following Cox 1952) has tended to develop analogues of the SPRT using sufficient statistics where possible [see SUFFICIENCY]. A sequential t-test of this type was tabulated by Arnold (see U.S. National Bureau of Standards 1951). The usual approximations to the O.C. and ASN do not apply directly in these situations. Cox (1963) has described a large-sample approach based on maximum likelihood estimates of the parameters. Two-sided tests of hypotheses. In many statistical problems two-sided tests of hypotheses are more appropriate than one-sided tests. In an experiment to compare two treatments, for example, it is customary to specify a null hypothesis that no effective difference exists and to be prepared to reject the hypothesis if differences in either direction are demonstrable. One approach to two-sided sequential tests (used, for example, in the standard sequential t-test) is to allow an alternative composite hypothesis to embrace simple hypotheses on both sides of the null hypothesis. It may be more appropriate to recognize here a three-decision problem, the decisions being to accept the null hypoth-
1 91
esis (that is, to assert no demonstrable difference), to reject it in favor of an alternative in one direction, or to reject it in the other direction. A useful device then is to run simultaneously two separate two-decision procedures, one to test H0 against H! and the other to test H0 against H[ where H: and H( are alternatives on different sides of H0 (see Sobel & Wald 1949). Other approaches. Wald's theory and the sort of developments described above are in the tradition of the Neyman-Pearson theory of hypothesis testing, with its emphasis on risks of accepting or rejecting certain hypotheses when these or other hypotheses are true. This approach is arbitrary in many respects; for example, in the SPRT there is no clear way of choosing values of a. and /3 or of specifying an alternative to a null hypothesis. Much theoretical work is now based on statistical decision theory [see DECISION THEORY; see also Wald 1950]. The aim here is to regard the end product of a statistical analysis as a decision of some sort, to measure the gains or losses that accrue, under various circumstances, when certain decisions are taken, to measure in the same units the cost of making observations, and to choose a rule of procedure that in some sense leads to the highest expectation of gain. Prior probabilities may or may not be attached to various hypotheses. With certain assumptions, the SPRT emerges as an optimal solution for the comparison of two simple hypotheses, but there is no reason to accept it as a general method of sequential analysis. Chernoff (1959) has developed a large-sample theory of the sequential design of experiments for testing composite hypotheses. The aim is to minimize cost in the limiting situation in which costs of wrong decisions far outweigh costs of experimentation. Account is taken of the choice between different types of observation (for example, the use of either of two treatments). A somewhat different approach (for instance, Wetherill 1961) is to stop an investigation as soon as the expected gain achieved by taking a further observation is outweighed by the cost of the observation. The formulation of the problem requires the specification of prior probabilities and its solution involves dynamic programming [see PROGRAMMING]. The recent interest shown in statistical inference by likelihood, with or without prior probabilities, has revealed a conflict between this approach and the more traditional methodology of statistics, involving significance tests and confidence intervals [see LIKELIHOOD]. In the likelihood approach, inferences do not depend on stopping rules. There is, on this view, no need to have a separate theory of estima-
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tion for inverse sequential sampling or to require that investigations should follow a clearly defined stopping rule before their results can be rigorously interpreted. The effect of all this work is at present hard to assess. The attraction of a global view is undeniable. On the other hand, the specification of prior distributions and losses may be prohibitively difficult in most scientific investigations. A number of workers have studied problems involving progressive changes in experimental conditions. Robbins and Monro (1951) give a method for successive approximation to the value of an independent variable, in a regression equation, corresponding to a specified mean value of the dependent variable. Similar methods for use in stimulusresponse experiments are reviewed by Wetherill (1963). In industrial statistics much attention has been given to the problem of estimating, by a sequence of experiments, the set of operating conditions giving optimal response. This work has been stimulated mainly by G. E. P. Box, whose evolutionary operation is a method by which continuous adjustments to operating conditions can be made [see EXPERIMENTAL DESIGN, article on RESPONSE SURFACES]. P. ARMITAGE [Directly related are the entries ESTIMATION; HYPOTHESIS TESTING; SCREENING AND SELECTION.] BIBLIOGRAPHY
Useful bibliographies and surveys of sequential analysis are given in Jackson I960; Johnson 1961; and Wetherill 1966. Wald 1947 remains an important source book; an elementary exposition of the SPRT, with examples, is contained in Columbia University, Statistical Research Group 1945. Armitage 1960 is concerned with medical applications. Federer 1963 discusses sequential procedures in screening and selection problems. ANDERSON, T. W. 1960 A Modification of the Sequential Probability Ratio Test to Reduce the Sample Size. Annals of Mathematical Statistics 31:165-197. ANSCOMBE, F. J. 1953 Sequential Estimation. Journal of the Royal Statistical Society Series B 15:1-29. -> Contains eight pages of discussion. ARMITAGE, P. , 1957 Restricted Sequential Procedures. Biometrika 44:9-26. ARMITAGE, P. 1960 Sequential Medical Trials. Oxford: Blackwell; Springfield, 111.: Thomas. BARNARD, G. A. 1946 Sequential Tests in Industrial Statistics. Journal of the Royal Statistical Society Supplement 8:1-26. -> Contains four pages of discussion. BARTKY, WALTER 1943 Multiple Sampling With Constant Probability. Annals of Mathematical Statistics 14:363-377. BROSS, I. 1952 Sequential Medical Plans. Biometrics 8:188-205. CHERNOFF, HERMAN 1959 Sequential Design of Experiments. Annals of Mathematical Statistics 30:755-770.
COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY, STATISTICAL RESEARCH GROUP 1945 Sequential Analysis of Statistical Data: Applications. New York: Columbia Univ. Press. Cox, D. R. 1952 Sequential Tests for Composite Hypotheses. Cambridge Philosophical Society, Proceedings 48:290-299. Cox, D. R. 1963 Large Sample Sequential Tests for Composite Hypotheses. Sankhyd: The Indian Journal of Statistics 25:5-12. DODGE, HAROLD F.; and ROMIG, HARRY G. (1929-1941) 1959 Sampling Inspection Tables: Single and Double Sampling. 2d ed., rev. & enl. New York: Wiley; London: Chapman. -» This book is a republication of fundamental papers published by the authors in 1929 and in 1941 in the Bell System Technical Journal. FEDERER, WALTER T. 1963 Procedures and Designs Useful for Screening Material in Selection and Allocation, With a Bibliography. Biometrics 19:553-587. HALDANE, J. B. S. 1945 On a Method of Estimating Frequencies. Biometrika 33:222-225. JACKSON, J. EDWARD 1960 Bibliography on Sequential Analysis. Journal of the American Statistical Association 55:561-580. JOHNSON, N. L. 1961 Sequential Analysis: A Survey. Journal of the Royal Statistical Society Series A 124: 372-411. ROBBINS, HERBERT; and MONRO, SUTTON 1951 A Stochastic Approximation Method. Annals of Mathematical Statistics 22:400-407. SCHNEIDERMAN, M. A.; and ARMITAGE, P. 1962 A Family of Closed Sequential Procedures. Biometrika 49: 41-56. SOBEL, MILTON; and WALD, ABRAHAM 1949 A Sequential Decision Procedure for Choosing One of Three Hypotheses Concerning the Unknown Mean of a Normal Distribution. Annals of Mathematical Statistics 20:502-522. STEIN, CHARLES M. 1945 A Two-sample Test for a Linear Hypothesis Whose Power is Independent of the Variance. Annals of Mathematical Statistics 16:243258. U.S. NATIONAL BUREAU OF STANDARDS 1951 Tables to Facilitate Sequential t-Tests. Edited by K. J. Arnold. National Bureau of Standards, Applied Mathematics Series, No. 7. Washington: U.S. Department of Commerce. WALD, ABRAHAM 1947 Sequential Analysis. New York: Wiley. WALD, ABRAHAM (1950)1964 Statistical Decision Functions. New York: Wiley. WALD, ABRAHAM; and WOLFOWITZ, J. (1948) 1955 Optimum Character of the Sequential Probability Ratio Test. Pages 521-534 in Abraham Wald, Selected Papers in Statistics and Probability. New York: McGrawHill. -» First published in Volume 19 of the Annals of Mathematical Statistics. WETHERILL, G. B. 1961 Bayesian Sequential Analysis. Biometrika 48:281-292. WETHERILL, G. B. 1963 Sequential Estimation of Quantal Response Curves. Journal of the Royal Statistical Society Series B 25:1-48. -> Contains nine pages of discussion. WETHERILL, G. BARRIE 1966 Sequential Methods in Statistics. New York: Wiley.
SERIAL CORRELATION See TIME SERIES.
SERRA, ANTONIO SERRA, ANTONIO Antonio Serra was an Italian economist born around the middle of the sixteenth century in Cosenza, a city of Calabria then belonging to the Kingdom of Naples. Nothing is known about his life except that he spent some time in a Neapolitan prison, charged—according to different sources—either with forging money or with participating in a conspiracy, headed by his fellow citizen Tommaso Campanella, to overthrow the Spanish government; it was in prison that he wrote his Breve trattato delle cause che possono far abbondare li regni d'oro e d'argento, dove non sono miniere, con applicazione al regno di Napoli (1613; "A Brief Treatise on the Causes That Can Make Gold and Silver Plentiful in Kingdoms Where There Are No Mines, With Application to the Kingdom of Naples"). Serra may have written Breve trattato and dedicated it to the Spanish viceroy in the hope of regaining his freedom. In 1617, while still in prison, he obtained permission to submit to the court his ideas for economic reform; but his plan was not accepted and he was sent back to prison. Serra's work remained practically unknown until Ferdinando Galiani extolled it in one of the footnotes to the 1780 edition of his Delia moneta ([1750] 1915, pp. 344-345). Serra refuted the view expressed by Marc'Antonio de Santis, author of Discorso intorno alii effetti che fa il cambio in regno (1605; "Discourse on the Effects of the Rate of Exchange in the Kingdom"), that the scarcity of money in the Kingdom of Naples was attributable to the high rate of exchange. He used arguments which made him the first to elaborate the view that the rate of exchange is a consequence of the balance of international payments, which alone regulates the international flow of money (Tagliacozzo 1937, p. xxx; Schumpeter 1954, p. 354). Serra had a clear understanding of the balanceof-trade concept as an analytic tool in economic reasoning and was the first to use that tool fully and, on the whole, correctly. [See INTERNATIONAL
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Serra's book went beyond the immediate implications of its title, explaining the outflow of gold and silver from the Kingdom of Naples and the balance of trade as consequences of the economic conditions of the country. Essentially, the treatise is about the factors on which depend the abundance not of money but of commodities—natural resources, quality of the people, the development of industry and trade, the efficiency of government—the implication being that if the economic process as a whole functions properly, the monetary element will take care of itself and not require any specific therapy. And this argument contains several contributions to the nascent stock of theoretical tools. (Schumpeter 1954, p. 195) Hence, Schumpeter credits Serra "with having been the first to compose a scientific treatise, though an unsystematic one, on Economic Principles and Policy" (ibid.). One of the theoretical tools contained in the Breve trattato (part 1, chapter 3) is the first clear formulation of the law of diminishing returns in agriculture and increasing returns in manufacturing industries [see Tagliacozzo 1937, p. xxxi; see also PRODUCTION]. Serra's realistic, active approach to economic policy—exemplified by his plea for the introduction of new industries in the Kingdom of Naples (see Breve trattato, part 3, chapter 8)—probably struck Galiani ([1750] 1915, pp. 344-345) as an anticipation of his own relativistic, undogmatic, pragmatic, liberal (as opposed to laissez-faire) approach. [See the biography of GALIANI; on Galiani's approach to economic policy, see Tagliacozzo 1937, pp. lii-lv.] This is what caused Friedrich List—the founder of the "infant-industry" argument and a forerunner of the historical school of economics—to say, in a chapter devoted almost entirely to Serra (1841, book 3, chapter 1 in 1856 edition), "Antonio Serra sees the nature of things as it actually exists and not through the spectacles of previous systems or of some one principle which he is determined to advocate and carry out." GIORGIO TAGLIACOZZO
MONETARY ECONOMICS, article On BALANCE OF
PAYMENTS.] In analyzing the component items of the balance of payments, he paid due attention to the invisible items; in this respect he anticipated and surpassed all other seventeenth-century writers, including the overrated Thomas Mun, whose England's Treasure by Forraign Trade was written about fifty years after the Breve trattato and may have been influenced by it (Mazzei 1924, p. 396; Schumpeter 1954, pp. 353-354; Tagliacozzo 1937, pp. xxx—xxxiii).
BIBLIOGRAPHY ARIAS, GINO 1923 II pensiero economico di Antonio Serra. Politica 16:129-146. BENINI, RODOLFO 1892 Sulle dottrine economiche di A. Serra: Appunti critici. Giornale degli economisti Second Series 5:222-248. FORNARI, TOMMASO 1880 Studi sopra Antonio Serra e Marc'Antonio De Santis. Milan: Hoepli. FORNARI, TOMMASO 1882 Delle teorie economiche nelle
provincie napoletane. Milan: Hoepli. GALIANI, FERDINANDO (1750)1915 Delia moneta. Edited by Fausto Nicolini. New ed. Bari: Laterza. -> Serra's
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work was first mentioned in a footnote to the 1780 edition. GOBBI, ULISSE 1884 La concorrenza ester a e gli antichi cconomisti italiani. Milan: Hoepli. GOBBI, ULISSE 1889 L'economia politico, negli scrittori italiani del sec. XVI-XVII: Studio. Milan: Hoepli. GRAZIANI, AUGUSTO (editor) 1913 Economisti del cinque e seicento. Bari: Laterza. LIST, FRIEDRICH (1841) 1928 The National System of Political Economy. London: Longmans. -» First published in German. MAZZEI, JACOPO 1924 Politica economica internazionale inglese prima di Adamo Smith. Milan: Vita e Pensiero. SANTIS, MARC'ANTONIO DE 1605 Discorso intorno alii effetti che fa il cambio in regno. Naples: Vitale. SCHUMPETER, JOSEPH A. (1954) 1960 History of Economic Analysis. Edited by E. B. Schumpeter. New York: Oxford Univ. Press. SERRA, ANTONIO (1613) 1913 Breve trattato delle cause che possono far abbondare li regni d'oro e d'argento, dove non sono miniere, con applicazione al regno di Napoli. Pages 141-235 in A. Graziani (editor), Economist del cinque e seicento. Bari: Laterza. -> Translated extracts appear on pages 145-167 in Arthur E. Monroe (editor), Early Economic Thought, published in 1924 by Harvard University Press. A full translation, with an introduction by Klaus-Peter Heiss, is projected for publication by the Princeton University Press. TAGLIACOZZO, GIORGIO (editor) 1937 Economisti napoletani dei sec. XVII e XVIII. Bologna: Cappelli. Vm DE MARCO, ANTONIO DE (1891) 1898 Le teorie economiche di Antonio Serra. In Antonio De Viti de Marco, Saggi di economia e finanza. Rome: Giornale degli Economisti.
SET See ATTENTION; RESPONSE SET. SETTLEMENT See CITY; COMMUNITY; NEIGHBORHOOD; VILLAGE. SEX DIFFERENCES See under INDIVIDUAL DIFFERENCES. SEXUAL BEHAVIOR i. ANIMAL SEXUAL BEHAVIOR n. SOCIAL ASPECTS in. SEXUAL DEVIATION: PSYCHOLOGICAL ASPECTS iv. SEXUAL DEVIATION: SOCIAL ASPECTS v. HOMOSEXUALITY
Charles H. Phoenix Samuel Z. Klausner John Money John H. Gagnon Evelyn Hooker
ANIMAL SEXUAL BEHAVIOR
Animal sexual behavior is but one aspect of the total pattern of reproductive behavior. Sexual be-
havior includes all responses directly associated with genital stimulation and copulation, whether homosexual or heterosexual. Among warm-blooded vertebrates, heterosexual copulation culminates in the transfer of sperm from male to female, with subsequent fertilization of ova and reproduction of the species. Despite its significance for species survival, sexual behavior has received relatively little experimental attention. With few exceptions, sexual behavior in man has not been studied experimentally and is likely to remain generally inaccessible for study by experimentalists for some time to come (Ford & Beach 1951; Lloyd 1964). Careful experimental analysis of animal sexual behavior, especially that of primates, should provide a valuable background of information for understanding the data that exist concerning sexual behavior in man. Many of the forms of sexual behavior described by Kinsey and his associates (Kinsey et al. 1948; 1953) as part of the human sexual behavior repertoire have been observed in a number of other mammalian species. Beach (1949) has suggested that a study not only of the similarities but of the differences in sexual behavior between man and other mammalian species should help in our understanding of how social forces can modify a basic biological drive. In experimental research on sexual behavior, as in research on any other aspect of behavior, the experimentalist seeks to discover and analyze those variables of which behavior is a function. The initial step in the process is the identification of components of sexual behavior and a description of these in relation to the total pattern. It then becomes possible to measure quantitatively the latency, frequency, and duration of each component and thus to assess the effects of the independent variables on specific components of the total sexual behavior pattern. Since there have been many reviews of sexual behavior patterns of a number of insects, fishes, amphibians, reptiles, and birds, the present account is restricted to a discussion of sexual behavior in placental mammals. Detailed descriptions are available of the mating behavior of several laboratory mammals, including the rat, guinea pig, hamster, rabbit, cat, dog, monkey, and chimpanzee, and of farm animals such as the goat, sheep, cow, pig, and horse. Limited descriptions are also available of sexual behavior patterns in normally wild species not generally found in laboratories, such as the chinchilla, porcupine, skunk, mink, fox, and elephant. The accuracy and detail of the descrip-
SEXUAL BEHAVIOR: Animal Sexual Behavior tions of the behavior in the last-mentioned species vary widely, however, and further study is needed. Components of sexual behavior Mounting. The most readily identified aspect of animal sexual behavior is the mounting response. It is an essential component of the male mating pattern but frequently occurs in females, especially during estrus. In a successful mating sequence the male mounts the female from the rear. The forelegs are placed on the back or around the sides of the female with the hind legs on the ground. The male may then execute a series of rapid pelvic thrusts. The posture and motion permit the male to insert the erect penis into the female's vagina. Not all mounting, however, is oriented to the rear of the female. The male may mount the side or head of the partner and may or may not execute pelvic thrusts. Mounting by females also shows similar variation. Females of a number of species display mounting behavior only during estrus; but in some species, such as the rat and dog, mounting by females is not restricted to any particular part of the estrous cycle. The mount executed by a female is frequently indistinguishable from that of the male. Thus, the typography of the behavior does not identify the sex of the animal. Mounting occurs between members of the same or opposite sex and across species in some instances. Intromission. Intromission is obviously restricted to the male. To achieve intromission, not only must the male be properly oriented, but the penis must be erect. The detection of intromission is difficult in most species and often requires special conditions of observation. In some species, such as the guinea pig, the rate of pelvic thrusting may be slower during intromission. In the rat, when intromission is not accompanied by ejaculation, the intromission response is usually followed by a vigorous backward lunge and a period during which the male may manipulate the penis with paws and mouth before mounting again. This gross bodily reaction is most frequently used as an index of intromission rather than visualization of penis insertion. Ejaculation. Ejaculation, as in the case of intromission, is not identified directly but is commonly inferred by changes in gross body movement. In the guinea pig, for example, at the moment of ejaculation the flanks of the male are drawn in as in a spasm. The male then dismounts, or the female pulls away, and both male and female clean the genitalia. Ejaculation by the male rat is also accompanied by a drawing in of the flanks. Follow-
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ing ejaculation the male dismounts much more slowly than he does following intromission, and there ensues a period of relative inactivity. Judging whether or not ejaculation has occurred from observation of gross behavior is particularly difficult in some species, and the presence of sperm or an ejaculatory plug in the vagina is frequently used as confirmatory evidence. Lower components. Not only is mounting the most conspicuous aspect of sexual behavior but together with intromission and ejaculation shows for most species the least variation among the numerous components of the sexual behavior pattern. Wide variation exists from species to species in the so-called lower components of the mating pattern. In general, these lower components appear to produce excitement and readiness to mate in both sexes. The guinea pig displays a mating pattern typical of many species. The following sequence is characteristic: On encountering an estrous female, the male, walking with a characteristic gait, circles the female; he rubs against her flanks, nibbles at the ear, prods the female's mouth area with his nose, licks the genitalia, then approaching from the rear, rubs his nose and lower jaw over the female's back, a response that frequently elicits the lordosis response in the receptive female. These lower components may occur in any order and do not represent a stereotyped sequence of reflexes triggered by the presence of an estrous female. In some instances, especially in experienced individuals, the male may mount the female without any preliminary display and may achieve intromission and ejaculation without manifesting any of the lower components. Lordosis. The one outstanding component of female sexual behavior common to all mammalian species except man is the lordosis response. In the monkey the receptive posture is referred to as a "present." The receptive posture or lordosis consists of a particular stance, with the four legs fixed and a straightening and arching (in some cases) of the back with elevation of the pudendum. In some species the head is thrown backward and the tail is deviated or displaced so as to expose the genitalia. A number of minor species differences exist, but in all species the pattern facilitates both mounting and intromission by the male. The complete pattern of female sexual behavior may include a number of other components in addition to the lordosis response. These additional components vary widely among species. They may precede copulation and may be classed as courtship
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SEXUAL BEHAVIOR: Animal Sexual Behavior
behavior or "foreplay" or precede the onset of full estrous behavior as in the guinea pig and be referred to as proestrous behavior. In some species, such as the cat, estrus may be followed by distinct behavioral responses, termed afterreaction. Factors influencing sexual behavior Accurate description of sexual behavior in natural surroundings and under carefully controlled laboratory conditions, although an essential first step, constitutes but a starting point for the study of the major problems associated with sexual behavior. In experimental investigation, sexual behavior has been found to vary with the species, strain, sex, diet, temperature, illumination, season, age, method of rearing (including age of weaning), nature of housing (including social and isolated conditions), stage in the reproductive cycle, familiarity with the test area (territoriality) and test partner, duration and frequency of tests, dominance relationship, and the general health of the animal. With the exception of masturbation, sexual behavior is a social phenomenon; hence the behavior of each individual of a pair or group constitutes an added stimulus variable not readily controlled in the assessment of sexual behavior. It is frequently convenient to classify the determinants of sexual behavior into a few broad categories. Such categories are usually neither allinclusive nor mutually exclusive but suggest, in a general way, the class of variable emphasized by an investigator or represented in a given research effort. For purposes of presentation we may categorize the variables as genetic, hormonal, sensory and neural, and experiential. Genetic variables. Chromosomal sex is determined at the time of fertilization and depends upon the particular chromosomes contributed by the parents. Many problems of sex determination at the gene level of analysis remain to be solved, but these need not concern us here. Classification of the individual as male or female is usually based on the appearance of the external genitalia. Unfortunately sex classification based on this criterion does not always correspond to chromosomal or gonadal sex, nor does it necessarily correspond to the pattern of sexual behavior displayed by the animal. In addition to these possible inconsistencies, chromosomal sex itself may not be normal, as for example in the case of an individual whose chromosomal pattern is XO and who, accordingly, lacks one of the sex chromosomes. Nevertheless, species differences, strain differences, and sex differences may be changed by varying genetic background. Such knowledge contributes little to our under-
standing of how the genes bring about their effect; but regardless of the mechanisms involved, it is assumed that all organismic variables have a genetic basis (Beach 1947a). Breeding experiments. The genetic material contributed by the parents has been shown to determine the particular pattern of sexual behavior that will be displayed by the individual as an adult. Not only is it possible to breed for high or low levels of sexual behavior, but different modes of inheritance of the various components of sexual behavior have been demonstrated. For example, in a study of two inbred strains of guinea pigs, in which the male of the two strains differed in ejaculation latency and in mounting frequency, Jakway (1959) has shown that ejaculation latency of one strain was dominant and mounting frequency of the second strain was dominant when these were studied in F, and F., hybrid generations and in backcrosses. Differences have also been demonstrated in modes of inheritance of components of female sexual behavior in the guinea pig (Goy & Jakway 1959). It is obvious that sexual behavior need not be inherited as a unitary trait. Although most work on the inheritance of patterns of sexual behavior has been carried out on insects, an increasing amount of work is being done on mammals (Dilger 1962; Goy & Jakway 1962). Hormone variables. Sexual behavior among females of lower mammalian species is characterized by its cyclicity. The display of sexual behavior is referred to as estrus or heat. The period coincides with the presence of mature ovarian follicles and, generally, with changes in the vaginal epithelium. The term estrus is sometimes used to refer to the physiological state of the ovary or condition of the cells in the vagina. The multiple meaning attached to the term is testimony to the close relationship between the physiological state and the behavioral state. Ovulation usually, although not always, accompanies estrus; and thus mating is most likely to occur at a time when fertilization is possible. Among primates, such as the monkey, chimpanzee, and man, the display of sexual behavior is not confined to the period of ovulation but may occur at any point in the cycle (Eayrs & Glass 1962; Young 1941). The decreasing dependency on ovarian hormones has been taken as evidence that animals higher on the phylogenetic scale have through evolution become emancipated from gonadal hormone control of sexual behavior (Beach 1947&). Females and males of some species, such as the marten and deer, are seasonal breeders. Sexual activity among seasonal breeding males is likely to be confined to periods when the females of the
SEXUAL BEHAVIOR: Animal Sexual Behavior species are in estrus. Among nonseasonal breeding species, males do not show the cyclic display of sexual behavior characteristic of the females. Correspondingly the level of gonadal hormone in the male does not vary in any cyclic fashion. Gonadectomy and replacement therapy. Perhaps the most compelling evidence of the importance of the gonadal hormones in the display of sexual behavior comes from studies of gonadectomy and replacement therapy. Spaying adult females of subprimate species, with the possible exception of the rabbit, results in the complete and immediate loss of mating behavior. But the injection of estrogen or estrogen and progesterone brings the female into estrus. With appropriate timing and dosage of injected hormone, estrus thus induced may be indistinguishable from that displayed prior to spaying. In primates below man, the effects of spaying are not as conspicuous as in lower mammals, and although the effectiveness of replacement therapy has not been as carefully studied, reports suggest that the dramatic change in behavior observed in lower mammals is not seen in primates. The effects of ovariectomy on human sexual behavior are not fully known, but some sexual behavior is known to persist following the operation. In general, the less conspicuous are the changes in behavior at estrus, the less effective ovariectomy appears to be in eliminating receptivity. Castration of the adult male does not result in complete and immediate loss of sexual behavior as does spaying in the female. The first component of the mating pattern to be lost following castration is the ejaculatory response, and later intromission drops out of the repertoire. There is considerable species variation, but in many species the male may continue to mount and show pelvic thrusts months or years after castration. The decrement in performance is generally greater in rodents and lagomorphs than in carnivores (Beach 1958). Information on the effects of castration in primates is scanty. Present evidence suggests that the prepuberally castrated monkey and ape retain the capacity for erection, and they display the normal mounting pattern (Goy 1964). Little is known of effects of castration on human sexual behavior. Just as there is a gradual diminution of sexual behavior following castration, restoration of the complete pattern of sexual behavior by androgen administration is a gradual process. An increased frequency of mounting is followed by the occurrence of intromission and finally the ejaculatory response is restored. Such, at least, is the case in the lower mammals that have been studied. No
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quantitative studies exist on the effectiveness of androgen replacement therapy in subhuman primates, and the evidence for man is contradictory. There is no question of the importance of sex hormones for the full expression of sexual behavior in adults of lower mammalian species; however, sex hormone specificity remains somewhat ambiguous. In either sex the heterotypic hormone is not as effective as the homotypic hormone in promoting the display of appropriate sexual behavior. In general, the character of the behavior induced by hormone injection, whether masculine or feminine, is not a property of the hormone itself but depends upon the organization of the sexual behavior mechanisms within the individual. The role of gonadal hormones in differentiation of biological sex has been studied intensively by embryologists over many years (Burns 1961), but the role of these hormones in differentiation of sexual behavior has, until recently, received little attention. It has now been demonstrated that in both the genetic female guinea pig and the rat, testosterone administration during the period of differentiation of the tissues that are to mediate sexual behavior, or what we have called sexual behavior mechanisms, results in permanent suppression of female behavior and in an increase in display of male behavior. In the guinea pig, this period of differentiation is completed prenatally, whereas in the rat the period extends into the early postnatal period. The behavior of genetic female adult rhesus monkeys treated prenatally with testosterone has not been studied, but observation of behavior during the first year of life showed a masculinization of patterns of play behavior and indications of an increase in the frequency of display of male sexual behavior (Phoenix et al. 1959; Young et al. 1964). Further evidence indicating the significance of testosterone in differentiation of tissues mediating the pattern of sexual behavior is provided by the response of rats castrated the day of birth and injected as adults with estrogen and progesterone. These males displayed the complete female estrous response with a lordosis frequency comparable to that of females. Such was not the case when rats were castrated at ten days of age or later. In adulthood the role of testosterone is to activate pre-established patterns of sexual behavior. During the prenatal or early postnatal period the role of testosterone is organizational, in the sense that it differentiates in both genetic males and females a prepotency for the male pattern of sexual behavior (Young et al. 1964). The gonadal hormones are major determinants
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of sexual behavior both as activators and organizers of patterns of sexual behavior. The nongonadal hormones play a less direct role in control of sexual behavior. The pituitary, for example, derives its significance for behavior primarily because it controls gonadal action. Sexual behavior can be induced in hypophysectomized animals by injection of gonadal hormones, but in otherwise intact animals pituitary dysfunction is associated with abnormal reproductive function and sexual behavior. Thyroid activity. Broad species and individual differences exist with respect to the importance of thyroid activity. The thyroid is not crucial to normal sexual behavior in the male guinea pig or rat. The thyroidectomized female rat may mate successfully, but the spayed, thyroidectomized guinea pig exhibits reduced responsiveness to injected estradiol. In the bull, thyroidectomy abolishes all sexual behavior. Present evidence emphasizes species differences, and when thyroid deficiency appears to interfere with normal sexual behavior it most likely does so by altering systemic metabolic function. Sensory variables. The senses serve several functions vital to sexual behavior. They are essential in bringing together the male and female of a given species and in arousing and directing behavior that eventually results in copulation and reproduction. The distance receptors play a major role in locating appropriate sex partners, and all of the senses probably contribute to the arousal and performance of the behavior sequence culminating in insemination. The effects of sensory deprivation in sexual behavior have been studied to a limited extent in the rat, rabbit, and cat. Beach (1951) has concluded that sexual arousal in the male does not depend upon any one sense modality but upon the total pattern of sensory input from the several receptor systems. Generally the female is less dependent upon multiple stimulation for display of adequate sexual behavior. A female deprived of vision, olfaction, and audition may continue to mate successfully, but this is not true of the male. Neural variables. The neural tissues constitute what is presumed to be one of the primary loci of gonadal hormone action controlling behavior. The site of action within the nervous system is not definitely known, but it is assumed to include both spinal cord and brain. Spinal cord. When the cord is transected above the lumbar region in males of species ranging from rat to man, stimulation of the penis still produces erection, ejaculation, and pelvic thrusting. The majority of paraplegics can achieve erection, and some
have had fertile matings. It is obvious, therefore, that at least some of the more reflexive elements of the sexual behavior pattern are organized at the spinal level. Effects of cord transection in the female are not as clear, but whatever fragmentary elements of sexual behavior survive cord transection occur independently of hormonal stimulation. In neither sex is there anything resembling the normal pattern of sexual behavior in preparations with the brain stem sectioned below the level of the hypothalamus. Hypothalamus. Small bilateral and midventral lesions in the hypothalamus of spayed female guinea pigs may eliminate all receptive behavior and mounting despite hormonal injection, which in the spayed unoperated female induces the complete estrous response (Brookhart et al. 1940). In some females with slightly different lesions, receptive behavior is blocked but mounting behavior is unaffected. In still other cases, mounting is eliminated but receptive behavior persists (Goy & Phoenix 1963). In the male guinea pig, hypothalamic lesions may eliminate all sexual behavior. However, some males may continue to mount following the operation. In the absence of testicular atrophy, loss of sexual behavior cannot be attributed to hormonal insufficiency (Brookhart & Dey 1941; Phoenix 1961). Hypothalamic lesions in a number of species, including the rat (Soulairac & Soulairac 1956), rabbit, cat, and ewe, have resulted in comparable loss of sexual behavior. In most of these species, although not yet established for both sexes, one area in or near the hypothalamus controls pituitary function and thus governs sexual behavior indirectly; and a second area exerts direct neural control over sexual behavior. Destruction of the former eliminates sexual behavior by interfering with pituitary-gonadal axis function and therefore with output of gonadal hormone necessary to normal sexual behavior. Destruction of the latter area eliminates sexual behavior by interfering with a primarily neural mechanism (Sawyer 1960). Lesions in the anterior portion of the hypothalamus in spayed female rats and guinea pigs have produced persistent receptivity, or estrus. Such an operation releases the animal, to some extent at least, from gonadal hormone control of sexual behavior and thus produces a condition thought to exist normally in a number of primates, especially man. The operation may be interpreted as removing a neural area that in the normal state inhibits sexual behavior unless stimulated by female hormones (Goy & Phoenix 1963). A number of other lines of evidence implicate
SEXUAL BEHAVIOR: Animal Sexual Behavior the hypothalamus as the region of the brain most directly involved in the control and integration of sexual behavior. For example, hypothalamic implants of solid diethylstilbestrol dibutyrate produce in the spayed cat the full display of sexual behavior. Comparable implants in other regions of the brain or in subcutaneous tissue do not produce this effect (Harris et al. 1958). Experiments involving electrical recording from hypothalamic areas in the cat have shown changes in potential associated with estrous reactions, and changes in electroencephalograph activity of the anterior hypothalamus have also been observed in association with mating behavior in the female rabbit (Sawyer 1960). When an electrode is permanently implanted in the hypothalamus of a rat and so wired that pressing a bar delivers a small electrical impulse to the brain area at the electrode tip, rats will repeatedly press the bar, thus obtaining electrical stimulation to the area. Castration abolishes the bar-pressing response by the rat, but the response can be reinstated by injecting the castrate with testosterone (Olds 1958). Such a demonstration tells us little about sexual behavior but implicates the hypothalamus in behavior that is dependent on a gonadal hormone. In a now classic experiment, Kliiver and Bucy (1939) performed bilateral temporal lobectomies on monkeys and reported a broad constellation of behavioral changes, including heightened sexual activity, following the operation. Hyper sexuality was later reported following destruction of the amygdaloid complex and overlying pyriform cortex in lynxes, agoutis, cats, and monkeys. Castration of male cats resulted in elimination of hypersexuality. The lesion is interpreted as having had its effect by removing from inhibition the neuroendocrine mechanisms regulating the display of sexual behavior (Schreiner & Kling 1956). Cerebral cortex. In lower mammals, including the cat, complete removal of the neocortex of the female does not eliminate sexual receptivity, although the quality of the response may suffer. In male rats comparable decortication eliminates all sexual behavior, and these males show no signs of arousal in the presence of an estrous female. Partial decortication in the cat may eliminate successful mating behavior because of loss of sensorymotor integration, but the operation need not interfere with sexual arousal (Beach 1951). In primates the cortex may play a major role in integration of sexual behavior. In general, the more important learning and memory are in sexual performance, the more important the neocortex is likely
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to be. It is apparent that control of sexual behavior is not vested in any single brain area. The evidence suggests rather that the entire nervous system is involved in the display of the normal pattern of sexual behavior. Experiential variables. Although it has been pointed out that differences in patterns of sexual behavior are associated with differences in genetic background, this does not preclude the importance of experiential factors in determining the particular pattern displayed by the individual. The limits to which experience can modify the behavior pattern are, however, largely determined by genetic factors. In studying the influence of experiential factors on mating behavior, we are indirectly examining the variability allowed by genetic endowment. When males from two inbred strains of guinea pigs were separated from their mothers at the age of 25 days and reared in isolation, they did not display normal mating behavior patterns when tested as adults. For isolation to produce comparable effects in male guinea pigs of a heterogeneous stock, the animals had to be isolated beginning at 10 days of age. The experiment demonstrates the influence of genetic and experiential variables in determining patterns of sexual behavior. It should be noted that not all males even within the inbred strains showed the "isolation effect" and that the relevant variables associated with isolation have not been determined (Valenstein et al. 1955). Isolation of the male rhesus monkey at birth produces drastic effects not only on its sexual behavior but on its entire social behavior repertoire (Harlow & Harlow 1962). However, motherdeprived infants, if given an opportunity to interact with peers, develop essentially normal patterns of sexual behavior. The manner in which peer interaction fosters development of normal sexual behavior remains to be demonstrated. Female guinea pigs and rhesus monkeys reared in isolation also show deficiencies in reproductive behavior. Despite the bizarre social behavior and abnormal sexual behavior displayed by the isolated female rhesus, a number have mated with particularly capable males and have delivered viable young. It should be noted that the behavioral deficiency is not attributable to gonadal hormone deficiency in the isolated monkey or guinea pig. Although the exact nature and extent of the effects of isolation on sexual behavior have not been determined for the male rat, available evidence suggests that the impairment is not as profound as it is in the monkey (Zimbardo 1958). A wide variety of experiences are capable of modifying sexual behavior in addition to the method
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of rearing just discussed. What has been demonstrated is that sexual behavior, in general, is subject to modification just as other aspects of behavior can be modified by varying experience. Thus despite heritability of sexual behavior patterns, dependence on hormonal stimulation, and the spinal reflex contribution to patterns of sexual behavior, the complete pattern can be blocked, enhanced, or modified by social and situational experience. The extent to which it can be modified by experience varies primarily with the species, sex, and age of the individual. CHARLES H. PHOENIX [Other relevant material may be found in GENETICS; INFANCY, article on THE EFFECTS OF EARLY EXPERIENCE; NERVOUS SYSTEM; PSYCHOLOGY, article on COMPARATIVE PSYCHOLOGY; and in the biography of KlNSEY.]
BIBLIOGRAPHY
BEACH, FRANK A. 1947a Evolutionary Changes in the Physiological Control of Mating Behavior in Mammals. Psychological Review 54:297-315. BEACH, FRANK A. 1947& A Review of Physiological and Psychological Studies of Sexual Behavior in Mammals. Physiological Review 27:240-307. BEACH, FRANK A. 1949 A Cross-species Survey of Mammalian Sexual Behavior. Pages 52-78 in Paul H. Hoch and Joseph Zubin (editors), Psychosexual Development in Health and Disease. New York: Grune & Stratton. BEACH, FRANK A. 1951 Instinctive Behavior: Reproductive Activities. Pages 387-434 in S. S. Stevens (editor), Handbook of Experimental Psychology. New York: Wiley. BEACH, FRANK A. 1958 Evolutionary Aspects of Psychoendocrinology. Pages 81-102 in Anne Roe and George Gaylord Simpson (editors), Behavior and Evolution. New Haven: Yale Univ. Press. BROOKHART, J. M.; and DEY, F. L. 1941 Reduction of Sexual Behavior in Male Guinea Pigs by Hypothalamic Lesions. American Journal of Physiology 133:551554. BROOKHART, J. M.; DEY, F. L.; and RANSON, S. W. 1940 Failure of Ovarian Hormones to Cause Mating Reactions in Spayed Guinea Pigs With Hypothalamic Lesions. Society for Experimental Biology and Medicine, Proceedings 44:61-64. BURNS, R. K. 1961 Role of Hormones in the Differentiation of Sex. Volume 1, pages 76-158 in William C. Young (editor), Sex and Internal Secretions. 3d ed. Baltimore: Williams & Wilkins. DILGER, WILLIAM C. 1962 Behavior and Genetics. Pages 35-47 in Eugene L. Bliss (editor), Roots of Behavior: Genetics, Instinct, and Socialization in Animal Behavior. New York: Harper. EAYRS, J. T.; and GLASS, A. 1962 The Ovary and Behavior. Volume 2, pages 381-433 in Solly Zuckerman (editor), The Ovary. New York: Academic Press. FORD, CLELLAN S.; and BEACH, FRANK A. 1951 Patterns of Sexual Behavior. New York: Harper. GOY, ROBERT W. 1964 Reproductive Behavior in Mam-
mals. Pages 409-441 in Charles W. Lloyd (editor), Human Reproduction and Sexual Behavior. Philadelphia: Lea & Febiger. GOY, ROBERT W.; and JAKWAY, JACQUELINE S. 1959 The Inheritance of Patterns of Sexual Behaviour in Female Guinea Pigs. Animal Behaviour 7:142—149. GOY, ROBERT W.; and JAKWAY, JACQUELINE S. 1962 Role of Inheritance in Determination of Sexual Behavior Patterns. Pages 96-112 in Eugene L. Bliss (editor), Roots of Behavior: Genetics, Instinct, and Socialization in Animal Behavior. New York: Harper. GOY, ROBERT W.; and PHOENIX, CHARLES H. 1963 Hypothalamic Regulation of Female Sexual Behaviour: Establishment of Behavioural Oestrus in Spayed Guineapigs Following Hypothalamic Lesions. Journal of Reproduction and Fertility 5:23-40. HARLOW, HARRY F.; and HARLOW, MARGARET K. 1962 Social Deprivation in Monkeys. Scientific American 207, Nov.: 136-146. HARRIS, G. W.; MICHAEL, R. P.; and SCOTT, PATRICIA P. 1958 Neurological Site of Action of Stilboestrol in Eliciting Sexual Behaviour. Pages 236-251 in Ciba Foundation, Symposium on the Neurological Basis of Behaviour. Edited by G. E. W. Wolstenholme and C. M. O'Connor. Boston: Little. JAKWAY, JACQUELINE S. 1959 Inheritance of Patterns of Mating Behaviour in the Male Guinea Pig. Animal Behaviour 7:150-162. KINSEY, ALFRED C. et al. 1948 Sexual Behavior in the Human Male. Philadelphia: Saunders. KINSEY, ALFRED C. et al. 1953 Sexual Behavior in the Human Female. Philadelphia: Saunders. KLUVER, H.; and BUCY, P. C. 1939 Preliminary Analysis of Functions of Temporal Lobes in Monkeys. Archives of Neurology and Psychiatry 42:979-1000. LLOYD, CHARLES W. (editor) 1964 Human Reproduction and Sexual Behavior. Philadelphia: Lea & Febiger. OLDS, JAMES 1958 Effects of Hunger and Male Sex Hormone on Self-stimulation of the Brain. Journal of Comparative and Physiological Psychology 51:320324. PHOENIX, CHARLES H. 1961 Hypothalamic Regulation of Sexual Behavior in Male Guinea Pigs. Journal of Comparative and Physiological Psychology 54:72-77. PHOENIX, CHARLES H. et al. 1959 Organizing Action of Prenatally Administered Testosterone Propionate on the Tissues Mediating Mating Behavior in the Female Guinea Pig, Endocrinology 65:369-382. SAWYER, CHARLES H. 1960 Reproductive Behavior. Volume 2, pages 1225-1240 in Handbook of Physiology. Section 1: Neurophysiology. Washington: American Physiological Society. SCHREINER, LEON; and KLING, ARTHUR 1956 Rhinencephalon and Behavior. American Journal of Physiology 184:486-490. SOULAIRAC, A.; and SOULAIRAC, M.-L. 1956 Effets de lesions hypothalamiques sur le comportement sexuel et le tractus genital du rat male. Annales d'endocrinologie 17:731-745. VALENSTEIN, ELLIOT S.; Riss, WALTER; and YOUNG, WILLIAM C. 1955 Experiential and Genetic Factors in the Organization of Sexual Behavior in Male Guinea Pigs. Journal of Comparative and Physiological Psychology 48:307-403. YOUNG, WILLIAM C. 1941 Observations and Experiments . on Mating Behavior in Female Mammals. Quarterly Review of Biology 16:135-156; 311-335.
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also that which society has come to apply to the act (Thomas 1907). In contrast to the social science perspective, the "physicalist tradition" tends to treat sex simply as energy or motive. For example, the studies of Kinsey (a zoologist) and his associates at the Indiana University Institute for Sex Research follow the II tradition of "biological realism"; that is, they focus SOCIAL ASPECTS on the ecology and styles of the physical act. These Social scientific writing on sexual behavior over are by far the most popular scientific studies of the past century falls in three categories: the ecolsex, as measured by sales and published critical ogy and styles of sex as a physical act; the meanreviews. From a physicalist point of view, the preings of the act, in its direct, displaced, or subsumption that all acts engaging the genitals are limated form, to the individual and to society; the alternative ways of tapping the same reservoir of norms and ethical standards that govern the modes physiological energy justifies drawing them under of, occasions for, and designation of participants the same rubric. Thus Kinsey's treatment of alterin, the physical act; and the organizational ar- native "outlets" places greater emphasis on the rangements that implement these norms and standchannels through which energy is released than on ards. It is now commonly accepted that the frethe social context of that energy release. quencies and techniques of sexual behavior vary Social science analyses of sexual behavior are widely among individuals and among religious, primarily concerned with coital acts, both homosexual and heterosexual, which involve a relationclass, ethnic, educational, age, and sex categories ship between human beings and are thus qualiin the same society (Kinsey et al. 1948; 1953); tatively different from other sexual behavior. that its personal meanings are numerous and conMasturbation, nocturnal emissions, and bestiality tradictory (Freud 1893-1895); and that sexual norms and ethical standards contrast sharply from claim social science attention only insofar as they affect either the occurrence of coitus or its meanculture to culture (Mantegazza 1886). ing or become the object of institutional concern. As producers of literature on sexual behavior, According to this view, the energy problem is intersocial scientists are easily outnumbered by physiwoven with that of the social meaning of sexual cians, psychologists, physiologists, theologians, and acts. Freudian theory of the economy of the libido philosophers, among others. The present article, uses the notion of sublimation to designate the rather than restricting itself to studies by social rechanneling of sexual energy into cultural activiscientists, will conceptualize the content of this diverse literature from a social science perspective. ties by shifting the object of cathexis; thus the theory interweaves motivational and meaningful These materials will be examined in terms of aspects. the social meanings of sexual behavior, the way the sexual enters as a component of social roles, the Sexual behavior contains a nonverbal language social norms governing recruitment to these erotithrough which an individual expresses and concized roles, and their articulation with networks veys meanings; sensory exploration and gestures of the noneroticized roles that constitute some outweigh words as sign and symbol vehicles. Removal of clothing beyond the degree necessary for major social institutions. Reference will be made to social organizational arrangements for facilitatcoitus itself exemplifies the significance of tactile communication. Any sexual act may carry several ing or inhibiting enactment of these roles. social and personal meanings. For example, a The social science perspective. Sexual behavior morning erection may express unconscious conparticipates in social action by contributing a motive, or a driving force of that action. Ratzencerns about death rather than sex (Bergler 1950). Ford and Beach (1951) studied sexual behavior hofer (1898), an early theorist of the sociology of between species and across cultures, yet they sex, saw all motives of social contact as modificagranted priority to the physicalist approach by tions of either the instinct of self-preservation or classifying sexual behavior according to modes of the sexual instinct. Moreover, as a component of stimulation of the genitals. A consequence of this social action, sexual behavior is also a way of physical perspective is their tendency to measure expressing and conveying both individual and the cause of sexual behavior in terms of tension social meanings; that is, the meaning is not only reduction and to designate procreation as its printhat which an individual attributes to his act but YOUNG, WILLIAM C.; GOY, ROBERT W.; and PHOENIX, CHARLES H. 1964 Hormones and Sexual Behavior. Science 143:212-218. ZIMBARDO, PHILIP G. 1958 The Effects of Early Avoidance Training and Rearing Conditions Upon the Sexual Behavior of the Male Rat. Journal of Comparative and Physiological Psychology 51: 764—769.
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cipal social function. The procreative function loses its centrality for a social psychology of human sexual behavior in view of the empirical fact that less than one in a thousand human coital acts results in pregnancy and fewer are intended to do so (Foote 1954). However, for sociology, the part of sexual behavior that is, in fact, procreative becomes significant because of both the demographic consequences and the institutional and organizational arrangements that become necessary for the birth and rearing of offspring (Ellwood 1925). The eroticized role. The higher a species is in the evolutionary scale, the less dependent is its sexual behavior on gonadal hormones and seasonal physiological changes; and in man it comes under control of the cortex of the brain (Ford & Beach 1951), thus introducing the possibility of decisional and normative control. Sexual behavior as a role component, that is, as a component of social action under decisional and normative control, distinguishes human from animal sexuality. In human sexual behavior, the erotic element may be incidental to other motives, such as the desire for a new experience or the desire to escape drudgery (Thomas & Znaniecki [1918-1920] 1958, vol. 2, pp. 1800-1821). A social role—such as that of lover, of prostitute or client, of husband or wife, of young male delinquent or adult fellator (A. J. Reiss 1961)—in which a sexual element is embedded with other social role elements, such as economic or affective exchange or child raising, may be termed an "eroticized role." The eroticized role is part of the whole system of roles constituting the personality, and, in a sense, it eroticizes the entire personality. This is what has been described as a transformation of sexuality into Eros (Marcuse 1955). Sexuality becomes meaningful to the actor, and may be understood by the observer, in the context of these other aspects of the personality. An eroticized social role may be articulated with other roles in the social structure; for example, the role of the prostitute in her relation with a client may be meshed with her relatively nonerotic role in her relation with her madam or other employer. This perspective on role articulation follows Malinowski (1929), who advocated an anthropological perspective that does not treat sex as a mere physiological transaction but studies its implication for lovemaking, its function as the nucleus of the family, the spells and magic that grow up around it, its effects upon, and how it is affected by, the legal system and the economic system.
The variety of sexual meanings is, in part, dependent on other aspects of the role—that is, on other norms, affects, or meanings that define that role or other roles with which it is articulated in a personality or in a society. Kirkendall (1961) described how sex, while it may advance a deep interpersonal relation, may be exploitative as part of a casual relationship. With prostitutes, the relationship itself becomes the instrumental servant of its sexual component. Even in advancing a deep relation, however, sex may assume special meanings associated with the broader meaning of that relationship. Thus sex may be a weapon to destroy, a mode of defense, a bargaining point, or a form of self-assertion; negatively, it may be a form of self-denial (Frank 1954). Components of an eroticized role may be malintegrated. A marriage contracted for social or economic advantages despite sexual incompatibility is a classic instance. Sexual behavior inconsistent with personal ethical standards may engender an internal struggle manifested in guilt feelings. If strains of this type become widespread, social standards may be readjusted (I. L. Reiss 1960). Recruitment to the eroticized role Recruitment of partners to an eroticized role is governed by considerations of personality, social norms, and societal mechanisms of control. Personality variables affect the desire and ability of an individual to seek, as well as his desirability as, a sex-role partner. Physiological or attitudinal disturbances in an individual's response at any stage of the coital act influence recruitment to the eroticized role. In the preparatory stage, an individual must be able to respond to excitation from internal and external psychological stimulation. This requires sensory, intellectual, motor, and glandular contributions to mechanisms of arousal. An individual's attitude toward himself—for example, as reflected in body image—affects his ability to woo another through foreplay and enter intimate relationships (Fisher & Cleveland 1958). An individual must experience impetus to penetrate or desire to be penetrated, want to continue inplay, and, at culmination, experience orgastic peristalsis of genital structures. Much depends upon ability to tolerate regression in the service of the ego (Fried 1960). Disturbances of sexuality are commonly classified in terms of frigidity, low potency, preference for masturbation or for sexual perversion, hypersexuality, and lack of sexual interest (Eisenstein 1956). Special personality groups vary in interest in eroticized roles. Most of the erotic impulse of idiots
SEXUAL BEHAVIOR: Social Aspects is directed toward themselves and the remainder to objects of the same sex (Potter 1927). Alcoholics lack sex interest, because, it has been argued, of repressed homosexuality (Levine 1955). The aged tend to lose motivation for coitus (Armstrong 1963). The evaluation of personal characteristics in recruitment is relative to the persons involved; that is, an individual not desirable to one partner may be desirable to another. For example, males generally prefer shorter females, and females generally prefer taller males. Women who want men near their own height, it has been argued, are expressing a need for ascendancy. Similarly, males who seek taller women are said to be seeking to possess the forbidden parent figure (Beigel 1954). Norms of recruitment. Social norms prescribe and proscribe which social types may recruit one another. Havelock Ellis (1910), for example, wrote that in choosing a mate we tend to seek parity of racial and anthropological characteristics together with disparity of secondary sexual characteristics and complementarity of psychic characteristics. Under control of instinct, animals rarely depart from parity of species and disparity of secondary sexual characteristics. Mongrelization may be induced among domesticated animals but is extremely rare among wild animals despite opportunities. Man can, and sometimes does, engage in relations that the more constitutionally directed animals would refuse. Man may disregard species parity and practice bestiality, disregard secondary sexual disparity and practice homosexuality, and disregard psychic complementarity and establish neurotic sex relations. On the other hand, man may refuse relations because of sexual style, the status of the partner, or the beauty of the partner—a parity irrelevant to the animal. For man, the power of the social over biological determinants extends to the very definition of gender. Money et al. (1957) compared the relative influences of the chromosomal sex, gonadal sex, hormonal sex, internal accessory reproductive structures, and external genital morphology on the gender role actually assumed by hermaphrodites, and they found social sex assignment to be the most reliable prognosticator of gender role. Rules for recruitment to coital relations in general parallel, but do not completely overlap with, those governing marital recruitment. Laws of exogamy define the inner social limits for recruitment of a marital partner. These are extensions of the incest taboo, which is a nearly universal taboo, with exceptions only in such cases as the Egyptian royal family, where brother—sister mar-
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riage was permitted, or among Azande nobles, where father-daughter marriage has been permitted. Laws of endogamy define the outer social limits. These norms have been compared by Westermarck (1889) to the "law of similarity" that keeps animals from pairing across species. In human relations, however, endogamy controls potentially fertile relations within the same species. A number of individuals are virtually precluded from recruitment to eroticized heterosexual roles. This is the case with institutionalized populations in prisons or mental hospitals. Likewise, occupational conditions may separate individuals from the opposite sex. Hobos, being homeless, have less access to women, and thus they tend to frequent the lowest status prostitutes and to practice homosexuality. Social control of eroticized role recruitment contributes to the maintenance of the social structure; if society lacked such controls, random mating could disrupt the familial and economic lines of stratification of a society. Moreover, social control of recruitment may enable one social group to dominate another through its power to allocate sexual occasions and facilities. It may also be an internally integrative device, as it is among celibate monastics. According to Ross (1920), such control is necessary to manage a smoldering antagonism that exists between the sexes as groups. Sexual communication in recruitment. Communication employed for recruitment to the eroticized role parallels the communication of arousal in the sex act. Token arousal announces sexual availability. Erotic communication relies heavily on movement, such as the inviting movements of the dance and the arousing tactile movements during coitus. Odors founded in the natural capryl odors and supplemented at the human level by perfumes act upon the deeper levels of consciousness (Bloch 1907). Cosmetic means of communicating sexual interest include painting and tattooing as well as sexual mutilation. Socially stylized ceremonies of fertility or initiation may announce availability and effect arousal. A few rites, such as subincision, announce sexual availability but reduce sexual enjoyment or arousal potential for the subject (Allen 1949; Westermarck 1889). Verbal communication supplements sensory communication in sexual behavior. Speech is so closely identified with sexuality that in some cultures it is forbidden or restricted between persons who are socially precluded from engaging in sexual relations (Baker 1949). The more intimate a sexual matter, the less the likelihood of communication about it to nonerotic role partners.
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In many societies, socially structured mores about erotic communication bar young people from arousal and consummatory opportunities. Sexual norms may be learned inferentially by the young or by new social groups, such as immigrants, by observation of behaviors lacking primary erotic meaning, such as forms of dress and of association between the sexes (Klausner 1964). Classified newspaper advertising and a specialized journalism directed to erotica have long been used for the recruitment of both heterosexual and homosexual partners. Deviant subgroups develop private signaling systems to cue a potential partner without revealing themselves to noninitiate spectators. For example, homosexuals may wear peculiar clothing (the definition of which changes from time to time), intersperse their speech with a special argot, or perform certain gestures. They may position themselves to receive such signals by frequenting known haunts. Social control of sexual behavior Society not only exerts control over the recruitment of role partners but also attempts to control the types of sexual behaviors enacted and the occasions for their enactment. Both informal and formal social controls are found. Attitudinal disapproval of individuals' erotic behaviors, which is perhaps the commonest form of control, may be expressed as verbal chastisement, gossip, scandal, humor, or mockery. The Trobriand Islanders, for example, control sexual style by jesting about those who use the "white man's position" for intercourse. A quasi-formal control mechanism is exemplified among the Mondurucu by the gang rape to force a recalcitrant female to submit to male authority (Murphy 1959). Norms also define those behaviors to which it is legitimate to recruit. Early studies of sexual behavior treated cross-cultural comparisons descriptively, presenting various behaviors, sexual art, and technical devices as curiosities (Moll 1912; KrafftEbing 1886; Bloch 1907). These studies did, however, open the way to the study of sexual norms by giving information about criteria for recruitment to eroticized roles in other cultures. Correlations between sexual behavior and the overarching cultural ethos allow inference about the types of sexual behaviors to which recruitment is approved in various cultural situations; that is, recruitment norms vary with the ethos. For example, Sorokin (1956) argued that sexual asceticism is associated with "idealistic societies" and libertarianism with "sensate societies." Taylor (1953) classified histor-
ical periods in Western society as predominantly "matristic" or "patristic." In patristic periods, dominated by a father religion and exemplified by England during the first millennium of the Christian era, people have a horror of homosexuality, sex is generally restricted, and rape and incest increase. In matristic periods, dominated by a mother religion and exemplified by England after the first millennium, people have a horror of incest and are permissive regarding sex. Social control may be exerted by concrete organizational arrangements. Organizations that facilitate recruitment to the sex role also maintain procedures, such as the "sex game," for controlling recruitment and defining types of permitted alliances (e.g., see Cressey 1932). The Nazis, while promoting a policy of sexual abstinence, provided youth camps in which sexual relations took place. Monasteries may debar their inmates from sexual opportunities. Child marriage commits the relationship before the erotic drive appears. The sexes may be physically and, therefore, socially isolated, as in a harem or school. Chaperonage is a way of supervising the young during their meetings. Systems of peer group pressures, such as those exerted by campus sororities or fraternities, encourage socially approved love relationships by subjecting them to ratings by age mates. These controls are more stringent among the upper classes, who have more to lose by a breakdown in the stratification system (Goode 1959). Legal control takes the form of laws against homosexuality, adultery, sodomy, or pederasty— that is, against behaviors that violate rules governing recruitment to the eroticized role. In some jurisdictions, the style of coitus is legally as well as informally directed. In England, the Wolfenden Committee on homosexual offenses and prostitution gathered intelligence about sexual behavior from social scientists and psychiatrists as a basis for legislating on sexual recruitment. They concluded that it is the duty of the law not to concern itself with immorality as such but to confine itself to activities that offend against public order and decency. Thus, they recommended that homosexual relationships between adults by mutual consent and in privacy should not fall within the province of criminal law (Great Britain . . . 1957). Federal legislation in the United States, such as the Mann Act (the so-called "white slave" traffic act) of 1910, is given force through policing activities of the Immigration and Naturalization Service, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and local police departments. Throughout Anglo-American history,
SEXUAL BEHAVIOR: Social Aspects the methods of legal control of sex expression have varied much more than has the accepted doctrine of sexual morality (May 1931; Mueller 1961). Sex education is a form of noncoercive, though formal, control. The medical profession in its efforts to control venereal disease, as well as religious groups in their efforts to maintain their own sexual norms, have been instrumental in founding organizations such as the American Society of Sanitary and Moral Prophylaxis in 1905 and the American Social Hygiene Association in 1912, now the American Social Health Association. This latter association uses education to combat venereal disease, commercialized prostitution, and other conditions associated with sex delinquency among young people. Resistance to social control. Protest against efforts to enforce prevailing sexual mores and to control recruitment to the eroticized role is expressed in individual sexual deviance, the formation of groups of individuals with special sexual needs, and movements to change the prevailing mores. The sex offender uses illegitimate means, such as violence or disregard for the consent of the partner, to recruit to coital or noncoital sexual behaviors, or he recruits without regard to rules denning permitted sexual partners. Generally, these individuals are undersexed rather than oversexed. Freudian theory suggests that some sex offenders may be compensating for feelings of bodily damage or phallic inadequacy, or suffering from castration anxiety (Hammer 1957). Most sex offenders are of average intelligence. Those arrested for incest, however, tend to be older men of subnormal intelligence and antisocial personalities. Apprehended distributors of obscene literature tend to be older, sexually inhibited men of average intelligence who are not hostile. Women are rarely arrested for sexual offenses in American society, except for violating norms regarding public solicitation. The role relations in primarily nonsexual delinquent groups may become eroticized, involving, for instance, group masturbation. Organizations of individuals whose physical status makes it difficult for them to recruit or be recruited to an eroticized role, such as dwarfs or the blind, may oppose prevailing sexual mores, as may those who, though not necessarily handicapped or abnormal in a clinical sense, have sexual requirements that are contrary to the norms. These groups provide evaluational support, facilitate recruitment to the role, and insulate members against the sexual mores of the larger society (Hooker 1956).
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Social movements concerned with sex have sought revision of sexual standards, of the laws supporting them, and of the means of enforcing them. Corruption in systems of police regulation of prostitution led to the formation of the International Federation for the Abolition of State Regulation of Vice in 1875. The World League for Sexual Reform on a Scientific Basis, perhaps the most extensive such group, was an outgrowth of the Institute for Sexual Science founded by Magnus Hirschfeld in Germany in 1929. It attempted to abolish antisexual taboos, establish a philosophical basis for sexual freedom, and provide education in the form of lectures and clinical advice. The institute was closed by the Nazis, and the world movement collapsed a few years later. Wilhelm Reich, who criticized Hirschfeld for attempting sexual reform within the framework of capitalist society, established the Socialist Society for Sexual Advice and Study in Vienna in 1928 to "defend the rights of children and young people to their natural love." Sex and social institutions The nonerotic components in an eroticized role may link it with a pattern of roles constituting an institution. Historically, eroticized roles have been part of the fabric of economic, political, religious, familial, and other institutions. At certain times, a particular institution, such as the church in Christian society, may exclude the erotic component from its roles and influence its place in the roles of another institution, especially the family. The family. Social movements to reform sexual mores ordinarily protest the family's monopoly of the legitimate eroticized role. The eroticized role is universally legitimated in the family, and in modern Western society it is legitimated only in the family. However, actual behavior is at variance with this official standard. In the Kinsey samples, 50 per cent of the females and 85 per cent of the males with a high school education reported that they had experienced premarital coitus. Nearly half of these females had experienced coitus with a man other than their fiance. Moreover, by the age of forty nearly 26 per cent of the females and 50 per cent of the males had engaged in extramarital coitus. Increasing opportunities for premarital and extramarital coitus accompany the greater mixing of the sexes in the educational, occupational, and social worlds. Legal control of premarital intercourse in American society is generally enforced more strictly in the case of younger participants.
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Adultery is grounds for divorce in all states. To the extent that coitus takes place outside of marriage the procreative aspect declines in significance. For example, Malinowski (1929) thought that the Trobriand Islanders, who have very permissive sexual mores, did not appreciate the connection between coitus and pregnancy, although it is more likely that, while aware of the connection, they were not much interested in it. Discussions of contraception reveal some tensions aroused concerning nonprocreative coital meanings, since contraceptives are not simply designed to prevent conception but to do so while coitus continues. Sex and religion. Sexual behavior has been interwoven with religion from earliest times. Religion's general concern with fertility involves it in the procreative aspect of sex, and this concern may even become pervasive, as, for example, in the Indian lingam cults. Furthermore, sexual energy itself may play a role in religious worship. Scott (1941) concluded that phallic worship originated in the pleasure associated with coitus and not in any clearly conceived notion that intercourse would produce children. Sex as worshipful, expressive communication with a supraindividual force is illustrated by the activities of temple prostitutes in Babylon. Krafft-Ebing (1886) argued that religion and sex could replace one another, since both display a similar scope and quality of excitement at their peaks and both can degenerate under pathological conditions into cruelty. Religious mystical roles may contain an erotic compound in both the Western and Eastern traditions. On the other hand, the cases of the sacerdotal celibate, the religious hermit, or the penitent abstainer illustrate religious exclusion of the sexual component. Religious considerations affect recruitment to eroticized roles in other institutions. Thus, rules of exogamy and endogamy are generally supported by religious sanctions. Religious sanctification of marriage or the withholding of that sanctification affects the recruitment of coital partners. Moreover, religion may contribute to the isolation of the sexes by separating them in worship and by excluding women from sacred precincts. Religious devotion is negatively associated with participation in nonreligious eroticized roles in the United States. The frequencies for all sexual outlets, except for marital coitus, decrease with increasing devoutness (Kinsey et al. 1948; 1953). This association seems to hold in France as well (Institut Frangais . . . 1960). Sex and the polity. The relation of sexual behavior to the nature of the state and politics has long been of popular concern. The literature on
court ladies and on espionage has described the impact of eroticized roles upon political roles. Sorokin (1956) asserted that sexual overindulgence debilitates the entire society. Krafft-Ebing (1886) saw a two-directional relation, in which, on the one hand, sexual excess undermines the props of society and, on the other hand, the collapse of society produces sexual aberrations. Utopian schemes have included recommendations for control of eroticized roles. Unwin (1940) proposed that, in his new society, Hopousia, there be two kinds of marriage: alpha marriage, which would be monogamous and preceded by prenuptial continence, for those who would achieve, create, and lead, and beta marriage, which may be terminated at will and would not require prenuptial continence, for those who do not aspire to social position. Unwin's thesis is grounded in the concept of energy sublimation. In John Humphrey Noyes' Oneida community, a cooperative colony founded in 1848, extramarital "coitus interruptus" was permitted, on the ground that sex is a way of communicating the meaning of intimate friendship. The acquisition of political power by men usually implies an access to more women. For example, in Bedouin society, a tribal chief is more likely to be polygamous and to retain concubines than is a less powerful member of the tribe. In Europe, royalty as well as the economically powerful have been able to keep mistresses. Conquest has generally implied access to the women of the conquered society, either by rape, by capture, or through the woman's desire to consort with the powerful. Sex and the economy. Sex has a place in the economy both as a marketable commodity and as a component affecting the marketability of nonsexual commodities. Thus economic value can be derived from sexual value. For example, prostitution involves an economic-sexual exchange of this character; the economic exchange ramifies beyond the prostitute and her client to include the pimp who recruits the client, the madam who supplies facilities for the act, and, perhaps, the police who protect all of them from the law. In the case of marriage, the economic-sexual exchange is embedded in a wider set of family and community relations. Sexual role performance consumes facilities, goods, and services, and thus industries emerge around the provision of facilities for recruitment to the eroticized role and for enactment of that role. These range from the provision of meeting places, such as dance halls; the publishing of pornographic, scientific, artistic, and guidance manuals; the supply of pharmaceutical and me-
SEXUAL BEHAVIOR: Social Aspects chanical contraceptives; and the letting of places, such as a motel room or brothel, for consummating the sex act. Sexual value may be derivative from economic value as well. For example, sexual jealousy, rather than being an innate emotion, may be related to views of women as property. Jealousy is then an anger aroused when property rights are violated. A norm of premarital chastity may also be related to marketability (Nemecek 1958). Reich (1930), using syncretistic MarxianFreudian "sex-economic" concepts, described an interplay between sexual and economic norms. He reasoned that since psychic structure is created by social structure and the core of psychic structure is the sexual function, sexual function is controlled by social structure. Social structure is constituted by the "modes of production," including the interpersonal relations of production. These relations affect sexual needs, among others. They also influence concepts of life, morals, and philosophy—that is, ideology—and so influence sex norms. Classes standing in different relation to the "modes of production" will differ in their sexual needs and norms. The dominant political minority imposes its ideology in general, and its sexual ideology in particular, on a population. According to this view, the subordinate population thus has sex needs derived from its own class position while being subject to the sexual ideology of another class. It should be noted that Kinsey's findings do not support Reich; Kinsey and others (1953) found little relation between the parental occupational class and the incidence of various sexual behaviors. Research methods Methods of social and psychological research developed in other areas have been used to ascertain frequencies of sexual behaviors as well as social and individual meanings associated with that behavior. Questionnaires (Christensen & Carpenter 1962) and interviews (Kinsey et al. 1948) have both been used to elicit such information. Protecting the anonymity of the respondent and establishing the scientific legitimacy of the interviewer are salient bases for rapport during an interview. To maximize the validity of responses, the interviewer must avoid making the respondent feel guilt, anxiety, or defensiveness. Direct questions should be asked with no defensiveness or apology on the part of the interviewer, and terminology should be adapted to the social-class level of the respondent. The inquiry should begin with matters that do not provoke anxiety, such as age, and then proceed to items which are sexual but for
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which the individual does not feel responsible; thus the interviewer would ask about spontaneous orgasms before asking about masturbation. The fact that anxiety associated with each type of behavior differs among culture or class groups and between the sexes affects the ordering of the questions. For example, homosexuality is less frightening than masturbation for females in American society, while the reverse is true for males; thus, in interviewing females, questions on homosexuality precede those on masturbation, and the reverse order is used for males. As a practical procedure one might request the age at first orgasm, then ask for its source and, if this is not too anxiety-provoking, trace this source through the years. By asking when he first experienced each type of behavior, the burden of denial is placed upon the interviewee. Kinsey's interviewers severely censured any subject suspected of giving a dishonest history. Kinsey correlated the frequencies of each source of outlet—masturbation; premarital, extramarital, and marital coitus; homosexuality; and animal contacts—with demographic factors such as national origin, marital status, age, education, occupational class, rural or urban residence, religious affiliation, and religious devoutness, among others. Intrapsychic meanings of sexual behavior have been studied by correlating projective test responses with the frequencies of behaviors. The Rorschach test has been used to reveal body image (Fisher & Cleveland 1958), the Thematic Apperception Test to uncover feelings of guilt associated with sex (Leiman & Epstein 1961), and a combination of the Thematic Apperception Test and the HouseTree-Person Test to obtain data about castration feelings or feelings of phallic inadequacy for psychoanalytic interpretation (Hammer 1957). Anthropological field methods, employing observation and informant interviews, have been used to gain information about both the occurrence of behaviors and their meanings (Malinowski 1929). Observational methods supply data on systems of communication and interaction that are necessary for an analysis of the social organization of sexuality (A. J. Reiss 1961). The Human Relations Area Files, containing field reports on many societies, have been used to exploit the advantages of both field observation and correlation methods (Murdock 1949). Attitude questionnaires have been used to obtain information on ideal prescriptive norms, as has content analysis of newspapers, radio, and plays (A. Ellis 1954). The fact that the various sexual behaviors may be ordered along dimensions of greater or lesser intimacy or greater or lesser acceptability has been
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exploited to construct scales. Podell and Perkins (1957), for example, developed a Guttman scale for ordering types of sexual experience, and Ira Reiss (1964) developed a refined Guttman scale for a study of standards of sexual permissiveness. SAMUEL Z. KLAUSNER [See also FAMILY; MARRIAGE; PROSTITUTION; SEXUAL BEHAVIOR, articles on SEXUAL DEVIATION and on HOMOSEXUALITY; and the biographies of ELLIS; FREUD; MALINOWSKI; REICH; WESTERMARCK.] BIBLIOGRAPHY Primary literary materials as sources of data may be located in several extensive bibliographies: Hayn & Gutendorf 1875 lists references and abstracts of erotica in German; Reade 1936 lists and abstracts English material; and Gay 1861 includes a similar collection of French materials. Ellis & Abarbanel 1961, containing articles and short bibliographies on most topics of interest, is a good introductory resource for secondary materials. ALLEN, CLIFFORD 1949 A Study of Sexual Mutilations. International Journal of Sexology 2:158-161. ARMSTRONG, EUNICE B. 1963 The Possibility of Sexual Happiness in Old Age. Pages 131-137 in Society for the Scientific Study of Sex, Advances in Sex Research. Edited by Hugo G. Beigel. New York: Harper. BAKER, SIDNEY J. 1949 Speech and Sexual Taboos. International Journal of Sexology 3:98—101. BEIGEL, HUGO G. 1954 Body Height in Mate Selection. Journal of Social Psychology 39:257-268. BERGLER, EDMUND 1950 Morning Erections. International Journal of Sexology 3:141—144. BLOCK, IWAN (1907) 1937 The Sexual Life of Our Time. New York: Falstaff. -» First published as Das Sexualleben unserer Zeit in seinen Beziehungen zur modernen Kultur. CHRISTENSEN, HAROLD T.; and CARPENTER, GEORGE R. 1962 Timing Patterns in the Development of Sexual Intimacy: An Attitudinal Report on Three Modern Western Societies. Marriage and Family Living 24: 30-35. CRESSEY, PAUL G. 1932 The Taxi Dance Hall. Univ. of Chicago Press. EISENSTEIN, VICTOR W. (editor) 1956 Neurotic Interaction in Marriage. New York: Basic Books. ELLIS, ALBERT (1954) 1962 The American Sexual Tragedy. 2d ed. New York: Stuart. ELLIS, ALRERT; and ABARBANEL, ALBERT (editors) 1961 The Encyclopedia of Sexual Behavior. 2 vols. New York: H awthorn. ELLIS, HAVELOCK (1910) 1936 Studies in the Psychology of Sex. Volume 4: Sex in Relation to Society. New York: Random House. ELL WOOD, CHARLES A. 1925 The Psychology of Human Society. New York: Appleton. FISHER, SEYMOUR; and CLEVELAND, SIDNEY E. 1958 Body Image Boundaries and Sexual Behavior. Journal of Psychology 45:207-211. FOOTE, NELSON N. 1954 Sex as Play. Social Problems 1:159-163. FORD, CLELLAN S.; and BEACH, FRANK A. 1951 Patterns of Sexual Behavior. New York: Harper. FRANK, LAWRENCE K. 1954 The Psychocultural Approach in Sex Research. SociaZ Problems 1:133-139.
FREUD, SIGMUND (1893-1895) 1955 The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud. Volume 2: Studies on Hysteria, by Josef Breuer and Sigmund Freud. London: Hogarth. -» First published in German. FRIED, EDRITA 1960 The Ego in Love and Sexuality. New York: Grune. GAY, JULES (1861) 1894-1900 Bibliographic des ouvrages relatifs a I'amour, aux femmes, au manage . . . . 4th ed. 4 vols. Paris: Becour. GOODE, WILLIAM J. 1959 The Theoretical Importance of Love. American Sociological Review 24:38-47. GREAT BRITAIN, COMMITTEE ON HOMOSEXUAL OFFENSES AND PROSTITUTION (1957) 1963 The Wolfenden Report: Report of the Committee on Homosexual Offenses and Prostitution. New York: Stein & Day. HAMMER, EMMANUEL F. 1957 A Psychoanalytic Hypothesis Concerning Sex Offenders. Journal of Clinical and Experimental Psychopathology 18:177-184. HAYN, HUGO; and GUTENDORF, ALFRED N. (1875) 19121929 Bibliotheca germanorum erotica et curiosa. 9 vols., 3d ed. Munich: Muller. -» Hayn was the sole author of the first edition, published as Bibliotheca germanorum erotica. HOOKER, EVELYN 1956 A Preliminary Analysis of Group Behavior of Homosexuals. Journal of Psychology 42: 217-225. INSTITUT FRANCAIS D'OPINION PUBLIQUE (1960) 1961 Patterns of Sex and Love: A Study of the French Woman and Her Morals. New York: Crown. -> First published in French. KINSEY, ALFRED C. et al. 1948 Sexual Behavior in the Human Male. Philadelphia: Saunders. KINSEY, ALFRED C. et al. 1953 Sexual Behavior in the Human Female. Philadelphia: Saunders. KIRKENDALL, LESTER A. 1961 Premarital Intercourse and Interpersonal Relationships. New York: Julian. KLAUSNER, SAMUEL Z. 1964 Inferential Visibility and Sex Norms in the Middle East. Journal of Social Psychology 63:1-29. KRAFFT-EBING, RICHARD F. VON (1886) 1965 Psychopathia sexualis. New York: Putnam. -» First unexpurgated edition in English; original in Latin. LEIMAN, ALAN H.; and EPSTEIN, SEYMOUR 1961 Thematic Sexual Responses as Related to Sexual Drive and Guilt. Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology 63:169-175. LEVINE, JACOB 1955 The Sexual Adjustment of Alcoholics: A Clinical Study of a Selected Sample. Quarterly Journal of Studies on Alcohol 16:675-680. MALINOWSKI, BRONISLAW (1929)1962 The Sexual Life of Savages in North-western Melanesia: An Ethnographic Account of Courtship, Marriage, and Family Life Among the Natives of the Trobiiand Islands, British New Guinea. New York: Harcourt. MANTEGAZZA, PAOLO (1886)1935 The Sexual Relations of Mankind. New York: Eugenics Publishing. -> First published in Italian. MARCUSE, HERBERT 1955 Eros and Civilization: A Philosophical Inquiry Into Freud. Boston: Beacon. MAY, GEOFFREY 1931 Social Control of Sex Expression. New York: Morrow. MEAD, MARGARET 1949 Male and Female: A Study of the Sexes in a Changing World. London: Gollancz; New York: Morrow. MOLL, ALBERT (1912) 1921 Handbuch der Sexualwissenschaften. 2d ed. Leipzig: Vogel.
SEXUAL BEHAVIOR: Deviation: Psychological Aspects MONEY, JOHN; HAMPSON, J. G.; and HAMPSON, J. L. 1957 Imprinting and the Establishment of Gender Role. A.M.A. Archives of Neurology and Psychiatry 77:333336. MUELLER, GERHARD 1961 Legal Regulation of Sexual Conduct. Legal Almanac Series, No. 9. Dobbs Ferry, N.Y.: Oceana. MURDOCH, GEORGE P. 1949 The Social Regulation of Sexual Behavior. Pages 256-266 in Paul Hoch and Joseph Zubin (editors), Psychosexual Development in Health and Disease. New York: Grune. MUHPHY, ROBERT F. 1959 Social Structure and Sex Antagonism. Southwestern Journal of Anthropology 15: 89-98. NEME^EK, OTTOKAR 1958 Virginity: Prenuptial Rites and Rituals. New York: Philosophical Library. PODELL, LAWRENCE; and PERKINS, JOHN C. 1957 A Guttman Scale for Sexual Experience: A Methodological Note. Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology 54:420-422. POTTER, HOWARD W. 1927 An Introductory Study of the Erotic Behavior of Idiots. Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease 65:497-507. RATZENHOFER, GUSTAV 1898 Die sociologische Erkenntnis. Leipzig: Brockhaus. READE, ROLF S. 1936 Registrum librorum eroticorum . . . . 2 vols. London: Privately printed. REICH, WILHELM (1930) 1945 The Sexual Revolution. 3d ed. New York: Orgone Institute Press. -» First published as Die Sexualitdt im Kulturkampf. REISS, ALBERT J. Jr. 1961 The Social Integration of Queers and Peers. Social Problems 9:102-120. REISS, IRA L. 1960 Premarital Sexual Standards in America. Glencoe, 111.: Free Press. REISS, IRA L. 1964 The Scaling of Premarital Sexual Permissiveness. Journal of Marriage and the Family 26:188-198. Ross, EDWARD A. (1920) 1938 Principles of Sociology. 3d ed. New York: Century. SCOTT, GEORGE R. (1941) 1952 Phallic Worship. New York: Mental Health Press. SOROKIN, PITIRIM A. 1956 The American Sex Revolution. Boston: Sargent. TAYLOR, GORDON R. 1953 Sex in History. London: Thames & Hudson. THOMAS, W. I. 1907 Sex and Society: Studies in the Social Psychology of Sex. Univ. of Chicago Press. THOMAS, W. L; and ZNANIECKI, FLORIAN (1918-1920) 1958 The Polish Peasant in Europe and America. 2 vols,, 2d ed. New York: Dover. -> See especially Volume 2, pages 1800-1821, "Sexual Immorality of Girls." UNWIN, JOSEPH D. 1940 Hopousia: Or, the Sexual and Economic Foundations of a New Society. London: Allen & Unwin. WESTERMARCK, EDWARD A. (1889) 1921 The History of Human Marriage. 3 vols., 5th ed. London: Macmillan. Ill SEXUAL DEVIATION: PSYCHOLOGICAL ASPECTS
One premise of psychoanalytic doctrine is that the general developmental process of childhood includes psychosexual development. It may be taken as a general premise of all growth, physical and psychological, that at any one stage of devel-
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opment the organism's current growth status and future potential is determined by (1) what it began with, (2) what has been added or subtracted in the interim, perhaps irreversibly, and (3) the growth-facilitating or growth-impeding environment that it may meet. Thus, at the moment of conception, growth status and potential is determined by both the quantitative and qualitative aspects of the genetic code of information, supplied half by the mother, half by the father, and by the intrauterine environment in which the fertilized egg exists. The intrauterine environment may prove hostile mechanically, metabolically, or because of the invasion of foreign organisms, viruses for example. The embryo itself may be its own enemy, as when a particular developmental phase or system fails, with subsequent deleterious effects on another phase or system. For example, if the testes differentiate imperfectly in a genetic male, then the fetal testicular secretions fail, with the result that the anlagen of the external genital morphology develop as either completely or partially female, depending on the degree of testicular failure. Contrarily, in the case of a genetic female, if the fetal adrenal cortex functions erroneously, so as to produce an excess of androgen in the place of expected cortisone, then the anlagen of the external genitalia will masculinize in their development, even to the point that the genital tubercle becomes a fully formed penis instead of a clitoris. Principle of the critical period Both of the foregoing examples of an error in embryonic sexual development illustrate the principle of the critical period, that is to say, that period in the development of some system or function when the organism passes from a neutral or undifferentiated stage to a differentiated one. It is during this critical period that development is vulnerable to interference and deflection, which, if they occur, will leave a permanent residual in structure or function. The further development of the organism will then in some degree be determined by, or influenced by, the outcome of the critical period. Effects of atypical early experiences. The concept of the critical period applies not only to morphologic and prenatal development, but to behavioral, psychological, and postnatal development as well. In behavioral science, the European animal ethologists were the first to observe that patterns of behavior, including sexual behavior, can be experimentally changed during a critical, developmental learning period, and thenceforth
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this deviance becomes relatively fixed. In other words, particular atypical experiences may interfere with or deform the genetic, hormonal, or neural norms of behavioral development otherwise expected. The justly famous experiments of Harlow (see Money 1965a, chapter 7) on the macaque monkey are a case in point. The experimental monkeys showed that opportunity to play with age-mates in early childhood was a developmental prerequisite to the achievement of normal copulatory ability in adolescence. Depriving the infants of childhood play, combined with depriving them of interaction with their mothers by rearing them with dummy mothers made of wire covered with a piece of towel, had particularly adverse effects. Such doubly deprived animals were unable to adapt to the motions of mating and to effect sexual intercourse even when paired with mates selected for experience and gentleness. Those few females in whom pregnancy was finally achieved were incompetent to mother their own young. They neglected and injured them, sometimes cruelly. Other aspects of their behavior, in general, also appeared to be grossly disordered. Another illustrative experiment is that of Birch (1956). Female rats were raised in isolation with a rubber collar or ruff around their necks, which deprived them of the experience of licking themselves or others. They were finally released from their collars to deliver their first litter. Instead of licking the young as they were born, they ate most of them. The surviving 5 per cent were retardedly and improperly retrieved and badly suckled; some were eaten after being carried to the nest. Three survivors of a large litter died of starvation. Their mother had shepherded them under her chin every time they approached her belly to search for a nipple. Experiments in population density with rats have demonstrated yet another way in which behavioral experience, namely crowding, may induce aberrant sexual and social behavior (Calhoun 1962), affecting even the unborn fetuses and their future behavior, presumably via the maternal endocrine system (Keeley 1962). The proper understanding of psychosexual development and of erroneous development in human beings requires focusing attention on experience, behavior, and social interaction during the formative years of childhood. In man, perhaps even more so than in lower species, peculiarities and special features of experience during critical periods may change the expected genetic, hormonal, or neural norms of development.
Hermaphroditism—an example. Probably the most dramatic illustration of this last proposition is to be found in the psychology of hermaphroditism (Money, Hampson, & Hampson 1957; Money 1961). Human hermaphroditism, for which there are several different etiologies, is conventionally defined in terms of a discrepancy between the gonads (ovaries, testes, or, rarely, ovotestes) and the morphology of the external genitalia. Sometimes the discrepancy may be total, as indicated at the beginning of this article, namely, when the gonads are testicular and the external organs are perfectly female (the syndrome of testicular feminization) or when the external organs are perfectly male except for an empty scrotum, the gonads being ovaries and in proper ovarian position (a rare variant of the hyperadrenocortical syndrome of female hermaphroditism). Most commonly in hermaphroditism, however, the discrepancy between gonads and external organs is incomplete, by reason of the fact that the external organs are themselves imperfectly differentiated as either male or female. In this incompleted state of differentiation, the external sex organs of either sex look remarkably similar: the penis with a urinary gutter instead of a tube and with its orifice near the scrotum can easily be confused with an enlarged clitoris, and the incompletely fused scrotum may pass for labia that have improperly begun to fuse. Because confusion is possible and because medical decisions may sometimes differ, it may so happen that two individuals of identical genetic, gonadal, and hormonal diagnosis are assigned to different sexes. Effects of sex assignment. The expected outcome of such sex assignment is that psychosexual differentiation will proceed to take place congruously with assignment and rearing. Ideally, the external organs will have been repaired surgically as early as possible, so as to conform to the assigned sex. The visible, kinesthetic, and tactile body image is a potent fact in a child's own awareness of his or her gender identity, and the visible appearance of sex is, of course, the ultimate criterion for the gender-role expectancies imposed by most of the people who are significant in a child's life. Even with delayed genital repair, it has proved possible for psychosexual differentiation to take place in keeping with assigned sex when genetic, gonadal, and hormonal sex are at variance. Incongruous-looking sex organs militate against psychosexual differentiation appropriate to sex assignment, especially when the incongruity is reinforced by some other source of ambiguity such as paren-
SEXUAL BEHAVIOR: Deviation: Psychological Aspects tal lack of conviction as to the way they should be rearing their child or open doubt expressed by age-mates. In some instances, doubt may develop in the child's own mind without any clear retrospective indication of its origin. Ideally, for psychosexual differentiation to be brought to maturity at puberty, assigned sex should not be at variance with hormonal sex and the secondary sexual changes of the body that are hormonally controlled. This ideal can be met in modern endocrinology. Yet, there are occasional untreated cases; among them are cases of hormonal virilization in girls with the hyperadrenocortical syndrome, which is remarkable in view of the intensity of virilization and its early onset before the usual age of puberty. These cases show that the persistence of a feminine psychosexual differentiation is possible despite the hormonal contradiction and its severe handicap to proper adolescent social maturation. Crucial variables. In psychosexual differentiation, the crucial variables, which may in hermaphroditism be independent of one another and may be overridden by the experiential effects of assignment and rearing, are five: (1) chromosomal sex, as determined by actual chromosomal count, (2) gonadal sex, (3) hormonal sex, (4) internal accessory morphologic sex, and (5) external morphologic sex. Psychosexual differentiation itself transcends not only all five of these variables but also the assigned sex in the syndrome of transvestism with transsexualism, which has, therefore, been treated, and not without reasonable success, by surgical, hormonal, and social sex reassignment (Benjamin 1964; Pauly 1965). To have found rare clinical cases in which the five physical variables can be overridden is not, of course, to have proved that the physical variables do not under other circumstances contribute to, or help determine, psychosexual differentiation. What has been proved is not that psychosexual differentiation is always and exclusively a matter of behavioral and experiential life history but that experiences determined by rearing are far more potent than might otherwise have been expected. Harlow's investigations on the macaque demonstrated, on the one hand, the extraordinary power and permanence of the social-experience factor in preventing psychosexual maturity; but they also led him, on the other hand, to conclude that sex differences in normal macaque behavior antedate childhood experience and learning. Harlow observed (1962) that the young male monkeys made more threats toward other monkeys, both male and female, than did the young females.
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The females' threats, moreover, were reserved primarily for other young females. The young females retreated more often than the males, specifically by adopting the female sexual posture. The young males initiated more play contacts, with playmates of either sex, than did the females; and the males had a monopoly on rough-and-tumble play. With increasing age, the males showed increasing frequency of the male mounting position in their copulatory play. They showed little grooming behavior, which, in adults, is more a characteristic of female than male sexual behavior. The application of Harlow's method of direct observations and systematic experiments on monkeys is restricted in human beings, as compared with clinical case study, by reason of the usual ethical vetoes on experimental manipulation of the lives of human beings and by the customary taboos imposed on sexual play and the expression of sexual interests in childhood. Systematic experimental attempts to study the development of masculinity and femininity have confined themselves to the secondary data of questionnaires or interviews or to the oblique data of free association, projective tests, and play. Although not thoroughly consistent or definitive, the findings show that psychosexual differentiation varies with age and in some degree is related to family and class differences in child-rearing practices and the emotional quality of the relationship between the child and each parent. Sex reassignment. That there is a critical period in psychosexual differentiation, and that it is early in life, is suggested by clinical evidence, again from hermaphroditism, namely in instances of a change of the sex of assignment (Money, Hampson, & Hampson 1956). It is not difficult for a child under a year of age to adjust to a sex reassignment, provided the parents can also adjust. But the older the child—for example, if he is past the age of learning to talk and is becoming acquainted with the verbal and other signals of gender difference—and the further that psychosexual differentiation has progressed without ambiguity, the progressively less likely it is that an imposed sex reassignment will be successfully assimilated. It thus appears that the establishment of a psychosexual identity and gender role roughly parallels the learning of the native language. The critical period, in which the basic essentials are laid down, is ended probably by the kindergarten age. The remaining years of childhood are years of consolidation until the hormonal changes of adolescence bring psychosexual differentiation to its completed expression in both the subjective
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and the behavioral aspects of falling in love, courtship, mating, and parenthood. Puberty. Hormonal puberty is temporarily delayed sometimes, and sometimes it never occurs, except for the intervention of hormonal replacement therapy. Without the advent of hormonal puberty, psychosexual differentiation remains to some degree in a state of infantilism. The exact degree varies from individual to individual, for the psychosexual maturation of the teen-ager is equated to a certain extent with social maturation, as is well demonstrated in cases of physical sexual precocity where the body becomes sexually mature as early as age six but the social maturation remains consistent with chronological age and/or degree of social exposure. A few hormonally prepubertal teen-agers are able to overcome the handicap of a sexually unappealing, prepubertal body morphology and to keep up socially with their age-mates. But the task is difficult and the competition harsh, so that the majority lag in social maturation. They retreat, as it were, to a younger age group, waiting for the day when their bodies no longer tell a lie about their ages. If this waiting is too protracted, there may be a permanent scar in social development. Those late pubertal developers who succeed in not lagging in social maturity may even succeed also in appearing to have reached psychosexual maturity, in the sense that they have sexual relations, copulate to the partner's satisfaction, and perhaps get married. But their achievement is, in fact, a simulation, insofar as their proprioceptive erotic sensations and cognitional eroticism in general are not the same as they will be after hormonal treatment has begun. A male, for example, whatever peak of erotic experience he may reach, does not have an orgasm as he will later experience it. He does not have sex dreams incorporating orgasm, wet or dry; he does not have masturbation imagery, or much of an urge to masturbate; and he does not respond with the same frequency or intensity to erotic perceptual stimuli, visual and narrative, as he will after hormonal puberty is induced. Probably he is incapable of experiencing an episode of that very intense concatenation of feeling so little attended to scientifically—namely, falling in love. Failure to develop full normal maturity of psychosexual differentiation after hormonal puberty, natural or induced, may represent one of four types of failure in the growth process, regardless of etiology. One is a simple arrestment of development that had been otherwise normal up to that point. The second is a regression from a once more
advanced level. The third is the introduction of a fault or error in development. The fourth'is a continued persistence of developmental error from an earlier period. In psychosexual differentiation, a persistent error may have had its genesis in faulty differentiation at the outset of childhood or perhaps in regression occurring in a later period of childhood. It is probable that a large proportion of psychosexual pathology in evidence at adolescence does not have its initial origins in postpuberty but represents the persistence of faulty psychosexual differentiation earlier. The fault manifests itself in full only under the influence of hormonal maturation. Conspicuous effeminacy in boys, for example, has been noted from as early as the age of three (Green & Money 1961) and seen to progress from later childhood through puberty to chronic, overt homosexuality (unpublished data). Theories of the life history dynamics of homosexuality have recently been comprehensively reviewed by Pritchard (1962) and by Bieber and his associates (see Society of Medical Psychoanalysts 1962). Whatever the type or timing of developmental error, the responsible or contributing etiologic agent may be, singly or in combination, genetic, gestational, metabolic, nutritional, toxic-infective, traumatic, behavioral-experiential, social-interactional, or otherwise. The cold scientific fact of the matter is that astonishingly little is known of the etiology of psychosexual pathologies. Knowledge of their phenomenology and natural history is greater (Money 1963c), although it is far from complete. Brain mechanisms Current advances are being made in knowledge regarding brain mechanisms mediating sexual behavior. Brain ablation was the earliest experimental technique for such investigation, gains and losses in sexual behavior being related to damaged or removed neural centers and pathways. A newer technique is that of direct electrical stimulation of neural centers and pathways by means of microelectrodes implanted in the brain. The neurophysiology of sex is best understood, even if somewhat simplified, in terms of what MacLean (1962) has delineated as man's three brains: the upper mammalian brain or new cortex; the lower mammalian brain or old cortex, also known as the limbic system; and the reptilian brain, comprising the brainstem reticular system, the midbrain, and the basal ganglia. The limbic cortex attaches to the reptilian brain like a pair of headphones covered by the helmet of the neo-
SEXUAL BEHAVIOR: Deviation: Psychological Aspects cortex. In the reptilian brain, the centers of the hypothalamus lie in close proximity to the pituitary gland. The hypothalamic-pituitary axis is of fundamental importance in sex, for it is here that the nervous system and the endocrine system meet— here that neural messages become neurohumoral, and neurohumoral ones become hormonal. It is here that the hypothalamus regulates cyclic functioning of the pituitary gonadotropic hormones, which in turn regulate the hormonal functioning of the gonads. Here then, indirectly, lie some of the dictates of behavior related to the effecting of pregnancy and parenthood. The limbic system also collaborates. Electrode implantation studies. In the ringlike arrangement of structures on each side of the brain that form the limbic system, there is in the upper forward part the septum and below it the amygdala. MacLean, exploring the representation of sexual function in the limbic system of the squirrel monkey by means of implanted electrodes, found that partial sexual functions could be directly activated by stimulation of the septal area. In the adjacent area of the amygdala chewing and salivation were activated, with partial erection occurring after many seconds of stimulation or as a rebound phenomenon after the termination of stimulation. MacLean conjectured that the topographical representation of the head end and the rear end of the body in such close proximity bears some relationship to the intimate interplay of behavior in the oral and sexual spheres. In lower animals, this interplay is in evidence in sexual smelling and in the delivery of the young. In human beings it appears in ordinary love play. Exaggerated and distorted, it appears also in the pathologies of anal-oral and urethral-oral stimulation and in stimulation from smelling, smearing, or ingesting feces or urine. The proximity of representation of all the phylogenetically primeval action systems and their related nonverbal feeling or emotion in the old brain may help to explain other pathologies of sex, such as the association of sexual stimulation with mutilation and attack in masochism and sadism. In some of his experiments, MacLean obtained a relation between seminal discharge and genital scratching, which, unless experimentally interrupted, would become severely self-mutilative (MacLean, Dua, & Denniston 1962). Neurohormonal studies. Another new direction in the neurophysiology of sex lies in neurohormonal research (reviewed by Money 1965b). One approach is to inject a sex hormone into the body and then study its effect on sexual centers in the
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limbic system and in the hypothalamus and adjacent midbrain nuclei. In one group of rabbit studies, Sawyer and his co-workers (Kawakami & Sawyer 1959) demonstrated the effect of subcutaneously injected sex hormone on electroencephalogram activity, registered from implanted electrodes, relative both to local vaginal stimulation and to sexual response. Olds (1958, p. 683) and Critchlaw, working with male rats experimentally prepared for brain self-stimulation, found that with some electrode placements and certain low electric shock, self-stimulation responses disappeared almost completely after castration and reappeared, progressively, after replacement therapy with testosterone propionate in oil. A second approach in neurohormonal research is to implant hormones directly into sexual centers in and around the hypothalamus. Fisher (1956) used the technique of implanting fluid hormone through a microcannula. By introducing minute amounts of testosterone into the preoptic area of male rats, he obtained rather bizarre combinations of mating and maternal behavior, including nest building and persistent retrieving and grooming of foster litters of young. Harris, Michael, and Scott (1958) used the improved technique of implanting microamounts of solid hormone and were able to induce a state of sustained sexual receptivity in cats, in the absence of genitopelvic estrus. Michael (1961; 1962) used radioactive estrogen and traced its site of action in the brain by making autoradiographs of the sliced brain. The autoradiographic technique further established (Glascock & Michael 1962) that individual neurons in the hypothalamus take up radioactive estrogen that has been given by intramuscular injection. These various implantation neurohormonal experiments have shown that the sex hormones are not clearly sex specific, but often paradoxical in their neurobehavioral effect. Other chemicals may be found capable of producing their effects. The ultimate possible application of this new breakthrough in dealing with psychosexual pathology cannot be foreseen at the present time. A third approach in neurohormonal research is to alter the neural organization of later sexual behavior by injecting hormones into the pregnant mother or newborn animal (guinea pig and rat). The findings of several investigators converge, tentatively indicating that, dependent on species differences in gestational age at birth, there is a critical period around the time of birth when androgen has an organizing effect on neural centers in the hypothalamus. This effect abolishes the pituitary's ability subsequently to produce gonado-
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tropins cyclically, as in the female; and it allows mating pattern elements that are chiefly masculine, although they are shared by both sexes, to predominate in childhood. Some dimensions of deviance Androgen as an organizer. Androgen is thus implicated as an active organizer of the sexual control system, both in terms of reproductive cycles and sexual behavior. At a critical period earlier in embryonic life, androgen is an active organizer substance without which the internal anlagen of the female reproductive anatomy persist and the anlagen of the external organs feminize (Jost 1958). Nature's primary impulse, in other words, is to make a female. One conjectures a relationship here with the greater vulnerability of the male to disease and death, which would create an unequal sex ratio except for the fact that 106 males are born to 100 females. One conjectures also a connection with the fact that psychosexual disorders have a higher incidence in men than in women, with some of the psychosexual anomalies, like fetishism, voyeurism, and exhibitionism, being to all intents and purposes unheard of in females. Sex differences in arousal patterns. The higher incidence of psychosexual pathologies in the male may be related to a sex difference in erotic arousal patterns. This difference is manifested in the greater capacity of the male to be aroused erotically and genitopelvically, and to be ready for immediate release, by pictorial and narrative imagery. Such stimuli arouse the female sentimentally to want her lover or husband; but she is dependent on direct tactile stimulation, more than the male, for the arousal of genitopelvic eroticism. There is some evidence in the psychology of hermaphroditism that the male arousal pattern may be neurally organized under the influence of androgen in fetal life. It will be for further research to determine whether the development of psychosexual pathology in the male may be rooted in part in imperfect or faulty neurohormonal organization at this early period. One thing already quite clear in the evidence of hermaphroditism is that a masculine type of arousal pattern is perfectly compatible with entirely feminine cognitive content and imagery of eroticism that parallels the sex of assignment. Arousal stimuli. Perceptual stimulants to sexual arousal and the reproductive cycle vary with the species. The relation between light stimulation and the release of pineal hormones is being newly investigated in the rat. Olfactory stimuli also are
the subject of important new experiments (Parkes & Bruce 1961), which show, after copulation in the mouse, that odors released by the male regulate the establishment of pregnancy in the female. Acuity of the sense of smell in human females (Money 1965ft) is regulated by estrogen and varies with the menstrual cycle. Its relation to other cyclic sexual phenomena or to sexual disorder has not been investigated. Odor may be the agent responsible, in the macaque monkey, for fluctuation in male sexual behavior in rhythm with the female menstrual cycle, as described by Michael and Herbert (1963). In addition to benefiting from the new neurophysiological techniques, contemporary sex research has also benefited from the new techniques in genetics. These techniques have enabled researchers to establish the presence (female) or absence (male) of the sex-chromatin mass (Barr body) in the nucleus of the body's cells and to photograph, measure, and count the actual chromosomes in cells. The relevance of the new findings to the theory of psychosexual pathology has been chiefly negative: gross chromosome defects are not demonstrable in the majority of psychosexual disorders. A partial exception may exist in the case of Klinefelter's syndrome. Affected individuals are phenotypic males with an extra X chromosome. There appears to be an unusually high incidence of psychopathology, including sexual disorders, that develops in association with the syndrome (Money 1963a). Among the sexual disorders are homosexuality and transvestism (Money & Pollitt 1964). Otherwise genetics cannot be directly implicated in psychosexual ambiguity (Money 1963k). Disorders of sexual psychology express themselves in full in adolescence after the advent of hormonal puberty brings erotic functioning to maturity. It is probable that the majority of such disorders have their initial origins in faulty psychosexual differentiation persisting from early childhood. Later error or regression of differentiation are also possible, as is simple arrestment in psychosexual growth. Faults, errors, regression, and arrest of development have, on the one hand, a chronologic origin and, on the other hand, an etiologic origin. The chronologic origin may fall within a critical period, with resultant immutability or refractoriness to change. The etiologic origin may be single or multiple. An etiologic factor may by itself represent only a potential vulnerability to psychosexual disorder, materializing only when in combination
SEXUAL BEHAVIOR: Deviation: Social Aspects with another factor or factors. Thus a genetic vulnerability may materialize only when the behavioral environment conspires appropriately. Etiologic considerations include genetic, gestational, metabolic, nutritional, toxic—infective, traumatic, behavioral-experiential, and social-interactional factors. JOHN MONEY [Other relevant material may be found in AFFECTION; DEVELOPMENTAL PSYCHOLOGY; GENETICS; IDENTITY, PSYCHOSOCIAL; INFANCY, article On THE EFFECTS OF EARLY EXPERIENCE; NERVOUS SYSTEM; PSYCHOANALYSIS; SOCIALIZATION.] BIBLIOGRAPHY
BENJAMIN, H. 1964 Nature and Management of Transsexualism: With a Report on Thirty-one Operated Cases. Western Journal of Surgery, Obstetrics and Gynecology 72:105-111. BIRCH, H. G. 1956 Sources of Order in the Maternal Behavior of Animals. American Journal of Orthopsychiatry 26:279-284. CALHOUN, JOHN B. 1962 Population Density and Social Pathology. Scientific American 206, Feb.: 139-148. FISHER, ALAN E. 1956 Maternal and Sexual Behavior Induced by Intracranial Chemical Stimulation. Science 124:228-229. GLASCOCK, R. F.; and MICHAEL, R. P. 1962 The Localization of Oestrogen in a Neurological System in the Brain of the Female Cat. Journal of Physiology 163: 38P-39P. GREEN, RICHARD; and MONEY, JOHN 1961 Effeminacy in Prepubertal Boys: Summary of Eleven Cases and Recommendations for Case Management. Pediatrics 27:286-291. HARLOW, HARRY F. 1962 The Heterosexual Affectional System in Monkeys. American Psychologist 17:1—9. HARRIS, G. W.; MICHAEL, R. P.; and SCOTT, P. P. 1958 Neurological Site of Action of Stilboestrol in Eliciting Sexual Behavior. Pages 236-254 in Ciba Foundation, Symposium on the Neurological Basis of Behavior. Edited by G. E. W. Wolstenholme and C. M. O'Connor. Boston: Little. -> Includes two pages of discussion. JOST, ALFRED 1958 Embryonic Sexual Differentiation: Morphology, Physiology, Abnormalities. Pages 15-45 in Howard W. Jones and William W. Scott (editors), Hermaphroditism, Genital Anomalies and Related Endocrine Disorders. Baltimore: Williams & Wilkins. KAWAKAMI, M.; and SAWYER, CHARLES H. 1959 Neuroendocrine Correlates of Changes in Brain Activity Thresholds by Sex Steroids and Pituitary Hormones. Endocrinology 65:652-668. KEELEY, KIM 1962 Prenatal Influence on Behavior of Offspring of Crowded Mice. Science 135:44-45. MACLEAN, PAUL D. 1962 New Findings Relevant to the Evolution of Psychosexual Functions of the Brain. Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease 135:289-301. MACLEAN, PAUL D.; DUA, S.; and DENNISTON, R. H. 1962 A Mapping of Cerebral Structures Involved in Seminal Discharge and Genital Scratching. American Neurological Association, Transactions 87:136-139. MICHAEL, RICHARD P. 1961 An Investigation of the Sensitivity of Circumscribed Neurological Areas to Hormonal Stimulation by Means of the Application of Oestrogens Directly to the Brain of the Cat. Pages
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465-480 in International Neurochemical Symposium, Fourth, Varenna, Italy, 1960, Regional Neurochemistry . . . Proceedings. Oxford: Pergamon Press. MICHAEL, RICHARD P. 1962 Estrogen-sensitive Neurons and Sexual Behavior in Female Cats. Science 136: 322-323. MICHAEL, RICHARD P.; and HERBERT, J. 1963 Menstrual Cycle Influences Grooming Behavior and Sexual Activity in the Rhesus Monkey. Science 140:500-501. MONEY, JOHN 1961 Hermaphroditism. Volume 1, pages 472-484 in Albert Ellis and Albert Abarbanel (editors), Encyclopedia of Sexual Behavior. New York: Hawthorn. MONEY, JOHN 1963a Cytogenetic and Psychosexual Incongruities With a Note on Space-Form Blindness. American Journal of Psychiatry 119:820-827. MONEY, JOHN 1963b Factors in the Genesis of Homosexuality. Pages 19-43 in Conference on Community Mental Health Research, yourth, Washington University, St. Louis, 1962, Determinants of Human Sexual Behavior: Proceedings. Springfield, 111.: Thomas. MONEY, JOHN 1963c Psychosexual Development in Man. Volume 5, pages 1678-1709 in Encyclopedia of Mental Health. New York: Watts. MONEY, JOHN (editor) 1965a Sex Research: New Developments. New York: Holt. -» See especially Chapter 7, "The Effect of Rearing Conditions on Behavior," by Harry F. Harlow and M. K. Harlow. MONEY, JOHN 1965fo Influence of Hormones on Sexual Behavior. Annual Review of Medicine 16:67-82. MONEY, JOHN; HAMPSON, J. G.; and HAMPSON, J. L. 1956 Sexual Incongruities and Psychopathology: The Evidence of Human Hermaphroditism. Johns Hopkins Hospital Bulletin 98:43-57. MONEY, JOHN; HAMPSON, J. G.; and HAMPSON, J. L. 1957 Imprinting and the Establishment of Gender Role. A.M.A. Archives of Neurology and Psychiatry 77:333336. MONEY, JOHN; and POLLITT, ERNESTO 1964 Cytogenetic and Psychosexual Ambiguity: Klinefelter's Syndrome and Transvestism Compared. Archives of General Psychiatry 11:589-595. OLDS, JAMES 1958 Self-stimulation Experiments and Differentiated Reward Systems. Pages 671-687 in Herbert H. Jasper et al. (editors), Reticular Formation of the Brain. Boston: Little. PARKES, A. S.; and BRUCE, H. M. 1961 Olfactory Stimuli in Mammalian Reproduction. Science 134:1049-1054. PAULY, IRA B. 1965 Male Psychosexual Inversion: Transsexualism. Archives of General Psychiatry 13:172181. PRITCHARD, MICHAEL 1962 Homosexuality and Genetic Sex. Journal of Mental Science 108:616-623. SOCIETY OF MEDICAL PSYCHOANALYSTS 1962 Homosexuality: A Psychoanalytic Study, by Irving Bieber et al. New York: Basic Books. IV SEXUAL DEVIATION: SOCIAL ASPECTS
Deviance in general, and sexual deviance in particular, presents the scientist with extremely difficult problems of definition and analysis. Sexuality is, perhaps more than any other aspect of human behavior, mingled with moral imperatives, conscious fantasy, and unconscious desires, all of which combine to trouble even most scientific ob-
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servers (Trilling 1950; Rieff 1959). The recognized necessity (not to mention utility) of sexual behavior makes the problem of establishing cutoff points beyond which the interaction of actors, acts, and contexts may be defined as deviant even more obscure than it is in other areas of behavior. The positive functions of the sexual impulse for society have indeed resulted in advocacy, by small minorities to be sure, of behavior that is widely conceived of as immoral, antisocial, or immature. In a discussion of sexual deviance it would be useful to consider cross-cultural data. However, there is a minimum of scientifically comparable data about sexual behavior available, even from European countries (see Kinsey et al. 1953, pp. 95-96 for a list of such research), and a systematic attempt to discuss sexual deviance in non-Western cultures, where only the barest outline of information about sexual behavior is available, would be presumptuous. A useful compilation of the available cross-cultural information has been made by Clellan S. Ford and Frank A. Beach (1951). In this article the cultural focus is mainly the United States; other industrialized Western societies are treated with less precision.
male participation in deviant behavior than female, but both sexes include a relatively large number of taboo violators. In addition, for the relatively short period for which data are available these rates of participation have remained remarkably stable, indicating that they are outgrowths of normal social operation rather than the consequence of upheaval or disorder. There is evidence that although there is a wide distribution of these different forms of sexual behavior, attitudes toward them remain relatively repressive (see Wheeler 1960 and I. Reiss 1960 for attitudes toward premarital coitus). Repressive attitudes can be held even by those who habitually participate in deviant sexual activities, as has been shown by a study of homosexually experienced males (Gebhard et al. 1965, pp. 638-639). In addition, there is some evidence that these attitudes are situation-specific and change over the individual's life cycle; for instance, Robert Bell and Jack Buerkle (1961) found that the attitudes of mothers toward their daughters' having premarital coitus varied with the age of the mother, the age of the daughter, and other factors affecting motherdaughter relationships.
Sexual prohibitions and their violation Sexuality has the curious distinction of being the only biological drive that has been regulated in nearly all its physical manifestations. Although these prohibitions are often attributed to the prudery of the nineteenth century, it is clear that they are of considerably more ancient origin. All the sexual acts that are currently legislated against in the criminal law owe their stigma to the JudaeoChristian religious tradition. These very early prohibitions remain with us today, when, in a very different context and serving other functions, they still operate to shape training for sexual behavior, attitudes toward this behavior in both the self and in others, and the institutional structures that are meant to control it. Although it is possible to find some situation in which any act might be described as deviant, it is very difficult to approximate the universal condemnation of deviant sexuality in any other area of behavior. Particularly impressive is the discrepancy between the system of sexual taboos, as expressed in both the law and individual attitudes, and the corresponding systems of overt behavior. From the survey research on sexual behavior in the United States (see Kinsey et al. 1953, pp. 94-95), it is apparent that violations of widely held taboos against many forms of sexual behavior are frequent. There is a considerable bias toward greater
Sexual learning as a source of deviance Given the strong taboos against most of its manifestations, it is very difficult to determine why so much deviant behavior occurs. However, it is important to point out that although the taboos are strongly expressed, the sanctions are not as strongly invoked. At the social-psychological level the major question seems to be "What are the reasons for the attachment to the prohibitory rules, coupled with the failure to apply sanctions?" Part of this is probably due to the sheer strength of the biological drive. It is important not to assume that all of the variance in sexual behavior is attributable to social and psychological factors, since there is still a general lack of data on the interaction between these elements and the biological substrate. Some of the differences between the overt sexual behavior of males and females may be due to basic hormonal and other biological characteristics as well as to differential socialization practices (Kinsey et al. 1953, chapters 14—18; Money 1961; Young, Goy, & Phoenix 1964). The supreme importance of early childhood experience for sexual development—an insight that we owe to the early work of Freud (1905)—has been amply demonstrated by the work of such researchers as John Money (1961), John and Joan Hampson (1961), Harry Harlow (1959), and Rene Spitz (1949). In the first few years of life, interactions
SEXUAL BEHAVIOR: Deviation: Social Aspects between parents and children, predominantly at the nonverbal level, build a basis of sexual capacities on which later verbal learning concerning normative standards of behavior about these capacities is overlaid. Furthermore, the majority of adult-child interaction having impact on the learning of sexual behavior is not conceived of by the adult as having any relevance to the ultimate sexual adjustment of the child. Such adult-child interaction is permitted or even encouraged, provided that its latent sexual content is not explicitly labeled or identified for what it is; as soon as it is so labeled and acknowledged it falls within the purview of one prohibition or another. Because of these learning conditions the child grows up in what has been called a nonlabeled or mislabeled sexual environment (Sears, Maccoby, & Levin 1957, pp. 176-217). It is the ambiguity of early sexual instruction that seems to be important. The setting of the capacities and directions of sexual behavior occurs at an unrecognized and unconscious level, whereas the conscious attitude instruction not only takes place sporadically but frequently is unrelated to the development of the behavioral systems that the attitudes purport to control. One of the functions of language is that of helping the child to order and to control the world; apparently, what happens in the formation of sexual attitudes is that words are not supplied to the child to enable him to label and come to grips with his feelings and desires. In such a context the sexual zone is left to the imagery and fantasy often noted in childhood (and adult) sexuality. Examination of the social structures that control sexual learning after childhood makes apparent the imprecision and vagueness of the connections that exist between behavior on the one hand, and attitudes toward such behavior, on the other. A certain amount of sexual display and exploration occurs during the prepubertal years among members of both sexes, but the significant element is that unless this activity is noted and defined negatively by adults or unless the behavior takes place between an experienced person and a child, there is little impact on the child. In addition, there is not necessarily any organization of sexual learning as a result of these experiences. A child who has had prepubertal experience similar to coitus may be unaware of the connection between this behavior and other sexual activities. During puberty the significance of the genital sexual function becomes more apparent, but young people who become involved in sexual behavior do so in considerable ignorance. In the culture of
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adolescence the folklore of sexual experience is rife with error and misperception. Males and females get together sexually often as the result of accident, and frequently they do so for nonsexual motives. Because of the strength of the sexual drive and the ambiguous circumstances under which its control is learned, much adult sexual behavior takes place under conditions of mutual misunderstanding. Although there is a transfer of learning from one sexual experience to another, there is rarely a successful dialogue between male and female about such matters of mutual sexual interest. The bulk of sexual communication is gestural and, between persons with some mutual experience, often ritual in character. Forms of sexual deviance Deviance is traditionally conceived of as being antithetical to the values of the larger social system, although it is often thought to have value because punishment of it reinforces conformity. Many sociologists have described deviance as being learned in a socially well-defined initiatory system (for example, the predelinquent subculture or even lower-class society in toW) and maintained in a supportive social setting (for example, the drugaddict community). A primary weakness of such theories of "differential association" (Sutherland & Cressey [1924] 1960, pp. 74-81) or differential identification in the explanation of deviance is that they require an interactional system in which the actor learns the values and techniques of the deviant life. For most sex offenders, and for nearly all classes of sexual behavior that are described as deviant, a prior socially structured learning system apparently does not exist. In addition, the notion that deviant behavior must be maintained through subcultural supportive systems is difficult to apply to the problem of sexual deviance, although in some types of sexual deviance such systems do appear. Sexual deviance seems to be of three general types. The first is situation-specific deviance that is normatively disvalued (or at least not valued positively) but which nonetheless serves generally useful purposes and is so ubiquitous that sanctions are applied to only a minority of those involved. This type of deviance involves no articulated system of social roles. The second type of sexual deviance consists of those forms that have supportive social organizations either for the purpose of gathering sexual partners or clientele together, or for social support in deviance, or for both purposes. Finally, there is a large body of deviance (pedophilia, incest, and so on), which is condemned and
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against which strong sanctions are invoked, that does not seem to be learned in recognizable deviant social structures and that does not have a socially organized performance system. Functional deviance. Masturbation and premarital coitus are primary examples of behavior that is generally defined as deviant but that does not involve the application of sanctions unless the perpetrators are, by some mischance, apprehended or there is some untoward consequence, such as pregnancy or venereal disease. These forms of behavior may be described as "wrong but normal." There is considerable class variation in the incidence and frequency of masturbation and premarital coitus, with the former important among middle-class males and the latter among lower-class males. Solitary masturbation is not against the law; premarital coitus may be, especially if either party is legally a minor, but even so prosecutions are comparatively rare. The perceived utility of masturbation as a male adolescent sexual outlet with few social consequences in comparison to coitus may account for the decreasing stigma attached to it. It seems to be related to other behavior denned by social class and characterizes males who assume middle-class occupational roles (Kinsey et al. 1948, chapter 10). Premarital coitus is culturally valued for males especially within the pro-masculine lower-class culture, accounting for its prevalence and the lack of invoked sanctions (I. Reiss I960; Whyte 1943). Both masturbation and coitus are class-linked and seem to be the most appropriate responses to the impact of the sexual drive after puberty in the male. For females premarital coitus is connected with impending marriage and a love relationship; thus, the behavior is defined as proper in a situation-specific way. Masturbation in females seems to have no class linkages at all. In general these activities have a smaller incidence and a lower frequency among females than among males, possibly because of both hormonal differences and differences in socialization. Deviant subcultures. The second type of deviant sexual behavior is that which involves supportive social structures either for the purpose of entry into the system of behavior or for the maintenance of the individual in the behavior. This type of behavior comprises homosexuality and prostitution. It is only female prostitution that has all the elements of a deviant subculture similar to that of drug addicts or juvenile delinquents (Davis 1961; Kinsey et al. 1948, chapter 10). In this situation the stigma for the sexual behavior is attached to the prostitute, and the legal sanctions for
the behavior are leveled primarily against her, secondarily against the abetting persons (pimps, madams), and exceedingly rarely against the customers or against agents of law enforcement who may condone her activities. Prostitution develops organized forms primarily because of its commercial aspect and because of the character of the enforcement program that is designed to control it. For the most part, recruitment of individuals for homosexual experience does not occur through a social system organized for that purpose. The majority of persons who come to conceive of themselves as homosexual do so on the basis of readying experiences early in life that are linked to secondary reinforcements in puberty. Unfortunately, studies of the etiology of homosexuality have been most unsatisfactory in their attempts to locate the crucial early experiences that are salient (Money 1963). Some etiological studies have focused on biological and especially genetic factors, sometimes mediated through hormonal anomalies. But even though there have been some studies of twins (Kallman 1952; 1963) and some work has been done on hormonal factors (Kinsey 1941), the most persuasive discussions of early factors in the development of a homosexual commitment have been couched in the psychoanalytic tradition or in certain variants of it (Society . . . 1962; Ovesey 1954). The psychoanalytic tradition locates the origins of homosexuality in pathological versions of parentchild relations in which the mother provokes her son's sexual interest and in consequence burdens him with an anxiety about incest with which he cannot deal. As a result his relations with females are blighted because of his fears of paternal revenge for his incest, which remains forever unconsummated. Other explanations in this tradition are less metaphorical in their language but still focus upon seductive mothers, detached fathers, lack of a male figure in the home, and the like. Unfortunately the bulk of the populations who have been the source of the data in these reports have been examined in the course of psychotherapy or other treatment, creating a situation in which pathology and homosexuality are inextricably confounded. Psychological research into homosexuality has also maintained a determined concern with the etiological question and with developing instrumentation that might successfully distinguish between the homosexual and the heterosexual on the basis of either manifest items or latent items that are presumed to be indicators of homosexual commitments (see, for instance, the psychometric indices of masculinity and femininity used by Brown 1958;
SEXUAL BEHAVIOR: Deviation: Social Aspects Hooker 1957; 1958; Dean & Richardson 1964; Freimd 1963). During the pubescent years there is a good deal of minor homosexual experimentation that accounts for nearly all of the homosexual activity of the predominantly heterosexual portion of the population. Thus, it can be predicted that about one in three of all males born in the United States will at some time have a homosexual experience to the point of orgasm; however, about 85 per cent of those having such experience will do so only in their adolescent years. Among females the proportion who ever have a homosexual experience will be somewhat smaller, but once again most of them will confine the experience to adolescence (Kinsey et al. 1948; 1953). The factors that distinguish those who go on to adult homosexual commitments from those who experience homosexual acts only as transient parts of adolescent development are still unknown. However, it is known that males often develop strong sexual interests in other males without knowing that there is such a thing as homosexuality. (This process occurs more frequently in specialized sexual interests such as transvestism and fetishism.) The realization of being homosexual occurs in a variety of ways: sometimes through processes of introspection, sometimes through falling in with other homosexuals who act seductively, and sometimes through sexual contacts with other males who finally become defined as homosexual. It is after the point of conscious admission that one is a homosexual—an admission that ranges from the traumatic to the delighted—that the search for sexual partners begins. This search usually requires entry into the world of homosexual bars, development of the argot of homosexual life, and gradual learning of the modes of approach and retreat that are related to the satisfaction of sexual needs. Study of this zone of the homosexual's adjustment is beginning to result in a literature that suggests that adult homosexual commitments are not re-enactments of early pathological relations between parents and children. These studies have begun to outline the processes of adult socialization that are involved in the development of the homosexual commitment. There now also exists a literature on particular aspects of the homosexual life (Hooker 1966; Leznoff & Westly 1956; Achilles 1967). The extant literature is nearly exclusively concerned with the male homosexual; the literature on the lesbian is both scanty and scientifically inadequate. In general, discussions of the lesbian tend to focus on the similarities between male and
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female homosexuality and to see one as the mirror image of the other—that is, to see male homosexuals as imitations of females and female homosexuals as imitations of males. A more satisfactory view, however, is to see female homosexuality as continuous with normal female sexuality (Simon & Gagnon 1967; Ovesey 1956). Not all homosexuals are regular members of the homosexual community and many of them never involve themselves in this social milieu at all. It is difficult to determine whether or not a more intensive or a more detached relationship to the community is more helpful in the homosexual's personal and social adjustment. The maintenance of female homosexuality occurs more often outside the community context than does homosexuality among males (Simon & Gagnon 1967). The development of homosexual contacts among prisoners in penal institutions is more like an articulated system of introduction to homosexual experience than is homosexual development in the free community. Homosexual behavior in prisons ranges from the careful seduction, in adult male institutions, of a weaker male by an aggressive male (involving money and protection from the latter in exchange for the sexual cooperation of the former, and often leading to "marriage") to the "extended family" systems observed in juvenile female institutions and the homosexual "bringing out" in female penitentiaries (Lindner 1948; Sykes 1958; Halleck & Hersko 1962; Lamberti 1963; Ward & Kassebaum 1965; Giallombardo 1966). The antisocial deviant. The third type of deviant sexual acts to be considered are those most specifically prosecuted by law-enforcement agencies; they involve aggression, youth, close kin relations, and public disturbance (a typology suggested both in Wheeler 1960 and in Indiana University 1965; see pp. 1-13 for the classification of sex offenders). Most of these acts are committed by individuals whose behavior is the result of needs developed outside any subcultural or deviant training ground composed of other persons oriented toward the same behavior. The origins of heterosexual pedophilia, for example, seem to lie in the incapacity of the male to establish any meaningful relationship with an adult female or in many cases a failure to find any sociosexual outlet at any level of psychological involvement. The pedophile resorts to children because the difference in age gives him a sense of power over them as well as the hope that he will meet with an uncritical reception. There is no social support for the act either before or after its occurrence. The individual has the latent capacity to commit the act without any
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social support, and at the intersection of the appropriate forces (aging, alcohol, fatigue, emotional stress) a sexual contact with a child occurs. The model of the behavior that seems to be most useful is that of the releasing mechanism. The pedophile has learned in childhood a certain set of responses that gives him the potential for the act as an adult. Under the appropriate circumstances the potential is realized. Other sexual acts of the third type that have some of the aspects of pedophilia are homosexual pedophilia, exhibitionism, compulsive peeping, and sex offenses involving incest and the use of force. In the cases of peeping, assaultive offenses, and incest there are certain complicating social or cultural factors. Peeping and the use of minimal aggression in sexual relations are not necessarily viewed as abnormal or deviant. The act of peeping is something that many males have performed when confronted by a lighted unshaded window; however, for the impulse to invade and dominate the sexual life of the individual to such an extent that he must seek out windows in which to look suggests that more than a simple heterosexual interest is involved. A certain amount of aggression by males is expected in the process of sexual exploration in Western culture, and it is clear that excessive force is used more frequently than is reported to the agencies of law enforcement. This is predominantly a lower-class phenomenon, but not totally so, since there is evidence for its occurring among college-level males as well (Kirkpatrick & Kanin 1957). There are indications that those college-level males who do use force have certain other characteristics that differentiate them from males who do not use force. The aggressive male is commonly responding to his own needs rather than to the interactional situation in which he is involved. What may be involved is a blunting of the capacity to recognize negative signs displayed by the female, either as a function of the male's specific personality characteristics or as a function of his sexual excitement. Incest. The problem of sexual contact between relatives is confined primarily to father-daughter contacts and to a lesser extent to those between brothers and sisters and between cousins. The last two are usually transitory childhood contacts or those that take place just after puberty, and in the case of brother—sister incest they may be made more complicated by the presence of mental deficiency. Father-daughter contacts are most prevalent in rural, or rural-origin, families. The families in which such contacts occur commonly are extremely disorganized families in which the father
converts the daughter into a source of sexual and often pseudo-marital relations (Kaufman et al. 1954). Mothers in these families retreat from the center of the family life, and only if the daughter is quite young does the mother inform the police. With very young daughters the offense often has elements of pedophilia. Sex-offense rates. A useful point to be made about deviant behavior of this third type is that over long periods of time it represents a relatively stable proportion of all offenses known to the police, of all persons arrested, and of all felons in penal institutions. In addition, the rates per hundred thousand in the population have remained stable for many years. The stability of these rates indicates that disturbed and disorganized families represent a rather constant source of individuals who grow up with strategic weaknesses in their character structures and thus become sexual offenders. The rate of increase in the number of such persons, however, does not exceed the growth rate of the population, indicating that the roots of these kinds of deviant acts are in the family, as the basic unit of social organization, rather than in secondary social structures. As can be seen from the foregoing discussion, the forms of sexual behavior that are approved arise from sources very similar to those from which the forms called deviant arise, and the margins between one and the other are sharp in moral evaluation but vague in fact. The general situation of sexuality in this society may be best described as that of pluralistic ignorance, a condition of noninformation and misinformation that serves to direct (or misdirect) a powerful drive. For the vast majority of deviant sexual acts, negative sanctions are frequently expressed but only sporadically enforced. For a smaller proportion of acts, deviant behavior involves recognizable social organization that serves either as a learning structure or as a performance structure for the development and maintenance of the behavior. Finally, for a very small proportion there seem to be no social structural components to the behavior, either for its development or for its continuation, and its origins seem most likely to be in early familial life, as was explained above. With the general absence of mediating social structures between the original development of sexual capacity in childhood and the performance of sexual roles in adulthood the conditions described above are not surprising. Sexual roles are worked out on an individual basis with a general incapacity to share and reformulate very large portions of the
SEXUAL BEHAVIOR: Deviation: Social Aspects sexual experience. Since there is a high premium on silence in sexual matters, there is rarely an opportunity for social checks on deviant impulses, nor does there exist any system by which the behavior of individuals, if it varies from the rigid normative standards, can be examined in terms of the behavior's relevant social and psychological meaning. Of all of the areas of deviant behavior, it is sexual deviance which most strongly maintains its "individualistic" character. JOHN H. GAGNON [See also DEVIANT BEHAVIOR; MENTAL DISORDERS; and the biographies of FREUD; KINSEY.] BIBLIOGRAPHY
ACHILLES, NANCY 1967 The Development of the Homosexual Bar as an Institution. Pages 214-228 in John H. Gagnon and William Simon (editors), Sexual Deviance. New York: Harper. BELL, ROBERT R.; and BUERKLE, JACK V. 1961 Mother and Daughter Attitudes to Premarital Sexual Behavior. Marriage and Family Living 23:390-392. BROWN, DANIEL G. 1958 Inversion and Homosexuality. American Journal of Orthopsychiatry 28:424-429. DAVIS, KINGSLEY 1961 Prostitution. Pages 262-288 in Robert K. Merton and Robert A. Nisbet (editors), Contemporary Social Problems. New York: Harcourt. DEAN, ROBERT B.; and RICHARDSON, HAROLD 1964 Analysis of MMPI Profiles of Forty College-educated Overt Male Homosexuals. Journal of Consulting Psychology 28:483-486. EHRMANN, WINSTON 1959 Premarital Dating Behavior. New York: Holt. FORD, CLELLAN S.; and BEACH, FRANK A. 1951 Patterns of Sexual Behavior. New York: Harper. FREUD, SIGMUND (1905) 1953 Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality. Volume 7, pages 123-245 in The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud. London: Hogarth; New York: Macmillan. -> First published as Drei Abhandlungen zur Sexualtheorie. FREUND, KURT 1963 A Laboratory Method for Diagnosing Predominance of Homo- or Hetero-erotic Interest in the Male. Behavior Research and Therapy 1:85-93. GAGNON, JOHN H.; and SIMON, WILLIAM (editors) 1967 Sexual Deviance. New York: Harper. GIALLOMBARDO, ROSE 1966 Society of Women: A Study of a Woman's Prison. New York: Wiley. HALLECK, SEYMOUR L.; and HERSKO, MARVIN 1962 Homosexual Behavior in a Correctional Institution for Adolescent Girls. American Journal of Orthopsychiatry 32:911-917. HAMPSON, JOHN L.; and HAMPSON, JOAN G. 1961 The Ontogenesis of Sexual Behavior in Man. Pages 14011432 in William C. Young (editor), Sex and Internal Secretions. 3d ed. 2 vols. Baltimore: Williams & Wilkins. HARLOW, HARRY F. 1959 Love in Infant Monkeys. Scientific American 200, no. 6:68—74. HOOKER, EVELYN 1957 The Adjustment of the Male Overt Homosexual. Journal of Projective Techniques 21:18-31. HOOKER, EVELYN 1958 Male Homosexuality in the Rorschach. Journal of Projective Techniques 22:33-54.
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HOOKER, EVELYN 1966 The Homosexual Community. Pages 354-364 in James O. Palmer and Michael J. Goldstein (editors), Perspectives in Psychopathology. New York: Oxford Univ. Press. INDIANA UNIVERSITY, INSTITUTE FOR SEX RESEARCH 1965 Sex Offenders: An Analysis of Types, by Paul H. Gebhard, J. H. Gagnon, W. B. Pomeroy, and C. V. Christenson. New York: Harper. KALLMAN, FRANZ J. 1952 Comparative Twin Study on the Genetic Aspects of Male Homosexuality. Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease 115:283-298. KALLMAN, F. J. 1963 Genetic Aspects of Sex Determination and Sexual Maturation Potentials in Man. Pages 5-18 in Conference on Community Mental Health Research, 4th, Washington University, St. Louis, 1962, Determinants of Human Sexual Behavior. Edited by George Winokur. Springfield, 111.: Thomas. KARPMAN, BENJAMIN 1954 The Sexual Offender and His Offenses. New York: Julian Press. KAUFMAN, IRVING; PECK, A. L.; and TAGIURI, C. K. 1954 The Family Constellation and Overt Incestuous Relations Between Father and Daughter. American Journal of Orthopsychiatry 24:266-277. KINSEY, ALFRED C. 1941 Criteria for a Hormonal Explanation of the Homosexual. Journal of Clinical Endocrinology 1:424-428. KINSEY, ALFRED C.; POMEROY, W. B.; and MARTIN, C. E. 1948 Sexual Behavior in the Human Male. Philadelphia : S aunders. KINSEY, ALFRED C. et al. 1953 Sexual Behavior in the Human Female. Philadelphia: Saunders. KIRKPATRICK, CLIFFORD; and KANIN, EUGENE 1957 Male Sex Aggression on a University Campus. American Sociological Review 22:52-58. LAMBERTI, ARMAND 1963 A Type of Peer Relationship in a Girls' Training School. Menninger Clinic, Bulletin 27:200-204. LEZNOFF, MAURICE; and WESTLEY, WILLIAM 1953 The Homosexual Community. Social Problems 3:257-263. LINDNER, ROBERT M. 1948 Sexual Behavior in Penal Institutions. Pages 201-215 in Albert Deutsch (editor), Sex Habits of American Men: A Symposium on the Kinsey Report. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: PrenticeHall. MARMOR, JUDD (editor) 1965 Sexual Inversion: The Multiple Roots of Homosexuality. New York: Basic Books. MONEY, JOHN 1961 Sex Hormones and Other Variables in Human Eroticism. Pages 1383-1400 in William C. Young (editor), Sex and Internal Secretions. 2 vols. 3d ed. Baltimore: Williams & Wilkins. MONEY, JOHN 1963 Factors in the Genesis of Homosexuality. Pages 19-43 in Conference on Community Mental Health Research, 4th, Washington University, St. Louis, 1962, Determinants'of Human Sexual Behavior. Edited by George Winokur. Springfield, 111.: Thomas. OVESEY, LIONEL 1954 The Homosexual Conflict: An Adaptational Analysis. Psychiatry 17:243-250. OVESEY, LIONEL 1956 Masculine Aspirations in Women: An Adaptational Analysis. Psychiatry 19:341-351. REISS, ALBERT J. JR. 1960 Sex Offenses: The Marginal Status of the Adolescent. Law and Contemporary Problems 25:309-333. REISS, ALBERT J. JR. 1961 The Social Integration of Queers and Peers. Social Problems 9:102-120. REISS, IRA L. 1960 Premarital Sexual Standards in America. Glencoe, 111.: Free Press.
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RIEFF, PHILIP 1959 Freud: The Mind of the Moralist. New York: Viking. SEARS, ROBERT R.; MACCOBY, E. E.; and LEVIN, H. 1957 Patterns of Child Rearing. Evanston, 111.: Row, Peterson. SIMON, WILLIAM; and GAGNON, JOHN H. 1967 The Lesbians: A Preliminary Overview. Pages 247-282 in John H. Gagnon and William Simon (editors), Sexual Deviance. New York: Harper. SOCIETY OF MEDICAL PSYCHOANALYSTS 1962 Homosexuality: A Psychoanalytic Study, by Irving Bieber et al. New York: Basic Books. SPITZ, RENE A. 1949 Autoeroticism. Psychoanalytic Study of the Child 3/4:85-120. SUTHERLAND, EDWIN H.; and CRESSEY, DONALD R. (1924) 1960 Principles of Criminology. 6th ed. Philadelphia: Lippincott. -» First published as a textbook under the title Criminology, with Sutherland as the sole author. SYKES, GRESHAM M. 1958 The Society of Captives: A Study of a Maximum Security Prison. Princeton Univ. Press. TRILLING, LIONEL (1950) 1957 The Kinsey Report. Pages 223-242 in Lionel Trilling, The Liberal Imagination. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday. WARD, DAVID A.; and KASSEBAUM, GENE B. 1965 Women's Prison: Sex and Social Structure. Chicago: Aldine. WHEELER, STANTON 1960 Sex Offenses: A Sociological Critique. Lazv and Contemporary Problems 25:258278. WHYTE, WILLIAM F. 1943 A Slum Sex Code. American Journal of Sociology 49:24-31. YOUNG, WILLIAM C. (editor) 1961 Sex and Internal Secretions. 2 vols. 3d ed. Baltimore: Williams & Wilkins. -> Pagination is continuous. YOUNG, WILLIAM C.; GOY, ROBERT W.; and PHOENIX, CHARLES H. 1964 Hormones and Sexual Behavior. Science 143:212-218.
HOMOSEXUALITY
Homosexual practices are among the most ancient manifestations of human sexuality. Abundant evidence for this fact is found in both the religious and the secular literature of the oldest civilizations and in their graphic art as well. Social attitudes in different cultures apparently varied then, as now, from strong condemnation of all homosexual practices to tolerance or permissiveness for some. From the beginning of the Christian era in western Europe ecclesiastical and secular law sought to prevent, control, and eradicate homosexuality by means of severe moral and legal condemnation. By the late nineteenth century, legal penalties were less severe as a result of humanitarian reform, but moral and religious censure had not diminished. That the scientific study of homosexuality began in this period of western European history, and in this cultural climate, is a tribute to the scientific and humanitarian interests of physicians, particularly such pioneers as Richard von Krafft-Ebing,
Sigmund Freud, Havelock Ellis, and Magnus Hirschfeld. Their theories were largely concerned with etiology and were based on clinical observations and influenced by developments in the biological sciences, including evolutionary theory. Although by this time cross-cultural observations of homosexuality were also accumulating, together with the rudiments of a general theory, they had little effect on the mainstream of research, which continued to focus on the etiology of homosexuality among individuals of Western culture. Increased research on homosexuality in Western countries since World War n has been coupled with more open discussion of the subject. Although there is no reliable evidence that the incidence of homosexuality is increasing, some forms of it are more socially visible. In part, this may be accounted for by the publicity given to scientific investigations of homosexuality and to discussions of the controversial social, legal, moral, and mental health issues related to it. Emergent homosexual "communities" in large urban centers and "homophile" organizations openly protesting public policy further contribute to this heightened visibility and increased public awareness. These developments reflect radical changes in the attitudes of the public and of homosexuals, in the social character of homosexuality, and in the volume and focus of scientific research. Homosexuality (homo- derives from the Greek root meaning "same") includes an extraordinary diversity of dyadic relations and of individual mental states and action patterns. The patterns of social organization that develop when homosexuals seek each other out also vary greatly. Because of this diversity, "homosexuality" is an ambiguous term with many meanings. Some investigators, such as Ford and Beach (1951), limit the term to overt sexual relations between individuals of the same sex. For others, notably Kinsey and his associates (1948; 1953), the degree of psychic arousal and the frequency of overt sexual response to individuals of the same or opposite sex determine ratings on a heterosexual-homosexual continuum that ranges from exclusively heterosexual to exclusively homosexual, with several intermediate ratings. Investigators with a clinical perspective (see, for instance, Marmor 1965, p. 4) frequently stress motivational and subjective aspects of erotic preference as criteria for defining persons as homosexual; overt behavior is considered as of secondary importance. In the social perspective of homosexual subcultures, the defining criteria may be shared understanding of sexual preferences for members of one's own sex and participation in social activity
SEXUAL BEHAVIOR: Homosexuality centered on the search for, and interaction with, these individuals (Goffman 1963, pp. 143-144). Thus, it is clear that "Who is homosexual?" and "What is homosexuality?" are very complex questions, clarification of which would be a lasting contribution to social science. Research on homosexuality is also of major significance for the light it throws on the relation of social structure and cultural norms to patterns of human sexuality; on the origins, development, and essential features of normal and abnormal personality; on masculinity and femininity; and on social deviance and deviant subcultures. Etiology and determinants In those Western societies that define homosexuality as deviant, there are four major theoretical issues concerning the etiology and determinants of persistent or predominant adult homosexuality. (1) Is the human organism psychosexually neutral at birth, so that learning processes determine homosexual object choice in adults, or are there "inherent sexual predispositions" (Diamond 1965, p. 168) which selectively influence the effects of learning? (2) What is the nature and content of the learning processes by which homosexual object choice develops? Is the appropriate developmental model a deviant role or a personality system with intrapersonal traits, motives, and gender identifications incompatible with the socialsexual capabilities and self-other expectancies of adult relations with the opposite sex? Does positive conditioning of sexual responses to persons of the same sex, or negative conditioning to persons of the opposite sex, or a combination of both, account for homosexuality? (3) Are particular periods in the developmental process, such as early childhood or adolescence, critical for homosexual object choice? (4) Are parent-child relationships in the nuclear family crucial in determining whether an individual becomes homosexual, or are peer relationships in childhood and adolescence, and deviant subcultures in adolescence and early adult life, of equal or possibly greater importance? These four issues are highly controversial and cannot be resolved by the research evidence currently available. A brief historical review of some of the major studies will illustrate differences in theoretical assumptions, in methodological approaches, in findings, and in conclusions, and it will indicate important areas for continued research. Theories of homosexuality. Early theorists stressed the importance of biological predispositions as determinants. Krafft-Ebing (1886) theorized that homosexuality was produced by a
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dominance of opposite-sex brain centers (female centers in males or vice versa) or that it was a hereditary disease. Freud (1905) postulated constitutional bisexuality as one of the biological predispositions which, together with early learning experiences or fixations, determined homosexual object choice. The major studies of biological predispositions have focused on genetic, chromosomal, and hormonal anomalies or dysfunctions. Comparisons of predominantly homosexual and heterosexual males with respect to chromosomal abnormalities have resulted in negative findings. In several studies, maternal age and birth order of homosexuals in a sibling series were significantly later than in control groups of heterosexual men. The degree of concordance of homosexuality in identical male twins appears to be significantly higher than in fraternal twins (for a review of these studies, see Pare 1965). The evidence is controversial but suggests that genetic mechanisms may be important. Significant progress could be made by replicating the studies of twins, birth order, and maternal age and by an intensified search for genetic determinants. Homosexual object choice in adults is not affected by hormone therapy and differences between the endocrine systems of homosexuals and those of heterosexuals have not been reliably demonstrated (Perloff 1965). As more accurate techniques of measuring hormonal activity develop, continued research may be valuable. A potential contribution of biological factors to human homosexuality is suggested by recent studies of animals, in which the location and functions of sex-specific behavior centers in the brain have been demonstrated (Krafft-Ebing may be vindicated!). Studies at the infrahuman level have also demonstrated that hormones injected prenatally produce effects on adult sexual behavior (for a review of these studies, see Diamond 1965). Thus, specific biological predispositions may be crucial variables, interacting with psychological and cultural variables, especially in producing the highly feminized males and masculinized females often referred to as "inverts." The experiential determinants emphasized by classical psychoanalytic theory are pathogenic parent—child relations and failure to successfully resolve (unconsciously) the vicissitudes of the three basic phases of libidinal and object-relations development in the critical period of infancy and early childhood. Some revisions of psychoanalytic theory reject constitutional or psychological bisexuality and emphasize ego adaptations to environmental difficulties. With few exceptions, however (see, for instance, Thompson 1947; Sullivan
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1953), pathogenic relations with parents in early childhood are assumed to be the crucial determinants, although individual patterns of behavior are subject to modification during adolescence. (For a review of psychoanalytic theories, see Society of Medical Psychoanalysts 1962, chapter 1.) This theoretical assumption currently relies for empirical support on conflicting and controversial data derived largely from comparing the life histories of adult homosexual and heterosexual males. Freund and Pinkava (1961) carefully tested clearly formulated hypotheses concerning parent-child relations and homosexuality by comparing interview data from male homosexual patients in a psychiatric hospital with similar data from two contrasting matched groups: neurotic heterosexual patients in the same hospital and nonpsychiatric patients. They found no significant differences between these groups with respect to the dominance, control, or decisive influence of either parent in the family. Relations between homosexual sons and their fathers were more "disturbed," a finding tentatively interpreted by the authors as secondary to, rather than a cause of, homosexuality, since the disturbance appeared to be mainly on the son's side of the relationship. Reports of greater conflict between parents of homosexuals signified a lack of tolerance by their sons for marital conflict rather than greater incidence of actual conflict. Bieber and his co-workers (see Society of Medical Psychoanalysts 1962) compared questionnaire data provided by psychoanalysts concerning their homosexual and heterosexual patients. Some differences between patientmother-father, mother-son, and father-son relationships in the contrasting groups were statistically significant. The authors concluded that the chances of becoming homosexual or of developing severe homosexual problems appear to be high for any son who is exposed to the combination of a "close-binding-intimate" mother who dominates and minimizes her husband, and a father who is detached or hostile (p. 172). Schofield (1965) compared interview data obtained from six matched groups: (1) homosexual and pedophiliac prisoners convicted of homosexual offenses, (2) homosexual and heterosexual patients who were in psychiatric treatment, (3) homosexuals and heterosexuals who were neither in treatment nor in prison. The proportion of individuals from disturbed home backgrounds was similar in each matched pair of groups; it was lowest in the nontreatment-prison groups and highest in the patient groups. The proportion of individuals who reported possessive, overprotective, or dominant mothers
and poor or nonexistent relations with fathers in childhood was larger in the combined homosexual groups (pedophiliacs excluded) than in the combined heterosexual groups (p. 105). The evidence from these and many similar studies does not support the assumption that pathological parent—child relations are either necessary or sufficient antecedents or determinants of adult homosexuality. The evidence does indicate, however, that some forms of familial pathology appear to be associated with increased vulnerability of some individuals to homosexual development, and it suggests that psychopathology is more frequently associated with homosexuality in these individuals. Longitudinal studies could now be designed for the testing of hypotheses specific to the differential effects of variable combinations of parent—child relations on the development of adult psychosexual patterns. The potential contribution of such studies is very high. . Empirical evidence that determinants in adolescence are critical for adult homosexuality is fragmentary. The theoretical rationale for this assumption is that one of the major developmental tasks of adolescence is the achievement of a stable psychosexual identity. An extensive body of clinicaltheoretical literature emphasizes the adolescent period as critical for the resolution of intrapsychic psychosexual conflicts originating in infancy or early childhood (Society of Medical Psychoanalysts 1962). Sullivan (1953) stressed very close and intense preadolescent friendships with peers of the same sex as one of the essential conditions for heterosexual development and the separation of lust and intimacy "dynamisms" as one precondition of adult homosexuality. Assuming that the human capacity for homosexual as well as heterosexual response is a basic part of the mammalian heritage, Kinsey and his associates (1948) suggested that cultural pres- ^ " sures and social conditioning may determine the final object choice. That adolescence may be a critical period for males is indicated by (1) the existence of a high positive relation between the early onset of adolescence and frequency of homosexual activity during adolescence and later life (ibid., p. 630) and (2) occurrence of the peak of sexual activity between ages 16 and 20. Among females, however, no consistent relation was found between homosexual activity and early onset of adolescence (Kinsey et al. 1953, p. 462), and the peak of female sexual activity occurs in the late twenties (ibid., p. 759). Group norms and peer relationships in adolescence may determine the relative frequencies of
SEXUAL BEHAVIOR: Homosexuality heterosexual and homosexual patterns in adults by affecting their self concepts, sex role expectations and performances, and notions of what constitute the boundaries of permissible behavior. Reiss (1961) found that members of a group of male juvenile delinquents who engaged in sexual acts with adult homosexuals did not define themselves as homosexuals and did not continue homosexual activity as adults. Group norms defined the limits of permissible sexual activity, rules of payment, frequency of contact, and derogatory attitudes toward homosexuality. Conversely, late adolescents or young adults who participate in homosexual cliques or informal homosexual groups may progressively redefine homosexual behavior in positive terms, defining themselves as homosexuals in the process, and thus beginning a homosexual "career" (Hooker 1965a, pp. 90, 101). Adult homosexual roles may be formed by a continuous process of social-sexual learning, from early childhood to adolescent and early adult life. Self-other interactions, including overt sexual activities, in deviant socially marginal pairs or groups of peers of the same sex, may be critical determinants of motives, self concepts, sex role expectations and abilities, and performances that are congruent with deviant and homosexual roles and incongruent with heterosexual roles. At critical choice points in the developmental process or continuously from early childhood, situational and social-structural variables may produce effects influencing adult patterns—for instance, the feminizing effects of older sisters on younger brothers, situationally determined isolation from peers of the same sex in childhood and adolescence, or isolation from peers of the opposite sex in adolescence. From the limited evidence currently available, it is clear that the diverse forms of adult homosexuality are produced by many combinations of variables, including biological, cultural, psychodynamic, structural, and situational. No single class of determinants, whether psychodynamic, cultural, or biological, accounts for all or even one of these diverse forms. The relative importance of each kind of determinant apears to vary greatly from one individual to another. It should be noted, however, that the classification of types of homosexuality with respect to patterns of determinants and characteristic adult features is an important problem for research. It is also clear that many developmental models are required to account for the diversity of developmental sequences leading to confirmed patterns of adult homosexuality. The continued search for determinants may be more
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productive if pursued in the perspective of development over time, rather than in the traditional perspective of origins or causes. Psychodynamics of adult homosexuality Psychoanalytic theories assume that homosexuality is a symbolic expression of unconscious psychodynamic mechanisms and that in any given case these mechanisms and symbolizations are complex and numerous. Thus, according to Freud (1905), male homosexuality may be a narcissistic search for a love object symbolizing the self; an avoidance and derogation of females induced by unconscious castration anxiety and fear of them, coupled with primary narcissism focused on the male genitals; and an unconsciously incestuous and therefore forbidden attraction to women associated with unconscious castration anxiety and fear of punishment by males. Stronger identification with the mother is symbolically expressed in "feminine" sexual submission to males; that with the father, in "masculine" domination of males. Freud postulated similar complex symbolic expressions of unconscious psychodynamics for female homosexuality; the primary difference between male and female homosexuality, he thought, related to the nature of castration anxiety. However, there is a paucity of theoretical assumptions that differentiate male and female homosexuality with respect to personality dynamics and its correlates (see Romm 1965). Ambivalence, chronic anxiety, intense hostility toward the partner, and longing for love characterize female homosexual relationships, according to Wilbur (1965). Thompson (1947) considered homosexuality in both sexes as a symptom of diverse character problems covertly expressed in homosexual relations (among these problems were fear of the opposite sex, need to defy authority, fear of adult responsibility, and destructiveness of self or others). These theories involve complex patterns of variables that are difficult to state as clear hypotheses. Consequently, the design of an appropriate methodology for testing them presents problems. Research studies have therefore focused on selected aspects of the theories or variables for which clinical impression or theoretical rationale provides justification. Masculinity and femininity. A major focus of research studies on male homosexuality is the complex issue of psychological masculinity-femininity and its relation to gender identification. Terman and Miles (1936), using masculinityfemininity test scores and interview data, compared "passive" male homosexuals (defined by "female" roles in sexual acts) with "actives" (de-
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fined by "male" roles) and then compared both of these with (presumably) selected groups of heterosexual men and women. The femininity scores of the passives were higher than those of any other male group tested. The masculinity scores of the actives were higher than those of the passives and of a group of regular-army men. These results suggested that individuals in both homosexual groups represented deviations in masculine and feminine identifications, interests, activities, and feelings. Interview data on the passives supported the masculinity-femininity test results. Similar results were obtained on a small sample of active female homosexuals. In subsequent studies of masculinity-femininity, data on sexual practices and preferences are rarely reported, but the evidence from research on other dimensions of male homosexuality indicates that samples of homosexuals usually include many individuals whose preferences and practices are highly variable, as well as those representing the two extremes of active and passive (Society of Medical Psychoanalysts 1962; Hooker 1965£>; Schofield 1960). The distribution of the scores of homosexuals and control groups of heterosexuals on the masculinity-femininity scale of the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI) indicates that homosexuals are significantly more "feminine" in their responses than heterosexuals. Thus, Doidge and Holtzman (1960, p. 11) found that a group of homosexual men in the Air Force who had been investigated for homosexual offenses scored significantly higher (that is, were more "feminine") than three control groups of predominantly or exclusively heterosexual men. Braaten and Darling (1965, p. 298) found that, while overt homosexual males (including exclusives and bisexuals) and covert homosexuals who were patients in a college clinic did not differ significantly on masculinity-femininity scores, as a total group (overts plus coverts) they scored significantly higher than a control group of equally disturbed, nonhomosexual patients. Although a group of homosexual males who were not in treatment and were apparently functioning effectively in the community scored significantly higher than a control group of heterosexual males on the masculinity-femininity scale of the MMPI and the femininity scale of the California Personality Inventory (CPI), significant differences were not found in scores on various projective measures designed to assess unconscious gender identification (unpublished research by the author). Feminine identification and confused or unstable gender identification in male homosexuals have
also been assessed by the use of content indices in the Rorschach Test and the Thematic Apperception Test (TAT). The interstudy reliability of these indices in differentiating homosexual and heterosexual groups is low (Hooker 1965a; Lindzey 1965). Chang and Block (1960)' using a list of adjectives, derived identification scores from descriptions by male homosexual and heterosexual research subjects of the ideal self, the mother, the father, and their actual selves. The results supported the hypothesis that homosexual males were more strongly identified with the mother and did not identify with the father. Conclusions from these findings must be drawn with caution. Psychological masculinity and femininity are not unitary dimensions of personality but composites of different clusters of interests, attitudes, and feelings. The test measures are also multivariate in character. Thus, high "femininity" scores may indicate ego sensitivity and denial of interest in culturally masculine occupations (Braaten & Darling 1965). Research findings currently available do not provide even roughly sketched outlines of the complex patterns of psychological masculinity-femininity and gender identification in male or female homosexuals. If current measures of these variables are to remain in use, the multivariate character of what is being measured must be taken into account. Also, new and more appropriate methods must be devised for assessing different clusters or profiles of the conscious, unconscious, cultural, and biological components of masculinity, femininity, and gender identification. The selection of samples of research subjects must make allowance for the broad range and diversity of masculine and feminine patterns and the variable combinations of these. Other personality dimensions. The evidence supporting assumptions related to other psychodynamics or personality correlates is equally inconclusive. Bieber and his co-workers (Society of Medical Psychoanalysts 1962) concluded that their findings provide convincing support for the assumption that homosexuality is a specific form of sexual psychopathology: fear of the opposite sex or of heterosexual expression. But none of the evidence, such as fear of injury to the genitals, fear and aversion to female genitalia, or anxiety associated with heterosexual behavior, was specific to the homosexual group. The evidence cited for the conclusion that other psychopathologic processes in personality are secondary but invariably occur in homosexuals is subject to the same limitations. Moreover, the research subjects were patients in psychoanalytic treatment, so that the relation be-
SEXUAL BEHAVIOR: Homosexuality tween psychopathology and homosexuality was confounded. Braaten and Darling (1965) found no evidence to support assumptions that homosexuals, as rated by psychiatric interviewers, were more psychopathic, paranoid, or schizoid than a control group of heterosexuals and found no differences in psychopathology as measured by the MMPI. Psychiatric ratings on narcissism and masochism were higher for homosexuals but not specific to them. The significantly higher scores of homosexuals on all clinical scales of the MMPI were interpreted by Doidge and Holtzman (1960) as evidence that homosexuality is a symptom of severe personality disturbance. In a number of studies of male homosexuals who were not in treatment or in disciplinary settings, the results obtained by the use of the MMPI, TAT, Rorschach, and other psychological measures did not justify the conclusion that homosexuality is necessarily and invariably a concomitant or symptom of psychopathology- In many individuals no evidence of psychopathology was found (Hooker 1957; 1965a). Nevertheless, the assumption that a modal pattern of personality structure and psychodynamics characterizes male homosexuals is explicitly stated or is implicit in the methodology used in many research studies. Having been unable to establish any differences between a group of homosexual males and a control group of heterosexuals, either in degree of self-acceptance or in ideal-self descriptions, Chang and Block commented that since "homosexuals and normals are quite obviously rather different sorts of people," their data must be regarded as questionable (1960, p. 309). Nevertheless, the only obvious difference between homosexuals and heterosexuals is in psychosexual object choice. All experienced clinicians and research workers report that the personality differences among individual homosexuals are far more apparent than the similarities. Investigators who include the data on individual differences in their studies have found a great diversity of personality patterns. A singular exception is the finding of Cattell and Morony (1962) that low ego strength, high extroversion, low superego, and a radical social outlook characterize the personality profiles of male homosexuals. They conclude that it is legitimate to speak of the homosexual-personality profile. The inconclusiveness of research on homosexuality is a function of many variables, including differences in investigators, in samples of research subjects and situational settings, in methodology, and in concepts of homosexuality. Lindzey (1965) has demonstrated the significant influence of many of these variables in a study designed to
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cross-validate objective indices of homosexuality in the TAT and to test the predictive efficiency of clinical methods of diagnosing homosexuality compared with actuarial ones. The limitations of psychological tests in the diagnosis of homosexuality have been documented in many studies. Inferences from these measures and generalizations about the personality characteristics of homosexuals must be made with caution and within the limits set by the characteristics of the research sample, the setting, and the methodology. With few exceptions, studies of the personalities of homosexuals have been stated in terms of dichotomous attributes—psychopathology versus normality, specific sexual psychopathology versus pervasive personality disorder, feminine versus confused identification, feminine versus masculine identification, and other pairs of mutually exclusive variables. Thus, in effect, homosexuality has been •*' treated as a clinical entity. But contemporary personality theories are richly suggestive of dimensions or subsystems of personality that are potentially relevant to psychosexual patterns, and until now, these theories have scarcely been tapped as sources of hypotheses. Some of the effects of a changing climate of public attitudes toward homosexuality and of an increasing freedom to conduct scientific studies of human sexuality in all of its complex psychological, social, and biological aspects are manifested in the small but growing number of behavioral scientists whose interests and competence in personality research are focused on homosexuality. With the cooperation of homosexuals in the "homophile" and larger communities, it is no longer necessary to depend on subjects in clinic or prison settings. With the use of more rigorous criteria in selecting homogeneous samples of subjects and of more appropriate research designs, including cluster and profile analyses, it may be possible to differentiate personality patterns among homosexuals. Also, progress may be achieved in resolving the long-debated issue v'" as to whether some homosexuals differ from their heterosexual counterparts only in sexual object choice or are invariably different in some personality dimensions. Role differentiation and typology The perspectives of the two-sexed heterosexual society have so dominated the study of homosexuality that typologies of homosexual and related roles have been developed only to a very limited extent. Thus, Ferenczi (1914) distinguished between male inverts who have pervasive feminine identifications and assume a passive sexual role
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and males who assume an active sexual role and are apparently masculine in every respect except sexual object choice. Many theoreticians and empirical investigators (see, for instance, Terman & Miles 1936), while emphasizing the active-passive dichotomy in sex roles and the corresponding masculine-feminine dichotomy in gender identifications, have noted that the patterns of many male homosexuals represent variable combinations and intermediate grades. Recent studies (Schofield I960; Society of Medical Psychoanalysts 1962; Hooker 1965b) have shown that the terms "activity" and "passivity" may be useful in referring to psychological states but are inaccurate and misleading when applied to sex roles and should therefore be discarded. The terms "insertee" and "inserter" (Society of Medical Psychoanalysts 1962) are more accurate and operationally useful equivalents. Studies of the sex-role preferences and practices of male homosexuals indicate that a large proportion of them habitually perform either role, according to their own or their partners' momentary preference. For the majority, consciousness of male identity and of masculinity or femininity appears to show no clear relation to sex roles. Sustained dyadic relations and the shared perspective of male homosexual subcultures appear to increase the flexibility of social-sexual roles and to create the social conditions for the emergence of new solutions to the problems of role differentiation in a one-sex world (Hooker 1965k). Studies of male homosexuality in correctional institutions (Huffman I960; Sykes 1958) suggest that homosexual social-sexual roles are clearly defined by inmate codes. According to these codes, the masculinity of the individual who assumes the inserter role in a homosexual act is not diminished and may even be increased. Within the institution, the role carries no implication that the individual is homosexual. Emotional involvement with a partner appears to be rare. Gratification of needs for power, status, and sexual release is presumably legitimate motivation for assuming the role. Individuals who assume insertee roles occupy social positions of inferior status to which stereotyped attributes of femininity and homosexuality are ascribed. These findings apply only to institutions in which known homosexuals are not segregated from the rest of the prison population. As noted above, the literature of female homosexuality is fragmentary in comparison with that of male homosexuality. Studies of role differentiation have been conducted largely in correctional settings for adolescent girls or prisons for adult
women. In prisons for women a male-female dichotomy in social-sexual roles develops and is sustained with little flexibility or variation (Ward & Kassebaum 1965). The masculine, or "butch," role is characterized by emulation of the male in appearance, mannerism, and aggressiveness in social interaction as well as in sexual relations. The feminine role is identical in the prison and in the larger society, except for the sexual partner. The woman who assumes the masculine role becomes emotionally involved with her feminine role partner and defines herself as homosexual more frequently, and receives sexual gratification less frequently, than her counterpart in the male prison. Whether the clear-cut male-female role differentiation in prison settings is also characteristic of female homosexual patterns in the larger community is unknown. Despite the differences, the similarities of homosexual role differentiation in men's and women's prisons are striking. It appears that individuals in both settings who assume opposite-sex roles are more likely to have been overt homosexuals before entering prison and to continue homosexuality on being released. In studies of correctional settings for adolescent girls, it has been found that the roles assumed in the course of homosexual relationships represent variations of all family roles. The empirical data obtained in the restricted environments of correctional institutions for men and women support a dichotomous typology of homosexual roles in which the male and female social-sexual roles in the larger community are reflected. However, male homosexual role patterns in other cultural settings appear to show extensive variations for which a taxonomy, or system of classification, is urgently needed. Studies of female homosexual role patterns in nonprison settings (several were in progress in 1966) can provide the necessary data for a comparison of variability within and between the sexes. The development of taxonomies of male and female homosexual patterns is a theoretical problem of paramount importance. To be meaningful, such taxonomies must include variations in many dimensions of personality, in sexual and social behavior, and in the social settings or subcultures in which many homosexuals participate. Demographic and cultural variation. In undertaking empirical research on the incidence or demographic distribution of homosexuality in urban industrialized societies, investigators are confronted with two major questions: (1) Who or what is to be counted as homosexual? and (2) How can representative samples be obtained in
SEXUAL BEHAVIOR: Homosexuality different social strata of individuals whose behavior is socially, morally, and legally stigmatized? In view of the magnitude of these problems, it is not surprising that few have even attempted to solve them. The most systematic research studies of the incidence and social correlates of homosexuality are those of Kinsey and his associates (1948; 1953), who rejected the counting of homosexuals as an inappropriate and impossible task. Accumulative estimates of incidence were based on the number of individuals brought to orgasm by physical contact with others of the same sex during specified periods. They attempted to collect interview data from samples of equal size, varying in demographic characteristics. The samples (5,300 white males, 5,940 white females) were neither representative of the total population nor randomly selected from it. For white males the estimated incidence was indicated by the following: (1) 37 per cent had at least one overt homosexual experience between the onset of adolescence and old age; (2) 10 per cent were predominantly homosexual for at least three years between the ages of 16 and 55; (3) 4 per cent were solely homosexual after the onset of adolescence. For white females, the estimated incidence was much lower: (1) 13 per cent had at least one overt homosexual experience between adolescence and old age; (2) 28 per cent had covert or overt experience; (3) a half to a third as many females were primarily or exclusively homosexual in any age period. The major findings on the social correlates of homosexual activity for males were that the highest incidence occurred among unskilled and semiskilled workers and the lower white-collar class; among those with high school education and of urban background; and among the less devout or inactive church members. The lowest incidence occurred among the professional and upper whitecollar classes and in the college-educated group. However, the incidence among skilled workers was closer to that among the professional and upper white-collar classes than to that among the lower occupational groups. Those with grade school education displayed a level of homosexual activity intermediate between that of high school- and that of college-educated groups. Homosexual activity in females increased with education, so that the incidence was highest among those with college or postgraduate education; for males, the opposite was true. For both males and females the highest incidence occurred among the less devout or least active in church affiliation. Although the assumptions, methods, and conclu-
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sions of these studies are highly controversial, their findings are most frequently cited as evidence for a high incidence of homosexuality in the United States. They are also believed (on the basis of rather limited demographic evidence) to support the assumption that cultural differences between social groups determine the unequal distribution of homosexual activity in different segments of society. This assumption also appears to be supported by Schofield's study in England (1960). A group of 127 men who identified themselves as homosexuals to the investigator and were also rated by him as predominantly or exclusively so were interviewed concerning their backgrounds and current social and sexual patterns. The largest proportion of men were in lower occupational levels and the smallest in the professional group, a distribution of men among occupational levels that is similar to the total population's. However, the number of men in nonmanual and artistic occupations and in the professions exceeded chance expectations, and those employed in a technical capacity and manual workers were underrepresented. In educational level attained, the sample was similar to the total population in that the largest number had the statutory minimum of education. However, the number of those with extensive education and high social status was higher than would be expected in a random sample of the total male population. The majority of these men lived in London, to which a large proportion of them had migrated from other urban centers. Active church affiliation was only slightly lower than that of the general population. In a continuation of this study, fifty men were selected who had been neither convicted of homosexual offenses nor involved in therapy of any kind (Schofield 1965). They were compared with an equal number of men in three groups: homosexuals in prison, homosexuals in therapy, and pedophiliacs convicted of offenses against males. On Kinsey ratings, the prison group was predominantly or exclusively homosexual; the patient group included a small number who were equally homosexual and heterosexual or predominantly heterosexual; a quarter of the convicted homosexuals and 60 per cent of the pedophiliacswere either equally homosexual and heterosexual or predominantly heterosexual. In educational achievement, occupational status, earned income, social class, and upward social mobility, the men who were neither in prison nor in therapy ranked highest and the prison groups lowest. The four groups were differentiated not only in their demographic characteristics but also in their patterns of social and
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sexual relationships. Thus, the men who had not sought treatment or been arrested were better integrated into the larger community both at work and in their leisure time. They also had larger circles of homosexual friends and more long-standing relationships with other men. Only in this group were there substantial numbers of men who maintained a household with another homosexual. They were far less promiscuous than the patient or prison homosexual groups, although the frequency of sexual experience was equally high. It is apparent that comparison of the findings in this British study with those in the Kinsey report has limited meaning. However, some similarities and differences are of interest. In both studies, homosexuals were found in all social classes, educational levels, and occupations. A larger proportion of homosexuals (or of homosexual activity) in all studies took place in urban settings and in lower occupational levels and social classes. In educational achievement, however, the proportion was greater in the middle level (high school) in America and in the lower level (secondary modern school) in England. That in both countries the distributions were skewed toward the lower end of the occupational and social class range may well be accounted for by the fact that individuals in higher levels would not volunteer to be interviewed. The same limitation is relevant to the Kinsey finding that the incidence of homosexual activity is lowest among the most devout religious groups. Moreover, in the English studies the incidence of active religious affiliation did not appear to be significantly lower among homosexual males. In short, whether homosexuals or homosexual activities among males or females are more heavily concentrated in different social strata remains an open question. Whether the social patterns or incidence of those who define themselves as homosexual are different in varied social levels is of equal or possibly even greater importance. Ethnographic accounts. In a survey of studies of sexual behavior in 190 societies, Ford and Beach (1951) found that ethnographic accounts of homosexual activities were available for 76. In 49 of these some forms were condoned, regarded as normal or socially acceptable, and even encouraged for at least some classes of individuals. In some cultures, such as those of the Siberian Chukchee and the Aleutian Koniaga, an institutionalized role of berdache, or shaman, is provided for adult male homosexuals. These men adopt feminine dress, activities, mannerisms, become "wives" of other men, and assume the "female" role in anal inter-
course. Their social status may be high. Male homosexuality in some societies, for instance among the Keraki and Kiwai of New Guinea, is an institutionalized feature of puberty rites. Thus, all males must engage in homosexual practices, either as initiates in the insertee role in anal intercourse or as married or unmarried males who perform the inserter role. Such practices are believed to be essential for male growth and strength. It has also been reported that all men and boys among the Siwans of northeast Africa engage in homosexual practices; married and unmarried males have homosexual and heterosexual liaisons. In 28 of these societies, adult homosexuality was reported to be rare, absent, or only practiced in secret. In all societies (except that of the Sirione in Bolivia) in which homosexuality was said to be rare, specific social pressures were directed against it. Condemnation and penalties ranged from ridicule to threat of death. The unreliability of the estimates of incidence in these societies was apparent. Information concerning female homosexuality was reported for only 17 societies. It appeared highly probable that females were less likely than males to engage in homosexual practices. In view of the small number of societies for which data are currently available and the questionable reliability and meaning of the data in the many studies that report sexual behavior while ignoring its context of culture patterns and social structures, it is apparent that descriptive or explanatory generalizations concerning demographic and cultural variations in homosexuality are precariously based. Whether a majority of societies consider some form of homosexuality normal and socially acceptable is an important issue for continued cross-cultural research. Clearly, some societies not only consider adolescent or childhood homosexuality normal (some evidence suggests an increasing trend in this direction in the United States) but also regard homosexual relations between adult and adolescent males as important, normal, and socially approved alternatives to heterosexual intercourse (Davenport 1965). Subcultures and social organizations. Homosexual communities and subcultures in modern urban centers are collective reactions to legal pressures and social stigma. Whether they are largely created by societal reactions to this form of sexual expression (Becker 1963) or, on the contrary, would develop under any sociolegal conditions is debatable (Schur 1965, p. 86). A central thesis in contemporary theories (Lemert 1951; Becker 1963; Goffman 1963) is that deviant as well as conform-
SEXUAL BEHAVIOR: Homosexuality ing behavior is learned in interaction with others and that it cannot be understood without reference to the societal reactions it invokes. Male homosexual collectivities develop on a sizable scale only in modern industrialized societies, which define this form of sexual expression as criminal, pathological, or immoral. In adjusting to this stigmatized status, a large number of homosexuals in social interaction with others who share similar inclinations make it the basis of their social identity and way of life. A larger majority cope with the problems of homosexuality in other ways, whether or not they enter some sector of a homosexual community. Homosexual communities in large cities are made up of constantly changing aggregates of persons who are loosely linked by friendship and sexual interests in an extended and overlapping series of networks. Some network clusters form tightly knit cliques of friends and homosexually "married" pairs, while in others, informal groups or social organizations develop. The structure of the communication, friendship, and sexual network among members of the community is complex. Community gathering places are centers from which information is transmitted concerning social occasions for homosexuals and the attitudes and organized activities of law-enforcement agencies concerning homosexuals. In some sectors of these networks, bars, taverns, or private clubs are informally institutionalized as homosexual territory, although under surveillance of the police, who sometimes exact tribute for their connivance. These settings provide opportunities for the initiation of sexual contact and for an in-group social life. Some are primarily market places for making sexual contacts, while others are predominantly centers of social activity, although arrangements for sexual activity may occur. A standardized and essential feature of interaction in bars, baths, streets, and parks is the expectation that sex can be had without obligation or commitment. Sexuality is separated from affectional and social life and is characterized by promiscuity, instrumentality, and anonymity. In other sectors of the homosexual community, sexuality is integrated in the affectional, personal, and social patterns of individuals who establish relatively stable and long-lasting relationships. Many subcultures develop in large homosexual communities, with a distinctive vernacular, distinctive modes of speech and dress, distinctive values and norms regulating sexual and other forms of conduct, and distinctive patterns of interaction
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with homosexuals and nonhomosexuals. Some individuals may be totally immersed in a homosexual subculture of the community. A wide variety of occupations is created by the demand for services to homosexuals. Male prostitutes, many of whom are homosexuals, constitute one occupation (Reiss 1961; Schur 1965). Entrepreneurs who are homosexual may develop an occupation in arranging social entertainment and large social gatherings for members of a particular homosexual group. Thus, at work and in leisure time, in personal and social life, contact with the larger society may be infrequent. For the majority, however, behavioral, temporal, and spatial separation of the homosexual and heterosexual worlds is required to manage the strategies of passing as heterosexuals at work and in social contact with heterosexuals. In fact, there are many different methods, some of them quite complex, both of participating in the homosexual community without leaving the larger society and of ignoring the larger society altogether. Related to these patterns of integration and separation are the different social levels of homosexual groups. Female homosexual, or lesbian, communities apparently develop on a smaller scale, with informal groups, cliques, and special gathering places. But a formal organization of lesbians and an official publication with national circulation indicate that the collective aspects of female homosexuality have some importance. No empirical studies of these aspects are currently available. Although homophile organizations, whether male or female, constitute and represent a very small minority of the total homosexual population, they achieve social significance by the role they assume in openly protesting the status assigned to homosexuals by the larger society. Empirical studies of, and theoretical inquiry into, homosexual subcultures are very limited (Leznoff & Westley 1956; Hooker 1965a; 1965b). They suggest that commitment to a homosexual identity and career and the stability of that commitment and the career pattern that follows may be determined by entry into the homosexual community and by the ensuing identity transformation and socialization processes. However, the relation between personality and homosexual subculture variables in determining the commitment to, and patterns of, adult homosexuality is complex. For many the stability of the commitment appears to be a function of the interaction of both sets of variables. Probably a majority of those who are committed to an exclusive homosexual pattern have defined themselves as homosexual before they
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enter the community. In major urban centers, however, it appears unlikely that adult homosexuals are ignorant of, or indifferent to, the community. EVELYN HOOKER [See also PERSONALITY; and the biographies of ELLIS; FREUD.] BIBLIOGRAPHY Reviews of research studies may be found in Marmor 1965; Ruitenbeek 1963; Schofield I960; 1965. Kinsey et al. 1948; 1953 include surveys of earlier work on homosexuality. BECKER, HOWARD S. 1963 Outsiders: Studies in the Sociology of Deviance. New York: Free Press. BRAATEN, LEIF J.; and DARLING, C. DOUGLAS 1965 Overt and Covert Homosexual Problems Among Male College Students. Genetic Psychology Monographs 71: 269-310. CATTELL, RAYMOND B.; and MORONY, JOHN H. 1962 The Use of the 16 PF in Distinguishing Homosexuals, Normals, and General Criminals. Journal of Consulting Psychology 26:531-540. CHANG, JUDY; and BLOCK, JACK 1960 A Study of Identification in Male Homosexuals. Journal of Consulting Psychology 24:307-310. DAVENPORT, WILLIAM 1965 Sexual Patterns and Their Regulation in a Society of the Southwest Pacific. Pages 164-207 in Conference on Sex and Behavior, Berkeley, California, Sex and Behavior. Edited by Frank A. Beach. New York: Wiley. DIAMOND, MILTON 1965 A Critical Evaluation of the Ontogeny of Human Sexual Behavior. Quarterly Review of Biology 40:147-175. DOIDGE, WILLIAM T.; and HOLTZMAN, WAYNE H. 1960 Implications of Homosexuality Among Air Force Trainees. Journal of Consulting Psychology 24:9-13. FERENCZI, SANDOR (1914) 1963 The Nosology of Male Homosexuality. Pages 3-16 in Hendrik M. Ruitenbeek (editor), The Problem of Homosexuality in Modern Society. New York: Duttoii. -> First published in German. FORD, CLELLAN S.; and BEACH, FRANK A. 1951 Patterns of Sexual Behavior. New York: Harper. FREUD, SIGMUND (1905) 1953 Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality. Volume 7, pages 123-245 in The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud. London: Hogarth; New York: Macmillan. ~» First published in German. FREUND, K.; and PINKAVA, V. 1961 Homosexuality in Man and Its Association With Parental Relationships. Review of Czechoslovak Medicine 7:32-40. GOFFMAN, ERVING 1963 Stigma: Notes on the Management of Spoiled Identity. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall. HOOKER, EVELYN (1957) 1963 The Adjustment of the Male Overt Homosexual. Pages 141-161 in Hendrik M. Ruitenbeek (editor), The Problem of Homosexuality in Modern Society. New York: Dutton. HOOKER, EVELYN 1965a Male Homosexuals and Their "Worlds." Pages 83-107 in Judd Marmor (editor), Sexual Inversion: The Multiple Roots of Homosexuality. New York: Basic Books. HOOKER, EVELYN 1965& An Empirical Study of Some Relations Between Sexual Patterns and Gender Identity in Male Homosexuals. Pages 24-52 in John Money
(editor), Sex Research: New Developments. New York: Holt. HUFFMAN, ARTHUR V. 1960 Sex Deviation in a Prison Community. Journal of Social Therapy 6:170-181. INDIANA UNIVERSITY, INSTITUTE FOR SEX RESEARCH 1965 Sex Offenders: An Analysis of Types, by Paul H. Gebhard, J. H. Gagnon, W. B. Pomeroy, and C. V. Christenson. New York: Harper. KINSEY, ALFRED C. et al. 1948 Sexual Behavior in the Human Male. Philadelphia: Saunders. KINSEY, ALFRED C. et al. 1953 Sexual Behavior in the Human Female. Philadelphia: Saunders. KRAFFT-EBING, RICHARD VON (1886) 1965 Psychopathia sexualis. New York: Putnam. -» First unexpurgated edition in English; original in Latin. LEMERT, EDWIN M. 1951 Social Pathology: A Systematic Approach to the Theory of Sociopathic Behavior. New York: McGraw-Hill. LEZNOFF, MAURICE; and WESTLEY, WILLIAM A. (1956) 1963 The Homosexual Community. Pages 162-174 in Hendrik M. Ruitenbeek (editor), The Problem of Homosexuality in Modern Society. New York: Dutton. LINDZEY, GARDNER 1965 Seer Versus Sign. Journal of Experimental Research in Personality 1:17-27. MARMOR, JUDD (editor) 1965 Sexual Inversion: The Multiple Roots of Homosexuality. New York: Basic Books. OPLER, MARVIN K. 1965 Anthropological and Cross-cultural Aspects of Homosexuality. Pages 108—123 in Judd Marmor (editor), Sexual Inversion: The Multiple Roots of Homosexuality. New York: Basic Books. PARE, C. M. B. 1965 Etiology of Homosexuality: Genetic and Chromosomal Aspects. Pages 70-80 in Judd Marmor (editor), Sexual Inversion: The Multiple Roots of Homosexuality. New York: Basic Books. PERLOFF, WILLIAM H. 1965 Hormones and Homosexuality. Pages 44-69 in Judd Marmor (editor), Sexual Inversion: The Multiple Roots of Homosexuality. New York: Basic Books. REISS, ALBERT J. JR. (1961) 1963 The Social Integration of Queers and Peers. Pages 249-278 in Hendrik M. Ruitenbeek (editor), The Problem of Homosexuality in Modern Society. New York: Dutton. ROMM, MAY E. 1965 Sexuality and Homosexuality in Women. Pages 282-301 in Judd Marmor (editor), Sexual Inversion: The Multiple Roots of Homosexuality. New York: Basic Books. RUITENBEEK, HENDRIK M. (editor) 1963 The Problem of Homosexuality in Modern Society. New York: Dutton. [SCHOFIELD, MICHAEL] 1960 Minority: A Report on the Life of the Male Homosexual in Great Britain, by Gordon Westwood [pseud.]. London: Longmans. SCHOFIELD, MICHAEL 1965 Sociological Aspects of Homosexuality. Boston: Little. SCHUR, EDWIN M. 1965 Crimes Without Victims. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall. -» See especially pages 1-11 and 67-119. SOCIETY OF MEDICAL PSYCHOANALYSTS 1962 Homosexuality: A Psychoanalytic Study, by Irving Bieber et al. New York: Basic Books. SULLIVAN, HARRY STACK 1953 The Interpersonal Theory of Psychiatry. Edited by Helen Swick Perry and Mary Ladd Gawel. New York: Norton. SYKES, GRESHAM M. 1958 The Society of Captives: A Study of a Maximum Security Prison. Princeton Univ. Press.
SHERRINGTON, C. S. TERMAN, LEWIS M.; and MILES, CATHERINE C. 1936 Sex and Personality: Studies in Masculinity and Femininity. New York: McGraw-Hill. THOMPSON, CLARA (1947) 1963 Changing Concepts of Homosexuality in Psychoanalysis. Pages 40-51 in Hendrik M. Ruitenbeek (editor), The Problem of Homosexuality in Modern Society. New York: Button. WARD, DAVID A.; and KASSEBAUM, GENE G. 1965 Women's Prison: Sex and Social Structure. Chicago: Aldine. WILBUR, CORNELIA B. 1965 Clinical Aspects of Female Homosexuality. Pages 268-281 in Judd Marmor (editor), Sexual Inversion: The Multiple Roots of Homosexuality. New York: Basic Books.
SHAMANISM See RELIGIOUS SPECIALISTS.
SHANG YANG Shang Yang (also known as Wei Yang or Kungsun Yang), who died in 338 B.C., was a Chinese political administrator who left his native state of Wei to enter the service of Duke Hsiao of the state of Ch'in. At the time, the feudal hierarchy dominated by the Chou dynasty had degenerated into a struggle for power among feudal principalities, and Duke Hsiao's consuming concern was to build up Ch'in strength and become a leader among the contending states. Although it is questionable whether Shang Yang himself wrote The Book of Lord Shang, which has been ascribed to him, the conception of a state that is presented in this work is very likely similar to his, and it was therefore surely influential in the reforms he instituted to fulfill Duke Hsiao's ambition. "The central idea of the political theory expounded in The Book of Lord Shang is the necessity for creating a strong government; the strength of a government is relative to the weakness of the people and is insured by a strict rule of law" (Duyvendak 1934, p. 16). Power, for Shang Yang, consisted of a large army and a full granary. He was convinced that the maximum strength of the state could be obtained only through state-wide mobilization, and this in turn required a system of effective laws enforced by severe punishment. He succeeded in instituting laws that applied uniformly throughout the state and equally to all classes of people. The laws were codified and made public, and a judiciary was set up that was independent of the administrative offices of the government. In addition, Shang Yang proposed and implemented a new system of land division, based on private ownership, together with a tithing system of taxation. In accordance with the principle of centralized govern-
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ment, military service was owed only to the state, and all private military action was prohibited. Shang Yang's administrative system was a success. In ten years the state was reputedly rid of lawlessness; it was highly centralized and bureaucratized; and it pursued a victorious policy of foreign war. When the Ch'in state succeeded in subduing all its rivals and reunifying the empire in 221 B.C., the programs initiated by Shang Yang were introduced and extended throughout the empire. Shang Yang did not long survive the death of Duke Hsiao in 338 B.C. His severe and egalitarian laws had aroused much resentment on the part of the nobility and the privileged classes, and they took the first opportunity to turn against him. His attempts first at flight and then at armed resistance failed, and he was put to death. The Book of Lord Shang remains a valuable record of the social and political philosophy of the ancient Chinese school of law in general and of Shang Yang in particular. The "school of law" stressed the importance of government by law, as opposed to the Confucian ideal of government by "moral virtue." Traditional China, dominated by Confucianism, therefore regarded Shang Yang and the other members of the legalist school with suspicion and abhorrence and condemned Shang Yang for having no moral sense or human feeling. Modern China has re-evaluated him more favorably. The ideas and institutions associated with his name now appear to contain a number of elements considered necessary to the modern administration of law and government. In Shang Yang's approach to politics, however, an informed public played no role, nor were there any safeguards against a ruler who wished to substitute his own whims for the welfare of the state. Y. P. MEI [See also CHINESE POLITICAL THOUGHT and the biographies of KAUTILYA; MACHIAVELLI.] BIBLIOGRAPHY
DUYVENDAK, J. J. L. 1934 Shang Yang. Volume 14, pages 15-16 in Encyclopaedia of the Social Sciences. New York: Macmillan. KUNG-SUN, YANG The Book of Lord Shang. Translated by J. J. L. Duyvendak. Univ. of Chicago Press, 1963.
SHERRINGTON, C. S. Sir Charles Scott Sherrington (1857-1952) made an overwhelming contribution to the foundations of modern neurophysiology through his ex-
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periments and theories on the functioning of the spinal reflexes. Sherrington's importance to the behavioral scientist lies in the fact that he used mainly the methods of behavioral science to pursue his investigations. He studied the behavior of animals after the influence of higher neural centers had been removed surgically by spinal transection. From such behavior he formulated hypotheses about the nature of the nervous system, which he tested by further experiment. Sherrington was born in London, the son of a country doctor. Although his curriculum at school did not include science, he later enrolled as a medical student at St. Thomas's Hospital in London. Before he completed his clinical studies there in 1885 he worked in the physiology school at Cambridge University and he also spent almost a year with Friedrich Goltz and Carl Anton Ewald in Strasbourg. It was in Goltz's laboratory that he saw the reactions of a dog with a high spinal transection. The investigation of such phenomena was to form his major scientific interest until 1935, the date of his retirement from the Waynflete professorship of physiology at Oxford. Although something was known of reflex action in a general way, Sherrington's thorough investigations transformed the study of reflex action into a tool for the understanding of nervous activity. His book The Integrative Action of the Nervous System (1906) summarizes his most important contributions. The problem that Sherrington posed himself was how the truncated nervous system of the spinal animal produces motor reactions that are coordinated both in space and in time when stimuli are applied. He saw that stimulation of motor pathways alone leads to contortions rather than to actions and that the properties possessed by nerve trunks alone are not sufficient to endow the nervous system with the means of achieving the behavior that he observed. To account for the difference in reaction to different stimuli Sherrington had recourse to the notion of an adequate stimulus, or the idea that the function of a receptor is to make available a particular reflex only to specific physical stimuli. Furthermore, Sherrington was struck by the presence of an after-discharge (the tendency for a reaction to persist after the stimulus has been withdrawn), by differences in latency of reaction when stimuli of differing strength are applied, and by the irreversibility of conduction in the reflex arc. To explain these and other discrepancies between the action of nerve trunks and the nature of the connection between stimulus and response, Sherrington postulated the functions of the synapse, the name of which he
coined. This synaptic hypothesis, based almost entirely on behavioral observations, has now been strikingly verified by advances in experimental technique. On the synaptic hypothesis, messages travel from one nerve cell to another across a small gap between the two cells. Thus there is a functional connection between the two cells as distinct from a physical fusion of their membranes. Transmission across this gap is different in kind from transmission along the processes of the nerve cell itself. (It is now known that in the vertebrate nervous system such transmission across the synapse generally occurs by means of diffusion across the gap between the nerve cells—the synaptic cleft— of small amounts of chemical substances, such as acetylcholine.) He used this hypothesis further to account for interactions between reflexes, and he also introduced the notion of the final common path, thus narrowing down the locus at which one reflex inhibits another. He provided a detailed physiological basis for the mechanism of chain reflex, a notion propounded both by Exner and by Jacques Loeb, which is of great importance to behaviorism. It should be stressed that Sherrington, in his more than three hundred publications, made contributions to many fields other than neurophysiology, among them the physiology of blood, the psychology of contrast and flicker, and the functional localization of the motor cortex. He was also one of the early scientists to work on the neural basis of the emotions. His discussion of the JamesLange theory in the seventh chapter of The Integrative Action of the Nervous System is still one of the best in the literature. The excellence of his work won wide recognition, and in 1932 he was awarded the Nobel prize for medicine. Although Sherrington probably contributed more than anyone else to the purely mechanistic understanding of reflexes, he also found it useful to consider them in terms of their purpose, or biological utility. And he was not averse to devoting thought to the more philosophical aspects of the functioning of the nervous system. In his extensive writings on the subject he argued for a Cartesian dualism of body and mind, a position in which Sir John Carew Eccles, another distinguished neurophysiologist, has followed his teacher. In spite of their profound influence on physiology, the details of Sherrington's observations and thoughts have little affected the mainstream of behavioral science. However, the general impact of his work, whether rightly or wrongly, contributed to the vogue for analysis in terms of the reflex or of stimulus—response psychology. J. A. DEUTSCH
SIDGWICK, HENRY [See also NERVOUS SYSTEM, especially the article on STRUCTURE AND FUNCTION OF THE BRAIN; SENSES; SENSORY AND MOTOR DEVELOPMENT; SKIN SENSES AND KINESTHESIS.] WORKS BY SHERRINGTON (1906) 1948 The Integrative Action of the Nervous System. 2d ed. New Haven: Yale Univ. Press. (1925) 1940 The Assaying of Brabantius and Other Verse. 2d ed. Oxford Univ. Press. 1932 CREED, R. S.; DENNY-BROWN, D.; ECCLES, J. C.; LIDDELL, E. G. T.; and SHERRINGTON, C. S. Reflex Activity of the Spinal Cord. Oxford: Clarendon. (1940) 1951 Man on His Nature. 2d ed. Cambridge Univ. Press. -> A paperback edition was published in 1953 by Doubleday. 1946 The Endeavour of Jean Fernel. Cambridge Univ. Press. SUPPLEMENTARY
BIBLIOGRAPHY
COHEN, HENRY 1958 Sherrington: Physiologist, Philosopher and Poet. Springfield, 111.: Thomas; Liverpool Univ. Press. LIDDELL, EDWARD G. T. 1960 The Discovery of Reflexes. Oxford: Clarendon. -> See especially pages 98-143, "Sherrington and His Times."
SIDGWICK, HENRY Henry Sidgwick (1838-1900), English economist, does not have an obvious place in the standard histories of economic or social thought. His name is not associated with any particular theory or policy, and much of his influence was exerted through his teaching and his participation in the affairs of Cambridge University. Sidgwick was born at Skipton in Yorkshire, where his father was an Anglican clergyman and headmaster of the local grammar school. From his earliest years it was clear that Sidgwick was destined for academic success. After attending Rugby, he went to Cambridge and achieved distinction there, both in classics and mathematics. In 1859 he was elected to a fellowship at Trinity College; he remained at Cambridge for the rest of his life. At the beginning of his academic career Sidgwick taught classics, but he was soon drawn into the field of social science and in 1867 exchanged his lectureship in classics for a lectureship in moral sciences (what would now be called social sciences). Much of his intellectual effort as a teacher at Cambridge was directed toward improving the curriculum: he was influential in raising the status of the social sciences, and he helped pave the way for the economics tripos. Thus, he may be regarded as one of the pioneers who facilitated the emergence of the "Cambridge school" of economics. He also furthered the cause of univer-
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sity education for women (his wife became principal of Newnham College in 1892), and he played a part in the movement for greater religious toleration at the university. His writings ranged over a number of fields: in addition to his early classical studies, he wrote on politics, philosophy, and economics and, more remote from his central concerns, attempted to make research on psychic phenomena (then a particular vogue in England) scientifically respectable. All who came in contact with Sidgwick seem to have agreed about his intellectual and moral stature; Marshall spoke of him as his "spiritual father and mother," and John Neville Keynes described him as the most intellectually gifted man he had ever met. Sidgwick's written contributions to economics are to be found mainly in his Principles of Political Economy (1883). This work is a useful bench mark by which to judge the state of the discipline in the period between J. S. Mill's Principles (1848) and the first edition of Marshall's Principles (1890). The text is primarily a re-exposition of Mill, with traces of the emergent marginalism of Jevons and Marshall. Like Marshall, Sidgwick had a strong desire to emphasize continuity in economic thinking, rather than his own originality. As he put it, "The special aim . . . is to eliminate needless polemics by a guarded restatement of traditional doctrines, with due recognition of the advances made in economic theory by recent writers" ([1883] 1901, p. ix). The book contains some corrections and clarifications of Mill's analysis (for example, the distinction between movements along a demand schedule and shifts from one demand schedule to another, which is so blurred in Mill, is clearly made and explained by Sidgwick), and the influence of Marshall is obvious. The most important sections in Sidgwick's Principles are those dealing with methodology and the analysis of government interference. Sidgwick restated the methodological position, first enunciated within the context of economics by Senior and Mill, whereby the "science" and the "art" of political economy are to be logically differentiated: "The first gives information as to what happens, without pronouncing whether it is good or bad; the second judges that what happens or would happen under certain conditions is the best thing that could happen" (ibid., p. 36). However, Sidgwick (ever a moderate) refused to adopt the extreme position of Cairnes, and later of Robbins, according to which the economist qua economist has no special qualifications in the normative area of his studies. The core of Sidgwick's major contribution is
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contained in his discussion of the art of political economy (book 3). He was at pains to dissociate economic science from the political doctrines of laissez-faire and suggested various conditions under which state interference in the productive process may become desirable: one important condition is the divergence of private and social benefits. Here Sidgwick's analysis constitutes the prototype of the Marshall-Pigou approach. However, he did not present a general a priori case for government interference whenever this divergence obtains—each situation has to be considered on its own. He stated the case for interference with the distribution of income—necessitated by an unregulated economic system—with much more generality, except for reservations about the possible effects of interference on production. He argued for much greater equality of income, to be achieved by deliberate government fiscal policy, basing his argument on the "general acceptance" of two propositions of Bentham's, which may be summarized as follows: utility increases as wealth increases, but at a decreasing rate. Sidgwick did not make clear the methodological status of these propositions; we are not told whether they are judgments or testable (and tested) hypotheses. Sidgwick's influence on social thought and policy is difficult to assess. Although he expressed grave doubts about the feasibility of a total socialist solution, his rejection of any general theoretical reasons for nonintervention and his emphasis on the need to look at every case individually place him squarely in the English Fabian tradition. BERNARD CORRY [For the historical context of Sidgwick's work, see the biographies of MILL and SENIOR; for discussion of the subsequent development of Sidgwick's ideas, see the biographies of MARSHALL and PIGOU.] WORKS BY (1874) 1901 The Methods Macmillan. (1883) 1901 The Principles New York:- Macmillan. (1891) 1908 The Elements Macmillan.
SIDGWICK of Ethics. 6th ed. London:
of Political Economy. 3d ed. of Politics. 4th ed. London:
SUPPLEMENTARY BIBLIOGRAPHY
KEYNES, JOHN NEVILLE 1900 Henry Sidgwick [obituary]. Economic Journal 10:585-591. KEYNES, JOHN NEVILLE (1908) 1963 Henry Sidgwick. Volume 3, pages 757-759 in Robert Palgrave, Palgrave's Dictionary of Political Economy. New York: Macmillan. MARSHALL, ALFRED (1890) 1961 Principles of Economics. 9th ed. 2 vols. New York and London: Macmillan.
MILL, JOHN STUART (1848) 1965 Principles of Political Economy, With Some of Their Applications to Social Philosophy. 2 vols. Edited by J. M. Robson. Collected Works, Vols. 2, 3. Univ. of Toronto Press. SIDGWICK, ARTHUR; and SIDGWICK, ELEANOR 1906 Henry Sidgwick: A Memoir. London and New York: Macmillan.
SIEGFRIED, ANDRE Andre Siegfried (1875-1959), French geographer and political scientist, gained world-wide recognition through his development of a new approach to the study of political parties known as geographic de I'opinion politique, or political ecology; through his studies of French political regimes; and through his more general studies of the United States and other countries. Siegfried was born in Le Havre, the son of a wealthy Calvinist Alsatian merchant who served as mayor of Le Havre from 1878 to 1886 and as a member of the Chamber of Deputies from 1885 to 1922. His mother was the daughter of a pastor in the Reformed Church and came from the departement of Ardeche, which Siegfried later chose as the subject of one of his studies in political ecology. His parents liked to entertain, and Siegfried had the opportunity, first in Le Havre and later in Paris, of meeting in his home the political elite of the Third Republic. As a young man, he accompanied his father, who was a passionate traveler and keen observer, on some of his journeys abroad, an experience which was important for his own later efforts to describe and compare foreign countries. His father, as mayor and as a deputy, initiated many social reforms, thereby setting an example for Siegfried's activities in this field. Siegfried's interest in politics led him to run for the National Assembly. He was unsuccessful and decided instead to focus his political interest on the compilation of "a psychological and political geography of France." The first volume, Tableau politique de la France de I'ouest, appeared in 1913, but the series was interrupted by World War I. Siegfried did not return to his geographies of electoral behavior until after World War n. He then published Geographic electorate de FArdeche sous la Hle Republique (1949a) but after that left further studies to his disciples, publishing only his basic ideas on this kind of inquiry. Siegfried served as a professor at the Ecole Libre des Sciences Politiques and from 1933 to 1946 held a chair in economic and political geography at the College de France. Apart from his writings his main influence came through his two courses at the
SIEGFRIED, ANDRE College de France, one on the geography of political parties in France and the other on the economic and political geography of the world. In 1942, during the German occupation, he became director of the Musee Social, an institute that his father had founded for the preparation of social legislation. He had had a large part in the establishment of the Universite Populaire de Belleville, one of the earliest institutions for adult education of workingmen. He was also active as a journalist, and through his articles in Figaro during World War ii "he became one of the most effective leaders of public opinion" (Jean Schlumberger in Andre Siegfried 1875-1959 1961). After World War ii he became director of the Institut d'Etudes Politiques in Paris. He was elected to the Academic Frangaise in 1944, the first geographer to be so honored. Before and after World War i, Siegfried traveled in Great Britain, the United States, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. "It was an opportunity," he wrote later, "to observe democracy as practiced with the Anglo-Saxon spirit and methods. Instead of the aggressive and somewhat negative individualism of the Latin civilization, I saw political societies based on social cooperation. At bottom it seemed to be a contrast between the Catholic and Protestant state of mind, religion leading to extraordinarily different consequences" (1930, p. vi). This experience reinforced his interest in the political institutions of his own country. Siegfried's studies of foreign countries are comprehensive monographs in the tradition of Tocqueville. Each of them has a central theme: the books on New Zealand (1904) and Canada (1906) are concerned with the formation of new nations and the books on Britain (1931) and the United States (1927) with their changed positions in the world. The books are masterful syntheses of the economic, political, and cultural aspects of large complex societies, always presented with a historical perspective and a geographical foundation. He gave his major attention to class structure, to religious orientations and cleavages, and to race. Since he had more than once visited some of the countries he wrote about, he was able to observe important social changes directly. His wide range of knowledge in economics, political science, and history and his acquaintance with both the Latin and Anglo-Saxon worlds enabled him to make use of cross-cultural comparisons. He did not resist the temptation of putting his impressions of national character, or as he put it, the "souls of nations," into print (1950). These essays, while not free of the generalizations and
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exaggerations common to most writing of this sort, bring into focus the outstanding traits of each nation and are free of farfetched psychological conjectures. Siegfried's writings on French political life fall into two categories: the historical studies of political regimes from the Third to the Fifth Republic and the ecological studies of political parties or tendencies. The latter include the early study of northwest France (1913) and the later one of Ardeche (1949a). These ecological studies represented a methodological innovation and were the beginning of a school of investigation that has gained adherents in many countries. The observation that each of the major political tendencies in France has its particular strongholds which show a high degree of stability despite changing party labels led Siegfried to the conclusion that it was possible to distinguish regions of political opinion—political climates which correspond to regions in physical geography. The particular climate depends on the varying combinations of several major factors: (1) the social stratification of the regional population—whether it is egalitarian or hierarchic; (2) the religious orientation of the people—whether Roman Catholic or Protestant, and if Catholic, whether or not the political instructions of the priest are followed; (3) the past—that is, memories of important political events that influence political attitudes; (4) the extent to which the population is autochthonous or contains a significant proportion of "strangers" (in-migrants); (5) the geography—that is, the soil, the climate, the altitude, the topography, the settlement patterns, the population density, and the degree of accessibility or isolation of the area. Siegfried's technique consisted essentially, although not exclusively, of comparing successive maps showing election returns by small areas with maps showing the geographic distribution of other factors and in assessing, from their fit, the relative importance of the various factors. For Ardeche, for example, the topographical map gave the best fit. In Ardeche ways of life vary with the altitude; the mountain, the hillside, and the plains communities are distinctly different. The merit of these ecological studies derives from Siegfried's intensive knowledge of the regions as well as from his sense of what is politically relevant. Although he used such formal notions as "the Right" and "the Left," he was careful to state what these mean in terms of immediate goals and general political ideas. Although Siegfried held a chair of political and economic geography, he was not a geographer in the technical sense. The findings of geography and
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geology were for him data essential to the understanding of society. Nor was he a geographical determinist, although he appreciated the opportunities and limitations which the physical environment offers to human action, particularly for the development of primary industries. The social structure, especially the class structure in the Marxian sense, depends on the use of these opportunities, and the class structure in combination with other factors produces certain political climates. But Siegfried was not a Marxist in his political orientation, or even a socialist. As a scholar, he felt obliged to avoid association with any political party. And yet, he was clearly a republican, a liberal, and a humanist and therefore also a social reformer. While he had sympathy for the Anglo-Saxon style of political life, he regretted the "Americanizing" tendencies in the economic organization of France, the impending decline of the independent entrepreneur, and the replacement of the artisancraftsman by the assembly-line worker. These tendencies, inescapable as they might be, he feared would endanger the dignity and spirituality of man. RUDOLF HEBERLE [See also GEOGRAPHY.] WORKS BY SIEGFRIED (1904) 1914 Democracy in New Zealand. London: Bell. -> First published in French. (1906) 1949 Canada: An International Power. 2d ed. New York: Duell. -» First published as Le Canada: Les deux races. 1913 Tableau politique de la France de I'ouest sous la Troisieme Republique. Paris: Colin. 1927 America Comes of Age: A French Analysis. New York: Harcourt. -» First published in 1927 as Les Etats-Unis d'aujourd'hui. 1930 France: A Study in Nationality. New Haven: Yale Univ. Press. ->• Also published in the same year as Tableau des partis en France. 1931 England's Crisis. New York: Harcourt. -» Also published in the same year as La crise britannique au XXe siecle. 1934 Amerique Latine. Paris: Colin. 1937 Une geographic de 1'opinion politique est-elle possible? Nouvelle revue francaise 49:789-802. 1946 La geographic de 1'opinion politique. Atomes 1, no. 4:3-6. 1947 The Mediterranean. New York: Duell. 1949a La geographic electorate de I'Ardeche sous la HIe Republique. Paris: Colin. (1949fc) 1950 African Journey. London: Cape. -> First published as Afrique du Sud: Notes de voyage. (1950) 1952 Nations Have Souls. New York: Putnam. -> First published as L'dme des peuples. 1951 Voyage aux Indes. Paris: Colin. 1952a Geographic politique des cinqs continents. Paris: Passerell.
1952& Mes souvenirs de la Troisieme Republique; Mon pere et son temps: Jules Siegfried, 1836—1922. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France. (1954) 1955 America at Mid-century. New York: Harcourt. -> First published as Tableau des Etats-Unis. 1956 De la IIIe a la IVe Republique. Paris: Grasset. 1958 De la IVe a la Ve Republique au jour le jour. Paris: Grasset. SUPPLEMENTARY BIBLIOGRAPHY
Andre Siegfried 1875-1959. 1961 Paris: Imprimerie Foulon. -> A collection of eulogies. See especially the article by Jean Schlumberger.
SIGNIFICANCE, TESTS OF The topic of significance testing is treated in detail in HYPOTHESIS TESTING, a term that is usually regarded as synonymous with "tests of significance," although some statisticians feel that there are important distinctions. The present article describes the basic ideas of significance testing, outlines the most important elementary tests, and reviews problems related to the philosophy and application of significance testing. Significance tests are statistical procedures for examining a hypothesis in the light of observations. Many significance tests are simple and widely used, and have a long history; the idea of significance testing goes back at least to the eighteenth century. There has been much confusion about significance testing, and consequently it has been much misused. Despite their apparent simplicity (and sometimes because of it), significance tests have generated many controversies about meaning and utility. A significance test starts with observations and with a hypothesis about the chance mechanism generating the observations. From the observations a test statistic is formed. Large values of the test statistic (or small values, or both, depending on circumstances) lead to strong skepticism about the hypothesis, whereas other values of the test statistic are held to be in conformance with the hypothesis. Choice of the test statistic usually depends upon the alternatives to the hypothesis under test. Basic ideas As an example of significance testing, suppose that the hypothesis under test, often called the null hypothesis, or H 0 , is that sleep deprivation has no effect on a certain kind of human skill, say arithmetic ability as measured by a particular type of test. Some population must be specified; suppose
SIGNIFICANCE, TESTS OF that it consists of all students at a particular college who are willing to participate in a sleep-deprivation experiment. One hundred students are chosen at random, tested for arithmetic skill, deprived of a night's sleep, and then tested again. For each student the initial test result minus the second test result is regarded as the basic observation, datum, or score. Suppose, for the present, that if the null hypothesis is false, the effect of sleep deprivation is either to increase average score or to decrease it; either direction might hold, so the alternative hypotheses are two-sided. The analyst would, of course, be concerned about possible practice and motivational effects; a helpful device might be the use of a control group that would also be tested twice, but with a normal night's sleep. The effect of practice might be lessened by the presentation of a sequence of tests before the experiment proper begins. Another matter of concern is whether the basic score used, the difference between test results, is more appropriate than the ratio of test results or some other combination of them. For present purposes such issues are not discussed. From the 100 scores a test statistic is then formed. The choice might well be the Student itstatistic, which is the observed average score divided by an estimate of its own variability. Details of the t-statistic are given later. The nub of the significance-testing concept is that if the null hypothesis really is true, then it is unlikely that the Student ^-statistic would be greater than, say, 2.6 in unsigned numerical value. The probability of that event, under the usual— but possibly dangerous—assumptions that the scores behave like statistically independent random variables with the same normal distribution, is about .01, or 1 out of 100. If, on the other hand, the null hypothesis is false, the probability of the event is greater than .01, much greater if sleep deprivation has a large effect. Hence, if a Student ^-statistic greater than 2.6 or less than —2.6 is observed, either the null hypothesis is false, or the null hypothesis is true and an event of small probability has occurred, or something is wrong with the underlying assumptions. If those assumptions seem satisfactory, and if the Student t-statistic is, say, 2.7, most people would prefer to act as if the null hypothesis were false. The cut-off number, 2.6, and the associated probability, .01, are cited for the sake of specific illustration. If 2.6 is replaced by a larger number, the associated probability is smaller; if it is replaced by a smaller number, the probability is larger.
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In formal significance testing one decides beforehand on the cut-off number. If 2.6 is chosen, then there is a .01 probability of erroneously doubting the null hypothesis when it is in fact true. In the example, 2.6 is called the critical value of the (unsigned) Student t-statistic, and .01 is called the level of significance or (usually synonymously) the size of the test. The level of signifiance, frequently denoted by a, is also called the probability of Type i error, or of error of the first kind; this is the error of falsely doubting the null hypothesis when it is in fact true. In the present context, if the unsigned Student t-statistic turns out to be greater than the critical value, it is often said that the statistic (or the test, or the sample) is statistically significant; this terminology can lead to confusion, as will be described below. From this approach, then, a significance test is a procedure, agreed upon beforehand, that will result in one of two conclusions (or actions, or viewpoints): if the test statistic—here the unsigned Student ^-statistic—-is greater than the critical value, one tends to act as if the null hypothesis is false; otherwise one tends to act in some different way, not necessarily as if the null hypothesis is true but at least as if its falsity is not proved. These two kinds of conclusions or actions are conventionally called, respectively, rejection and acceptance of the null hypothesis. Such nomenclature, with its emotional overtones and its connotations in everyday speech, has led to confusion and needless controversy. The terms "rejection" and "acceptance" should be thought of simply as labels for two kinds of actions or conclusions, the first more appropriate if the null hypothesis is false and the second more appropriate if it is true or at least not known to be false. In the example, rejection and acceptance might correspond to different attitudes toward a theory of sleep or to different recommendations for desirable amounts of sleep. (In some contexts, such as acceptance sampling in industry, the terms "acceptance" and "rejection" may be used literally.) There is further room for confusion in the varying ways that significance testing is described. In the example it would be accurate to say that the hypothesis of no sleep-deprivation effect (on average score) is being tested. But it might also be said, more loosely, that one is testing the effect of sleep deprivation, and this might be misinterpreted to mean that the null hypothesis asserts a positive mean score under sleep deprivation. One reason for this ambiguity is that the null hypothesis is often set up in the hope that it will be rejected. In the comparison of a new medical treatment with an old one, equality of effectiveness might be un-
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interesting, so only rejection of the null hypothesis of equality would excite the experimenter., especially if he had invented the new treatment. On the other hand, accepting the null hypothesis may itself be very important—for example, in an experiment to test the theory of relativity. Usually, however, there is a basic asymmetry between the null hypothesis and the other hypotheses. The two-decision procedure discussed above is a highly simplified framework for many situations in which significance tests are used. Although there are cases in which the above viewpoint makes direct sense (for example, industrial acceptance sampling, crucial experiments for a scientific theory), most uses of significance tests are different. In these more common uses the analyst computes that level of significance at which the observed test statistic would just lead to rejection of the null hypothesis. In the example, if the observed Student t-statistic were 1.8, the resulting sample level of significance, or observed significance level, would be .075, again under the conventional assumptions listed earlier. From this second viewpoint the observed (or sample) significance level is a measure of rarity or surprise; the smaller the level, the more surprising the result if the null hypothesis is true. Naturally, if the result is very surprising under the null hypothesis, one is likely to conclude that the null hypothesis is false, but it is important to know quantitatively the magnitude of the surprise. The sample level of significance is often called the P-value, and the notation P = .075 (or p = .075) may be used. (For other views on measuring surprise, see Weaver 1948; Good 1956.) Usually a very rough knowledge of the degree of surprise suffices, and various simplifying conventions have come into use. For example, if the observed significance level lies between .05 and .01, some authors say that the sample is statistically significant, while if it is less than .01, they call it highly statistically significant. The adverb "statistically" is often omitted, and this is unfortunate, since statistical significance of a sample bears no necessary relationship to possible subject-matter significance of whatever true departure from the null hypothesis might obtain (see Boring 1919). From one point of view, significance testing is a device for curbing overenthusiasm about apparent effects in the data. For example, if the sleepdeprivation experiment showed a positive effect, an experimenter enthusiastic about a theory of sleep psychology might cry, "Eureka! Sleep deprivation really does have the predicted consequence." After he himself has had a good night's sleep, however, he might compute the appropriate test statistic and see, perhaps, that the observed effect—
or a greater one—could occur with probability .2 under the null hypothesis of no real underlying effect. This would probably dampen his initial enthusiasm and might prevent one of the many premature announcements of discoveries that clutter the literature of some sciences. (The sleep example is solely for illustration; I have no reason to think that experimenters on sleep are anything but cautious in their statistical analyses.) On the other hand, it is easy to be overconservative and throw out an interesting baby with the nonsignificant bath water. Lack of statistical significance at a conventional level does not mean that no real effect is present: it means only that no real effect is clearly seen from the data. That is why it is of the highest importance to look at power and to compute confidence intervals, procedures that will be discussed later. The null hypothesis, despite its name, need not be that the average effect of sleep deprivation is zero. One might test the null hypothesis that the average effect is 10 score units. Or one might test such a null hypothesis as: the average effect of sleep deprivation is not positive; or, again: the average effect lies between —10 and 10 score units. The last two null hypotheses, unlike the previous ones, do not fix the hypothesized average effect at a single value. Standard tests There are a number of popular standard significance tests in the statistical armamentarium. The tests described here include those on means, variances, correlations, proportions, and goodness of fit. Mean. The null hypothesis in a test on means, as in the original example, is that the expected value (mean) of a distribution is some given number, fji0. This hypothesis is to be tested on the basis of a random sample of n observations on the distribution; that is, one considers n independent random variables, each with that same distribution whose mean is of interest. If the variance, or2, of the distribution is known, and if X denotes the sample mean (arithmetic average), a widely useful test statistic is X
(1)
—
fJJQ
cr/Vn
which has mean zero and standard deviation one under the null hypothesis. Often the absolute (unsigned numerical) value of (1) is the test statistic. If the underlying distribution of interest is normal, then (1) is itself normally distributed, with variance one and mean zero (that is, it has a unit normal distribution) under the null hypothesis.
SIGNIFICANCE, TESTS OF Even if the underlying distribution is not normal, (1) has approximately the unit normal distribution under the null hypothesis, provided that n is not too small. In practice cr2 is usually unknown, and an estimator of it, s2, is used instead. The most usual estimator is based on the sum of squared deviations of the observations from X,
1 (x w -x) 2 ], n 1 where the Xi are the observations. (The usual name for s- is "sample variance," and that for s is "sample standard deviation.") Then (1) becomes the Student (or t-) statistic
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not normally distributed, the unit normal distribution is a good approximation to the null distribution of (4) for n1}n2 large. (If, instead of the null hypothesis ft t = /A, , one wishes to test JJL^ = /*2 + S, where 8 is some given number, one need only replace X1 — X2 in the numerator of (4) with x;-X2-8.) If the variances are not known, and if s2 and sf, are estimators of them, a common test statistic is
(2)
f^° • -=z s/\/n If the Xi are normal, then (3) has as its distribution under the null hypothesis the Student (or £-) distribution with n—1 degrees of freedom (df). If n is large (and often it need not be very large), then in quite general circumstances the distribution of (3) under the null hypothesis is approximately the unit normal distribution. [See DISTRIBUTIONS, STATISTICAL, articles on SPECIAL CONTINUOUS DISTRIBUTIONS and APPROXIMATIONS TO DISTRIBUTIONS.] Two samples. Suppose that the observations form two independent random samples of sizes n a and ?z 2 : Xn, • • • , X1?!i and X 21 , • • • , X 2r , 2 . Here the first subscript denotes the sample (1 or 2), and the second subscript denotes the observation within the sample (1 through r^ or n 2 ). For example, in the sleep-deprivation experiment the first sample might be of male students and the second of female students. The null hypothesis might be that the average effect of sleep deprivation on arithmetic skill is the same for male and female students. Note that this null hypothesis says nothing about the magnitude of the average effect; it says only that the average effect is the same for the two groups. More generally, suppose the null hypothesis is that the two underlying means are equal: ^ = fjL2, where ^ is the expected value of any of the Xu and /x2 that of any of the X 2 i . If the variances are known, say erf and erf, the usual test statistic is /o\ (3)
(4)
where X^ and X2 are the two sample means. If the X's are normally distributed, (4) has the unit normal as null distribution—that is, as its distribution when the null hypothesis holds. Even if the X's are
X2 (5) which, for n^, n2 large, has the unit normal distribution as an approximation to the null distribution. The null distribution is better approximated by a ^-distribution [details can be found in ERRORS, article on EFFECTS OF ERRORS IN STATISTICAL ASSUMPTIONS]. If the variances are unknown but may reasonably be assumed to be equal ( Contains an account of Sismondi's life and writings. SUPPLEMENTARY BIBLIOGRAPHY
AMONN, ALFRED 1945-1949 Simonde de Sismondi als Nation alokonom: Darstellung seiner Lehren mit einer Einfiihrung und Erlauterungen. 2 vols. Bern: Francke. GROSSMANN, HENRYK 1924 Simonde de Sismondi et ses theories economiques (Une nouvelle interpretation de sa pensee). Warsaw: Universitas Liberae Poloniae. LENIN, VLADIMIR I. (1896) 1951 A Characterization of Economic Romanticism: Sismondi and Our Native Sismondists. Moscow: Foreign Language Publishing House, -> First published as "Sotsial'no-ekonomicheskiia vozreniia Simonda de-Sismondi" in Russkoe bogatstvo. RICARDO, DAVID (1817) 1962 Principles of Political Economy and Taxation. London: Dent; New York: Dutton. -> A paperback edition was published in 1963 by Irwin. RICARDO, DAVID Works. Volumes 6-9. Cambridge Univ. Press, 1951-1952. SALIS, JEAN R. DE 1932 Sismondi, 1773-1842: La vie et I'oeuvre d'un cosmopolite philosophe. Paris: Champion. SOTIROFF, GEORGES 1945 Ricardo und Sismondi: Eine aktuelle Auseinandersetzung iiber Nachkriegswirtschaft vor 120 Jahren. Zurich and New York: Europa.
SIMONS, HENRY C. Henry Calvert Simons (1899-1946), American economist, spent most of his professional career at the University of Chicago, teaching in the department of economics and then becoming the first professor of economics in the law school. He de-
veloped a unified and comprehensive set of principles of economic policy for the United States and applied these principles to the changing problems of his times. Simons called his philosophy libertarian: the essential requirement of a good political and economic order is that it protect, promote, and respond to the free choices of individuals. However, what is distinctive about his philosophy is the combination of this idea with two others: First, a merely negative, "hands-off" policy of government is not sufficient to maintain the free economic order and realize its benefits; the government must undertake certain limited but important affirmative actions. (The title of his first work to gain national attention, "A Positive Program for Laissez-faire," 1934, already conveyed this idea, and it recurs throughout his writing.) Second, equality is a value only a little below freedom. Simons' important writings began to appear in 1933 and 1934, near the bottom of the great depression. The failure of "free enterprise" and laissez-faire had greatly strengthened support for government intervention in economic activity. There were no apparent limits to the character and scope of these interventions, less because of any widespread acceptance of a policy of extensive government control than because of the absence of any principles for distinguishing between controls that were necessary, appropriate, or feasible and those that were not. Simons proposed a set of principles for making this distinction: It is the responsibility of the government to maintain a framework within which a free economy can successfully operate and to do so by means that are general in their application, impersonal, and based on law rather than administrative discretion. But the government should not intervene in the heart of the economic process— in the determination of relative prices and wages and in production and investment decisions. Specifically, Simons emphasized the government's responsibility for maintaining appropriate monetary and competitive conditions. Simons believed that the failure of the government to discharge its responsibility for maintaining reasonable stability in the supply of money had been one of the main causes of the severity of the depression. He was an early leader, among American economists, in advocating monetary expansion, to be achieved by means of budget deficits, as the road to recovery from the depression. But he did not believe that it was sufficient merely to assign to the government the responsibility of using its monetary, fiscal, and debt-management policies
SIMONS, HENRY C. to achieve some vaguely defined goal of economic stability. Reform of the banking system was also necessary, and he urged that the money supply be based on a 100 per cent reserve of government obligations. Also, he argued the case for a statutory rule of monetary policy that would govern the conduct of the monetary authorities. Which of several reasonable rules was chosen was less important than the existence of some objective standard known to the public and binding on the authorities. Simons often argued against what he considered excessively loose, discretionary, and expansionist prescriptions by overenthusiastic advocates of positive fiscal and monetary policy. Yet, the more important fact is that Simons, the champion of free enterprise and nonintervention, did accept and emphasize the responsibility of the government to use its monetary and fiscal policies affirmatively to stabilize the economy. This allowed Simons and his followers to influence policy more than they could have done if they had denied government responsibility. Simons was among the first to stress that if federal tax rates were unchanged, the resulting decline of revenues in recessions and rise of revenues in booms would have a strong stabilizing influence on the economy; that varying the revenue side of the budget might be a more effective fiscal instrument than varying the expenditure side; and that the way in which the government financed its debt would be a significant independent economic factor. These ideas all became important in postwar fiscal thinking and fiscal policy. Thus, Simons' writings made a major contribution to the emergence of a postwar consensus on fiscal and monetary policy in the United States, not only among economists but also among persons in government and in the private economy whose opinions were influential. While Simons believed that monetary stability is a necessary background condition for the effective operation of the free economy, he also felt that competition is the active driving force of the economy. He relied upon competition to organize production efficiently; to promote technological advance and economic growth; to permit high employment without inflation; to provide individuals, as consumers and as sellers of productive services, with the real alternatives that are the essence of freedom; to yield "commutative justice," in the sense of economic rewards proportional to productive contributions; to prevent extreme inequality of power or income; and to minimize the need for government intervention to settle conflicts between private interests. In his early writings Simons seemed to believe
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that the degree of competition in the United States was far from adequate to serve these purposes, chiefly because corporations had been permitted to grow to excessive size. Later, Simons' view of the problem changed. He came to believe that it was the trend toward monopoly, rather than the degree of monopoly already achieved, that was the great danger. Moreover, the natural force of competition was strong, so strong that private arrangements, unaided by government, could only temporarily and partially suppress it. Therefore, the first requirement was to prevent government from supporting monopoly. In his last writings, including "Some Reflections on Syndicalism" (1944), which became the classic statement of the case against trade unions, Simons argued that unions were the principal threat to the competitive, and therefore free, society. Simons offered no confident remedy, only the hope that awareness of the danger would make it possible to limit the growth of union power before it was too late. The part of his program that Simons elaborated in greatest detail was the tax system. His two longest (although relatively short) works, Personal Income Taxation (1938) and Federal Tax Reform (written in 1943, published 1950), were on this subject. Simons' writing on taxation largely spelled out the implications of a few basic ideas, the one most closely identified with his name being the definition of income, for tax purposes, as the sum of consumption plus the change in the value of net assets owned. Other ideas fundamental to his thinking about taxes were (a) that all taxation is taxation of individuals and must be judged by its effects on individuals; (fo) that the allocation of income to short periods of time, like a year, is arbitrary and causes injustice and inefficiency: and (c) that in taxation, as in other policies, the government should avoid accidental or deliberate interference with the system of relative prices and wages. Rigorous application of these ideas enabled Simons to cut through a great deal of sophisticated argument about such matters as capital gains, gifts and bequests, corporate profits, and tax-exempt securities. Twenty years after his death, the considerations contained in Simons' work were still basic to the continuing effort to rationalize the federal income tax system. It was in his tax proposals that Simons' stress on equality as a social goal found its most immediate expression. Simons did not believe that policy* for reducing inequality should be confined to creation of a progressive tax system, but he did believe that correction of the tax system had to
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come first. As he said, "There are remarkable opportunities for extending the range of sociali/.ed consumption (medical services, recreation, education, music, drama, etc.) and especially for extending the range of social welfare activities. The prospects in these directions, however, must remain somewhat unattractive as long as the expenditures involved must be covered by the kinds of taxes on which we have relied in the past—that is, so long as what the government gives to the masses with one hand is largely taken away with the other" ([1934] 1948, pp. 68-69). HERBERT STEIN [See also FISCAL POLICY; MONETARY POLICY; TAXATION, article on PERSONAL INCOME TAXES; and the biography of KNIGHT.] WORKS BY SIMONS
(1934) 1948 A Positive Program for Laissez-faire: Some Proposals for a Liberal Economic Policy. Pages 4077 in Henry C. Simons, Economic Policy for a Free Society. Univ. of Chicago Press. 1938 Personal Income Taxation: The Definition of Income as a Problem of Fiscal Policy. Univ. of Chicago Press. (1943) 1950 Federal Tax Reform. Univ. of Chicago Press. -> Written in 1943; published posthumously in 1950. 1944 Some Reflections on Syndicalism. Journal of Political Economy 52:1-25. Economic Policy for a Free Society. Univ. of Chicago Press, 1948. -» Contains writings first published between 1934 and 1945 and a complete bibliography. SUPPLEMENTARY BIBLIOGRAPHY
DAVENPORT, JOHN 1946 The Testament of Henry Simons. University of Chicago Law Review 14:5-14. H» First published in Fortune, in September 1946. DIRECTOR, AARON 1946 Simons on Taxation. University of Chicago Law Review 14:15-20. KATZ, WILBER G. 1946 Economics and the Study of Law: The Contribution of Henry C. Simons. University of Chicago Law Review 14:1-4. LEWIS, H. GREGG 1946 [Obituary of] Henry C. Simons. American Economic Review 36:668-669.
i. INDIVIDUAL BEHAVIOR n. ECONOMIC PROCESSES in. POLITICAL PROCESSES
Allen Newell and Herbert A. Simon Irma Adelman Charles F. Hermann
INDIVIDUAL BEHAVIOR
"Simulation" is a term now generally employed to denote an approach to the construction of theories that makes essential use of computers and computer-programming languages. In some appli-
cations simulation techniques are used in investigating formal mathematical theories—for example, stochastic learning theories. In other applications, the theoretical models of the systems that are simulated are essentially nonquantitative and nonnumerical. We may define simulation more specifically as a method for analyzing the behavior of a system by computing its time path for given initial conditions, and given parameter values. The computation is said to "simulate" the system, because it moves forward in time step by step with the movement of the system it is describing. For the purposes of simulation, the system must be specified by laws that define its behavior, during any time interval, in terms of the state it was in at the beginning of that interval. Simulation has always been an important part of the armory of applied mathematics. The introduction of modern computers, however, has so reduced the cost of obtaining numerical solutions to systems of equations that simulation has taken on vastly increased importance as an analytic tool. As a consequence, the relative balance of advantage has shifted from simplifying a theory in order to make it solvable toward retaining complexity in order to increase its accuracy and realism. With simulation and other techniques of numerical analysis, computers permit the study of far more complicated systems than could have been investigated at an earlier time. Simulation with mathematical theories. Consider first the simulation of systems that are described by mathematical models (Newell & Simon 1963a, pp. 368-373). A model consists of a system of equations containing variables, literal constants (often called parameters), and numerical constants. The system of equations may be solved symbolically, by expressing the several variables explicitly in terms of the literal and numerical constants; or the system may be solved numerically, by substituting particular numerical values for the literal constants and then solving the equations for these special cases. For many complex systems of equations, symbolic solutions cannot be obtained, only numerical solutions. The former are clearly preferred when obtainable, for once a symbolic solution has been found, the special cases are readily evaluated by substituting numerical values for the parameters in the solutions instead of in the original equations. To take a highly simplified example, a learning theory might postulate that the rate at which learning occurs is proportional to the amount of material
SIMULATION: Individual Behavior remaining to be learned. If, for simplicity of exposition, we divide time into discrete intervals and define the variable x(f) as the amount of material that has been learned up to the end of the tth time interval, then the theory can be expressed by a simple difference equation: = a[b (1) where a is a literal constant that we can name intelligence for this learning task, and b is a literal constant that represents the total amount to be learned. The symbolic solution to this simple system is well known to be: (2)
-ay,
where £(0) is a literal constant denoting the amount that had already been learned up to the time t = 0. Particular numerical solutions can now be found by assigning numerical values a, b, and x(0) and by solving (2) for x(t) for any desired values of t. Alternatively, numerical solutions— learning curves—for the system can as readily be computed for given a, b, and x(0) directly from equation (1), transferring the x(i) term to the right-hand side and solving successively for x ( l ) , ^(2), #(3), • • - . This latter procedure—solving (1) numerically—would be called simulation. The advantages of simulation as a technique for analyzing dynamic systems are not evident from the excessively simple equation (1). Suppose, however, that a, instead of being a literal constant, designated some function, a [ b , x ( t ) ] , of b and x(t). Only for very special cases could (1) then be solved symbolically to obtain an explicit expression, like (2), for x(t). In general, when we wish to know the time paths of systems expressed by such equations, numerical solution for special cases—that is, simulation—is our main recourse. A great many of the mathematical theories currently used for the study of learning and other individual behavior are probabilistic or stochastic in character. Such theories pose formidable mathematical problems, and explicit symbolic solutions for their equations are seldom obtainable. Unlike a deterministic system, the solution of the equations of a stochastic system does not specify a single time path for the system but assigns a probability distribution to all possible paths of the system. In some cases, certain properties of this probability distribution—certain means and variances —can be obtained symbolically, but the specification of the entire probability distribution can seldom be obtained symbolically. In order to estimate the parameters of the distribution numerically, the
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system can be simulated by Monte Carlo techniques. That is, random variables can be introduced into the model, and the equations analogous to (1) solved a number of times, each time with different values of the random variables assigned and using the appropriate probabilities. The numerical solutions to (1) will trace out possible paths of the system, and the probability that a particular path will be followed in the simulation will be proportional to its probability under the assumptions of the model. Then, from the numerical results of the Monte Carlo simulation, numerical estimates can be made of the parameters of the probability distribution. [See RANDOM NUMBERS.] Information-processing theories. The greatest use of simulation for the study of individual behavior has involved so-called information-processing theories, which are different in important respects from classical mathematical theories. Simulation has exactly the same relation to information-processing theories as to other formal theories —it is a method for discovering how the system described by the theory will behave, in particular circumstances, over a period of time. However, almost no methods other than simulation exist for investigating information-processing theories. For this reason, a phrase like "simulation of cognitive processes" often refers both to an information-processing theory of cognitive processes and to the investigation of the theory by simulation, in the narrower sense of the term, [See INFORMATION THEORY.] Information-processing theories of individual behavior take the form of computer programs, usually written in programming languages called list-processing languages, especially devised for this purpose. The information-processing theories undertake to explain how a system like the human central nervous system carries out such complex cognitive processes as solving problems, forming concepts, or memorizing. The explanation is sufficiently detailed to predict—by computer simulation —behavior in specific problem situations. That is to say, the theory aims at predicting, not merely some quantitative aspects of behavior (number of errors in a learning situation, for example)., but the actual concrete behaviors and verbal outputs of subjects placed in the very same situation and confronted with the identical task. [See CONCEPT FORMATION; PROBLEM SOLVING.]
A specific example will help make clear exactly what is meant by this. Clarkson (1963) has constructed an information-processing theory to ex-
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plain how a bank officer selects portfolios of securities for trust funds. The trust officer, who has been told the purpose of the trust and the amount of money available for investment, prepares a list of stocks and bonds that can be bought with this sum. If the computer program is provided (as input) the same information about the purpose of the trust and its size, it will also produce (as output) a list of stocks and bonds. A first test of the program, as a theory, is whether it will pick the same list of companies and the same number of shares in each as the trust officer. In an actual test, for 'example, the program predicted the trust officer would buy 60 shares of General American Transportation, 50 Dow Chemical, 10 IBM, 60 Merck and Company, and 45 Owens-Corning Fiberglas. The trust officer in fact bought 30 Corning Glass, 50 Dow Chemical, 10 IBM, 60 Merck and Company, and 50 Owens-Corning Fiberglas. A second and more severe test of the theory is whether, in reaching its final choices, it goes through the same stages of analysis, weighs the same factors, considers the same alternatives, as the human it is simulating. As one technique for making this kind of test, the human subject is asked to perform the task while thinking aloud, and his stream of verbalizations (protocol) is recorded. The human protocols are then compared with the trace produced by the computer program while it is performing the same task (for an example of this technique, which Clarkson also used, see Newell & Simon 1963&). Omar K. Moore and ScarviaB. Anderson (1954) devised a task that required the subject to "recede" certain symbolic expressions. One problem was to recede L I : (r i — p) • (— r ^ g) into LO: — ( — # • £ > ) . (For purposes of the experiment and of this example, these strings of symbols can be treated as "code messages," whose meaning need not be known. The expression LI may be read "parenthesis r horseshoe minus p parenthesis dot parenthesis minus r horseshoe q parenthesis.") The receding had to be carried out according to certain rules, which were numbered from 1 to 12. At one point in his thinking-aloud protocol, a subject said, "Now I'm looking for a way to get rid of the horseshoe inside the two brackets that appear on the left and right side of the equation. And I don't see it. Yeah, if you apply rule 6 to both sides of the equation, from there I'm going to see if I can apply rule 7." The same receding task, receding LI into LO according to the rules specified by Moore and .Anderson, was given to a program, the General Problem Solver (GPS), expressing an information-
processing theory of human problem solving. One portion of the trace produced by the program read as follows: Goal: Apply rule 7 to LI. Subgoal: Change "horseshoe" to "wedge" in left side of LI. Subgoal: Apply rule 6 to the left side of LI. Result: L4: (—r V —p) • (—r 2 g). Subgoal: Apply rule 7 to L4. Subgoal: Change "horseshoe" to "wedge" in right of L4. Subgoal: Apply rule 6 to right side of L4. Part of the test of the adequacy of GPS as a theory of human problem solving would be to decide how closely the segment of the human protocol reproduced above corresponded to the segment of the computer trace. For example, in the illustrative fragment cited here, both the human subject and GPS went down a blind alley, for rule 7 turned out to be not applicable to the expression receded by rule 6. A theory of human problem solving must predict and explain the mistakes people make, as well as their ability sometimes to achieve solutions. Information-processing theories can also be tested in more orthodox ways than by comparing protocols with traces. A program can be simulated in an experimental design identical with one that has been employed for human subjects. Statistics from the computer runs can be compared with the statistics of the human performance. This is the principal means that has been used to test the Elementary Perceiver and Memorizer (EPAM), an information-processing theory of human rote learning that will be described briefly later (Feigenbaum 1963). By having EPAM learn nonsense syllables by the standard serial anticipation method, at various simulated memory drum speeds and for lists of different lengths, quantitative predictions were made of the shape of the so-called serial position curve (relative numbers of errors during the learning process for different parts of the list of syllables). These predictions showed excellent agreement with the published data from human experiments. In other experiments in the learning of paired nonsense syllables, EPAM predicted quantitatively the effects upon learning rate of such variables as degree of familiarity with the syllables and degree of similarity between syllables. These predictions also corresponded closely with the published data from several experiments. [See FORGETTING and LEARNING, article on VERBAL LEARNING.!
SIMULATION: Individual Behavior In summary, an information-processing theory is expressed as a computer program which, exactly like a system of difference or differential equations, predicts the time path of a system from given initial conditions for particular values of the system parameters. The theory predicts not merely gross quantitative features of behavior but the actual stream of symbolic outputs from the subject. Such theories can be subjected to test in numerous ways; among others, by comparing the behaviors, including the thinking-aloud protocols, of subjects with the computer traces produced by the simulating programs. Evaluation. The examples reveal both some of the strengths and some of the difficulties in the information-processing approach to theory construction and theory testing. On the positive side, the theories are written in languages that are capable of representing stimuli and responses directly and in detail, without an intermediate stage of translation into mathematical form. This has the further advantage of avoiding virtually all problems of stimulus scaling. The stimuli themselves, and not scales representing some of their gross characteristics, serve as inputs to the theory. Although the computer traces produced by the simulations are not in idiomatic English, the comparison of trace with protocol can be handled by relatively unambiguous coding techniques. One of the main difficulties of the approach is closely related to one of its strengths—the detail of its predictions. Since different human subjects do not behave in exactly the same way in identical task situations, a simulation that predicts correctly the detail of behavior of one individual will predict the detail of behavior of others incorrectly. Presumably, a theory of individual behavior should consist of general statements about how human beings behave, rather than statements about how a particular human being behaves. At a minimum we would want to require of a theory that modifications to fit the behaviors of different subjects should change only relatively superficial features of the theory—values of particular parameters, say —and that they not necessitate fundamental reconstruction of the whole simulation program. It remains to be seen how fully this requirement will be met by information-processing theories. Up to the present, only a modest amount of investigation has been made of the possibilities of creating variants of simulation programs to fit different subjects. Generality is needed, too, in another direction. Most of the early simulation programs were constructed to explain human performance in a single
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task—discovering proofs for theorems in symbolic logic, say, or making moves in chess. It seems unreasonable to suppose that the programs a human uses to solve problems in one task environment are entirely specific to that environment and separate and independent from those he uses for different tasks. The fact that people can be scaled, even roughly, by general intelligence argues against such total specialization of skills and abilities. Hence, an important direction of research is to construct theories that can be applied over a wide range of tasks. An example of such a theory is GPS, already mentioned. GPS can simulate behavior in any problem environment where the task can be symbolized as getting from a given state of affairs to a desired state of affairs. A wide range of problem-solving tasks can be expressed in this format. (To say that GPS can simulate behavior in any such environments means, not that the program will predict human behavior correctly and in detail, but that the program can at least be made to operate and produce a prediction, a trace, in that environment, for comparison with the human behavior.) Thus, GPS has actually been given tasks from about a dozen task environments—for example, discovering proofs for theorems in logic, solving the missionaries-and-cannibals puzzle, and solving trigonometric identities—and there is every reason to suppose it can handle a wide range of others. Levels of explanation. There has been great diversity of opinion in individual psychology as to the appropriate relation between psychological theory and neurophysiology. One extreme of the behaviorist position holds that the laws of psychology should state functional relations between the characteristics of stimulus situations, as the independent variables, and response situations, as the dependent variables, with no reference to intervening variables. A quite different position holds that explanation in psychology should relate behavior to biological mechanisms and that the laws of psychology are essentially reducible to laws of neurophysiology. Information-processing theories represent a position distinct from either of these (Simon & Newell 1964). Unlike the extreme behaviorist theories, they make strong assumptions about the processes in the central nervous system (CNS) that intervene between stimulus and response and endeavor to explain how the stimulus produces the response. On the other hand, the information-processing theories do not describe these intervening processes in terms of neurophysiological mechanisms but postulate much grosser elements: symbol struc-
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tures and elementary information processes that create and modify such structures and are, in turn, controlled by the structures. Behaviorist theories may be called one-level theories, because they refer only to directly observable phenomena. Neurophysiological theories are two-level theories, for they refer both to behavioral events and underlying chemical and biological mechanisms. Information-processing theories are at least three-level theories, for they postulate elementary information processes to explain behavior, with the suggestion that the elementary information processes can subsequently be explained (in one or more stages of reduction) in chemical and biological terms. [See LEARNING, article on NEUROPHYSIOLOGICAL ASPECTS; and NERVOUS SYSTEM.] Elementary information processes and symbol structures play the same role, at this intermediate level of explanation, as that played by chemical reactions, atoms, and molecules in nineteenth-century chemistry. In neither case is it claimed that the phenomena cannot be reduced, at least in principle, to a more microscopic level (neurophysiology in the one case, atomic physics in the other); it is simply more convenient to have a division of labor between psychologists and neurophysiologists (as between chemists and atomic physicists) and to use aggregative theories at the information-processing level as the bridge between them. Some specific theories. The remainder of this article will be devoted to an account of the psychological substance of some current informationprocessing theories of cognition. Because space prohibits a complete survey of such theories, the examples will be restricted to problem solving, serial pattern recognition, and rote memory processes. Theories of other aspects of pattern recognition and concept formation will be omitted (Hunt 1962; Uhr 1966), as will be theories proposing a parallel, rather than serial, organization of cognitive processes (Reitman 1965). The theories to be described are incorporated in a number of separate programs, which have not yet been combined into a single information-processing theory of "the whole cognitive man." Nevertheless, the programs have many similar components, and all incorporate the same basic assumptions about the organization and functioning of the CNS. Hence, the theories are complementary and will be discussed here, not as separate entities, but as components of a theory of cognition (Simon & Newell 1964). The basic assumptions about the organization and functioning of the CNS are these: (1) The CNS contains a memory, which stores
symbols (discriminable patterns) and composite structures made up of symbols. These composite structures include lists (ordered sets of symbols, e.g., the English alphabet) and descriptions (associations between triads of symbols). The relation "black, opposite, white," to be translated "white is the opposite of black," is an example of a description. (2) The CNS performs certain elementary processes on symbols: storing symbols, copying symbols, associating symbols in lists and descriptions, finding symbols on lists and in descriptions, comparing symbols to determine whether they are identical or different. (3) The elementary processes are organized hierarchically into programs, and the CNS incorporates an interpretive process capable of executing such programs—determining at each stage what elementary process will be carried out next. The interpretation is serial (not all informationprocessing theories share this assumption, however), one process being executed at a time. The memory, symbol structures, elementary processes, and interpreters are the informationprocessing mechanisms in terms of which observed human behavior is to be explained. Programs constructed from these mechanisms are used to simulate problem solving, memorizing, serial pattern recognizing, and other performances. Problem-solving processes. A central task of any theory of human problem solving is to explain how people can find their way to solutions while exploring enormous "mazes" of possible alternative paths. It has been calculated that if a chess player were to consider all the possible outcomes of all possible moves, he would have to examine some 10120 paths. In fact he does not do this—obviously he could not, in any event—but conducts a highly selective search among a very much smaller number of possibilities. Available empirical data indicate that a problem solver usually explores well under a hundred paths in this and other problemsolving "mazes." Experiments based on information-processing theories have shown that such selective searches can be accomplished successfully by programs incorporating rules of thumb, or heuristics, for determining which paths in the maze are likely to lead to solutions (Feigenbaum & Feldman 1963, part 1, sees. 2, 3). Some of the heuristics are very specific to a particular task environment. As a person becomes skilled in such an environment, he learns to discriminate features of the situation that have diagnostic value, and he associates with those features responses that may be appropriate in situa-
SIMULATION: Individual Behavior tions of the specified kind. Thus, an important component in specific skills is a "table of connections," stored in memory, associating discriminable features with possibly relevant actions. For example, a chess player learns to notice when the enemy's king is exposed, and he learns to consider certain types of moves (e.g., "checking" moves) whenever he notices this condition. [See ATTENTION.] Much of the behavior of problem solvers in chess-playing and theorem-proving tasks can be explained in terms of simple "feature-noticing" programs and corresponding tables of connections, or associations. But the programs must explain also how these components in memory are organized into effective programs for selective search. These organizing programs are relatively independent of the specific kind of problem to be solved but are applicable instead (in conjunction with the noticing processes and associations) to large classes of task environments. They are general heuristics for problem solving. The central GPS heuristic is an organization of elementary processes for carrying out means-end analysis. These processes operate as follows: the symbolized representations of two situations are compared; one or more differences are noted between them; an operator is selected among those associated with the difference by the table of connections; and the operator is applied to the situation that is to be changed. After the change has been made, a new situation has been created, which can be compared with the goal situation, and the process can then be repeated. Consider, for example, a subject trying to solve one of the Moore-Anderson "receding" problems. In this case, the problem is to change LI: r • (-p 3 g) to LO: (q V p~) • r. The subject begins by saying, "You've got to change the places of the r to the other side and you have to change the . . . minus and horseshoe to wedge, and you've got to reverse the places from p and q to q and p, so let's see. . . . Rule 1 (i.e., A • B -> B • A) is similar to it because you want to change places with the second part. . . ." The means—end chain in this example includes the following: notice the difference in order between the terms of LI and LO; find an operator (rule 1) that changes the order. Another kind of organization, which may be called planning and abstraction, is also evident in problem solving. In planning, some of the detail of the original problem is eliminated (abstracted). A solution is then sought for the simplified problem, using means-end analysis or other processes.
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If the solution is found for the abstract problem, it provides an outline or plan for the solution of the original problem with the detail reinserted. The programs for means-end analysis and for planning, each time they are activated, produce a "burst" of problem-solving activity directed at a particular subgoal or organization of subgoals. The problem-solving program also contains processes that control and organize these bursts of activity as parts of the total exploratory effort. [See PROBLEM SOLVING.] Rote memory processes. The noticing processes incorporated in the problem-solving theory assume that humans have subprograms for discriminating among symbol structures (e.g., for noticing differences between structures) and programs for elaborating the fineness of these discriminations. They also assume that associations between symbol structures can be stored (e.g., the table of connections between differences and operators). Discrimination and association processes and the structures they employ constitute an important part of the detail of problem-solving activity but are obscured in complex human performances by the higher-level programs that organize and direct search. In simpler human tasks—memorizing materials by rote—the organizing strategies are simpler, and the underlying processes account for most of the behavioral phenomena. It has been possible to provide a fairly simple information-processing explanation for the acquisition of discriminations and associations (Feigenbaum 1963). (Our description follows EPAM, the program for rote learning mentioned above.) In the learning situation, there develops in memory (a) a "sorting net," for discriminating among stimuli and among responses, and (£>) compound symbol structures, stored in the net, that contain a partial representation, or "image," of the stimulus as one component and a partial image of the response as another. When stimuli or responses are highly similar to each other, greater elaboration of the sorting net is required to discriminate among them, and more detail must be stored in the images. A stimulus becomes "familiar" as a result of repeated exposure and consequent elaboration of the sorting net and its stored image. We have already noted that these simple mechanisms have been shown to account, quantitatively as well as qualitatively, for some of the main features of learning rates that have been observed in the laboratory. [See LEARNING, article On DISCRIMINATION LEARNING.]
Recognition of periodic patterns. As an example of an information-processing explanation of
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some of the phenomena of concept formation, we consider how, according to such a theory, human subjects detect and extrapolate periodic patterns —e.g., the letter pattern A B M C D M . . . (Simon & Newell 1964, pp. 293-294). At the core of the explanation is the hypothesis that in performing these tasks humans make use of their ability to detect a small number of basic relations and operations: for example, the relations "same" and "different" between two symbols or symbol structures; the relation "next" on a familiar alphabet; and the operations of finding the difference between and the quotient of a pair of numbers. (These discriminations are not unlike those required as components in problem-solving programs to detect features of symbol structures and differences between them.) With a relatively simple program of these processes, the pattern in a sequence can be detected, the pattern can be described by a symbol structure, and the pattern description can be used by the interpretive process to extrapolate. In the example A B M C D M, the relation "next" is detected in the substring A B C D, and the relation "same" in the M's. These relations are used to describe a three-letter pattern, whose next member is the "next" letter after D, i.e., E. The information-processing theory of serial pattern detection has proved applicable to a wide range of cognitive tasks—including the Thurstone Letter Series Completion Test, symbol analogies tests, and partial reinforcement experiments. [See CONCEPT FORMATION; see also Feldman 1963.] This article has described the use of simulation in constructing and testing theories of individual behavior, with particular reference to nonnumerical information-processing theories that take the form of computer programs. Examples of some of the current theories of problem solving, memorizing, and pattern recognition were described briefly, and the underlying assumptions about the information-processing characteristics of the central nervous system were outlined. Various techniques were illustrated for subjecting information-processing theories to empirical test. ALLEN NEWELL AND HERBERT A. SIMON [Directly related are the entries DECISION MAKING, especially the article on PSYCHOLOGICAL ASPECTS; INFORMATION THEORY; MODELS, MATHEMATICAL; PROBLEM SOLVING. Other relevant material may be found in LEARNING THEORY; MATHEMATICS; NERVOUS SYSTEM; PROGRAMMING; REASONING AND LOGIC;
THINKING.!
BIBLIOGRAPHY
CLARKSON, GEOFFREY P. E. 1963 A Model of the Trust Investment Process. Pages 347-371 in Edward A. Feigenbaum and Julian Feldman (editors), Computers and Thought. New York: McGraw-Hill. FEIGENBAUM, EDWARD A. 1963 The Simulation of Verbal Learning Behavior. Pages 297-309 in Edward A. Feigenbaum and Julian Feldman (editors), Computers and Thought. New York: McGraw-Hill. FEIGENBAUM, EDWARD A.; and FELDMAN, JULIAN (editors) 1963 Computers and Thought. New York: McGrawHill. FELDMAN, JULIAN 1963 Simulation of Behavior in the Binary Choice Experiment. Pages 329-346 in Edward A. Feigenbaum and Julian Feldman (editors), Computers and Thought. New York: McGraw-Hill. GREEN, BERT F. JR. 1963 Digital Computers in Research: An Introduction for Behavioral and Social Scientists. New York: McGraw-Hill. HUNT, EARL B. 1962 Concept Learning: An Information Processing Problem. New York: Wiley. MILLER, GEORGE A.; GALANTER, E.; and PRIBRAM, K. H. 1960 Plans and the Structure of Behavior. New York: Holt. MOORE, OMAR K.; and ANDERSON, SCARVIA B. 1954 Modern Logic and Tasks for Experiments on Problem Solving Behavior. Journal of Psychology 38:151-160. NEWELL, ALLEN; and SIMON, HERBERT A. 1963a Computers in Psychology. Volume 1, pages 361-428 in R. Duncan Luce, Robert Bush, and Eugene Galanter (editors), Handbook of Mathematical Psychology. New York: Wiley. NEWELL, ALLEN; and SIMON, HERBERT A. 1963b GPS, a Program That Simulates Human Thought. Pages 279-293 in Edward A. Feigenbaum and Julian Feldman (editors), Computers and Thought. New York: McGraw-Hill. REITMAN, WALTER R. 1965 Cognition and Thought: An Information-processing Approach. New York: Wiley. SIMON, HERBERT A.; and NEWELL, ALLEN 1964 Information Processing in Computer and Man. American Scientist 52:281-300. UHR, LEONARD (editor) 1966 Pattern Recognition. New York: Wiley.
n ECONOMIC PROCESSES
Simulation is at once one of the most powerful and one of the most misapplied tools of modern economic analysis. "Simulation" of an economic system means the performance of experiments upon an analogue of the economic system and the drawing of inferences concerning the properties of the economic system from the behavior of its analogue. The analogue is an idealization of a generally more complex real system, the essential properties of which are retained in the analogue. While this definition is consistent with the denotation of the word, the connotation of simulation among economists active in the field today is much more restricted. The term "simulation" has been generally reserved for processes using a physical
SIMULATION: Economic Processes or mathematical analogue and requiring a modern high-speed digital or analogue computer for the execution of the experiments. In addition, most economic simulations have involved some stochastic elements, either as an intrinsic feature of the model or as part of the simulation experiment field. Thus, while a pencil-and-paper calculation on a two-person Walrasian economy would, according to the more general definition, constitute a simulation experiment, common usage of the term would require that, to qualify as a simulation, the size of the model must be large enough, or the relationships complex enough, to necessitate the use of a modern computing machine. Even the inclusion of probabilistic elements in the pencil-and-paper game would not suffice, in and of itself, to transform the calculations into a bona fide commonusage simulation. In order to avoid confusion, the term "simulation" will be used hereafter in its more restrictive sense. To clarify the concept of simulation, it might be useful to indicate how the simulation process is related, on the one hand, to the analytic solution of mathematical models of an economy, and on the other, to the construction of mathematical and econometric models of economic systems. The relationship between simulation and econometric and mathematical formulations of economic theories is quite intimate. It is these descriptions of economic processes that constitute the basic inputs into a simulation. After a mathematical or econometric model is translated into language a computing machine can understand, the behavior of the model, as described by the machine output, represents the behavior of the economic system being simulated. The solutions obtained by means of simulation techniques are quite specific. Given a particular set of initial conditions, a particular set of parameters, and the time period over which the model is to be simulated, a single simulation experiment yields a particular numerically specified set of time paths for the endogenous variables (the variables whose values are determined or explained by the model). A variation in one or more of the initial conditions or parameters requires a separate simulation experiment which provides a different set of time paths. Comparisons between the original solution and other solutions obtained under specific variations in assumptions can then be used to infer some of the properties of the relationships between input and output quantities in the system under investigation. In general, only very partial inferences concerning these relationships can be drawn by means of simulation experiments. In
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addition, the results obtained can be assumed to be valid only for values of the parameters and initial conditions close to those used in the simulation experiments. By contrast, traditional mathematical approaches for studying the implications of 'an economic model produce general solutions by deductive methods. These general solutions describe, in functional form, the manner in which the model relates the endogenous variables to any set of initial conditions and parameters and to time. The models formulated for a simulation experiment must, of course, represent a compromise between "realism" and tractability. Since modern computers enable very large numbers of computations to be performed rapidly, they permit the stepby-step solution of systems that are several orders of magnitude larger and more complicated than those that can be handled by the more conventional techniques. The representation of economic systems to be investigated with the aid of simulation techniques can therefore be much more complex; there are considerably fewer restrictions on the number of equations and on the mathematical forms of the functions that can be utilized. Simulation, therefore, permits greater realism in the extent and nature of the feed-back mechanisms in the stylized representation of the economy contained in the econometric or mathematical model. The impetus for the use of simulation techniques in economics arises from three major sources. First, both theory and casual observation suggest that an adequate description of the dynamic behavior of an economy must involve complex patterns of time dependencies, nonlinearities, and intricate interrelationships among the many variables governing the evolution of economic activity through time. In addition, a realistic economic model will almost certainly require a high degree of disaggregation. Since analytic solutions can be obtained for only very special types of appreciably simplified economic models, simulation techniques, with their vastly greater capacity for complexity, permit the use of more realistic analogues to describe real economic systems. The second driving force behind the use of simulation, one that is not unrelated to the first, arises from the need of social scientists in general and of economists in particular to find morally acceptable and scientifically adequate substitutes for the physical scientist's controlled experiments. To the extent that the analogue used in the simulation represents the relevant properties of the economic system under study, experimentation with the ana-
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logue can be used to infer the results of analogous experiments with the real economy. The effects in the model of specific changes in the values of particular policy instruments (e.g., taxes, interest rates, price level) can be used to draw at least qualitatively valid inferences concerning the probable effects of analogous changes in the real economic system. Much theoretical analysis in economics is aimed at the study of the probable reactions of an economy to specified exogenous changes, but any economic model that can be studied by analytic techniques must of necessity omit so many obviously relevant considerations that little confidence can be placed in the practical value of the results. Since a simulation study can approximate the economy's behavior and structure considerably more closely, simulation experiments can, at least in principle, lead to conditional predictions of much greater operational significance. Finally, the mathematical flexibility of simulation permits the use of this tool to gain insights into many phenomena whose intrinsic nature is not at all obvious. It is often possible, for example, to formulate a very detailed quantitative description of a particular process before its essential nature is sufficiently well understood, to permit the degree of stylization required for a useful theoretical analysis. Studies of the sensitivity of the results to various changes in assumptions can then be used to disentangle the important from the unimportant features of the problem. Past uses of simulation. The earliest applications of simulation approaches to economics employed physical analogues of a hydraulic or electrical variety. Analogue computers permit the solution of more or less complex linear or nonlinear dynamic systems in which time is treated as a continuous variable. They also enable a visual picture to be gained of adjustment processes. On the other hand, they are much slower than digital computers and can introduce distortions into the results because of physical effects, such as "noise" and friction, which have no conscious economic analogue. Subsequent economic simulations have tended to rely primarily on digital computers. As the speed and memory capacity of the computers have improved, the economic systems simulated have become increasingly more complex and more elaborate, and the emphasis in simulation has shifted from use as a mathematical tool for solving systems of equations and understanding economic models to use as a device for forecasting and controlling real economies. In addition, these improvements in computer design have permitted the construction of microanalytic models in which ag-
gregate relationships are built up from specifications concerning the behavioral patterns of a large sample of microeconomic units. As early as 1892, Irving Fisher recommended the use of hydraulic analogies "not only to obtain a clear and analytical picture of the interdependence of the many elements in the causation of prices, but also to employ the mechanism as an instrument of investigation and by it, study some complicated variations which could scarcely be successfully followed without its aid" (1892, p. 44). It was not until 1950, however, that the first hydraulic analogues of economic systems were constructed. Phillips (1950) used machines made of transparent plastic tanks and tubes through which colored water was pumped to depict the Keynesian mechanism of income determination and to indicate how the production, consumption, stocks, and prices of a commodity interact. Electrical analogues were used to study models of inventory determination (Strotz et al. 1957) and to study the business cycle models of Kalecki (Smith & Erdley 1952), Goodwin (Strotz et al. 1953), and others. The shift to the use of digital computers began in the late 1950s. In a simulation study on an IBM 650, Adelman and Adelman (1959) investigated the dynamic properties of the Klein-Goldberger model of the U.S. economy by extrapolating the exogenous variables and solving the system of 25 nonlinear difference equations for a period of one hundred years. In this process no indications were found of oscillatory behavior in the model. The introduction of random disturbances of a reasonable order of magnitude, however, generated cycles that were remarkably similar to those characterizing the U.S. economy. On the basis of their study, they concluded that (1) the Klein-Goldberger equations may represent good approximations to the behavioral relationships in the real economy; and (2) their results are consistent with the hypothesis that the fluctuations experienced in modern highly developed societies are due to random perturbations. Duesenberry, Eckstein, and Fromm (1960) constructed a 14-equation quarterly aggregative econometric model of the U.S. economy. Simulation experiments with this model were used to test the vulnerability of the U.S. economy to depressions and to assess the effectiveness of various automatic stabilizers, such as tax declines, increases in transfer payments, and changes in business savings. A far more detailed and, indeed, the most ambitious macroeconometric simulation effort to date, at least on this side of the iron curtain, is being carried out at the Brookings Institution in Washington, B.C. The simulation is based on a 400-equa-
SIMULATION: Economic Processes tion quarterly econometric model of the U.S. economy constructed by various experts under the auspices of the Social Science Research Council (Duesenberry et al. 1965). The Brookings model has eight production sectors. For each of the nongovernment sectors there are equations describing the determinants of fixed investment intentions, fixed investment realizations, new orders, unfilled orders, inventory investment, production worker employment, nonproduction worker employment, production worker average weekly hours, labor compensation rates per hour, real depreciation, capital consumption allowances, indirect business taxes, rental income, interest income, prices, corporate profits, entrepreneurial income, dividends, retained earnings, and inventory valuation adjustment. The remaining expenditure components of the national product are estimated in 5 consumption equations, 11 equations for nonbusiness construction, and several import and export equations. For government, certain nondefense expenditures, especially at the state and local levels, are treated as endogenous variables, while the rest are taken as exogenous. On the income side of the accounts there is a vast array of additional equations for transfer payments, personal income taxes, and other minor items. The model also includes a demographic sector containing labor force, marriage rate, and household formation variables and a financial sector that analyzes the demand for money, the interest rate term structure, and other monetary variables. Finally, aside from a battery of identities, the model also incorporates two matrices: an input-output matrix that translates constant dollar GNP (gross national product) component demands into constant dollar gross product originating by industry, and a matrix that translates industry prices into implicit deflators for GNP components. The solution to the system is achieved by making use of the model's block recursive structure. First, a block of variables wholly dependent on lagged endogenous variables is solved. Second, an initial simultaneous equation solution is obtained for variables in the "quantity" block (consumption, imports, industry outputs, etc.) using predetermined variables and using prices from the previous period in place of current prices. Third, a simultaneous equation solution is obtained for variables in the "price" block using the predetermined variables and the initial solution from the quantity block. Fourth, the price block solution is used as a new input to the quantity block, and the second and third steps are iterated until each variable changes (from iteration to iteration) by no more
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than 0.1 per cent. Fifth, the three blocks are solved recursively. Simulation experiments show that the system yields predictions both within and beyond the sample period that lie well within the range of accuracy of other models. Simulation studies have also been undertaken to determine the potential impact of personal-income and excise-tax reductions, of government expenditure increases, and of monetary tightness and ease. Stochastic simulations are also being carried out to ascertain the stability properties of the system. A rather different approach to the estimation of behavioral relationships for the entire socioeconomic system has been developed by Orcutt and his associates (Orcutt et al. 1961). Starting with the observed behavior of microeconomic decision units rather than macroeconomic aggregates, they estimate behavioral relationships for classes of decision units and use these to predict the behavior of the entire system. For this purpose, functions known as operating characteristics are estimated from sample surveys and census data. These functions specify the probabilities of various outcomes, given the values of a set of status variables which indicate the relevant characteristics of the microeconomic units at the start of a period. Their initial simulation experiments were aimed at forecasting demographic behavior. For example, to estimate the number of deaths occurring during a given month, the following procedure was applied: an operating characteristic, (m - m 0 )F 2
F 3 (m),
was specified. Here, Pj(ra) indicates the probability of the death of individual i in month m, Ai(m — ^) is the age of individual i at the start of month m, RI denotes the race of individual i, and Si denotes the sex of individual i. The function Fi is a set of four age-specific mortality tables, one for each race and sex combination, which describe mortality conditions prevailing during the base month ra0 . The function F2 is used to update each of these mortality tables to month m. The function F3 is a cyclic function which accounts for seasonal variations in death rates. This and other operating characteristics were used in a simulation of the evolution of the U.S. population month by month between 1950 and 1960. A representative sample of the U.S. population consisting of approximately 10,000 individuals was constructed. In each month of the calculation a random drawing determined, in accordance with the probabilities specified by the relevant oper-
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ating characteristics, whether each individual in the sample would die, marry, get divorced, or give birth. A regression analysis was then used to compare the actual and predicted demographic changes during the sample period. Close agreement was obtained. This approach is currently being extended to permit analysis of the consumption, saving, and borrowing patterns of U.S. families, the behavior of firms, banks, insurance companies, and labor unions, etc. When all portions of the microanalytic model have been fitted together, simulation runs will be made to explore the consequences of various changes in monetary and fiscal policies. So far, we have discussed simulation experiments for prediction purposes only. However, the potential of simulation as an aid to policy formulation has not been overlooked by development planners in either free-enterprise economies or socialist countries. A microanalytic simulation model has been formulated at the U.S.S.R. Academy of Sciences in order to guide the management of the production system of the Soviet economy (Cherniak 1963). The model is quite detailed and elaborate. It starts with individual plants at a specific location and ends up with interregional and interindustry tables for the Soviet Union as a whole. In addition, the U.S.S.R. is contemplating the introduction of a 10-step joint man-computer program. The program is to be cyclic, with odd steps being man-operated and even steps being computeroperated. The functions fulfilled by the man-operated steps include the elaboration of the initial basis of the plan, the establishment of the criteria and constraints of the plan, and the evaluation of results. The computer, on the other hand, will perform such tasks as summarizing and balancing the plan, determining optimal solutions to individual models, and simulating the results of planning decisions. This procedure will be tested at a level of aggregation corresponding to an industrial sector of an economic council and will ultimately be extended to the economy as a whole. I have been unable to find any information on the progress of this work more recent than that in Cherniak (1963). To take an example from the nonsocialist countries, a large-scale interdisciplinary simulation effort was undertaken at Harvard University, at the request of President John F. Kennedy, in order to study the engineering and economic development of a river basin in Pakistan. The major recommendations of the report (White House 1964) are currently being implemented by the Pakistani government, with funds supplied by the U.S. Agency for International Development.
In Venezuela a 250-equation dynamic simulation model has been constructed by Holland, in conjunction with the Venezuelan Planning Agency and the University of Venezuela. This model, which is based on experience gained in an earlier simulation of a stylized underdeveloped economy (Holland & Gillespie 1963), is being used in Venezuela to compare, by means of sensitivity studies, the repercussions of alternative government expenditure programs on government revenues and on induced imports, as well as to check the consistency of the projected rate of growth with the rate of investment and the rate of savings. An interesting macroeconomic simulation of the Ecuadorian economy, in which the society has been disaggregated into four social classes, is currently being carried outbyShubik (1966). Monte Carlo studies. The small sample properties of certain statistical estimators cannot be determined using currently available mathematical analysis alone. In such cases simulation methods are extremely useful. By simulating an economic structure (including stochastic elements) whose parameters are known, one generates samples of "observations" of a given sample size. Each sample is then used to estimate the parameters by several estimation methods. For each method, the distribution of the estimates is compared with the true values of the parameters to determine the properties of the estimator for the given sample size. This approach, known as the Monte Carlo sampling method, has frequently been applied by econometricians in studies of the small sample properties of alternative estimators of simultaneous equation models [see SIMULTANEOUS EQUATION ESTIMATION]. Limitations and potential. To a large extent, the very strength of simulation is also its major weakness. As pointed out earlier, any simulation experiment produces no more than a specific numerical case history of the system whose properties are to be investigated. To understand the manner of operation of the system and to disentangle the important effects from the unimportant ones, simulation with different initial conditions and parameters must be undertaken. The results of these sensitivity studies must then be analyzed by the investigator and generalized appropriately. However, if the system is very complex, these tasks may be very difficult indeed. To enable interpretation of results, it is crucial to keep the structure of the simulation model simple and to recognize that, as pointed out in the definition, simulation by no means implies a blind imitation of the actual situation. The simulation model should express
SIMULATION: Economic Processes only the logic of the simulated system together with the elements needed for a fruitful synthesis. Another major problem in the use of simulation is the interaction between theory construction and simulation experiments. In many cases simulation has been used as an alternative to analysis, rather than as a supplementary tool for enriching the realm of what can be investigated by other, more conventional techniques. The inclination to compute rather than think tends to permeate a large number of simulation experiments, in which the investigators tend to be drowned in a mass of output data whose general implications they are unable to analyze. There are, of course, notable exceptions to this phenomenon. In the water-resource project (Dorfman 1964), for example, crude analytic solutions to simplified formulations of a given problem were used to pinpoint the neighborhoods of the solution space in which sensitivity studies to variations in initial conditions and parameters should be undertaken in the more complex over-all system. In another instance, insights gained from a set of simulation experiments were used to formulate theorems which, once the investigator's intuition had been educated by means of the simulation, were proved analytically. Examples of such constructive uses of simulation are unfortunately all too few. Finally, in many practical applications of simulation to policy and prediction problems, insufficient attention is paid to the correspondence between the system simulated and its analogue. As long as the description incorporated in the simulation model appears to be realistic, the equivalence between the real system and its analogue is often taken for granted, and inferences are drawn from the simulation that supposedly apply to the real economy. Clearly, however, the quality of the input data, the correspondence between the behavior of the outputs of the simulation and the behavior of the analogous variables in the real system, and the sensitivity of results to various features of the stylization should all be investigated before inferences concerning the real world are drawn from simulation experiments. In summary, simulation techniques have a tremendous potential for both theoretical analysis and policy-oriented investigations. If a model is chosen that constitutes a reasonable representation of the economic interactions of the real world and that is sufficiently simple in its structure to permit intelligent interpretation of the results at the present state of the art, the simulations can be used to acquire a basic understanding of, and a qualitative feeling for, the reactions of a real economy to vari-
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ous types of stimuli. The usefulness of the technique will depend crucially, however, upon the validity of the representation of the system to be simulated and upon the quality of the compromise between realism and tractability. Presumably, as the capabilities of both high-speed computers and economists improve, the limitations of simulation will be decreased, and its usefulness for more and more complex problems will be increased. IRMA ADELMAN [For additional treatment of the terminology in this article and other relevant material, see ECONOMETRIC MODELS, AGGREGATE.] BIBLIOGRAPHY
General discussions of the simulation of economic processes can be found in Conference on Computer Simulation 1963; Holland & Gillespie 1963; Orcutt et al. I960; 1961. A comprehensive general bibliography is Shubik 1960. On the application of analogue computers to problems in economic dynamics, see Phillips 1950; 1957; Smith & Erdley 1952; Strotz et al. 1953; 1957. Examples of studies using digital computers are Adelman & Adelman 1959; Cherniak 1963; Dorfman 1964; Duesenberry et al. I960; 1965; Fromm & Taubman 1966; White House 1964. ADELMAN, IRMA; and ADELMAN, FRANK L. (1959) 1965 The Dynamic Properties of the Klein-Goldberger Model. Pages 278-306 in American Economic Association, Readings in Business Cycles. Homewood, 111.: Irwin. -> First published in Volume 27 of Econometrica. CHERNIAK, lu. I. 1963 The Electronic Simulation of Information Systems for Central Planning. Economics of Planning 3:23-40. CONFERENCE ON COMPUTER SIMULATION, UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, Los ANGELES, 1961 1963 Symposium on Simulation Models: Methodology and Applications to the Behavioral Sciences. Edited by Austin C. Hoggatt and Frederick E. B alders ton. Cincinnati, Ohio: South-Western Publishing. DORFMAN, ROBERT 1964 Formal Models in the Design of Water Resource Systems. Unpublished manuscript. DUESENBERRY, JAMES S.; ECKSTEIN, OTTO; and FRO.MM, GARY 1960 A Simulation of the United States Economy in Recession. Econometrica 28:749-809. DUESENBERRY, JAMES S. et al. (editors) 1965 The Brookings Quarterly Econometric Model of the United States. Chicago: Rand McNally. FISHER, IRVING (1892) 1961 Mathematical Investigations in the Theory of Value and Prices. New Haven: Yale Univ. Press. FROMM, GARY; and TAUBMAN, PAUL 1966 Policy Simulations With an Econometric Model. Unpublished manuscript. HOLLAND, EDWARD P.; and GILLESPIE, ROBERT W. 1963 Experiments on a Simulated Under-developed Economy: Development Plans and Balance-of-payments Policies. Cambridge, Mass.: M.I.T. Press. ORCUTT, GUY H. et al. 1960 Simulation: A Symposium. American Economic Review 50:893-932. ORCUTT, GUY H. et al. 1961 Microanalysis of Socioeconomic Systems: A Simulation Study. New York: Harper. PHILLIPS, A. W. 1950 Mechanical Models in Economic Dynamics. Economica New Series 17:283-305.
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PHILLIPS, A. W. 1957 Stabilisation Policy and the Timeforms of Lagged Responses. Economic Journal 67: 265-277. SHUBIK, MARTIN 1960 Bibliography on Simulation, Gaming, Artificial Intelligence and Allied Topics. Journal of the American Statistical Association 55:736-751. SHUBIK, MARTIN 1966 Simulation of Socio-economic Systems. Part 2: An Aggregative Socio-economic Simulation of a Latin American Country. Cowles Foundation for Research in Economics, Discussion Paper No. 203. SMITH, O. J. M.; and ERDLEY, H. F. 1952 An Electronic Analogue for an Economic System. Electrical Engineering 71:362-366. STROTZ, R. H.; CALVERT, J. F.; and MOREHOUSE, N. F. 1957 Analogue Computing Techniques Applied to Economics. American Institute of Electrical Engineers, Transactions 70, part 1:557-563. STROTZ, R. H.; MCANULTY, J. C.; and NAINES, J. B. JR. 1953 Goodwin's Nonlinear Theory of the Business Cycle: An Electro-analog Solution. Econometrica 21: 390-411. WHITE HOUSE—[U.S.] DEPARTMENT OF INTERIOR, PANEL ON WATERLOGGING AND SALINITY IN WEST PAKISTAN 1964 Report on Land and Water Development in the Indus Plain. Washington: Government Printing Office. Ill POLITICAL PROCESSES
A political game or political simulation is a type of model that represents some aspect of politics. The referent, or "reality," represented by a simulation-gaming technique may be some existing, past, or hypothetical system or process. Regardless of the reference system or process depicted in a game or simulation, the model is always a simplification of the total reality. Some political features will be excluded. Those elements of political phenomena incorporated in the model are reduced in complexity. The simplification and selective incorporation of a reference system or process produce the assets of parsimony and manageability as well as the liability of possible distortion. These attributes are, of course, equally applicable to other kinds of models, whether they be verbal, pictorial, or mathematical. Simulations and games differ from other types of models in that their interrelated elements are capable of assuming different values as the simulation or game operates or unfolds. In other words, they contain rules for transforming some of the symbols in the model. For example, a game might begin with the description of a particular situation circulated to players who then are instructed to make responses appropriate for their roles. Initial reactions of some players lead to action by others; they in turn provoke new responses. In this manner not only do situations evolve, but basic changes
also occur in the relationships between the players. When the value of one element in the simulation is changed, related properties can be adjusted accordingly. Because of this ability to handle time and change, Brody has described simulations and games as "operating models" (1963, p. 670). Games versus simulations. To the users of both techniques, the distinctions between games and simulations are still ambiguous, as some current definitions will illustrate. Brody (1963) and Guetzkow and his associates (1963) distinguish between (1) machine, or computer, simulations, (2) man, or manual, games, and (3) mixed, or man-computer, simulations. Generally the "machine" referred to is a digital computer, although some simulations involve other types of calculating equipment. The extension of the term "simulation" to cover those models which are a mixture of man and machine does not occur in other definitions. For example, the concept "simulation" is confined by Pool, Abelson, and Popkin (1965) to models that are completely operated on a computer. Rapoport (1964) defines a simulation as a technique in which both the assessment of the situation and the subsequent decisions are made in accordance with explicit and formal rules. When either assessment or decisions are made by human beings without formal rules, the technique is described as a game. When both assessment and decision are made by men, Rapoport stipulates that the device is a scenario. A different interpretation is given by Shubik, who suggests that a game "is invariably concerned with studying human behavior or teaching individuals" (1964, p. 71). On the other hand, a simulation is designated as the reproduction of a system or organism in which the actual presence of humans is not essential because their behavior is one of the givens of the simulated environment. The necessary involvement of humans in games also appears in the definitions of Thorelli and Graves (1964) and Dawson (1962). In Dawson's conceptualization all operating models are simulations, but only those which introduce human players are games. In these definitions of games and simulations, two distinguishing criteria are recurrent. The techniques are differentiated either by the role specified for human participants or by the role assigned formal rules of change or transformation. When human participation is the distinguishing criterion, a game is described as an operating model in which participants are present and a simulation as a model without players. With rules of transformation as the criterion, the type of model without extensive
SIMULATION: Political Processes use of formal rules is a game and the technique with formal rules for handling change is a simulation. The two distinguishing criteria can be interpreted as opposite poles of a single differentiating property. A model designed with only a limited number of its operating rules explicitly stated requires human players and administrators to define rules as the game proceeds. Conversely, a model designed with the interrelationships between its units specified in formal rules has less use for human decision makers during its operation. Thus, formal rules and human participants are alternative means for establishing the dynamic relationships between a model's units. Given this interpretation, two operational characteristics can be used for separating games and simulations. One definitional approach is to reserve the term "simulation" for models that are completely programmed (i.e., all operations are specified in advance) and that confine the role of humans to the specification of inputs. Alternatively, simulations can be defined as operating models that, although not necessarily excluding human decision makers, involve such complex programmed rules that either computer assistance or a special staff using smaller calculating equipment is required to determine the consequences of the rules. The latter definition of simulation is used in the remainder of this essay. Accordingly, a game is an operating model whose dynamics are primarily determined by participants and game administrators with a minimum of formal rules (i.e., neither computer nor calculation staff). The use of "game" to identify one type of dynamic model necessitates distinguishing political gaming from the theory of games and from "parlor games." Occasionally, game theory and political gaming are applicable to similar political problems. The theory of games, however, is a mathematical approach to conflict situations in which the outcome of play is dependent on the choices of the conflicting parties. To employ game theory, specified conditions must be fulfilled; for example, the players must have knowledge of all their alternatives and be able to assign utilities to each one. Political gaming does not require those conditions, nor does it contain formal solutions to conflict situations. Political gaming also may be confused with "parlor games" designed for entertainment. The two activities can be distinguished by political gaming's instructional or research focus, its greater complexity, and its more elaborate effort to reproduce a political reference system or process.
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To summarize, political games and simulations are operating models whose properties are substituted for selected aspects of past, present, or hypothetical political phenomena. Although consensus is lacking, many definitions imply that games are operating models in which the pattern of interaction and change between the represented units is made by human participants and administrators as the model is played. In simulations, the interaction and change among elements represented in the model are specified in formal rules of transformation which are frequently programmed on a computer. A proposed operational distinction is that a game becomes a simulation when the specified rules become so detailed as to require a separate calculating staff or a computer. Operating models relevant to politics Development. One origin of political gaming and simulation is the war game used to explore military strategy and tactics. The Kriegsspiel, or war game, was introduced in the German general staff late in the first quarter of the nineteenth century. Before the beginning of World War n both the Germans and the Japanese—and perhaps, the Russians—are reported (Goldhamer & Speier [1959] 1961, p. 71) to have extended some war games from strictly military exercises to operations which included the representation of political features. The current development of simulations and games for the study of politics also has been influenced by the use of operating models in the physical sciences (e.g., the study of aerodynamics in wind tunnels), the availability of electronic computers, and the interest in experimental research throughout the social sciences. The extension of the small-group laboratory studies to include the examination of larger social systems has been a vital contribution. RAND international politics game. The allman game created at the RAND Corporation in the 1950s was one of the earliest post-World War n games conducted in the United States. As the game is described by Goldhamer and Speier (1959), it involves a scenario, a control team, and a group of players who are divided into teams. To establish the setting for the game, the scenario describes the relevant world features that exist at the outset of play. Each team of national policy makers decides on appropriate policy in response to the circumstances described in the scenario. Action taken by a nation is submitted to the control team, which judges its feasibility and plausibility. If the con-
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trol team rules that a given policy is realistic, the action is assumed to have occurred. Appropriate teams are notified of the new development. The game evolves as nations respond to the moves of other teams and to the events introduced by the control team (e.g., technological innovations, assassinations, etc.). In addition to the exercises conducted at RAND, this international politics game has provided the basic format for games at various institutions, including the Center for International Studies at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (Bloomfield & Whaley 1965). In contrast to the RAND games, most of the university exercises have been conducted with students for instructional purposes. The problems presented by the game scenarios have ranged from historical events to future hypothetical developments. In some games, teams have represented various branches or departments within the same government rather than different nations. Legislative game. The legislative game was developed by Coleman (1964) to examine collective decision making and bargaining. Although it is an all-man game like the RAND model, the initial conditions of the legislative game are established by a deck of especially designed cards rather than a scenario. Moreover, the game is structured exclusively by rules and the behaviors of players. It does not involve a control team. Six to eleven players assume the role of legislators representing the hypothetical constituencies or regions indicated on randomly assigned cards. These legislators attempt to remain in office by passing issues or bills the voters in their regions favor and by defeating items the voters oppose. In the critical bargaining period which precedes the legislators' vote on each issue, any player may agree to support issues which are not relevant to his constituents in exchange for a vote from another legislator on an issue crucial for his re-election. After the game's eight issues have been passed, defeated, or tabled, the legislators are able to determine whether they will be re-elected for another session. Public opinion game. The public opinion game was designed by Davison (1961) as an instructional device to demonstrate such factors as the development of cross-pressures, the difference between private and public opinion, and the role of both psychological and social forces. Each participant is given the description of an individual whose role the player assumes. The final public opinion of every hypothetical individual is a weighted composite of (1) his private opinion before the issue is discussed, (2) his religious organization's posi-
tion, (3) his secondary organization's position, and (4) his primary group's position. Although the public opinion game is an all-man exercise like both the RAND and legislative games, it contains to a greater degree than the other two models quantitative rules that determine the outcome. The players, in various combinations, are able to choose the positions assumed by each of the elements which influence an individual's final public opinion. Once the positions are taken, however, specific rules indicate what values shall be assigned to each opinion component and how they shall be compiled. If the public opinion game incorporated more determinants of opinion (the author acknowledges many simplifications), the resulting complexity of the rules probably would require a calculation staff or computer, thus transforming the game into a simulation according to the present definition. Inter-Nation Simulation. The man-machine simulation developed by Guetzkow and his associates (1963), Inter-Nation Simulation (INS), is an example of an operating model whose dynamics are so complex that a calculation staff is required. In each of a series of 50-minute to 70-minute periods at least one exchange occurs between the structured calculations and the participants. Participants assume one of several functionally defined roles that are specified for each government. Unlike the RAND game, neither nations nor the positions within them correspond to specific counterparts in world politics. In each simulated nation the decision makers allocate military, consumer, and "basic" resources in pursuit of objectives of their own choosing. After negotiating with other nations or alliances, the decision makers allocate their resources for trade, aid, blockades, war, research and development, defense preparations, and the generation of new resources. Programmed rules are used by the calculation staff to determine the net gain or loss in various types of resources that have resulted from the decisions. The programmed rules also determine whether the actions of the government have maintained the support of the politically relevant parts of their nation. If these elites, symbolically represented in the calculations, are dissatisfied, a revolution or election may establish a new government. The calculated results are returned to each nation, and a new cycle of interactions and decisions is begun. Versions of the Inter-Nation Simulation have been used in various institutions in the United States as well as by the Institute for Behavioral Science in Tokyo, Japan, and University College of London, England.
SIMULATION: Political Processes Benson and TEMPER simulations. The dynamics of INS are created by a combination of participant activity and quantitative rules. By comparison, the operations of the international simulation constructed by Benson (1961) are completely programmed on a computer. Nine major nations and nine tension areas in contemporary world politics are contained in the program. To begin a simulation exercise, the operator supplies the description of the nine major nations along such dimensions as aggressiveness, alliance membership, foreign bases, trade, and geographical location. From these initial inputs the computer determines the nature of the international system, the extent of each nation's interest in various areas, and other necessary indices. The operator then announces an action by one of the major nations against one of the tension areas. Actions are described in terms of the degree of national effort required—from diplomatic protest to total war. From this information the computer program determines the response of each of the other nations. The effects of the initial action and resulting counteractions are then computed for each nation and the international system. With these new characteristics, the operator may specify another action. A much more complex computer simulation of international relations, TEMPER (Technological, Economic, Military and Political Evaluation Routine ), is currently being developed for the Joint War Games Agency of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff (1965). Represented in TEMPER is the interaction between political, economic, cultural, and military features of as many as 39 nations, which are selected from 117 nations included in the program. Crisiscom. Whereas the Benson simulation and TEMPER are computer representations of international systems, Crisiscom (Pool & Kessler 1965) depicts the psychological mechanisms in individuals that affect their information processing. In its present form, the decision makers represented in Crisiscom deal with foreign policy, and the computer inputs are messages that concern the interaction between international actors. The policy makers and the material they handle, however, might be adapted for other levels of political decision making. The messages fed into the computer are assessed for affect (attitude or feeling of one actor toward another) and salience (the importance attached to an actor or interaction). Each message is given attention, set aside, or forgotten by the simulated decision maker, according to programmed instructions that reflect psychological observations about
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the rejection and distortion of information. For example, more attention is given a message that does not contradict previous interpretations. This filtering of communications determines what issues are selected by the policy makers for attention and decision. The filtering program not only influences the process for the selection of issues but also gradually alters the decision maker's affect matrix. The affect matrix represents the decision maker's perception of how each actor feels toward all the other actors in the world. In a test of Crisiscom the kaiser and the tsar were simulated. Both were given identical messages about events in the week prior to the beginning of World War i. At the end of the simulated week the differences in their affect matrices and the events to which they were attending reflected quite plausibly differences between the actual historical figures. Simulmatics election simulation. The Simulmatics Corporation has applied an all-computer simulation to the 1960 and 1964 American presidential elections (Pool et al. 1965). The electorate is represented in the computer by 480 types of voters. Every voter type is identified by a combination of traits that include geographical region, city size, sex, race, socioeconomic status, political party, and religion. For each voter type information is stored on 52 political characteristics, for example, intention to vote, past voting history, and opinions on various political issues. The empirical data for the 52 "issue-clusters" are drawn from national opinion polls conducted during campaigns since 1952. The aggregation of surveys, made possible by the stability of political attitudes in the United States, permits a more detailed representation of voters than is obtained in any single poll. Before the simulation can be applied to a particular election, the operators must decide what characteristics and issues are most salient. Equations or rules of transformation are written to express the impact of the issues on different kinds of voters. In the 1960 campaign, a simulation whose equations applied cross-pressure principles to the voters' religion and party ranked the nonsouthern states according to the size of the Kennedy vote. The simulation's ordering of the states correlated .82 with the actual Kennedy vote. In 1964, the equations introduced into the computer program primarily represented the effects of three "issue-clusters" (civil rights, nuclear responsibility, and social welfare). This time the percentage of the vote in each state obtained by Johnson was estimated, and the correlation with the actual election was .90. Other operating models. The described operating models illustrate various constructions and
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procedures but do not form an exhaustive list of those techniques currently used in political inquiry. For example, the Simulmatics project is not the only computer simulation of political elections. McPhee (1961), Coleman (1965), and Abelson and Bernstein (1963) have constructed simulations representing not only the election outcome but also the process by which voters form opinions during the campaign. The last model differs from the others by representing a local community referendum. Other games and simulations range from local politics games (Wood 1964) to games of international balance of power (Kaplan et al. I960); from simulations of disarmament inspection (Singer & Hinomoto 1965) to those of a developing nation (Scott & Lucas 1966). In addition, other operating models not directly concerned with the study of political phenomena are relevant. Abstract games of logic developed by Layman Allen are used in the study of judicial processes at the Yale Law School. Bargaining games, such as those advanced by Thomas Schelling (1961), and the substantial number of business and management simulations (K. Cohen et al. 1964; American Management Association 1961; Thorelli & Graves 1964) have political applications, as do some of the numerous war games (Giffin 1965). Uses of political gaming and simulation The development and operation of a game or simulation demand time, effort, and finances. Moreover, operating models are beset by such difficulties as the question of their political validity. Despite these problems, games and simulations have been considered to be useful techniques in research, instruction, and policy formation. Research. Many of the research attractions of operating models can be summarized in their ability to permit controlled experimentation in politics. In political reality, determination of the effects of a phenomenon can be severely hindered by confounding influences of potentially related events. Through a carefully designed model, an experimenter can isolate a property and its effects by either deleting the competing mechanisms from the model or holding them constant. Not only can a game or simulation be manipulated, but it can also be subjected to situations without the permanent and possibly harmful consequences that a comparable event might create in the real world. This ability of the researcher to control the model permits replications and increased access. To establish a generalized pattern, repeated obser-
vations are required. A simulation or game can be assigned the same set of initial conditions and played over and over again, whereas in its reference system the natural occurrence of a situation might appear infrequently and perhaps only once. Moreover, replications of an operating model may reveal a greater range of alternative responses to a situation than could otherwise be identified. Increased access to the objects of their research also leads students of politics to consider operating models. Players in a political game can be continuously observed; a detailed set of their written and verbal communications can be secured; and they can be asked to respond to interviews, questionnaires, or other test instruments at points selected by the researcher. Computer simulations can be instructed to provide a "print-out" at any specified stage of their operation, thus providing a record for analysis. The diversity of means by which data are readily obtained from such models contrasts with the limited access to the crowded lives of actual policy makers and their often sensitive written materials. In addition to control, replication, and access, gaming and simulation contribute in at least two ways to theory building. First, the construction of a game or a simulation requires the developer to be explicit about the units and relationships that are to exist in his model and presumably in the political reference system it represents. An essential component of the political process which has been ignored in the design of a game is dramatized for the discerning observer. A computer simulation necessitates even more explication of the relationships among the model's components. An incomplete program may terminate abruptly or result in unintelligible output. Thus, in constructing an operating model a relationship between previously unconnected findings may be discovered. Alternatively, a specific gap in knowledge about a political process may be pinpointed, and hypotheses, required by the model, may be advanced to provide an explanation. A second value for theory building results from the operating, or dynamic, quality of games and simulations. Static statements of relationships can be transformed into processes which respond to change without the restrictions imposed by such alternatives as linear regression models. According to Abelson and Bernstein (1963, p. 94), ". . . the static character of statistical models and their reliance on linear assumptions seem to place an upper limit on their potential usefulness. . . . Computer simulation offers a technique for formulating
SIMULATION: Political Processes systemic models, thus promising to meet this need." It should be recognized that these research assets are not shared equally by all political games and simulations. For example, a computer simulation may not generate the range of potential alternatives to a situation provided by a series of games played with policy experts. On the other hand, control and replication are more easily achieved in a programmed computer simulation than in a political game in which players are given considerable latitude in forming their own patterns of interaction. Instruction. Simulations involving human participants and games are being used in graduate and undergraduate instruction as well as in secondary school teaching. Several evaluations of these techniques for college and university teaching have been reported in political science (e.g., Alger 1963; Cohen 1962) and in other fields (e.g., Thorelli & Graves 1964, especially pp. 25-31; Conference on Business Games 1963). One of these reports (Alger 1963, pp. 185-186) summarizes the frequently cited values of a simulation or game as a teaching aid: "(1) It increases student interest and motivation; (2) It serves as a laboratory for student application and testing of knowledge; (3) It provides insight into the decision-maker's predicament; (4) It offers a miniature but rich model that facilitates comprehension of world realities." In contrast to the positive evaluations of users like Alger, a critical assessment of the instructional merits of political gaming and simulation has been offered by Cohen (1962). On the basis of a game he conducted, Cohen questioned (1) whether the game increased motivation among students not already challenged by the course; (2) whether the game stimulated interest in more than a narrow segment of the entire subject matter; (3) whether the game misrepresented or neglected critical features of political reality, thereby distorting the image of political phenomena; and (4) whether a comparable investment by both instructor and students in more conventional modes of learning might have offered a larger increment in education. Systematic educational research has yet to clarify the differing evaluations of games and simulations for instruction. In one educational experiment with a political simulation (Robinson et al. 1966), undergraduate students in each of three courses were divided into two groups controlled for intelligence, grade-point average, and certain personality characteristics. One group augmented its
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regular course activities by a weekly discussion of relevant case studies. The other group in each course participated in a continuing simulation for an equal amount of time. Although most measures of student interest did not indicate significant differences between the groups, students evinced more interest in the case studies, while attendance was higher in the simulation group. Similarly, no direct and unmediated difference was found between the two groups on either mastery of facts or principles. To date, the limited educational research on gaming in other fields (e.g., Conference on Business Games 1963) also has produced ambiguous results. It may be that the more knowledge students have in the subject area of a model or game, the more complex and detailed it must be to provide a satisfactory learning experience. One instructional use of games and simulations that may prove particularly useful with sophisticated students is to involve them in the construction of a model rather than to simply have them assume the role of players. Policy formation. In some respects the application of games and simulations as adjuncts to policy formation is only an extension of their use for research and instruction. Policy makers have employed games or man-machine simulations as training aids for governmental officials in the same manner as management-training programs have incorporated business games. In the Center for International Studies game at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, "questionnaires returned by participants have revealed that responsible officials . . . place a uniformly high value on the special benefits the games provide, particularly in sharpening their perspectives of alternatives that could arise in crisis situations" (Bloomfield & Whaley 1965, p. 866). Simulation and gaming research performed under government contract or with more or less direct policy implications has concerned such issues as the systemic consequences of the proliferation of nuclear weapons (Brody 1963), the impact on political decision making of situational characteristics associated with crisis (Hermann 1965), and the potential role of an international police force at various stages of disarmament (Bloomfield & Whaley 1965). An application of simulation research for political campaigns is reflected in the election simulations conducted under contract to the National Committee of the Democratic Party by the Simulmatics Corporation (Pool et al. 1965). One of the major areas of U.S. government-related
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activity involving operating models is war gaming and its extension to cover relevant political aspects of national security. Public material on these activities, however, is limited. Validity—evaluating correspondence How are the elements of political reality estimated in a way to make their transmission to an operating model accurate? What are the implications of representing political properties by deterministic or stochastic processes? What are the relative advantages of games compared to simula• tions? If humans act as participants, how can the motivations of actual political leaders be reproduced? Underlying most of these questions is the problem of validity. Operating models are by definition representations of an existing or potential system or process. They are constructed for the information they can provide about a selected reference system. If in comparison to the performance of the reference system the simulation or game produces spurious results, the model is of little worth. An estimation of the "goodness of fit" or extent of similarity between an operating model and external criteria is, therefore, the central problem of validity. Different types of criteria or standards can be used for evaluating the correspondence between operating models and their reference system (Hermann 1967). To date, however, the only effort at validity that has been applied to most simulations and games uses no specific criterion of comparison. In this approach, called face validity, the model's realism is based on impressionistic judgments of observers or participants. If participants are used, face validity may concern estimates of their motivation or involvement. Unfortunately, participants can be motivated in a game that incorrectly represents the designated political environment. Furthermore, if the operating model involves the substitution of one property for another, some feature may give the appearance of being quite unreal even though it replicates the performance of the real-world property it replaces. When specific criteria for correspondence are established, model validity may be determined by comparing events, variables and parameters, or hypotheses. In the first case, the product or outcome of the operating model is compared to the actual events it was intended to replicate (e.g., the correlation between the state-by-state election returns in the 1960 U.S. presidential campaign and those projected by the Simulmatics Corporation's model; Pool et al. 1965). The second approach compares the variables and parameters that consti-
tute a model with the real-world properties they are intended to represent (e.g., a current study uses factor analysis of the core variables of a simulation and the quantifiable real-world indices for which the simulation variables have been substituted; validity judgments are made from comparisons of the factors and of the variables that load on each factor; see Chadwick 1966). The third approach to validity compares the statistical results of a number of hypotheses tested in an operating model with comparable tests of the same hypotheses conducted with data drawn from the reference system (e.g., Zinnes 1966). Confirmation of a variety of hypotheses in both the operating model and in the actual political system increases confidence in the model's validity. With the exception of face validity, each of the described validity approaches requires that values for specified properties be determined with precision for both the operating model and its reference system. Not only is this procedure often difficult, but in some instances it may not be appropriate. Imagine a political game designed as an aid for policy making whose purpose is to display as many different alternative outcomes to an initial situation as possible. The fact that the subsequent course of actual events leads to only one of those outcomes —or perhaps, none of them—may not reduce the utility of the exercise for increasing the number of alternatives considered by the policy makers. In other instances, an operating model may be consistent with one of the described validity criteria but remain unsatisfactory for some purposes. One illustration is an election simulation in which the winning political party is decided by a stochastic process. With correct probability settings and frequent elections in the model, the simulation's distribution of party victories would closely approximate election outcomes in the reference system. Despite the apparent event validity, the simulation would be undesirable for instruction in election politics. The naive participant might conclude from his experience with the collapsed campaign process that party victory is determined exclusively by chance. In summary, a variety of validity strategies exist. The appropriate strategy varies from model to model and with the purpose for which the game or simulation was designed. Each operating model must be independently validated. At any given time the confidence in the accuracy with which a game or simulation represents its intended political reference system will be a matter of degree. Evaluation of these operating models for the study of
SIMULTANEOUS EQUATION ESTIMATION politics will depend upon the development and application of procedures for measuring the extent to which each model's purposes are fulfilled. CHARLES F. HERMANN [See also INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS; STRATEGY,] BIBLIOGRAPHY
ABELSON, ROBERT P.; and BERNSTEIN, ALEX 1963 A Computer Simulation Model of Community Referendum Controversies. Public Opinion Quarterly 27:93122. ALGER, CHADWICK F. 1963 Use of the Inter-Nation Simulation in Undergraduate Teaching. Pages 150-189 in Harold Guetzkow et al., Simulation in International Relations: Developments for Research and Teaching. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall. AMERICAN MANAGEMENT ASSOCIATION 1961 Simulation and Gaming: A Symposium. Report No. 55. New York: The Association. BENSON, OLIVER 1961 A Simple Diplomatic Game. Pages 504-511 in James N. Rosenau (editor), International Politics and Foreign Policy: A Reader in Research and Theory. New York: Free Press. BLOOMFIELD, L. P.; and WHALEY, B. 1965 The PoliticalMilitary Exercise: A Progress Report. Orbis 8:854-870. BRODY, RICHARD A. 1963 Some Systemic Effects of the Spread of Nuclear Weapons Technology: A Study Through Simulation of a Multi-nuclear Future. Journal of Conflict Resolution 7:663-753. CHADWICK, R. W. 1966 Developments in a Partial Theory of International Behavior: A Test and Extension of Inter-Nation Simulation Theory. Ph.D. dissertation, Northwestern Univ. COHEN, BERNARD C. 1962 Political Gaming in the Classroom. Journal of Politics 24:367-381. COHEN, KALMAN J. et al. 1964 The Carnegie Tech Management Game: An Experiment in Business Education. Homewood, 111.: Irwin. COLEMAN, JAMES S. 1964 Collective Decisions. Sociological Inquiry 34:166-181. COLEMAN, JAMES S. 1965 The Use of Electronic Computers in the Study of Social Organization. Archives europeennes de sociologie 6:89-107. CONFERENCE ON BUSINESS GAMES, TULANE UNIVERSITY, 1961 1963 Proceedings. Edited by William R. Dill et al. New Orleans, La.: Tulane Univ., School of Business Administration. DAVISON, W. P. 1961 A Public Opinion Game. Public Opinion Quarterly 25:210-220. DAWSON, RICHARD E. 1962 Simulation in the Social Sciences. Pages 1-15 in Harold Guetzkow (editor), Simulation in Social Science: Readings. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall. GIFFIN, SIDNEY F. 1965 The Crisis Game: Simulating International Conflict. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday. GOLDHAMER, HERBERT; and SPEIER, HANS
(1959)
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HERMANN, C. F. 1965 Crises in Foreign Policy Making: A Simulation of International Politics. China Lake, Calif.: U.S. Naval Ordnance Test Station, Contract N123 (60S30) 32779A. HERMANN, C. F. 1967 Validation Problems in Games and Simulations With Special Reference to Models of International Politics. Behavioral Science 12:216233. KAPLAN, MORTON A.; BURNS, ARTHUR L.; and QUANDT, RICHARD E. 1960 Theoretical Analysis of the "Balance of Power." Behavioral Science 5:240-252. MCPHEE, WILLIAM N. (1961) 1963 Note on a Campaign Simulator. Pages 169-183 in William N. McPhee, Formal Theories of Mass Behavior. New York: Free Press. POOL, ITHIEL DE SOLA; and KESSLER, A. 1965 The Kaiser, the Tsar, and the Computer: Information Processing in a Crisis. American Behavioral Scientist 8, no. 9:31-38. POOL, ITHIEL DE SOLA; ABELSON, ROBERT P.; and POPKIN, SAMUEL L. 1965 Candidates, Issues, and Strategies: A Computer Simulation of the 1960 and 1964 Presidential Elections. Rev. ed. Cambridge, Mass.: M.I.T. Press. RAPOPORT, ANATOL 1964 Strategy and Conscience. New York: Harper. ROBINSON, JAMES A. et al. 1966 Teaching With InterNation Simulation and Case Studies. American Political Science Review 60:53-65. SCHELLING, T. C. 1961 Experimental Games and Bargaining Theory. WorZd Politics 14:47-68. SCOTT, ANDREW M.; and LUCAS, WILLIAM A. 1966 Simulation and National Development. New York: Wiley. SHUBIK, MARTIN 1964 Game Theory and the Study of Social Behavior: An Introductory Exposition. Pages 3-77 in Martin Shubik (editor), Game Theory and Related Approaches to Social Behavior: Selections. New York: Wiley. SINGER, J. DAVID; and HINOMOTO, HIROHIDE 1965 Inspecting for Weapons Production: A Modest Computer Simulation. Journal of Peace Research 1:18-38. THORELLI, HANS B.; and GRAVES, ROBERT L. 1964 International Operations Simulation: With Comments on Design and Use of Management Games. New York: Free Press. WOOD, R. C. 1964 Smith-Massachusetts Institute of Technology Political Game, Documents 1-5. Unpublished manuscript, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Department of Political Science. U.S. JOINT CHIEFS OF STAFF, JOINT WAR GAMES AGENCY 1965 TEMPER. Volume 1: Orientation Manual. DDC AD 470 375L. Washington: The Agency. ZINNES, DINA A. 1966 A Comparison of Hostile Behavior of Decision-makers in Simulate and Historical Data. World Politics 18:474-502.
1961
Some Observations on Political Gaming. Pages 498— 503 in James N. Rosenau (editor), International Politics and Foreign Policy: A Reader in Research and Theory. New York: Free Press. GUETZKOW, HAROLD et al. 1963 Simulation in International Relations: Developments for Research and Teaching. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall.
The distinction between partial and general equilibrium analysis in economic theory is well grounded [see ECONOMIC EQUILIBRIUM]. Early work in econometrics paid inadequate attention to this distinction and overlooked for many years the possibilities of
282
SIMULTANEOUS EQUATION ESTIMATION
improving statistical estimates of individual economic relationships by embedding them in models of the economy as a whole [see ECONOMETRIC MODELS, AGGREGATE]. The earliest studies in econometrics were concerned with estimating parameters of demand functions, supply functions, production functions, cost functions, and similar tools of economic analysis. The principal statistical procedure used was to estimate the as in the relation
where ati is any other unbiased estimator. Clearly, the properties of being unbiased and best are desirable ones. These properties are defined without reference to sample size. Two related but weaker properties, which are defined for large samples, are consistency and efficiency. An estimator, dt, is consistent if prima!i = a!i, that is, if lim P(\di — a.i\ < e) — 1, r->co
t= E
t = 1, 2, • • • , T,
using the criterion that Y
uj
xr
exp
/ j
This function will be denoted as L, the likelihood function of the sample, and is seen to depend on the unknown parameters o^ , - • • , « „ and 7iJc > and o-f, obtained from this restricted likelihood maximization are the limited-information estimators. Methods of obtaining these estimators and a study of their properties are given in Anderson and Rubin (1949). Linear regression calculations are all that are needed in this type of estimation, save for the ex-
traction of a characteristic root of a matrix with dimensionality nl x rii. A quickly convergent series of iterations involving matrix multiplication leads to the computation of this root and associated vector. The vector obtained, properly normalized by making one coefficient unity, provides estimates of the ftij. The estimates of the yik are obtained from TCI
= -EA .?=!
k = 1,
where the 77^ are least squares regression coefficients from the reduced form equations. It is significant that both full-information and limited-information maximum likelihood estimators are essentially unchanged no matter which variable is selected to have a unit coefficient in each equation. That is to say, if we divide through an estimated equation by the coefficient of any endogenous variable, we get a set of coefficients that would have been obtained by applying the estimation methods under the specification that the same variable have the unit coefficient. Full-information and limited-information maximum likelihood estimators are invariant under this type of scale normalization. Other estimators are not. Two-stage least squares. The classical method of least squares multiple regression applied to a single equation that is part of a larger simultaneous system is inconsistent by virtue of the fact that some of the "explanatory" variables in the regression (the variables with unknown coefficients) may not be independent of the error variable. If we can "purify" such variables to make them independent of the error terms, we can apply ordinary least squares methods to the transformed variables. The method of two-stage least squares does this for us. Let us return to the equation estimated above by limited information. Choose y-i, say, as the dependent variable, that is, set fi^ equal to unity. In place of y.,t, • • • , ynit, we shall use
as explanatory variables. The yjt are computed values from the least squares regressions of y, on all the z/c in the system (k= 1, • • • , ra). The coefficients 7Tjk are the computed regression coefficients. The regression of y± on y-2, • • • , yni, zl, • • • , zOTj provides a two-stage least squares estimator of the single equation. All the equations of a system may be estimated in this way. This can be seen to be a generalization, to systems with nontriangular Jacobians, of the method suggested previously for recursive models in which the variance—covariance matrix of disturbances is not diagonal.
SIMULTANEOUS EQUATION ESTIMATION We may write the "normal" equations for these least squares estimators as M,?,7
M,v
In this expression vt is the vector of residuals computed from the reduced form regressions of y*t, • • • , ynit on all the zkt . If k — 0, we have ordinary least squares estimators. If k = 1, we have two-stage least squares estimators. If k = 1 + X and X is the smallest root of the determinantal equation - Jfv^f;JMw)| = 0,
-c'
In this notation yt is the vector of computed values (#2*, • • • , ?/v); *t is tne vector (zit, ••• , zmit~);
Zn
b is the estimator of the vector (/3 i2 , • • • , /3 iWl ); and c is the estimator of the vector (yn, • • • , jim^. It should be noted that M^* = Myz* = M.'z*y . It should be further observed that
In this expression the whole vector zt = (zlt, • • • , zTO0> which includes all the predetermined variables in the system, is used for the evaluation of the relevant moment matrices. /j-Class estimators. Theil (1958) and Basmann (1957), independently, were the first to advocate the method of two-stage least squares. Theil suggested a whole system of estimators, called the fc-class. He defined these as the solutions to
M
287
- kM -c'
we have limited-information maximum likelihood estimators. This is a succinct way of showing the relationships between various single-equation methods of estimation. Of these three members of the k-class, ordinary least squares is not consistent; the other two are. Three-stage least squares. Other members of the fc-class could be cited for special discussion, but a more fruitful generalization of Theil's approach to estimation theory lies in the direction of what he and Zellner (see Zellner & Theil 1962) call three-stage least squares. Chow (1964) has shown that three-stage least squares estimators are better viewed as simultaneous two-stage least squares estimators. Let us denote ut as the vector of residuals associated with each equation in a system that has had elements of yit replaced by yit, that is, ut = (u,t, • • • , unt), where
uit = yit + E' ?..#.. 'ijUit + i y Z-< In this formulation 2' means summation over all values of j except j = i, and it is assumed that the iih endogenous variable in the ith equation has a unit coefficient. Some elements of p^ and yik are zero or otherwise restricted for identification. Define Mil
Minimization of Zj with respect to /3i; and yik yields the estimators sought. Thus, we have an extension of the principle of least squares in which the generalized variance is minimized. This is like the principle of maximum likelihood, which also minimizes Z , expressed in terms of the Pn and y ifc , but the direction normalization is different. Theil and Zellner termed their method threestage least squares because they first derived twostage least squares estimators for each single equation in the system. They computed the residual variance for each equation and used these as estimators of the variances of the true (unobserved) random disturbances. They then used Aitken's
288
SIMULTANEOUS EQUATION ESTIMATION
generalized method of least squares (1935) to estimate all the equations in the system simultaneously. Aitken's method applies to systems of equations in which the variance-covariance matrix for disturbances is a general known positive definite matrix. Theil and Zellner used the two-stage estimator of this variance-covariance matrix as though it were known. The advantage of this method is that it is of the full-information variety, making use of restrictions on all the equations of the system. Other methods. If the conditions for identification of a single equation are such that there are just enough restrictions to transform linearly and uniquely the reduced form coefficients into the structural coefficients, an indirect least squares method of estimation can be used. Exact identification under zero-type restrictions would enable one to solve
k = ml + 1, • • • ,m, for a unique set of estimated fin , apart from scale normalization, given a set of estimated TT^. The latter would be determined from least squares estimators of the reduced forms. Since there are nv — 1 of the fin to be determined, the necessary condition for exact identification here is that rii — 1 = m — raj . If there is underidentification, i.e., too few a priori restrictions, structural estimation cannot be completed but unrestricted reduced forms can be estimated by the method of least squares. This is the most information that the econometrician can extract when there is lack of identification. Least squares estimators of the reduced form equations are consistent in the underidentified case, but estimates of the structural parameters cannot be made. Instrumental variables. The early discussion of estimation problems in simultaneous equation models contained, on many occasions, applications of a method known as the method of instrumental variables. In estimating the ith equation of a linear system, i.e.,
31 Pay it + we may choose (n± — 1 ) + m± variables that are independent of uit . These are known as the instrumental set. Naturally, the exogenous variables in the equation (z l f , • • • , z TOii ) are possible members of this set. In addition, we need n^— 1 more instruments from the list of exogenous variables in the system but not in the ith equation. For this problem let these be denoted as x2t, • • • , xnit • Since
E(z, t Mit) = 0, s = 1, • • • , TO!, and E(xrtuit} = 0, r = 2, • • • , n!, we can estimate the unknown parameters from = 0,
+ 2y«
E Pa E /=!
«=1
With a scale-normalization rule, such as fin = 1, we have (n T — 1) + ml linear equations in the same number of unknown coefficients. In exactly identified models there is no problem in picking the xrt, for there will always be exactly n, — 1 z's excluded from the ith equation. The method is then identical with indirect least squares. I f m — ml>n1 — l, i.e., if there are more exogenous variables outside the zth equation than there are endogenous variables minus one, we have overidentification, and the number of possible instrumental variables exceeds the minimum needed. In order to avoid the problem of subjective or arbitrary choice among instruments, we turn to the methods of limited information or two-stage least squares. In fact, it is instructive to consider how the method of two-stage least squares resolves this matter. In place of single variables as instruments, it uses linear combinations of them. The computed values m ^
V~\
n
*.
•//1 — / * ** jTt^kt 5
J
O
?
...
*M
*
•*•'
are the new instruments. We can view the method either as the regression of y^ on y2, • • • , yni, Zi, • • • , zmi or as instrumental-variable estimators with y2t, • • • , ynit, zit, • • • , zmit as the instruments. Both come to the same thing. The method of instrumental variables yields consistent estimators. Subgroup averages. The instrumental-variables method can be applied in different forms. One form was used by Wald (1940) to obtain consistent estimators of a linear relationship between two variables each of which is subject to error. This gives rise to a method that can be used in estimating econometric systems. Wald proposed that the estimator of fi in yt = a + fixt,
where yt and xt are both measured with error, be computed from T
y* Lt 11yt —
. T *=-+!
t=l T
/ * Xt
/ * Xt
t=l
SIMULTANEOUS EQUATION ESTIMATION He proposed ordering the sample in ascending magnitudes of the variable x. From two halves of the sample, we determine two sets of mean values of y and x. The line joining these means will have a slope given by ft. Wald showed the conditions under which these estimates are consistent. This may be called the method of subgroup averages. It is a very simple method, which may readily be applied to equations with more than two parameters. The sample is split into as many groups as there are unknown parameters to be determined in the equation under consideration. If there are three parameters, for example, the sample may be split into thirds and the parameters estimated from y2 = a + /3x2 + yzz , i/s = oi. + j8%3 + yz3 .
The extension to more parameters is obvious. The method of subgroup averages can be shown to be a form of the instrumental-variables method by an appropriate assignment of values to "dummy" instrumental variables. Subgroup averages is a very simple method, and it is consistent, but it is not very efficient. Simultaneous least squares. The simultaneous least squares method, suggested by Brown (1960), minimizes the sum of squares of all reduced form disturbances, subject to the parameter restrictions imposed on the system, i.e., it minimizes
S£i '?*> subject to restrictions. Suppose that the vit are expressed as functions of the observables and parameters, with all restrictions included; then Brown's method minimizes the sum of the elements on the main diagonal of Z r , where Z« is the variancecovariance matrix of reduced form disturbances, whereas full-information maximum likelihood minimizes |ZV|. Brown's method has the desirable property of being a full-information method; it is distribution free; it is consistent; but it has the drawback that its results are not invariant under linear transformations of the variables. This drawback can be removed by expressing the reduced form disturbance in standard units v' =
and minimizing
289
Evaluation of alternative methods The various approaches to estimation of whole systems of simultaneous equations or individual relationships within such systems are consistent except for the single-equation least squares method. If the system is recursive and disturbances are independent between equations, least squares estimators are also consistent. In fact, they are maximum likelihood estimators for normally distributed disturbances. But generally, ordinary least squares estimators are not consistent. They are included in the group of alternatives considered here because they have a time-honored status and because they have minimum variance. In large-sample theory, maximum likelihood estimators of parameters are generally efficient compared with all other estimators. That is why we choose full-information maximum likelihood estimators as norms. They are consistent and efficient. Least squares estimators are minimum-variance estimators if their variances are estimated about estimated (inconsistent) sample means. If their variances are measured about the true, or population, values, it is not certain that they are efficient. Limited-information estimators are less efficient than full-information maximum likelihood estimators. This should be intuitively obvious, since fullinformation estimators make use of more a priori information; it is proved in Klein (1960). Twostage least squares estimators have asymptotically the same variance-covariance matrix as limitedinformation estimators, and three-stage (or simultaneous two-stage) least squares estimators have the same variance-covariance matrix as fullinformation maximum likelihood estimators. Thus, asymptotically the two kinds of limited-information estimators have the same efficiency, and the two kinds of full-information estimators have the same efficiency. The instrumental-variables or subgroupaverages methods are generally inefficient. Of course, the instrumental-variables method can be pushed to the point where it is the same as twostage least squares estimation and can thereby gain efficiency. A desirable aspect of the method of maximum likelihood is that its properties are preserved under a single-valued transformation. Thus, efficient estimators of structural parameters by this method transform into efficient estimators of reduced form parameters. The apparently efficient method of least squares may lose its efficiency under this kind of transformation. In applications of models, we use the reduced form in most cases, not the individual structural equations; therefore the prop-
290
SIMULTANEOUS EQUATION ESTIMATION
erties under conditions of transformation from structural to reduced form equations are of extreme importance. Limited-information methods are a form of maximum likelihood methods. Therefore the properties of limited information are preserved under transformation. To obtain limited-information estimators of the single equation
stage least squares. These consist of a repeated application of least squares regression techniques of calculation, but the first regressions computed are of substantial size. There are as many independent variables in the regression as there are predetermined variables in the system, provided there are enough degrees of freedom. Essentially, the method amounts to the calculation of parameters and computed dependent variables in
'let — Uit, /\
we maximize the joint likelihood of vn, • • • , vnit in m
"
+Vjt>
j = 1 , - • • ,rii,
subject to the restrictions on the ith equation. In this case only the n, reduced forms corresponding to y-it, • • • , ynit are used. It is also possible to simplify calculations, and yet preserve consistency (although at the expense of efficiency), by using fewer than all m predetermined variables in the reduced forms. In this sense the reduced forms of limited-information estimation are not necessarily unique, and the same endogenous variable appearing in different structural equations of a system may not have the same reduced form expression for each equation estimator. There is yet another sense in which we may derive reduced forms for the method of limited information. After each equation of a complete system has been estimated by the method of limited information, we can derive algebraically a set of reduced forms for the whole system. These would, in fact, be the reduced forms used in forecasting, multiplier analysis, and similar applications of systems. The efficiency property noted above for limited and full information has not been proved for systems of this type of reduced forms, but this has been studied in numerical analysis (see below). Ease of computation. Finally we come to an important practical matter in the comparison of the different methods of estimation—relative ease of computation. Naturally, calculations are simpler and smaller in magnitude for single-equation least squares than for any of the other methods except that of subgroup averages. The method of instrumental variables is of similar computational complexity, but for equations with four or more variables it pays to have the advantage of symmetry in the moment matrices, as is the case with singleequation least squares. This is hardly a consideration with modern electronic computing machines, but it is worth consideration if electric desk machines are being used. The next-simplest calculations are those for two-
m v-» ~
yjt — Z-iTTjkZkt , fc=i
A — O
J ~ *•>
. . . • » Wl >
'
'
Only the "forward" part of this calculation by the standard Gauss-Doolittle method need be made in order to obtain the moment matrix of the yjt. In the next stage we compute the regression
Two important computing problems arise in the first stage. In many systems m>T; i.e., there are insufficient degrees of freedom in the sample for evaluation of the reduced forms. We may choose a subset of the zkt, or we may use principal components of the zkt (Kloek & Mennes 1960). Systematic and efficient ways of choosing subsets of the zkt have been developed by taking account of the recursive structure of the model (Fisher 1965). In many economic models ra has been as large as 30 or more, and it is often difficult to make sufficiently accurate evaluation of the reduced form regression equations of this size, given the amount of multicollinearity found in economic data with common trends and cycles. The same procedures used in handling the degrees-of-freedom problem are recommended for getting round the difficulties of multicollinearity. Klein and Nakamura (1962) have shown that multicollinearity problems are less serious in ordinary than in two-stage least squares. They have also shown that these problems increase as we move on to the methods of limitedinformation and then full-information maximum likelihood. Limited-information methods require all the computations of two-stage least squares and, in addition, the extraction of a root of an n T x n^ determinantal equation. The latter calculation can be done in a straightforward manner by iterative matrix multiplication, usually involving fewer than ten iterations. Both limited information and two-stage least squares are extremely well adapted to modern computers and can be managed without much trouble on electric desk machines. Three-stage least squares estimators involve the
SIMULTANEOUS EQUATION ESTIMATION computation of two-stage estimators for each equation of a system, estimation of a variance-covariance matrix of structural disturbances, and simultaneous solution of a linear equation system of the order of all coefficients in the system. This last step may involve a large number of estimating equations for a model of 30 or more structural equations. All the previous methods consist of standard linear matrix operations. The extraction of a characteristic root is the only operation that involves nonlinearities, and the desired root can quickly be found by an iterative process of matrix multiplication. Full-information maximum likelihood methods, however, are quite different. The estimation equations are highly nonlinear. For small systems of two, three, or four equations, estimates have been made without much trouble on large computers (Eisenpress 1962) and on desk machines (Chernoff & Divinsky 1953). The problem of finding the maximum of a function as complicated as the joint likelihood function of a system of 15 to 20 or more equations is, however, formidable. Electronic machine programs have been developed for this purpose. The most standardized sets of full-information maximum likelihood calculations are for systems that are fully linear in both parameters and variables. Single-equation methods require linearity only in unknown parameters, and this is a much weaker restriction. Much progress in computation has been made since the first discussion of these econometric methods of estimation, in 1943, but the problem is far from solved, and there is no simple, push-button computation. This is especially true of full-information maximum likelihood. Efficient programs have recently been developed for calculating full-information maximum likelihood estimates in either linear or nonlinear systems, and these have been applied to models of as many as 15 structural equations, involving more than 60 unknown parameters. Generalization of assumptions. The basis for comparing different estimation methods or for preferring one method over another rests on asymptotic theory. The property of consistency is a largesample property, and the sampling errors used to evaluate efficiency measures are asymptotic formulas. Unfortunately, samples of economic data are frequently not large, especially time series data. The amount of small-sample bias or the small-sample confidence intervals for parameter estimators are not generally known in specific formulas. Constructed numerical experiments, designed according to Monte Carlo methods, have
291
thrown some light on the small-sample properties. These are reported below. Another assumption sometimes made for the basic model is that the error terms are mutually independent. We noted above that successive least squares treatment of equations in recursive systems is identical with maximum likelihood estimation when the variance-covariance matrix of structural disturbances is diagonal. This implies mutual independence among contemporaneous disturbances. In a time series model we usually make another assumption, namely, that E ( u i f u i t ' ' ) = 0,
t ^ t', for all i, }.
The simplest way in which this assumption can be modified is to allow the errors to be related in some linear autoregressive process, such as
i= 1, 2, ••• ,n, where E(e i f e,- r ) = 0 (£ ^ £', for all i, j). In a formal sense joint maximum likelihood estimation of structural parameters and autoregressive coefficients, p i j k , can be laid out in estimation equations, but there are no known instances where these have been solved on a large scale, for the estimation equations are very complicated. For single-equation models or for recursive systems which split into a series of single-equation regressions, the autoregressive parameters of first order have been jointly estimated with structural parameters (Barger & Klein 1954). The principal extensions to larger systems have been in cases where the autoregressive parameters are known a priori. Then it is easy to make known autoregressive transformations of the variables and proceed as in the case of independent disturbances. [See TIME SERIES.] Related to the above two points is the treatment of lagged values of endogenous variables as predetermined variables. The presence of lagged endogenous variables reflects serial correlation among endogenous variables rather than among disturbances. In large samples it can be shown that for purposes of estimation we are justified in treating lagged variables as predetermined, but in small samples we incur bias on this account. Another assumption regarding the disturbances in simultaneous equation systems is that they are mainly due to neglected or unmeasurable variables that affect or disturb each equation of the model. They are regarded as errors in behavior or technology. From a formal mathematical point of view, they could equally well be regarded as a direct error in observation of the normalized dependent variable in each equation, assuming that the system is
292
SIMULTANEOUS EQUATION ESTIMATION
written so that there is a different normalized dependent variable in each equation. There is an implicit assumption that the exogenous variables are measured without error. If we change the model to one in which random errors enter through disturbances to each relation and also through inaccurate observation of each individual variable, we have a more complicated probability scheme, whose estimation properties have not been developed in full generality. This again has been a case for numerical treatment by Monte Carlo methods. The procedures of estimating simultaneous equation models as though errors are mutually independent when they really are not and as though variables are accurately measured when they really are not are specification errors. Other misspecifications of models can occur. For simplicity we assume linearity or, at least, linearity in unknown parameters, but the true model may have a different functional form. Errors may not follow the normal distribution, as we usually assume. [See ERRORS, article on EFFECTS OF ERRORS IN STATISTICAL ASSUMPTIONS.] Full-information methods are sensitive to specification error because they depend on restrictions imposed throughout an entire system. Single-equation methods depend on a smaller set of restrictions. If an investigator has particular interest in just one equation or in a small sector of the economy, he may incur large specification error by making too superficial a study of the parts of the economy that do not particularly interest him. There is much to be said for using single-equation methods (limited information or two-stage least squares) in situations where one does not have the resources to specify the whole economy adequately. There are numerous possibilities for specifying models incorrectly. These probably introduce substantial errors in applied work, but they cannot be studied in full generality for there is no particular way of showing all the misspecifications that can occur. We can, however, construct artificial numerical examples of what we believe to be the major specification errors. These are discussed below. Sampling experiments. The effect on estimation methods of using simplified assumptions that are not fully met in real life often cannot be determined by general mathematical analysis. Econometricians have therefore turned to constructing sampling experiments with large-scale computers to test proposed methods of estimation where (1) the sample is small; and (2) there is specification error in the statement of the model, such as
(a) nonzero parameters assumed to be zero, (b) dependent exogenous variables and errors assumed to be independent, (c) imperfectly measured exogenous variables assumed to be perfectly measured, or (d) serially correlated errors assumed to be not serially correlated. So-called Monte Carlo methods are used to perform the sampling experiments that conceptually underlie sampling error calculations. These sampling experiments are never, in fact, carried out with nonexperimental sources of data, for we cannot relive economic life over and over again; but we can instruct a machine to simulate such an experiment. Consider a single equation to be estimated by different methods, for example,
t ~ 1, 2, • • • , T.
ut,
Fix a. and (3 at, say, 3.0 and 0.5, respectively, and set T = 30. This would correspond to the process = 3.0 +
7/30 =
3.0 +
+
Cgo
+
We also fix the values of the predetermined variables xl}x.2, • • • , x30 once and for all. We set T = 30 to indicate that we are dealing with a 30-element small sample. A sample of 30 annual observations would be the prototype. Employing a source of random numbers scaled to have a realistic standard deviation and a zero mean, we draw a set of random numbers u^ , • • • , u30 . We then instruct a machine to use u± , • • • , w30 and x-i , • • • , xzo to compute yl} • • • , yso from the above formulas. From the samples of data, ylf • • • , y30 and xl} • • • , xzo , we estimate a and /3 by the methods being studied. Let a and ft be the estimated values. We then draw a new set of random numbers, Ui, • • • , uso , and repeat the process, using the same values of xt , • • • , x^ . From many such repetitions, say 100, we have sampling distributions of a and ft. Means of these distributions, when compared with a (= 3.0) and (3 (= 0.5), indicate bias, if any, and standard deviations or root-mean-square values about 3.0 or 0.5 indicate efficiency. From these sampling distributions we may compare different estimators of a and ft. What we have said about this simple type of experiment for a single equation can readily be extended to an entire system: By't + rz't = u't,
t= 1 , 2 , --,T.
In this case we must start with assumed values of B and F. We choose a T-element vector of values
SIMULTANEOUS EQUATION ESTIMATION for each element of zt, the predetermined variables, and repeated T-element vectors of values for each element of ut. The random variables are chosen so that their variance-covariance matrix equals some specified set of values. As in the single-equation case, T = 30 or some likely small-sample value. The zt are often chosen in accordance with the values of predetermined variables used in actual models. In practice, Monte Carlo studies of simultaneous equation models have dealt with small systems having only two, three, or four equations. Two sets of results are of interest from these studies. Estimates of individual elements in B and F can be studied and compared for different estimators; estimates of B~T, the reduced-form coefficients, can be similarly investigated. In addition, we could form some over-all summary statistic, such as standard error of forecast, for different estimators. The simplest Monte Carlo experiments have been made to test for small-sample properties alone; they have not introduced measurement errors, serial correlation of disturbances, or other specification errors. Generally speaking, these studies clearly show the bias in single-equation least squares estimates where some of the "independent" variables in the regression calculation are not independent of the random disturbances. Maximum likelihood estimators (full or limited information) show comparatively small bias. The standard deviations of individual parameter estimators are usually smallest for the single-equation least squares method, but this standard deviation is computed about the biased sample mean. If estimated about the true mean, least squares sometimes does not show up well, indicating that bias outweighs efficiency. Fullinformation maximum likelihood shows up as an efficient method, whether judged in terms of variation about the sample or the true mean. Two-stage least squares estimators appear to have somewhat smaller variance about the true values than do limited-information estimators, and both methods measure up to the efficiency of single-equation least squares methods when variability is measured about the true mean. Asymptotically, limited-information and twostage estimators have the same variance-covariance matrices, and they are both inefficient compared with full-information estimators. The Monte Carlo results for small samples are not surprising, although the particular experiments studied give a slight edge to two-stage estimators. When specification error is introduced, in the form of making an element of F zero in the estimation process when it is actually nonzero in the
293
population, we find that full-information methods are very sensitive. Both limited-information and two-stage estimators perform better than fullinformation maximum likelihood. Two-stage estimators are the best among all methods examined in this situation. Limited-information estimators are very sensitive to intercorrelation among predetermined variables. The principal result for Monte Carlo estimators of reduced form parameters is that transformed single-equation least squares values lose their efficiency properties. Being seriously biased as well, these estimates show a poor over-all rating when used for estimating reduced forms for a system as a whole. Full-information estimators, which are shown in these experiments to be sensitive to specification error, do better in estimating reduced form coefficients than in estimating structural coefficients. Their gain in making use of all the a priori information outweighs the losses due to the misspecification introduced and, in the end, gives them a favorable comparison with ordinary least squares estimators of the reduced form equations that make no use of the a priori information and have no specification error. If a form of specification error is introduced in a Monte Carlo experiment by having common time trends in elements of zt and ut, so that they are not independent as hypothesized, we find that limited-information estimators are as strongly biased as are ordinary least squares values. If time trend is introduced as an additional variable, however, the limited-information method has small bias. When observation errors are imposed on the zt, both least squares and limited-information estimators show little change in bias but increases in sampling errors. In this model, it turns out as before that the superior efficiency of least squares estimators of individual structural parameters does not carry over to the estimators of reduced form parameters. A comprehensive sampling-experiment study of alternative estimators under correctly specified and under misspecified conditions is given in Summers (1965), and Johnston (1963) compares results from several completed Monte Carlo studies. This approach is in its infancy, and further investigations will surely throw new light on the relative merits of different estimation methods. For some years economists were digesting the modern approcah to simultaneous equation estimation introduced by Haavelmo, Mann and Wald, Anderson and Rubin, and Koopmans, Rubin, and Leipnik, and there was a period of little change in
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SINGLE TAX
this field. Since the development of the two-stage least squares method by Theil, there have been a number of developments. The methods are undergoing interpretation and revision. New estimators are being suggested, and it is likely that many new results will be forthcoming in the next few decades. Wold (1965) has proposed a method based on iterative least squares that recommends itself by its adaptability to modern computers, its consistency, and its capacity to make use of a priori information on all equations simultaneously and to treat some types of nonlinearity with ease. Also, excellent recent books, by Christ (1966), Goldberger (1964), and Malinvaud (1964), greatly aid instruction in this subject. LAWRENCE R. KLEIN [See also LINEAR HYPOTHESES, article on REGRESSION.] BIBLIOGRAPHY
AITKEN, A. C. 1935 On Least Squares and Linear Combination of Observations. Royal Society of Edinburgh, Proceedings 55:42-48. ANDERSON, T. W.; and RUBIN, HERMAN 1949 Estimation of the Parameters of a Single Equation in a Complete System of Stochastic Equations. Annals of Mathematical Statistics 20:46-63. BARGER, HAROLD; and KLEIN, LAWRENCE R. 1954 A Quarterly Model for the United States Economy. Journal of the American Statistical Association 49:413437. BASMANN, R. L. 1957 A Generalized Classical Method of Linear Estimation of Coefficients in a Structural Equation. Econometrica 25:77-83. BROWN, T. M. 1960 Simultaneous Least Squares: A Distribution Free Method of Equation System Structure Estimation. International Economic Review 1: 173-191. CHERNOFF, HERMAN; and DIVINSKY, NATHAN 1953 The Computation of Maximum-likelihood Estimates of Linear Structural Equations. Pages 236-269 in Cowles Commission for Research in Economics, Studies in Econometric Method. Edited by William C. Hood and Tjailing C. Koopmans. New York: Wiley. CHOW, GREGORY C. 1964 A Comparison of Alternative Estimators for Simultaneous Equations. Econometrica 32:532-553. CHRIST, C. F. 1966 Econometric Models and Methods. New York: Wiley. EISENPRESS, HARRY 1962 Note on the Computation of Full-information Maximum-likelihood Estimates of Coefficients of a Simultaneous System. Econometrica 30:343-348. FISHER, FRANKLIN M. 1965 Dynamic Structure and Estimation in Economy-wide Econometric Models. Pages 589-635 in James S. Duesenberry et al., The Brookings Quarterly Econometric Model of the United States. Chicago: Rand McNally. FISHER, FRANKLIN M. 1966 The Identification Problem in Econometrics. New York: McGraw-Hill. GOLDBERGER, ARTHUR S. 1964 Econometric Theory. New York: Wiley.
HAAVELMO, TRYGVE 1943 The Statistical Implications of a System of Simultaneous Equations. Econometrica 11:1-12. JOHNSTON, JOHN 1963 Econometric Methods. New York: McGraw-Hill. KLEIN, LAWRENCE R. 1960 The Efficiency of Estimation in Econometric Models. Pages 216-232 in Ralph W. Pfouts, Essays in Economics and Econometrics: A Volume in Honor of Harold Hotelling. Chapel Hill: Univ. of North Carolina Press. KLEIN, LAWRENCE R.; and NAKAMURA, MITSUGU 1962 Singularity in the Equation Systems of Econometrics: Some Aspects of the Problem of Multicollinearity. International Economic Review 3:274-299. KLOEK, T.; and MENNES, L. B. M. 1960 Simultaneous Equations Estimation Based on Principal Components of Predetermined Variables. Econometrica 28:45-61. KOOPMANS, TJALLING C.; RUBIN, HERMAN; and LEIPNIK, R. B. (1950) 1958 Measuring the Equation Systems of Dynamic Economics. Pages 53-237 in Tj alling C. Koopmans (editor), Statistical Inference in Dynamic Economic Models. Cowles Commission for Research in Economics, Monograph No. 10. New York: Wiley. MALINVAUD, EDMOND (1964) 1966 Statistical Methods of Econometrics. Chicago: Rand McNally. -» First published in French. MANN, H. B.; and WALD, ABRAHAM 1943 On the Statistical Treatment of Linear Stochastic Difference Equations. Econometrica 11:173-220. STROTZ, ROBERT H.; and WOLD, HERMAN 1960 A Triptych on Causal Chain Systems. Econometrica 28:417463. SUMMERS, ROBERT 1965 A Capital Intensive Approach to the Small Sample Properties of Various Simultaneous Equation Estimators. Econometrica 33:1-41. THEIL, HENRI (1958) 1961 Economic Forecasts and Policy. 2d ed., rev. Amsterdam: North-Holland Publishing. TINBERGEN, JAN 1939 Statistical Testing of Businesscycle Theories. Volume 2: Business Cycles in the United States of America: 1919-1932. Geneva: League of Nations, Economic Intelligence Service. WALD, ABRAHAM 1940 The Fitting of Straight Lines if Both Variables Are Subject to Error. Annals of Mathematical Statistics 11:284-300. WOLD, HERMAN 1965 A Fix-point Theorem With Econometric Background. Arkiv fur Matematik 6:209-240. ZELLNER, ARNOLD; and THEIL, HENRI 1962 Three-stage Least Squares: Simultaneous Estimation of Simultaneous Equations. Econometrica 30:54-78.
SINGLE TAX See TAXATION, article on PROPERTY TAXES; and the biography of GEORGE. SISMONDI, J. C. L. SIMONDE DE See SIMONDE DE SISMONDI, J. C. L. SITUATIONAL TESTS See under PERSONALITY MEASUREMENT.
(7
SIZE DISTRIBUTIONS IN ECONOMICS SIZE DISTRIBUTIONS IN ECONOMICS The size distributions of certain economic and >ocioeconomic variables—incomes, wealth, firms, plants, cities, etc.—display remarkably regular patterns. These patterns, or distribution laws, are usually skew, the most important being the Pareto law [see PARETO, article on CONTRIBUTIONS TO ECONOMICS] and the log-normal, or Gibrat, law (below). Some disagreement about the patterns actually observed still exists. The empirical distributions often approximate the Gibrat law in the middle ranges of the variables and the Pareto law in the upper ranges. The study of size distributions is concerned with explaining why the observed patterns exist and persist. The answer may be found in the conception of the distribution laws as the steady state equilibria of stochastic processes that describe the underlying economic or demographic forces. A steady state equilibrium is a macroscopic condition that results from the balance of a great number of random microscopic movements proceeding in opposite directions. Thus, in a stationary population a constant age structure is maintained by the annual occurrence of approximately constant numbers of births and deaths—the random events par excellence of human life. The steady state explanation is evidently inspired by the example of statistical mechanics in which the macroscopic conditions are heat and pressure and the microscopic random movements are performed by the molecules. Characteristically, the steady state is independent of initial conditions, i.e., the initial size distribution. In economic applications this is important because it means that the pattern determined by certain structural constants tends to be re-established after a disturbance is imposed on the process. This will only be the case, however, if the process leading to the steady state is really ergodic, that is, if the influence of initial conditions on the state of the system becomes negligible after a certain time; and it will be relevant in practice only if this time interval is sufficiently short. The idea that the stable pattern of a distribution might be explained by the interplay of a multitude of small random events was first demonstrated in the case of the normal distribution. The central limit theorem shows that the addition of a great number of small independent random variables yields a variable that is normally distributed, when properly centered and scaled. A stochastic process that leads to a normal distribution is the random walk on a straight line with, for example, a 50 per
295
cent probability each of a step in one direction and a step in the opposite direction. It is only natural that attempts to explain other distribution patterns should have started from this idea. The first extension was to allow the random walk to proceed on a logarithmic scale. The resulting distribution is log-normal on the natural scale and is known as the log-normal or Gibrat distribution. The basic assumption, in economic terms, is that the chance of a certain proportionate growth or shrinkage is independent of the size already reached —the law of proportionate effect. This law was proposed by J. C. Kapteyn, by Francis Gal ton, and, later, by Gibrat (1931). Let size (of towns, firms, incomes) at time t be denoted by Y(t), and let e(t) represent a random variable with a certain distribution. We have
where Y(0) is size at time 0, the initial period. For small time intervals the logarithm of size can be represented as the sum of independent random variables and an initial size which will become negligible as t grows: log Y ( t ) = log Y(0)
6(2)- ••+£(*)•
If the random variables e are identically distributed with mean m and variance cr2, the distribution of logY(f) will be normal with mean mt and variance cr2t. This random walk corresponds to the process of diffusion in physics which is illustrated by the socalled Brownian movement of particles of dust put into a drop of liquid. Since it implies an ever growing variance, the idea of Gibrat is not itself enough to provide an explanation for a stable distribution. There must be a stabilizing influence to offset the tendency of the variance to increase; indeed, a distinguishing feature of the various theories presently to be reviewed lies in the kind of stabilizer they introduce to offset the diffusion. Two interesting cases may be noted here. One possibility is to modify the law of proportionate effect and assume that the chances of growth decline as size increases. This approach has been taken by Kalecki (1945), who assumes a negative correlation between the size and the jump and obtains a Gibrat law with constant variance. Another possibility is to combine the diffusion process of the random walk with a steady inflow of new, small units (firms, cities, incomes). Some units may continue indefinitely to increase in size, but
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SIZE DISTRIBUTIONS IN ECONOMICS
their weight will be offset by that of a continuous stream of many new, small entrants, so that both the mean and the variance of the distribution will remain constant. This approach, which leads to the Pareto law, has been taken by Simon (1955). Review of various models. Descriptions of various models will illustrate the methods employed. Models differ with regard to the distribution law explained, the field of application (towns, incomes, etc.), and the type of stochastic process used. Champernowne's model. Champernowne (1953) presents a model that explains the Pareto law for the size distribution of incomes. The stochastic process employed is the so-called Markov chain [see MARKOV CHAINS]. The model is based on a matrix of probabilities of transition from one income class to another in a certain interval of time, say a year. The rows are the income classes of one year, the columns the income classes of the next year. The income classes are chosen in such a way that they are equal on the logarithmic scale (for example, incomes from 1 to 10, from 10 to 100, etc.). The probability of a jump from one income class to the next income class in the course of a year is assumed to be independent of the income from which the jump is made (the law of proportionate effect). The number of income earners is constant. The number of income earners in income class s is then determined as follows. The number of incomes in class s at time t + 1 is f(s,t+l)=Zf(s-u,t)p(u), u = -n
where s, u, and t take on integer values, p(w) is the probability of a jump over u intervals (i.e., the transition probability), and the size of the jump is constrained to the range +1, — n. In the steady state equilibrium reached after a sufficiently long time has passed, the action of the transition matrix leaves the distribution unchanged. We then have f(s)=Zf(s-«)p(u),
s > 0,
as t -»oo. This difference equation is solved by putting f(s) = zs. The characteristic equation
has two positive real roots, one of which is unity. To assure that the other root will be between 0 and 1, Champernowne introduces the following stability condition:
The relevant solution is f(s) = bs, 0 < b < 1, which gives the number of incomes in income class s. If the lower bound of this class is the log of the income Y 8 , then the probability of an income exceeding Ys is given by Since s is determined by where h is the class interval and Ymin is the lower boundary of the lowest income class, it follows that logP(Y.)=y-alogY., where the parameters y and a are determined by b, h, and Y min . This is the Pareto law with Pareto coefficient a. Champernowne's stability condition implies that the mathematical expectation of a change in income is negative. This counteracts the diffusion. How can the stability condition be justified on economic grounds? It may be connected with the fact that in this model every income earner who drops out is replaced by a new income earner. Since, in practice, young people have on the average lower and more uniform incomes than old people, the replacement of old income earners by young ones usually means a drop in income. Thus, Champernowne's stability condition, as far as its economic basis is concerned, is very similar to the entry of new, small units that act as a stabilizer in Simon's model. Rutherford's model. Rutherford's model (1955) leads, in his opinion, to the Gibrat law for the size distribution of incomes. Newly entering income earners, assumed to be log-normally distributed at the start, are subject to a random walk and thus to increasing variance during their lifetimes. The process of birth and death of income earners, which is explicitly introduced into the model, acts as the stabilizer. The distribution of total income is obtained by summing the distributions for all age cohorts that contribute survivors, Rutherford's method is to derive the moments of the distribution by integration over time of the moments for the entrance groups. The distribution is built up "synthetically" from the moments, as it were. In the absence of an analytical solution with a definite distribution law, some disagreement remains about the result. Simons model. In Simon's model (1955), which leads to what he calls the Yule distribution, the aggregate growth of firms, cities, or incomes is given a priori. The stochastic process apportions this given increment to various units according to
SIZE DISTRIBUTIONS IN ECONOMICS certain rules, which are weakened forms of the law of proportionate effect and rules of new entry. As a consequence of this procedure, there is no possibility of shrinkage of individual units. The given aggregate emphasizes the interdependence of fortunes of different firms (the gain of one is the loss of another)—-a point that is neglected in other models, such as that of Steindl (1965). On the other hand, the aggregate is, in reality, not given; it is not independent of the action of the firms, which may increase their total market by advertising, product innovation, and so on. The process of apportionment may be described as follows. We may conveniently think of populations of cities, so that f ( n , N) is the frequency of cities with n inhabitants in a total urban population of N; to be realistic, we shall assume that a city exceeds a certain minimum number of inhabitants; n will measure the excess over this minimum, and N will correspondingly be the sum of these excess populations. An additional urban inhabitant is allocated to a new city with a probability a and to an existing city, of any size class, with a probability proportionate to the number of (excess) inhabitants in that size class. Then,
297
Yule distribution asymptotically approaches the Pareto law for large values of n, that is, f ( n ) -* n-^f(1 )F(p + 2) as n -* oo. This model is applicable to cases in which size is measured by a stock, for example, number of employees of a firm. Simon provides an alternative interpretation of it that applies to flows, such as income and turnover of firms. For example, the total flow of income is given, and each dollar is apportioned to existing and new income earners according to the rules given above. Using simulation techniques, Ijiri and Simon (1964) show that the pattern of the Yule distribution persists if serial correlation of the growth of individual firms in different periods is assumed. This finding is important because, in reality, growth is often affected by "constitutional" factors, such as financial resources and research done in the past. The model of Wold and Whittle. Wold and Whittle (1957) present a model of the size distribution of wealth in which stability is provided by the turnover of generations, as in Rutherford's model. On the death of a wealth owner, his fortune is divided among his heirs (in equal parts, as a simplification). The diffusion effect is provided by f(n,N+ 1) ~ f ( n , N ~ ) the growth of wealth of living proprietors, which = J - = L [(n - 1 )f (n - 1, N) - nf(n, N)], proceeds deterministically at compound interest. The model is shown to lead to a Pareto distribution, the Pareto coefficient depending on the number of heirs to an estate and the ratio of the growth rate of capital to the mortality rate of the wealth owners. Steindl's models. Steindl's models (1965, chapWe assume that there is a steady state solution ters 2, 3) are designed to explain the size distriin which the frequencies of all classes of cities bution of firms, but they can equally well be applied change in the same proportion, that is, in which to the size distribution of cities. The distribution laws obtained are, for large sizes, identical with f(n,N+ 1) _ N + 1 for all n. the Pareto law. Like Rutherford's model, Steindl's N f(n, N) models rest on a combination of two stochastic Using this relation and defining a relative frequency processes. One is a birth-and-death process of the of cities as f ( n ) = f ( n , N)/(aN), we obtain from population of cities or firms; the other is a stothe above equations chastic process of the growth of the city or firm itself. f(n^ - f(r, - n; ( i - « ) ( t t - i ) 'W ' ^ l +(l-«)n The way in which the interplay of these two processes brings about the ,Pj,reto law can be ex,( 1 . T( .) _ ' 2- a ' plained in elementary terms. We start with the size distribution of cities. The number of cities can be or, setting I/' ( l - a ) = p , explained by a birth process, if we assume that (n- l ) ( n - 2 ) - - - 2 - 1 cities do not die. Let us assume that new cities are /Yw") — Ci appearing at a constant rate, e, the birth rate of -4- 9A ^) r x - i s cities. The number of cities increases exponentially, ^li ^F^n )L \p T _ ri ^r? and the age distribution of cities at a given moment of time is This expression is the Yule distribution. Using a property of the T-function, it can be shown that the e>0, (1)
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SIZE DISTRIBUTIONS IN ECONOMICS
where t is age and -R(t) is the number of cities with age in excess of t; in other words, K(t) is the rank of the town aged t + dt, and -R(O) is the total number of towns existing at the moment of time considered. The size of the city—its number of inhabitants—increases, on the average, with age. If the rate of births plus immigration, A, and of deaths plus emigration, (JL, are constant, we obtain an exponential growth function for the size of the city:
historical development is revealed in a cross section of the layers. We can also see how irregularities in the evolution over time will affect the size distribution. If an exceptional spurt of births of new firms occurs at one point of time (after a war, for example), the regression line in plane 1 will be broken and its upper part shifted upward in a parallel fashion. The same thing will happen to the transformed distribution in plane 3. InR
(2)
Eliminating t between eqs. (1) and (2), we get (3)
lnR = -
X—
lnR(0).
This is the Pareto law (if e/(X - / & ) > ! ) , and the Pareto coefficient is seen to be the ratio of the growth rate of the number of cities to the growth rate of a city. This demonstration, which on the face of it is deterministic in character, can be supplemented by a graphical illustration in which the stochastic features are included. In Figure 1 the distribution of cities according to age is plotted in the vertical (In R, t) plane. The abscissa shows the age of the city, and the ordinate shows the log of the rank of the city. Each city is thus represented by a dot, and the regression line fitted to these points represents relation (1 ). In the horizontal (t, In n} plane, we show the exponential growth of cities with age, as in relation (2). Again each city may be represented by a dot showing age and size. The scatter diagram in the horizontal plane may be regarded as a stochastic transformation of the time variable into the size variable. If the size of each city has been found on the scatter diagram, the cities can be reordered according to size; we then obtain, in the third (In R, In 72) plane, the transformed relation (3) between the number of cities (rank) and the size of a city. If firms are studied, we must take into account the death of firms. We might assume that a firm dies when it ceases to have customers. We can imagine that the age distribution in plane 1 of Figure 1 includes the dead firms; they are automatically eliminated in the transformation to size, being transferred to the size class below one. In the exponential relation (1), e must now represent the net rate of growth of the number of firms if the birth of firms is assumed to be a constant ratio of the population. Figure 1 illustrates how the evolution in time of the number of firms (cities) is mapped onto the cross section of sizes. This process may be compared to sedimentation in geology, where a
In n
Figure 1
The complete model for firms may be described as follows. The size of a firm is measured by the number of customers attached to it. This is governed by a birth-and-death process. Let us denote by o(At) a magnitude that is small in comparison with At. There is a chance A At + o(At) of a customer's being acquired and a chance //, At + o(A£) of a customer's being lost in a short period of time, At; multiple births and deaths have a chance of o(At). The probability that a firm has n or more than n customers is given by P(n) = r?(n, t)r(t) dt, Jo
where P ( n , f ) is the probability that a firm of age t has n or more than n customers. The term r(t) is the density of the age distribution of firms, including dead firms; for large t it is the steady state of a renewal process and is given by r(t) = ce~et, where e is the net rate of growth of the firm population and c is a constant. The number of firms with less than one customer, P(0, t) — P(l, t), equals the dead firms. The value of P(n, t) is obtained as the solution of a birth-and-death process for the customers of a firm: P(n, t) = (l - y) ( ( \I^y '
n = 1, 2, • • • ,
where a = g-*, a' — ( / a/A)e~ (X -"•>*, and A > p. This expression can be expanded in series and in-
SIZE DISTRIBUTIONS IN ECONOMICS serted in the above integral; this yields, integrating term by term, '-/*' *(-n\(n-l\ \v )\ k ) / j / v=0 00
E
7c=0
j
V + k + fo>
n\ J B ( n , cu + v), '
where o) = e/(X — ft) > 0 and B(rz, w + v) is the Beta integral. Hence,
P(n) v ' If /x/X < 1, we can neglect the terms with *> above a certain value. Thus, if n -» and v has a moderate value, we can use the approximations B(n, a) + v} = n-"-T(a> + i/), B(rz, *0 — rrT(z'); therefore, as n -» °°,
The following features of the solution may be remarked: Since the approximation depends on the value of ft/X, which is the mortality of firms of high age, the smaller the mortality of firms, the greater will be the proportion of the distribution that conforms to Pareto's law. The mean of the distribution will be finite if o> > 1 . This is important in connection with disequilibria, which can arise through changes in X, ju, and e. It can be shown that the Pareto solution applies to the growing firm (X > /JL, the above case) and, in a modified form, to the shrinking firm ( X < / a ) ; but it does not obtain for the stationary firm (X = /x). The above solution for the distribution according to customers can be shown to be valid also for the distribution according to sales, if firms grow mainly by acquiring more customers and not by getting bigger customers. This is often true in retail trade but not in manufacturing. An alternative model assumes the other extreme — that firms grow only by getting bigger orders. This model is based on the theory of collective risk. The capital of the firm, a continuous variable, is subject to sudden jumps at the instant when orders are executed and to a continuing drain of costs, which is represented deterministically by an exponential decline. The steady state solution obtained from this process is, for large values of capital, identical with the Pareto law; for moderate values, the distribution has a mode and represents, albeit with some complications, a modification of the "first law of Laplace," which was proposed by Frechet (1939) for income distributions.
299
Size as a vector. It would be natural to measure the size of a firm by a vector, including employment, output, capital, etc., and apply the steady state concept to the joint distribution of several variables. Regression and correlation coefficients obtained in a cross section could then be regarded, like the Pareto coefficient, as characteristics of the steady state. It may be guessed that the growth of the number of firms will have an influence on these parameters as well. Practically no work has been done in this direction, but it is the only way to clear up the meaning of cross-section data and their relation to time series data and to the theoretical parameters of the underlying stochastic process. The situation in economics is totally unlike that in physics, where the processes are stationary and the ergodic law establishes the identity of time and phase averages. (Only the cosmogony of F. Hoyle, in which the continuous creation of matter offsets the expansion of the universe to establish a steady state of the cosmos, offers a parallel to the growth processes considered above.) The surprise expressed at one time at the difference in estimates of income elasticities from cross-section data and from time series data appears naive in this light because we could only expect them to be equal if the processes generating households, incomes, and consumption were stationary. But the population of households or the population of firms is not stationary. A cross section of firms shows the growth path of the firm through its different stages of evolution; but the number of firms of a given age depends on the past growth of the total number of firms, and this may influence the regression coefficient. Moreover, the growth path is not unique, because there are several processes superimposed upon one another (growth paths depending on age of firm, age of equipment, age of the management, etc.). For example, the short-run and long-run cost curves are inevitably mixed up in a cross section of firms. [See CROSSSECTION ANALYSIS.] How much "stability" and why. The starting point of the theories here reviewed is the stability of distributions, but stability must not be taken literally. The distributions do change in time, but the change is usually slow. The tail of the distribution of firms or, to a lesser extent, of wealth is composed of very old units, and time must pass before it can be affected by, for example, a change in new entry rates or in growth rates of firms. Thus, the reason for the quasi stability of distributions is that the stock of firms, etc., revolves only slowly. Indirectly this also accounts for the quasi stability of the distribution of incomes, because in-
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come is largely determined by wealth or its equivalent in the form of education. An even more enduring influence on the income distribution is the differentiation of skills and professions, which evolves slowly, as a secular process. The explanations advanced in this article do not exclude the possibility that distribution patterns may change abruptly—for example, as a consequence of taxation, in the case of net incomes; or as a consequence of a big merger movement, in the case of firms. JOSEF STEINDL [Directly related are the entries INCOME DISTRIBUTION, article on SIZE; RANK-SIZE RELATIONS.] BIBLIOGRAPHY
CHAMPERNOWNE, D. G. 1953 A Model of Income Distribution. Economic Journal 63:318-351. FRECHET, MAURICE 1939 Sur les formules de repartition des revenus. International Statistical Institute, Revue 7:32-38. GIBRAT, ROBERT 1931 Les inegalites economiques. Paris: Sirey. IJIRI, Yuji; and SIMON, HERBERT A. 1964 Business Firm Growth and Size. American Economic Review 54:77-89. KALECKI, MICHAEL 1945 On the Gibrat Distribution. Econometrica 13:161-170. MANSFIELD, EDWIN 1962 Entry, Gibrat's Law, Innovation, and the Growth of Firms. American Economic Review 52:1023-1051. RUTHERFORD, R. S. G. 1955 Income Distributions: A New Model. Econometrica 23:277-294. SIMON, HERBERT A. (1955) 1957 On a Class of Skew Distribution Functions. Pages 145-164 in Herbert A. Simon, Models of Man: Social and Rational. New York: Wiley. -> First published in Volume 42 of Biometrika. SIMON, HERBERT A.; and BONINI, CHARLES P. 1958 The Size Distribution of Business Firms. American Economic Review 48:607-617. STEINDL, JOSEF 1965 Random Processes and the Growth of Firms: A Study of the Pareto Law. London: Griffin; New York: Hafner. WOLD, H. O. A.; and WHITTLE, P. 1957 A Model Exploring the Pareto Distribution of Wealth. Econometrica 25:591-595. ZIPF, GEORGE K. 1949 Human Behavior and the Principle of Least Effort: An Introduction to Human Ecology. Reading, Mass.: Addison-Wesley.
SKILL, ACQUISITION OF See under LEARNING. SKIN SENSES AND KINESTHESIS The skin senses and kinesthesis (muscle and movement senses) present a difficult problem in sensory physiology—the problem of how information about several energies of the external world are signaled to the brain. Skin receptors are sensitive to thermal and mechanical stimulation, and mechan-
ical stimulation is detected in a variety of ways both by sense organs in cutaneous structures and deep, internal structures such as muscles, tendons, and joints. In varying degrees, deep receptors also detect the state of the tissues or the position of the body and limbs in space. At one time, it was thought that a single skin sense—so-called common sensibility—detected touch, pressure, warmth, cold, and pain. Beginning in the late nineteenth century, the concept of separate sensory modalities developed, based on the presumed existence of histologically distinct sets of sense organs for each cutaneous sense, of some separation of pathways in the spinal cord, and of specific endings in the cerebral cortex (see Boring 1942). The one concrete experimental datum was a spotlike, or punctiform, distribution of sensitivity, determined by exploring the skin millimeter by millimeter with different energies and finding different psychological responses—touch, warmth, cold—from different spots. This punctiform sensitivity seemed to demand specific anatomical endings. The histological specificity—various encapsulations of the neural terminals themselves —described by anatomists seemed to provide a structural correlate for several psychological and physiological findings. However, the search for a histologically distinctive receptor beneath a sensitive spot proved elusive. The minimum demanded is that this receptor be a sense organ that responds differentially or differently to various forms of energy. The traditional view is that a sense organ responds differentially to one energy or to one band of an energy spectrum (e.g., warmth and cold or frequencies of light waves) and analyzes an object in contact with the skin in terms of this energy or band of energy. Such a filter function is traditionally expressed by the concept of adequate stimulus or, better worded, differential sensitivity. Like all filters, the sense organ has a low threshold for one form of energy or for one band of frequencies within a given form of energy. An alternative view holds that sense organs are much alike in their range of sensitivity to a variety of energies but respond differently in some way ("frequency" or "pattern") to each energy, leaving the central nervous system to interpret the different responses and recognize the different energies (Weddell 1961). These points of view are caught in a crosscurrent of contradictory experimental findings. Receptors Since the mid-1950s, the point of view that receptors are alike in their range of sensitivities and
SKIN SENSES AND KINESTHESIS that discrimination of sensations is a joint function of receptor responses and processes in the central nervous system has received considerable support from evidence that there is little morphological differentiation of receptors in hairy skin, although hairy skin indisputably signals different modalities of sensation. While hairless skin (lips, fingertips, etc.) does contain specialized endings, it became gradually accepted, on the basis of Weddell's work (1961), that only two types of endings exist in hairy skin: fibers originating about the roots of hairs and fine, beaded, unmyelinated, or so-called free, nerve endings. Because the same modalities of sensation are experienced from stimulation of hairy and hairless skin, specificity or band-pass characteristics cannot then be attributed to any capsules or discs that are associated with the specialized nerve terminals in hairless skin. Anatomical studies have not disproved the functional specificity of the terminations; whatever specificity exists must, however, be on a subcellular or molecular basis, not visible with the light microscope and conventional stains. Actually, in slight contradiction of Weddell's broad generalization, there are several types of hair receptors having somewhat different discharge properties, but all are receptors for mechanical stimulation (mechanoreceptors). Also, the conspicuously encapsulated organ—the Pacinian corpuscle —-is found in the dermis and subcutaneous tissues. Iggo and Muir (1963) have discovered a morphologically specialized end organ that consists of a thickened epidermis covering several Merkel-type corpuscles, into which penetrate branches of a single thick myelinated axon. This spotlike receptor is also a mechanoreceptor. Deep in the skin and in muscles and tendons, there are encapsulated or otherwise specialized sense organs. Knowledge of sense-organ morphology is in a curious state because certain "classical" formations are now considered artifacts, but at least one new type has been discovered. Another plausible morphologically based generalization, now proved to be invalid, is that all free nerve endings are pain receptors and that their lack of capsule or morphological complexity accounts for the wide variety of energies that can elicit cutaneous pain—namely, mechanical, heat, cold, and chemical stimulation. Passing from the skin to the spinal cord are numerous small axons, measuring about 1ft in diameter, which conduct nerve impulses at about 1 meter per second and are termed unmyelinated. (Under the light microscopes they appear to lack a surrounding sheath of white fatty material, myelin; electronmicroscopy reveals a thin myelin sheath.) These fibers, termed
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C-fibers, conduct impulses which result in painful sensation; so do the smallest fibers with optically visible myelin sheaths. These fibers, called 8-fibers, conduct impulses at a considerably faster rate, about 6 meters per second. Because of this double system of fibers, pain can be appreciated, in certain circumstances, as two pulses: "fast" pain and "slow" pain. It has recently been learned that touch and thermal stimuli excite nerve impulses at intensities of stimulation far below that required to elicit pain. In fact, a large number of the C-fibers can be recruited into responding before the level of stimulation required to elicit pain is reached. Thus, it can no longer be held that the fine unmyelinated axons are concerned exclusively with conducting the impulses that arise within high-threshold end organs and that their central effect results only in the experience of pain. [See PAIN.] Until recently, knowledge of C-fiber function has been largely inferential, because the small action potentials produced by them have been difficult to record. Douglas, Ritchie, and Straub (1960) caused impulses in the large-diameter, low-threshold axons to collide and, thus, eliminate themselves, leaving only the C-fiber impulses to reach the recording electrode. Activation of C-fibers did not require the strong mechanical or thermal stimulation that elicits pain sensation. In fact, a fall in skin temperature of 10° C., less than is required to elicit a painful sensation, activated three-quarters of the C-fibers. Clearly, the C-fibers cannot be concerned solely with pain sensation. This general conclusion is supported by the more direct, classical procedure of "cutting down" a nerve until impulses in only one axon are recorded. This procedure, accomplished by Iggo (1959), showed that C-fibers do respond to more than one form of energy and with weaker stimulation than that required to elicit pain. In fact, they respond to stimuli not much stronger than those required to stimulate the specifically sensitive endings connected with large unmyelinated axons of sensory neurons. C-fiber discharges to a temperature drop as little as 0.3° C. have been recorded. Recording from a single axon has been accomplished in man (Hensel & Boman 1960). Receptors connecting with myelinated fibers respond weakly to cold stimulation and strongly to mechanical stimulation. They tend to fire "spontaneously" at natural skin temperature in the absence of known mechanical stimulation. The one epidermal receptor which is highly structured and is served by a large unmyelinated axon—the touch spot receptor of Iggo and Muir (1963)—discharges in response to cooling. This
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receptor is slow in adapting. The muscle spindle, which also adapts slowly, is also sensitive to cooling, but the very rapidly adapting Pacinian corpuscle is not. Iggo (1965) believes that the effect of cooling is a general property of mechanoreceptors which takes time to develop. Postulation of a multispecific ending is not necessary. Whatever the cause, the nervous system has the problem of "decoding" the discharge from such end organs. In contrast, an ending responding specifically to heat has been discovered. This ending is termed a heat receptor, since it does not respond to strong mechanical and cold stimulation. Protopathic and epicritic sensibility. Since the primitive, fine unmyelinated fibers cannot be associated exclusively with the most primitive and least discriminative sense, the pain modality, and since some myelinated fibers have endings which are thermally, as well as mechanically, sensitive, it is inevitable that thinking should return (Poggic & Mountcastle 1960) to the all but discarded theory of protopathic and epicritic sensibilities, proposed by Henry Head (see Head et al. 1920). The protopathic system was postulated to be sensitive only to extremes of temperature and capable only of gross discriminations, whereas the epicritic was sensitive to light touch and fine gradations of warmth and cold and capable of fine discriminations of pressure and weight. In a sense, a central neural substrate has been furnished by the research just described, assuming always that the afferent neurons described transmit impulses to the brain. Before further consideration of this assumption in the discussion of the spinal pathways of sensation, it should be noted that Head's theory is criticized because quantitative explanations can be given for phenomena which he felt had to be explained in terms of qualitatively different neural mechanisms. Deep sensitivity. Sensory information coming over the deep branches of peripheral nerves is termed deep sensitivity or, specifically, muscle, tendon, and joint sensitivity. Sherrington (1906) introduced the term "proprioception" ("self-sensitivity"), in contrast to "exteroception" ("giving knowledge of the outside world"). "Kinesthesis," or "sense of movement," is favored by some (Rose & Mountcastle 1959), in the belief that the impulses reaching the cerebral cortex come only from joints rather than from muscle and are, therefore, particularly, although not exclusively, excited by movement. The deep receptors lie also in muscle; they record not only active but passive movement and record the posture or position of a limb in space (in neurological jargon, "position sense"). [See SHERRINGTON.1
Intensity, affect, and place. So far, this discussion has dealt with the kind of stimulus energy that is signaled. The phenomenological counterpart is the quality of the sensation, the differences in experience which cause us to give sensations different names such as warmth, cold, touch, or pressure. Sensation has three other aspects which are intriguing neurophysiological puzzles and are of great medical importance: The first of these is intensity of stimulation. The second is affect, the aspect of a sensory experience which causes us to describe it as pleasant or unpleasant. This phase of sensation blends into the problems of motivation and emotion. The third is place, or the spatialdiscrimination aspects of cutaneous sensibility. Intensity is peripherally coded in the frequency of discharge or, perhaps more accurately, in the quantity of impulses—that is, frequency times number of responding fibers. It is no longer likely that affect can be fiber-coded in the periphery—for example, that pain can be identified with C-fibers as a group. The problem becomes one of the destination of the impulse within the brain. Spatial discrimination involves the ability to locate on the skin surface the point of stimulation (topognosis) and an allied function, so-called twopoint discrimination, measured as the smallest distance at which two points applied to the skin are sensed as two rather than one—a function comparable to visual acuity. Errors of localization and fineness of point discrimination are small on the skin surfaces used to explore objects—fingertips, lips, and tongue—and poorly developed on the back and proximal segments of the limbs. Acuity is related to the density of the receptors and to the number of sensory axons supplying the region. In spatial discriminations, cutaneous and deep receptors combine to provide information about the form of an object palpated and, with the sensations of temperature, weight, etc., enable us to recognize common objects by palpation (stereognosis). Although it is customary to speak loosely of these as sensory processes, technically they are perceptions and judgments. A considerable evolution of the brain has been required to add to the mere recognition of touch, cold, warmth, or pain the abilities to discriminate their fine degrees of intensity, to locate the point on the skin stimulated, and to appreciate the spatial aspects of objects. [For a detailed discussion of intensity and the spatial and affective aspects of sensation, see Ruch & Patton 1965; see also PERCEPTION, article on DEPTH PERCEPTION.]
Convergence of axons. Another threat to the concept of specific receptors connected by separate
SKIN SENSES AND KINESTHESIS pathways to the cerebral cortex is the discovery that afferent axons that are apparently specific in the periphery for different kinds of energy converge on the same second-order neuron on the spinal cord. This occurs with axons that terminate on neurons in the posterior horn but not for all second-order neurons on which the posterior-column fibers terminate. Specificity (filtering) and the resulting information would be lost if the transmitting channel had a wide-band pass, unless the streams of impulses from the two narrow-bandpass sense organs were coded differently in the second and subsequent neurons. It has not yet been demonstrated that the single secondary neuron in which the nerve impulses are detected gives rise to ascending sensory fibers. However, similar nonspecific behavior is found in some third-order neurons and some cortical neurons, as will be discussed below. The simple alternative to specific sensory end organs is frequency coding. A sense organ may fire at one rate when stimulated by touch and at another rate when stimulated by pressure. Alternatively, two specific end organs may, through their axons, fire a second-order neuron at two different rates. The difficulty with either concept is that the frequency code is, so to speak, needed to signal the intensity of a stimulus, as can be seen when the intimate nature of sense-organ excitation is examined. Receptor potentials and nerve impulses. The mechanoreceptor is a transducer that converts nonelectrical energy into an electrochemical phenomenon, the generator, or receptor, potential. This potential, in turn, sets up action potentials in the parent axon which are brief, self-propagating, and independent, in size and velocity, of the strength of the stimulus or of the generator potential. By contrast, the magnitude of the generator potential is related in logarithmic proportion to the magnitude of the physical stimulus. Further, the generator potential is stationary, decreasing rapidly with distance along the axon; in response to a sustained stimulus, it tends to be prolonged, although not usually sustained at its initial level. The propagated all-or-none action potentials (nerve impulses) are always intermittent. When the generator potential reaches a certain value (a threshold), the axon is discharged and cannot again be fired until certain changes underlying self-propagation are reversed. [See NERVOUS SYSTEM, especially the articles on STRUCTURE AND FUNCTION OF THE BRAIN and ELECTROENCEPHALOGRAPHY.]
In some receptors, the generator potential dies out so rapidly that only one or two impulses are
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set up. Such phasic receptors can signal intensity by their proximity to the stimulus or by differing axon thresholds, which permit stronger and stronger stimuli to involve more and more axons. Such a recruitment will, through convergence at the second-order neuron, mean that more impulses per second reach the brain. In the tonic type of sensory neuron, the generator potential persists as long as there is a stimulus, but as mentioned, the potential tends to diminish from its initial level to an approximate plateau. So long as this potential exceeds axon threshold, impulses will continue to be generated. However, as the generator potential diminishes, so does the rate of discharge. Since continuance of a stimulus is accompanied by a psychological decrease in intensity (adaptation X the declining frequency of sensory-axon discharge is consistent with the supposition that frequency is the way in which stimulus intensity is coded. More directly, if different plateau levels of the generator potential are induced by different magnitudes of stimulation, the frequency of discharge is directly and linearly proportional to the generator potential. The over-all logarithmic relationship between intensity of stimulus and frequency of nerve impulses, characteristic of many receptors, lies in the logarithmic relationship between the magnitude of the physical stimulus and the generator potential. From an engineering point of view, sense organs are poor transducers in respect to linearity, although good in respect to reducing a wide range of intensities to the somewhat limited frequency capacity of nerve axons (600 pulses per second being the upper limit). Central sensory processes The classical somatosensory (skin senses and kinesthesis) pathway in man, monkeys, and apes is made up of systems originating in both the posterior and anterolateral columns of the spinal cord. All sensory pathways are synaptically interrupted. Anterolateral-column pathways first synapse near the point of entry into the spinal cord. Posteriorcolumn pathways synapse for the first time in the lowest region of the brain stem, the medulla. In both pathways, crossing occurs after the first synapse, so that the left side of the brain is concerned with the right side of the body, as is true of vision and motor function. In man and monkey, the second-order neurons of both sensory pathways synapse in the ventroposterior portion of the thalamus with third-order neurons which project to the cortical areas. The classical somatosensory pathway is conducted by the medial and spinothalamic lemnisci to the posterolateral point of the ventral
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nucleus, where it ends in a topographically organized fashion, so that the body surface is projected upon this nucleus (for the detail of this pathway, see Ruch & Patton 1965). Some pathways, especially those of the anterolateral column, have more than three neurons. In the cat, for example, the spinothalamic tract, in the literal sense of the term ("one neuron from cord to thalamus"), does not exist; all of the secondorder myelinated fibers synapse before they reach the thalamus. This distinction can be conveyed by speaking of spinothalamic tracts and spinothalamic chains or systems. With the present techniques for studying experimental degeneration in myelinated fibers by staining the axon rather than the disintegrating myelin sheath (and, of course, unmyelinated fibers), the extensiveness of the multisynaptic pathways is just becoming appreciated. In brief, at various levels of the brain stem, many ascending axons give off branches to or terminate on neurons in the central gray matter and reticular substance (a deep-lying meshwork of fibers containing clusters of cell bodies). From these levels, neuron chains proceed to certain thalamic areas which in turn connect with the cerebral cortex. Since the C-fiber system is stimulated peripherally by other than noxious stimuli, the multineuron, fine-fiber ascending system is potentially concerned with all forms of cutaneous sensation. Two questions can be asked concerning the transmission of sensory information in the spinal cord through the thalamus to the cerebral cortex: First, to what degree is the energy specificity of the sense organ preserved at the first synaptic junction? Second, to what degree do the second-order and third-order neurons receive impulses from a restricted area of the skin? The answer to the latter is indicative of, but not a measure of, the preservation of locus of stimulus in ascending pathways. Wall (1961), in recording from single secondorder neurons of the posterior horn (not to be confused with the posterior column) of the spinal cord, has discovered that they tend to be fired by a variety of stimuli. The axons of these neurons ascend in the anterolateral columns, and the impression is gained that in some anterolateral systems the degree of fiber coding attained in the periphery is largely sacrificed at the first synapse. The kind of stimulation must, therefore, be coded in some other dimension of the stream of afferent impulses. It should be mentioned that reflex connections, as well as ascending axons, originate in the posterior horn and that many anterolateral and posterolateral ascending pathways beside the spinothalamic tract have cells of origin in this region.
It seems, then, that in some ascending pathways, specificity in relation to stimulus energy has been lost in the transfer to secondary axons; either the information itself is lost or else it is coded in some other fashion. Temporal patterning is suggested as the means of coding (Wall 1961). Posterior-column pathways. The behavior of the sensory pathways which ascend the posterior columns of the spinal cord without synapsing and without crossing until they reach the medulla is quite different. In the medulla, the second-order neurons, after crossing, give rise to the medial lemniscus, which ascends the brain stem to the thalamus. The transmission of information which conveys the site of stimulation on the skin is considered by most neurophysiologists to be a product of a topographical organization of axons within ascending pathways that is preserved throughout the thalamic relay nuclei and the thalamocortical projections. The result is a kind of "isomorphism" between the peripheral array of skin receptors and the array of neurons making up the cerebral cortex. This organization must not be thought of in terms so crude as a single receptor being connected with a single cortical cell, an adjacent receptor with an adjacent cortical cell, etc. Such "structural canalization" of pathways seems to be almost deliberately avoided, even in systems—such as the visual—which have a high degree of acuity and spatial discrimination. Receptive fields. There is much interdigitation of free nerve endings in the skin which would seem unnecessary unless some biological value is attained. On the other hand, the number of channels and the degree of their "insulation" from each other (i.e., lack of convergence) at synaptic levels are highest for the points of greatest acuity and spatial discrimination (e.g., the fovea of the retina and the tips of the fingers). One index of topographical organization and potential acuity is the "receptive field." The receptive field of a single axon or cell body is that area of skin from which the unit can be discharged (or, in the case of the eye, the area of the visual field in which the unit can be discharged or inhibited). Thus, each peripheral axon, secondary neuron, and cortical cell has a receptive field. The receptive fields of the second-order neurons of the posterior-column and the anterolateralcolumn pathways contrast sharply; the former are measured in millimeters, and the latter, in centimeters. Although large, the receptive fields of second-order neurons on the anterolateral pathways are not splotchy but homogeneous and are often round or elliptical, indicating that many peripheral
SKIN SENSES AND KINESTHESIS axons with adjacent or overlapping fields on the skin have converged in an orderly fashion. Another finding, which seems to pertain to even the posterior column system, is that receptive fields are larger at the cortical level than at the level of the second-order neuron. This rule also holds in the visual system, where form appreciation can be seen in the divergence or widening of the channel (Hubel & Wiesel 1965). In the skin senses, a similar analysis has yet to be made empirically, although it has been subject to speculation. The anterolateral-column pathways are a phylogenetically primitive system that receives impulses from unmyelinated and fine myelinated fibers; that conducts impulses which inform the brain of the state of the skin and tissues and, to some degree, of the ambient environment and objects (e.g., their warmth or coldness) but that may report poorly on spatial aspects of the stimulus. Geometrical patterns of warmed or cooled skin induced by radiant energy are very poorly discriminated. It may be important to know that a hand or an arm is cold or painful but not that one millimeter of skin is cold and the next warm. In contrast, the posterior-column pathways have been considered to convey knowledge of the objects forming the external world, the position of the body and the limbs in space, and the accurate locus of stimulation (Ruch & Patton 1965). In this generalization, the reservation should be made that the anterolateral system of man and other primates is not the primitive system of fibers seen in lower forms, but it does reach the thalamus and conveys some limited knowledge of the world. Because the posterior columns are rarely selectively interrupted by trauma or tumor, the residual capacity of the spinothalamic and other lateral, anterolateral, and ventral ascending pathways is poorly understood. From experiments on monkeys (DeVito et al. 1964), it is known that the discrimination of weights is initially impaired by section of the posterior column but that the capacity to discriminate returns virtually to normal. Weight discrimination is, from clinical evidence, considered to be served primarily by posteriorcolumn systems. The somatosensory cortex. Buried in the central fissure which divides the parietal from the frontal lobe is a narrow strip of highly granular cortex typical of sensory areas in the cortex. On this and the adjacent zone of the postcentral gyrus is concentrated a dense projection of fibers from so-called relay nuclei, which in turn receive fibers of the medial lemniscus and the spinothalamic tract (in primates). This cortical area, called the somato-
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sensory cortex, is highly organized topographically, with relatively large portions devoted to the skin areas having the greatest acuity in two-point discrimination and the greatest accuracy in location of a point touched. According to Mountcastle (1961) the receptive field of a single neuron in this region is relatively small but is calculated to be one hundred times that of a second-order neuron. The size of the receptive field is smallest on the fingers and largest on the back, being roughly proportional to the spatial acuity of these regions. Detour systems. In addition to the classical somatosensory pathway, there are three additional pathways, termed detour systems (Ruch & Patton 1965) because they, in a sense, bypass the relay nuclei of the classical pathway. One is a projection to the precentral gyrus from a thalamic nucleus which receives input from the cerebellum and, hence, is potentially connected with the various spinocerebellar pathways. The second is a projection of fibers from the posterior thalamic nuclei to the posterior parietal lobule, a so-called association area, lying behind the termination of the classical pathway. The posterior thalamic nuclei are believed to receive impulses from the classic relay nucleus (some of the most posterior ones receive impulses directly from the medial and spinal lemniscus, but their cortical projection is not known with certainty). At the time these systems were being traced anatomically, behavioral experiments showed that the posterior parietal area could account for discrimination of weights independently of the precentral gyrus (Ruch et al. 1937). Furthermore, the combined destruction of both areas (parietal lobectomy) greatly impaired, but did not abolish, weight discrimination, even in chimpanzees. This and other evidence (Kruger & Porter 1958) indicates that the classical motor area serves a discriminative somatosensory function. The third set of detour pathways is nonlemniscal and nonspinothalamic in the strict sense but is nonetheless anterolateral in its spinal course. Ascending fibers terminate in or give off collaterals (some are no doubt collaterals of spinothalamic fibers) to the bulbar reticular formation and, at midbrain levels, to the central gray matter, the superior colliculus, and the posterior thalamic nuclei near the medial geniculate body (Mehler et al. 1960). The thalamic nuclei medial to the relay of spinothalamic and lemniscal fibers also receive a stream of the ascending fibers of anterolateral origin, as well as impulses from multisynaptic pathways deep in the reticular formation.
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The pathway has been termed the paleospinothalamic tract, to distinguish it from the direct, or neospinothalamic, tract (Bishop 1962). There is considerable reason to believe that the diffuse, multisynaptic, unmyelinated, primitive system of fibers is involved in affect and pain experience. Posterolateral tracts. Throughout this discussion, we have drawn the classical contrast between posterior-column and anterolateral-column pathways. It is now clear that a posterolateral tract of the spinal cord also sends impulses to the somatosensory cortex, with relays in the lateral cervical nucleus. This tract is a fast-fiber system, impulses reaching the cerebral cortex more quickly than those conducted in the posterior columns. Some fibers of this system have restricted receptive fields, while others respond broadly in respect to place and kind of cutaneous stimulation. This system has been studied mainly electrophysiologically, and its significance to sensation relative to the posteriorcolumn and anterolateral-column systems has yet to be assessed. Mechanisms of cerebral sensory function. Four aspects of sensation can be arranged in a presumed order of phylogenetic development: affect, quality, intensity, and localization. Affect appears to develop at subcortical levels of the nervous system, probably as low as the midbrain. The quality of stimuli can be correctly identified (e.g., touch, warmth) even after extensive cortical lesions, and recognition of quality is probably a thalamic, as well as a cortical, function. The discrimination of fine degrees of intensity is a function of the "motor" and "association" areas adjacent to the classic somatosensory area of the postcentral gyrus in the cerebral cortex. Obviously, these two terms do not convey their sensory function. In the ascending pathways, distortion of a simple stimulus-intensity—frequency-of-discharge arrangement arises from the tendency of second-order neurons and cortical neurons to fire repetitively in response to a single afferent stimulation. Nevertheless, the single thalamic units being fired by limb displacement reflect faithfully, in spikes per second, the degree of joint rotation (Mountcastle et al. 1963). Interestingly, the quantitative relationship between stimulus and response is a power function rather than the logarithmic function postulated by the classical Weber-Fechner law. This finding agrees with and supports the conclusion reached by Stevens (1961) on the basis of psychophysical experiments involving magnitudescaling procedures and cross-modality ratio matching; such methods are powerful tools applicable widely in the social sciences. [See PSYCHOPHYSICS;
SCALING; and the biographies of FECHNER and WEBER, ERNST HEINRICH.] A broad relation exists between accuracy in localization and the amount of topographical organization in a system, the number of cortical units devoted to an area of skin, and the size of the receptive fields. However, the extent of the receptive fields and of the area of cerebral cortex activated by stimulation of a point on the skin are much too great to permit consideration of any true point-topoint isomorphism between the skin and the somatosensory cortex. Corroborative evidence is provided by the fact that the ramifications of single sensory neurons are so extensive that neurons interdigitate, and that size of the receptive field becomes progressively larger higher up in the nervous system. There are counterparts in the auditory system and in the visual system, where optical errors, light scatter, and small eye movements are also hazards to a conception of a pointto-point relationship between the external world and the visual cortex. It may be speculated that all these errors could have been minimized in the course of evolution. The occurrence of these dispersal processes must mean that they contribute to, rather than detract from, acuity of spatial discrimination. It is probable that in all three sensory systems the nervous system behaves, not in terms of a mosaic of all-or-nothing patches of cortical activation, but in modal points of maximum cortical activation (number of active neurons times frequency of their discharge). The ability to discriminate modal points of excitability and such devices for sharpening these points as lateral inhibition and descending inhibitory influences on sensory system synapses provide a mechanism by which the fineness of "cortical grain" (i.e., the numbers of cortical neurons) extends discriminative ability beyond what could be achieved if sense organs were arranged in a mosaic, rather than an interdigitating, fashion and were equipped with private pathways to the cerebral cortex. An alternative to this statistical conception of spatial discrimination is a very successful "atomistic" analysis of the visual cortex by Hubel and Wiesel (1965), in which divergence in the system at each synaptic level endows it with increasingly subtle powers of spatial movement and form discrimination.
THEODORE C. RUCH [Directly related are the entries NERVOUS SYSTEM, article On STRUCTURE AND FUNCTION OF THE BRAIN;
PAIN; SENSES, article on CENTRAL MECHANISMS. Other relevant material may be found in BODY IMAGE; HEARING; PERCEPTION, article on DEPTH PER-
SLAVERY CEPTiON; PSYCHOLOGY, article on
PHYSIOLOGICAL
PSYCHOLOGY; PsYCHOPHYSICS; SENSES; TASTE AND SMELL; VISION.] BIBLIOGRAPHY
BISHOP, GEORGE H. 1962 Normal and Abnormal Sensory Patterns: Pain. I: Anatomical, Physiological and Psychological Factors in Sensation of Pain. Pages 95133 in Robert Grenell (editor), Neural Physiopathology. New York: Harper. BORING, EDWIN G. 1942 Sensation and Perception in the History of Experimental Psychology. New York: Appleton. DEVixo, J.; RUCH, T. C.; and PATTON, H. D. 1964 Analysis of Residual Weight Discriminatory Ability and Evoked Cortical Potentials Following Section of Dorsal Columns in Monkeys. Indian Journal of Physiology and Pharmacology 8:117-126. DOUGLAS, W. W.; RITCHIE, J. M.; and STRAUB, R. W. 1960 The Role of Non-myelinated Fibres in Signalling Cooling of the Skin. Journal of Physiology 150:266-283. HEAD, HENRY et al. 1920 Studies in Neurology. 2 vols. London: Hodder & Stoughton. -» These papers consist mainly of a republication of papers published in Brain between 1905 and 1918. HENSEL, HERBERT; and BOMAN, KURT K. A. 1960 Afferent Impulses in Cutaneous Sensory Nerves in Human Subjects. Journal of Neurophysiology 23:564578. HUBEL, DAVID H.; and WIESEL, TORSTON N. 1965 Receptive Fields and Functional Architecture in Two Non-striate Visual Areas (18 and 19) of the Cat. Journal of Neurophysiology 28:229-289. IGGO, A. 1959 Cutaneous Heat and Cold Receptors With Slowly Conducting (C) Afferent Fibres. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Physiology 44:362—370. IGGO, A. 1965 The Peripheral Mechanisms of Cutaneous Sensation. Pages 92-100 in David R. Curtis and A. K. Mclntyre (editors), Studies in Physiology, Presented to John C. Eccles. New York: Springer. IGGO, A.; and MUIR, A. R. 1963 A Cutaneous Sense Organ in the Hairy Skin of Cats. Journal of Anatomy 97:151 only. -» An abstract. KRUGER, LAWRENCE; and PORTER, PHYLLIS 1958 A Behavioral Study of the Functions of the Rolandic Cortex in the Monkey. Journal of Comparative Neurology 109:439-469. MEHLER, WILLIAM R.; FEFERMAN, MARTIN E.; and NAUTA, WALLE J. H. 1960 Ascending Axon Degeneration Following Anterolateral Cordotomy: An Experimental Study in the Monkey. Brain 83:718-750. MOUNTCASTLE, VERNON B. 1961 Some Functional Properties of the Somatic Afferent System. Pages 403-436 in Symposium on Principles of Sensory Communication, Endicott House, 1959, Sensory Communication. Cambridge, Mass.: M.I.T. Press. MOUNTCASTLE, VERNON B.; POGGIO, GIAN F.; and WERNER, GERHARD 1963 The Relation of Thalamic Cell Response to Peripheral Stimuli Varied Over an Intensive Continuum. Journal of Neurophysiology 26:807-834. POGGIO, GIAN F.; and MOUNTCASTLE, VERNON B. 1960 A Study of the Functional Contributions of the Lemniscal and Spinothalamic Systems to Somatic Sensibility. Johns Hopkins Hospital, Bulletin 106:266-316. POWELL, THOMAS P.; and MOUNTCASTLE, VERNON B. 1959 Some Aspects of the Functional Organization of the Cortex of the Postcentral Gyrus of the Monkey:
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A Correlation of Findings Obtained in a Single Unit Analysis With Cytoarchitecture. Johns Hopkins Hospital, Bulletin 105:133-162. ROSE, JERZY E.; and MOUNTCASTLE, VERNON B. 1959 Touch and Kinesthesis. Volume 1, section 1, pages 387-429 in Handbook of Physiology. Washington: American Physiological Society. RUCH, THEODORE C.; FULTON, J. F.; and GERMAN, W. J. 1937 Sensory Discrimination in Monkey, Chimpanzee and Man After Lesions on the Parietal Lobe. Archives of Neurology and Psychiatry 39:919-937. RUCH, THEODORE C.; and PATTON, HARRY D. (editors) 1965 Physiology and Biophysics. 19th ed. Philadelphia: Saunders. -> The first edition was published in 1905 as A Textbook of Physiology for Medical Students and Physicians, by William H. Howell. SHERRINGTON, CHARLES S. (1906) 1948 The Integrative Action of the Nervous System. 2d ed. New Haven: Yale Univ. Press. STEVENS, S. S. 1961 The Psychophysics of Sensory Function. Pages 1-33 in Symposium on Principles of Sensory Communication, Endicott House, 1959, Sensory Communication. Edited by Walter A. Rosenblith. Cambridge, Mass.: M.I.T. Press. WALL, PATRICK D. 1961 Two Transmission Systems for Skin Sensations. Pages 475-496 in Symposium on Principles of Sensory Communication, Endicott House, 1959, Sensory Communication. Edited by Walter A. Rosenblith. Cambridge, Mass.: M.I.T. Press. WEDDELL, GRAHAM 1961 Receptors for Somatic Sensation. Volume 1, pages 13-48 in Conference on Brain and Behavior, Brain and Behavior. Edited by Mary A. B. Brazier. Washington: American Institute of Biological Sciences.
SLAVERY In classical Roman law, slavery was denned as an institution "whereby someone is subject to the dominium of another contrary to nature" (Digest 1.5.4.1). Dominium can be translated as "power," but the idea of property is also implied. This definition may be accepted as universally applicable without the controversial phrase, "contrary to nature." Distinctions then have to be drawn according to the owner (whether an individual, a corporate institution, the state, or a god), according to the existence or nonexistence of certain "rights" of the slave (such as the claim to eventual manumission, or statutory freedom), and according to the social structure within which slavery functioned. However, the property element remains essential. All forms of labor on behalf of another, whether "free" or "unfree," place the man who labors in the power of another; what separates the slave from the rest, including the serf or peon, is the totality of his powerlessness in principle, and for that the idea of property is juristically the key—hence the term "chattel slave." For a sociological analysis, however, equal stress must be given to the slave's deracination. The law
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may declare him, in a formal way, powerless and rightless; one reason the law is enforceable is that he lacks any counterweight or support, whether from a religious institution, from a kinship group, from his own state or nation, or even from other depressed groups within the society in which he has become a slave. Legally he is not a person. Yet he is a human being, and therefore a purely juristic analysis in terms of property, though necessary, is not sufficient. Conceptually, every man has available to him, or is denied, a bundle of rights and obligations as diverse as freedom of movement, the right to the fruits of his labor, the right to marry and establish a family, the obligation (or right) of military service, the right to look after his soul. It is not normally the case that a man possesses either all of them or none; hence the range and variety of personal statuses found in different societies, and, within limits, even inside a single society, are very considerable. One may speak of a spectrum of statuses between the two extremes of absolute rightlessness and of absolute freedom to exercise all rights at all times (Finley 1964). The latter has never existed, nor has the former, although the position of the slave in the American South came very near to it. In between the two extremes, precisely as in a spectrum, there is much shading and overlapping, which the servile vocabulary reflects. Within the spectrum there are lines of demarcation. Throughout most of human history, labor for others has been performed in large part under conditions of dependence or bondage; that is to say, the relation between the man who works and his master or employer rested neither on ties of kinship nor on a voluntary, revocable contract of employment, but rather on birth into a class of dependents, on debt, or on some other precondition which by custom and law automatically removed from the dependent, usually for a long term or for life, some measure of his freedom of choice and action. "The concept of labor as a salable commodity, apart from the person of the seller, is relatively recent in the history of civilization" (Lasker 1950, p. 114). In all societies in which dependent labor is common, regardless of the variations within that broad class of persons, one main demarcation line is between the dependents and the others. Slavery is a species of dependent labor and not the genus. Slaves were to be found in many societies in which other kinds of dependent labor—debt bondsmen, clients, helots, serfs, Babylonian mushkenu, Chinese k'o, Indian Sudras—were common, just as they coexisted with free labor. However, slavery attained its greatest functional significance,
and usually its greatest numerical strength, in societies in which other, less total varieties of bondage had either disappeared or had never existed. The distinction is particularly sharp as between genuine slave societies—classical Greece (except Sparta) and Rome, the American South and the Caribbean—on the one hand, and slave-owning societies as found in the ancient Near East (including Egypt), India, or China, on the other hand. Only when slaves became the main dependent labor force was the concept of personal freedom first articulated (in classical Greece), and words were then created or adapted to express that idea. It is literally impossible to translate the word "freedom" directly into ancient Babylonian or classical Chinese, and modern European languages cannot render mushkenum or k'o. The slave as outsider Speculations about the origins of slavery have tended to overlook the specific character of slavery within the broader category of dependent labor. Thus, Nieboer (1900, especially pp. 6-7, 419-430) correctly stresses "division of labor" and scarce resources (including scarce manpower) as necessary conditions, but he misses the point that the needs were usually met in early and traditional societies by such institutions as clientage or helotage rather than by slavery, as they have again been met in many areas in very modern times after the abolition of slavery (Kloosterboer 1960, chapter 14). The slave is an outsider: that alone permits not only his uprooting but also his reduction from a person to a thing which can be owned. Insiders en masse cannot be so totally transformed; no community could survive that. Thus, free Greeks who wished to dispose of unwanted children were compelled to resort to the fiction that they had "exposed" them (that is, abandoned them in a deserted place); the earliest Roman law code explicitly provided that if a Roman were subject to enslavement as a punishment, he had to be sold abroad (Levy-Bruhl 1931); Islamic law always laid down, and usually enforced, the rule that no born Muslim could be enslaved. Any hypothesis about the origins of slavery must therefore explain how and why a given society turned to outsiders either to supplement or to replace its existing labor force. Supplementation on a small scale, such as the retention of female captives, seems both very ancient and very widespread and presents no analytical problems. But the shift to slavery in a fundamental sense, as a substantial labor force employed in production, is a radical step. The explanations cannot be identical in all
SLAVERY instances, because of profound differences in the social structures and economic systems. However, there were always present not only a sufficient material and technical level and a concentration of power which made possible safe procurement of outsiders in sufficient numbers but also the failure, unacceptability, or unavailability of other kinds of labor. The trauma of enslavement, often entailing great physical suffering as well as severe psychological damage, set up a chain reaction in the behavior of both the slaves and their masters, in which the potential or actual employment of naked force was a permanent and inescapable factor (Elkins 1959). These behavior patterns and their underlying psychology were reinforced by the slave's lack of essential human ties of kin and community. Free sexual access to slaves marks them off from all other persons as much as their juridical classification as property. On the other hand, not all societies went as far as the American South in the absolute denial to the slave of a de facto family of his own. There slavery was complete, so to speak, and the slave's deprivation was extended to the next generation; he lost all control not only over his productive activity but also over his reproduction. In consequence, being born into slavery meant being born an outsider, too. Prejudice. Prejudices of color, race, nationality, and religion were deeply involved in slavery, not only as ideological justification but also as influences on its institutional development. "Slavery was not born of racism," writes Williams (1944, p. 7), "rather, racism was the consequence of slavery." However, the question must be asked whether the very idea of enslavement could have been thought of without the extreme distinction between groups, and therefore prejudice, in which "race" in a very loose sense was the criterion. To be sure, Greeks^enslaved Greeks from other city-states, for example, and religious conversion, whether to Christianity or to Islam, did not normally release a slave. Nor did community solidarity always prevent penal bondage from sliding into genuine slavery (Pulleyblank 1958, p. 204). These are minor aberrations, however. If one could compile statistics of the number of slaves throughout history according to their origins, the proportion of racial, national, and religious outsiders would be overwhelming. Prejudice was certainly an important factor in the Southern American colonies when they decreed, in the 1660s, that henceforth all Negroes, but no whites, who were imported should be slaves and not indentured servants. Prejudice had its limits, however. For example,
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it never interfered with sexual relations. It allowed Portuguese officials and missionaries to condone Negro slavery in Brazil while they struggled energetically to emancipate the Amerindians (Boxer 1963, chapter 3; Davis 1966, chapter 8). Slaves drawn from culturally advanced peoples, such as the Hellenized Syrians in Rome, were regularly employed in such occupations as medicine and education. The most remarkable groups of elite slaves—the Mamelukes and Janissaries—illustrate all aspects of the slave outsider. In each generation the Mamelukes were purchased as children outside Islam, were given a rigorous and lengthy religious and military training, and were freed when ready for military service. A closed corps was thus created; their only ties were to themselves and their patron (ex-owner), and their elite position was not transmissible to their own children (Ayalon 1960). Slave supply The procurement of a continuous and numerous supply of slaves depended above all on warfare. In early and simple societies, that usually meant raids by the slave-owning society on its source of supply. Even under more advanced conditions, when societies of more or less equal power and culture adjoined each other, regular warfare and raiding may also have been stimulated, at least in part, by the desire for slaves. However, greater stability of supply and greater numbers were ensured in the New World and even to a considerable extent in ancient and medieval times by a more indirect link with war. Neither Portugal nor England made war regularly in Africa in order to meet the demand in the Americas for slaves. The initial act of capture was left to the Africans themselves or to so-called pirates, as it had been left in antiquity to Scythians, Phrygians, and others. In short, the active cooperation of "native" chieftains and tribesmen was critical, and equally so was the role of professional slave traders as the middlemen. Slave traders often appear as ambiguous figures. The Southern judge who wrote that "the calling of a slavetrader was always hateful, odious, even among slaveholders themselves" (Bancroft [1931] 1959, p. 366) was expressing one common judgment, but not the only one, for in England at the same time "his business was a recognized road to gentility" (Davis 1966, p. 154). In all countries his financial and governmental backers and his customers were thoroughly "respectable" figures in the community, and the high value of his services was always acknowledged. The suggestion that for a century or more the Roman Senate made no seri-
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ous effort to suppress piracy in the eastern Mediterranean is probably sound, just as there can be little doubt about influential, though not unchallenged, support for the extensive illicit trade in slaves which followed British abolition after the Napoleonic Wars. After warfare, breeding was the major source of supply. This is a subject on which much research remains to be done, the results of which will probably confirm the view that no simple generalization is possible. Certainly the often cited "law" that a slave population never reproduces itself is fictitious. In the United States the slaves did better than that, providing a very considerable increase. The question is intimately bound up with many social and economic factors and not with supposedly necessary demographic consequences (biological or otherwise) of the slave status. At one extreme there were conditions such as prevailed in the silvermining district of Athens, where the slaves were almost all males and therefore could not reproduce themselves. At the other extreme there was the systematic, profitable breeding in the poorer regions of the American South (Conrad & Meyer 1958). In between these extremes, there was a great range of possibilities, conditioned by, among other things, the prevailing rules regarding the inheritance of slave status. These rules appear bewildering in their variety, but much the commonest was that the child took the mother's status. The uses of slaves The actual numbers of slaves in any society are rarely known. The American South provides the decisive exception, and there the figures show an upper limit far below the often repeated exaggerations, such as the 400,000 claimed for ancient Athens. In 1860 slightly fewer than one-third of the population of the American slave states were slaves. Furthermore, "nearly three-fourths of all free Southerners had no connection with slavery through either family ties or direct ownership. The 'typical' Southerner was not only a small farmer but also a nonslaveholder" (Stampp 1956, p. 30). What counts in evaluating the place of slavery in any society is, therefore, not absolute totals or proportions, but rather location and function. If the economic and political elite depended primarily on slave labor for basic production, then one may speak of a slave society. It does not matter, in such situations, whether as many as three-fourths were not slaveholders, or whether slavery was fairly widespread outside the elite in domestic or other nonproductive roles. Wherever there are slaves, they will be found in
domestic (and therefore also sexual) roles. Such roles have their own spectrum, ranging from the "drawers of water" and meanest prostitutes to domestics who were occupationally employed by their craftsmen-owners and to eunuchal grand viziers and harem favorites. If, however, this is the social location of most of the slaves, then it must follow that other kinds of dependent (or, on occasion, free) labor together with independent peasants and craftsmen constitute the productive labor force. That was the case in the ancient Near East, China, India, and medieval Europe and Byzantium as well as the Islamic world of the same period, and it is still the case in Saudi Arabia. The economics of slavery. Slavery, then, is transformed as an institution when slaves play an essential role in the economy. Historically that has meant, in the first instance, their role in agriculture. Slavery has been accommodated to the large estate under radically different conditions: the Roman latifundia did not practice the monoculture of the modern plantation, and they existed within an essentially precapitalist economy. However, both types of estate produced for the market, and they both existed alongside widespread free small holding. That both slaves and free men did identical work was irrelevant; what mattered was the condition of the work, or rather, on whose behalf and under what (and whose) controls it was carried on. In slave societies hired labor was rare and slave labor the rule whenever an enterprise was too big for a family to conduct unaided. That rule extended from agriculture to manufacture and mining, and sometimes even to commerce and finance. In this article it is impossible to examine in detail these other uses of slaves, because of all the complexities involved and the extent to which they vary from society to society. A number of variables are involved: the poverty of the soil, as in Athens and other Greek cities; the special position of a particular region within an international network of economic relations, as in the American South; or the special role of the state as a large consumer of manufactures, as in the later Roman and Byzantine empires. As an economic institution, slavery was "profitable"; this can be asserted with confidence, despite frequent attempts to deny it. In the strict sense of the term, the question of profitability does not enter into an evaluation of domestic slaves, court eunuchs and concubines, or Mamelukes. Nor is there any value in hypothetical arguments about whether or not Roman senators could have managed their latifundia even more profitably with some other kind of labor force. They made very large fortunes
SLAVERY for centuries on end, and there is no other way to calculate the economics of slavery in a precapitalist society. As for the American South, it can no longer be seriously questioned that slave plantations were profitable "in a strict accounting sense" (Genovese 1965, p. 280), whatever the effects of slavery on further economic growth within a competitive world economy. In the accounting, it is important to give proper weight to the profitability of slave breeding in the agriculturally poorer regions. In addition, there were the profits of the slave trade, which might or might not accrue to members of the slaveholding society itself. Slaves and masters The difficulties in properly understanding the personality and the psychology of the slave are obvious. Neither the remarks by contemporary writers (whether slaveholders or outside reporters) nor the relatively few documents emanating from slaves themselves can be taken at face value. Yet a special slave psychology must have developed (speaking in group terms, of course). In order to survive as human beings, slaves had to adapt to their new state of deracination by developing new psychological features and new focuses of attachment, including their overseers and masters. Slave elites, whether individual overseers or whole groups of slaves and freedmen (ex-slaves), such as the imperial familia in Rome or the Mamelukes in Egypt, serve to exemplify how far adaptation and acceptance could be pushed under certain conditions. The slave-type—the clever schemer of Greek and Roman comedy or the childlike, indolent, amoral Sambo familiar to American literature and popular humor—is no doubt a stereotype and a caricature, but, as Elkins (1959, chapter 3) has argued, it cannot be a pure invention out of nothing. Slave rebellions. The slave was a "troublesome property" (Stampp 1956, chapter 3). In its most extreme form, "being troublesome" meant revolt, but large-scale revolt is extremely difficult to organize and has, in fact, been a relatively rare phenomenon in the history of slavery. Throughout classical antiquity there were only three revolts of any mark, each involving 100,000 or more slaves, and all concentrated within the short time span of 135-70 B.C. Common to all three were the presence of certain necessary conditions, including a severe breakdown of the social order and the concentration of large numbers of slaves with common nationality, language, and culture, among them men with unusual potentialities of leadership (Vogt 1957). It is important to contrast the ancient chattel slaves with the helots (in Sparta and elsewhere)
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in this respect: the latter were permanently mutinous in an organized way, presumably because they belonged to a class of dependent labor which retained the normal human ties of solidarity with kin and community. The Caribbean throughout the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries was also an area of persistent revolt. In the United States, under conditions which differed above all by being noncolonial, not a single serious revolt ever occurred; for example, the "Turner cataclysm" of 1831 was a purely local affair lasting a few months from its inception (with only three days of actual fighting) and involving only some hundreds of men (Aptheker 1943, chapter 12). "Being troublesome," in sum, usually meant something much less than outright rebellion, such as flight, sabotage, theft, and inefficiency. None of these is expressible in quantitative terms or easy to evaluate. There is American evidence to support the famous judgment of the economist Cairnes (1862) that slave labor was on the lowest level of skill because slaves were both uneducated and uncooperative (Genovese 1965, chapter 2). On the other hand, the possibilities of "loyalty," which is equally immeasurable, cannot be ignored. In contrast to American slaves, the slaves of ancient Greece and Rome were regularly and successfully employed in the most highly skilled occupations. Relative mildness or harshness of treatment cannot be a sufficient explanation of such variations, which must lie deep in the social structure and in psychology. Likewise, variations in the practice of manumission, in the place of freedmen in the society, and in the accompanying psychology require complex explanations. Attitudes of the masters. In the ancient world the institution of slavery was never challenged, despite the notion that it was "contrary to nature." No serious argument was ever put forward for the abolition of slavery in ancient Greece and Rome ( as distinct from relative liberality in freeing individual slaves), on moral or any other grounds; this was also the case in India, China, and the Islamic world. Nor did Christianity change the fundamental attitude after it became the official and more or less universal religion of both the western and eastern halves of the Roman Empire. Slavery declined sharply at the end of antiquity, but for reasons having nothing to do with moral ideas. Furthermore, it was in the Christian states in southern and southwestern Europe that slavery was considerably revived in the late Middle Ages (Verlinden 1955), and it was among the Christian conquerors of the New World that it received its newest and most vigorous re-creation. Paradoxically, it was
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then that the most powerful and persistent claims were put forward for the "naturalness" of slavery, with ample quotation from the Bible, and that moral arguments for the abolition of slavery were fully mustered for the first time. The whole subject of the psychological effects of slavery calls urgently for further investigation— from the side of the masters (including the free poor who themselves owned no slaves) as well as from the side of the slaves. The need to be brutal, ideologically as well as physically, must have had repercussions on the master's psyche. The easy sexual access to slave women influenced all attitudes toward sex and women: witness the quasichivalric ideology of Southern womanhood. Furthermore, the identification of certain forms of physical labor with slavery, including the essential labor in agriculture, had its effects on the free man's choice of employment and on his spirit of enterprise generally. More often than not, the majority of free farmers and craftsmen, out of necessity, performed labor similar to that of the slave. Even then, however, there were subtle effects on the directions into which creative talents and energies were channeled, and there were certain employments into which it was extremely difficult to move the free poor when they were needed. Policy makers in underdeveloped countries are still coming up against just such resistance (McLoughlin 1962), although it usually follows the abolition of forms of dependent labor other than slavery. Slavery and Marxist theory Marxist theory, by its very nature, has assigned a unique historical position to slavery. History is viewed as a progress through a number of stages, each genetically determined within its predecessor and each founded on a particular mode of production (social relations of production), of which one is slavery. In the past half century, in particular, the way in which historical analysis was enmeshed in, not to say dominated by, current political discussions produced among orthodox Marxists a rigid, universal, unilinear scheme of development in five stages: primitive communism, slavery, feudalism, capitalism, and socialism. Even the ancient Near East and ancient China, it was held, were slave societies, and there were persistent but wholly unsuccessful efforts to discover general laws or general features common to all slave societies. However, scattered through Marx's writings down to the early 1860s there are also brief, not fully developed references to an "Asiatic mode of production." His only attempt to examine this systematically was in one section of a bulky manuscript written in 1857-1858 but not published
until 1939-1941 and not widely known before the 1950s. In this sophisticated account, the Asiatic mode of production is characterized as one in which there was no private property in the land and in which a despotic government ruled over the village communities, whose members were in a condition of "general slavery" and who were therefore not slaves in the chattel sense at all. Publication of this work has sparked a very intense new discussion, following a hiatus of nearly a generation (Pecirka 1964). The discussion is still in an early and fluid state, but the general trend seems clear. It is argued that the stages of evolution in European history from which the traditional scheme was constructed do not constitute a model for world history at all but were, on the contrary, a unique development. As a corollary, the "Asiatic" mode of production has been found on other continents as well, for example in Bronze Age Greece and among the Incas. The place of slavery in Marxist theory thus seems to be undergoing a redefinition to fit a multilinear pattern of development. M. I. FlNLEY
[See also ASIAN SOCIETY, article on SOUTHEAST ASIA; INTERNMENT AND CUSTODY.] BIBLIOGRAPHY No serious full-scale history of slavery exists in one book. The books and articles listed here, zvith the bibliographies they include, cover the field quite thoroughly. For classical antiquity, Wallon 1847 is still valuable for its rich documentation. The one modern book on antiquity, Westermann 1955, is recognized to be unsatisfactory; a better, though not systematic, introduction will be found in the 11 articles collected in Finley 1960. For the fullest survey of modern views since the work of David Hume, with a Marxist critique, see Lentsman 1963, Part 1. On the historiography of American slavery, see Elkins 1959, Chapter 1, and the massive literature cited in the notes in Davis 1966; for the neiv discussion initiated by Elkins, see Sio 1965. On the unresolved controversy about Latin American, and especially Brazilian, slavery, see Elkins 1959 for the view that there has been considerable amelioration, as contrasted with North American slavery, and Davis 1966, Chapter 8, for the opposing view. Summaries of current Marxist discussions of the "Asiatic mode of production," with particular reference to slavery, will be found in Pecirka 1964 and Chesneaux 1965, both of whom write as Marxists. An important stimulant of this discussion has been the publication of Marx 1857—1858. APTHEKER, HERBERT 1943 American Negro Slave Revolts. New York: Columbia Univ. Press. AYALON, DAVID 1960 Studies in Al-Jabarti. Part I: Notes on the Transformation of Mamluk Society in Egypt Under the Ottomans. Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient 3:148-174, 275-325. -» Provides references to Ayalon's other articles on the Mamelukes. BANCROFT, FREDERIC (1931) 1959 Slave Trading in the Old South. New York: Ungar. BOXES, CHARLES R. 1963 Race Relations in the Portuguese Colonial Empire: 1415—1825. Oxford: Clarendon.
SLEEP BROWNING, R. 1958 Rabstvo v vizantiiskoi imperil: 600-1200 (Slavery in the Byzantine Empire: 6001200). Vizantiiskii vremennik 14:38-55. BUCKLAND, WILLIAM W. 1908 The Roman Law of Slavery: The Condition of the Slave in Private Law From Augustus to Justinian. Cambridge Univ. Press. CAIRNES, JOHN E. (1862) 1863 The Slave Power: Its Character, Career, and Probable Designs; Being an Attempt to Explain the Real Issues Involved in the American Contest. 3d ed. New York: Carleton. CHANANA, DEV RAJ (1960) 1961 Slavery in Ancient India, as Depicted in Pali and Sanskrit Texts. London: Collet.
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Marx's posthumously published Grundrisse der Kritik der politischen Okonomie. MENDELSOHN, ISAAC 1949 Slavery in the Ancient Near East: A Comparative Study of Slavery in Babylonia, Assyria, Syria and Palestine; From the Middle of the Third Millennium to the End of the First Millennium. Oxford Univ. Press. NIEBOER, HERMAN J. (1900) 1910 Slavery as an Industrial System: Ethnological Researches. The Hague: Nijhoff.
FILLER, Louis (1960) 1963 The Crusade Against Slavery: 1830-1860. New York: Harper.
PECTRKA, J. 1964 Die sowjetischen Diskussionen iiber die asiatische Produktionsweise und iiber die Sklavenhalterformation. Eirene: Studia graeca et latina (Prague) 3:147-169. POKORA, TIMOTEUS 1963 Existierte in China eine Sklavenhaltergesellschaft? Archiv orientdlni 31:353-363. PULLEYBLANK, E. G. 1958 The Origins and Nature of Chattel Slavery in China. Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient 1:185-220. SIEGEL, BERNARD J. 1945 Some Methodological Considerations for a Comparative Study of Slavery. American Anthropologist New Series 47:357-392. Sio, ARNOLD A. 1965 Interpretations of Slavery: The Slave Status in the Americas. Comparative Studies in Society and History 7:289-308.
FINLEY, M. I. (editor) 1960 Slavery in Classical Antiquity: Views and Controversies. Cambridge: Heffer.
STAMPP, KENNETH M. 1956 The Peculiar Institution: Slavery in the Ante-bellum South. New York: Knopf.
FINLEY, M. I. 1964 Between Slavery and Freedom. Comparative Studies in Society and History 6:233249.
URBACH, EFRAIM E. (1960) 1964 The Laws Regarding Slavery as a Source for Social History of the Period of the Second Temple, the Mishnah and Talmud. Volume 1, pages 1-94 in London, Institute of Jewish Studies, Papers of the Institute . . . . Edited by J. G. Weiss. Jerusalem: Hebrew Univ., Magnes Press; distributed by the Oxford Univ. Press. -> First published in Hebrew in the journal Zion. VERLINDEN, CHARLES 1955 L'esclavage dans I'Europe medievale. I: Peninsule iberique-France. Bruges (Belgium): Tempel. VOGT, J. (1957) 1965 Struktur der antiken Sklavenkriege. Pages 20-60 in J. Vogt, Sklaverei und Humanitdt. Historia, Einzelschriften, Heft 8. Wiesbaden (Germany): Steiner.
CHESNEAUX, JEAN 1965 Ou en est la discussion sur le mode de production asiatique? Pensee 122:40-59. CONRAD, ALFRED H.; and MEYER, JOHN R. 1958 The Economics of Slavery in the Ante Bellum South. Journal of Political Economy 66:95-130, 442-443. DAVIS, DAVID BRION 1966 The Problem of Slavery in Western Culture. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell Univ. Press. ELKINS, STANLEY M. (1959) 1963 Slavery: A Problem in American Institutional and Intellectual Life. New York: Universal Library.
GENOVESE, EUGENE D. 1965 The Political Economy of Slavery: Studies in the Economy and Society of the Slave South. New York: Pantheon.
HADJINICOLAOU-MARAVA, ANNE 1950 Recherches sur la vie des esclaves dans le monde byzantin. Athens: L'Institut Francais. KURD, JOHN C. 1858-1862 The Law of Freedom and Bondage in the United States. 2 vols. Boston: Little. IANNI, OCTAVIO 1962 As metamorfoses do escravo: Apogeu e crise da escravatura no Brazil meridional. Sao Paulo (Brazil): Difusao Europeia do Livro. JAMES, CYRIL L. R. (1938) 1963 The Black Jacobins: Toussaint L'Ouverture and the Santo Domingo Revolution. 2d ed. rev. New York: Random House. KLOOSTERBOER, WILLEMINA 1960 Involuntary Labour Since the Abolition of Slavery: A Survey of Compulsory Labour Throughout the World. Leiden (Netherlands): Brill.
LASKER, BRUNO 1950 Human Bondage in Southeast Asia. Chapel Hill: Univ. of North Carolina Press. LENTSMAN, IAKOV A. 1963 Rabstvo v mikenskoi i gomerovskoi Gretsii (Slavery in Mycenaean and Homeric Greece). Moscow: Akademiia Nauk SSSR. -> Translated into German by Maria Brauer-Pospelova as Ja. A. Lencman, Die Sklaverei im mykenischen und homerischen Griechenland, and published in 1966 by Steiner. LEVY-BRUHL, H. (1931) 1960 Theorie de 1'esclavage. Pages 151-169 in M. I. Finley (editor), Slavery in Classical Antiquity: Views and Controversies. Cambridge: Heffer. -» First published as "Esquisse d'une theorie sociologique de 1'esclavage a Rome." MCLOUGHLIN, PETER F. M. 1962 Economic Development and the Heritage of Slavery in the Sudan Republic. Africa 32:355-391. MARX, KARL (1857-1858) 1965 Pre-capitalist Economic Formations. Edited by E. J. Hobsbawm. New York: International Publishers. -> A partial translation of
WADE, RICHARD C. 1964 Slavery in the Cities: The South 1820-1860. Oxford Univ. Press.
WALLON, HENRI (1847) 1879 Histoire de 1'esclavage dans I'antiquite. 2d ed. 3 vols. Paris: Hachette. WESTERMANN, WILLIAM L. 1955 The Slave Systems of Greek and Roman Antiquity. Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society. WILBUR, CLARENCE M. 1943 Slavery in China During the Former Han Dynasty: 206 B.C.-A.D. 25. Field Museum of Natural History, Anthropological Series, Vol. 34. Chicago: The Museum. WILLIAMS, ERIC (1944) 1961 Capitalism and Slavery. New York: Russell & Russell.
SLEEP Historically, there has been concern with two major questions about sleep: What specific mechanisms start, maintain, and terminate sleep? What functions does sleep serve? In addition, there has been considerable interest in the relationship of sleep to learning and performance, as well as in abnormalities of sleep behavior.
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Causes and processes. The oldest theories about the causes of sleep postulated either congestion or anemia of the brain. More recent hypotheses have attributed sleep to arterial anoxemia, endocrine periodicities, functional neural blocks, or the accumulation of fatigue products. Pieron's idea of a "hypnotoxin" that accumulates during waking and is metabolized away during sleep (1913, p. 520) is one of the best-known explanations. A large number of biochemical studies on blood and other body fluids (reviewed by Kleitman 1939) have failed to turn up evidence in support of any of these hypotheses. The anoxia theory was controverted by the finding that the oxygen content of blood was normal during sleep and that cerebral blood flow was actually increased. The toxin theory was seriously challenged by the finding that Siamese twins with a common blood supply failed to show synchronized sleep-wake rhythms. However, knowledge of the biochemical processes taking place within the sleeping brain is not sufficient to accept or reject the causal influence of chemical factors. At present, these and similar theories of the causes of sleep are not in fashion. Electrophysiological mechanisms. Since the 1930s, the development of electrophysiological techniques has facilitated new approaches to the processes of sleep. Interest has focused on the elucidation of the specific brain mechanisms responsible for the onset and termination of sleep. It is now well established that wakefulness results from activity in the ascending reticular system of the brain stem. However, the central mechanisms for the onset and maintenance of sleep are not so well understood. The reticular activating system, which originates in the reticular formation of the lower brain stem and extends upward to the hypothalamus, subthalamus, thalamus, and cortex, receives collaterals from all sensory pathways as well as from the cortex. Stimulation of the reticular system by any of these sources or by such biological products as norepinephrine is accompanied by behavioral activation and alertness. Arousal is usually sustained after removal of the stimulus. Lack of stimuli or lack of stimulus variation has soporific effects. [See NERVOUS SYSTEM, article on STRUCTURE AND FUNCTION OF THE BRAIN.]
Since the publication of Kleitman's evolutionary theory of sleep, most physiologists have accepted the "stimulus deficiency" explanation of sleep (1939). The onset and maintenance of sleep are said to be a result of reduced afferent stimulation that deprives the cortex of its sensory raw material. The resulting "deactivation" of the reticular system is, indeed, an important sleep-inducing
mechanism. Everyday experience indicates that in man and animals the preparations for sleep include the suppression of external stimuli. Destruction of the reticular system produces sleep as well as electroencephalographic (EEC) patterns indicative of sleep. More recent evidence, however, does not fully support this view of sleep as a passive phenomenon. In fact, it strongly suggests the existence of active, sleep-producing mechanisms in the central nervous system. Low-frequency stimulation of several brain locations from the lower brain stem to the thalamus produces sleep, in contrast to the arousing effects caused by high-frequency electrical stimulation of the reticular system. Barbiturate infusion at most brain levels induces sleep, but at some locations induces waking. It is true that changes in the internal milieu, such as reduced blood pressure and low body temperature, contribute to sleep and that familiar or unchanging external stimuli favor sleep, but these conditions are not sufficient to maintain sleep. There is behavioral and physiological evidence to support the hypothesis that there are two mechanisms in the brain for the control of sleep and waking: an activating and a deactivating system. The many degrees of wakefulness and sleep probably result from complex interactions between these two systems, involving the interplay of numerous structures in the nervous system. The sleep-wake rhythms. Most living things show alternating activity and quiescence in response to the alternation of day and night. Higher animals show polyphasic or monophasic and diurnal or nocturnal patterns, depending on their adaptive requirements. These "circadian" (circa, dies) rhythms seem to be determined primarily by internal mechanisms but usually can be "reset" by environmental pacemakers, such as night and day. Some biological cycles are remarkably persistent, whereas others are easily modified by environmental changes. The cerebral cortex may have a unique role in the maintenance of sustained sleep and waking. All animals capable of adjusting their sleep—wake cycles to the monophasic diurnal rhythm of man have a well-developed cortex. Removal of the cortex in such animals causes reversion to polyphasic sleep cycles. The sleep-wake cycles of rats, rabbits, puppies, and human infants are polyphasic. Monkeys and higher mammals, as well as many birds, have monophasic diurnal cycles. Attempts to modify the diurnal rhythm in man include two types of manipulation: alteration of the phase and alteration of the period of the sleep-wake cycle. The phases of sleep
SLEEP and waking can be easily modified (as in shifts to night work), but attempts to alter the 24-hour period to days of 12, 48, 21, or 28 hours have had only limited success. Some subjects adjusted to 21-hour or 28-hour days, but none adjusted to 12-hour or 48-hour cycles. A practical requirement for readjusting the phases of sleep and waking occurs when travelers move across lines of longitude. World travelers (especially on long-distance flights) experience phase-shift asynchrony in the day-night cycle, which may cause emotional distress and impaired performance. It seems that about two weeks are needed for a complete diurnal readjustment of physiological rhythms. A number of physiological rhythms vary with man's sleep-wake cycle. Among these are heart rate, skin resistance, and muscle tonus. One measure of considerable interest is the diurnal temperature cycle. Temperature is normally maximal by day and at its lowest in the early hours of the morning. Several studies have shown that performance efficiency, especially speed, is highly correlated with the temperature cycle. The diurnal variation of both temperature and efficiency are probably related to the establishment of a circadian rhythm of excitement in the reticular system and hypothai amus. Prolonged disregard of normal biological rhythms may lead to genuine, although poorly understood, "rhythm diseases" anchored in disturbed autonomic functioning. [See TIME, article On PSYCHOLOGICAL ASPECTS.]
Sleep seems to be a parasympathetic phenomenon. During normal sleep, general metabolism slows down. Heat production and body temperature decrease, heart rate and respiration decrease, blood pressure is lowered, and CO2 tension increases. Kleitman (1939) has pointed out, however, that most of these changes could be simply a consequence of the prone position or of muscle relaxation, independent of sleep. Physiological cycling during sleep. During the waking state, the resting normal human with eyes closed usually displays a continuous EEC pattern of 8 to 12 cycles per second, which is known as the "alpha" rhythm. As he drifts into sleep, the alpha rhythm disappears and is replaced by a low-voltage pattern with irregular frequency. During this phase, thresholds for responding to environmental stimuli are about the same as those in the waking state. As sleep continues, the background EEC voltage becomes higher and the frequency of the rhythms decreases, until the deepest stages of sleep are reached. In the deepest stages, the EEC record is composed of low-frequency, high-voltage "delta" rhythms, and it is very difficult to waken the subject. Approximately 90 minutes after the onset of
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sleep, the high-voltage patterns disappear and are replaced by a low-voltage irregular phase similar to that seen at the beginning of sleep. This cycle of alternating slow high-voltage and faster low-voltage rhythms recurs with a period of about 90 minutes. The emergent low-voltage pattern has commonly been believed to be a "light" phase of sleep, but recent experiments show that thresholds for awakening are often very high during this stage. [See NERVOUS SYSTEM, article on ELECTROENCEPHALOGRAPHY.]
Other physiological measures also suggest a 90-minute period as a unit of sleep time. Changes in such physiological and behavioral variables as skin conductivity, heart rate, breathing rhythms, eye movements, and reports of dreaming occur cyclically and in phase with the EEC cycle. Increased heart rate, rapid eye movements, and reports of dreaming occur during the low-voltage phase. The EEC of cats, rats, and monkeys also show alternating slow high-voltage and fast low-voltage patterns during sleep. Jouvet (1961) has shown that the high-voltage phase in cats is controlled by cortical mechanisms, and the low-voltage phase by pontine and limbic structures. EEC recordings obtained simultaneously from deep brain structures, cortex, and scalp suggest that in the cat the lowvoltage phase of sleep involves hindbrain "sleep" and forebrain "wakefulness." The stage is accompanied by inhibition of motor activity, reduced heart rate and blood pressure, very high thresholds for awakening, and rapid eye movements. There is evidence, then, that during the low-voltage "dreaming" stage of sleep at least part of the brain is highly activated. But the very high response thresholds to auditory and other stimuli are difficult to interpret. Some studies show that auditory stimuli that warn of immediate and severe consequences are responded to in this stage as readily as in the other low-voltage phases of sleep. Thus, during dreaming the subject appears to be controlled by interoceptive stimuli and seems to block out external signals unless they have poignant significance. The cyclical sequence of EEG patterns of sleep in man appears to be quite stable, both from night to night and from subject to subject. Disturbance of these patterns by "deprivation" of either highvoltage or low-voltage EEG phases causes increasing amounts of the disturbed phase to appear on succeeding nights, as if compensation were necessary. Continued deprivation of the low-voltage "dreaming" phase causes irritability and unease. Sleep loss and biological functions. Is sleep a vital function? One way to test this is to deprive an organism of sleep. Several animal studies have shown that prolonged loss of sleep results in death.
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A number of human subjects have stayed awake 200 hours or more without sustaining serious physical damage, but after 120 hours without sleep, most subjects developed reversible delirious or psychotic states characterized by visual hallucinations, delusions of persecution, disorientation, and confusion. The psychosis of sleep deprivation, which disappears after normal sleep, is a model mental illness that has considerable significance for experimental psychiatry. If sleep plays a vital role in biological survival and psychological health, precisely what is this role? It has been suggested that sleep has three main functions: (a) restoring metabolic balance, (£>) permitting recovery from muscular fatigue, (c) aiding neural reorganization. With few exceptions, studies of sleep loss have not given positive support to any of these hypotheses. Most systems of the body hold up remarkably well with loss of sleep. Metabolic effects. One recent study of sleep loss, however (Luby et al. 1960), has shown striking metabolic effects. After the fourth day of sleep deprivation there was evidence of a drastic breakdown in the manufacture of adenosine triphosphate (ATP), the substance that provides energy for a host of biological processes. Thus, the highenergy transfer systems of cell metabolism showed gross impairment. This metabolic dysfunction was accompanied by rapid deterioration in personality and performance. These findings are congruent with the hypothesis that the catabolic processes that predominate during the waking state are compensated for during sleep; that sleep permits the restoration of energy and anabolic compensation. Effect on performance. During sleep loss the subject shows deficits in performance that are similar to those observed with fatigue. The deficit takes the form of lapses (brief periods of poor performance), which in the sleep-deprived subject are accompanied by extreme drowsiness, intrusive thoughts, visual illusions, and dreams. They are preceded and accompanied by a slowing of heart rate, breathing, and EEC rhythms. Lapses increase in frequency, duration, and depth as the period without sleep progresses until the subject reaches a kind of hypnagogic state in which the background EEC pattern resembles a light phase of sleep. The frequency of lapses during sleep loss is increased by monotony or by prolonged performance and is decreased by incentive. The main effects of these brief periods of extreme drowsiness are slowed reactions. The subject is usually able to sustain accuracy if given sufficient time. Tasks extremely sensitive to sleep loss are those that are prolonged,
repetitive, and work-paced, impose a high speedload, and provide low incentive (Williams et al. 1959). As sleep loss increases, other mental functions are affected. For example, the ability to store and retrieve new information is greatly impaired. Finally, when most data-processing functions are seriously debased, the subject becomes psychotic. Some goal-directed, sequential, and rational behavior remains, however. Even after seven days of sleep deprivation, subjects can pull themselves together for shortrterm problem-solving and can carry out well-learned, perhaps automatic, sensorymotor tasks. Performance decrement and personality aberrations during sleep loss follow the diurnal temperature cycle. Effectiveness reaches a low point late at night (when body temperature is at its lowest) and improves during the next day, even though the amount of sleep loss has increased. Interaction with other stress. There are at present very few reports on the combined effects of sleep loss and other types of stress. The available studies indicate that the effects are not readily predictable from a knowledge of the independent effects of each form of stress. For example, Wilkinson (1963) has shown that high-intensity background noise normally causes impaired performance on vigilance and choice reaction-time tasks. But the degrading effect of noise is reduced after a night of sleep loss. Apparently, noise and sleep deprivation produce different types of fatigue. With sleep loss, the level of stimulation required for arousal is too low; with noise, it may be too high. Similar complexities appear in studies that combine raised body temperature with sleep loss. Recent unpublished studies suggest that for the sleep-deprived subject a moderate increase in body temperature (say, one degree) improves performance, but that higher temperatures act synergistically with sleep deprivation to cause severe decrement in both speed and accuracy. Fatigue at skilled tasks. The word "fatigue" usually refers to the changes in muscle metabolism that occur with prolonged exertion. A vast amount of research has been done on this topic, but it will not be discussed in this article. There are, however, many prolonged tasks requiring very little muscular effort, during which performance declines and the subjects report fatigue. The general nature of impairment at such tasks was first described by Bills (1931). He observed that performance did not decline as a simple function of time at the task, but instead became increasingly uneven. Adequate performance was interrupted from time to
SLEEP time by "blocks," or brief periods of no response, which increased in frequency and duration with continued mental work. Bills attributed mental blocks to "a recurrent low condition of mental functioning." [See FATIGUE.] In recent years the prototype task for the study of prolonged performance has been the so-called vigilance test. During such a task, an observer watches or listens for long periods for critical signals that occur from time to time in a background of neutral signals. Radar and sonar operations are practical examples of such tasks. During the course of an hour's performance, the proportion of signals missed is low at first, but after 15 to 30 minutes increases rapidly. These errors of omission are increased by monotony, by distraction, and by states of physiological depression such as those caused by sleepiness, low oxygen pressure, high nitrogen pressure, and tranquilizing drugs. Performance improves under incentive, and the drug amphetamine largely prevents the decline in efficiency. Thus the effects of prolonged performance are similar to those seen with sleep loss. Presumably, the decrement is due to recurrent periods of lowered cerebral vigilance. It is not certain whether these phases represent increased distractibility or simply drowsiness, or both. Very few studies have used continuous physiological monitoring during prolonged performance, but the available reports suggest that the physiological changes accompanying performance decrement are similar to those that accompany the lapses of sleep deprivation. [See ATTENTION.] Learning and performance during sleep. There is no convincing evidence that learning can occur during sleep. The sleeping state seems to be incompatible with many forms of cognitive behavior. Simon and Emmons (1955) in a well-controlled series of experiments showed by continuous EEC monitoring that humans failed to learn items of information during actual sleep. Their results challenge all earlier studies purporting to show that learning can be induced during sleep, and they cast great doubt on the claims of numerous commercial enterprises that advertise sleep-learning methods. However, negative results in one well-controlled study do not prove that all forms of learning are impossible in the sleeping state. Failure to induce learning may have been due to procedural problems. Simon and Emmons used only one night of training. There was no effort to "shape" complex responses from simpler behavior or to elucidate the precise stimulus attributes, incentive conditions, and response requirements that might be compatible with the sleeping state. The cyclic rise and fall
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of EEC activation patterns during sleep suggests that there may be some phases of sleep in which learning is possible. The ancient observation that some discrimination is possible in sleep has been confirmed by recent experiments. Cats are capable of remarkably fine discrimination of auditory signals while asleep. Humans can discriminate between complex auditory patterns, make appropriate motor and physiological responses to conditioned stimuli, respond differentially to warning signals and neutral signals, and perform well-learned motor sequences without awakening. Sleep disorders and sleep therapy. The many abnormalities of sleep are well known. They include excessive sleep, inability to sleep, restless sleep, nightmares, bed-wetting, sleep paralysis, and other problems. Neurologists classify sleep disorders under three headings: hypersomnia, insomnia, and nocturnal behavioral symptoms. All three can occur with brain disease or with psychological etiology. Hypersomnia. Narcolepsy is a condition of hypersomnia characterized by sudden sleep seizures at inappropriate times. The syndrome also includes sleep paralysis and cataplexy. The irresistible desire to sleep may occur several times daily, especially after heavy meals, during periods of low body temperature, or during monotonous activity. The duration of sleep varies from a few seconds to several hours. Hypnagogic hallucinations often precede and accompany the attacks of sleep. Narcolepsy occurs in both idiopathic and symptomatic forms and may follow a chronic course for as long as forty years. Recently, a genetic factor has been identified in a group of patients with idiopathic narcolepsy (Yoss & Daly 1960). The idiopathic form usually appears during adolescence and is more common among males. The condition can be treated symptomatically with analeptic drugs. Insomnia. Insomnia, or hyposomnia, is also associated with a variety of pathological states including brain tumor, metabolic disease, circulatory disorders, and aging. It is a common precursor of acute schizophrenic reactions and, of course, accompanies general emotional upset, depression, or anxiety. The hyposomnia may occur at the onset, during, or at the termination of sleep. Clinical observers have reported that difficulty in falling asleep is a common symptom in anxiety neuroses, whereas frequent and early awakening from sleep is a classic feature of depressive illnesses. Insomnia is usually a difficult treatment problem, although drugs, psychotherapy, and relaxation-training are often effective.
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Nocturnal behavioral symptoms. Behavioral symptoms during sleep—including night terrors, sleep-walking, enuresis, grinding of teeth, delirium, and nightmares—can occur with specific disorders of the nervous system or as transient symptoms in normal individuals. All of these abnormalities may have some connection with aberrations of normal dreaming. Nearly all involve dreamlike activity and tend to occur during low-voltage EEC phases. Sleep therapy. Sleep can be learned as a response in order to reduce anxiety. Since the excessive sleeper may use sleep to "narcotize" anxiety, it may be supposed that sleep would be useful as an adjunct to psychotherapy. Sleep therapy was first used in Switzerland, but it has achieved greatest popularity in the Soviet Union. As a consequence of Pavlov's theories, prolonged sleep is used to "protect" the brain during mental illness. It is said to be most effective in cases of catatonic excitement, depression, and acute anxiety, but no controlled experimental studies were located. [See MENTAL DISORDERS, TREATMENT OF, article on SOMATIC TREATMENT.]
Conclusion. Since the first comprehensive summary of sleep and wakefulness by Kleitman (1939) there has been a considerable increase in scientific interest in the problem. At that time there were about thirteen hundred references in the literature. There are now more than four thousand. Research activity is much greater, however, in neurophysiology than in psychology or other disciplines-. Psychologists for the most part seem to have taken the transition from waking to sleep as a natural boundary for the study of behavior. Sleep, however, is not behaviorally empty. Even in deepest sleep subjects retain responsiveness to external stimuli. This finding that a considerable amount of behavior can be induced during sleep raises some interesting problems for both psychologists and neurophysiologists. If sleep is not, behaviorally, a silent state, what limits does sleep impose on the organization of behavior? If the pattern and meaning of auditory signals can be recognized by the sleeping subject, how are we to define sleep? How is the central nervous system organized during the sleeping state? A few answers have been suggested to the fundamental questions raised by the identification of similar cyclic patterns of sleep in man and animals. The discovery of the physiological correlates of dreaming permitted the development of entirely new concepts relating animal to human subjective states. But as research increases, questions multiply. Do animals dream? Is the dreaming phase in man under the control of the limbic system? What organizing concept in neurophysiology will ac-
count for the simultaneous high activation levels and high response threshold seen in the emergent low-voltage stage of sleep? The age-old questions of the causes of sleep, the biological functions of sleep, the neural and humoral mechanisms of sleep, the effects of distributed sleep, and the modifiability of the sleep-wake cycle are only partially answered. Clearly, research on the psychological, physiological, and social properties of sleep has important implications for all of the life sciences. There are practical reasons, too, for the brisk developments in this field. The requirements of space flight, of modern industry, and of military operations put the subjects of sleep and waking, and of biological rhythms in general, into challenging perspective. HAROLD L. WILLIAMS [See also DREAMS and FATIGUE. Other relevant material may be found in HYPNOSIS; MENTAL DISORDERS, article on BIOLOGICAL ASPECTS; NERVOUS SYSTEM, articles on STRUCTURE AND FUNCTION OF THE BRAIN and ELECTROENCEPHALOGRAPHY.] BIBLIOGRAPHY
BARTLEY, SAMUEL H.; and CHUTE, E. 1947 Fatigue and Impairment in Man, New York: McGraw-Hill. BILLS, ARTHUR G. 1931 Blocking: A New Principle of Mental Fatigue. American Journal of Psychology 43: 230-245. CIBA FOUNDATION FOR THE PROMOTION OF INTERNATIONAL COOPERATION IN MEDICAL AND CHEMICAL RESEARCH 1961 Symposium on the Nature of Sleep. Edited by G. E. W. Wolstenholme and Maeve O'Connor. Boston: Little. COUNCIL FOR INTERNATIONAL ORGANIZATIONS OF MEDICAL SCIENCES 1954 Brain Mechanisms and Consciousness. Proceedings of a conference held at Ste. Marguerite, Quebec, Canada, August, 1953. Edited by Edgar D. Adrian et al. Oxford: Blackwell; Springfield, 111.: Thomas. HENRY FORD HOSPITAL, DETROIT 1958 Reticular Formation of the Brain: Symposium. Edited by Herbert H. Jasper et al. Boston: Little. JOUVET, M. 1961 Telencephalic and Rhombencephalic Sleep in the Cat. Pages 188-208 in Ciba Foundation, Symposium on the Nature of Sleep. Edited by G. E. W. Wolstenholme and Maeve O'Connor. Boston: Little. KLEITMAN, NATHANIEL (1939) 1963 Sleep and Wakefulness. Rev. & enl. ed. Univ. of Chicago Press. LINDSLEY, DONALD B. 1960 Attention, Consciousness, Sleep and Wakefulness. Volume 3, pages 1553-1593 in Handbook of Physiology. Section 1: Neurophysiology. Edited by H. W. Magoun et al. Baltimore: Williams & Wilkins. LOBASHEV, M. E.; and SAVVATEEV, V. B. 1959 Fiziologiia sutochnogo ritma zhivotnykh (Physiology of Circadian Rhythms in Animals). Moscow and Leningrad: Izdatel'stvo Akademii Nauk SSSR. LUBY, ELLIOT D. et al 1960 Sleep Deprivation: Effects on Behavior, Thinking, Motor Performance and Biological Energy Transfer Systems. Psychosomatic Medicine 22:182-192.
SLUTSKY, EUGEN OSWALD, IAN 1962 Sleeping and Waking: Physiology and Psychology. Amsterdam and New York: Elsevier. PIERON, HENRI 1913 Le probleme physiologique du sommeil. Paris: Masson. SIMON, CHARLES W.; and EMMONS, WILLIAM H. 1955 Learning During Sleep? Psychological Bulletin 52: 328-343. WILKINSON, ROBERT T. 1963 Interaction of Noise With Knowledge of Results and Sleep Deprivation. Journal of Experimental Psychology 66:332-337. WILLIAMS, HAROLD L.; LUBIN, A.; and GOODNOW, J. J. 1959 Impaired Performance With Acute Sleep Loss. Psychological Monographs 73, no. 14:1-26. WOLF, WILLIAM (editor) 1962 Rhythmic Functions in the Living Systems. New York Academy of Sciences, Annals 98:753-1326. Yoss, ROBERT E.; and DALY, DAVID D. 1960 Hereditary Aspects of Narcolepsy. American Neurological Association, Transactions [I960]:239-240.
SLUTSKY, EUGEN Eugen Slutsky, or Evgenii Evgenievich Slutskii (1880-1948), Russian economist, statistician, and mathematician, was born in Yaroslavl province, the son of a schoolteacher. He entered the University of Kiev as a student of mathematics in 1899 but was expelled three years later for revolutionary activities. From 1903 to 1905 he studied engineering at the Institute of Technology in Munich. After the revolution of 1905 he returned to Russia, obtaining a degree in law from the University of Kiev in 1911. For a while he taught jurisprudence in a technical college, but he became interested in political economy and in 1918 he received a degree in that subject and became a professor at the Kiev Institute of Commerce. In 1926 he left Kiev for Moscow to join the Kon'iunkturnyi Institut (i.e., the Institute for the Study of Business Cycles). From 1931 to 1934 he was on the staff of the Central Institute of Meteorology. Moscow State University conferred an honorary degree in mathematics on him in 1934. From that time until his death he held an appointment at the Mathematical Institute of the Academy of Sciences of the Soviet Union. One of Slutsky's first published works was his famous article on the theory of consumer behavior (1915). Slutsky here developed some ideas of F. Y. Edgeworth's and Vilfredo Pareto's on the relationship between the utility function and prices, income, and consumption. His main achievement was to show that, with money income fixed, any change in the price of a commodity can be divided into two parts. The first part is the change in relative prices, with real (not money) income fixed. This is called the substitution effect; the consumer maintains approximately a given indifference level.
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The second part is the balance of the price change (a proportional shift in all prices), which can be translated into an equivalent change in money income, with prices constant, causing a variation in real income. This is called the income effect; the consumer shifts from one indifference level to another. The two effects turn out to be independent and additive ("Slutsky's relation"). The distinction drawn between the substitution effect and the income effect is often left ambiguous. There is a choice as to whether to define the holding of real income fixed as (a) holding the consumer's utility fixed, or (£>) holding a Lespeyre measure of the purchasing power of his money income fixed. Slutsky clearly uses (a) in his mathematical analysis and (b} in his verbal explanation. The difference is, however, of the second order of smalls and unimportant when considering small changes in price. (For a further discussion of this point, see Mosak 1942.) Although in R. D. G. Allen's opinion (1950) the present theory of consumer behavior is as much a development of Slutsky's work as of Pareto's, Slutsky's paper attracted no attention until Allen discovered it in the mid-1930s (1936). In his later years Slutsky did very little work in pure economics but made a considerable contribution to mathematical statistics and the theory of probability. His first paper on this subject, "On the Criterion of Goodness of Fit of the Regression Lines and on the Best Method of Fitting Them to the Data" (1913), was written eight years before the work of R. A. Fisher on the same subject. Slutsky was interested in the problem of formalizing the theory of probability. In the article "Uber stochastische Asymptoten und Grenzwerte" (1925) he examined the accurate definition of the concept of asymptotic convergence in probability, and so made an important contribution to the theory of probability (see also 1928; 1938). Slutsky was one of the originators of the theory of stochastic processes. In his work "The Summation of Random Causes as the Source of Cyclic Processes" (1927) he proved that the "periodical" oscillations in economic, meteorological, and other time series do not necessarily show the presence of any underlying periodic cause; such oscillations are typical of all serially correlated random sequences, including those which result from taking a moving sum in a sequence of mutually independent, purely random quantities. By repeatedly smoothing such sequences, one can obtain a new sequence, which will in any limited period of time be closely approximated (with probability one) by a sine curve. This effect of averaging random
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series was studied by Slutsky independently of G. U. Yule. Slutsky's study of stochastic processes centered on serial, or lag, correlation, that is, correlation between two members of a time series separated by a fixed time interval. In many important applications serial correlation depends only on interval length, not on position along the time series. The concept of serial correlation has broad applications in many branches of science and technology, including radio engineering. Slutsky's theory was generalized by A. Khinchin (1934). Slutsky wrote several articles on the estimation of parameters of stochastic processes. His complete works on the theory of probability and mathematical statistics have been published (see Izbrannye trudy ). In the last years of his life Slutsky studied the problem of computing tables for functions of several variables. This work resulted in the posthumous publication of Tablitsy dlia vychisleniia nepolnoi Y-funktsii i funktsii veroiatnosti x~ (Tables for the Computation of the Incomplete F-function and the x2 Probability Distribution; 1950). A. A. KONUS [For the historical context of Slutsky's work, see the biographies of EDGEWORTH and PARETO; for discussion of the subsequent development of Slutsky's ideas, see TIME SERIES; UTILITY.] WORKS BY SLUTSKY
1913
On the Criterion of Goodness of Fit of the Regression Lines and on the Best Method of Fitting Them to the Data. Journal of the Royal Statistical Society 77:78-84. -» Published in Russian in 1960 in Izbrannye trudy (Selected Works). 1915 Sulla teoria del bilancio del consumatore. Giornale degli economisti 3d Series 51:1-26. -» Published in Russian in 1963 by the Akademiia Nauk SSSR, in Economiko-matematicheskie melody, Volume 1. 1925 tiber stochastische Asymptoten und Grenzwerte. Metron 5, no. 3:3-89. -> Published in Russian in 1960 in Izbrannye trudy. (1927) 1937 The Summation of Random Causes as the Source of Cyclic Processes. Econometrica 5:105—146. -» First published in Russian. Reprinted in 1960 in Izbrannye trudy. 1928 Sur les fonctions eventuelles continuees, integrables et derivables dans le sens stochastique. Academic des Sciences, Paris, Comptes rendus hebdomadaires des seances 187:878-880. -» Published in Russian in 1960 in Izbrannye trudy. 1938 Sur les fonctions aleatoires presque periodiques et sur la decomposition des fonctions aleatoires stationnaires en composantes. Pages 33-55 in Collogue consacre a la theorie des probabilites. Part 5: Les fonctions aleatoires, by S. Bernstein, E. Slutsky, and H. Steinhaus. Actualites scientifiques et industrielles, No. 738. Paris: Hermann. -> Published in Russian in 1960 in Izbrannye trudy.
1950
Tablitsy dlia vychisleniia nepolnoi T-funktsii i funktsii veroiatnosti % 2 . Edited by A. N. Kolmorgorov. Moscow: Akademiia Nauk SSSR. -» Published posthumously. Izbrannye trudy: Teoriia veroiatnostei, matematicheskaia statistika. Moscow: Akademiia Nauk SSSR, 1960. -> Contains papers originally published between 1913 and 1938., SUPPLEMENTARY BIBLIOGRAPHY
ALLEN, R. D. G. 1936 Professor Slutsky's Theory of Consumers' Choice. Review of Economic Studies 3:120129. -» A summary of Slutsky's 1915 article on consumer behavior. ALLEN, R. D. G. 1950 The Work of Eugen Slutsky. Econometrica 18:209-216. -» Includes a bibliography on pages 214-216. KHINCHIN, A. 1934 Korrelationstheorie der stationaren stochastischen Prozesse. Mathematische Annalen 109: 604-615. MOSAK, JACOB 1942 On the Interpretation of the Fundamental Equation of Value Theory. Pages 69-74 in Chicago, University of, Department of Economics, Studies in Mathematical Economics and Econometrics in Memory of Henry Schultz. Edited by Oskar Lange, Francis Mclntyre, and Theodore O. Yntema. Univ. of Chicago Press.
SMALL, ALBION W. Albion Woodbury Small (1854-1926) did more than any other American sociologist to establish the recognition of sociology as an academic subject, and he shared with Lester F. Ward and Franklin H. Giddings the leading role in defining the scope and status of sociology among the social sciences. Like many sociologists at the turn of the century, Small was initially trained in theology, but in his case that training had been greatly broadened and secularized before he began to teach sociology. After graduating from Colby College in 1876 and from the Baptist Newton Theological Seminary in 1879, he spent two years studying at Berlin and Leipzig. There he was deeply influenced by such historical economists as Gustav Schmoller and by such welfare economists as Adolf Wagner and Albert Schaffle. He read Karl Marx with sympathy but never became a convert. After returning to America, Small taught history and political science for several years at Colby before obtaining a doctorate in 1889 from the Johns Hopkins University. There he specialized in history and political science but was impressed by welfare economics as taught by Richard T. Ely; sociology was not offered at Hopkins at that time. The influence of the welfare economists and admiration for Ward led Small to find the ultimate justifica-
SMALL, ALBION W. tion of sociology in its stimulation and guidance of sound social planning and in its development of a reliable body of secular social ethics. Establishing sociology as a profession. In 1889 Small became president of Colby and remained there until 1892, when he was appointed to the first chair of sociology in the United States, at the newly founded University of Chicago. There he built the first, and long the best, department of sociology in the United States, appointing in the early years George E. Vincent, W. I. Thomas, Charles R. Henderson, and, somewhat later, Robert E. Park and Ernest W. Burgess. With Vincent, Small wrote the first sociology textbook, published in 1894. Continuing as chairman of the sociology department until his retirement in 1925, Small also served as dean of the graduate school after 1905. Throughout his academic career, he was respected not only as an administrator but also as a conscientious and informative teacher. Small founded the American Journal of Sociology in 1895 and edited it for the next 30 years. It was long the only substantial sociological journal in the United States and for that time the best in the world. Through this medium Small exerted a dominant influence in extending academic and public interest in sociology as well as in raising the standards for sociological literature. He did much to familiarize young scholars with German sociology, an ever more important service as the number of Americans studying for their doctorates in Germany decreased. Small helped to establish the American Sociological Society in 1905 and served as its president from 1912 to 1913. Until his retirement he was one of the most energetic leaders of the society, assuming the task of editing and publishing the Annual Proceedings of its meetings. He was also prominent in international sociological activities and served as president of the Institut International de Sociologie in 1922. Contributions to sociology as a discipline. Although Small may ultimately be remembered for his lifelong campaign to establish sociology as a valid field of academic endeavor rather than for his intellectual contributions, the development of his ideas nevertheless exemplifies a general trend in sociology during his lifetime. This trend, as Small assessed it, was a transition from primary attention on relatively static social structures to a dynamic and functional analysis of social processes. In his 1894 textbook he had shown much interest in the social organism analogies that were so popular in the early period of sociology, but through his later work he became by far the most important American figure in promoting the recog-
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nition and elucidation of the concept of the social process. The basic raw material of the social process is, according to Small, group activities. Group activities tend to be based on elemental human interests, and the inevitable conflict of these interests provides the dynamics of the social process. This conception of Small's was first shaped by his reading of Marx and by his studies under Wagner and Schaffle which emphasized the economic pressures that produce social reconstruction. Small had also read the earlier books of Ludwig Gumplowicz, which stressed the conflict of social groups, but was repelled by Gumplowicz's naturalistic evolutionism, which maintained that mankind could not provide for the betterment of social conditions. Small believed that conflicts could be accommodated and anarchy prevented if the conflicts were carried out under the authoritative supervision of the state, which adjudicates group antagonisms. As early as 1893 Small had constructed a comprehensive schedule of the human interests that emerge in comparable forms of group manifestations. While he was still developing this idea, he came into contact with Wesen und Zweck der Politik (1893), by Gustav Ratzenhofer, the learned Austrian general who was also a social philosopher. Small's attempt to fuse his own views with those of Ratzenhofer was already evident by 1903, and when he published his General Sociology (1905), the fusion was virtually complete. Although General Sociology is widely considered to be the mature expression of Small's doctrine of the dynamic role of the conflict of interests, many of his students contend that he presented the subject in a more complete and intriguing manner in his famous lectures on "The Conflict of Classes," which, unfortunately, were never published. Small's contribution to sociological methodology, which he considered vitally important, has come to be virtually ignored; sociology has since turned toward a more quantitative approach. He was very concerned with defining the scope and objectives of sociology, outlining the main subdivisions of the field and stating its fundamental ethical goals. Small made significant contributions to social science outside the field of formal sociology, especially to political science and economics. His conception of the state as the mediator of conflicting group interests inspired Arthur F. Bentley's famous The Process of Government, perhaps the most important American contribution to political theory in the twentieth century. Several of Small's books contributed to the development of institutional economics (1907; 1909; 1913; 1924). His
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vigorous critique of the capitalist system was influenced not only by Marxism and the early welfare economists but also by his (temporary) Chicago colleague Thorstein Veblen and even more by Werner Sombart. It is not surprising that Small's wide-ranging acquaintance with the various social sciences should have led him, toward the end of his career, to be increasingly interested in promoting and encouraging their synthesis. HARRY ELMER BARNES [For the historical context of Small's work, see ECONOMIC THOUGHT, article on THE INSTITUTIONAL SCHOOL; SOCIAL PROBLEMS; and the biographies of ELY; GUMPLOWICZ; MARX; RATZENHOFER; SCHMOLLER; SOMBART; VEBLEN; WAGNER; WARD, LESTER F. For discussion of the subsequent development of his ideas, see the biographies of BENTLEY; BURGESS; OGBURN.] WORKS BY SMALL 1894 SMALL, ALBION W.; and VINCENT, GEORGE E. An Introduction to the Study of Society. New York: American Book Company. 1905 General Sociology: An Exposition of the Main Development of Sociological Theory From Spencer to Ratzenhofer. Univ. of Chicago Press. 1907 Adam Smith and Modern Sociology: A Study in the Methodology of the Social Sciences. Univ. of Chicago Press. 1909 The Cameralists: The Pioneers of German Social Polity. Univ. of Chicago Press. 1910 The Meaning of Social Science. Univ. of Chicago Press. 1913 Between Eras From Capitalism to Democracy. Kansas City, Mo.: Inter-collegiate Press. 1916 Fifty Years of Sociology in the United States (18651915). American Journal of Sociology 21:721-864. 1924 Origins of Sociology. Univ. of Chicago Press. SUPPLEMENTARY BIBLIOGRAPHY
BARNES, HARRY E. 1926 The Place of Albion Woodbury Small in Modern Sociology. American Journal of Sociology 32:15-44. BARNES, HARRY E. 1948 Albion Woodbury Small: Promoter of American Sociology and Expositor of Social Interests. Pages 766-792 in Harry E. Barnes (editor), An Introduction to the History of Sociology. Univ. of Chicago Press. GOODSPEED, THOMAS W. 1926 Albion Woodbury Small. American Journal of Sociology 32:1-14. HAYES, EDWARD C. 1927 Albion Woodbury Small. Pages 149-187 in Howard W. Odum (editor), American Masters of Social Science. New York: Holt. HOUSE, FLOYD N. 1926 A List of the More Important Published Writings of Albion Woodbury Small. American Journal of Sociology 32:49-58. MACLEAN, ANNIE M. 1926 Albion Woodbury Small: An Appreciation. American Journal of Sociology 32:4548. RATZENHOFER, GUSTAV 1893 Wesen und Zweck der Politik. 3 vols. Leipzig: Brockhaus. -» Volume 1: Die sociologische Grundlage. Volume 2: Die Staatspolitik nach aussen. Volume 3: Der Zweck der Politik im allgemeinen.
SMALL GROUPS See GROUPS. SMELL See TASTE AND SMELL. SMITH, ADAM Adam Smith (1723-1790) was born in Kirkcaldy, Fifeshire, a fisheries and mining town near Edinburgh. He was the son, by a second marriage, of Adam Smith, comptroller of the customs at Kirkcaldy, who died early in 1723; his mother, Margaret Douglas, was the daughter of a substantial landowner in Fifeshire. Smith lived with his mother whenever he was in Scotland until her death in 1784; he was her only child, and he remained a bachelor until his death. Smith received his elementary schooling in Kirkcaldy and entered the University of Glasgow in 1737, graduating with an M.A. in 1740. He then went to Oxford University as a Snell fellow at Balliol College, where he stayed until 1746. Beyond the fact that at Glasgow he was a student of Francis Hutcheson, almost nothing is reliably known about his intellectual experiences either at Glasgow or at Oxford. From 1746 to 1748 he lived with his mother in Kirkcaldy, presumably continuing his studies and awaiting an opening for a career in some remunerative post. Between 1748 and 1751, under the sponsorship of some of the leading intellectuals of Edinburgh, he gave several successful series of public lectures, on rhetoric and belleslettres, on jurisprudence, and perhaps on other subjects. On the strength of the reputation gained by these lectures, he was elected in 1751 to the professorship of logic at the University of Glasgow. When the chair of moral philosophy became vacant later in the same year, he was elected to that superior post, which he occupied until 1763. In 1759 he published his first book, The Theory of Moral Sentiments. Early in 1764 Smith went to France as tutor of the young duke of Buccleuch, stepson and ward of Charles Townshend. Smith remained in France from early in 1764 until late in 1766, most of the time in Toulouse but for some months in Paris, where he saw a good deal of the leading physiocrats and philosophes. He also visited Geneva, where he made the acquaintance of Voltaire. After his return to England in 1766, he was until early in 1767 an adviser to Charles Townshend, then chancellor of the exchequer and working on his fatal plan for taxing the American colonies;
SMITH, ADAM Smith's contribution to this plan, if any, is unknown. Endowed with a generous pension for life from the duke of Buccleuch, Smith returned in 1767 to Kirkcaldy, where he remained until early in 1773, working on The Wealth of Nations. From 1773 until early in 1776 he was again in London, completing the book but also advising the government occasionally on economic matters. On March 9, 1776, The Wealth of Nations was finally published, and soon thereafter Smith returned once more to Kirkcaldy. Early in 1778, he was appointed a commissioner of customs for Scotland and also a commissioner of the salt duties. These were not sinecure posts, as has often been alleged, but required his presence in Edinburgh for the greater part of each week throughout the year. For the rest of his life, he held these posts and lived in Edinburgh, where he died on July 17, 1790. Overview of writings The Theory of Moral Sentiments and The Wealth of Nations were the only full-length books that Smith wrote; however, he kept revising both of them for successive editions, and the additions in the sixth edition of The Theory of Moral Sentiments, which was published only a few weeks before his death, were substantial in extent and importance. He contributed three essays to periodicals in 1755 and 1761, and a collection of essays on literary and philosophical subjects was first published posthumously in 1795 ("Essays on Philosophical Subjects" 1963). In 1896 Edwin Cannan edited and published a recently found student's report of Smith's economic lectures as given in 1763 at the University of Glasgow (Lectures on Justice . . . 1964). In 1963 John M. Lothian edited and published a student's report on Smith's lectures on rhetoric and belles-lettres at Glasgow in 1762/1763 (Lectures on Rhetoric . . . 1963), which he had shortly before purchased at an auction sale in Scotland. W. S. Howell, in an as yet unpublished manuscript, describes these lectures as "an important and original revolutionary document in an important revolution in the history of rhetorical theory," the "revolution" consisting of the substitution for the old rhetoric stemming from Aristotle and Cicero of a new rhetoric based on the new learning of Bacon, Descartes, Locke, and others. At the same auction Lothian also purchased a student's report of Smith's economic lectures at Glasgow. This report, which is now in the possession of the University of Glasgow, is substantially fuller and also, it has been stated, superior in quality to that published by Cannan in 1896. Smith is said to have lectured also at the University of Glasgow on nat-
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ural theology. Shortly before his death he supervised the burning of almost all of his manuscripts, some 16 folio volumes. Smith clearly had a wide range of interests. The evidence available suggests that he reached his basic methodological and philosophical principles early in his career and that his destruction of manuscripts before his death was probably motivated much more by dissatisfaction with their form or with their incomplete state than by any fundamental change in his views. Almost everything Smith wrote, in its methodological implications if not in its concrete subject matter, has some relevance for social thought, but it is expedient here to concentrate on the two books he published during his lifetime. Many writers, including the present author at an early stage of his study of Smith, have found these two works in some measure basically inconsistent. But in much of his writing Smith worked from what he called systems and what today would be called models. He was aware that "systems" are incomplete in the factors they take into account. Had he been able to complete his total system, he would probably have demonstrated that the apparent inconsistencies were often not real ones, but were merely the consequences of deliberate shifts from one partial model to another. In a letter of November 1, 1785, to a French correspondent, Smith wrote that he had ". . . two other great works upon the anvil; the one is a sort of Philosophical History of all the different branches of Literature, of Philosophy, Poetry and Eloquence; the other is a sort of theory and History of Law and Government. . . . But the indolence of old age, tho' I struggle violently against it, I feel coming fast upon me, and whether I shall ever be able to finish either is extremely uncertain" ([1785] 1896, p. 166). The manuscripts of these two "great works" presumably were among those destroyed shortly before his death. "The Theory of Moral Sentiments" The first thing to note about The Theory of Moral Sentiments is its title. It is a "theory" or "system," that is, it consciously and deliberately employs some measure of patterned abstraction and thus does not profess to account for all the relevant facts of the real world. Its primary concern is only with that part of human psychology which is involved in the interrelationships of men living in communities—the "moral sentiments," that is, the passions, propensities, affections, feelings, whether of approbation or of disapproval, aroused by these interrelationships. These senti-
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ments are intermediate, in degree of reflection or "reason" involved, between the basic instincts that man shares with the animals and the calculation or ratiocination of sophisticated man as a reasoning being. When and how and in what degree these sentiments operate Smith discovered through observation of his neighbors, and presumably also, although he apparently never explicitly said so, through disciplined introspection exercised on the assumption that men are substantially alike in their subrational psychology. To show how the sentiments operate to socialize the individual, to fashion him into a disciplined member of a harmonious social group, Smith introduced into his model the concept of "spectators," distinguishing two main species. There is, first, the spectator external to yourself, the "real" spectator, who, by manifesting in some manner his sentiment of approval or disapproval of your behavior, exercises an influence on you. There is, second, the internal spectator, yourself, operating on two distinct levels: first, your imagination of what the reaction of a hypothetical external spectator would be to your actual or contemplated behavior; second, your own moral judgment, the judgment by your own conscience, by "the man within your breast," by the "impartial spectator." This whole complex mechanism of psychological response by men to their neighbors' feelings of approval or disapproval, which Smith called sympathy, he regarded as the major factor in creating and maintaining a socialized community. It involves, according to Smith, not only the desire to win the praise or approval of others but also the desire to be praiseworthy; when the two desires are in conflict, conscience decrees that the latter shall prevail. Commentators have objected that Smith here described a circular process, operating through sympathy like a set of "mirrors," and that he failed to explain adequately either what behavior is approved and what is disapproved or the origin or genesis of the social passions. Yet, at least by implication, Smith did offer such an explanation. He emphatically rejected human reason as the source of these sentiments. Also by implication he denied that there is a natural evolutionary process in which groups with a pattern of sentiments that is predominantly useful survive, whereas those groups with a pattern of antisocial sentiments perish. Smith maintained that man is endowed by God with his moral sentiments and that these sentiments bind men to each other because the deity so made them in its concern for the happiness of mankind. Smith ridiculed those who attributed to man's wisdom what is really the wisdom of God,
or of nature. Here Smith was, of course, invoking "final causes," or "the invisible hand." It is hard for some people today to believe that Smith's optimistic deism was completely sincere, and they tend to attribute his exposition of it to prudential considerations or to concessions to a mode of speech called for by the standards of propriety of the time. But in the "enlightened" Scottish circles of Smith's time optimistic deism, sincerely held, was practically universal. Although orthodox Calvinists rejected its optimistic aspect as not religious enough and David Hume rejected it as calling for too much religious faith, aside from Hume, no one among Smith's teachers, colleagues, friends, or followers is identifiable as a critic of optimistic deism. There may be genuine difficulty in reconciling Smith's deistic interpretation of the origin of the moral sentiments with other aspects of his social thought, including some of his specifically economic thought. Smith attributed to providence the original endowment of mankind with a set of moral sentiments conducive to the happiness of mankind. But unless he also assumed that providence intervenes constantly or intermittently to make appropriate adjustments in these sentiments as the physical or human environment changes through time (for which belief there is no evidence in anything he wrote), Smith would seem to have been postulating a static social psychology, at least on the subrational level, in what he himself admitted to be in many relevant respects a constantly changing and evolving world. Smith did recognize the impact of the variability of custom and fashion on the mode of operation of the moral sentiments, but, in spite of this variability, he specifically recognized only one major historical affront to the system of moral sentiments—the prevalence of infant exposure in the later period of ancient Greek civilization. He disposed of this exception as a temporary aberration, outweighed by the many outstanding virtues of Greek civilization at the time. Nowhere did he attempt to explain how antisocial passions and aberrations in conflict with the "Author of Nature's" design came into existence. But in keeping with the notion then held by some scientists that there is in nature a self-equilibrating mechanism by which aberrations are prevented from prevailing, a notion having some analogy to the modern scientific notion of "homeostasis," Smith held that there is an inherent tendency in the moral sentiments to overcome such aberrations. Smith's treatment of "justice" in The Theory of Moral Sentiments is especially important for a proper interpretation of The Wealth of Nations.
SMITH, ADAM Smith always used the word to mean substantially what Aristotle and the Schoolmen meant by "commutative justice." Justice is a negative virtue; it consists of refraining from injury to another person and from taking or withholding from another what belongs to him. It is thus distinct from benevolence, friendship, or charity. Smith considered justice, so understood, to be the necessary foundation of a viable society. It is a moral sentiment and thus finds voluntary or natural expression. The natural or spontaneous sentiment of justice is not, however, strong enough in ordinary men to meet the needs of society. Consequently, men have been endowed with the propensity to formulate rules of justice on the basis of their experience and reason, and they accept these rules for themselves and press them upon others. But even this is inadequate for the needs of society, and therefore government is established, its chief function being the coercive enforcement of justice on the individual members of the community through law and the magistrates. The moral sentiments operate at different levels of intensity according to the nature and the strength of the external stimuli impinging upon men. Smith's discussion here closely parallels Hume's discussion in A Treatise of Human Nature (1739-1740, book 2, part 2, especially sec. 4) and elsewhere: in describing the way in which the strength of the "passions" between individuals varies with the closeness of their relationship with respect to duration, space, kinship, nationality, occupation, rank, and so forth, Hume repeatedly used the term "distance" metaphorically to signify any factors separating individuals from each other, a usage that goes back at least to Aristotle and Thomas Aquinas. Although Smith stressed distance in its primary spatial sense as an important factor in weakening the intensity of the moral sentiments—"To what purpose should we trouble ourselves about the world in the moon? All men, even those at the greatest distance, are no doubt entitled to our good wishes, and our good wishes we naturally give them. But if, notwithstanding, they should be unfortunate, to give ourselves any anxiety upon that account seems to be no part of our duty" ([1759] 1966, p. 197)—he also used the same idea, if not the actual term "distance," for the absence not only of spatial proximity but also of membership in the same family, village, town, province, country, circle of friends, guild or company, church, social class, or some other psychologically unifying bond. In similar manner he took it for granted that the participants in a large number of the transactions which occur in the market are (in the metaphorical sense) at an extreme dis-
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tance from each other; they are, in relation to each other, anonymous, or strangers, so that there is limited occasion for any moral sentiments other than justice to come into operation. In The Theory of Moral Sentiments, Smith minimized the contribution that even the highly successful pursuit of wealth or of higher social status makes to the happiness of an individual. Both in this work and in The Wealth of Nations Smith treated increase in aggregate wealth as a highly worthy objective for a country, but apparently in only one passage in either work is increase in per capita wealth or income expressly mentioned as a reason for the advantage of an increase in aggregate wealth. Smith attached little importance to an increase above a quite modest level of per capita income, but he attributed great value to the increase of population that an increase in aggregate wealth fosters and supports. With his optimistic view of the amount of happiness ordinarily enjoyed even by the poor, Smith believed that growth of population is ordinarily conducive to growth in the aggregate amount of human happiness. He also found value in increase of aggregate wealth because it makes possible an increase in handsome buildings and great avenues in the towns, the "magnificence" so extolled by the writers of classical antiquity and of the Renaissance, but he treated these as public rather than individual riches. Smith also included as an advantage of growth of aggregate wealth the progress of aesthetic and intellectual culture and of "civilization" in general, which he associated with communal enrichment. "The Wealth of Nations" The Wealth of Nations is of great importance for three main reasons. First, it presents an impressive collection of economic data, gathered together by Smith from wide reading in publications from the time of the ancient Greeks and Romans to his own time and from acute observation of Britain and France in his own time. Smith used this material to illustrate and support his analysis of contemporary economic process, to provide a factual basis for his frequent ventures into the philosophy or theory of economic development, and at times to digress into narrative history presented without any clear relationship to his theoretical endeavors. The Wealth of Nations was heavily drawn on as a reliable source book for factual data by several generations of writers on economic matters, especially, of course, in the English-speaking countries. It is still useful for this purpose. Second, it was the most comprehensive and ambitious attempt up to Smith's time to present in
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comprehensive, and at the same time coordinated, fashion the nature of economic process in a predominantly "individualistic," or "competitive," or "market," or "capitalistic" society, to use modern adjectives. For a long time it largely determined the selection of issues and the initial analytical approach of economists in many countries, even when in their treatment of The Wealth of Nations they were much more critics than disciples. Third, it was an evaluating and crusading book, which sharply criticized existing society and government and argued strongly for changes in national policy, especially in relation to the extent and nature of government intervention in economic matters—domestic, colonial, and international. Not immediately, but within a generation, it became a powerful influence on writers on economic policy. Later still, both directly and indirectly through those influenced by it, it became a significant factor in determining the course of national policy not only in Britain but in other countries as well. This is much more than any other economic work has ever achieved; and Smith probably has had much more influence than any other economist. Economic development. Smith was deeply interested in the history, the causes, and the natural and artificial limitations of what we now commonly call "economic development" and what he referred to as "progress," "improvement," "progress of improvement," and "progress of opulence." His treatment of economic development is scattered throughout almost the whole work. He put most stress on the following factors as favorable to economic development: abundance of natural resources; technological progress as promoted by extension of division of labor; freedom of private enterprise from its own propensity to monopolistic organization; freedom from such hurtful artificial institutions as primogeniture; and freedom from official policies and practices that act as brakes on individual initiative or misdirect it. The basic source of economic progress, however, he found in the striving of individuals to improve their economic status or their rank in society— ". . . the desire of bettering our condition, a desire which . . . comes with us from the womb, and never leaves us till we go into the grave" ([1776] 1950, p. 323). He did not believe that this desire does or should operate without restraint. It is disciplined by the sentiment of justice and by governmental enforcement of justice. It has to compete, beneficially or otherwise, with "the passion for present enjoyment," which acts as a restraint on accumulation; with indolence; with the occasional "liberality" of
employers to their workmen and of landlords to their tenants; and with "the pride of man [which] makes him love to domineer," so that a plantation owner may prefer the service of slaves to that of freemen even where the latter would be more profitable. All of these are factors that are present in a different degree in different orders of society and in different circumstances. Smith, moreover, saw the desire for individual enrichment and the desire to preserve or improve one's social status as occasionally coming into conflict, as, for instance, when one's rank calls for profuse expenditure but the preservation or augmentation of one's estate calls for frugality. Smith placed great emphasis on the division of labor as a requisite of economic development; he also stressed the interrelations of the division of labor with technology and with commerce. He found a subrational or nonutilitarian origin for the resort to specialization (although not for its intensification) in a "propensity to truck and barter" innate in mankind. Here, following certain predecessors, he identified three contributions that the division of labor makes to productivity: by permitting indefinite repetition of simple tasks, it promotes dexterity; it eliminates the loss of working time involved in changing from one task to another; it facilitates invention of machinery, both by the artisans on the job and by outside observers. Smith stated that extension of the division of labor makes more capital necessary and therefore makes frugality and accumulation economic virtues. He always minimized the differences of innate ability or aptitude between different persons and thus gave little or no weight to the advantage claimed for specialization by a continuous chain of writers from ancient Greece on—that it makes possible the assignment of workers to those tasks for which they have the greatest aptitude. Smith pointed out that the division of labor is limited by the extent of the market and that growth of population both constitutes an extension of the market and is made possible by the increase of aggregate production that results from an extension of the division of labor. Growth of population, growth of aggregate wealth and income, and extension of the division of labor are thus explained as mutually dependent and mutually supporting factors. Smith recognized, under the influence of Rousseau, that the division of labor has a drawback from a humanitarian point of view: the worker as a person tends to be degraded by the monotony of his work and the enlistment of only a narrow range of his mental faculties. Smith thought, however, that this predicament could be remedied by educa-
SMITH, ADAM tion. This is one of the reasons that Smith accepted as a desirable function of government the financing, at public expense, of elementary education for the children of the poor. Smith's discussion was cited by Karl Marx in his presentation of the thesis that a degradation or "alienation" of labor is a consequence of division of labor, but Marx was unaware of the prior treatment of the subject by Rousseau to which Smith was indebted. Smith's belief that the tendency to aggregate improvement is "natural," i.e., essentially the product of man's basic psychology, may have been a factor contributing to his skepticism about the possibility that government may make major positive contributions to economic development. While he charged government in general with operating as a brake on economic progress, Smith nevertheless remained an optimist. In man's zeal to better his condition, the "wisdom of nature" had provided a counterforce to mistaken government policies and practices that was sufficiently powerful to make possible, in most cases, a thriving and prospering economy. Smith's eclecticism. It is a common error to interpret The Wealth of Nations as an unqualified eulogy of private enterprise and the businessman. It was only private enterprise operating in a fully competitive manner that Smith praised. He depicted businessmen in general as having a constant propensity to organize themselves into groups capable of exercising "monopoly" power, groups to which he undiscriminatingly attributed the capacity and, by implication, the will to exact the highest price at which any sales can be made. He also charged businessmen with major responsibility for persuading or pressing government to establish special privileges and legal monopolies for favored groups. Where monopoly is unavoidable, he preferred government to private operation. He had only deep and violently phrased scorn for the morals of businessmen organized in groups either to operate as monopolists or to obtain special privileges from government. The Wealth of Nations does lavish praise on the businessman, but only when he is on his good behavior. Smith's main merits as an "analytical" or "scientific" theorist, to use modern eulogistic terms for "pure" economic theory, lie in his eclectic spirit. While deliberately resorting to abstraction, he very much doubted that abstraction could provide either understanding of the real world or, by itself, safe guidance for the legislator or statesman. On specific points of economic analysis some predecessors did better than Smith, and he failed to absorb fully some of the genuinely valuable analytical
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contributions of Hume, the physiocrats, and Turgot. If "analytical" as a eulogistic term is to be interpreted strictly in terms of degree of rigor, internal consistency, and close analogy to abstract mathematical operations, Schumpeter's verdict that "the Wealth of Nations does not contain a single analytic idea, principle, or method that was entirely new in 1776" (Schumpeter 1954, p. 184) is difficult to challenge, and not merely because valuable ideas that are "entirely new" are hard to spot in any area of intellectual endeavor. In both his major works Smith repeatedly amended his system, bringing into his discussion some hitherto neglected variable, some fresh observation of fact, some new objective. He has been rightly charged by critics with resorting profusely to such qualifications as "perhaps," "generally," and "in most cases," with the consequence that his models are not tight or rigorous. It is arguable, however, by those who, if forced to choose, prefer realism, or at least the pursuit of it, to rigor and elegance of analysis, that both of his major works are on the whole made better by the qualifications he sprinkled in their pages and that he would have made them still better, although still untidier, if he had used even more qualifying adjectives or phrases. He would at least have made it harder for later critics to use short quotations, out of context or stripped of their qualifications, to show his inability to avoid flagrant self-contradiction. The question of the relation of relative labor input to exchange value is one instance where Smith appears repeatedly to have shifted from one belief to another; however, it may be that actually he was only shifting from one abstraction to another, while decorating his exposition (in a manner common then and not unknown now) with traditional maxims exalting the role of labor—maxims whose familiarity alone made them seem to carry logical or empirical weight. Smith can be quoted in support of all of the following propositions: that labor is the sole "source" of market value; that labor is the sole regulator of exchange value; that labor has, among the elements entering into production, a peculiar and perhaps even an exclusive valuecreating power; that the relative values of different commodities are, or should be, proportional to their labor-time costs or to their wage costs; that all incomes are extracted from the product of labor. For some economists any one of these propositions suffices to label its exponent a "labor theory of value" theorist. It seems safer, nevertheless, not to attribute to Smith much more than the belief that in commercial or capitalist economies relative labortime costs per unit of product have a large part in
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the determination of the exchange values of different commodities, and relative wage-costs even more. Economic policy. The separation of normative from non-normative, or policy, economics was a late development in the history of economics, and even today it is hard to fully execute this separation because many of the standard terms used in economic analysis carry with them an almost automatic normative or evaluative implication: for example, "productive," "utility," "value," "equilibrium." Prior to Smith's time it was rare for any writer to attempt to distinguish between, on the one hand, the study of economics in the purely "scientific" sense of the pursuit of understanding for its own sake, and, on the other hand, the use of economic analysis as an instrument for the formulation or evaluation of national economic policy. (Richard Cantillon was one of the few who did make this distinction.) When Smith wrote The Wealth of Nations the term "political economy" was already in wide use. It was used with some ambiguity, but predominantly with emphasis on "political," indicating reference to national policy. The term "economics" was rarely used by itself except in its original Greek meaning of household management. When Smith chose as the title of his book An Inquiry Into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations instead of something like "Principles of Political Economy," it may be surmised that he did so because he thought of his book as including both an objective study of processes and causes, such as would be the subject matter of a treatise on physics or physiology, and a discussion of "political economy" proper, or an evaluative or hortatory treatment of governmental economic policy. Smith used the term "political economy" a dozen or so times, and every time, except perhaps once, he meant the economic policy of a nation. Since Smith generally took a dim view of the benefits to be derived from national economic policy, political economy must for him have been nearly synonymous with "economic poison." Smith, of course, was not an exponent of philosophical anarchism, which apparently had nowhere been systematically expounded before William Godwin's Enquiry Concerning Political Justice (1793). If Smith had adopted the term "laissezfaire" as an appropriate label for his own policy views, he undoubtedly would not have interpreted it literally as a condemnation of all government interference with the activities of private individuals. He was as emphatic as he could be on the vital need for government enforcement of justice,
and there is evidence in The Wealth of Nations that he would have included in this function not only the formulation of rules of justice and the provision of machinery for the punishment of their infraction, but also the prevention of certain infractions by such enactments as standardization of weights and measures, requirements that commodities offered for sale be so stamped as to indicate their quality, and the establishment of building standards that would hinder individuals from subjecting others to the risk of fire or to other hazards to their property or their personal safety. Smith assigned to government the care of the defense of the community against foreign aggression or internal disorder and the levy of taxes to finance these activities. He also conceded to government the provision of those services needed by the community which could not practically be entrusted to private enterprise, because of the scale on which they had to be carried out or for other special reasons. On at least two issues—a "standing" or professional army versus a militia and the autonomy of the East India Company—Smith expressed a strong preference for governmental control in addition to or instead of private management. In general, where monopoly was unavoidable, he much preferred that it be under public rather than private control. Nevertheless, it is as an exponent of free enterprise; free trade; noninterference of government in the individual's choice of occupation, residence, or investment; freedom for the individual to make his economic decisions of all kinds in response to the price movements of free and fully competitive markets—in short, of "economic liberalism" or "laissez-faire," as these terms were used in the nineteenth century—that Smith made his chief mark on the history of economics and on the economic and social history of the Western world. These economic freedoms were to Smith "natural rights," essential constituents of the dignity of man. He also valued them from a utilitarian point of view, as giving maximum scope for incentives to industry and to efficiency. In the international sphere he saw in them the most solid factors working to bring peace between nations. Modern economists find Smith's arguments oversimplified and perhaps also too emotional and one-sided. But many of them still acknowledge a strong influence of his writings on their system of values and gladly continue to do homage to his name. JACOB VINER [For the historical context of Smith's work, see ECONOMIC THOUGHT, article on MERCANTILIST
SMITH, WILLIAM ROBERTSON THOUGHT; and the biographies of CANTILLON; HUME; MANDEVILLE; for discussion of the subsequent development of his ideas, see LAISSEZ-FAIRE; and the biographies of BASTIAT; LAUDERDALE; RICARDO; SAY.]
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SCOTT, WILLIAM R. 1937 Adam Smith as Student and Professor. Glasgow: Jackson. SPENGLER, JOSEPH J. 1959 Adam Smith's Theory of Economic Growth. Southern Economic Journal 25:397415; 26:1-12.
WORKS BY SMITH
(1759) 1966 The Theory of Moral Sentiments. New York: Kelley. (1776) 1950 An Inquiry Into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations. Edited by Edwin Carman. London: Methuen. -» A two-volume paperback edition was published in 1963 by Irwin. (1785) 1896 [Letter to the Due de la Rochefoucauld.] Economic Journal 6:165-166. Essays on Philosophical Subjects. Volume 5, pages 49399 in Adam Smith, The Works of Adam Smith. Aalen (Netherlands): Zeller, 1963. Lectures on Justice, Police, Revenue and Arms, Delivered in the University of Glasgow . . . Reported by a Student in 1763. Edited by Edwin Cannan. New York: Kelley, 1964. -» The Cannan edition was first published in 1896. Lectures on Rhetoric and Belles Lettres, Delivered in the University of Glasgow . . . Reported by a Student in 1762-63. Edited by John M. Lothian. London and New York: Nelson, 1963. The Works of Adam Smith. 5 vols. Aalen (Netherlands): Zeller, 1963. SUPPLEMENTARY BIBLIOGRAPHY
Adam Smith, 1776-1926: Lectures. 1928 Univ. of Chicago Press. -> Contains lectures by John Maurice Clark and others to commemorate the sesquicentennial of the publication of The Wealth of Nations. BITTERMANN, HENRY J. 1940 Adam Smith's Empiricism and the Law of Nature. Journal of Political Economy 48:487-520, 703-734. BONAR, JAMES (1894) 1932 A Catalogue of the Library of Adam Smith. 2d ed. London: Macmillan, GODWIN, WILLIAM (1793) 1946 Enquiry Concerning Political justice and Its Influence on Morals and Happiness. 3d ed., rev. 3 vols. Univ. of Toronto Press. HARVARD UNIVERSITY, GRADUATE SCHOOL OF BUSINESS ADMINISTRATION, BAKER LIBRARY, KRESS LIBRARY OF BUSINESS AND ECONOMICS 1939 The Vanderblue Memorial Collection of Smithiana. Boston, Mass.: The Library. HUME, DAVID (1739-1740) 1958 A Treatise of Human Nature. Edited by L. A. Selby-Bigge. Oxford: Clarendon. -» Reprinted from the original edition and edited with an analytical index. MACFIE, A. L. 1959 Adam Smith's Moral Sentiments as Foundation for His Wealth of Nations. Oxford Economic Papers New Series 11:209-228. MACFIE, A. L. 1961 Adam Smith's Theory of Moral Sentiments. Scottish Journal of Political Economy 8:12-27. RAE, JOHN (1895) 1965 Life of Adam Smith. With an introduction and guide by Jacob Viner. New York: Kelley. ROSENBERG, NATHAN 1965 Adam Smith on the Division of Labour: Two Views or One? Economica New Series 32:127-139. SCHUMPETER, JOSEPH A. (1954) 1960 History of Economic Analysis. Edited by E. B. Schumpeter. New York: Oxford Univ. Press.
William Robertson Smith (1846-1894) was born in Scotland, the son of a distinguished scholar and minister in the Free Church of Scotland. The father instilled in his son a love for learning and for free critical inquiry, especially in the field of Biblical studies. While Robertson Smith was a student at the University of Aberdeen his main interest shifted to mathematics and physics, subjects that he never wholly abandoned. His work in these subjects, published while he was still in his early twenties, was well thought of, and many years later he was considered as a candidate for a chair of mathematics at Glasgow. However, his first published paper, entitled "Prophecy and Personality" (1868), derived from his Biblical studies, and it was this field that subsequently took overwhelming precedence. After his early training at Aberdeen he went to the New College seminary at Edinburgh. In 1870, when he was only 24 years old, he was appointed to the chair of Hebrew and Old Testament exegesis at the Free Church College at Aberdeen, and five months after this appointment he was ordained. For six of the 11 years of his stay at Aberdeen, wrangles with the general assembly over the issue of Biblical criticism consumed his time and sapped his energies. Some of his lectures had aroused suspicion, but the matter came to a head with the appearance of his article "Bible" (1875) in the ninth edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica and of a review of this article, ascribed to A. H. Charteris, professor of Biblical criticism at the University of Edinburgh, which accused Robertson Smith of importing discredited views from the Continent and of tarnishing a theological professoriate. The celebrated "Robertson Smith affair" had begun; thereafter he was hounded by the Free church, and rather than accept the odious limitations on intellectual activity that were the condition of his continuing occupancy of the chair at Aberdeen, he stood his ground and in 1887 was removed from his post. The two succeeding years were devoted almost entirely to writing articles for the Encyclopaedia Britannica and to the enormous amount of editorial work he undertook as its chief editor—it is said that he read the entire edition.
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During the struggle with the governing body of the Free church, Robertson Smith had been offered two appointments by Harvard University: first, the chair of Hebrew and Oriental languages and, later, the chair of ecclesiastical history. He did not accept either, but in 1889 he was offered the chair of Arabic at Cambridge and accepted with great pleasure. He found time amid his academic activities to make several visits to Egypt, and on one of these he accompanied the celebrated explorer Richard Burton on a minor expedition. He spent two months in Arabia; he traveled in Palestine, Syria, and the Libyan desert; and during another period of leave he went to Tunisia and Algeria. He made his way easily among the Arabs and recorded some of his observations, but he lacked the time and the training for any systematic studies of social life. Several influences contributed to Robertson Smith's intellectual development. His home environment encouraged the study of Hebrew, Arabic, and the classics, and he shared the interest in history and in the nature of human progress that was characteristic of the general Scottish intellectual environment. The latter preoccupation had produced in the eighteenth century a group of philosophers who were deeply curious about the evolution of social institutions (Bryson 1945). More directly, Robertson Smith was influenced by his friend J. F. McLennan, a Scottish barrister and the author of Primitive Marriage and Studies in Ancient History. McLennan, in turn, was familiar with the work of Fustel de Coulanges who, in The Ancient City, had functionally related the development of religion (from its classical roots to the appearance of Christianity) to the kind of social units into which people were arranged, although he did give religion a sort of causal priority in producing social change. [See the biographies of MCLENNAN and FUSTEL DE COULANGES.] An examination of Robertson Smith's general theories of religion clearly reveals how profoundly these ideas influenced him. The two works of Robertson Smith's that were important for the development of sociology are Kinship and Marriage in Early Arabia (1885) and Lectures on the Religion of the Semites (1889). Of the two, the analysis of religion has had the greater influence, but its full understanding requires a knowledge of some of the ideas about tribal society in the analytically weaker book on kinship. In fact, the two works go hand in hand. (The very first formulation of Robertson Smith's general views on religion appeared in the wellknown article "Sacrifice" in the ninth edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica in 1886, a few months after the study of kinship.)
Analysis of religion As a churchman and theologian, Robertson Smith had an immediate concern with religion. His writings were, in part at least, the solution to a personal problem, giving him a more satisfactory understanding of the essence of religion and a reason for his continued convictions. It is only in the light of his commitment to religion that his long and acrimonious struggle with the Scottish Free church makes sense, for his aim was to help revitalize religion, not to destroy it. His penchant for looking at things sociologically led him first of all to the problem of a satisfactory analysis of beliefs. His point of analytical departure was to argue that the beliefs people hold and the general dogmas to which they subscribe are not acquired by individual effort—that is, they are not a matter of individual choice resulting from reasoned argument but are part of the general social apparatus with which man is endowed at birth. Religion is a part of an individual's collective representations, to use the phrase Durkheim later introduced into sociological vocabulary. In other words, Robertson Smith saw religion as "a part of the organised social life into which a man was born, and to which he conformed throughout his life in the same unconscious way in which men fall into any habitual practice of the society in which they live" ([1889] 1927, p. 21). Thus gods and their worship are taken for granted, just as other usages are accepted, and "if they [men] reasoned or speculated about them, they did so on the presupposition that the traditional usages were fixed things behind which their reasonings must not go, and which no reasoning could be allowed to overturn" (p. 21). Early religion, according to Robertson Smith, had very little to do with beliefs; it was concerned with practices, and conformity was a matter of course. Just as in studies of political structure, an inquiry does not begin "by asking what is recorded of the first legislators, or what theories men advanced as to the reason of their institutions" (p. 21), but by seeking to understand political institutions and their effect on social relations, so too the study of religion must be directed at "the workings of religious institutions" and the way in which the relations of the worshipers are shaped. The analogy is not arbitrarily chosen, for, Robertson Smith contended, "the parallelism in ancient society between religious and political institutions is complete" (p. 20). Robertson Smith believed that political institutions are older than political theories, and in the same way, religious institutions are older than re-
SMITH, WILLIAM ROBERTSON ligious theories. Rites are prior to beliefs, rationalization follows practice. There is evidence for priority of ritual in early forms of religion, which were constituted wholly of ritual and practical usage. Practices that persist do tend to acquire accretions of explanatory beliefs, but the meanings thus attached are inconsequential, vague, or contradictory, while the practices are fixed. More often than not, people are unaware of the doctrinal differences that divide sects in the contemporary world, and when doctrinal explanations of ritual acts are given at all, these may differ within the same religion and culture without any question of orthodoxy being raised; conspicuously less leeway is permitted in the carrying out of proper procedures. Robertson Smith felt that sociological inquiry would do well to begin not with a creed or with what individuals privately think but with overt ritual acts. Some sixty years after Robertson Smith had made this point with crystal clarity, Radcliffe-Brown was still laboring it thus: "My suggestion is that in attempting to understand a religion it is on its rites rather than beliefs that we should first concentrate our attention" (1952, p. 155). Robertson Smith's study of ancient religion led him to conclude that it is external religious acts that give religion its principal social meaning. In ancient society, the rites of religion ensured conformity: privately, a man might believe what he liked; only by public acts of piety was it possible to judge whether he subscribed to religion. It was through his acts that the participant revealed his social identity, and for this identification his beliefs were virtually irrelevant. Further, acts and ritual were necessarily rigid because they showed public conformity and were testimony of a person's social outlook. Nonconformity, therefore, meant that someone was at odds with his social group. Ritual was the discipline that ensured the cohesion and continuity of social groups. Performance of rituals pledged continued membership in a social group; default was a public withdrawal. Excommunication was in fact the severance of ties to a social group and was therefore the same as outlawry. Religious allegiance and political connection were one and the same thing; a change of one was a change of both. Alter a man's political status and he is compelled to change his religion, "for a man's religion is part of his political connection" ([1889] 1927, p. 36). Viewed in this light, ancient religion had both regulative and stimulative functions. It was regulative in the sense that the welfare of the individual could reach its optimum development only to the extent of his compatibility with his fellowmen. Individual goodness, it follows from this, was the
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behavior that made for the general harmony of the community. By the same token, sin was an act that seriously disrupted this internal harmony and produced an impasse in relations, leading to the kind of stultification that could be remedied only by excommunication from the religious congregation and by outlawry from the social group. Religion, however, was not merely regulative in the sense that it compelled conformity; it was also stimulative, in that ritual was a repetitive statement of divine and human unity. Each and every religious act revived and consolidated the community of worshipers, giving it a consistency of purpose and a continuity of being. Religion was a social activity from which the good of the community was derived. "Religion did not exist for the saving of souls but for the preservation and welfare of society . . ." (ibid., p. 29). Religion was based on these two elements—the regulative and the stimulative—rather than on personal problems of redemption. In his writings on sacrifice, Robertson Smith further analyzed the nature of the congregation of worshipers, which he regarded as "the central problem of ancient religion . . ." (p. 27). He rejected the several theories of sacrifice—gift, tribute, covenant, expiation, propitiation; indeed, he could hardly do otherwise, given his acceptance of the premise that religion is a social activity, because this premise implies that the intentions of the sacrificer are relatively unimportant. Instead, Robertson Smith focused his attention on those who participate in the sacrificial act by partaking in the commensal meal. He rejected the view, recently endorsed by Evans-Pritchard, that the festal meal which succeeds a sacrifice "is not a sacramental meal but an ordinary commensal act of family or kin which, moreover, falls outside the sacrificial rites" (Evans-Pritchard 1956, p. 274). The greater part of one chapter in Robertson Smith's Lectures on the Religion of the Semites (especially pp. 272282 in the 1927 edition) was devoted to the argument that the meal succeeding the slaughter was not a mere family affair but was eaten by a congregation of worshipers. Today also, as the present author's studies show, it is not permitted among the Bedouin Arabs for one family alone to consume the flesh of a slaughtered domesticated animal. Robertson Smith pointed out that the meal following a sacrifice further differed from an ordinary meal in two ways. First, the flesh of the sacrificial victim was meat with a special status, different from the meat of game. (Again, this is a distinction drawn also by contemporary Bedouins. When game —gazelle, for example—is captured, the captor may distribute it among the households in a camp
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as a matter of generosity, or he and his family may consume it entirely, running no more risk than the charge of meanness.) A commensal meal, therefore, is not simply an arrangement by which people who happen to be at hand join in eating but one at which attendance is obligatory because the meat is that of a sacrificial animal. Confusion sometimes arises around this point because all animals are customarily slaughtered in a prescribed manner. But ritual slaughter does nothing more than make it permissible to eat the flesh; it does not command a congregation and must not be confused with an act of sacrifice. Whether or not the flesh provides a commensal meal depends on the status of the animal and its relation to the person who slaughters it or who has it slaughtered. Second, the special character of the commensal meal following a sacrifice was related to the link between the owner of the slaughtered animal and the victim: the victim was part of the sacrificer in a very intimate sense. This is also true among modern Bedouins: a camel or a sheep is part of a man's risiq (wealth) in the same way as are his children, and they are frequently and affectionately referred to by the same word. The host who slaughters one of his own animals is offering something of himself—a part of his "spiritual essence," which creates "a sort of spiritual bond," as Mauss put it—and all those who accept are thereby accepting a special relationship with the host, based on commensal nourishment. They become men who have joined together to share their economic resources for the common preservation of their lives. Robertson Smith maintained that eating together constituted a bond among men equivalent to kinship. Participants in the meal, regardless of their consanguineous connections, were men bound by mutual obligation (another way of saying "kinship") sealed and covenanted in God. For kinship, as Robertson Smith saw it, was a matter not of consanguinity but of defined social relationships. Shrewdly, he pointed out that the tie that united the foster child to his foster mother and her kin was a tie of milk, not blood ([1889] 1927, p. 274); closeness of kinship was established not by birth but by nourishment. The sacrificial meal was one that a man shared with his commensals, "so that commensality can be thought of (1) as confirming or even (2) as constituting kinship in a very real sense" (p. 274). Thus, in the early history of religion, the important relationship was not that of the individual man to a supernatural power, but that of "all the members of the community to a power that has the
good of the community at heart . . ." (p. 55). Communities were small, and the rivalry between them was expressed through the gods of the communities, just as the rivalry between neighboring villages in Spain is expressed through their local saints (p. 31). "Solidarity of the gods and their worshippers as part of one organic society" (p. 32) kept groups of people apart. As society advanced and institutions were elaborated, religious organization developed in matching likeness. With the fusion of groups into larger unities, political growth was marked by the appearance of a hierarchy of new gods: "A society and kinship of many gods began to be formed, on the model of the alliance or fusion of their respective worshippers" (p. 39). Church organization and political divisions were but two aspects of the same thing. This part of Robertson Smith's argument clearly shows the influence of Fustel de Coulanges, whose theme in The Ancient City was the parallel development of religious and political organizations. Durkheim, whose writings on religion have had much more general influence than those of Robertson Smith, later argued that social groups possess stability only if a sentiment of unity exists, which must be given collective expression in emblematic form; and through this emblem, society worships itself. This view is an elaboration of what Robertson Smith wrote, for like Durkheim, he saw in the unity of the social group the core of religion. Since the whole edifice of religion is built up out of the unity that exists in groups, from the smallest to the largest, the idea of God is rooted in the local community and its growth is the elaboration of political organization. This general idea was accepted among social scientists until Evans-Pritchard—first in an article on Nuer sacrifices (1954) and then in his book Nuer Religion (1956)—put forward a fundamentally different interpretation. Although he admitted what he called a structural role for religion—that there is a relationship between the various spirit manifestations of God and the points of division in a political system, since people who live together will worship together—he asserted that God stands outside the society altogether and that his various manifestations in society are only refractions of the external God. This is the idea of the one and the many, so brilliantly treated by Johnson (1942). For Robertson Smith, the notion of God was the notion of social unity, which grew as political organization developed; God stands at the apex of a hierarchy of social groupings. For Evans-Pritchard, God does not grow out of the social structure and is not limited by it. Robertson Smith and Evans-
SMITH, WILLIAM ROBERTSON Pritchard are not simply two scholars with disparate opinions on a limited, specific problem. They represent two ways of looking at human life between which there is no possibility of compromise: Evans-Pritchard attaches basic importance to what men think, while Robertson Smith attaches similar importance to what men do, and each scholar observes and weighs the evidence accordingly. Kinship and marriage The second major work of Robertson Smith's that is of importance to modern sociology is Kinship and Marriage in Early Arabia (1885). Much of this work is marred—indeed is rendered virtually profitless in parts—by his preoccupation with the stages in the evolution of marriage and with an attempt to demonstrate that kinship was reckoned in the female line before precedence came to be given to male descent. The influence of his friend McLennan on his thinking in this field of study was an unmitigated misfortune. It led Robertson Smith to indulge in wild speculations, which he tried to support by guessing many of the facts. However, when he used authentic data, he did make a number of astute points. Early Arab society was divided into political groups based on genealogical descent lines, reckoned through males. Robertson Smith did not concern himself with arid verification or refutation of the validity of genealogies, Instead, he was quick to grasp the significance of the consistency (between the branching of genealogical lines and I the political divisions of tribes. This consistency meant, he said, that the genealogies were manipulated to suit the reality of political divisions and that this was done by altering the length of descent lines to give groups of equal political status equally long descent lines ([1885] 1903, p. 11). Further, he showed some appreciation of the political processes (later to be known as fission and fusion) whereby tribal segments came together to form sections in opposition to like sections, only to dissolve into their separate parts when the situation provoking the combination ceased. His way of putting it was that several groups combined to form a larger whole, "resolving again into their elements" (p. 2). It is to his credit also that in his examination of the processes of alliance and opposition he noted that the occurrence of female names was indicative of greater cohesion in societies where descent was in the male line and polygamy was permitted: female names served to distinguish between paternal half-brothers and thus provided an additional divisive element in
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simple patrilineal descent. After offering this interesting idea, however, Robertson Smith abandoned it and used the occurrence of female names as "proof" of an earlier system of kinship through women. The crux of the problem of tribal organization, as Robertson Smith saw it, lay in the composition of the smallest political groups, out of which the larger ones were built (p. 3). Essentially, these were local communities whose constitution rested on the herding necessities of groups of people moving about, together with their animals, and controlling their own natural resources in water and pasture (p. 41). Robertson Smith conceived of each of these groups as a kindred and, while he rightly saw that consanguineous agnation was relevant within this group but not in larger ones, he also seized the important point that the smallest group was not merely "the family grown large" (p. 5)—that it was a political group and therefore quite unlike a family. Idiomatic expression in ancient times gave the impression (and still does among Bedouin Arabs) that small political groups were composed of members of a kind of big family. Robertson Smith perceived that terms which appear to mean blood connection may refer to actual consanguineous relationships, or they may be used in the sociological sense of conceptualizing a unity. Thus when phrases such as "one blood" were used to refer to a group or when it was said after the loss of a member through homicide that "our blood has been spilt," it is erroneous to infer that all members of the group were consanguineously related (p. 46). Robertson Smith urged that discussions of kinship be divested of sentimentality and that categories of kinship be regarded not in terms of physiological connections but rather in the more meaningful terms of the duties and obligations which they symbolize. A father, in this sense, is the person who carries the obligations of protector, guardian, and provider of food. In ancient Arabia (and among the present-day Bedouins also) these obligations were acquired by virtue of the payment of bridewealth, as agreed to prior to the marriage contract. This transfer of wealth gave a man procreative rights to his spouse—"what he purchases is the right to have children by her and to have these children belong to his own kin" (p. 130). And further, he acquired the right to delegate the act of procreation to another man without losing his legal relationship to the children born to his wife—hence the saying, "the son is reckoned to the bed on which he is born" (p. 139). If consanguinity did not matter in this close relation-
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ship, then obviously it was largely irrelevant when more distant relationships were involved. Kinship, in other words, was a matter of social relationships. If relationships, then, are to be understood in terms other than those of consanguinity, it is necessary, Robertson Smith suggested, to look at the rights attached to each category. Thus, it would be profitable to regard the family as a property-owning unit, and the delimitation of this particular "kinship unit" would be the range of heirs (pp. 162 ff.). In analyzing marriage, his stress was similar: "Marital rights are rights of property which can be inherited . . ." (p. 105). Leach, writing three quarters of a century later, created something of a stir when he began his analysis of a Singhalese village with the assertion: "Kinship as we meet it in this book is not 'a thing in itself " (1961, p. 11). He ended his analysis with the same statement, devoting the intervening pages largely to showing that kinship is nothing "except in relation to land and property" (p. 305). (This reductionist argument is discussed in Peters 1963. The composition of local groups among Bedouins, along lines not unlike those suggested by Robertson Smith in his book on kinship, is analyzed in Peters 1965.) The tribal group of men that Robertson Smith conceived as a kindred was in fact a corporation. Equal responsibility was the privilege of all its members, regardless of the particulars of real or fictive kinship relationships. A group was "a single life" ([1885] 1903, p. 46) and indivisible. It possessed a unique name, leaving no doubt about a person's identity (p. 26), and it had rules of recruitment (pp. 40 ff.). Each corporation had a homeland with its own natural resources (p. 41). It also possessed the reproductive facilities of women (pp. 132-145). Control over its mobile property was achieved by disinheriting women (p. 117) who, had they been permitted to transmit property, could, by marrying outside the group, alienate its property. The corporation had authority to compel its members to accept stated obligations and to outlaw them in case of default (pp. 25, 27). In conclusion, the corporate group, to be effective, required members to be coresidents; since the most impelling obligation of membership was participation in offense and defense, it was necessary to be able to rally members in one place at short notice. Thus, corporations were local communities with a high concentration of agnates. Later inquiries into the nature of tribal systems in ancient Arabia led Robertson Smith increasingly to ascribe importance to the institution of the
blood feud. There are references to the blood feud in his published works, but the notes he left were too fragmentary to form the basis of a complete analysis; his premature death robbed us of what would surely have been a brilliant work. E. L. PETERS [For the historical context of Robertson Smith's -work, see the biographies of DURKHEIM; FUSTEL DE CouLANGES; for discussion of the subsequent development of his ideas, see MARRIAGE, article on MARRIAGE ALLIANCE; MYTH AND SYMROL; RELIGION; RlTUAL.] WORKS RY SMITH
(1868) 1912 Prophecy and Personality: A Fragment. Pages 97-108 in Lectures & Essays of William Robertson Smith. Edited by J. S. Black and George Chrystal. London: Black. 1875 Bible. Volume 3, pages 634-648 in Encyclopaedia Britannica. 9th ed. Edinburgh: Black. (1885) 1903 Kinship and Marriage in Early Arabia. New ed. London: Black. -» See especially the Preface by E. L. Peters to the paperback edition published in 1967 by Beacon. 1886 Sacrifice. Volume 21, pages 132-138 in Encyclopaedia Britannica. 9th ed. Edinburgh: Black. (1889) 1927 Lectures on the Religion of the Semites: The Fundamental Institutions. 3d ed. New York: Macmillan. -> A paperback edition was published in 1956 by Meridian as Religion of the Semites: The Fundamental Institutions. Lectures & Essays of William Robertson Smith. Edited by J. S. Black and George Chrystal. London: Black, 1912. SUPPLEMENTARY BIHLIOGRAPHY
BLACK, J. S.; and CHRYSTAL, GEORGE 1912 The Life of William Robertson Smith. London: Black. -> Contains a bibliography of Robertson Smith's writings. BRYSON, GLADYS 1945 Man and Society: The Scottish Inquiry of the Eighteenth Century. Princeton Univ. Press. CHELHOD, JOSEPH 1955 Le sacrifice chez les Arabes: Recherches sur revolution, la nature et la fonction des rites sacrificiels en Arable occidentale. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France. DURKHEIM, EMILE (1912)1954 The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life. London: Allen & Unwin; New York: Macmillan. -» First published as Les formes elementaires de la vie religieuse, le systeme totemique en Australie. A paperback edition was published in 1961 by Collier. EVANS-PRITCHARD, E. E. 1954 The Meaning of Sacrifice Among the Nuer. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland 84:21-33. EVANS-PRITCHARD, E. E. (1956) 1962 Nuer Religion. Oxford: Clarendon. FORTES, MEYER 1959 Oedipus and Job in West African Religion. Cambridge Univ. Press. FRANKFORT, HENRI 1948 Kingship and the Gods: A Study of Ancient Near Eastern Religion as the Integration of Society and Nature. Univ. of Chicago Press. FUSTEL DE COULANGES, NUMA DENIS (1864) 1956 The Ancient City: A Study on the Religion, Laws, and
SMOKING Institutions of Greece and Rome. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday. -» First published in French. GOODE, WILLIAM J. (1951) 1955 Religion Among the Primitives. Glencoe, 111.: Free Press. -> A paperback edition was published in 1964. HUBERT, HENRI; and MAUSS, MARCEL (1899) 1964 Sacrifice: Its Nature and Function. Univ. of Chicago Press. -> First published as "Essai sur la nature et la fonction du sacrifice" in Volume 2 of Annee sociologique. JOHNSON, AUBREY R. 1942 The One and the Many in the Israelite Conception of God. Cardiff: Univ. of Wales. LEACH, EDMUND R. 1961 Pul Eliya, a Village in Ceylon: A Study of Land Tenure and Kinship. Cambridge Univ. Press. MAUSS, MARCEL (1925) 1954 The Gift: Forms and Functions of Exchange in Archaic Societies. Glencoe, 111.: Free Press. H> First published as Essai sur le don: Forme et raison de I'echange dans les societes archa'iques. PETERS, E. L. 1960 The Proliferation of Segments in the Lineage of the Bedouin in Cyrenaica. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland 90:29-53. PETERS, E. L. 1963 Aspects of Rank and Status Among Muslims in a Lebanese Village. Pages 159-200 in Julian A. Pitt-Rivers (editor), Mediterranean Countrymen: Essays in the Social Anthropology of the Mediterranean. Paris: Mouton. PETERS, E. L. 1965 Aspects of the Family Among the Bedouin of Cyrenaica. Pages 121—146 in Comparative Family Systems. Edited by Meyer F. Nirnkoff. Boston: Houghton Mifflin. PETERS, E. L. 1967 Some Structural Aspects of the Feud Among the Bedouin of Cyrenaica. Unpublished manuscript. RADCLIFFE-BROWN, A. R. (1952) 1961 Structure and Function in Primitive Society: Essays and Addresses. London: Cohen & West; Glencoe, 111.: Free Press. -» A paperback edition was published in 1965 by the Free Press.
SMOKING Tobacco was introduced to Europe by Columbus upon his return from the New World. As the habit of smoking spread throughout Europe, Russia, Africa, and the Orient, it met with formidable opposition from rulers, who instigated periodic attacks upon it. In 1604, King James i of England issued a proclamation called "A Counterblast to Tobacco." He and others, however, were unsuccessful in eradicating the use of tobacco, which soon became an export of considerable economic importance to the new American colonies. In the United States tobacco remains economically important; it contributes to national income, and its yield of tax revenue plays a significant role in the budget of the federal government.
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Although social and religious controversies occasionally have flared between those segments of society which found smoking pleasurable and those which believed it to be a foul-smelling, unnatural, and loathsome habit, scientists showed little interest in the effects of smoking for some five centuries after its introduction to Europe. In 1900 vital statisticians reported an increase in the incidence of cancer of the lung. Beginning in 1930, scientists from various parts of the world have reported vital statistics suggesting a relationship between certain populations' increasing consumption of cigarettes and an increased incidence of lung cancer, heart disease, and other illnesses in the same populations. Since the mid-1950s these results have become sufficiently convincing to cause the following health agencies to declare that smoking is a significant health hazard: the British Medical Research Council; the cancer societies of Denmark, Norway. Sweden, Finland, and the Netherlands; the American Cancer Society; the American Heart Association; the Joint Tuberculosis Council of Great Britain; and the Canadian National Department of Health and Welfare. However, cigarette manufacturers have steadfastly maintained that the evidence linking cigarettes and disease is not conclusive. In any study of smoking, an initial problem arises with regard to the definition of who is a cigarette smoker and. even more problematic, who is an ex-smoker, light smoker, medium smoker, or heavy smoker. There is no precise definition as to what are the actual behavioral (motions), physiological, or psychological referents of smoking. For example, do all individuals who "smoke heavily" inhale to the same extent? One individual might light 40 cigarettes a day but puff only one-eighth of each, whereas another individual, claiming to smoke only 12 cigarettes a day, could inhale each of these down to the last quarter inch. We also do not know the relationship between reported smoking (through verbal self-report or responses to a questionnaire) and actual smoking. Data relevant to these preliminary questions would contribute greatly to the precision of subsequent research on smoking. Within the past decade social scientists have become interested in the smoker, as evidenced by the appearance of numerous surveys and other research reports on the psychosocial characteristics of smokers. The vast majority of these have focused only on cigarette smokers, and the findings reported below will relate primarily to them. The reader interested in a detailed review of
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this subject may consult five reviews that include comprehensive bibliographies of the original literature. Two of the reviews appeared in 1960—one in the United States (Matarazzo & Saslow 1960), and one in Scotland (Kissen 1960). A third review was published by Lawton (1962) and a fourth by Horn (1963). The most recent review (Hochbaum 1964) was prepared as part of the highly publicized report of the advisory committee to the surgeon general of the United States Public Health Service. Several individual studies are of especial significance because of their scope, sampling, or over-all design. Haenszel, Shimkin, and Miller (1956) surveyed the smoking habits of a cross section (40,000) of the total population of American men and women 18 years of age and older. Sackrin and Conover (1957) followed this by further study of 18,000 of the same 40,000 individuals. Kallner (1958) studied the entire population of Israel. Lilienfeld (1959) studied 4,400 adults in Buffalo, New York. Horn and his associates (1959) polled the total population of high school students (22,000) in Portland, Oregon, while Salber and her associates (see Salber & MacMahon 1961; Salber et al. 1962; Salber, Welsh, & Taylor 1963; Salber & Worcester 1964; Salber et al. 1961; 1963) have published a series of related studies of 6,810 high school students in Newton, Massachusetts. In England, Bothwell (1959) conducted a study of the smoking habits of 8,314 Oxfordshire schoolchildren, while Chave and Schilling and their associates (1959) studied another group of 3,500 London youngsters. Also, Eysenck and his co-workers (1960) attempted to measure some personality characteristics of a stratified sample of 2,360 smoking and nonsmoking adult British males and followed this with a more detailed study of 3,194 additional males (Eysenck 1963). Demographic variables. Although social scientists have only recently begun to study the cigarette smoker, there already seem to be a number of variables whch are consistently found to be associated with smoking. These variables are reviewed below, although, because of space limitations, no attempt has been made to review the findings of every study on each variable. Rather, the more significant or better-established findings of a particular study have been presented, and the original articles can be referred to for more detail. The reader interested in the attempts of health educators and social scientists to understand why people smoke and in some of the methods currently being explored in the United States to help smokers give up their habit should consult the report by Mausner and Platt (1966).
Age, sex, and marital status. With respect to age, data from both sides of the Atlantic are similar and indicate that regular smoking usually begins in mid-adolescence to late adolescence, although a small percentage of youngsters start cigarette smoking earlier. Boys are inclined to smoke somewhat earlier and more heavily than girls (Bothwell 1959; Cartwright et al. 1959; Haenszel et al. 1956; Hochbaum 1964; Horn et al. 1959; Horn 1963; Kissen 1960, p. 368; Matarazzo & Saslow I960; and Salber et al. 1961). Among women, the incidence of smoking is increasing. In their study in Newton, Massachusetts, Salber and Worcester (1964) report that the number of women, particularly Jewish women, who smoke may soon exceed the number of men who smoke. Among both sexes and all ages, there is a greater percentage of smoking among divorced and widowed individuals than among those either married or never married. Although this has been established for the United States, comparable data for other countries are not available. Income, occupation, and education. The five reviews suggest that yearly income is not related in any consistent manner to smoking. However, socioeconomic class, when defined only in terms of occupational and educational level, does appear to bear a consistent relationship to smoking; individuals at the lowest occupational levels start to smoke earlier and in greater numbers than those in all other groups. For example, white-collar groups (professional workers, managers, and so forth) typically contain fewer smokers than are found among craftsmen, foremen, salespersons, and similar groups. Possibly it is because some individuals in the latter groups have higher yearly incomes than do some white-collar workers that the relationship between smoking and socioeconomic class, more broadly defined to include income and place of residence as well, is not clearly established. Apparently there is no clear linear relationship between the highest educational level attained by maturity and smoking (see especially Lilienfeld 1959). However, among high school students those with highest achievement and those in college preparatory courses are considerably less likely to smoke than those in business and technical courses. An interesting twenty-year longitudinal study of a group of Harvard undergraduates indicates that individuals who major in the arts and letters, education, and social sciences later become smokers in greater numbers than do students whose career choice is in the physical sciences (Heath 1958; McArthur et al. 1958).
SMOKING Urban-rural differences. In all studies examining urban-rural differences, rural farm populations, including both sexes and all ages, were found to contain a smaller percentage of smokers than either the rural nonfarm or the city populations. Rural nonfarm persons closely resemble urban dwellers in their smoking habits. Women and girls in large cities in the northeastern United States (e.g., New York City and Boston) smoke more than do women and girls in cities in other areas of the United States. It is unknown whether a similar pattern prevails when cosmopolitan centers such as London, Paris, and Rome are used as a basis for comparison. Race and religion. In the English-speaking countries which have been studied, there appears to be no relationship between race and smoking, the proportion of smokers being approximately equal between the Caucasian and Negro subsamples. It is well known that devout followers of some religions do not smoke at all (e.g., Hindus, Muslims, Mormons). Studies of young men and women of high school and college age in the United States (Horn et al. 1959; Salber & Worcester 1964; Straits & Sechrest 1963) have reported that significantly more followers of the Roman Catholic and Jewish faiths were found to smoke than Protestants in these age groups. In the Newton, Massachusetts, study, Salber and Worcester (1964, p. 36) found that Catholic men and boys smoked more than other males, while Jewish women and girls smoked more than other females. Psychological variables. In addition to sociological and demographic variables, some psychological variables have also been explored. Intelligence and achievement. Present available evidence suggests that there is no direct relationship between intelligence, as measured by tests of IQ, and smoking (Matarazzo & Saslow I960; Hochbaum 1964). The same is not true for academic achievement during adolescence, however. The previously mentioned studies in Portland, Oregon; Buffalo, New York; Newton, Massachusetts; and a study in London, England (Davis, as reported in Kissen I960, p. 369) indicate that those students who are academically inferior to their age mates or classmates have a significantly greater tendency to be smokers. This relationship between achievement and smoking, of course, does not establish that one of the two factors is a cause of the other. It can be stated, however, on the basis of consistent evidence, that groups of young men and women who are academically less successful than their
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peers contain a higher proportion of smokers than is found among their more successful classmates. Also, smokers are found to take the scholastically less demanding academic programs (vocational preparation in contrast to a college preparatory curriculum). Smokers date more but engage in fewer extracurricular activities, including sports of some types, than do nonsmokers. No interpretation of these disparate facts has yet achieved wide acceptance. Personality. Studies attempting to relate personality variables to smoking suffer from the serious handicap that there exists today no highly valid, universally accepted measure either of global personality or of any specific personality dimension. (This assertion quite probably will find support among serious students of personality.) One result is that seldom do any two studies, even those allegedly measuring the same trait (e.g., neuroticism), utilize the same methods of assessment; therefore they cannot be compared meaningfully. Matarazzo and Saslow (1960), Kissen (1960), Lawton (1962), Horn (1963), and Hochbaum (1964) have presented reviews of the few published studies in this area. The results, meager and poorly supported as they are, suggest the following. In most English-speaking countries roughly half of the population are smokers. Studies using stratified as well as nonstratified samples (some small, some large) reveal the presence of a slightly higher number of "extraverts" and "neurotic," "anxious," and "tense" individuals among the smokers as compared to the nonsmokers. However, although the differences in the mean scores of smokers and nonsmokers are statistically significant, they typically reflect a difference in response to only one or two questionnaire items. Two of the most extensive (3,194 individual subjects) and best-designed studies on this subject (Eysenck et al. I960; Eysenck 1963) utilized stratified samples of individuals in the British Isles. In the second one Eysenck (1963, pp. 114-115) concludes : "Degree and type of smoking are . . . related to extraversion, in the sense that pipe smokers are introverted, as are non-smokers; light, medium and heavy smokers are extraverted, increasingly so in that order." The degree of extraversion among ex-smokers is found to be indistinguishable from that among light smokers. Such a strong conclusion may not be justified, however, since the mean extraversion scores, on the 31-item extraversion measure used by Eysenck, were as follows for the groups studied (in the order in which they are mentioned above): 17.07, 17.63, 17.60, 18.70, 18.95, and 17.71. Although several of the groups
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differed significantly from each other because of the large number of subjects, the mean difference between the highest and lowest groups was only 1.88 items on the 31-item personality measure. Similar small but statistically significant differences between smokers and nonsmokers have been found on the "anxiety" scale used by Matarazzo and Saslow (1960, p. 499) and on the "tension," "psychosomatic," and "neuroticism" measures used by other workers. Referring to the research described above in their 1960 review, Matarazzo and Saslow concluded . . . while smokers do differ from non-smokers in a variety of characteristics, none of the studies has shown a single variable which is found exclusively in one group and is completely absent in the other . . . [this] is especially true for the variables measuring personality characteristics. . . . Examination of the means, standard deviations, ranges, percentages, etc. . . . makes clear that while group trends suggest the smoker to be more "neurotic," on the average, there are still many individual smokers with neuroticism, or anxiety . . . scores lower than those of many nonsmokers. . . . Thus, a clear-cut smoker's personality has not emerged from the results so far published in the literature. . . . It is hard to believe that they [the half of a country's population who smoke] would share in common one personality "type." This is not to imply, however, that the various psychological dimensions along which smokers have been shown, as a group, to differ from non-smokers may not suggest an important single process, or processes, underlying these various demonstrated (but small) differences. Further research may indeed so systematize the disparate findings. (1960, pp. 508-510) Thus, a number of studies report small differences in mean scores, suggesting that compared to the nonsmoker the average smoker has a slight tendency to be more extraverted, outgoing, adventurous, tense, anxious, inclined to drink more alcohol and coffee, date earlier, watch more television, see more movies, drive an automobile earlier, read fewer books per month, play fewer sports, and belong to fewer clubs and school organizations. However, a large number of individual smokers may show few or none of these characteristics. In addition, no unifying theme, trait, or personality dimension has been abstracted from these separate characteristics. For the present it seems best to conclude that any psychological dynamics that may differentiate the smoker from the nonsmoker have not yet been isolated. Initiation of smoking. Phanishayi (1951), in India, was one of the first to study variables associated with the initiation of smoking. His research
was followed by that of McArthur and his associates (1958) with Harvard College undergraduates in Boston; Bothwell (1959) in Oxfordshire, England; Chave, Schilling and their associates (1959) in London; Horn and his associates (1959) in Portland, Oregon; Cartwright et al. (1959) in Edinburgh, Scotland; Morison and Medovy (1961) in Winnipeg, Canada; and Salber and MacMahon (1961) in Newton, Massachusetts. These studies consistently have identified parental smoking as one of the most important predisposing factors in smoking among school-age children. As mentioned above, most smokers appear to have begun smoking between the ages of 10 and 18. If both parents smoke, the probability that their children will begin to smoke is several times that of children with nonsmoking parents. When only one parent smokes, the incidence of smoking among the offspring falls midway between that of the other two groups. Published data also suggest a higher frequency of smoking among children with older siblings who smoke. The relationship of some other sociopersonal factors to initiation of the smoking habit is less clear-cut. In general, the studies suggest that youngsters' beginning to smoke is related to: (a) curiosity about smoking; (Z?) conformity pressures among adolescents; (c) need for status among peers, including self-perceived failure to achieve peer-group status or satisfaction; (d) the need for self-assurance; and ( e } striving for adult status (see the reviews by Hochbaum 1964; Horn 1963). However, it is difficult to measure the strength of such needs, as well as their relative influence, and therefore these relationships should be considered tentative. There is no convincing evidence that beginning to smoke in childhood or young adulthood is a sign of rebellion against parents or other authority figures, although such a hypothesis has been suggested by several writers. Most writers have suggested that once the smoking habit has been established the factors associated with its continuation very likely are different from those associated with its initiation. Although the evidence is far from conclusive, it appears that situational tension-reduction is an important motivational factor in perpetuating the smoking habit. Also, a small group of smokers attest that they continue to smoke because it is pleasurable. Many smokers report considerable dissatisfaction with smoking but, despite repeated attempts, have found themselves unable to break the habit. In fact, Horn (1963, p. 364), who sampled the adult popu-
SMOKING lation of the entire United States, reports that only 14 per cent of regular cigarette smokers state that they consider the habit pleasurable, safe, and worth the cost. Discontinuation of smoking. Why do smokers not give up the habit that so many state they would like to shed? Despite pronouncements from health authorities in all parts of the world, the proportion of smokers reporting successful discontinuation of smoking is from 10 to 20 per cent in males and 3 to 10 per cent in females (Haenszel et al. 1956, p. 24; Hammond & Percy 1958, p. 2,956; Cartwright et al. 1959, p. 726; and Horn 1963, p. 391). Immediately following the 1964 report of the surgeon general of the United States, 8.6 per cent of the smoking students at two U.S. colleges reported that they stopped smoking as a result of the health hazard identified in this report (Katahn et al. 1964). Again, a greater percentage of male smokers (10.3 per cent) than female smokers (5.9 per cent) reported quitting. In addition, more natural science majors (18.2 per cent) quit smoking than did liberal arts majors (6.7 per cent). The same students took a story-completion test requiring them to create both an imaginary story and an estimate of the amount of time which in reality would have transpired during the occurrence of the sequence of events in the story. Ex-smokers tended to respond with a longer time perspective than did students who continued to smoke, and the authors suggest that these individuals might be more likely to worry about long-term health hazards. Immediately before and following the surgeon general's report, several researchers attempted to find effective means for discouraging initiation and encouraging cessation of the smoking habit. Horn (1960) used a variety of educational approaches with high school students in Portland, Oregon, but he reported only minimal success in preventing the initiation of smoking. Both Horn (1964, personal communication) and Lawton (1964, personal communication) have attempted to help adult smokers discontinue smoking through the use of weekly educational meetings (Horn in Washington) and weekly "group therapy" sessions (Lawton in Philadelphia). With both techniques, success rates were not much higher than the 10 to 20 per cent "spontaneous" successes reported by other writers. The Horn and Lawton studies raise an important question for all cessation studies: who is an exsmoker? Is he an individual who quits for a week, a month, a year, or forever? It is both a common observation and an established statistical fact that
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many ex-smokers resume the habit after varying lengths of time. Comment. After reviewing the above literature, the present authors have concluded that, in all probability, people begin to smoke for essentially the same reasons that they adopt other habits, such as eating certain foods, using certain brands of soap, wearing lipstick, going to see the Beatles, and so forth. That is, initiation of smoking appears to be a result of the millions of dollars spent yearly by (cigarette) manufacturers to influence people to do so; the standards and fads extant in youthful and adult social circles; the examples provided by parents and families; the depth of commitment to personal religious codes; and, finally, some psychological and personality characteristics (e.g., extraversion, tension, neuroticism, etc.) of the individual himself. In our opinion, the last category (personality characteristics) is the least influential in determining whether a given individual will begin to smoke, whereas the other factors (especially the amount spent on world-wide advertising) have considerable influence. Once started, however, continuation or discontinuation appears to be, in large part, a function of the sociopsychological characteristics of the individual. JOSEPH D. MATARAZZO AND RUTH G. MATARAZZO [Directly related are the entries DRINKING AND ALCOHOLISM; DRUGS.] BIBLIOGRAPHY BOTHWELL, P. W. 1959 The Epidemiology of Cigarette Smoking in Rural School Children. Medical Officer 102:125-132. CARTWRIGHT, ANN; MARTIN, F. M.; and THOMSON, J. G. 1959 Distribution and Development of Smoking Habits. Lancet (1959) no. 2:725-727. CHAVE, S. P. W.; and SCHILLING, R. S. F. et al. 1959 The Smoking Habits of School Children. British Journal of Preventive and Social Medicine 13:1—4. EYSENCK, H. J. 1963 Smoking, Personality and Psychosomatic Disorders. Journal of Psychosomatic Research 7:107-130. EYSENCK, H. J. et al. 1960 Smoking and Personality. British Medical Journal [1960], no. 5184:1456-1460. From Epidemiology to Ecology—Smoking and Health in Transition. 1966 American Journal of Public Health 56, no. 12. HAENSZEL, WILLIAM; SHIMKIN, MICHAEL B.; and MILLER, HERMAN P. 1956 Tobacco Smoking Patterns in the United States. U.S. Public Health Monograph No. 45; Public Health Service Publication No. 463. Washington: Government Printing Office. HAMMOND, E. CUYLER; and PERCY, CONSTANCE 1958 Ex-smokers. New York State Journal of Medicine 58:2956-2959. HEATH, CLARK W. 1958 Differences Between Smokers and Non-smokers. AMA Archives of Internal Medicine 101:377-388.
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[HOCHBAUM, G. M.] 1964 Psycho-Social Aspects of Smoking. Pages 359-379 in U.S. Surgeon General's Advisory Committee on Smoking and Health, Smoking and Health: Report of the Advisory Committee to the Surgeon General of the Public Health Service. Public Health Service Publication No. 1103. Washington: Government Printing Office. HORN, DANIEL 1960 Modifying Smoking Habits in High School Students. Children 7:63-65. HORN, DANIEL 1963 Behavioral Aspects of Cigarette Smoking. Journal of Chronic Diseases 16:383-395. HORN, DANIEL et al. 1959 Cigarette Smoking Among High School Students. American Journal of Public Health 49:1497-1511. KALLNER, GERTRUDE 1958 Smoking Habits of the Population. Unpublished manuscript, Israel, Central Bureau of Statistics. KATAHN, MARTIN; SPIELBERGER, CHARLES D.; and JUDSON, ABE J. 1964 Smokers and Ex-smokers: Reactions of College Students to the Surgeon General's Cancer Report. Psychonomic Science 1:323-324. KISSEN, DAVID M. 1960 Psycho-Social Factors in Cigarette Smoking Motivation: A Review. Medical Officer 104:365-372. LAWTON, M. P. 1962 Psychosocial Aspects of Cigarette Smoking. Journal of Health and Human Behavior 3: 163-170. LILIENFELD, ABRAHAM M. 1959 Emotional and Other Selected Characteristics of Cigarette Smokers and Nonsmokers as Related to Epidemiological Studies of Lung Cancer and Other Diseases. Journal of the National Cancer Institute 22:259-282. MCARTHUR, CHARLES; WALDRAN, ELLEN; and DICKINSON, JOHN 1958 The Psychology of Smoking. Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology 56:267-275. MATARAZZO, JOSEPH D.; and SASLOW, GEORGE 1960 Psychological and Related Characteristics of Smokers and Nonsmokers. Psychological Bulletin 57:493-513. MAUSNER, BERNARD; and PLATT, ELLEN S. 1966 Behavioral Aspects of Smoking: A Conference Report. Health Education Monographs Supplement, No. 2. -» Presents the highlights of a three-day conference held at Beaver College (Glenside, Pennsylvania) attended by 39 scientists and health educators. MORISON, JAMES B.; and MEDOVY, H. 1961 Smoking Habits of Winnipeg School Children. Canadian Medical Association Journal 84:1006-1012. PHANISHAYI, R. A. 1951 Causes of Smoking Habit in College Students: An Investigation. Journal of Education and Psychology 9:29-37. SACKRIN, SEYMOUR M.; and CONOVER, ARTHUR G. 1957 Tobacco Smoking in the United States in Relation to Income. U.S. Department of Agriculture, Market Research Report, No. 189. Washington: The Department. SALBER, EVA J.; and MACMAHON, BRIAN 1961 Cigarette Smoking Among High School Students Related to Social Class and Parental Smoking Habits. American Journal of Public Health 51:1780-1789. SALBER, EVA J.; MACMAHON, BRIAN; and WELSH, BARBARA 1962 Smoking Habits of High School Students Related to Intelligence and Achievement. Pediatrics 29: 780-787. SALBER, EVA J.; WELSH, BARBARA; and TAYLOR, S. V. 1963 Reasons for Smoking Given by Secondary School Children. Journal of Health and Human Behavior 4: 118-129.
SALBER, EVA J.; and WORCESTER, JANE 1964 Change in Women's Smoking Patterns. Cancer 17:32-36. SALBER, EVA J. et al. 1961 Smoking Habits of High School Students in Newton, Massachusetts. New England Journal of Medicine 265:969-974. SALBER, EVA J. et al. 1963 Smoking Behavior, Recreational Activities and Attitudes Toward Smoking Among Newton Secondary School Children. Pediatrics 32: 911-918. STRAITS, BRUCE C.; and SECHREST, LEE 1963 Further Support of Some Findings About the Characteristics of Smokers and Non-smokers. Journal of Consulting Psychology 27:282. U. S. SURGEON GENERAL'S ADVISORY COMMITTEE ON SMOKING AND HEALTH 1964 Smoking and Health: Report of the Advisory Committee to the Surgeon General of the Public Health Service. Public Health Service Publication No. 1103. Washington: Government Printing Office.
SNOUCK HURGRONJE, CHRISTIAAN Christiaan Snouck Hurgronje (1857—1936), Dutch orientalist and colonial official, was educated at Leiden University. He was a lecturer at his alma mater between 1880 and 1889 and for 17 years thereafter was an adviser on religious and native affairs to the Netherlands Indies government. From 1906 until his death, he was professor of Arabic and Islamic institutions at Leiden and concurrently (until 1933) adviser to the Ministry of Colonies. Snouck Hurgronje is best known as one of Europe's two nineteenth-century pioneers in the scientific study of Islam (the other being the Hungarian Ignaz Goldziher). His rigorously critical, historical approach, based on close scrutiny of scriptural texts and Arabic commentaries, shed new light on such crucial problems as the origins of the faith and the role of Muhammad in its growth and development, and the nature of the hadith (the recorded usages and traditions of the Prophet and the early Muslim communities). Snouck was the first to recognize the central role in Islam of the fiqh, i.e., a repository of quasijudicial regulations pertaining not only to legal and social affairs but also to the relation of the individual to Allah, and of the idjma, i.e., the "consensus" on interpretations of the fiqh reached by the four recognized schools of Islam, which is binding on all Muslims. At the same time Snouck Hurgronje critically re-examined Islam as a historical reality, reconstructing, on the basis of the Qu'ran (Koran) and the hadith, the origins of the first Muslim communities, with special emphasis on the adaptations to pre-existing rituals instituted by Muhammad. Snouck was also the first to clarify
SNOUCK HURGRONJE, CHRISTIAAN the interplay between pre-Islamic usages ('ada~) and fiqh and hence the pattern of diversity within unity. Islamic eschatology, especially that centering on the Mahdi, and Islamic mysticism were other important fields opened up by him, which were subsequently thoroughly explored in the Indonesian setting by some of his outstanding Dutch students. Although Snouck was recognized as a leading authority on Islam in European and Muslim lands even during his lifetime, his other achievements have as yet received only scanty scholarly attention. Apparently without formal academic training in anthropology, Snouck produced ethnological and ethnographic studies of lasting importance. It was his concern for Islam as a living reality, his sharp sense of observation and his mastery of both scriptural and vernacular languages, and his careful field work that permitted him to do so. His classic two-volume work, Mekka (1888-1889), the result of his sojourn there in 1885, typically combined a reconstruction from original texts of the Holy City's history with vivid, detailed descriptions of daily life, gathered in "coffee shops, diwans, mosques and living quarters." Snouck almost intuitively grasped the concept of "culture," as is evidenced in the preface to his standard work on the Achinese of northern Sumatra (1893-1894): "To him who really wants to penetrate the Muhammadan factor in the life of a people, children's games, adult entertainments, profane literature, the organization of a village or province—all these are in many respects as important as are the books used in religious instruction, the mystical orders propagating in the land, the position of the scribes" (1893-1894, vol. 1, p. xii). A similar perceptiveness pervades his observations on Javanese Islam, published (in part only) pseudonymously in 18911892 as a series of letters from a retired Javanese district head. As lecturer in a training institute for colonial officials from 1880 on and as the first Dutchman to gain on-the-spot knowledge of the Indonesian ("Djawa") colony in Mecca, Snouck Hurgronje was throughout his career deeply and often passionately involved in the problems confronting a European colonial power ruling millions of Indonesian Muslims. His studies on the Achinese and Javanese were written while he served the colonial government in an advisory capacity; the insights he gained during his Achinese mission were instrumental in terminating a desultory, decades-old and Muslim-inspired war against the Dutch. But more than a mere adviser, Snouck was in fact the
34 1
originator and architect of modern Dutch Islamic policy, a policy basically adhered to until the end of Dutch rule in Indonesia in 1942. Its twin principles were the broadest toleration of religious life, on the one hand, and rigorous repression of Islamic, especially pan-Islamic, political agitation, on the other. Although the dividing line was as difficult to determine in theory as in practice, particularly after the advent of Islamic reformism in Indonesia (after Snouck had returned to Holland), the twentieth-century Islamic renaissance in the archipelago was doubtless facilitated by the colonial government's adherence to Snouck's directives. However, there is a tragic paradox in the fact that, in spite of his lasting influence on Islamic policies, Snouck Hurgronje was least successful as a colonial statesman in the wider sense of the word. He was one of the very few Dutchmen with a bold vision of the ultimate destiny of peoples under colonial domination and virtually the lone propounder of the associationist ideal that envisaged a future political union between Holland and Indonesia as equal partners sharing a common cultural bond. He was a fervent proponent of rapid Westernization through education, which he believed would readily supplant indigenous, including Muslim, orientations, especially among the Javanese aristocracy. Snouck argued in favor of progressive Indonesianization of the administration, which was to go hand-in-hand with a planned withdrawal of European supervisory personnel. Especially in the years after World War I, he became one of the most resolute Dutch advocates of ultimate Indonesian independence. Dutch colonial practice in the twentieth century, however, took a course which was diametrically opposite to that which Snouck Hurgronje advocated. His departure from Indonesia in 1906 had been caused by his inability to persuade the colonial authorities to supplement pacification (in Achin) with meaningful social reconstruction. The iron logic, merciless irony, and uncompromising vehemence with which he argued his case (his later, presumably highly critical, advisory opinions to the Ministry of Colonies have not yet been published) made him the idol of many liberals but also the bete noire of diehard colonial conservatives. In order to undercut his influence and that of his colleague Cornelis van Vollenhoven in the training of colonial administrators at Leiden University, these conservatives in 1925 established a rival department of Indonesian studies at the University of Utrecht.
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Snouck's failure as a colonial administrator should not obscure his lasting stature in the field of Islamic studies. Social scientists have not yet fully come to appreciate his contributions to many of their specialties. HARRY J. BEND A [See also ASIAN SOCIETY; COLONIALISM; ISLAM; and the biography of SCHRIEKE.] WORKS BY SNOUCK HURGRONJE
1888-1889 Mekka. 2 vols. The Hague: Nijhoff. -» Volume 1: Die Stadt und ihre Her^en. Volume 2: Aus dem heutigen Leben. (1889) 1931 Mekka in the Latter Part of the 19th Century: Daily Life, Customs and Learning, the Moslims of the East-Indian Archipelago. Leiden: Brill; London: Luzac. -» First published in German. A translation of Volume 2 of Snouck Hurgronje 1888-1889. (1891-1892) 1924 Brieven van een wedono-pensioen. Pages 111-248 in Christiaan Snouck Hurgronje, Verspreide geschriften. Volume 4: Geschriften betreffende den Islam in Nederlandsch-Indie. Bonn and Leipzig: Schroeder; Leiden: Brill. -> First published in Java in a Dutch newspaper De Locomotief, between January 7, 1891, and February 22, 1892. (1893-1894) 1906 The Achehnese. 2 vols. London: Luzac. -» First published as De Atjehers. Translation of extract from the 1893-1894 edition was provided by Harry J. Benda. 1923-1927 Verspreide geschriften. 6 vols. in 7. Bonn and Leipzig: Schroeder; Leiden: Brill. -> Volume 1: Geschriften betreffende den Islam en zijne geschiedenis. Volume 2: Geschriften betreffende het mohammedaansche recht. Volume 3; Geschriften betreffende Arable en Turkije. Volume 4: Geschriften betreffende den Islam in Nederlandsch-Indie. 2 vols. Volume 5: Geschriften betreffende taal- und letterkunde. Volume 6: Boekaankondigingen; verscheidenheden; registers. Ambtelijke adviezen van C. Snouck Hurgronje, 1889—1936. 3 vols. The Hague: Nijhoff, 1957-1965. Selected Works of C. Snouck Hurgronje. Edited by G. H. Bousquet and J. Schacht. Leiden: Brill, 1957. SUPPLEMENTARY BIBLIOGRAPHY
BENDA, HARRY J. 1958 Christiaan Snouck Hurgronje and the Foundation of Dutch Islamic Policy in Indonesia. Journal of Modern History 30:338-347. BOUSQUET, GEORGES-HENRI 1938 La politique musulmane et coloniale des Pays-Bas. Paris: Hartmann. -» A partial translation of this book was published in 1940 as A French View of the Netherlands Indies, by Oxford University Press. DREWES, GERARDUS W. J. 1957 Snouck Hurgronje en de Islamwetenschap: Herdenking van de lOOe geboortedag van Prof. Dr. C. Snouck Hurgronje, 10 februari 1957. Leiden: Universitaire Pers. PEDERSEN, JOHANNES 1957 The Scientific Work of Snouck Hurgronje. Leiden: Brill. PIJPER, GUILLAUME F. 1957 Islam and the Netherlands. Leiden: Brill. PIJPER, GUILLAUME F. 1961 De islampolitiek der Nederlandse regering. Pages 209-222 in Henri Baudet and Izaac J. Brugmans (editors), Balans van beleid: Terugblik op de laatste halve eeuui van NederlandschIndie. Assen (The Netherlands): Van Gorcum.
VAN NIEL, ROBERT 1957 Christiaan Snouck Hurgronje: In Memory of the Centennial of His Birth. Journal of Asian Studies 16:591-594.
SOCIAL ACCOUNTING See NATIONAL INCOME AND PRODUCT ACCOUNTS; NATIONAL WEALTH; for related material, see also INCOME DISTRIBUTION; INPUT-OUTPUT ANALYSIS. SOCIAL ANTHROPOLOGY See under ANTHROPOLOGY. SOCIAL BEHAVIOR, ANIMAL i. THE FIELD ii. PRIMATE BEHAVIOR in. THE REGULATION OF ANIMAL POPULATIONS
/. P. Scott Irven DeVore V. C. Wynne-Edwards
THE FIELD
Social behavior may be defined as any behavior which is stimulated by or has an effect upon another animal of the same species. So defined, almost all behavior may have some degree of sociality—and it is therefore proper to speak of behavior as highly social or only minimally so— but there is very little behavior which can be called truly asocial. Social behavior is therefore very nearly equivalent to behavior in general, as the same behavior may be social or not, depending upon its source of stimulation and its object. To qualify the above definition further, there are occasions, particularly in cases of domestication or hybridization, in which social behavior can be elicited by a member of another species. Behavior patterns. A behavior pattern may be defined as a segment of behavior having a definite adaptive function, and therefore, as a basic functional unit of behavior. For example, a chicken approaching a pan of water, lowering its bill into the water, and then raising its head is exhibiting a pattern of behavior which has the function of providing the animal with water. Distribution of social behavior. The paramecium, so commonly studied in elementary biology courses, is a highly developed protozoan which exhibits a variety of behavior patterns. One of these is a simple form of sexual behavior in which the paramecia fasten themselves together and afterward exchange nuclei and divide. Another pattern occurs under unfavorable environmental conditions. When a drop of water containing several paramecia is allowed to dry slowly, the animals will huddle together and thus protect each
SOCIAL BEHAVIOR, ANIMAL: The Field other against drying out. Such behavior has the function of shelter or comfort seeking. In addition, this one-celled animal shows other patterns of behavior which are only incidentally social. One of these is an investigatory or exploratory pattern of behavior in which the animal drives itself ahead with its cilia in a spiral path and thus comes in contact with various objects. Depending on the nature of the objects, it may remain in contact or back off and start out in another direction. Finally, its pattern of ingestive behavior is extremely simple, consisting of driving water laden with food particles toward its gullet by means of cilia, and it involves only starting or stopping the beating cilia. More complex patterns of behavior having basically the same functions are present in the lower invertebrates, but only in the arthropods and vertebrates can we find new functions. Male crayfish, for example, will fight with each other during the breeding season, an example of agonistic behavior. Certain insects show highly developed patterns of behavior for the care of the young, thus exhibiting care-giving, or epiineletic, behavior. The young larvae, by their movements, may signal for care and attention, exhibiting care-soliciting, or etepimeletic, behavior. Likewise, ingestive behavior assumes a highly social function, especially among ants, which feed each other in a relationship that Wheeler (1923) called trophallaxis. All of these behavioral functions are highly developed in vertebrates. In addition, superior eyesight permits vertebrates to develop patterns of social behavior which involve mutual imitation; this allelomimetic behavior is commonly seen in schools of fish, flocks of birds, and herds of mammals, where each animal follows the movements of those next to him, resulting in highly coordinated group movements (Scott 1958). Systems of behavior. As behavior becomes more complex in the animal kingdom, a given species develops several alternate patterns of behavior for each general function. A paramecium, for example, has only one simple pattern of ingestive behavior and no patterns of agonistic behavior. In contrast, a mouse attacked by another mouse may fight back, run away, assume a defensive posture, or become limp and passive. Each of these patterns of behavior has the function of adapting to the same stimulus, and the attacked mouse usually goes through all or part of this behavior repertory until one response is finally selected on the basis of its effect. Such a group of behavior patterns having a common general function, and usually a common physiological basis, is a behavioral sys-
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tem. Behavioral systems are quite similar to physiological systems, and many of them are directly related, as for example, sexual behavior and the reproductive system. Like physiological systems, behavioral systems do not function entirely independently of each other, and in various species they may be organized on a somewhat different basis. In the dog and other members of the family Canidae, sexual and eliminative behavior are closely related to each other, whereas in birds the two are unrelated. The nature of behavior patterns and their organization into a system is largely a result of the special heredity of the species concerned. A primary task in studying the social behavior of any species is to describe its special behavior patterns and their organization into behavioral systems. This behavioral inventory, or ethogram, as Tinbergen has named it (1951), provides the essential raw material for understanding social organization or conducting experimental work. Development of behavioral systems. In most of the higher animals, behavioral systems are incompletely developed at birth or hatching. In young mammals the ingestive system is present in an immature form, the newborn animal taking its food only by nursing. The development of behavior patterns for ingesting solid food comes later. Some systems of behavior may be completely absent, and all of them tend to be loosely organized together as et-epimeletic behavior. As the animal grows older, both behavior patterns and behavioral systems become differentiated from each other, partly as the result of learning and partly because of the processes of growth and maturation. Social organization Social relationships. A social relationship may be defined as regular and predictable behavior between two individuals, usually of the same species. In some animals these relationships may be organized largely as the result of heredity, but in higher animals relationships develop as a combined result of hereditary factors and learning. When two chickens meet for the first time, each presents a problem of adaptation to the other, and one solution is to attack. The result is a fight, and usually one chicken wins and the other loses. When they meet again, there is a tendency to repeat the behavior, so that in the long run one individual forms a strong habit of winning and the other of losing. Since one of the principles of learning is the "law of effect" (which might also be called the law of least effort), the winning chicken reduces its attacks as time goes on, and the whole
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relationship is reduced to one of threat and avoidance behavior rather than actual fighting. This is an example of a typical dominance-subordination relationship. [See LEARNING, articles on INSTRUMENTAL LEARNING and REINFORCEMENT.] Hereditary factors also help to determine the development of the relationship. If one bird is a male and the other a female, the male almost invariably wins. Among females, large hens are likely to win over small ones, and aggressive breeds over peaceful ones (Guhl 1953). Thus, the development of a social relationship may be considered as a process of differentiation of behavior, affected by both heredity and learning. As will be seen below, the development of social relationships in young animals is a slower and more complex process. Social relationships can be classified in two different ways. In Carpenter's system, classification is based on the different kinds of individuals present in the system (1934). In howling monkeys and most other mammals there are three major kinds of individuals (males, females, and young) combined in six kinds of social relationships (see Table 1). The same scheme applies to all social vertebrates, but it becomes more complex in some of the social invertebrates. In bees there are three kinds of adults—males (drones), females (queens), and sterile females (workers)—as well as the young. In addition, the workers exhibit different behavior at different stages of development. In termites there may be as many as three different kinds of individuals capable of reproduction and as many more different kinds of workers. Table I — Social relationships classified according to age and sex Male Female Young
Male
Female
Voung
Male-male Male-female Male-young
Female-female Female-young
Young-young
Source: After Carpenter 1934.
Social relationships may also be classified according to the behavioral system or systems involved. On this basis a large number of social relationships are theoretically possible, but actually observed, important social relationships are relatively few in number. There are four which involve one behavior system only. Dominancesubordination relationships are developed in any animal system where agonistic behavior is found. Sexual relationships depend of course on sex behavior. Leader—follower relationships are based on allelomimetic behavior and result from an unequal
degree of mutual imitation. Finally, mutual-care relationships, often seen in the mutual grooming of primates, are formed when both animals exhibit epimeletic behavior. There are two important relationships composed of combined systems: trophallaxis and caredependency. Trophallaxis involves mutual feeding and mutual care and is very important in the social insects. The workers feed the young and in turn lick off secretions from them. In mammals, birds, and other vertebrates which care for their young, epimeletic and et-epimeletic behavior are combined to produce the relationship of caredependency. Both of these schemes of classification may be combined for systematic study. For example, the behavior exhibited in a male-male relationship may be examined in detail and classified as dominance-subordination, leader-follower, or whatever it may be in the particular animal society. The number of possible social relationships which an animal develops depends on the size of the group. Carpenter has presented a simple formula for the total number: n(n — l)/2, which is of course the number of possible combinations between any two individuals in a group of n individuals. When examined in more detail, this formula has certain interesting properties which have implications for the social organization of groups. If we consider groups of different sizes, starting with one and going up to ten, we see that an individual added to a group adds a number of relationships equal to the number of individuals already present, i.e., an individual joining a group of three adds only three new relationships, but adds ten to a group of ten. There is a very rapid increase in the number of relationships as the group gets larger, resulting in extremely complex organization. Experiments indicate that hens in a flock of one hundred can recognize every other individual, making a theoretical total of 4,950 relationships in the flock. Social activity tends to increase in proportion to the number of social relationships. Primary socialization. In highly developed societies the individuals must become related to particular members of the species. An ant colony would become totally disorganized if its members reacted toward members of other colonies in the same way as to their own. Ants would wander from one nest to another, overcrowding one and leaving young unprotected in others. Therefore, at some period in their development, all individuals must learn to differentiate their own family or colony from others. As Fielde (1903) showed,
SOCIAL BEHAVIOR, ANIMAL: The Field there is a critical period in early development in which the immature ant can be transferred from one nest to another or even to that of another species and subsequently act as if it belonged with the new individuals. This transference of social relationships occurs regularly in the slave-raiding ants, a species of red ant commonly found in North America. The raiders remove the pupae from nests of black ants and take them to their own, where the black individuals subsequently rear and care for the offspring of the raiders. A similar phenomenon takes place in all highly social animals which have been studied so far. Birds hatched in incubators or removed from their nests in early stages of development and reared by hand become attached to the human species and often fail to react to their own. In precocial birds, such as chickens, ducks, geese, and turkeys, the formation of the first social relationship takes place within the first 24 hours after birth. In the more slowly developing altricial birds, such as song sparrows, jackdaws, or doves, the process takes place at a later period in development, and the degree of attachment to the human handler varies inversely with the age at which the young are taken from the nest [see IMPRINTING]. Among mammals, also, the process varies with speed of development. In sheep and other herd animals the young lamb becomes strongly attached to its mother within the first few days, whereas in the more slowly developing dog the period of socialization begins at about three weeks of age, reaches a peak at about six or seven weeks, and slowly declines thereafter. The process of socialization is of course a reciprocal one, the parents becoming attached to their offspring as well. In sheep or goats the mother becomes attached to her offspring within the first two hours or so and thereafter will repulse any strange infant. Primary socialization has been little studied in primates other than man, but it takes place within the first six months in rhesus monkeys, as also appears to be the case in human infants [see INFANCY, article on THE EFFECTS OF EARLY EXPERIENCE].
The time at which primary socialization takes place is obviously a critical period in development, determining which individuals shall be the close relatives of the young animal. Later he may exhibit appropriate patterns of sexual behavior and other types of social interaction toward similar individuals [see AFFECTION; SOCIALIZATION, article On PSYCHOLOGICAL ASPECTS].
What is the nature of the process involved in primary socialization? In the young animal there are positive behavioral mechanisms such as the
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"following" reaction of a young chick or lamb, which brings it into contact with members of its own species. There are also negative mechanisms, particularly the behavior patterns of escape, which develop somewhat later and prevent socialization with other individuals by inhibiting contact. As to the nature of the process itself, in precocial birds it obviously takes place in the absence of food rewards, and, under experimental conditions, without any obvious external rewards or reinforcement of any kind. While food rewards do affect the behavior of a young mammal, experiments have shown that the process of socialization takes place without them. All evidence indicates that the process is an internal one and is closely connected with emotional responses. Experimental studies indicate that any kind of strong emotion, whether it be that of loneliness, fear, pain, or hunger, will speed up the process of forming a social bond. While the capacity to form such a bond is strongly developed in the infant animal, the same process can take place at any time in later life at a somewhat slower rate, except when it is completely suppressed by the development of interfering behavior patterns (Scott 1962). Animal and human societies The kind of social organization developed by a species depends upon the nature of its behavior patterns and the ways in which they are organized into behavioral systems. Thus we may state a general law: Social behavior is a determinant of social organization. Aggregations. The simplest kind of animal society is the temporary aggregation. Such groups occur widely in the animal kingdom and were extensively studied by W. C. Allee, who was able to show in a large number of cases that living in groups promotes the survival of individuals, whether they are protozoans or vertebrates (Allee et al. 1949). This kind of temporary aggregation is based on shelter- or comfort-seeking behavior. A second kind of temporary aggregation is based on sexual behavior. This may involve only two individuals, as it does in paramecia, or vast numbers, as in the mating swarms of the palolo worm of the Pacific. The great majority of invertebrate societies belong to one or the other of these temporary aggregations. In contrast, the higher invertebrates, and many vertebrates, form long-lasting groups with highly complex internal organization. Insect groups first received scientific attention, but it is now realized that the social behavior of insects is somewhat specialized, being limited by certain anatomical
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peculiarities such as the external skeleton and the relatively inefficient compound eyes. Because of these limitations, insects are small, relatively shortlived, and unable to respond to complex visual stimuli at a distance. Insect societies. The most highly developed insect societies belong to two orders, the Hymenoptera, including ants, bees, and wasps, and the Isoptera, or termites. In both orders the societies consist of permanent groups associated with nests that are constructed by the combined efforts of the members, and the most prominent social behavior is care giving. In an ant colony two workers meet, feel each other with their antennae, and if one has recently fed, it will regurgitate a drop of honeydew to be eaten by the other. This, together with care of young, constitutes most of their social behavior and is what Wheeler termed trophallaxis (1923). In any given species of insect, social organization tends to be rigid and stereotyped, repeating itself generation after generation. There is relatively little modification by experience, and the combined efforts of the individuals produce a stable social environment. Alfred Emerson points out that insect societies have many of the characteristics of a single organism, and he has called them "supra-organisms" (see in Allee et al. 1949). The peak of development of the insect society is reached by the common honeybee, which maintains a permanent social group. In contrast to ants, in which each new colony is formed by a mated pair, large numbers of old bees accompany a queen moving to a new hive. Mating takes place at this time, and the fertile female, or queen, continues to reproduce for a long period, sometimes two or three years. The vast majority of the colony members are short-lived sterile females or workers which go through a regular series of activities as they pass through a few weeks of active life, first working around the hive and finally going out to forage for food. As von Frisch discovered, foraging bees are able to communicate to other workers the direction and distance at which food is found by means of body movements, or "dances," when they return to the hive (1950). Present evidence indicates that the nature of the signals and the ability to understand them are determined by heredity rather than learning. Vertebrate societies. The societies of vertebrate animals are also related to basic anatomy and physical capacities. Vertebrates have an internal skeleton and hence are capable of continuous growth. They can become immensely large, and their life spans may be enormously extended in
comparison with insects. The capacity for learning is consequently much more valuable and plays a more important role than it does among invertebrate societies, so that there are many examples of cultural as well as biological inheritance. Furthermore, the vertebrate eye is vastly more efficient than the compound eye of arthropods, making mutual imitation or allelomimetic behavior possible, particularly for animals active in the daytime. There is an enormous variety among vertebrate societies, ranging from temporary aggregations, like those of the lower invertebrates, to societies far exceeding those of the insects in complexity. The most highly developed societies are found among animals which occupy dominant ecological positions. In the water, fish are still the dominant form of life, and their societies have taken two forms. One of these, the school, which is based on allelomimetic behavior, is very widely found. In herring or mackerel the fish move in groups throughout their lives, even spawning in a mass and paying no attention to the eggs or young. In contrast, there are many kinds of fish, like the sunfish and stickleback, which emphasize nest building and the care of the young. In these cases the male guards the nest and sometimes the young for a short period after hatching. The period of dependency remains short, however, as in most cases the young must feed themselves. The males guard definite boundaries around the nest and thus exhibit territoriality (Tinbergen 1953). Amphibians, which usually occupy a relatively inferior ecological niche and are under constant pressure for survival, show almost no social organization except temporary mating aggregations and a few examples of care of the young. The same can be said for many reptiles, although some lizards develop dominance and territoriality and alligators build nests and briefly protect their young. Birds, which are the dominant form of life in the air, show a great variety of highly developed societies. One of the characteristics of bird societies is the phenomenon of seasonal change. For example, during their brief mating season, song sparrows develop one sort of social organization involving sexual behavior, territoriality, and care of the young and then spend the rest of the year in flocks which are much like schools of fish. Since the young are produced as eggs which have to be incubated, a high degree of coordination of caregiving behavior and physiological processes is necessary, and in many birds this is exhibited by both
SOCIAL BEHAVIOR, ANIMAL: The Field sexes, which combine to build the nest and care for the young. Many species feed their young, and pigeons and other members of the dove family nourish their offspring with crop milk. A "nuclear family" of male, female, and young is characteristic of these and many other bird societies, but in chickens and other members of the same family, mating is polygamous, and the brood of young is raised by the female alone. In mammals there is an enormous variety of societies differing in structure and degree of complexity. Among rodents, woodchucks are relatively solitary animals, reacting to each other with agonistic behavior except during the brief mating and reproductive seasons (Bronson 1964). At the opposite extreme are the prairie dogs, which run to groups numbering thousands of individuals. Each prairie dog colony is subdivided into territories, usually occupied by a sexually mature male, a group of females, and their young. Each year the adults in the territory move out to new locations on the edge of the colony, leaving the burrows behind for the next generation. Thus the oldest and most experienced members of the colony are found on its edges, where adaptation is more difficult (King 1955). Other examples of mammalian societies are the great herds of hoofed mammals. In a typical society, such as that of mountain sheep, the two sexes mingle during the mating season. Males compete in individual combat, and the more successful ones do most of the mating. During the rest of the year there are separate male and female herds, the latter being the group in which the young are raised. Among these herds a definite leadership organization develops, the older animals of either sex tending to lead in their respective groups. Some carnivores are quite solitary in their habits, but others, like wolves and dogs among the Canidae and lions in the cat family, live in permanent groups. These are, however, much smaller than those of the herd animals on which they prey. Thus, we see that there is an enormous number of different kinds of animal societies. There is great variation among human societies, but the variety possible in other animals far exceeds it. It is therefore of considerable interest to see what kinds of social organization are present in man's closest biological relatives, the other members of the Primate order. Primate societies. Like other important orders of mammals, the primate group includes a wide variety of species, ranging from the small "bush
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babies," or galagos, of Africa to the large manlike apes and man himself. Primates can be at least as different from one another as cats are from bears in the order Carnivora. Their chief limitation of variation is an ecological one. Except for man, they live entirely in tropical and subtropical regions, and while many primates like to play with water, none of them is truly aquatic. That primates other than man are highly social was first established by Carpenter's classical study of the howling monkey (1934). These are treedwelling primates of Central America. A band of males, females, and young wanders from tree to tree, eating fruits and leaves and rarely descending to the ground. Their most obvious kind of social behavior is allelomimetic, since they are constantly following each other. The more active males generally take the lead, but there is no single established leader in their wanderings. Agonistic behavior is greatly reduced and expressed almost entirely as the vocalization that gives the species its name. Females in estrus pass from male to male, and there is no indication of sexual jealousy or rivalry over females. The most important social relationship within the group is that between mother and offspring, the mother constantly carrying and caring for her baby for the first two years of its life. Care-giving behavior is also shown by the males if a young animal falls to the ground or is threatened in some way. Different bands have roughly marked territories, and groups keep each other apart by means of threats. Like man, baboons are a plains-living primate, and for this reason their social life has particular interest. Biologically they have evolved toward a doglike structure, often running on all fours and developing enormous teeth. However, they are largely vegetarian rather than hunting animals, often eating grass which they pick and eat a blade at a time. They readily adapt to living off farm crops, particularly melons and vegetables, and can be enormously destructive (Washburn & DeVore 1961; DeVore 1965). As with howlers, a large part of their social behavior is allelomimetic, and they move in a group of males, females, and young which may include thirty to one hundred individuals. Agonistic behavior is more prominent than in howlers, and the males develop a definite dominance order. As the group moves, the most dominant male stays in the center, while the more subordinate animals keep their distance from him and each other. Living on the plains, the group is constantly threatened by large predators such as lions and cheetahs. Females and their young tend to group themselves toward
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the center of the group, near the dominant male, this being the safest spot. When a member of the group is attacked or threatened, all the males combine in its defense. Consequently, baboons are seldom actually harmed by predators. When in estrus, a female may mate with the most dominant male first but then move on to others as he becomes satiated. As with howlers, there is no evidence of sexual jealousy or permanent bonds between particular males and females. The most important social relationship is that between mother and offspring; in fact, all adults are extremely responsive to young animals and will approach and care for them if the mother permits. As the infant becomes more independent, it joins a play group of other young animals within the group. In general, the baboon society gives the impression of a closely knit and highly cooperative group. Macaques are related to baboons, and their behavior is somewhat similar. The Indian macaque, or rhesus monkey, commonly lives near human habitations and is often fed by people. Carpenter studied an artificial colony of rhesus monkeys on Santiago Island off Puerto Rico and demonstrated that a dominance order between the males was an important part of their social life (1942). As with baboons, females in estrus pass from male to male. Overt aggressive behavior is perhaps more common than in baboons, possibly because of the disorganizing effect of human contact. Southwick found that where rhesus troops went into cities and competed for food, there were many cases of serious injury (1963). The behavior of the Japanese macaque is quite similar. Imanishi reports that the animals spend their lives within a troop composed of males, females, and young (1960). The most dominant male usually occupies the central position, surrounded by females, while the younger and less dominant males keep to the outside of the troop and also precede it when it is moving. As with baboons, there is no subdivision of the troop into families or any permanent consortship between individual males and females. The Indian langur, or Hanuman monkey, is a tree-living species and exhibits much less aggressive behavior than the macaques. However, Jay has described a definite dominance order among males (1965a; 1965b). All females are subordinate to all males, except when an infant is threatened, and their own dominance order is not a clearly marked one. Sexual behavior is relatively unimportant, as the females have only a five-day estrus period per month and this is absent during pregnancy and lactation. Females have some tendency to consort
with the most dominant male, but there is no absolute correlation, and in one group studied by Jay the most favored male was a low-ranking one. Male-female consortships never last more than a few hours. In contrast to baboons, males pay little attention to the young, but infants, and particularly the newborn ones, are the object of much attention from all females in the troop. Males tend to take the lead when the group moves. The manlike apes have been very difficult to study in the wild. In his original study Nissen (1931) was able to see very little besides the retreating chimpanzees disappearing into the tops of the tropical forest. More recently, Kortlandt located a favorable area on a Congo plantation where chimpanzees were protected and were in the habit of coming into the open (1962). Reynolds and Reynolds were able to keep track of a group of chimpanzees in the Budongo forest of Uganda with the aid of a large group of spotters scattered through the dense vegetation (1965). Unlike baboons, chimpanzees do not live in compact groups, but forty to fifty individuals may occupy an area of six to eight square miles. Except for females and their offspring, there are no permanent associations between individuals, and temporary groups of males and females, females and young, males, and groups containing all kinds of individuals are found in approximately equal numbers. Agonistic behavior is uncommon, and there are few indications of dominance and subordination. During estrus the same female may mate with several males in succession, and no fighting is observed between them. Chimpanzees appear to keep in touch with each other by vocalization, and on many occasions groups will join in vocalization over a large area. There is little evidence of leadership under most conditions and no reports of defense of territorial boundaries. Thus, chimpanzees form a very loosely knit but mutually tolerant society, with loose temporary associations between individuals, except for the mother-offspring relationship. Goodall has studied chimpanzees in the comparatively open forests of the Gombe Stream Reserve in Tanganyika and has been able to follow the behavior of identifiable individuals over a period of several years (1965). Her more detailed accounts of behavior confirm the general picture of chimpanzee social organization. In addition, she has observed occasional predatory behavior and meat eating. These chimpanzees also exhibit use of tools, in particular, poking twigs or rolled-up leaves down the holes of termites in order to collect them for food.
SOCIAL BEHAVIOR, ANIMAL: The Field The behavior of gorillas under natural conditions is also surprising. With their immense size these animals have little to fear from predators and within their own social groups are placid and peaceable. They are strict vegetarians, and the two sexes are so much alike that they are almost impossible to distinguish at any distance. Their sex organs are very small, and sex behavior plays a very minor part in their social life. Unlike chimpanzees, gorillas live in small compact groups containing both sexes and all ages of individuals. According to Schaller, there is a strong system of leadership, all members of the group responding to one of the older males (1963). Dominance is expressed almost entirely in the form of allowing precedence, and it is strongly related to age. The only one of the manlike apes that shows anything like the human nuclear family of male, female, and their offspring is the gibbon. These long-armed tree-dwelling animals of southeast Asia are highly aggressive in both sexes, and the largest social group is a male, a female, and their immature offspring. Other groups are kept away by threats and fighting. Rather than supposing this to be the beginning of evolution toward a nuclear family, we can advance the hypothesis that the gibbon group is formed by a reduction of the troop to the smallest unit which is still biologically functional. Primate societies do not present an evolutionary history of human social organization. Rather, each species has evolved its own social organization, producing an astonishing variety against which it is possible to compare and contrast human social organization. The one thing which is constant in all primate societies so far studied is the emphasis on the care of the young, particularly by the mother but also by unrelated males and females in the highly social forms. Agonistic behavior varies a great deal, as does sexual behavior. Most primates show regular periods of estrus, although there is some indication of a tendency toward a more extended receptivity in female chimpanzees. Was the social organization of our primitive human ancestors more like troops of rhesus and baboons, or was there a tendency to form temporary separate groups based on sex and age, as in the chimpanzee? The almost universal tendency toward division of labor in human societies suggests the latter. The animal data also suggest that the human nuclear family is perhaps not the beginning but the end point of human social organization, resulting from situations which demand great fluidity; that is, the nuclear family represents the ultimate reduction of family organization to the simplest
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unit which is still capable of all the functions of biological reproduction [see FAMILY]. The evolution of social organization. Social organization is based on behavior, and behavior leaves no fossils. Therefore, any reconstruction of the evolution of animal societies must always be hypothetical and based on what we know about living animals. Assuming that the more lowly organized forms of living animals are similar to those which existed millions of years ago, we can suppose that there are two general bases for the initiation of social life. One of these is shelter-seeking behavior, in which animals stay together because the bodies of their fellows form a favorable environment. If this sort of behavior is extended, it should result in the animals' following each other around, i.e., allelomimetic behavior. Animals that do the latter must have both motor equipment for rapid coordination and the necessary sense organs to keep in touch with each other. This kind of social group approaches its highest development in schools of fish, flocks of birds, and herds of mammals. The other kind of social behavior which we may assume to be primitive is sexual behavior, which results in more efficient means of reproduction than scattering the sex cells broadcast. Retaining the eggs after they are fertilized and giving them care after they are laid still further increases the efficiency of reproduction, and the height of this kind of behavior is seen in two widely different parts of the animal kingdom—societies of insects and those of many birds and mammals. These two basic kinds of social organization may evolve independently of each other, or both may occur together in the same species. In many cases social organization is quite independent of physical form, and closely related species may be either highly social or relatively unsocial. For example, the deer family range from the highly social elk through the more solitary Virginia deer to the moose, which is almost completely solitary except during the brief mating season and the association of a calf with its mother. Among rodents there is the prairie dog, a ground squirrel that lives in colonies of thousands of individuals, and at the opposite extreme, woodchucks, which lead highly solitary lives except for the brief necessities of mating and rearing the young. Even in the social insects there are close relatives of honeybees which build solitary nests. Thus there is no consistent relationship between biological form and social behavior, and the evolution of societies has become largely, though not entirely, independent of the anatomy of the individual. Consequently, in search-
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ing for the origin of human sociality, it is not possible to find anywhere the recapitulation of human social prehistory. The study of animal societies can at most suggest ideas and provide a basis of comparison. The problem of basic human nature. In addition to biological evolution, human societies have added a new dimension: cultural evolution. The beginnings of this can be seen among the higher animals where the offspring learn fears from the previous generation. However, human language has enormously increased the potentiality of passing information along from one generation to another, and written language permits its accumulation over almost infinite times and in enormous amounts. Compared to biological evolution, the study of cultural evolution is still in its infancy. Very little progress was made in the theory of biological evolution until the mechanism of heredity was discovered. Reasoning by analogy, we may suggest that the development of an adequate theory of cultural evolution will in part depend on our knowledge of the mechanism of cultural heredity, namely learning, and its application to cultural phenomena. Unlike biological evolution, which moves in terms of generations, cultural change can occur with extreme rapidity and can be measured in terms of years. This raises the possibility that cultural change may move so fast that it exceeds the biological capacities of man in respect to social behavior. [See CULTURE, article on CULTURE CHANGE.] Here again we are handicapped in our scientific information. There is no way of restoring precultural man to life and discovering what sort of social existence he led. Judging from existing animal societies, however, we may assume that his social behavior was well adapted to a particular kind of stable social organization. Beyond this, all we can do is to observe present-day human beings and study their social behavior under varying conditions. We know that sexual behavior plays an important role. Instead of definitely limited periods of sexual behavior, human females have very nearly reached the situation of constant receptivity, if not constant estrus, and there is no seasonal limitation on either sex. We know also that, because of the relatively slow developmental rate of human infants, care-giving behavior is highly important, as is the care-soliciting behavior of the young. It is likewise obvious that care-giving behavior is often extended to adults as well as to children and that it exists in both sexes. Young children are there-
fore one of the focal points of human societies, and as with all primate societies, the relationship between old and young is an important one. As with any highly social species, we may assume that human beings have evolved behavioral capacities for the control of agonistic behavior, partly through forming habits of not fighting while young and partly through the formation of dominancesubordination relationships. These facts are almost self-evident. It is not as well recognized that human beings are also highly allelomimetic, with strong tendencies to do what others around them are doing. Because of differences in age and sex, allelomimetic behavior may be difficult in mixed groups, and we can observe a tendency for human groups to sort themselves out on the basis of age and sex. [See AGGRESSION; IMITATION; LEADERSHIP.] Besides these major types of advanced social behavior, human beings continue to show all of the more primitive sorts of social behavior, for example, ingestive, eliminative, shelter-seeking, and investigative. In regard to the last, another characteristic of human beings is that they are highly curious. We can conclude that human beings show all of the basic kinds of social behavior in strongly developed form, and we can advance the hypothesis that any successful form of cultural organization of society must provide for reasonably satisfactory development and expression of these types of behavior. Conversely, any form of organization which attempts to completely suppress or distort a fundamental kind of behavior will result either in the dissolution of the society or maladaptive be*havior on the part of the individual within it. J. P. SCOTT [Directly related are the entries ETHOLOGY; IMPRINTING; INSTINCT; PSYCHOLOGY, article on COMPARATIVE PSYCHOLOGY. Other relevant material may be found in AFFECTION; AGGRESSION, article on PSYCHOLOGICAL ASPECTS; COLLECTIVE BEHAVIOR; COMMUNICATION, ANIMAL; CULTURE; EVOLUTION; GENETICS; GROUPS; IMITATION; KINESICS; SEXUAL BEHAVIOR, article on ANIMAL SEXUAL BEHAVIOR; SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY.] BIBLIOGRAPHY ALLEE, W. C. et al. 1949 Principles of Animal Ecology. Philadelphia: S aunders. BRONSON, F. H. 1964 Agonistic Behaviour in Woodchucks. Animal Behaviour 12, no. 4:470-478. CARPENTER, CLARENCE R. 1934 A Field Study of the Behavior and Social Relations of Howling Monkeys (Alouatta palliata). Comparative Psychology Monographs 10, no. 2; serial no. 48. CARPENTER, CLARENCE R. 1942 Sexual Behavior of Free Ranging Rhesus Monkeys (Macaca mulata*). 2 parts.
SOCIAL BEHAVIOR, ANIMAL: Primate Behavior ]ournal of Comparative Psychology 33:113-162. ~> I: Specimens, Procedures and Behavioral Characteristics of Estrus. II: Periodicity of Estrus, Homosexual, Autoerotic and Non-conformist Behavior. CLARK, WILFRED E. LEGROS 1960 The Antecedents of Man: An Introduction to the Evolution of the Primates. Chicago: Quadrangle. DEVORE, IRVEN (editor) 1965 Primate Behavior: Field Studies of Monkeys and Apes. New York: Holt. FIELDE, ADELE M. 1903 Artificial Mixed Nests of Ants. Biological Bulletin 5:320-325. FRISCH, KARL VON 1950 Bees: Their Vision, Chemical Senses, and Language. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell Univ. Press. GOODALL, JANE 1965 Chimpanzees of the Gombe Stream Reserve. Pages 425-473 in Irven DeVore (editor), Primate Behavior: Field Studies of Monkeys and Apes. New York: Holt. GUHL, A. M. 1953 Social Behavior of the Domestic Fowl. Technical Bulletin No. 73. Manhattan: Kansas State College, Agricultural Experiment Station. IMANISHI, KINJI 1960 Social Organization of Subhuman Primates in Their Natural Habitat. Current Anthropology 1:393-407. JAY, PHYLLIS 1965a The Common Langur of North India. Pages 197-249 in Irven DeVore (editor), Primate Behavior: Field Studies of Monkeys and Apes. New York: Holt. JAY, PHYLLIS 1965b Field Studies. Volume 2, pages 525-587 in Allan M. Schrier, Harry F. Harlow, and Fred Stollnitz (editors), Behavior of Nonhuman Primates. New York: Academic Press. KING, JOHN A. 1955 Social Behavior, Social Organization, and Population Dynamics in a Black-tailed Prairiedog Town in the Black Hills of South Dakota. Contributions from the Laboratory of Vertebrate Biology, No. 67. Ann Arbor: Univ. of Michigan. KORTLANDT, AuRiAAN 1962 Chimpanzees in the Wild. Scientific American 206, no. 5:128-138. NISSEN, HENRY W. 1931 A Field Study of the Chimpanzee. Comparative Psychology Monographs 8, no. 1; serial no. 36. REYNOLDS, VERNON; and REYNOLDS, FRANCES 1965 Chimpanzees of the Budongo Forest. Pages 368-424 in Irven DeVore (editor), Primate Behavior: Field Studies of Monkeys and Apes. New York: Holt. SCHALLER, GEORGE B. 1963 The Mountain Gorilla: Ecology and Behavior. Univ. of Chicago Press. SCOTT, J. P. 1958 Animal Behavior. Univ. of Chicago Press. SCOTT, J. P. 1962 Critical Periods in Behavioral Development. Science 138:949-958. SOUTHWICK, CHARLES H. (editor) 1963 Primate Social Behavior; an Enduring Problem: Selected Readings. Princeton, N.J.: Van Nostrand. TINBERGEN, NiKOLAAS 1951 The Study of Instinct. Oxford: Clarendon. TINBERGEN, NIKOLAAS 1953 Social Behaviour in Animals, With Special Reference to Vertebrates. London: Methuen. WASHBURN, SHERWOOD L.; and DEVORE, IRVEN 1961 Social Behavior of Baboons and Early Man. Pages 91-105 in Sherwood L. Washburn (editor), Social Life of Early Man. Viking Publication in Anthropology, No. 31. Chicago: Aldine. WHEELER, WILLIAM M. 1923 Social Life Among the Insects. New York: Harcourt.
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H PRIMATE BEHAVIOR
Man is a large, bipedal, diurnal primate closely related to the living great apes. Human behavior is based on a rich social heritage made possible by a tool-dependent culture and the unique properties of language. However, in most of the fundamental features of his social life, such as prolonged care of immature offspring and lifelong association between related adults, man is a typical Old World primate. Because man is most closely related to the Old World monkeys and apes, the following discussion is confined primarily to these forms and directed to those issues of most interest to the social sciences. Living primates. There are about six hundred varieties of living nonhuman primates, divided into some fifty genera and two hundred species. Because of this extraordinary diversity, ranging from such forms as the small, insectivorelike tree shrews and "mouse lemurs" to the great apes and man, it is sometimes assumed that the behavior of living primates can be arranged along an evolutionary scale of increasing behavioral similarity to man. However, no living primate is the ancestor of any other, and many varieties have had separate evolutionary histories for tens of millions of years. Every living species has survived by specialized adaptations, and while it is possible to make some broad generalizations about the physical characteristics of prosimians, monkeys, and apes (Clark 1960), behavioral comparisons are more difficult. Washburn and Hamburg (1965) have recently discussed the classification of the primate order from a behavioral point of view. The many varieties of monkeys alone range in size from creatures weighing less than a pound to others weighing more than one hundred pounds. They have exploited a wide variety of jungle and open woodland habitats, frequently achieving population densities of one hundred or more individuals per square mile. The Old World monkeys (Cercopithecidae) are divided into two subfamilies, the Cercopithecinae and the Colobinae; the latter group is distinguished by a specialized stomach capable of digesting large quantities of mature leaves. Brief observations have been made of several species of Colobinae, but the only form studied in detail is the common langur of India and Ceylon, Presbytis spp. (Jay 1965). Among the Cercopithecinae, numerous studies have been made of the two closely related ground-adapted forms, the African baboon (Papio) and the Asian macaques (Macaco.). Of the other two basic groups of
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Cercopithecinae, the mangabeys (Cercocebus') and the guenons, or vervets (Cercopithecus), a longterm field study has been made of only one, a ground-adapted species, Cercopithecus aethiops (Struhsaker 1965). The four apes, the Pongidae, are the gibbon (including the siamang), the orangutan, the gorilla, and the chimpanzee. All of the apes differ from the monkeys in that the trunk is "short, wide and shallow . . . the lumbar region is short . . . and the shoulder and arm muscles are especially adapted to abduction, flexion, and rotation" (Washburn & Hamburg 1965, p. 9). Because of this adaptation to climbing and the ability to hang or swing from branches, to brachiate, apes have a "vertical" posture, thus differing from the horizontal, quadrupedal monkeys, and it is no surprise that in their structure and bodily movements the apes closely resemble man. Physically, and to some extent behaviorally, man is most like the African great apes —the gorilla and the chimpanzee. But apes are confined to heavily wooded areas, and some of the behavioral patterns which have enabled man to travel long distances in open country are more closely paralleled in the behavior of terrestrial monkeys, such as baboons and macaques. In fundamental senses such as hearing, eyesight, and smell and in the organization of the brain, the viscera, and the reproductive organs man, the apes, and the Old World monkeys share a basic biological pattern which distinguishes them from all other mammals, including New World monkeys and other primates. Field studies of primates. Although attempts were made to study the African apes soon after their discovery in the nineteenth century, most reports of monkey and ape behavior in the wild remained anecdotal until Carpenter observed the howling monkeys of Panama in 1931. In succeeding years, other field studies were attempted, but these were usually brief; then, in the 1950s, investigators in Japan, the United States, and Europe independently initiated a variety of field studies emphasizing long-term, systematic observation of primates living in natural habitats. Most field studies have been made on monkey species that spend large amounts of time on the ground, where observation conditions are easiest. Because of their similarity to man, all the living apes except the orangutan have been the subject of at least one major field study. Long-term studies of free-ranging groups in monkey colonies have also contributed valuable data. The Japan Monkey Center has kept records of individual monkeys in its colonies since the early 1950s. Beginning with
Altmann in 1958 (see Buettner-Janusch et al. 1962), various investigators have restudied the rhesus monkey colony established on Cayo Santiago by Carpenter in 1938; in fact, since 1958 almost all the members of this free-ranging colony have been tattooed for identification. Because the life cycle of primates is so long, field workers cannot ordinarily ascertain sibling or mother-offspring bonds between adults, and yet these relationships are proving to be very important in some species. (For a more complete history of field studies see Southwick 1963, pp. 1-6; and Washburn et al. 1965.) Laboratory studies of primates, especially of the common Indian rhesus monkey, have continued without interruption since the 1930s. Contemporary views of such topics as discrimination, operant conditioning, perception, and learning have been summarized by Schrier, Harlow, and Stollnitz (1965). Recent studies of hemoglobins, blood serums, chromosomes, the nervous system, and the skin have been reported by Buettner-Janusch (1963-1964). There are two journals devoted entirely to primate studies, Primates and Folia primatologica, and there are many films of primate behavior. The formerly facile generalizations about monkey and ape behavior are no longer tenable. Although only about a dozen of the several hundred varieties of living primates have been studied to date, it is already clear that primates exploit a wide variety of ecological niches, that they live in different kinds of social groups, and that different species display quite different temperaments. Some species are distributed over large geographical areas, and group structure and behavior have been found to vary significantly between different populations of the same species (Jay 1968). The unique life history of every individual produces distinctive patterns of temperament and social behavior among the members of a single group. All of these variables make it inevitable that there will be important exceptions to many of the following generalizations. Primate group structure Most vertebrate social groups undergo a variety of changes in group composition during the year. Changes are correlated with such phenomena as the abundance of food, the mating season, the birth season, and the maturation of offspring. During the mating season adult males may drive off young males and form harems of receptive females; mothers may leave the group altogether when they give birth, living apart until their off-
SOCIAL BEHAVIOR, ANIMAL: Primate Behavior spring are able to support themselves, or females with immature offspring may form separate bands of their own. Some or all of these groups may participate in seasonal migrations. The result is a "population" with changing aggregations of individuals during the yearly cycle. The social group of the Old World monkeys and the apes is very different. Membership in the social group is usually continuous, and group composition may remain stable over many years. Typically, an individual is born, matures, leads its adult life, and dies in the same group. While there are interesting exceptions to these generalizations, they are so characteristic of a wide variety of monkey groups that it is convenient to speak of a distinctive group organization, the "troop." A troop so defined is a group of several adults of both sexes, together with juveniles and infants, which maintains a social identity and spatial unity that persists through the annual cycle and transcends the life-span of individual members. Such a troop is easily recognizable to the field observer because its boundaries are typically defended against outsiders. This social organization describes the basic social group of such Old World monkeys as lan-
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gurs, baboons, macaques, vervets (Cercopithecus aethiops*), and colobus; of the New World howling monkey (Alouatta palliata}, and perhaps spider monkeys (Ateles geoffroyi} (see Table 1). Less complete studies suggest that this type of group organization may also be characteristic of at least some species of mangabeys arid some other species of Cercopithecus. The troop is also characteristic of Lemur macaco and probably of some other species of lemur. The description of the troop would apply to the social organization of the mountain gorilla, except that members may move in and out of some mountain gorilla groups rather freely. Old World monkey and gorilla troops average about 25 individuals, but normal groups may be as small as 10 or number more than 200. The fact that primates normally remain in one social group throughout the year means that group members with needs and motivations as different as a small, helpless infant and a large, potentially dangerous adult male must accommodate each other. Among most vertebrates, when antagonisms arise between adults or between adults and mature offspring, usually during mating or birth periods, the result is a change in group structure. In some pri-
Table 7 — Types of social groups among primates Type of group Solitary individuals (usually nocturnal or crepuscular)
Prosim/ans
New World monkeys
Old World monkeys
Apes
Preagricu/fura/ man
Orangutan3
Tree shrew "Lesser lemur" Aye-aye Lep/'/emur Loris3 Pottoa Tarsier3
Ga/agob Mated pair with offspring
Hape/emur Indri Avahi Ga/agob
Aotes Callicebus Marmosets8
Gibbon
One-male group
"Family"
Patas Theropithecus gelada0
Papio hamadryas0 3
Troop, but oriented to one male
Troop (multiple adults of both sexes)
Lemur macaco Lemur catta Lemur fulvus Propithecus verreauxi
Unstructured aggregation
Ga/agob
a. Inadequate field data. b. Changes during annual cycle c. Changes during daily cycle. d. Geographical variation.
Spider monkey
Cercop/fhecus ascan/'us Colobus3 Langursd
Gorilla
Howler Squirrel monkey3 Capuchin3 Spider monkey3
Macaques Savannah baboon Vervet Mangabeys3 Colobus Langursd
Chimpanzee*1
"Band"
Iheropifhecus ga/adac Papio hamadryasd
Chimpanzee*1
"Dialect group"
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mate species young adult males may change groups or live for a time in an all-male group or as solitary animals. But most remain in their natal group, where mutual tolerance and group cohesion are accomplished by such different behavior patterns as the dominance hierarchy, the persistence of mother-offspring bonds into adult life, an elaborate repertoire of affective communication, and the conservative tradition of the group. In such groups each individual has a status with regard to every other individual, and through the long period of infancy and adolescence, the individual learns to anticipate the responses of other group members and behave accordingly. It is in the rich behavioral context of these Old World primate social groups that many of the behaviors which we have come to consider "human" were first developed. In patas monkeys (Erythrocebus patas), hamadryas baboons (Papio hamadryas}, and geladas (Theropithecus gelada) the basic social unit comprises several adult females and their offspring but only one adult male. Still another primate grouping pattern is the mated pair with offspring, reported to be found in the Indridae, in some small South American monkeys, and in the gibbon. This form of social organization has been compared to the human family, but it is actually the result of very different behavior patterns. An adult gibbon, for example, is antagonistic toward all other gibbons except its mate and its immature offspring. As a result, each gibbon pair lives apart from all other pairs, and even their own offspring are apparently driven away at maturity. In this respect the gibbon group is more comparable to a mated pair of birds during the breeding season than it is to the human family. (Unlike most birds, the gibbon group is stable and unaffected by seasonal variation.) The human family cannot occur as an isolated pair of adults but is always a subgroup within a larger social unit. Most of the prosimians are small, arboreal, nocturnal creatures which, like many other such mammals, forage as individuals, coming together only rarely. Yet some, such as Propithecus verreauxi and some species of lemurs (such as Lemur macaco}, live in small troops. The small galago or bushbaby (Galago senegalensis} forages singly at night but may sleep in small groups during the day and form mated pairs during part of the year. (The most complete discussion of the classification, social groups, and activity patterns of Madagascar lemurs is in Fetter 1962 and is summarized in Buettner-Janusch et al. 1962 and in DeVore 1965a.) Still another form of social group is described for the chimpanzees by Goodall (1965) and by
Reynolds and Reynolds (1965). Small subgroups of a population, such as females with young, adult males, and mixed groups of males and females, roam freely in a local area of forest. These clusters are in frequent contact and may gather together, for example, at food trees but do not appear to be organized into large persistent social units. On the other hand, recent observations of chimpanzees by the Japan Monkey Center personnel suggest a group size and organization much like a monkey troop: when crossing open country between forest patches, the chimpanzee group consistently numbered 43 and contained a nucleus of adult males, females in estrus, and females with infants. On the basis of brief observations some monkey species, especially in the New World, may also live in loose aggregations. The aggregations of hamadryas baboons are different in that the one-male units remain intact even though more than seven hundred individuals may gather at the same sleeping place (Kummer & Kurt 1963). As a result of field studies in progress, it will soon be possible to refine the descriptive categories shown in Table 1 and to add many new species. While the table reveals certain trends, such as the solitary life of many nocturnal prosimians and the frequent occurrence of the "troop organization" in monkeys, it also illustrates the difficulty of abstracting a model of "monkey" or "ape" social organization. Further, gross categories such as those in Table 1 should not obscure major behavioral differences: the frequency, intensity, and complexity of social contacts among members of a lemur troop are far fewer than comparable contacts among members of a monkey troop. This list of primate species could be tabulated with respect to characteristics such as habitat, diet, and group size (Crook & Gartlan 1966). For example, with the possible exception of some prosimians, males of all these species are dominant over females, and this is broadly reflected in the degree of sexual dimorphism they display. There is great variation in this characteristic, ranging from the gibbon, in which the sexes are scarcely distinguishable in size, to the baboon and the gorilla, where the male may be two or three times as large as the female. Sexual dimorphism with respect to body size, size of canine teeth, and general robustness of the skeleton and musculature all tend to correlate with the extent to which a species is adapted to the ground. Indeed, the degree to which an Old World primate species is adapted to life in the trees or to life on the ground is one of the best ways of predicting the size of the group, the degree of sexual dimorphism, the intensity of dominance relations among
SOCIAL BEHAVIOR, ANIMAL: Primate Behavior adults, the use of loud vocalizations in intergroup spacing, and the size of the area over which the social group ranges (DeVore 1963). Dominance and aggression "Dominance" has been defined in many ways by different workers, and further study will undoubtedly show that quite different behaviors have been subsumed under this rubric. Common to all concepts of dominance, however, is the notion that the dominant individual can assert priority over a subordinate in order to gain some desired objective. Although expressions of dominance vary widely from one species to another, between groups within the same species, and even in the same individual at different times, it is clear that dominance interactions are fundamental to primate behavior and that they are especially prominent in the Old World monkeys, apes, and man. It is in the primarily ground-dwelling species such as baboons and macaques that dominance behavior is most apparent, and it is in the social groups of these species that dominance hierarchies exert the most influence in social organization. In these monkeys an adult male is about twice the size of an adult female, and there is typically a pronounced gap between the bottom of the male dominance hierarchy and the top of the female hierarchy. In more arboreal species, females are usually more nearly the size of males, and the dominance hierarchies of the sexes may overlap to some extent. In such species expression of dominance is often less frequent and more subtle, and mere avoidance, for example, may be as important as a challenge or attack in the demonstration of dominance status. In one-male groups the male is larger and more dominant than the females and does not tolerate any other adult males. In the loose aggregation of a species like the chimpanzee, there are frequent dominance interactions between adults, but it has not been reported whether these result in a hierarchy such as gorilla groups show. The rank of any individual in a dominance hierarchy was formerly considered to be the result of the success of that individual in dominance interactions with each of the other individuals in the group. However, from recent studies of Old World monkey and ape groups, it appears that dominance status is seldom, if ever, simply the outcome of an interaction between two individuals. Any of a series of circumstances may intervene in the free expression of dominance between two individuals. The mother comes to the aid of her offspring during childhood and, at least among rhesus monkeys, into adult life as well (Sade 1965). Other individ-
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uals frequently join the combatants when a fight starts, and adults who tolerate each other will often support each other when one of them is challenged or attacked (DeVore 1965£>). Thus, an individual's dominance status is the result of a variety of factors, including past success in dominance encounters, the status of its mother, and the number and status of the individuals who will support it when challenged. Threat behavior. Baboons and macaques, among whom thresholds of aggression are lowest and agonistic encounters most frequent, exhibit the most elaborate repertoire of gestures and vocalizations conveying anger, threat, and fear. One form of threat behavior which is common in all the Old World primates (including man) is the "redirection of aggression," in which one animal threatens another and the threatened animal redirects the threat to a third individual or even to an inanimate object such as a stone or branch. For example, the loser of a fight between two adult males may chase a more subordinate male or a female or he may shake a tree limb vigorously. If he has chased a female, she will often chase or threaten a more subordinate female or a juvenile. This chain reaction of aggressive acts probably serves to periodically reinforce the various dominance statuses of all the participating group members. Male dominance. Dominance relationships among adult males in baboon and macaque groups are often stable over many months or even years. A male's status is ultimately based on his strength and fighting ability, and unless the group is very large, the males tend to be arranged in a linear hierarchy, or "peck order," in which each male is dominant over all individuals beneath him. This stable hierarchy of recognized status serves to reduce the number of agonistic interactions among males. In some savannah baboon, rhesus monkey, and Japanese macaque troops, several males in their late prime may be so tolerant of each other that dominance between them is rarely expressed, and in such troops these males may constitute a nucleus in which the members support each other in dominance interactions. As a result, these older males, some of whom would lose a fight to a younger male in individual combat, are able to hold the young males in check by combined action (DeVore 1965a, pp. 54-71; Imanishi 1960). It is this nucleus of older supporting males that takes the initiative in protecting the group from outside danger, in repelling individuals who try to join the group, and in breaking up fights among group members. On the contrary, among gorillas and in small monkey groups this initiative is taken by a
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single dominant, "alpha" male. Dominance behavior is difficult to understand in captivity, where it seems to be disruptive and antisocial. But in natural surroundings, dominant males protect weaker group members, and females and juveniles seek out the dominant males to sit beside or to groom. So, although the dominance hierarchy depends ultimately on force, it leads to relative peace and stability within the group. Female dominance. The dominance hierarchy of females tends to be unstable and to depend to some extent on the female reproductive cycle. Females in estrus are more active and aggressive and are frequently under the protection of a consort male. Among baboons and macaques, adult males are extremely protective of young infants, and this protection also extends to the mother as long as she is with a young infant. Thus, although it is clear that some adult females are more dominant than others in almost all circumstances, the interference of reproductive cycles in female—female dominance interactions seems to preclude the establishment of stable, linear dominance hierarchies. Sexual behavior As in humans, most female monkeys and apes have a menstrual cycle of about thirty days. Because humans do, and monkeys in captivity may, breed at all times of the year, the belief has been widely held that Old World primates show no seasonal variation in mating activity. Since the publication of Zuckerman's The Social Life of Monkeys and Apes (1932), it has often been asserted that the basis of monkey and ape societies is sexual attraction; however, we now know that the nonhuman primate group performs many functions besides providing its members with sexual outlets. There are many differences in patterns of sexual behavior between man and the nonhuman primates. In the first place, in at least some species of macaques, there are sharply defined mating and birth seasons. The data are best for the Japanese macaque and for the rhesus on Cayo Santiago, where records have been kept longest. Lancaster and Lee (1965) show that Old World monkeys tend to have at least a birth peak, if not a sharply defined birth season. Most monkeys give birth every year, and as in many birds and mammals, their reproductive cycles are presumably affected by such phenomena as day length and temperature. The reproductive cycle of some species, such as the baboons and the apes, is longer than a year, and if marked seasonality of sexual reproductive behavior
exists in these species, it has not yet been demonstrated. Another reason that opportunity for mating is an inadequate explanation of social cohesion in nonhuman primate groups is the fact that the female is sexually receptive for a relatively small portion of her life. Females will accept a male only on those days of their sexual cycle when they are in estrus, and sexual cycles are inhibited during pregnancy and lactation. Females and their young constitute the core of monkey groups, and yet the amount of sexual activity in the life of any female, or within any group during the year, is very small. In a species with a mating season, disruptions are most common during this season. At this time extragroup males attempt more actively to join the group, and the existing competition among males already in the group may become more intense. Koford (1966) reports that on Cayo Santiago 66 per cent of all rhesus males who leave a group do so during the mating season. One of the Cayo Santiago groups subdivided into five groups between 1958 and 1964, each subdivision occurring during the mating season. On the other hand, social bonds within groups are probably strongest during the birth season, when mothers are clustered together with their new infants and adult males are actively caring for the infants of the previous year. Mating patterns. In such species as the gibbon and the patas monkey (and in small groups of any species), only one adult male does the mating, but in most Old World primate groups the female is potentially accessible to every male in the group during some part of her estrous cycle. In such dominance-oriented species as baboons and macaques, the tendency is for the most dominant male to have priority of access to an estrous female, but his mating activity is usually confined to her period of maximum receptivity. For example, a female baboon is receptive for about 12 days in a thirtyday sexual cycle; the degree of receptivity can be gauged by the amount of tumescence in the sexual skin of the perineal area. During the early period of swelling she is mounted by juvenile and subordinate adult males, and it is only when tumescence is at a maximum that she is sought out by the dominant males. If there are a number of adult males of approximately equal dominance and only one receptive female, the males may threaten and fight for her possession. Although copulations early in her cycle are casual and transitory, dominant adult males usually form a consort pair with a receptive adult female. The pair may remain together for several days, or if there is competition among the
SOCIAL BEHAVIOR, ANIMAL: Primate Behavior males, the pairing may be interrupted after only a few hours. A baboon male's ability to maintain possession of an estrous female when he is being threatened will depend in part on the support he can expect from other males (DeVore 1965£>). The female must cooperate with the male during copulation, and she is thereby able to exercise some personal preference and to take some initiative in making sexual contacts. Thus, mating patterns in even a sexually dimorphic species like the baboon are more than a simple reflection of the male dominance hierarchy. There are opportunities for subordinate males to copulate before the female becomes attractive to the dominant males; a male's ability to mate may depend on his relationship to other, supporting males; and the female herself is able to exert some initiative. Prolonged immaturity By comparison to other mammals of similar size, the period of infant dependency is remarkably long in primates, and the necessity for providing care and protection of immature offspring is a dominant feature of monkey and ape social life. Ordinarily an infant in danger is retrieved by its mother, but adult males of many varieties of monkeys will threaten, distract, or attack a potential predator. Aggression toward predators is most prominent in ground-dwelling species such as baboons and macaques; for example, on an average day a baboon group may range as far as two or three miles from the safe refuge of trees. The birth of an infant not only changes the quantity and quality of its mother's social interactions, but every member of the group is affected in some measure. Adults and juveniles are highly attracted to young infants and repeatedly approach them to inspect, fondle, groom, and play with them. The newborn infant primate clings to its mother at all times, imposing substantial behavioral constraints not only on her but on the entire group. This prolongation of preadult life is so biologically expensive for the species that there must be major compensatory advantages. In a recent discussion, Washburn and Hamburg (1965) have suggested that this prolonged period of immaturity makes it possible for the species to adapt to a wide variety of environmental contexts because of the opportunity it provides for complex learning in the young. A large number of laboratory and field studies support the fact that much of the normal adult behavior of the species must be learned. In nature immature monkeys are in frequent contact with adults of both sexes and with their peers. The
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major activity of the young primate is "play," and it is during these long hours of daily play that the juvenile learns both the features of its physical environment and the appropriate responses to the other animals in its social environment. The development of normal sexual behavior, the expression of effective patterns of affection and dominance, and the ability to rear an infant competently are all social skills which must be learned, and monkeys raised in isolation show major deficits in all of these behaviors (Harlow & Harlow 1965; Mason 1965). Social deprivation experiments also indicate how even less drastic events in the early life of a young primate reared under normal conditions may lead to the striking individual differences in adult temperament and social skills that are so frequently reported by research workers. Mother-offspring relations. It has long been obvious to observers that the relationship between a mother and her offspring is the most intense and prolonged in primate life. During the usual field study it is impossible for the observer to know what genealogical relationships may exist between adults or between any group members who are beyond the weanling stage. Rejection by the mother when she weans her infant seems so firm, and the effect on the infant so traumatic, that the tendency has been to assume that their early close bonds have been severed permanently. (Moreover, the mother's attentions are soon redirected to the care of another newborn infant.) But these conclusions are clearly incorrect, at least for some species, as prolonged observation of identified individuals has shown. Studies reported by Imanishi (1960) and Koford (1963) indicate that the rank of a young male in the dominance hierarchy is frequently very closely related to the rank of his mother; highranking mothers tend to rear high-ranking male offspring. The evidence is less clear for females, but it seems likely that high-ranking females may also be related as siblings or as mother and daughter. Sade (1965) has offered the most detailed accounts of the importance of social bonds between uterine kin in rhesus monkeys. The most frequent subgroups are clusters of mature and immature offspring around an old female. These animals not only sit together and groom each other more often than they do other group members, but they frequently support each other in dominance interactions as well. Data indicating the importance of genealogically related subgroups are most convincing for the Japanese macaque and the rhesus on Cayo Santiago, where individual records have been
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kept for many years, but Jane Goodall (1965) has also described similar clusters of offspring around old female chimpanzees. Troops of Japanese macaques and rhesus monkeys which contain no adult males (except during the mating season) have been reported, but they are rare. The achievement of high rank by the offspring of dominant females appears to be caused both by childhood experience and by the mother's support of her mature offspring. Infants of dominant females stay with their mothers and other dominant individuals near the center of the group, and in the Japanese macaque they may never go through the period of social peripheralization that is characteristic of most young males. They are born in the middle of the group, grow up there, and remain there as adults, assuming at a young age the roles peculiar to the dominant males at the heart of the group. Also, in day-to-day agonistic interactions, a young male who is supported in aggressive encounters by a dominant mother will simply win more of these encounters than one whose mother is subordinate. Presumably the long period of conditioning during infancy and adolescence strongly reinforces a male's expectation of success or failure in the social dominance interactions of adult life. The question of the effect of genetic inheritance on the achievement of social dominance should be investigated; this could easily be done by cross-fostering experiments, in which the offspring of a subordinate female and a dominant female would be exchanged at birth. Sade reports that rhesus mothers on Cayo Santiago continue to support their adult sons in dominance interactions with other group members. Furthermore, a mother ordinarily remains dominant over her son all of her life. Apparently correlated with this behavior is the fact that copulation between mother and son is very rare. In one of the few known cases of mother—son incest, the two had engaged in a vicious fight, and the son had subsequently become dominant over his mother before the mating occurred. Although they are not yet well understood, it appears that the complicated patterns of nurturance and dominance behavior between mother and son may inhibit copulation between them and that the aversion to incest may be present among members of a number of Old World primate species. Adult male-offspring relations. Paternity in nonhuman primate groups is rarely known or knowable either to the investigator or to the monkeys. Adult males seek to protect any infant from injury either from group members or from predators. However, in some species an adult male may
form a special protective relationship with a particular infant. In the Japanese macaque, for example, males frequently establish such a relationship with yearlings when these are rejected by the mother and replaced by a new infant (Itani 1959). Analogous behavior has been reported in other macaques and baboons (Washburn et al. 1965). Among some New World marmosets a male may carry an infant at all times except when the mother is nursing it. The one-male unit of the hamadryas baboon develops because young adult males forcefully adopt immature females, "mothering" the females until they reach sexual maturity (Kummer 1968). There are no indications from field studies that the adult male in arboreal Old World primates establishes strong social bonds with infants or juveniles beyond protection of infants when the group is threatened by a predator. Even in the ground-adapted patas monkey and in the vervet monkey, the role of the male seems limited to protection or to distracting predators, and the present evidence indicates that more elaborate male—offspring relations arise only in terrestrial primates living in large social groups. Human and primate social organization Only a few years ago nonhuman primate behavior was assumed to be simple, stereotyped, and easy to observe; with notable exceptions (Carpenter 1964), field reports were largely anecdotal accounts by casual observers. Observations of zoo colonies suggested that primate groups were a disorganized rabble, tyrannized by aggressive males and held together only by sexual attraction. From the perspective of modern field studies, the conclusions based only on the behavior of primates in captivity bore as little relation to the social organization of free-ranging groups as would a monograph on middle-class society based solely on a study of inmates in a maximum-security prison. Social organization is not identical for any two primate species. Human social organization, with its varied cultural manifestations, is unique; but studies of monkeys and apes are helping to distinguish those behavior patterns that are truly unique from those which man shares with his nearest relatives. Before the urban revolution human social organization was centered on small, face-to-face groups of adults involved in the quest for food and the protection of immature offspring, and it is not surprising that patterns of dominance and aggression and of nurturance and affection seem so similar in men, monkeys, and apes. The division of labor by sex, with females specializing in child
SOCIAL BEHAVIOR, ANIMAL: Primate Behavior care and males as protectors, and the performance of different social roles according to status are familiar patterns to the sociologist. The evolutionary basis of man's unique biological and social system is treated elsewhere in this encyclopedia, but it seems appropriate to outline here some of the features of human organization which seem to distinguish men most clearly from the other primates [see EVOLUTION, article on HUMAN EVOLUTION]. Much of the contrast between human and primate social organization is based on human language. Communication in monkeys and apes is a rich complex of vocal, gestural, and tactile signals, but the majority of these signals are reflections of changing emotional states among the communicants and are comparable to the communication systems of other animals, not to language [see COMMUNICATION, ANIMAL; see also Marler 1965; Bastian 1965; Altmann 1967]. Language is so fundamental to human life that it is impossible to dissociate it from other distinctly human behaviors, such as toolmaking and the willingness to share food. Nonhuman primates do not share food, even with their own infants, but neither do they have tools to gather food or an improved site or camp from which they can disperse during the day in complementary gathering and hunting activities and where they can convene again to share the results of the day's quest. The most distinctive feature of human social organization, the family, is adaptive only in the context of an economy based on tool use and sharing; presumably it also requires other uniquely human traits such as the ability of the female to mate at all times. On the other hand, many behavior patterns that have been viewed as ramifications of the human family are actually present in the Old World primates—the maternal affectional system and its extension to uterine kin, the close association of siblings, the protection and nurturance by adult males of the young—and it is no longer so difficult to understand how the human social systems could have evolved. With language, an incest aversion between mother and son became an incest taboo; with language, the already close ties among uterine kin were explicitly recognized and socially extended. Field and laboratory studies of primates were not begun on a large scale until the 1960s, but they are now attracting the attention of persons in biology, ethology, and all branches of the behavioral sciences. Techniques of observation and analysis are constantly being refined, and behavioral studies are being combined with experiments in pharma-
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cology, hormonal studies, and neurophysiology (Washburn & Hamburg 1968). For example, miniature telemetering devices implanted in the animal have been used to record and direct the behavior of individuals in a free-ranging group. Ethological principles and techniques of observation are being applied to humans and the results compared to studies of nonhuman primates [see ETHOLOGY]. There is every indication that in the next few years this renewed interest in the nonhuman primates will yield results of increasing relevance to the social sciences. IRVEN DEVORE BIBLIOGRAPHY
ALTMANN, STUART A. (editor) 1967 Social Communication Among Primates. Univ. of Chicago Press. BASTIAN, JARVIS R. 1965 Primate Signalling Systems and Human Languages. Pages 585-606 in Irven DeVore (editor), Primate Behavior: Field Studies of Monkeys and Apes. New York: Holt. BUETTNER-JANUSCH, JOHN (editor) 1963-1964 Evolutionary and Genetic Biology of Primates. 2 vols. New York: Academic Press. BUETTNER-JANUSCH, JOHN et al. (editors) 1962 The Relatives of Man; Modern Studies of the Relation of the Evolution of Nonhuman Primates to Human Evolution. New York Academy of Sciences, Annals 102: 181-514. CARPENTER, CLARENCE R. 1964 Naturalistic Behavior of Nonhuman Primates. University Park: Pennsylvania State Univ. Press. CLARK, W. E. LEGROS 1960 The Antecedents of Man: An Introduction to the Evolution of the Primates. Chicago: Quadrangle. CONFERENCE ON SEX AND BEHAVIOR, BERKELEY, CALIFORNIA 1965 Sex and Behavior. Edited by Frank A. Beach. New York: Wiley. CROOK, J. H.; and GARTLAN, J. S. 1966 Evolution of Primate Societies. Nature 210:1200-1203. DEVORE, IRVEN 1963 A Comparison of the Ecology and Behavior of Monkeys and Apes. Pages 301-319 in S. L. Washburn (editor), Classification and Human Evolution. Chicago: Aldine. DEVORE, IRVEN (editor) 1965a Primate Behavior: Field Studies of Monkeys and Apes. New York: Holt. DEVORE, IRVEN 1965b Male Dominance and Mating Behavior in Baboons. Pages 266-289 in Conference on Sex and Behavior, Berkeley, Calif., Sex and Behavior. Edited by Frank A. Beach. New York: Wiley. DEVORE, IRVEN; and LEE, RICHARD 1963 Recent and Current Field Studies of Primates. Folia primatologica 1, no. 1:66-72. EIMERL, SAREL; and DEVORE, pRVEN 1965 The Primates. New York: Time Inc. GOODALL, JANE 1965 Chimpanzees of the Gombe Stream Reserve. Pages 425-473 in Irven DeVore (editor), Primate Behavior: Field Studies of Monkeys and Apes. New York: Holt. HARLOW, HARRY F.; and HARLOW, MARGARET K. 1965 The Affectional Systems. Volume 2, pages 287-334 in Allan M. Schrier, Harry F. Harlow, and Fred Stollnitz (editors), Behavior of Nonhuman Primates: Modern Research Trends. New York: Academic Press.
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IMANISHI, KINJI 1960 Social Organization of Subhuman Primates in Their Natural Habitat. Current Anthropology 1:393-407. ITANI, J. 1959 Paternal Care in the Wild Japanese Monkey, Macaca fuscata fuscata. Primates 2, no. 1: 61-93. JAY, PHYLLIS 1965 The Common Langur of North India. Pages 197-249 in Irven DeVore (editor), Primate Behavior: Field Studies of Monkeys and Apes. New York: Holt. JAY, PHYLLIS (editor) 1968 Primates: Studies in Adaptation and Variability. New York: Holt. JOLLY, ALISON 1967 Lemur Behavior: A Madagascar Field Study. Univ. of Chicago Press. KOFORD, CARL B. 1963 Rank of Mothers and Sons in Bands of Rhesus Monkeys. Science New Series 141: 356-357. KOFORD, CARL B. 1966 Population Changes in Rhesus Monkeys: Cayo Santiago 1960-1964. Tulane Studies in Zoology 13, no. 1:1-7. KUMMER, HANS 1968 Two Basic Variations in the Social Organization of the Genus Papio. In Phyllis Jay (editor), Primates. New York: Holt. KUMMER, HANS; and KURT, F. 1963 Social Units of a Free-living Population of Hamadryas Baboons. Folia primatologica 1:4-19. LANCASTER, JANE B.; and LEE. RICHARD B. 1965 The Annual Reproduction Cycle in Monkeys and Apes. Pages 486-513 in Irven DeVore (editor), Primate Behavior: Field Studies of Monkeys and Apes. New York: Holt. MARLER, PETER 1965 Communication in Monkeys and Apes. Pages 544-584 in Irven DeVore (editor), Primate Behavior: Field Stiidies of Monkeys and Apes. New York: Holt. MASON, WILLIAM A. 1965 The Social Development of Monkeys and Apes. Pages 514-543 in Irven DeVore (editor), Primate Behavior: Field Studies of Monkeys and Apes. New York: Holt. PETTER, J. J. 1962 Recherches sur Tecologie et 1'ethologie des lemurs malgaches. Musee National d'Histoire Naturelle, Memoires Serie A 27, no. 1:1-146. REYNOLDS, VERNON; and REYNOLDS, FRANCES 1965 Chimpanzees of the Budongo Forest. Pages 368-424 in Irven DeVore (editor), Primate Behavior: Field Studies of Monkeys and Apes. New York: Holt. SADE, DONALD S. 1965 Some Aspects of Parent-Offspring and Sibling Relations in a Group of Rhesus Monkeys, With a Discussion of Grooming. American Journal of Physical Anthropology New Series 23:1— 17. SCHALLER, GEORGE B. 1963 The Mountain Gorilla: Ecology and Behavior. Univ. of Chicago Press. SCHRIER, ALLAN M.; HARLOW, HARRY F.: and STOLLNITZ, FRED (editors) 1965 Behavior of Nonhuman Primates: Modern Research Trends. 2 vols. New York: Academic Press. SOUTHWICK, CHARLES H. (editor) 1963 Primate Social Behavior; an Enduring Problem: Selected Readings. Princeton, N.J.: Van Nostrand. STRUHSAKER, T. 1965 Behavior of the Vervet Monkey, Cercopithecus aethiops. Ph.D. dissertation, Univ. of California. SYMPOSIUM ON THE PRIMATES, LONDON, 1962 1963 The Primates. Edited by John Napier and N. A. Barnicot. The Proceedings of the Symposium of the Zoological Society of London, No. 10. London: The Society.
WASHBURN, S. L. (editor) 1963 Classification and Human Evolution. Chicago: Aldine. WASHBURN, S. L.; and HAMBURG, DAVID A. 1965 The Study of Primate Behavior. Pages 1-13 in Irven DeVore (editor), Primate Behavior: Field Studies of Monkeys and Apes. New York: Holt. WASHBURN, S. L.; and HAMBURG, DAVID A. 1968 Aggressive Behavior in Old World Monkeys and Apes. In Phyllis Jay (editor), Primates. New York: Holt. WASHBURN, S. L.; JAY, PHYLLIS C.; and LANCASTER, JANE B. 1965 Field Studies of Old World Monkeys and Apes. Science New Series 150:1541-1547. ZUCKERMAN, SOLLY 1932 The Social Life of Monkeys and Apes. New York: Harcourt. Ill
THE REGULATION OF ANIMAL POPULATIONS
Ecologists have been studying the dynamics of animal populations for roughly forty years, trying to discover how their numbers are regulated. The subject is of much practical importance in a world in which man, either knowingly or unknowingly, interferes drastically in this process and in which our own exploding population has become a central threat to human survival. Scientific knowledge in this field has reached a stage at which generalizations are possible, although final agreement has not been reached. Populations of animals obviously cannot all have the same life-cycle characteristics. Many of the insects run through several generations in a single summer, after which the population remains dormant during the winter and regenerates in the spring. Larger forms of animals, on the other hand, tend to live longer, and most of them have populations that keep going all the year round. Some populations fluctuate in numbers from season to season; others remain practically constant from year to year, even from decade to decade. Striking examples of the fluctuating kind include the arctic lemmings, many of the northern game birds and fur bearers, and the subtropical locusts. The steady state typically applies to most kinds of big game, many birds, and other animals both large and small, especially in temperate and tropical regions with equable climates. There is a continuous gradation between the extremes, and under natural conditions the populations of most animals in most situations resemble one another in one very important respect, namely, that there is no long-term trend either up or down. The normal situation is one in which the density of population moves or fluctuates irregularly, either weakly or strongly depending on circumstances, to a varying distance on either side of a constant average value. If and when permanent changes
SOCIAL BEHAVIOR, ANIMAL: Population Regulation take place in the environment, the average is also likely to shift and will assume a new level once the environmental change is complete. Therefore, we need to find out what determines the average, what causes the fluctuations and prevents them from swinging out of control in one direction or the other until the population either approaches infinite size or falls to zero. Population income and loss. Animals must in general possess the fecundity necessary to augment their numbers; otherwise they would quickly die out. In the course of time local populations receive an income of new recruits, largely as a result of reproduction, although some may come through immigration. They are also subject to loss, some of it by emigration and the rest through mortality. If the population stays roughly constant in number over the years, it means that the cumulative totals of recruitment and loss have balanced out. The fact that populations tend to maintain a constant average level and that when fluctuations occur they do not proceed very far in one direction or the other without being checked indicates that there must be some stabilizing process at work. For example, if the recruitment rate were always 20 per cent per annum and the death rate 25 per cent, the population would steadily diminish to the vanishing point; similarly, if the two rates were reversed, it would expand at 5 per cent compound interest. But let these rates vary according to whether the population density is high or low— so that high density produces low recruitment or high mortality or both, and low density the opposite—and then any continuous trend of numbers up or down can always be prevented. The phenomenon typically found in nature, of population density balanced within relatively narrow limits of variation, cannot in fact be accounted for in any other way than by regulators that operate in this manner and are "density dependent" in their action. There is one important school of thought which believes that density-dependent action arises mainly from the factors causing losses in the population. According to this hypothesis, animals are supposed always to reproduce as fast as they efficiently can, the surplus so produced being removed in a density-dependent manner by the various destructive agencies, namely predators, parasites and disease, starvation, and accidents of the physical world, such as floods and droughts. On the face of it, there seems nothing impossible or improbable in this: disease, for example, would be expected to spread fastest in overcrowded conditions, and starvation would have a similar incidence. The
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rate of accidental mortality seems perhaps the factor least likely to have any connection with population density. There are, however, many large animals, of which primitive man was a good example and lions and eagles are others, which effectively have no predators and appear not to be regularly subject to death from disease on a significant scale, except perhaps among old or outcast members of the population. We find ourselves, therefore, forced back on starvation as the only remaining density-dependent agency that might be capable of removing a population surplus. This possibility calls for close examination. Population density clearly has a very special relationship to food supply. Animals "select" their environments or habitats in accordance with their natural inclinations. The habitat selected has to provide them with the resources they need for sustaining life, including food of adequate quantity and quality, space, shelter, and breeding sites. In the great majority of species, food is the resource that sets the upper limit on population density, and determines the "carrying capacity" of the habitat. Habitats can therefore generally be graded as richer or poorer almost entirely in terms of their food productivity, and the average population density of animals living in them has been shown, in situations where both can be measured, to be closely related to it. However, the correlation between food supply and population density has no direct connection with starvation. The normal condition is that all individuals living in a particular habitat get enough to eat. If starvation occasionally occurs, it almost always comes as an emergency resulting from an accidental cause, such as exceptional cold or drought, and is not in any way dependent on the density of population that happens to be affected by it. Food resources harmed if overtaxed. Human experience in exploiting purely natural resources of animal and plant life, whether they happen to be the virgin pastures of the prairies or fish or game, shows that most of them can all too easily be overtaxed. Persistently overgrazed pasture quickly deteriorates and especially in arid climates can be reduced to a worthless desert in a few centuries. If we take too big a crop from our fisheries, whether for commerce or sport, or press too hard on fur bearers, wild fowl, or game, the stocks and the yields decrease. Unfortunately, long after the demand has become excessive, it is almost always still possible to go on making money, and we tend therefore to shut our eyes to the in-
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creasingly disastrous consequences piling up for the future. This highly characteristic danger inherent in the exploitation of "recurrent resources" has often led in the past to the decimation of the more lucrative and vulnerable prizes of the hunter, such as the passenger pigeon, the northern right whale and the blue whale, the fur seal and marine turtle, or the rhinoceros of Africa and Asia, now threatened because their horns are highly valued by people in the Far East for their supposed aphrodisiac powers. In exploiting their own sources of natural food, animals face exactly the same dangers as man. For the same reason, therefore, they must exercise restraint while there is plenty, if that plenty is to be conserved and future yields sustained. This is a deduction of great importance, for it implies that starvation can be ruled out as a practicable means of curbing population growth. Long before starvation occurred, disastrous damage would have been done to the food resource by overexploitation, and the survival of the entire population would be threatened. It can be concluded, therefore, that not only are there many kinds of animals which are not subject to predation or disease on an effective scale, but that starvation can also be eliminated as a practical regulating factor, because damage to the habitat is a precondition and, consequently, constitutes a continual threat to the safety of the group as a whole. Regulation through "conventions" It is now necessary to explore the alternative hypothesis that animals themselves possess the means of controlling numbers and population density. If they were able to do this, it would obviously be an adaptation of great value, because an ability to control population density would imply that it could be adjusted to some particularly favorable level, and that level could very well be the optimum one, as far as exploiting the food resource is concerned. Ideally, it would then be possible to take the maximum sustainable crop from the food resource and always feed the largest number of mouths that could be safely allowed without ever running the risk of overtaxing or depleting the supply. It is a common situation for an animal population to depend for a period of weeks or months on a standing crop that is not at the same time being replenished. This applies, for example, to birds feeding on seeds and berries in the fall or hunting for hibernating insects during the winter. When they first broach the food stock, it is at
maximum abundance and for perhaps hours or days could provide food for a prodigious number of exploiters. But it must be made to last much longer than that, and somehow the number or population density of exploiters must be restricted from the outset. The food itself will not restrict them, because it is superabundant; and yet the reason for imposing the restriction is related to food and food alone. What is required is some artificial method of limiting the population density, one that is, if possible, closely correlated with food production, serving as a buffer or shield in preventing overexploitation: something, in fact, closely analogous to the restrictive conventions entered into by states and nations to prevent commercial overfishing in the sea. It is at once apparent that a great many conventions of this kind exist in the natural world. The best known of them is the territorial system adopted by many kinds of birds during the breeding season. In the case of robins, cardinals, song sparrows, and a host of other birds, the males of a species compete with each other, each claiming and defending a territory on which pairing, nesting, and rearing of a young family subsequently take place. The males will not tolerate the crowding of territories beyond a certain limit, so that once a particular habitat has been taken up in claims, no further males can get in; any that attempt it are soon forced to leave and try somewhere else. This is a perfect example of a conventional density-limiting mechanism, and one easily understood. What has happened is that direct contest between rival members of the group for actual food has been sidetracked into equally furious competition for a piece of ground—a conventional substitute. Once the ground is "owned," the owner and his dependents can use the food that the territory contains in perfect freedom, without further dispute, and provided the conventional territory size is large enough, there need be no danger that their demands will overtax the supply. In a short article one cannot hope to do more than suggest the broad implications of this hypothesis. It must suffice to say that many of the density-limiting conventions that can be observed in nature are less direct or more sophisticated than the simple territorial one. For example, birds that depend on the resources of the ocean cannot stake individual territories for gathering or nesting on the sea itself. Instead, they breed in a colony on shore which in most cases is quite artificially limited .in size and in which each successful pair gains a token territory in the form of a small nest
SOCIAL BEHAVIOR, ANIMAL: Population Regulation site. Adults that have not succeeded in winning a nest site take on the status of onlookers and are frequently found at seabird colonies. They are evidently inhibited from nesting outside the traditional boundary or from starting a new colony around the corner. This conventional recognition of a colony is presumably related to the food supply, limiting the local population to a size that will be permanently immune to overfishing; however, as compared to the territorial system, the form it takes is more abstract or artificial because the object competed for is reduced to a few square feet or a hole or crevice, rather than the entire food-supplying territory. Abstraction can go even further than this. In some cases it is only the right to membership in a group that is recognized; the alternative is rejection as an outcast. Thus, there may be no contest for actual property at all, but only for individual or personal status. These conventions are normally concerned with competition between the members of the population of a single species of animal: that is to say, with intraspecific competition. This competition provides conventional goals or rewards that are substituted for actual food, and their effect is to limit the number (or density per unit of food) of members in the group and to unload any unwanted surplus to a safe distance. It is important to note that the competition itself assumes artificial or conventional forms. Birds contesting for territories seldom fight and kill each other, although winning a territory can in fact easily be a matter of life or death as far as the respective consequences to the victor and vanquished are concerned; instead they sing and threaten by voice or display fine crests or splendid or startling patterns of plumage. Social behavior provides the key. It takes but a short step at this point to reach the most striking and important generalization to emerge from the new hypothesis: Any group of individuals competing for conventional prizes by conventional methods automatically constitutes a society. Behind this there is the deeper implication that here is the essence or root from which all social behavior has stemmed: that the evolution of a primordial social organization occurred as an adaptive mechanism for the control of population density. A society could be defined as an organization capable of providing conventional competition among its members; in these terms, sociability is seen to have a biological basis. One does not need to ponder very deeply to see how closely this cap fits even in human social groupings, where leaders emerge even though individuals need not be engaged in
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any direct form of competition. A society, whether human or animal, is in essence a brotherhood tempered with rivalry. Inasmuch as it incorporates the mechanisms of competition, social organization appears to be indispensable in the process of maintaining an optimum population density. This is readily apparent in a territorial system, like that of birds, where neighbors of the same species are in constant social competition and by their behavior directly control the population density in the habitat. The longterm research on the Scottish red grouse being carried on near Aberdeen has shown, for example, that the grouse population on a heather moor consists of individuals all mutually known to their neighbors and greatly different in social standing. Dominant cock birds hold territories almost all the year round, covering the habitat like a mosaic; the most aggressive have the biggest territories. Socially subordinate cocks and unmated hens are often carried as members of the population although there is no room for them to establish any territorial claims for themselves. With the onset of winter, or when the productivity of the food supply declines for any other reason, it is the subordinates at the bottom of the social ladder that get squeezed out, leaving behind a surviving group adjusted in density to suit the lowered food level. The social hierarchy, or peck-order system, thus works as a safety valve, or overflow mechanism, identifying and unloading those who cannot be supported when there is a drop in food supply. If the population were not thinned down in this way, damage would be done to the habitat by overtaxing the resource. By means of the social hierarchy not only is damage prevented but the remaining population is assured of an adequate diet and a reasonable chance of survival. The hierarchy also operates in relation to breeding. Only established territory owners and their mates can breed, although unestablished nonbreeding adults can still be carried in the population and form a valuable reserve to fill any gaps that appear in the ranks of the establishment. It may be noted that the hierarchy is another wellknown biological phenomenon for which no general functional explanation has been given, although it finds an automatic place under the new theory. Characteristically, red grouse compete under conventional rules, one of which is that, at least in the fall, the competition takes place only between dawn and about 8 A.M. After that the social groups flock amicably, and all feed side by side for the rest of the day. So fierce is the aggression among
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the cock birds at dawn, however, that it is enough to subject some of the less-spirited competitors to a stress that not only drives them away from the habitat altogether but leaves them defenseless to predators and liable to succumb quickly to disease. The convention of competing at dawn, and often at dusk, and leaving the rest of the day free for other necessary activities like feeding is exceedingly common and appears to shed a flood of light on the timing of such familiar phenomena as the cockcrow and the dawn chorus of birds, the dusk flighting of ducks, the massed maneuvers of starlings and blackbirds at their roosts, the synchronized choruses of some kinds of tropical bats and cicadas, and the activity of marine life such as the croaker and the snapping shrimp; there are innumerable other analogous phenomena in which an indication of present numbers seems to be provided through synchronized communal activity. Dawn and dusk are of course the two most easily perceived hours of the day, and this no doubt explains their wide use for brief social activities that call for a simultaneous general participation in order to achieve their effect. Homeostasis and epideictic feedback. Community displays and contests provide the essential index of population density from day to day, producing "information" which can lead to an appropriate response when an adjustment to density is required. The whole process of balancing the population against the changing food productivity of the habitat appears to be a "homeostatic," or self-stabilizing, one, based on a feedback of information that sets the wheels of the adjusting machinery in motion whenever the balance has swung away from the optimal level. Community displays can not only lead to the expulsion of a population surplus, as in the case of the red grouse, but when the breeding season comes round, they can also serve to indicate how large a quota of recruits will be required to replenish the population or build it up to the particular level that is justified by the current carrying capacity of the habitat. We need a technical term to describe this kind of activity, whose purpose is to sample population pressure, and "epideictic" has been chosen as having the right derivation and meaning. One could easily predict that epideictic displays would be especially conspicuous before the breeding season, when the population is about to be built up to its annual peak level; indeed, this is the time at which some of the displays already mentioned reach their height. At that time in many species only the males are
required to take part in communal displays, each commonly acting as the representative of a mated pair; the females are otherwise occupied, frequently in more domestic duties. In these circumstances the males can be described as the "epideictic sex." The stimulation they receive from competing with rival males or sharing in exciting communal activities is density-dependent in its intensity: the more males there are, the hotter the pace. Rather frequently they assemble in unisexual swarms or groups, dancing in the air, perhaps, if they are flying insects or taking part in ritual tournaments, gymnastics, or parades, in the case of sage grouse and prairie chickens, tropical hummingbirds, manakins, and birds of paradise. They may have special vocal organs, as in songbirds, cicadas, frogs, drumnsh, most crickets and katydids, howling monkeys, and many others. These are primarily used not to woo and win females, as was formerly thought, but to gain the prizes of social competition in the form of real estate and personal status. Exactly the same use applies to adornments, weapons, and scent glands. Much rethinking is therefore required on the hitherto vexed subject of sexual selection. Epideictic displays are especially prominent among migratory animals as a preiude to their departure and as a means of smoothly handling heavy traffic over the vast tracts of country that often separate summer and winter quarters. This is especially true of birds. Without such displays the food resources would tend to be dangerously overtaxed in congested stopping places. The excited flocks of swallows and swifts, the spectacular massed maneuvers of locusts building up for a great emigration flight, and many of the big gatherings of birds, fruit bats, and insects to nightly roosts are associated with impending changes in population density through migration. Conclusions In the light of this theory of self-regulation of animal populations effected through the agency of social conventions, we can turn back once more to the original questions and see how they have been answered. The average population level would appear to be set for most species by the size of sustained crop that the food resources can yield, and this level is actually achieved through a code of conventional behavior that prevents the growth of population from going above the optimum density. Some fluctuations in population level are produced by accidental events in the environment, including predators and disease, which may cause
SOCIAL CHANGE extensive mortality; but in most cases they appear to arise from the operation of the homeostatic machinery, which automatically allows the population density to build up when resource yields are good and thin down when yields fall below average. The homeostatic machinery responds directly to the pressure of social competition. The latter is part and parcel of the struggle for existence and depends in turn on food availability and the number of mouths to be fed. It mirrors (inversely) the standard of living prevailing at the time. In this, therefore, lies the answer to the question, What establishes the balance of numbers and prevents the progressive long-term increase or decline of populations? Fluctuations tend in practice to be checked by homeostatic processes, which can control the recruitment rate, the pressure to emigrate, and, sometimes on an immense scale, the amount of mortality resulting from stress. Only when there are long-term alterations in the environment itself will the average population levels undergo permanent change. This sketch can give only an imperfect picture of the wide ramifications of the hypothesis. There is still one most important point to be mentioned, which is that man himself is conspicuously out of line with all the higher animals in being exposed to progressive population growth. The history of this seems perfectly clear. In many animals, including some of the mammals, fertility itself is under density-dependent control; overcrowding automatically leads to lowered, and finally suspended, recruitment. In primitive man, on the contrary, fertility was limited not through the internal effects of hormones on the rate of ovulation or on the resorption of embryos in the uterus (as in rabbits, foxes, deer, etc.) but through cultural conventions, customs, and taboos which imposed restrictions on sexual intercourse for mothers who already had a child at the breast or prescribed compulsory abortion, infanticide (especially of female infants), human sacrifices, or head-hunting expeditions. These had evolved in prehistoric man as part of a socially integrated control mechanism which kept populations nicely balanced against the carrying capacity of the habitat, exactly as in the higher animals. Then, eight or ten thousand years ago, the agricultural revolution began. Food productivity increased by leaps and bounds, and power and wealth accrued to those groups which allowed their populations to multiply, settle villages, and build towns. The old checks on population growth were insensibly for-
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gotten and discarded, and none have since taken their place. We should not therefore look to nature to halt the human population explosion: it must depend on our own efforts. V. C. WYNNE-EDWARDS [Directly related are the entries ECOLOGY; POPULATION. Other relevant material may be found in EVOLUTION; HOMEOSTASIS; WAR, article on PRIMITIVE WARFARE.] BIBLIOGRAPHY
JENKINS, DAVID; WATSON, ADAM; and MILLER, G. R. 1963 Population Studies on Red Grouse, Lagopus lagopus scoticus (Lath.), in North-east Scotland. Journal of Animal Ecology 32:317-376. WYNNE-EDWARDS, V. C. 1962 Animal Dispersion in Relation to Social Behaviour. Edinburgh and London: Oliver & Boyd; New York: Hat'ner. WYNNE-EDWARDS, V. C. 1963 Intergroup Selection in the Evolution of Social Systems. Nature 200:623-626.
SOCIAL CHANGE Social change is such a prevalent and often disturbing feature of contemporary life that both the specialist and the layman may be tempted to suppose that it is peculiarly modern. Certainly the extent and rate of change in the modern world are greater than in most past periods, but the static qualities of primitive cultures or archaic civilizations are easily and commonly overstated. Change, at some level and degree, is as characteristic of man's life in organized systems as is orderly persistence. Indeed, small-scale changes may be an essential component of persistence on a larger scale. For example, given man's biological life cycle, enduring systems, such as kinship organization and government, depend upon orderly patterns of agespecific role performances. Likewise, changing patterns—on a daily, weekly, monthly, or annual cycle—provide a basic and predictable continuity to the patterns of social existence. Paradoxically, as the rate of social change has accelerated in the real world of experience, the scientific disciplines dealing with man's actions and products have tended to emphasize orderly interdependence and static continuity. The genuine difficulties of dealing with social dynamics are in part responsible for this state of affairs. The relationship between small-scale and largescale change and the relationship between shortterm and long-term change exemplify the many analytical and factual complexities that are involved. These considerations make a formal defi-
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nition of social change highly desirable, and we shall therefore attempt one here: Social change is the significant alteration of social structures (that is, of patterns of social action and interaction), including consequences and manifestations of such structures embodied in norms (rules of conduct), values, and cultural products and symbols. This definition encompasses small-scale change, such as the gradual development of a leadership role in a small, task-oriented group; cyclical patterns of change, such as the succession of centralization and decentralization in administrative organizations; and revolutionary change, such as the overthrow of a government. It includes shortterm changes in employment rates as well as longterm changes in occupational structures; both growth and decline in membership size of social units; continuous processes such as specialization and bureaucratization; and discontinuous processes such as particular technical or social inventions. Social change and cultural change The broad definition given above comprises both what is commonly identified as social change, which refers mainly to actual human behavior, and cultural change, which refers mainly to culturally meaningful symbols produced by human beings. The emphasis in this discussion will be on the interplay among the complex normative patterns of behavior that we call institutions, since it is these that provide much of the rationale for social control and human activities in general. This emphasis cuts across conventional distinctions between the "social" and the "cultural" aspects of social systems. Cultural change, it is true, requires social actors as agents, and social change is likely to have cultural counterparts. However, changes in certain cultural subsystems—for example, language, the arts, and perhaps theological or philosophical systems—may be viewed in virtual abstraction from concrete human behavior (see, for instance, Sorokin 1937-1941). Similarly, fluctuations in the fashions of dress may be viewed as "autonomous," although it is also proper to consider such fashions as patterns of appropriate conduct in one sphere of social behavior (Kroeber 1957). It is true that such modes of abstraction are often mere matters of convenience. For example, the steady specialization of vocabularies in language systems may be treated as a principle of autonomous evolution; it may be related to the expansion of knowledge and to role differentiation in complex social systems. However, there is an
underlying problem that should be made explicit. The degree to which cultural subsystems, such as language, may be traced to structural sources is a question of considerable theoretical importance. Similarly important is the question of the degree to which such cultural subsystems may be translated into guides for social behavior. In human societies the extent of autonomous variability among coexistent features appears to be substantial. Therefore, a multiplicity of principles relating to structural regularities and to significant alterations is necessary for the understanding of order and change. It follows from the possibility of autonomous variability and from the initial discussion of smallscale social changes that in order to formulate principles of social change we must first of all identify the social structure to which these principles are to be applied. It is also necessary to specify the time period over which change is to be studied and to set up standards for measuring various degrees of change. Until these conditions are fulfilled, we cannot even begin to say what it is that is changing or how much it has changed. There is no singular, sovereign cause for changes in social systems or subsystems. It is true that the scientific quest for simplification has led to the identification of individual variables, such as technological innovation or population growth, that are important enough in themselves; but the result of these inquiries has been the development of special theories of change for specific classes of structures rather than any kind of master theory that embraces all types of factors. For small-scale social structures in general— face-to-face groups, for example, or formal organizations—we can safely assume that change will originate through such familiar mechanisms as the normative requirements attached to role performances (Moore 1963, p. 50). Large-scale systems, such as whole societies, are less easily studied; but even on present knowledge we can be confident that population growth or decline and the vicissitudes of incorporating infants into the system through socialization will introduce at least some flexibilities and adjustments, if not major structural changes in a definite direction. The probability of both technical and social innovation may be inferred from a universal feature of human societies which can be called the lack of correspondence between the "ideal" and the "actual" in the realm of social values. On the whole, these innovations are likely to be directed toward both "adaptation" to the nonhuman environment, to which adjustment is never perfect,
SOCIAL CHANGE and social control of the human population. Recognition of both of these elements can be found in the theories that we now propose to examine. Changing theoretical interests The nineteenth-century predecessors of modern sociology were very preoccupied with the dynamics of social change. Although some scholars, such as Frederic Le Play, attempted to establish canons for systematic description of contemporary social types, the attempt to trace the paths of history was a far more prevalent concern. Often the history attended to was not universal, but limited to the fairly clear antecedents of European civilization. Generally these authors attempted to find order in the succession of civilizations [see HISTORY, article on THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY]. The most ambitious of them was probably Auguste Comte, who invented the term "sociology" and propounded a "law of the three stages"—the theological, metaphysical, and positivist—to which all civilization was supposed to conform. Evolutionary theories. The directionality of change, and in particular the increasing complexity and structural differentiation of society, came to be a major tenet of evolutionary theories. Following the impact of Darwin's theories of biological evolution, Herbert Spencer, Lewis Henry Morgan, and others of lesser stature used such Darwinian notions as selective adaptation to account for both the cross-sectional diversity of societies and cultures and the supposedly sequential stages of social organization. By the end of the nineteenth century, evolutionary theory was a dominant factor in social thought, even in the work of writers who were not predominantly evolutionist in outlook. This applies to theorists as diverse as William Graham Sumner, despite his predominant concern with the relativism of all social values, and Emile Durkheim, whose life-long devotion to explaining social phenomena in terms of the balance of an interdependent system has caused him to be identified with what later became the "functionalist" approach to society. Marxist theory. Even Marxism was a variant of evolutionism, particularly in its adherence to the notion of sequential stages of social organization. The Marxists tried to show how social change came about by laying great stress on the interaction of technology with social organization. Indeed, Marxist thought in its crudest form shared with most evolutionary theory a belief that one stage of social organization succeeded another through the operation of forces that were as impersonal as they were inevitable. Marx himself,
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however, took fairly full account of the purposive character of social action; he did not rely solely on his theory of revolutionary change. Moreover, his theory was a dynamic one, although it underplayed the independent role of ideas and values; thus his intellectual heirs were never caught up in the extremes of static "functionalism" that later became a dominant theme in anthropological and sociological theory. Functionalist theory. Functionalism is the attempt to explain social phenomena by other social phenomena that are contemporary or quasi-simultaneous. In this respect, it rejects the "quest for origins." Some of its proponents (e.g., Durkheim, Radcliffe-Brown, Malinowski), in eschewing explanation in genetic terms, also tended to suppress all queries about the actual dynamics of change. For them, the demonstration of interdependence between different elements of social structure came to mean the search for self-equilibrating mechanisms in society. The recent revival of interest in dynamics owes something to all of these precedents. From functionalism, contemporary theory derives not only notions of systemic linkages which may be sequential, but also, through the concept of "dysfunction," some notions of tension and incipient change. However, the renewal of concern with analysis of social change probably owes more to the undeniable facts of contemporary life and particularly to the social scientists' resultant involvement in studies of modernization. Although functional systems models have served rather well as predictors of eventual expected changes in elements of social structure held to be related to economic development, the unconfirmed assumption that all fully modern societies have essentially the same kind of social structure can only lead to an unwarranted sociological determinism. In any event, this mode of analysis has produced a kind of "comparative statics," offering a before-and-after view curiously discordant with older evolutionary theories; for the functionalists' standard treatment of modernization dwells on pre-existing heterogeneity that becomes in due course a homogeneity. Nevertheless, functionalist studies of modernization have at least the merit of demonstrating a serious but fortunately remediable weakness in the analytical models employed, namely, that before-and-after comparison diverts attention from the mechanisms of change and entirely suppresses inquiries about actual sequences and timetables. Alternative models of societies. Any theory that views society as a "functional equilibrium system" has the advantage of telling us that certain vari-
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ables need to be correlated with certain other variables if the theory is to prove its worth. In any case, some such model of society, whether implicit or explicit, underlies most of the better attested propositions about social action and social structure in contemporary American sociology; indeed, these propositions are American sociology to a great extent, and their influence on other branches of social science is already profound. In spite of the objections already brought against functionalist theory, its prevalence is not necessarily to be deplored. Functionalism, in the hands of a sophisticated theorist, does not preclude attention to deviance, nor does it prejudge the issues of stability and continuity in social change theory. Indeed, to specify "the functional prerequisites of a society" (Aberle et al. 1950) is to adopt an implicitly evolutionary position, for the notion of functional prerequisites not only gives rise to highlevel generalizations about the features common to all societies but also, by applying the test of survival, explains the failure of past society by their want of one or more "operating characteristics." The sophisticated functionalist, therefore, views society as a "tension-management system," thus making order itself problematic; he welcomes empirical study of the uncertainties and conflicts that arise in society from disparities between the ideal and the actual. One of the few viable alternatives to functionalism that have been offered is the "conflict model" of society (Dahrendorf 1957). However, this does not appear to be a comprehensive construction, but only a change of emphasis to discordant elements and interests as a counterpoise to models that stress social integration. Moreover, the tensionmanagement model, as described above, already identifies structural tension points as probable sites of change. Problems of detection and measurement Change takes place in time, and time for observation is limited, especially for the single investigator. One method that has been devised for coping with this problem is the "panel study" [see PANEL STUDIES]. This is a method that attempts, over relatively brief periods, to record changes in individual attitude and behavior while they are in process. For longer periods, there would appear to be no substitute for historical evidence. Here the social scientist commonly turns to the professional historian; but the historian's interests do not often coincide with those of the sociologist, and it is not surprising if data that would help to answer sociological questions are either passed over or dealt
with only briefly in works of history. Moreover, historians have rarely made use of quantitative techniques of data reporting, and the sociologist interested in constructing actual rates of change may have to do his own history. Finally, there is the undeniable fact that much of the past is irretrievably lost to human knowledge. The assembling of social statistics is very recent in man's history and still very incompletely practiced [see CENSUS; GOVERNMENT STATISTICS; LABOR FORCE, article on DEFINITIONS AND MEASUREMENT; VITAL STATISTICS].
The problem of magnitude. It was earlier noted that the question "What is changing?" is primary. The identification of elements or constructs for observation and analysis is a theoretical matter. Opinions may properly differ as to what constitutes a "significant" change; there is no legitimate scientific basis for denying social scientists their interest in the tiny alterations that occur in small groups or in the day-to-day developments of a political campaign. Questions of magnitude, however, cannot be avoided if we are to talk about social change in general. How much of a change is to be taken as "significant" and by what criteria of significance? If the system constructs explicitly or implicitly employed by some functionalists were to be taken seriously, this problem could be solved simply by the strict dichotomization of change as "trivial" or "tragic" (Moore 1963, pp. 20, 70). In its extreme form, the assumption that all parts of a social system are completely interdependent results in the dilemma that change must be viewed either as constituting only variations on a theme within tolerable limits of persistent order ("trivial") or as so altering an essential social component as to have serious repercussions throughout the entire system ("tragic"). However, the problem is not that simple. The structural looseness of social systems is not only evident but empirically verifiable; it is therefore possible that some small-scale changes alter social systems by cumulative degrees. How much change, in what, has what predictable consequences for which specifiable classes of social phenomena? A demographic example. Some examples from demographic behavior may help to clarify the issue. Let us suppose that mortality rates are relatively low and temporally stable and relatively uniform in terms of such standard social categories as residence, ethnicity, occupation, and income. Let us also suppose that birth rates are relatively low and that the modal number of children per family is again relatively uniform across social categories.
SOCIAL CHANGE Now let us suppose a fairly rapid rise in birth rates, which in familial terms means an increase in the modal number of children from two to three. Such a change will have only minor consequences for the structure of the family, the consequences being limited to the nuances of generational and sibling relations. But the aggregative effect of this change on the economy, the density of population, the demand for schools and teachers, and so on, will be major; indeed, if we make allowances for the simplified nature of this example, it can serve as a description of the "baby boom" following World War ii. Now let us alter the assumption of the independence of family size with respect to various social categories. Let us suppose, rather, that over the course of a few decades the average size of family changes from a distribution inversely correlated with measures of socioeconomic status to a strongly positive correlation. Children would then become another symbol of affluence, but the effects of the change would be more complex. For example, with regard to mobility opportunities, it would appear that the relative smallness of poor families would favor a more equitable distribution of meager resources for current support and continuing education. Yet the advantages accruing to the children of well-to-do-families would probably persist; indeed, to the degree that inheritance of status continues to operate, the saturation of the upper ranks would preclude substantial upward mobility on the part of children of humble origin. In fact, if the fertility differentials were sharp, only a changed status distribution resembling an inverted pyramid could avoid substantial downward mobility among the well-born. These partially hypothetical illustrations of demographic trends underscore the importance of looking for consequences of any kind, whether they are direct or indirect, small-scale or large-scale. Problems of identification and observation. The ease with which social change can be identified or observed depends on at least four variables, all of which characterize the dynamic pattern of change. These variables are scale, brevity, repetition, and mensuration. Scale. "Scale" is a somewhat ambiguous term, which may refer to the size or comprehensiveness of the system affected—for example, the political structure of a whole society as compared with a local custom relating to courtship—or to the degree of alteration in the system. As magnitude in the latter sense implies at least crude measurement, the "scale" variable is most appropriately reserved to refer to the comprehensiveness of the system involved. These two variables—the size of the sys-
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tem and the degree of alteration—are of course likely to be positively correlated. However, the correlation is not perfect; small changes can occur in inclusive systems and large changes in subsystems. Brevity. Changes that are completed in a relatively short time are likely to be more observable than those that take place over a longer time, even if the latter eventually become substantial in magnitude. Long-term cycles which occur on a large scale may be detected retrospectively; however, they will probably go unnoticed if they are on a small scale and involve only small degrees of variation. Repetition. Relatively brief changes, even if of small magnitude, have a greater chance of being observed if they are repeated frequently—in a cyclical pattern, for example. Repetition, in fact, greatly facilitates explanation and prediction, in that chance antecedents may be more readily distinguished from common and efficacious ones. In this respect, the repetition need not be confined to a single social unit, provided that there is enough similarity among units to allow for comparison. Thus some of the social changes related to industrialization are unique and discontinuous with respect to past trends in areas undergoing modernization, but they are sufficiently repetitive from one society to another (time for these purposes being only an incidental variable) to permit the formulation of general principles. Mensuration. For large-scale transformations in social systems, such as political revolutions or rapid industrialization, the quest for quantities may seem unnecessarily laborious. Yet even here numerical indicators are likely to be useful for comparing cases, and they are particularly necessary if one is going to speak at all precisely about rates of change. In the case of less dramatic social transformations, the perception of change may not be uniform, and reliable measurement may therefore be the only way of settling the issue, as well as of finding at least partial explanation for clearly demonstrated changes. For example, is mental illness increasing in the United States and other modernized societies? If so, by what standardized criteria of identification and diagnosis can the increase be demonstrated? If it is demonstrable, how can crosssectional differences in rates—for example, by age or income—be converted hypothetically into temporal trends, still using these same indicators? Failure to exercise both quantitative ingenuity and great methodological caution is likely to produce only a spurious explanation for a fictitious trend; such academic exercises unfortunately have been too common.
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Demonstration of causal processes. It is very rare, in studies of social change, that we come across a classically neat demonstration of a singular cause, producing a singular effect, under finitely specifiable and repeatable conditions. This is partly because of the difficulty or impossibility of fully controlled social experimentation. A further difficulty is the inadequacy of the currently available conceptual and observational tools. Usually the analyst deals with statistical probability distributions and attempts to explain various "dependent variables" so characterized in terms of "independent variables" having the same uncertainties. Statistical techniques have been developed for dealing with these crudities, and others are likely to be invented [see CROSS-SECTION ANALYSIS]. Sequential analysis, however, involves additional problems, for it takes into account not only the degree to which the outcome is determined by one or another measurable antecedent but also the important question of the temporal order of critical variables. Smelser (1962, pp. 12-21) has borrowed from economics the term "value-added process" to refer to this type of logical scheme for organizing the determinant variables. This methodological principle offers the analyst some prospect of moving from the demonstration of necessary conditions to the understanding of sufficient conditions for social change, under favorable circumstances of observation and measurement. The notion of "value-added process" resembles various "stage" theories of change, although stages often represent arbitrarily imposed discontinuities in cumulative trends and thus understate the interaction of variables in the process of transformation. One of the more complex forms of evolutionary change has been identified by Arnold Feldman and Wilbert E. Moore (1960) as cumulative, ictroactive evolution. This term refers to the process by which later "stages" have a continuing or delayed effect on seemingly earlier ones. The mathematical conception of "stochastic processes" is a more accurate designation for this process than the concept of "stages." However, the delineation of stages is a useful mode of characterizing sequences that exhibit fairly clear breaks in rates of change and "emergences" that fundamentally alter the properties of social systems. The directions of change In accordance with the position that only "special" theories of social change are appropriate to the diversity of social phenomena, the varieties of directionality in change will each be illustrated empirically. Although many of these have been
offered in the past as master principles of social dynamics, the eclectic view here espoused has clear advantages in terms of factual confirmation, even if it thereby loses in simplicity and level of generalization. Evolutionism and relativism. The principal mistake of the evolutionary theorists of the latter half of the nineteenth century was overgeneralization. The rectilinear theories of human evolution either took too little account of diversity or explained it improperly. Although Spencer's concept of the "superorganic" offered promise of recognition that human societies might show some portion of the diversity of plant and animal species, he was too bound by the idea of the biological unity of mankind to exploit his fundamental idea. Later theorists went to the opposite extreme by ignoring biological factors and emphasizing sheer unexplained diversity. This extreme relativistic view was no more acceptable than the evolutionists' idea of lining up all of the world's cultures in rank order, with the presumably "simpler" social organization representing a kind of unexplained primitive survival. Fluctuations and cycles. In the analysis of social dynamics, the counterpart of the recognition of simple cross-sectional diversity has been the identification of "fluctuations " that is, variations through time which show no clearly repetitive or cumulative pattern. Fluctuations do indeed occur; for example, consider the chance variability in reproduction and the uncertainties of the intersection of hereditary and environmental factors in personality formation. In fact, the vicissitudes of matching recruits with the normative requirements of enduring positions insure some fluctuations in the exact behavioral counterparts of established structures (Sorokin 1937-1941, vol. 4; compare Moore 1963, pp. 66-68). As compared to fluctuations, cycles involve more determinate directionality. A simple pendulum swing between extremes (e.g., prosperity and depression, liberalism and conservatism, innovation and accommodation) represents the simplest cyclical pattern. The delineation of multistage cycles is likely to rest on tenuous analogies (e.g., the "life cycles" of civilizations) or to require somewhat arbitrary breaks in variables that on inspection show rather orderly trends. The self-equilibrating model. The notion of "self-equilibrating mechanisms" in functional systems is more readily understood in terms of trendless cycles than it is in terms of a static continuity which is only occasionally disrupted by external disturbances. For example, there is a tendency in
SOCIAL CHANGE administrative organizations for "indulgent" departures from strict compliance with the rules to grow more extreme, until reversed by a renewed insistence on approximate compliance. This might be characterized as the "cycle of sin and penance." Yet the notion of "self-equilibration" often implies that trends are reversed because of side effects of actions taken by the participants. This mechanistic assumption is not always warranted; the question as to whether the direction of change is deliberate is always a proper one. A further point about cyclical change may be derived from the example of a small-scale repetitive pattern just used. Cycles may be superimposed on an underlying, cumulative trend. Thus the "return to the rules" in an administrative organization is unlikely to be complete, and through successive repetitions of the sequence there is likely to result a long-term modification of the norms themselves. On a larger scale, the alternation of relatively high and relatively depressed economic indicators in complex economies may represent essentially short-term variations that are consistent with long-term growth as indicated by per capita income or similar measures of economic development. Progress as an aspect of growth. The evolutionary theorists of the nineteenth century were also naive in that they exaggerated the cumulative nature of change and comfortably equated change with "progress." However, to some extent the cumulation of which they spoke was real—a point missed by all their relativistic detractors. For various sectors of any social system, and even for entire systems, there is evidence of steady or even accelerating growth over long periods of time. For instance, the growth in the number of rules in continuing organizations is certainly not at a steady rate if very frequent temporal comparisons are made; however, it is probably very steady over somewhat longer intervals. Likewise, the growth in total human population has been variable over considerably longer periods, and yet cumulative over the entire span of man's earthly tenure. Rates of technical innovation are variable according to time and place, although commonly on a cumulative base. If the invention rate is the unit of observation, its trends may appear nearly cyclical over extensive periods of human history. On the other hand, if the sum total of useful knowledge is taken as the basis of observation, the short-term variations in the rate of addition to stock are likely to appear as very minor fluctuations in the long-term accumulation of reliable knowledge. This is because the growth of knowledge takes place at an
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exponential rate: the more there is, the faster it increases. Measurement of trends. Conclusions about both the rate and the direction of social change are much affected by the choice of time intervals of observation, including the span between the initial and terminal observations. Constant surveillance of ongoing processes is rare outside the laboratory and nearly impossible for long-range changes. Frequent recording of observations tends to pick up cyclical patterns and essentially meaningless fluctuations. Infrequent recording loses such information and points instead to more enduring trends. This is not to argue for less information, as infrequent observations are subject to grave risks of sampling error in the peculiarities of the observational situation. Skilled analysis can distinguish mere fluctuations, short-term trends, and longterm trends from a "continuous" series. The fact is, however, that in the retrospective analysis of longterm changes the analyst is more likely to detect a "fundamental" trend; thus the finer processes of transformation may be lost to view. Mortality and fertility trends. A further example of great substantive importance may serve to underscore the problems of sorting out short-term and long-term trends. Contemporary evidence and all reasonable inferences from available historical materials indicate fairly wide short-term fluctuations in death and birth rates. But they also indicate two clear longer-term patterns. Over the very long term, human population growth has followed the cumulative, accelerating (exponential) pattern. Examined in somewhat more detail, the shorterterm patterns exhibit greater variability in mortality than in fertility in "nonmodern" societies and greater variability in fertility in modern industrialized societies. Furthermore, the steady decline in mortality, followed, after an interval, by a steady decline in fertility, are trends uniformly accompanying economic development. The trends represent a dynamic pattern that is repetitive, although the pattern seems to operate only once in each economic unit. This example can be pushed still further with respect to the direction of change. The variation in mortality in "premodern" societies appears to be rather irregular, as it is determined by such "chance" factors as climate and harvests, political vicissitudes, and infectious diseases. On the other hand, the variation of fertility rates in "modernized" countries seems to approximate a cyclical pattern. In societies where contraception is practiced, birth rates are likely to be correlated with current economic indicators [see FERTILITY CONTROL].
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However, there is more than a slight suggestion that fertility functions not only as a dependent variable but also as an independent variable. Prosperous conditions result in exceptionally high fertility. As these birth cohorts reach maturity they tend to oversupply the prevailing labor demand, which serves to increase unemployment and other unfavorable economic indicators. These deteriorating economic conditions in turn result in small birth cohorts. Note that if this reasoning has further empirical validation (and it fits rather well the fertility behavior of Western countries for several decades following the 1930s) we shall have an example of a "self-disequilibrating" system. The cycles remain "off-phase" because of the intrinsic lag entailed in bringing infants to the age of laborforce participation. Cumulative trends. The ways in which cumulative trends display themselves are numerous. To simple, additive (rectilinear) change and accelerating (exponential) growth should be added one form or another of "logistic" trend. A slow increase accelerates because of an increasing base for combinations to take place, but then it "dampens off" as severely limiting conditions are encountered. The size of organizations and even of entire populations often display this pattern. However, it must be remembered that the parameters or restrictive boundaries are themselves subject to change—for example, by technological or organizational innovation. Moreover, the lower limits, as well as the upper, may serve as restrictive boundaries. For example, the decline of mortality is commonly described as a "reverse J-curve," meaning that early and easy improvements in health conditions are followed by more and more difficult life-saving measures until the limits of biological survival are approached. Structural differentiation and social change The directionality of change can be represented in terms of measures of size, incidence, or occurrence. Moreover, certain processes of change may be found to have a reliable and enduring direction. Most notable of these in the theoretical literature is the presumably universal tendency toward specialization or structural differentiation. But the question of why this should be so is commonly left unanswered, the process being taken as given. Durkheim (1893) and others sought a demographic explanation: growing numbers lead to more complex social arrangements, including positional and role differentiation. Extensive evidence does point to a high, but by no means perfect, correlation between size and specialization; however, the reasons
for this correlation are left for the most part unexplained. In Darwinian evolutionary theory, structural differentiation derives from selective adaptation of organisms to their environment. Since environments differ both cross-section ally and temporally, the idea of selective adaptation provides a way of accounting both for the observed diversity in structural forms and for continuing change. It is surprising that so little use has been made of this conceptual scheme in the theory of social systems, where it appears equally applicable. In this scheme, population or membership size would serve as a basis for increased potential variability, and differentiation internal to the system would be one mode of adaptation of the entire system to its environmental setting. Criteria of efficiency in optimizing goal achievement—criteria which may be overt and purposive in complex social systems—would then be particular forms of adaptation. Specialization is not, of course, an absolutely sovereign and irreversible dynamic process. Occasionally, its dangers to systemic cohesion may lead to renewed emphasis on unity and commonality of participating units. However, the probability of continuing specialization in enduring social systems is high. The cumulative growth of reliable knowledge and technique abets the requirement of differentiated competence. Structural differentiation does imperil systemic cohesion, as just indicated. Mere interdependence, as Durkheim (1893) demonstrated, does not insure "solidarity." Solidarity, or systemic cohesion, also requires an effective system of norms, which in turn will be justified or rationalized by common values. The mechanisms of effecting coordination are chiefly two: exchange, whether through relatively impersonal monetary markets or other forms of complementary reciprocities; and administrative authority, a mode of allocating duties and insuring compliance by the exercise of institutionalized power. These mechanisms are not of course mutually exclusive; for example, subordination to authority may be contractual. A supplementary note on directionality is appropriate. Any of the forms of change we have identified may be associated with ideas of "progress," which is simply change in an evaluatively approved direction. It is of course not itself a scientific principle, but as an item of belief it is possibly a relevant social datum. Progress may be viewed by social participants as the continuation of cumulative growth, as the dampening of cyclical oscillations and return to a steady state, or even the return to a past state which is evaluated as superior
SOCIAL CHANGE (the concept of "primitivism"). But since social action is partly purposive, the direction of change may well reflect the desired direction of change. Thus ideas of progress may be important elements in accounting for observed dynamics. The problem of discontinuities Change is most readily perceived as "orderly" when measured trends display a uniform direction or rate or when cycles are repeated often enough to confirm their character. Even lawful acceleration (Moore 1964) such as the exponential curve, which makes the rate of growth proportional to the extent of the relevant universe at any time, displays an underlying order. From a theoretical point of view, such orderly change clearly requires persistence or repetition in the ambient conditions. From a practical or procedural point of view, orderly change provides sufficient time for the identification of causes and the refinement of observation and measurement. Analytical difficulties multiply when change is in a significant sense and degree "discontinuous." For example, extremely rapid change, even if its antecedents are clear, may in turn alter the fundamental structure of the underlying changeproducing conditions. The "successor system" which emerges can be described as "qualitatively" different. This does not mean that measurement is no longer possible or appropriate; it does mean that new variables and parameters must be taken into account. Two illustrations from the contemporary world are relevant here. In retrospect, the discovery of nuclear fission and fusion may be viewed simply as an evolutionary step in the pattern of multiplying power utilization (White 1949). But the implications of that power for international politics, space travel, and economic production have introduced new dimensions into the potentialities for further change. At the more strictly social level, the extremely rapid spread of the doctrine of economic development has substantially reduced the cultural insularity of tribal societies and archaic agrarian civilizations and thus has increased the theoretical and practical utility of viewing the entire world as a single system. Closely related to such "emergent" phenomena as the social and political effects of atomic power is another class of events that we propose to call "threshold" phenomena. By this we mean that the cumulative and interactive effect of changes that are analytically separable may result in unprecedented transformation. Thus, although there is no precedent for a rapid decline of birth rates in the
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course of economic development, several antecedent conditions for a sharp break with the past may be noted. They include the potentiality and actuality of mortality reductions at a much more rapid rate than in the oldest industrial countries; a nearly universal political adherence to rapid economic development, coupled with growing recognition that economic programs are imperiled by extremely fast population growth; and a steadily changing "technology of contraception" that may greatly increase its economic and aesthetic (and perhaps even religious) acceptability. The concept of the threshold emphasizes sequential rather than factorial analysis of causation. Like Smelser's use of the "value added" concept (Smelser 1962), it represents an attempt to move from necessary to sufficient conditions in the prediction of change, including alterations in direction, rate, or subsequent characteristics of the social system which merit the designation "discontinuous." Reversal of trends. Trends may reverse as well as cumulate to new levels. The upswing in birth rates among industrially advanced countries following World War n illustrates completion of a process of change, after which the number of children per family began to be determined by previously unimportant factors. The historic decline in fertility owed something to marriage rates and ages, but chiefly reflected an extending pattern of contraception. As indicated by the then standard inverse relationship between fertility and socioeconomic status, the leading practitioners of contraception were those families which could best afford children. But in the course of time the attitudes and techniques favorable to family limitation became less and less the exclusive possession of upper-class and middle-class families. Apparently, it was chiefly education, among the various criteria of status, that had the greatest influence on family limitation, and it is also noteworthy that it is education that has exhibited the greatest equality of distribution. When a third or fourth child was no longer putative evidence of ignorance and error, but rather might be interpreted as a choice of family size, birth rates began to take on the characteristic trends and distributions of the markets for "consumer durables." Persistence of traditional structures. Similarly, economic modernization is never "complete." Its initial, discontinuous impact on traditionally organized societies may be followed by partial restoration of structures and forms which were never completely destroyed. For example, the weakening of extended kinship systems as a consequence of
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geographic and social mobility may be followed by partially restored, though discretionary, communication and reciprocities among kinsmen. Likewise, stable exchange or employment relations are likely to lose some of their nominal austerity and impersonality. Note that this is not to say that the status quo ante is fully restored or that nothing significant has changed, but only that the conception of an unusually disruptive "transitional period" has some merit. Revolution as discontinuous change. Fundamental "social revolutions" represent an extreme form of discontinuous change. Although social scientists have been at some pains to emphasize the partial restoration that occurs even after major revolutions, by definition revolutions involve fundamental changes in institutional structure and distribution of power. Polarization (for instance, of social classes of interest groups) is of course one antecedent of revolutionary change; however, polarization in turn requires explanation. Under the conditions of political centralization, substantial urban agglomeration, and fairly effective communication, polarization is likely to occur when there is an absolute or relative decline in economic wellbeing or political rights among those already largely excluded from positions of affluence and power. The decline, of course, must be fairly severe, sharply differential in its impact, and numerically extensive. Although this form of change is implicitly quantifiable, very little quantitative analysis of the antecedents of revolution has been attempted. Polarization, for example, is typical in the modernized sector of societies which are in early stages of industrialization. Yet in the majority of historical cases that sector has been too small to provide a clear revolutionary potential, and as it has expanded it has also reduced its polarity. How extensive and rapid must "early" modernization be in order for it to produce social revolution? The apparently faster change in aspirations than in the means for their fulfillment in contemporary developing areas invites the speculation that the incidence of revolutions may increase in the future. Refinement of that speculation into a responsible probability distribution awaits the collection of comparative data, both cross-sectional and temporal. Forecasting the future Theories of social change have little claim to scientific merit unless they are formulated as verifiable predictive propositions concerning the relations among variables. However, in the "real world"
the interaction of factors is very complex, and it may be difficult to replicate or control the conditions under which the causal variables are sequentially related. Thus, generally speaking, small-scale and short-term changes are easier to predict than their opposites. Science cannot predict the unique event with absolute reliability; it can only assign probabilities to individual occurrences in a class of events. In this respect, the task of the historian, whose data are in principle "all in," is substantially easier than that of the sociological prophet, who may not foresee crucial intervening events or even be able to assign correct values to available information. Although the precise shape of the future is hidden by a haze, there are several bases for at least rough and partial prediction. The first of these is the simple persistence of past and present conditions. Fortunately, for much of social conduct we can make this assumption; otherwise we would not know how to act or what to expect from day to day. Customs, organizations, and values may be expected to survive the pressures of other changes over long periods of time. For example, we may predict with fair confidence that the United States will continue to have a constitutional government; although it may experience some shifts in political influence and even in the relative powers of the executive, the legislature, and the judiciary, it is not likely to become a one-party regime or adopt a strictly executive mode of government. Moreover, the expansion of the size and functions of government does not lead us to expect the end of pluralism or any substantial reduction in the large measures of individual and private-group choice, decision, and competition which are characteristic of the "open society." Some American traits, such as pragmatism in attacking problems and a kind of rational, secular view of most social institutions, look like hardy survivors from the past which will continue into the future. A second basis for prediction is to be found in the continuation of orderly trends. In addition to our earlier discussion, some other probable trends may be noted. In the United States, the rate of urbanization and suburbanization has been increasing, but changes in the rate have been fairly orderly over three decades. The average age of marriage has been decreasing, but at a slowing rate. The proportion of secondary school graduates has been increasing, as has the proportion going on to college. Women are entering the labor force at a gradually rising rate, particularly at ages over 45 and under 60. The amount of private saving increases as the
SOCIAL CLASS economy grows and income increases, but the proportion of money saved remains remarkably constant. Some of these trends have a decade or two of history behind them and some much longer periods. With the extension and improvement of social accounting, the examination of trends may become an increasingly important basis for forecasting. Some destinations are known because the route has been traveled before. In addition to small-scale repetitive patterns, the contemporary world offers examples of large-scale recapitulated experience. In the course of economic modernization, precise replication of "Western" rates and sequences of change will not occur often. However, on the basis of what is known about "Western" experience we can go rather far in predicting the course of social change in major parts of the social organization and value systems of societies which are now seeking to become part of the modern world. Another component of forecasting is the great and growing importance of planning, which is of special significance in industrial countries and those attempting to become industrialized. A remarkable amount of energy and other scarce resources is spent on forecasting autonomous trends and calculating intermediate adaptations and on deliberately implementing future goals. Although accidental and "mindless" change still occurs, social change is increasingly both organized and institutionalized. The future is partially predictable because it will resemble in part what it is now intended to be. WILBERT E. MOORE [Directly related are the entries CREATIVITY, article on SOCIAL ASPECTS; CULTURE, article On CULTURE CHANGE; EVOLUTION, articles On CULTURAL EVOLUTION and SOCIAL EVOLUTION; FUNCTIONAL ANALYSIS; INDUSTRIALIZATION; MODERNIZATION; REVOLUTION; SYSTEMS ANALYSIS, article on SOCIAL SYSTEMS. Other relevant material may be found in AUTOMATION; CITY; CONFLICT; COOPERATION; ECONOMY AND SOCIETY; FASHION; FERTILITY; FOOD, article On WORLD PROBLEMS; INNOVATION; MORTALITY; PLANNING, ECONOMIC; PLANNING, SOCIAL; POPULATION,
articles on POPULATION THEORIES and POPULATION GROWTH; PREDICTION AND FORECASTING, ECONOMIC; SCIENCE, article on THE SOCIOLOGY OF SCIENCE; TRANSPORTATION; and in the biographies of DARWIN; DURKHEIM; LE PLAY; MARX; MORGAN, LEWIS HENRY; OGBURN; SOROKIN; SPENCER; SUMNER; WEBER,
MAX.] BIBLIOGRAPHY ABERLE, DAVID F. et al. 1950 The Functional Prerequisites of a Society. Ethics 60:100-111.
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DAHRENDORF, RALF (1957) 1959 Class and Class Conflict in Industrial Society. Rev. & enl. ed. Stanford Univ. Press. -> First published as Soziale Klassen und Klassenkonftikt in der industriellen Gesellschaft. DURKHEIM, EMILE (1893) 1960 The Division of Labor in Society. 2d ed. Glencoe, 111.: Free Press. -» First published as De la division du travail social. Economic Development and Cultural Change. -» A quarterly journal, with occasional monographic supplements, published since 1952 by the University of Chicago Press. Especially valuable for theoretical and empirical studies of modernization. ETZIONI, AMITAI; and ETZIONI, EVA (editors) 1964 Social Change: Sources, Patterns, and Consequences. New York: Basic Books. FELDMAN, ARNOLD S.; and MOORE, WILBERT E. 1960 Moot Points in the Theory. Pages 360-368 in Wilbert E. Moore and Arnold S. Feldman (editors), Labor Commitment and Social Change in Developing Areas. New York: Social Science Research Council. HAGEN, EVERETT E. 1962 On the Theory of Social Change. Homewood, 111.: Dorsey. KROEBER, A. L. 1957 Style and Civilizations. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell Univ. Press. MAC!VER, ROBERT M.; and PAGE, CHARLES H. (1949) 1961 Society. New York: Holt. ->• Book 3 contains an extensive treatment of social change. MOORE, WILBERT E. 1963 Social Change. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall. MOORE, WILBERT E. 1964 Predicting Discontinuities in Social Change. American Sociological Review 29: 331-338. OGBURN, WILLIAM F. (1922) 1950 Social Change With Respect to Culture and Original Nature. New enl. ed. New York: Viking. SAHLINS, MARSHALL D.; and SERVICE, E. R. (editors) 1960 Evolution and Culture. Ann Arbor: Univ. of Michigan Press. SMELSER, NEIL J. (1962) 1963 Theory of Collective Behavior. New York: Free Press. SOROKIN, PITIRIM A. (1937-1941)1962 Social and Cultural Dynamics. 4 vols. Totowa, N.J.: Bedminster Press. -> Volume 1: Fluctuation of Forms of Art. Volume 2: Fluctuation of Systems of Truth, Ethics, and Law. Volume 3: Fluctuation of Social Relationships, War, and Revolution. Volume 4: Basic Problems, Principles, and Methods. SPENCER, HERBERT (1862) 1958 First Principles. New York: DeWitt Revolving Fund. -> A general, classic formulation of evolutionary theory from the inorganic, through the organic, to the "superorganic" (sociocultural). VRIES, EGBERT DE 1961 Man in Rapid Social Change. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday. WHITE, LESLIE 1949 The Science of Culture: A Study of Man and Civilization. New York: Farrar, Straus. -> A paperback edition was published in 1958 by Grove Press. ZOLLSCHAN, GEORGE K.; and HIRSCH, WALTER (editors) 1964 Explorations in Social Change. Boston: Houghton Mifflin.
SOCIAL CLASS See under STRATIFICATION, SOCIAL.
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SOCIAL COHESION See COHESION, SOCIAL. SOCIAL CONTRACT "The social contract" is the term applied, by a long-standing consensus among students of politics, to the political theories of the most famous and influential thinkers of the period reaching from the mid-seventeenth century to the mid-eighteenth century: Thomas Hobbes. 1588-1679; John Locke, 1632-1704; and Jean Jacques Rousseau, 1712-1778. Scholarly tradition has associated the three because of their alleged common insistence that society originated in a contract, compact, or agreement, explicit or tacit, to which each individual concerned consented and, so, removed himself from the "state of nature" and helped set in motion a regime of government under laws, of impartially administered justice, and of civic morality. Recent scholarship, however, has tended to fix attention on other and perhaps more significant reasons for thinking of the "contractarians" as a school, or movement. The social contract school Hobbes, Locke, and Rousseau were all concerned with emphasizing the contract as an explanation of the nature rather than of the origin of society —that is, to get across the idea that whatever the origin of society, the relation between the individual members of society and their obligation to obey society's government and laws are fundamentally contractual even in the absence of a formal agreement. Put otherwise, none of the three committed himself unambiguously to the "historicity" of a freely negotiated contract among men in the act of emerging from a state of nature. Hobbes, for example, was willing for the subscribers to his "contract" to be bludgeoned into participation by any strong man capable of forcing their compliance. Locke was willing for the participants to be nursed into compliance by a "godlike" king. Rousseau placed great stress on the role of a "founder," or legislator, in midwifing the contract into existence over a long period of time. The influence of Machiavelli. All three, if not avowed pupils of Niccolo Machiavelli (who was in disrepute during most of the period in question), at least wrote as if they had been profoundly influenced by Machiavelli. Each was less committed to the contract as explaining the origin or even the nature of society than to certain other ideas which Machiavelli first enunciated: (1) Man and society
are not coeval (as earlier thinkers had asserted); rather, society, like government, law, justice, and morality, is a human artifact, which man is free to alter or dispose of as he sees fit. (2) "Natural" man—that is, man as he must have been prior to the founding of society—is not (as the earlier tradition had held) social or political "by nature"; rather, man first participates in society and continues to participate in it out of one form or another of "fear" or "terror" at the thought of the dire things that will happen to him if he does not participate; man "becomes" social or political only by virtue of the qualities that society superimposes upon his nature through a long process of habituation (man, as Machiavelli put it, is neither good nor bad by nature, but merely malleable). (3) The proper concern of political philosophy is not man's "perfection" or "end"—not, in Rousseau's phrase, "men as they might be"—but men as they are; political philosophy must not fritter away its energies on what Machiavelli called imaginary Utopias but must treat of the building of actual societies capable of ministering to the needs and wants of men as we actually know them. (4) There exists no natural or divine law that imposes on men anywhere and everywhere "perfect" duties toward one another and toward society itself, of which their "rights" are derivative. Here, indeed, the contractarians went further than Machiavelli, who had not concerned himself with rights at all, and held that the one firm statement we can make about "rights" is that each man is born with a "right" to "preserve himself" and to choose freely the "means" to his self-preservation. In summary: Their common dedication to these ideas—all "revolutionary" vis-a-vis the "great tradition" and all rooted in Machiavelli—far more than their use of a "social contract," binds Hobbes, Locke, and Rousseau together into a school. [See MACHIAVELLI.] Viewed in this context and irrespective of whether or not they wrote under Machiavelli's direct influence, the three together constitute a "bridge," moored at one end on Machiavelli, that stretches from the political philosophy of the "great tradition" of the West to the predominant political teachings of the present day. Each, in his own way, contributed to the accomplishment of Machiavelli's avowed purpose: to emancipate mankind from the "bad" tradition inherited from Plato, Aristotle, Cicero, Augustine, and Aquinas. The right of self-preservation. Hobbes, Locke, and Rousseau built their "models" of political society on the "right of self-preservation" and thereby gave to the word "right" a new and revolutionary meaning. The great tradition, insofar as it had
SOCIAL CONTRACT spoken of "rights" at all (both natural and divine law had emphasized duties, not rights), had conceived of every right as encrusted in a complex, or system, of duties and rights. Its rights had been, therefore, "correlative" to duties, in the twofold sense that, first, a man divested himself of his rights if he failed to perform their correlative duties and, second, that "my" right had been understood as carrying with it a correlative duty on "your" part to respect that right. Not so with the right of self-preservation, which the contract theorists attributed to every man at birth; it carried with it no correlative duties, nor were a man's fellows under any obligation to permit him to exercise it. One might say that the contract theorists divested the word "right" of any moral connotations whatever: Exercising my right of self-preservation, I enter society, or remain in it, because it seems, from a strictly "selfish" point of view, the best "means" at my disposal for preserving my life (or, in Locke's phrase, my "life, liberty, and estate") and not because of any duty toward my fellow men. [See DUTY.] Challenges and contributions. The four major burdens upon each contract theorist, their handling of which marks the significant differences between them qua contract theorists, were (a) to present a picture of natural, "presocial" man (for the purpose of which they used the device of the "state of nature"), which would render plausible the idea of his entering the "state of society" at all; (£>) to show that such and such a "state of society," characterized by such and such a "contract," is a transaction that a rational man, armed only with his right of self-preservation, would choose as the best available means for preserving himself; (c) to account for the obligation on the part of the participants in the contract to keep the "promise" they have allegedly made; and (d) to show why persons born and reared in society subsequent to the negotiation of the contract should be understood to have "consented" to the contract's terms. None of the three great contract theorists was able, in the judgment of subsequent scholarship, to meet these four challenges successfully, which perhaps explains the fact that the contract device disappeared from political philosophy soon after Rousseau. However, other ideas that derive either from the school as a whole or from one or more of its members have deeply influenced both political events and political thought throughout the intervening period: first, the notion that no society, government, law, or rule of "morality" is legitimate unless
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it rests, directly or indirectly, on the consent of the individuals concerned, though not necessarily consent to a contract; second, that the proper concern of political science is the political behavior of individuals and groups of individuals; third, that societies, governments, laws, and notions of right and wrong or of just and unjust are to be judged by the recognition and protection they provide for "inalienable" individual rights, conceived as inherent in all human beings in all times and places; fourth, that one of these rights is the right to live under a democratic government, that is, government subject to popular control understood as involving, in the absence of unanimity, control by the majority; and fifth, that, in the sense that should be decisive for politics, all men are born equal and that one major purpose of government, therefore, should be to promote equality. Antecedents of the social contract The Hobbesian contract marked a turning point —and in some respects a genuine innovation—in the history of political philosophy. But Hobbes possessed a vast knowledge both of history and of traditional political philosophy, and he, along with Locke and Rousseau, is sometimes said to have been indebted for all or some of his basic ideas to one or another of several sources. The Greek "conventionalists." We know, chiefly from passing references in the writings of Plato and Aristotle, that classical political philosophy itself arose in opposition to a long-dominant school of political thought in which the idea of convention played a role comparable to that of the compact in Hobbes. The contentions of that school were that the Greek city-state, the only form of society the Greeks knew, was a product not of nature but of the kind of tacit, constantly evolving, mutual understandings by which, for example, we today think of languages as originating and developing; that this is equally true of government, of law, and of notions of good and bad and just and unjust; and that it is equally true also of the citizens' habit of obeying the laws of his city. Among the names of the pre-Socratic conventionalists (of whose utterances we possess only fragments), the most prominent is that of Heraclitus, 575-480 B.C., but some of Plato's and Aristotle's archenemies, the Sophists, defended the conventionalist position. We may say of it, in general, that it is very close to the modern social contract theories in its denial, explicit or tacit, of what were to become the central propositions of classical political philosophy but very remote from those theories in its assertions; conventions, as understood
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by the conventionalists, carried with them no obligation and certainly not a contractual obligation. But there is this common ground between the conventionalists and the contractarians: they agree that society, justice, and law can have no superhuman or transcendent source and are therefore "man-made." Glaucoris statement. In the beginning, says Glaucon in Book n of Plato's Republic, each man thought it good to inflict injustice upon others and had to suffer injustice at the hands of others; all men behaved accordingly. In due course, however, men came to consider the resulting state of affairs intolerable and proceeded to agree to covenants and laws that obliged them to behave less rapaciously. Such, Glaucon continues, is the origin of justice, which is merely what the agreed-upon laws command, and men accept those laws because it is in their interest to do so. Glaucon, we notice, makes the shift from "convention" to "covenant"; he stresses self-interest as the central motivation in political behavior; and he posits (since, on his showing, there must have been a first covenant) an epoch in the past when men were "presocial," "prelegal," and "premoral." All three of these ideas, which were at most present by remote implication in the conventionalists as such, clearly do anticipate the position of the later contract philosophers. (Of course, Plato's purpose in presenting Glaucon's statement is to discredit the position.) The Biblical covenants. The Old Testament recounts numerous instances of "covenants" between Jehovah and particular individuals (e.g., Abraham) and between Jehovah and the people of Israel. Although they perhaps helped to familiarize subsequent generations with the idea of binding agreements or "contracts," they may be dismissed out of hand as sources for the modern contractarians. They were, in the nature of the case, agreements between Jehovah and an already existing society; the "law" to which they subjected the people of that society pre-existed it and was allegedly not of human origin. (But cf. Gough 1936.) The medieval social contractarians. History records numerous examples (the earliest of which probably was the Acts of the Fourth Council of Toledo in 633) of contracts between kings and peoples which limited the power of the king by declaring his subjects' allegiance dependent upon his recognizing certain of their rights, upon his making new laws only after consultation with the wise men of the realm and with their consent, and upon his promising, often in a coronation oath, to rule justly and in accordance with divine law and
the laws of the realm. Since these contracts did not create societies (one of the parties to the contracts was a people that already existed) and since they presupposed justice, law, and morality as goods of transcendent origin rather than human artifacts, their relevance here consists solely in the fact that they did keep alive the idea of contracts as a possible source of political obligation. So, too, with the vast body of medieval literature, much of it polemical, devoted to speculation as to the proper form and content of such contracts. (None of the later contractarians conceived of the relation between the people and the government, the ruled and the rulers, in contractual terms.) Only toward the very end of the medieval period did political philosophers again fix attention on the way society—or particular societies—originated. They posited a state of affairs that existed before political society was organized and pointed to a contract or agreement among individuals as the most probable explanation of the transition from the one condition to the other. The Spanish writer Salmonius, for example, argued in a book dated 1544 that both political society and law arise from mutual pledges between individuals who "come together" for these purposes. The Spanish Jesuit Juan Mariana, writing in 1599, described a prepolitical age when men lived as individual nomads, without positive law or government. These came into existence through a mutually binding "compact of society" in which, with an eye especially to the defenselessness of infants and children, they recognize the necessity of common measures of protection against acts of violence and set over themselves, as ruler, a man conspicuous for his justness and uprightness. Mariana's Protestant contemporary George Buchanan put forward a similar theory in Scotland in 1579. In all three cases, we are tempted to conclude that we stand in the presence of ideas that are indeed first cousins to those of the modern contractarians. This is true, however, only in the sense that the late medieval contractarians anticipated to some extent the vocabulary of Hobbes and his successors, and, by speaking in terms of contracts between persons, also anticipated to some extent the emphasis on individual consent. But a vast chasm yawns between Salmonius, Mariana, and Buchanan, on the one hand, and Hobbes, Locke, and Rousseau, on the other. The former, though they posited "prepolitical" men, conceived of them as possessing duties and rights under divine and natural law; far from insisting upon the "prepolitical" condition as "natural" in
SOCIAL CONTRACT contrast to the political condition, which is a human artifact, they deemed the political condition the more natural of the two because it is necessary for man's perfection and because ultimately it is the handiwork of God. The motives they attributed to men for "coming together" are by no means exclusively selfish and utilitarian (they include selfprotection and self-preservation, but not as the supreme motive). Finally, they had no difficulty in explaining the binding character of the contract, since both divine and natural law enjoined the keeping of promises. When, moreover, the Roman Catholic writers of the medieval period spoke of political society as contractual in origin, the point they were making obliquely is that political society is merely contractual in origin and therefore inferior to the church, which they believed to have come into existence through a direct act of God. Contributions to democratic theory Hobbes, Locke, and Rousseau have much in common besides their use of the compact, or contract, between individuals in a "state of nature" as a device through which to communicate their major teachings about politics. There are, of course, also great differences among the three, some of them topics of continuing controversy among scholars of political theory; this controversy has become enormously complicated. Each of the three philosophers wrote several works on politics, in which apparent inconsistencies, contradictions, and shifts in position on particular issues can be found, so that no scholarly consensus exists as to precisely what any of them taught. Each, in large part on the basis of testimony from self-proclaimed "disciples," has come to be identified with this or that subsequent political event or movement (Hobbes with modern authoritarianism and dictatorship, Locke with constitutional democracy, Rousseau with the French Revolution and "absolute" majority rule), so that the controversy in question has to some extent been affected and sometimes exacerbated by the political sympathies of the commentators. Finally, each of the three—at least according to recent scholarship —expressed himself on occasion with something less than complete candor, so that there is now dispute as to where we are to look, even in one arid the same book by one of the three, for the passages in which the author expressed his "true" intentions, as distinguished from those allegedly included for the precise purpose of throwing the general reader "off the scent" or enlisting the reader's prejudices on behalf of the author's position. If, however, we
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fix attention exclusively on each author's definitive work dealing with the contract and related topics (for Hobbes, Leviathan; for Locke, The Second Treatise on Civil Government; for Rousseau, The Social Contract) and think of the three together as a school and as a bridge leading from traditional political philosophy to modern political science and if we concentrate on the concept of contract itself, as it evolved from Hobbes to Locke to Rousseau, some conclusions are warranted about the similarities and differences between them and about their contributions to the emergence of present-day democratic theory. Individual rights. For each of the three authors the individual's right of self-preservation and of choosing the means thereto is that which authorizes the individual in the state of nature to enter into an agreement to form a political society and, so, legitimates the contract. For Hobbes and Locke, however, that right was a "natural" right, which belongs to the individual in the very "nature of things"; both regarded the proposition that asserts the right as requiring demonstration, which for each of them took the form: People as we know them, as given to us by nature, act as if they possessed such a right; therefore they do possess it. The mature Rousseau of the Social Contract attempted no such demonstration, preferring to treat the right to preserve oneself as axiomatic and, above all, as not a natural right. To Hobbes, therefore, belongs the credit for having taken one great step toward contemporary democratic theory by having made of the problem of the right or rights of individuals one of the central problems of modern political philosophy; to Rousseau belongs the credit for having, in anticipation of contemporary democratic theory, freed the defenders of individual rights from the necessity of rooting them in "nature." The law of nature. Hobbes and Locke both appealed to a "law of nature," which for Hobbes defined the minimal rules that, in the very nature of things, men must agree to observe if they are to constitute a society that will really protect them against the dangers of the "state of nature." For Locke the law of nature defined men's rights and duties in the state of nature and was, therefore, the ultimate source of the individual's right, once within civil society, to protection of his "life, liberty, and estate/' Both, in any case, revolutionized traditional natural-law teachings, by giving to the law of nature a new meaning and a new content. [See NATURAL LAW.] However, it was the Rousseau of the Social Contract who took the drastic step in the
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direction of contemporary democratic theory: he jettisoned the "law of nature" altogether and argued that there is no objective standard that the positive law of a particular society should seek to approximate. Authority and legitimacy. Hobbes's contract commits the individual to permanent and irrevocable membership in a political society, whose first and only task, once it is constituted, is to name a sovereign (either a single man, or an oligarchy, or a democratic assembly) who is empowered to make laws, decide disputes, lay down principles of right and wrong, and distinguish between religious truth and heresy; once the sovereign has been named, the citizen owes him absolute obedience in return for that protection against domestic law violators and foreign enemies which allegedly makes of civil society a "good bargain" for the citizen by comparison with the "violent death" that is his well-nigh certain fate in the state of nature. The effect of the contract is to make the will of the sovereign "representative" of the citizen's own will; the sovereign disposes of the entire force of society for effectuating his will, and the citizen, because that is what he has contracted to do, wills every act of the sovereign that does not involve direct sacrifice of his own life. The sovereign, not himself a party to the contract, cannot "rightfully" be called to account by his subjects for the manner in which he performs his task. The individual, although he comes into the contract by virtue of his right of self-preservation, enjoys within society only such rights as the sovereign wills him to have. The Hobbesian model anticipates modern democratic theory only in the sense that it makes of the "people" the remote source of all governmental authority. In Locke's conception of the contract the individual also assumes a permanent and irrevocable obligation to obey the legislative that the society appoints in its first act following its institution, though only provided that that legislative act for the "public good." Some commentators, however, have construed that proviso as guaranteeing to the individual rights that the legislative must not invade or deny, upon pain of exceeding its rightful authority (so that, according to these commentators, political power under the Lockean contract is "limited"). Other commentators have dismissed the proviso as operationally insignificant, since the contract neither specifies the rights in question nor envisages machinery through which the individual might assert them (so that, according to these commentators, Locke's legislative is, from the
standpoint of the individual, no more "limited" and, thus, no less absolute than Hobbes's sovereign). The decisive difference between the Hobbesian contract and the Lockean is that under the latter the "people," when it finds that the government is violating its "trust"—that is, the obligation to act only for the public good—may rightfully resist the government's authority and overthrow it, though the people must proceed at once to install a new legislative, whose laws the individual citizen, still under the "original" contract, is obligated to obey. If we deem the authority of Locke's legislative to be a limited one, without power to deny or invade certain individual rights, we may say that Locke's contract points forward to the bills-of-rights emphasis in contemporary democratic theory. Rousseau's contract differs radically from Locke's in two decisive respects. Rousseau's individual, when he enters the contract, cedes all of his rights, including his property, to the community, with the clear understanding that he is henceforth to enjoy only such rights as the "general will" of the community vouchsafes to him and is to perform all duties that that general will imposes on him. Rousseau's contract, on the other hand, is not permanent and irrevocable: the "general will"— that is, the body of the citizens in their legislative capacity—must legislate only laws which are general in their purpose (that is, addressed to the common good of the society's members) and general in their application (that is, of such character as to extend the same rights to, and impose the same duties on, each citizen). When the citizen finds himself in the presence of a law that does not meet these requirements, the contract has been violated and its obligation lapses. Rousseau said nothing about the situation that would supervene on such a violation of the contract; but it is certainly Rousseau's "model," not Hobbes's or Locke's, that points forward to the quest in contemporary democratic theory for a legislative process involving procedural guarantees, whose observance the citizens may demand with the threat of withdrawing their obedience. In other words, Rousseau's conception foreshadows the constitutional emphasis in contemporary democratic theory. The problem of consent. As a corollary to the right of self-preservation, Hobbes, Locke, and Rousseau held that a man can be rightfully "bound" only by his own consent. All three encountered great difficulty in explaining why the contract to which the original contractors consent should be binding upon their descendants. Hobbes and Locke "papered over" this difficulty by asserting that the descendants give tacit consent by remaining within
SOCIAL CONTROL: The Concept the community and accepting its protection. Neither Hobbes nor Locke, viewed from the standpoint of contemporary democratic theory, made any serious attempt to carry the principle that a man can be bound only by his own consent over into the "model" of political society. Here, once again, Rousseau broke sharply with his predecessors and sought in two ways to legitimate the laws of his society by the continuing consents, individually given, of the citizens: first, by stipulating in the contract that each citizen shall be required, on coming of age, to opt for consenting to the existing institutions or for withdrawing from the society, and, second, by requiring that no citizen be formally excluded from the deliberations and votes that produce expressions of the "general will." In both these respects, Rousseau brought us very close to two of the major themes of contemporary democratic theory: the emphasis on political equality and the stress on active participation by the citizens in the political process as an indispensable condition for "government by consent." WILLMOORE KENDALL [See also the biographies of HOBBES; LOCKE; ROUSSEAU. Directly related are the entries DEMOCRACY; MAJORITY RULE; NATURAL LAW; NATURAL RIGHTS. Other relevant material may be found in POLITICAL THEORY.] BIBLIOGRAPHY ALLEN, JOHN W. (1928) 1957 A History of Political Thought in the Sixteenth Century. 3d ed. London: Methuen. BUCHANAN, GEORGE (1579) 1581 De iure regni apud Scotos: Dialogus. 3d ed. Edinburgh: Apud Johannem Rosseum. -» Available from University Microfilms. GIERKE, OTTO VON (1881) 1958 Political Theories of the Middle Age. Cambridge Univ. Press. -» First published as "Die publicistischen Lehren des Mittelalters," a section of Volume 3 of Gierke's Das deutsche Genossenschaftsrecht. Translated with a famous introduction by Frederic William Maitland. GIERKE, OTTO VON (1913) 1934 Natural Law and the Theory of Society: 1500 to 1800. Translated with an introduction by Ernest Barker. 2 vols. Cambridge Univ. Press. -» A translation of five subsections of Volume 4 of Das deutsche Genossenschaftsrecht. A paperback edition was published in 1957 by Beacon. GOUGH, JOHN W. (1936) 1957 The Social Contract: A Critical Study of Its Development. Oxford: Clarendon. HOBBES, THOMAS (1642) 1949 De cive: Or, The Citizen. Edited with an introduction by Sterling P. Lamprecht. New York: Appleton. -» First published in Latin. HOBBES, THOMAS (1650) 1928 The Elements of Law: Natural and Political. Edited by Ferdinand Tonnies. Cambridge Univ. Press. HOBBES, THOMAS (1651) 1950 Leviathan. With an introduction by A. D. Lindsay. New York: Button. HUME, DAVID (1741-1742) 1912 Essays Moral, Political and Literary. 2 vols. Edited by T. H. Green and
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T. H. Grose. New York and London: Longmans. -> First published as Essays Moral and Political and changed to this title in the 1758 edition. JOUVENEL, BERTRAND DE 1947 Essai sur la politique de Rousseau. Pages 15-132 in Jean Jacques Rousseau, Du contrat social. A critical edition. Geneva: Cheval Aile. KENDALL, WILLMOORE (1941) 1959 John Locke and the Doctrine of Majority-rule. Urbana: Univ. of Illinois Press. LOCKE, JOHN (1690) 1964 The Second Treatise of Government: An Essay Concerning the True Original, Extent, and End of Civil Government. Pages 283-446 in John Locke, Two Treatises of Government. Cambridge Univ. Press. McCoy, CHARLES N. R. 1963 The Modernized Theory of Natural Law and the Enlightenment. Pages 187221 in Charles N. R. McCoy, The Structure of Political Thought: A Study in the History of Political Ideas. New York: McGraw-Hill. MARIANA, JUAN (1599) 1948 The King and the Education of the King. Washington: Country Dollar Press. -> First published in Latin. ROUSSEAU, JEAN JACQUES (1762) 1962 The Social Contract. London: Dent; New York: Oxford Univ. Press. -> First published in French. SALAMONI, MARIO (1544) 1955 De principatu, libros septem nee non orationes ad priores Florentines. Recognovit Marius d'Addio. Rome, Universita, Istituto di Diritto Pubblico e di Dottrina dello Stato, Pubblicazioni, Series 4, No. 5. Milan (Italy): Giuffre. -> Salamoni is also known by his Latin name Marius Salmonius. STRAUSS, LEO (1953) 1959 Natural Right and History. Univ. of Chicago Press. STRAUSS, LEO; and CROPSEY, JOSEPH (editors) 1963 History of Political Philosophy. Chicago: Rand McNally. -> See especially pages 354-378, "Thomas Hobbes," by Laurence Berns; pages 413-432, "Benedict Spinoza," by Stanley Rosen; pages 433-468, "John Locke," by Robert Goldwin; pages 491-513, "David Hume," by Robert Hill; and pages 514-535, "Jean Jacques Rousseau," by Allan Bloom. TUSSMAN, JOSEPH 1960 Obligation and the Body Politic. New York: Oxford Univ. Press.
SOCIAL CONTROL i. THE CONCEPT ii. ORGANIZATIONAL ASPECTS
Jesse R. Pitts Amitai Etzioni
THE CONCEPT
Much of the impetus for the development and use of the concept of social control comes from the sociological adaptation of the Darwinian tradition. But there, however, the major dichotomy was between organism and nature; for the various theories of social control, it has been that between individual and society. It is assumed in these theories that society has to control the animal nature of man: if order is to be established and main-
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tained, man's tendency to pursue his self-interest to the point of a war of all against all must be limited through learning or selection, or both. Emergence of the concept of social control thus indicated a waning of the utilitarian concept of the natural harmony of self-interests. Although social control is essentially an American term, it has its functional equivalents in European sociology. Durkheim saw the conscience collective as constraining men, with a power directly proportional to the intensity of the interaction around its specific representations, to behave in certain ways regardless of their own selfish interests. Thus a major function of social institutions such as the family, marriage, and religious cults was to increase the constraining power of the conscience collective; institutions were essentially agencies of social control. Implicit in Durkheim's account of society was a concept of deviance as caused by "animal spirits": without social constraint men were prone to violence and to selfish calculations, as typified by suicide egoiste and economic anomie, or to the infinite pain of infinite desires inevitably frustrated, as typified by suicide anomique [see SUICIDE, article on SOCIAL ASPECTS]. In consequence, Durkheim advocated, as a means of social control over the anomie endemic to economic life, the development of professional organizations, in which intense interaction would result in the development of realistic codes of behavior and in their enforcement through constraint upon the conscience of each of the participants. In The Rules of Sociological Method, first published in 1895; Durkheim pointed to another source of deviance: "premature" compliance, like that of Socrates, with currents of the conscience collective that have not yet reached the common man. This is essentially a structural approach to deviance; in Merton's famous article (1938), this same approach issued in the concept of deviance as adjustment to the inner contradictions of a given social system rather than as an expression of untamed impulses. Here, however, the resulting concept of social control was not as well elaborated—that is, unless we are satisfied with a more or less explicit concept of social control that limits it to purposive, rational social change aimed at removing these inner contradictions. In fact, this has long been the approach of American sociology, especially in its early melioristic days. Ross, who is responsible for the popularity of the concept "social control" (it is the title of a book of his, published in 1901), described many of the themes that were to dominate American soci-
ology until the late 1930s. First, there was the concept of the "natural order" derived from the spontaneous meshing of men's personalities with their inherent capacities for sympathy and sociability, on the one hand, and from their sense of justice and capacity for resentment, on the other. Some of these capacities were seen as biological endowments, but the "sense of justice" was thought to be derived from the early development of self not only through interaction as such but also through the resultant internalization of the other, which results in a desire to behave toward others as one would want others to behave unto oneself. Baldwin (1895) was cited by Ross for an early version of a concept that has been attributed solely to Cooley—the "looking-glass self." "Natural order" is thus similar to the state of the primary group as described by Cooley (1909), a state that the Chicago sociologists of the 1920s and 1930s believed was disrupted by urbanization, immigration, breakdown of the small community into competing groups, decline in the efficacy of natural selection (which used to eliminate "moral idiots"), and deviant behavior on the part of men with backgrounds different from those of the original settlers. As examples of natural order Ross cited primitive societies and even such modern settings as the California mining camp, where he thought social and economic equality had reigned before the coming of "adventurers and broken men from all parts of the world" (1901, p. 43). As Martindale (1966) has noted, social control in Ross's work has many features of social contract, since Ross defined it "as concerned with that domination which is intended and which fulfills a function in the life of the society" (1901, p. 16). Yet when he described social control in action, he fell back upon all the forms of the Durkheimian conscience collective that constrain the individual: public opinion, law, belief systems, education, custom, religion, personal ideas (among others, the basic definitions of manhood or womanhood), ceremony, art, personality (i.e., charisma), values, creative elites. The dilemma of the social behaviorist (at least since the time of Lester Ward) is thus clear from Ross's work: on the one hand, there is a Puritan assertion of the importance of the individual, especially of the individual with the proper instincts, as contrasted with the "moral idiots or moral lunatics who can no more put themselves in the place of another than the beast can enter into the anguish of its prey" (ibid., p. 50). These individuals can and should create a moral rational order to replace the natural order rendered un-
SOCIAL CONTROL: The Concept viable by greater population density and heterogeneity. On the other hand, Ross maintained that purposive social action, to be effective, must take into account the nonrational elements of social living, which may have Darwinian rationality, if not humanitarian rationality, on their side. But it is never made very clear how we move from the unintended but functional constraint of custom, religion, etc., to an "intended" and even more functional form of social control. Thus, in Ross's discussions of social control we encounter either a description of the elements of social constraint— a field that is equal to the whole of sociology—or pious wishes for rational action, which do not make particularly interesting reading. W. I. Thomas, as would be expected from one who saw social structure as social definition of the situation, used the concept of social control extensively. He agreed with Ross that once society had moved away from primary group control, the problem was to develop rational controls. Thomas saw social control as emerging from the actions of a new type of man, schooled according to the theories of the philosopher John Dewey and therefore capable of creating new patterns as they were needed (see Thomas & Znaniecki 1918-1920; Thomas 1923). Park and his colleagues (1925) were also concerned over the shift from primary means of social control, such as the family, the neighborhood, and the community, to secondary means of social control, such as the police, the press, the political machine, and the courts. Park pointed out that intended control did not necessarily mean rational control, in terms of the utility of the total community. Drawing on another tradition, Mannheim (1935; 1950) again raised the question of social control through planning and contrasted it with classical liberalism, which could not secure controls over custom and the laws of the market. For him there was a sort of fixed quantum of social control: when some forms of control diminished, it meant that others were increasing, in accordance with what he called the "laws of transmutation." Since controls were unavoidable, the attempt to deny rational, conscious control meant surrendering to nonrational, unconscious controls or to interest-group manipulations. It is with Parsons (1951) and LaPiere (1954) that we see the concept of social control become systematically limited to the control of deviance. This approach to the concept eliminates from it the ordinary normative component consisting of social structure and, more specifically, the aspects of social structure that are concerned with socializa-
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tion. A still more narrow definition is that of Sociological Abstracts, which reserves the rubric of social control to penology and the sociology of correction problems. Parsons' concept of social control is particularly fruitful because it is a systematic attempt to derive consequences from a specific theory of deviance. First, deviance is defined by "its tendency to result either in change in the state of the interactive system, or in re-equilibration by counteracting forces, the latter being the mechanisms of social control. It is presumed . . . that such an equilibrium always implies integration of action with a system of normative patterns which are more or less institutionalized" (1951, p. 250). Leaving aside the problem of error as deviance, Parsons addresses himself to the genesis of deviant motivation, which, in his opinion, is not to be found in "animal spirits" but results from (1) the learning derived from past interaction, (2) specific personality factors, and (3) the pressures and opportunities of immediate interactional situations. When role expectations are frustrated, the motivation of the actor is likely to develop ambivalence. Ambivalence means that the motivation of the actor contains both conforming and alienated components that may be directed at the normative pattern and/or at the relation with the social object (alter). The ambivalence can be oriented to an alter who, as a past satisfactory source of role reciprocity, had become the focus of positive feelings but who now, as a frustrator, becomes a source of negative feelings. Or it can be oriented to the norm that heretofore regulated the relationship between ego and alter and that has been internalized by ego, especially if the norm is seen as responsible for the frustrated role demand. Ambivalence can result in three courses of action: first, the loss of any attachment to the object or the pattern (a movement from ambivalence to indifference); second, a compulsive expression of only one side of the ambivalence, compulsive because it must inhibit the unexpressed side; and third, the acting out of both the conforming and the alienated sides in contexts that are segregated in time and place. Although Parsons does not say so outright, one is led to the conclusion that the personality system will normally take the third course and try to discharge both components of its motivational states. If this is not possible, the result is more likely to be either compulsive conformity or compulsive alienation. And it is to these two last eventualities that Parsons addresses himself. Passivity-activity, compulsive
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conformity versus compulsive alienation, and orientation to patterns versus orientation to social objects are the three major dimensions explored in his analysis of deviant behavior. This analysis results in the following insights. First, what may on the surface appear to be a conforming disposition may be so shot through with repressed alienation that as a result it is rigid, characterized by attempts to dominate the situation without due regard to the needs of alter. As a result, it is likely to be either deviant or devianceprone. Second, since illness is a prototype of passive alienated behavior, it must be considered a pattern of deviance. Thus its incidence, form, duration, and so on, become susceptible to sociological analysis. [See ILLNESS; MEDICAL PERSONNEL, article on PHYSICIANS.] Turning to the situational aspects of deviance, Parsons mentions role conflict and value conflict. His insight here is that values, especially of the universalistic-achievement type, lend themselves to deviant orientation because they permit much leeway in interpretation. Thus we have deviant groups able to claim legitimacy as conforming to the "real" values of the society, and this in turn permits deviants to express both sides of their ambivalent motivation: conformity to their own group and its norms, together with alienation from the outside world and its norms. A good example of this is the radical Christian sect. Although Parsons seems to believe that the grouping together of deviants increases their danger to society, he sees an ultimate source of social control in their ambivalence and in the bridges that these Utopian or radical groups maintain to the main value pattern by claiming to be its real defenders. These bridges are the basis for the "selling out" that many members experience after a more or less protracted stay in the deviant organization. Related to the deviant group's search for legitimacy is the "secondary institution," such as the youth culture or organized gambling, which allows some deviance from the dominant value pattern and yet keeps the participants integrated with this pattern. It is the prototype of institutions that both permit some expressions of alienated feelings and bring the actors back to conformity. [See GAMBLING.] Such, too, is the function of bereavement rituals [see DEATH]. The secondary institution also insulates the deviant pattern and limits its impact on the rest of the social system. Insulation as a means of social control is to be contrasted with isolation, the latter aiming to forestall the grouping of deviants. An example of isolation is what
occurs in the treatment of physical illness, for instance, although the treatment of illness as a whole is an example of insulation. And it is precisely in relation to the description of illness as passive deviance that Parsons makes his major contribution to the theory of social control. Taking the psychotherapeutic model as the prototype of the social control response to illness, he sees this process as including the following steps: support, permissiveness, restriction of reciprocation, and, finally, esteem for resuming conformity (Parsons 1951, chapter 7; Parsons & Bales 1955, pp. 38-41). The relationship of this therapeutic model to the structure of social learning is clear. Social control, when it aims to alter the state of the actor's motivation (rather than merely introduce the situational component of reliable and harsh negative sanctions) will follow the psychotherapeutic paradigm, most often quite unconsciously, and this will happen both at the level of dyadic encounters and at the level of institutional patterns, such as the bereavement rituals mentioned above. The following analysis of social control stems from Parsons' insights, but it focuses more on the institutional aspects and less on the motivational aspects of the problem. Thus, its main concerns are the institutional patterns that attempt to head off deviance by (1) preventing the buildup of tensions that result in a desire to deviate; (2) reinforcing the desire to conform; (3) making clear what is socially appropriate; (4) discouraging deviation by reliable negative sanctions and rewarding conforming behavior; (5) modifying social patterns to accommodate as much as possible the deviating behavior of actors. Finally, a description is given of the "fringe organization" as one type of Parsons' secondary institutions, and it is shown that fringe organizations have functional aspects for society even when they seem to give deviants the power of coalition. Preventing the buildup of tensions Prevention of the desire to deviate is, of course, one of the major functions of socialization. What is relevant here is the existence of structural arrangements for draining off tensions that otherwise might trigger deviant behavior. The buildup of tensions in an individual, caused by the inability of role behavior to reduce psychological need dispositions, makes him vulnerable to regression, i.e., to behavior which is not value-oriented and which is incompatible with his normal age, sex, and status roles but which would reduce these tensions. Hence, institutional arrangements have to allow regressive behavior either in isolated situations or
SOCIAL CONTROL: The Concept in crowd situations where the behavior gains temporary legitimation through the collective aspects of the behavior, and yet the temporary character of the crowd clearly marks the irrelevance of the behavior for normal situations. This is preferable to the development of latent alienation in conforming behavior. Primary groups, of course, offer this relative isolation. In fact, role behavior within them requires a capacity to regress and/or to tolerate this capacity to regress in others. Parenthood and conjugal relations are examples of primary group behavior where a capacity to regress—identification with the child, for instance—is an important motivational facility. Family roles offer a most important sanctuary for much tension reduction and behavior that would not be tolerated in a public context. As a matter of fact, one of the most effective agencies of social control is the family, as indicated, for instance, by the finding that marriage is one of the action patterns that has the most positive rehabilitative significance for a young jail or penitentiary releasee (Glaser 1964). Other modes of releasing tensions are the various forms of entertainment and play through which catharsis of antisocial desires can be secured. The "party" is a sort of institutionalized crowd situation where consumption of alcohol testifies that behavior "under the influence" does not imply a lasting commitment of the self to the pattern being indulged in at that moment. Saturnalia such as the German Fasching, carnivals, Halloween, and office parties perform similar functions. It is interesting to note that the wilder parties are typical of the lower-class males, the young of all classes, and the more cosmopolitan of the middle and upper classes. In the lower classes and among the young the problem of role frustration is acute. In the upper classes the opportunities for regression with immunity are at once a mark of class membership and a class asset. The development of labor discipline in mass industry seems to have paralleled the development of mass entertainment, as if the tensions induced by the former could be endured only if the latter were available to provide release. Urbanism by itself creates many crowd situations where tension release can be secured. The development of the saloon offered an opportunity for adult peer grouping where a certain adolescent irresponsibility could be recaptured, and although it led a certain percentage of workers to alcoholism and family nonsupport, its over-all effects must have been to reduce working-class tensions. Entertainment, through art, literature, films, or
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television, has a social control impact that well illustrates the mechanisms described by Parsons in his psychotherapeutic paradigm. By showing the hero as subject to some foibles, the various art forms offer support and permissiveness. They allow the spectator to have a deviant fantasy without burdening him with isolative guilt. Art must follow canons of taste, and the audience has the duty to take a critical attitude toward the show. Accordingly, regression through entertainment is allowed only because entertainment finally sends the audience back to its cultural responsibility, and through this to its broader social responsibility (for one of the best accounts before Freud of art as social control, see Ross 1901). Participation in the family, in peer group roles, and in entertainment roles acts as a powerful agency of social control, not only through the surveillance and sanction systems present in the primary group but also through the opportunity afforded the individual to give vent to motivations that cannot be accommodated in secondary group roles. Hence, it is possible to say that all work and no play can make Jack a deviant boy. Religious services also act in this way, more obviously in the case of revivalist services. Such services not only reward conformity but also, through the function of the church as a "social placer," stress rewards for proper motivation, regardless of actual success. Thus church going decreases the sting of failure by stressing the secondary importance of success in this world. If it did not, failure in this world might impel the individual to give up his conforming motivation. In this context it would be interesting to compare the rates of deviance of the western European working class with those of the American working class. The former has had the benefit of the secular religion represented by revolutionary socialism, while the American working class is largely bereft of this "Catholicism of the poor." Socialism has removed the sting of failure from the urban proletarian condition. It has promised the workers special dignity in the socialist paradise if they keep on being deserving— which, in addition to joining political organizations, means rejecting a difficult, if not impossible, upward mobility and abstaining from the deviance seen as characteristic of that lower-class stratum which Marx called the Lumpenproletariat. Thus conformity for the socialist working man is not incompatible with dignity. The American working man, on the other hand, caught in a Puritan ethos of striving and with no sedative for the pains of failure, may well be prone to take the law into his own hands, i.e., strike out against the prevailing
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system through various forms of white-collar or blue-collar crime. A functional and partial equivalent of the Catholicism of the poor is the gambling complex (Bloch 1962; Parsons 1951), which redefines life chances in terms of the "break": thus, one's status in life is not one's own fault, since the same luck that puts you down may raise you up [see GAMBLING]. Reinforcing the desire to conform The reinforcement of the motivation to conform was one of Durkheim's major concerns. He saw social control (which he called social constraint) as derived from collective representations; its strength was directly related to the size of the group that shared those representations and to the intensity of the interaction between group members. All social institutions, according to Durkheim, had this function of heightening the strength of collective representations through increasing the rate of interaction. Ritual, on the other hand, increased the sameness of the shared representations at the same time that it grouped together masses of people (Durkheim 1912). It is not necessary to accept Durkheim's interpretation of the mechanisms whereby this heightening of the constraining power of collective representations takes place in order to accept the statement that ritual does act as a reinforcer of conforming motivation. It makes the actor feel part of an all-enveloping group that shares his attitudes and with which he can think of himself as standing in a primary-type relationship. The actor's good standing in such a group depends upon his continued commitment to the symbolic system evoked by the ritual. A rationally oriented society is certainly not free of ritual. One of the dimensions of mass entertainment is ritual. Rites of passage, such as commencement exercises, make clear to the individual that he has changed groups and that he must not regress to behavior which might have been proper for the group he has left but is not functional for the groups he has entered. Ritual operates as an embleme of membership. In modern society the commitment to the over-all community, a necessary but not a sufficient condition for commitment to its inner role structure, is stimulated by collective movements that demand the expression of conventional sentiments. These collective movements are triggered by dramatic events such as Lindbergh's flight to Paris, President Kennedy's funeral, or any dramatic event where common feelings are aroused in many people. Press, radio, and television are crucial to this
process. At such times the nation becomes palpable to the individual. How often these movements are necessary and what form they take deserve more research than has been forthcoming heretofore (see, however, Shils & Young 1953; Greenberg & Parker 1965). Finally, the extension of education has greatly reinforced popular commitment to the nation's values and norms. As modern society allows and demands ever-increasing initiative from the individual rather than binding him to traditional role expectations, the more imperative it becomes for society that individual commitment to values and norms should be thorough. In situations where role behavior is largely invisible and/or where the alter of the dyadic relation is unable to evaluate whether ego is really upholding his end of the bargain, a long educative process is as necessary for building value controls as it is for imparting technical skills. This is true of most professions. Such occupations as watch and television repair, in which role behavior is also invisible, do not get this expensive value training, with the result that deviance is much more extensive in these trades than in the professions. Clarifying the content of conformity Reinforcement of motivation is of little avail in forestalling deviance if there is ambiguity as to what is conformity and what is deviance. While there are always some areas of anomie in any complex society, an additional hazard is the pressure that the individual generates against the norms through developing idiosyncratic definitions of the situation—definitions that legitimate for him behavior that to others seems clearly deviant (Sykes & Matza 1957). Primary groups have the capacity, through their close contact with their members and the high rate of communication which prevails among them, to make very clear what is desired or what is prescribed behavior. By confronting the individual's incipient idiosyncratic definitions of the situation with its own definitions, the primary group brings the individual back into line. There are areas of behavior, however, where individuals can become quite isolated from all primary group influence without seeming to be. Marginal people are especially prone to this invisible isolation. Cressey (1953) has shown how the first-time embezzler is often a man who becomes socially isolated with respect to a financial problem because the very existence of the problem already involves deviance from status group norms. Around this "unshareable problem," as Cressey calls it, the individual devel-
SOCIAL CONTROL: The Concept ops a series of rationalizations ("I'll put it back Monday," "It is only a loan," etc.) that for him justify his dipping into the till. Without primary group confrontation, the individual is defenseless against definitions of the situation that eventually make him an embezzler. Cameron (1964) has shown that most of the shoplifting in stores seems to be done by "respectable" housewives who do not think of themselves as thieves until confronted by the procedure of arrest. The very low rate of recidivism among shoplifters seems to warrant the conclusion that here arrest and its trauma are able to break through the pattern of rationalization and force a shoplifter to cease and desist, on pain of accepting a redefinition of herself as a thief. Arrest and the "ride downtown" force a deviant to face a potential reidentification of himself as a thief, an addict, a masher, a "drunk," or, more generally, a "criminal." The degradation of the deviant is, of course, a way to make clear to the onlookers and to the deviant himself the negative quality of the behavior they have witnessed. For the middle class or the "respectable" working class the administration of justice, with the process of arrest, trial, and punishment, is one of the most effective means of making very clear what is not appropriate behavior. This is largely because of the horror and ignorance that the average middle-class citizen has of anything connected with the police, courts, and jails. For the experienced lower-class delinquent the vagaries and failings of the system, such as "plea copping," bargain justice, entrapment, etc., are all proofs that "square" norms are false and/or inconsistent. If anything, experience of the system provides support to underworld definitions of the situation. But for the middle-class person, horror of the apparatus of justice tends to lead, often enough, to such cautious behavior that the individual may even fail to exercise his rights to the fullest because of his desire to stay away, at all costs, from the machinery of justice. The upper-class deviant, usually well protected by his class power from detection or prosecution when committing crimes of the assaultive or sexual variety, is frequently engaged in testing how far he can go in such areas as income tax evasion, restraint of trade, lobbying, and patent infringement. The high executive, unless restrained by ideological considerations, is likely to be searching for the exact definitions of deviance through pushing his advantages until restrained by legal statutes firmly applied. The performance, or societal, aspect of his role is the production of maximum economic wealth at least expense, and his sanction is profit. As a result, he will seek to maximize sale value
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and minimize costs by innovation. Such innovation is a positive name for deviance. The entrepreneur operates in a situation where he promotes ambiguity and resolves this ambiguity through the rationale of profit. He relies on the state to uphold the broader societal interest by setting limits and defining the proscribed. [See CRIME, article on WHITE-COLLAR CRIME.]
Thus Durkheim's analysis of anomie in the economic field is not obsolete. In the Preface to the second edition of the Division of Labor he offers the corporation—an organization including both employers and employees—as a means of social control. What has actually occurred, in the United States at least, is the development of an executive community with certain general standards regarding the responsibility of the group toward the broader community. This has sometimes been referred to as the "professionalization" of business. Regardless of the merits of that concept (for which see Barber 1963), the increasing level of education of the entrepreneur is bound to make him more sensitive to societal considerations. The role of ideology. In areas of norm conflict, and where there have been changes in the hierarchy of norms, ideology often emerges as a clarifier of what is desirable. Ideology heightens the goal tensions of actors in situations that are relatively fluid because of change or conflict, or both. It promotes the "bending" of institutional arrangements so as to permit the implementation of the goals prescribed by the ideology. It orients choice, when choice is possible, and encourages dominance of the ideological goal over the institutional goal, rewarding the actor through the feeling of duty done, regardless of the possible consequences of action. As a result, ideology can secure commitment to action when the latter results in little or no positive reciprocation from the objects of that action, at least for a certain time. Besides its function as a norm setter in times of social change, ideology also operates as a Utopian norm setter that may actually stabilize institutional norms. Ideology may state the preferable rather than the expected. Since all norms are violated to a degree (quantitatively and qualitatively), setting the norms at a higher level than expected has a certain functionality in securing the necessary level of compliance, provided that the "deviant percentage" does not destroy the prestige of the ideal norm. In organizations where stress situations are frequent but unpredictable in their scope and incidence, such as the armed forces, police forces, and fire departments, the problem of maintaining com-
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pliance is solved by treating the conformist to the ideal norm as a "hero"—a positive deviant, but a deviant nevertheless. Thus the average member is relieved from the guilt of nonconformity, and there is little development of counteraggression against the ideal norm. Military peer groups may say "Never volunteer," but nevertheless enough soldiers do. The law as ideology. The law has been used, especially in the United States, as a promoter of various kinds of social changes. This is equivalent to treating the law essentially as a statement of ideology. At the present time the federal government of the United States is using law as an instrument for changing the social status of the Negro in the South and, to a lesser degree, in the North. Although Sumner's classic critique (1894) of the "absurd effort to make the world over" still holds true in general, there are nonetheless situations where law judiciously enforced can act as an agent of social change. To take the Negro civil rights issue as an example, it requires, first, the growth of ambivalence in Southern commitment to the caste system and a growing number of supporters for the federal position among the white population. Through judicious enforcement of the law the federal government can create situations in which the Southerners committed to the caste system find enforcing its norms too costly and therefore begin to look on surrender as honorable, because it is into the hands of impersonal but respected powers such as "the court" and "the law of the land." Every failure of the caste system to enforce its norms decreases the power of these norms; every success in enforcing the federal norms strengthens these norms. However, the federal norms, being supported only by a minority, require for their enforcement a reliance upon force that is expensive and partly self-defeating, because force clearly reveals how little support they enjoy from the local mores. The role of the law as a specifier of the proscribed is fully discussed elsewhere [see LAW]. One aspect of this role that deserves special mention here is the contradiction in which the legal process finds itself. In the trial the lawyer defends the law against such deviant tendencies of the state as its propensity to abuse its power in order to secure what it believes to be desirable community ends. The lawyer accomplishes this by forcing the state to follow the rules of evidence and the inherent logic of the legal codes. Through his success the majesty and sacred character of the law are reinforced, especially among the middle classes, who
can comprehend the logic of these procedures (though more often through the way in which they are represented by television and the movies than through any actual witnessing of them). On the other hand, it is a natural consequence of the legal process that a certain number of criminal deviants fail to be convicted and punished. Knowledge that this is so weakens the authority of the trial in the eyes of spectator and culprit alike. It increases the pressure for "police justice," or the informal disposition of cases by policemen on the spot. It also increases reliance upon the informal sanctions of the social class system. Acquittal in court comes to mean not innocence, but that the state was unable to prove guilt. Reinforcement of the sanction system Sanctions can be negative or positive, that is, they can punish deviance or reward conformity. Most of the rewarding of conformity takes place through the regular role meshing and role reciprocities of the social structure. It is in this sense that Durkheim is right: all aspects of social structure have a part to play in social control. Here, however, we are primarily concerned with sanctions as deterrents. The effectiveness of a sanction system in discouraging deviant behavior is, we may suppose, directly related to the strength of the sanctions and to their reliability. In fact, if we extrapolate the findings of Lazarsfeld and Thielens (1958) concerning college professors under the crosspressure of left-wing peer groups and right-wing Congressional investigating committees, we can add that the reliability gradient of sanctions may be more important than their severity gradient. For instance, the difference between the rates of stealing in rural and urban districts, other factors being held constant, can be partly explained by the comparative ease of hiding stolen property in the city because of the lower surveillance capacity of the collectivities in which the urban deviant spends his life. In the city, neither physical proximity nor constant visibility implies a primary group concern for or interest in alter. Thus, detection and negative sanctions are easier to escape in the city even while the symbolic potential of the mere possession of goods increases. There is little knowledge of the owner's roles outside of the property context, and specialized agencies such as the police cannot duplicate the ubiquitous surveillance of long-established neighbors with firsthand knowledge of each other's financial capacities. Hence, the higher the turnover of neighborhood membership, the greater the penetrability of primary groups
SOCIAL CONTROL: The Concept ( and the greater the ease of departure from them), and the weaker the negative sanctions against all forms of misappropriation of property. For instance, the Chicago racketeer can become a respected real estate operator on the West Coast. To cope with the problem of the invisible past in a mobile society, state and private organizations have developed their own system of investigation, in which the secret personal file has replaced fallible public reputation. Class discrimination is more effective the closer one comes to the upper-class status group because, at that level, numbers are comparatively small and contacts are maintained through a high rate of sociable interaction and entertainment. As a result, in such circles reputation is more effectively used as a mechanism of social control. For instance, arrest and imprisonment are not a serious disgrace to the lower-class deviant, since he shares in a contraculture, one of the functions of which is precisely to neutralize the impact of such public degradation or loss of self-esteem. But arrest and imprisonment are major catastrophes to a middle-class deviant or to anyone not defended by a delinquent contraculture or subculture. Thus class sanctions are among the most effective sanctions available for social control. They often act as agents of social control even among those whose self image is one of inured criminality; for instance, it is rare that criminal fathers will not attempt to raise their children to be "straight." Wives and children are the hostages of the class system, and many a criminal has retired from crime, many a conformist has remained a conformist, because of the fear that his family would suffer negative sanctions if his deviance should become known. The upper class exercises powerful control over the successful entrepreneur of lower-class origins who attempts to continue the self-seeking and deviant orientation that has been so profitable to him in the past. By forcing the upstart's family into a marginal position in which the children are led to judge their parents by standards that the parents cannot learn, the upper class fosters tensions that have literally destroyed many such families. Indeed, the effectiveness of this kind of class system as a sanctioner derives from the fact that it does not debate with the individual as to his guilt or innocence. Instead, it acts upon the basis of reputation and of its members' response to the actions of the individual in question. Since the individual grants legitimacy to the class he aspires to join, his anxiety, generated by the invisibility of his
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judges and by the uncertain incidence and magnitude of their sanctions, causes him to undergo anticipatory socialization and to overconform well before he receives the rewards of membership. [See REFERENCE GROUPS.] Social class sanctions do not require the promise of social mobility to be effective. In fact, a high rate of social mobility may reduce the screening capacity of status groups. In low mobility systems the upper social classes confer esteem on selected lower-class families for their outstanding conformity and thereby raise the latter's standing within their own status groups. A weaker class system, such as may exist in the Soviet Union, requires, for the functional equivalent of social class sanctions, the systematic surveillance of the citizen by the state through a large police force, much of it secret, assisted by the citizen militia, factory committees, wall newspapers, and the like. To be as effective as social class sanctions, this kind of surveillance, in its arrest and trial procedures as in all else, must be as one-sided as is the court of social class. Although social classes share certain broad judgments as to the severity of crimes, they do not agree on the evaluation of certain points of behavior. Each social class has its private culture as well as its private language. For instance, some upper-class groups tolerate extramarital sexual patterns that would be considered deviant by the classes beneath. One of the reasons for this upperclass tolerance is precisely the intolerance that prevails among the classes beneath them. Lower-class deviants are sometimes protected by upper-class persons merely in order to degrade the middle-class standards that these deviants have transgressed. Thus, any exacerbation of the class struggle weakens the efficacy of the class system as an agency of social control. Force as negative sanction. The main asset of primary groups and of the status system as agents of social control is that their sanctions are pervasive in their incidence and impact and that even the deviant is usually highly motivated to maintain group membership. Accordingly, the most drastic sanction at the disposal of these groups is ostracism, which can use force, although it does not usually do so. More often, legal use of force is the monopoly of the state. In any case, force always stands behind the penalties meted out by the apparatus of justice, even when these penalties are merely fines and damages. Force is, of course, the ultimate deterrent and a most powerful means of social control. It can prevent an individual—either
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directly, through incarceration or death, or indirectly, through threats—from doing something which the state forbids. In fact, force seems much more effective in prohibiting action than in promoting active conformity. As soon as role tasks take on any sort of complexity, they require a degree of cooperation on the part of the individual that force alone cannot secure. Force can only coerce the visible—the body and its movements— while cooperation, which involves the use of intelligence and good will, is invisible. It is difficult for force to secure cooperation in the sense just described unless the following two conditions are met: (1) members of the deviant's primary groups can be used as hostages, or the deviant can be blackmailed, explicitly or implicitly, through the possibility that he may be expelled from cherished reference groups; (2) the use of force reasserts the legitimate authority of him who uses it by certifying that he takes his responsibilities and convictions seriously. The deviant can also be compelled by force to participate in roles where force is not a major aspect of the interaction. Such roles may have, as will be seen from the discussion of prisons, a socializing influence. At one extreme is the "brainwashing," the effectiveness of which seems to have been exaggerated, which took place in the Chinese prisoner of war camps in Korea. At the other extreme is the therapeutic relationship which commitment to a mental hospital may permit. But once childhood is over, punitive justice is the only expression of force that most citizens of modernized societies are ever likely to experience. Force certainly has a bad reputation in intellectual circles, and it is true that punitive justice acts at least as much through the stigma carried by its penalties as through its incarceration or rehabilitation programs. By stigmatizing the deviant, punitive justice passes on to him the pervasive sanctions imposed by the primary groups and by the status system. For those who no longer wish to belong to the community of the righteous, these secondary sanctions are meaningless; in fact, to have served a prison term can, in the "negative status group" composed of fellow deviants, be a claim for prestige. But secondary sanctions act as powerful threats for those who conform primarily because they are afraid of downward mobility. The latter not only fear the sanctions of punitive justice but even come to look on avoidance of these sanctions as a reward for conformity. The more gruesome the imagination of what the deviant endures, the stronger the conformist's "relative appreciation" of his own fate. As a matter of fact, the imagination is often worse
than the reality, since those who feel but resist temptation usually stay as far as possible from the areas where they might develop a realistic knowledge of punitive justice. Those who insist most vehemently that the brand on the deviant should be deep and lasting are likely to be those for whom the tangible rewards of conformity are relatively few and for whom virtue must too often be its own reward. Frequently they are the ones who live closest, in terms of social distance, to the lower class, from which most blue-collar criminals issue. They are middleclass-oriented working-class, the "poor but honest," or lower-middle class freshly arrived from the working class. Thus stigmatizing the criminal reinforces and stabilizes their sometimes tenuous, imperfect, but often hard-earned superiority of status. Members of such lower-middle status groups, with the possible exception of primary and secondary school teachers, have not had enough education to permit them to handle ambiguity with any ease. For them the attempt to sympathize with the deviant does not imply the self-administered status reward implicit in the sophisticated forgiving attitudes that may prevail in status groups further removed from the lower class. More often they see in this attempt a degradation of their efforts to remain conforming and a denial of their social distance from the deviant. Thus, in these groups, punishment of the guilty is a reward for those who have remained innocent. The medicalization of deviance. The diffusion of Freudian thought since the 1920s has had a significant impact upon the distribution of stigma and the incidence of penal sanctions. First, it has been a force for redefining certain aspects of deviance as illness rather than crime. It is not that the act thus incriminated loses its deviant characteristics, but that the sanction considered suitable to it is no longer of the penal variety. Second, illness is no longer seen as a result of unfortunate or contingent factors, but as related to unconscious motivation. Deviants are no longer so guilty of their crimes, but neither are they so innocent of their illnesses, not only mental illnesses but physical illnesses and accidents as well. And since it is believed that there is an effective therapy for illnesses, whether mental or physical, the deviant who fails to place himself in the hands of the medical profession is guilty at least of enjoying "secondary gains" (Rieff 1959; 1966). It has been thought by some that the medicalization of deviance has resulted in weakening sanctions to a point where individual responsibility and conformity are endangered. There is no hard evi-
SOCIAL CONTROL: The Concept dence on these points. True, the upper classes meet with less tolerance for the vices traditional to their status. On the other hand, judges will often commit the rare middle- and upper-class culprits who come before their courts to a course in therapy rather than to a stay in jail (however, these deviants may well find therapy more painful than jail, even if the social repercussions are less drastic). Lower-class culprits, especially adolescents and young adults, are more likely to be committed to mental hospitals and to find that their sentence is indeterminate. As a result, they may stay in the hospital longer than they would have stayed in jail. Szasz (1963) and other writers have stressed the threat to civil liberties implicit in present commitment and sanity board decisions. No doubt medicalization has resulted in extending immunity from punishment to certain culprits. However, it would seem that medicalization is one of the most effective means of social control and that it is destined increasingly to become the main mode of formal social control. Its advantages are many. For instance, the medical and paramedical professions, especially in the United States, are probably more immune to corruption than are the judicial and parajudicial professions and relatively more immune to political pressure. This is partly due to the fact that the social distance between patient and therapist is greater than that between lawyer and client. Although the doctor has more power in his clinic than the judge has in his courts, the possibility that a patient may be exploited is somewhat minimized by therapeutic ideology, which creates an optimistic bias concerning the patient's fate. American psychiatrists are better trained for their role than American judges are for theirs. Hence, in the competition for administering formal sanctions it is possible that the medical professions will win out. Signs of such a victory would be the transfer of divorce cases to medical and paramedical boards, the end of juvenile courts, and the development of social psychiatry. The medicalization of deviance denies the deviant the possibility of value legitimacy: If the culprit pleads illness, he thereby certifies his commitment to the dominant values and institutionalized norms and implies that, when restored to health, he will conform. Meanwhile, he must deliver himself into the hands of the medical authorities and follow their instructions in order to regain mental health. Thus the medicalization of deviance results in the political castration of the deviant. However, medicalization does permit a less wasteful and more flexible handling of deviance.
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Except for "organized" crime, such as the provision of gambling opportunities, the drug traffic, and prostitution, it is probable that most "crimes" (that is, forms of deviance classically subjected to court action) are committed by ordinary citizens rather than by members of the underworld. The disadvantage of criminal prosecution is that it can secure reliability of expectations regarding the deviant only at the price of boxing him into a stereotype that he then finds almost impossible to escape. In a sense social order, for its own preservation, requires him to become a stereotyped criminal. But forms of deviance that cannot be continually subjected to court action—forms that might be called the criminality of everyday life—must be ignored by the institutions of foimal social control and left to the sanction of informal interaction and social class. The medicalization of deviance offers yet another possibility: social pressures on deviance can be increased without boxing the deviant into as rigid a category as "criminal." The strength of informal sanctions is declining because of the increase in geographical mobility and the decrease in the strength of the traditional status groups. Medicalization offers a substitute method of controlling deviance—a method that is being used increasingly by universities, large corporations, professional organizations, social work agencies, and even by trade unions to control their own members and clients. The increasing commitment of the general population to absolute values— a commitment due partly to increasing education —makes a therapeutic approach more practicable. But the growing complexity of the division of labor and the increase in the zones of autonomy that are possible in the new bureaucracies (Crozier 1963) make it more imperative that the decisions which are taken by employees should be "reasonable." It is the problem of the pilot with the atomic bomb. An even greater sector of the population works with similar responsibilities. Thus social control becomes more humane and forgiving, but perhaps also more relentless and pervasive. Although mental illness carries a stigma that may create resistance in the deviant to the role in which medicalization has cast him, it may also compel the referring authority to give the "new" patient a second chance, if the medical profession certifies him improved or cured. This can decrease the deviant's fear of being stereotyped and so reduce his resistance to treatment. Because the medicalization of deviance is imperfectly institutionalized, there are still problems in the handling of medical files, and past treatment may become an unnecessary bar to certain
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positions. These problems are likely to be worked out as institutionalization proceeds and as scientific knowledge of personality potential and effective role requirements becomes more widespread. The medicalization of deviance has so far provided greater flexibility of response to deviance, together with more effective detection. This is partly because those who support and implement the medicalization of deviance now oppose many of the existing institutionalized arrangements for social control. Indeed, problems of control have been created in institutions such as prisons, communities for juvenile delinquents, and mental hospitals by the frequent identification of the professional with the deviant and their joint hostility to the petty bourgeois-oriented custodial staff. The unconditional rewards the professional staff offers to the deviants in order to establish therapeutic dyads, and also in order to degrade implicitly the status of the custodians, demoralize the latter, who see deviants secure favors and commercium with upper status groups that are denied to them. Their response is to sabotage the therapeutic program and try to take back the favors. Modification of social patterns Social control is not exclusively concerned with trying to change deviant motives; it also operates by systematically isolating the deviant from the rest of society through the agency of such specialized organizations as hospitals, prisons, and police forces, or through that of certain relatively informal modes of organization capable of monopolizing much of the deviant's behavior and of limiting, as well as patterning, his relations with the outside world. Examples of such organizations are the doctor-patient dyad, the underworld, the delinquent gang, bohemian coteries of various kinds, and political and religious sects of such an extremist tinge that they are outside the mainstream of political and religious thought. Hospitals and prisons, whatever else they may be, are certainly not models of conformity. Rather, they resemble such classic forms of institutional deviance as gambling, prostitution, and drug addiction, which operate under the informal supervision of the police rather than in spite of them. A mental hospital, from this point of view, is a place where mental illness is allowed. Another major aspect of formal organizations specializing in social control is that they control the staff as well as the inmates. Frequently, as in mental hospitals and penitentiaries, the staff lives on or near the grounds and its contacts with the outside world are few. [See SOCIAL CONTROL, article on ORGANIZATIONAL ASPECTS.]
Most work with deviants implies a capacity to identify with them that is above the average level of human empathy, and certainly a capacity to overcome the average distaste aroused by the stereotype of the deviant. Often this capacity is based upon strong deviant tendencies within the staff member, as described by the folkloric statement concerning the police: "It takes one to find one." Similar remarks could be made regarding mental hospital staff (especially professional, but also nonprofessional), but no solid evidence has yet been collected in this area. However, since all occupational roles that succeed in securing a high level of personality commitment must operate to reduce the deviant potential of their incumbents, the statement that any agency of social control also controls its staff implies that the staff brings to the agency a greater propensity to deviance than is met with in the average breadwinner. Impressionistic evidence of this seems strong in the cases of vice squad detectives, psychiatrists, and personnel of organizations devoted to the rehabilitation of alcoholics. Research on this problem is urgently needed, but such research would create very serious problems of rapport and public relations for the sociologist. Nevertheless, it is useful, in order to understand the structure of these agencies, to think of them as organizations where dilemmas of administration and policy are resolved in terms of the staff's needs rather than the inmates', even though this is not intended. The reasons for this are threefold. First, roles specializing in social control deal by definition with people who are frequently recalcitrant to, and are not deemed competent to evaluate the worth and necessity of, the restraining and/or therapeutic efforts directed at them. Second, there is a tendency for the stigma that applies to the deviant to be extended to the organizations specializing in control of the deviant. As a result of both these circumstances, formal social control operates at a very low level of visibility. The receivers of control are deemed incompetent and inferior to their controllers. The rest of society is not very interested in what is done to them as long as physical isolation is successfully maintained, and the standards of middle-class pity are applied. Third, although physical isolation is comparatively easy to achieve because it depends upon the known capacities of the human body (and also because a good percentage of inmates have no real intention of leaving), both rehabilitation and therapy remain problematic because so little is known about either. In prisons, especially, the inmate peer group has closer contact and control over the individual inmates than the staff either can develop or wishes
SOCIAL CONTROL: The Concept to develop, and these peer groups will resist the attempts of the staff to reform the inmates. Thus the relation between the staff and the inmates is reminiscent of the relations between the police and organized crime. The staff's administrative and rehabilitative policies will follow a combination of ideological and self-gratificatory lines. Colleges and universities are not very different in this respect. The prison as socializer. Under the conditions described above, it is surprising that the recidivism rate of released prisoners oscillates between 30 and 40 per cent (Glaser 1964). True, some of this is accounted for by the ex-convict's better techniques for evading arrest, just as many of the patients who never return to the mental hospital have learned to be sick at home. And there is a certain percentage of prisoners (especially wife murderers and first-time embezzlers) who reject convict values and never intend to repeat their offenses (in American prison slang these prisoners are known as "square Johns"). Wheeler (1961) has shown that there seems to be a U-curve of conformity to social values on the part of the inmates who do not belong either to the class of "square Johns" or to that of "gorillas" (seasoned hoodlums). As the inmate nears release, he seems to make some attempt to reorient himself to the values of the outside world. As one would expect from Parsons' analysis of the ambivalence of deviant attitudes, a homogeneous and definitive deviant motivational structure is as rare as a homogeneous and definitive conforming motivational structure. Hence the desire and capacity of the convict to rejoin those who conform are greater than had been foreseen by the critics of the prison system. The major obstacle to rehabilitation seems to lie in the transition from prison to the outside world. The difficulties center in two areas: (1) the fantasies about civilian life that are elaborated in the prison concerning jobs, income, and women insure that the ex-convict will be disappointed with conforming roles, especially since he can rarely secure one of the more attractive jobs immediately upon release; (2) the loss of primary group support that is involved in quitting the underworld to join the conforming community leaves the ex-convict without support while he is trying to break through the public stereotypes—although there is impressionistic evidence that the rejection he anticipates may be more of a problem than the rejection he experiences. The new trend in rehabilitation seeks to cope with these problems by creating "halfway houses" that facilitate and guide the ex-convict's return to society and offer him the support of a peer group composed of people who are in the same situation and who are trying to succeed in it. This
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form of peer group support is lacking in traditional parole procedures. [See PENOLOGY.] The other way in which prison life may alter the motivation of the inmate, especially the young inmate, is to develop in him the personality attributes that are functional to the successful discharge of conforming roles. The ideals of the "right guy" (Sykes 1958) are those of self-control, self-reliance, avoidance of self-pity, not getting into trouble, and avoiding or minimizing involvement with homosexuality. For the young adults who make up the bulk of prison commitments, the capacity to internalize these attitudes would imply a capacity to resist delinquent peer group pressures and the impulses to aggressive acting out that often caused their incarceration in th3 first place. It is true that the result of modeling oneself after the "right guy" might be a deeper commitment to underworld values and—perhaps more important—to the underworld as a collectivity and to its role structure. But some of this commitment to underworld values might be, if one accepts Wheeler's U-curve theory, more conducive to adjustment than effective internalization would be. This is because commitment to the ideology of the convict group in the prison is more a flag of membership and a boundary maintainer against the authority structure than a real commitment to action on lines supported by this ideology. Accordingly, "prisonization" (that is, getting adjusted to the conditions of prison life) is not the equivalent of criminalization (Glaser 1964). For those who internalize both the underworld value system and the behavioral skills symbolized by the concept of the "right guy," the changes in personality structure may well result in a better adjustment to the outside world through a greater conformity to its basic rules of behavior. The fringe organization. An organization that promotes policies sharply at variance with the political, religious, or moral principles of the society, or that imply at least a drastic change in the hierarchy of social values, may properly be called a fringe organization. The concept is a development of Parsons' "secondary institution." The fringe organization claims a special relation to the dominant values even though, in fact, it deviates from the established norms and role expectations. It tends to attract deviants whose field of deviance may be quite remote from the overt goals of the organization. What the deviant finds in his membership is a re-evaluation of his personality. He can now reject the outside rejecters. His superego pains are lifted and transformed into anxiety to do well in his new group. [See SOCIAL MOVEMENTS.]
As the member achieves good standing in the
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fringe organization, he is granted esteem, and this consolidates his learning. However, the support and esteem that legitimate the member's ego in his own eyes also increase the legitimacy for him of those needs of his which are not integrated with the fringe organization's role structure. Soon the member learns dissent. He discovers the discrepancy between the group's Utopian values and its organizational limits. He comes to realize that the outgroupers are neither better nor worse than the in-groupers. His growing participation in activities involving out-group members (for the adolescent and young adult these activities are often love affairs) increases his resistance to the fringe organization's attempt to monopolize the whole of his life. Soon he is ready to leave the organization and rejoin the wider community. His experience in the fringe organization has served as a therapeutic experience that permitted him to work out preOedipal, Oedipal, or post-Oedipal problems that formerly made it difficult for him to assume his regular age, sex, and status roles. The fringe organization thus serves society as a resocialization agency. But its services must be publicly unrecognized if it is to remain effective. Harassment by the conforming world is an asset to the fringe organization, which therefore engages in activities capable of triggering sufficient harassment to warrant feelings of martyrdom and hostility but not sufficient to end in the destruction of the group. Hence, the group must plan its deviance as a combined effort. This makes its protest more effective but at the same time compels it to follow the norms of intergroup conflict that are proper to the society at large. Thus the fringe organization becomes in some ways more dangerous to society and in other ways more reasonable and more predictable than would be the many unpredictable role failures of its members if the latter were let loose upon the world as random individuals. Behind the screen that the police and public interpose between the fringe organization and the rest of society lies a deviant social system that might even represent an institutionalization of a higher level of value commitment, and so prove itself superior to the existing social system. For a society can be wrong in terms of its objective possibilities; the deviant may be right, and the better often begins as the enemy of the good. More often than not, however, the fringe organization will be merely a group that enrolls the emotionally handicapped under the flag of Utopia. Yet it may also be a group that, like the first Christian sect, may teach the world a way to live in society with less bloodshed, less violence, less contempt. By tolerating the
existence of the fringe organization, society leaves the way open for its own renewal. Social control, as a specific topic for sociology, seems to be less popular now than in the past, when it was closely related to a concept of the source of deviance as being essentially located in the individual. But as the source of deviance has come to be located in the contradictions of the social system, the idea of controlling deviant individuals has become somewhat repugnant, and social reform itself has begun to look more than a little naive to a sociology penetrated with the knowledge that deliberate change always has unanticipated consequences. Social control was once a concept which covered many areas that later became independent specialties—areas like penology, medical sociology, and the sociology of law. Even such large, amorphous areas as social change can be said to overlap with the area of social control. Hence there is now less interest in a topic which, if it is to be treated as something other than a summary of the various specialties, requires a level of theoretical generality that may seem beyond our present reach. However, it is possible that the concept has been neglected for two reasons which are rooted in the structural conditions of sociology as an intellectual enterprise. First, there is the fact that the study of social control would seem to require a combination of professional skills both in the sphere of individual psychology and in social system analysis. At any rate, such a combination will be necessary if we are to secure (1) a better understanding of the meaning of role participation for the economy of the personality (for instance, in the tensioninducing and tension-reducing role functions that may have a direct effect in promoting or decreasing deviant propensities); and (2) a better understanding of adult socialization patterns, so that we can ascertain the impact of social control agencies in fostering motivational changes that go beyond mere increased awareness of expediency [see SOCIALIZATION, article on ADULT SOCIALIZATION]. This would require, among other things, research into the life patterns not only of members of total and of fringe organizations but also of those who have left them, regardless of the costs of tracing them and of getting reliable indications of their conforming and nonconforming behavior. The second structural handicap to the development of a theory of social control is the fact that it is an area which is rent with ideological debate. In particular, there is a struggle for the leadership of social control agencies between therapy-oriented
SOCIAL CONTROL: The Concept professionals and supporters of the classical judicial apparatus. Sociologists have sentimental and economic ties with the first group, and this makes it harder for them to maintain scientific detachment. Some, who feel more acutely the possibilities of conflict between their status group allegiance and their allegiance to objectivity, try to resolve the problem by flight from the field. Others will no doubt struggle on and let the facts speak for themselves. JESSE R. PITTS [Directly related are the entries CRIME; CRIMINAL LAW; DEVIANT BEHAVIOR; INTERNMENT AND CUSTODY; LAW; NORMS; PENOLOGY; PUNISHMENT; SANCTIONS; SOCIETY; VALUES. Other relevant material may be found in CAPITAL PUNISHMENT; DELINQUENCY; DRUGS, article on DRUG ADDICTION: SOCIAL ASPECTS; GAMBLING; INCEST; LEGAL SYSTEMS; POLICE; PROSTITUTION; PSYCHIATRY, article on THE RELIGIOPSYCHIATRIC MOVEMENT; RlTUAL; SECTS AND CULTS;
SOCIAL MOVEMENTS; UTILITARIANISM; and in the biographies of BALDWIN; BENTHAM; COOLEY; DURKHEIM; FREUD; MALINOWSKI; MANNHEIM; PARK; ROSS; SUMNER; SUTHERLAND; THOMAS.] BIBLIOGRAPHY BALDWIN, JAMES M. (1895) 1906 Mental Development in the Child and the Race: Methods and Processes. 3d ed., rev. New York and London: Macmillan. BARBER, BERNARD 1963 Is American Business Becoming Professionalized? Analysis of a Social Ideology. Pages 121-145 in Edward A. Tiryakian (editor), Sociological Theory, Values, and Sociocultural Change: Essays in Honor of Pitirim A. Sorokin. New York: Free Press. BLOCK, HERBERT A. 1962 The Gambling Business: An American Paradox. Crime and Delinquency 8:355364. CAMERON, MARY OWEN 1964 The Booster and the Snitch: Department Store Shoplifting. New York: Free Press. COHEN, ALBERT K. 1966 Deviance and Control. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall. COOLEY, CHARLES H. (1909) 1956 Social Organization: A Study of the Larger Mind. In Charles H. Cooley, Two Major Works: Social Organization and Human Nature and the Social Order. Glencoe, 111.: Free Press. -> Each title reprinted with individual title page and pagination. Separate paperback editions were published in 1962 by Schocken. CRESSEY, DONALD R. 1953 Other People's Money: A Study in the Social Psychology of Embezzlement. Glencoe, 111.: Free Press. CROZIER, MICHEL (1963) 1964 The Bureaucratic Phenomenon. Univ. of Chicago Press. -> First published as Le phenomene bureaucratique. DURKHEIM, EMILE (1895) 1958 The Rules of Sociological Method. 8th ed. Edited by George E. G. Catlin. Glencoe, 111.: Free Press. -> First published as Les regies de la methode sociologique. DURKHEIM, EMILE (1912) 1954 The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life. London: Allen & Unwin; New York: Macmillan. -> First published as Les formes
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elementaires de la vie religieuse, le systeme totemique en Australie. A paperback edition was published in 1961 by Collier. GLASER, DANIEL 1964 The Effectiveness of a Prison and Parole System. Indianapolis, Ind.: Bobbs-Merrill. GREENBERG, BRADLEY S.; and PARKER, E. B. (editors) 1965 The Kennedy Assassination and the American Public: Social Communication in Crisis. Stanford Univ. Press. LAPIERE, RICHARD T. 1954 A Theory of Social Control. New York: McGraw-Hill. LAZARSFELD, PAUL F.; and THIELENS, WAGNER JR. 1958 The Academic Mind: Social Scientists in a Time of Crisis. A report of the Bureau of Applied Social Research, Columbia University. Glencoe, 111.: Free Press. MALINOWSKI, BRONISLAW (1929) 1962 The Sexual Life of Savages in North-western Melanesia: An Ethnographic Account of Courtship, Marriage, and Family Life Among the Natives of the Trobriand Islands, British New Guinea. New York: Harcourt. MANNHEIM, KARL (1935) 1940 Man and Society in an Age of Reconstruction: Studies in Modern Social Structure. New York: Harcourt. -» First published as Mensch und Gesellschaft im Zeitalter des Umbaus. MANNHEIM, KARL 1950 Freedom, Power, and Democratic Planning. New York: Oxford Univ. Press. -» Published posthumously. MARTINDALE, DON A. 1966 Institutions, Organizations, and Mass Society. Boston: Houghton Mifflin. MATZA, DAVID 1964 Delinquency and Drift. New York: Wiley. MERTON, ROBERT K. (1938) 1957 Social Structure and Anomie. Pages 131-160 in Robert K. Merton, Social Theory and Social Structure. Rev. & enl. ed. Glencoe, 111.: Free Press. -> First published in the American Sociological Review. PARK, ROBERT E.; BURGESS, ERNEST W.; and MCKENZIE, RODERICK D. 1925 The City. Univ. of Chicago Press. PARSONS, TALCOTT (1948) 1955 Illness and the Role of the Physician: A Sociological Perspective. Pages 609-617 in Clyde Kluchohn and Henry A. Murray (editors), Personality in Nature, Society, and Culture. 2d ed., rev. New York: Knopf. PARSONS, TALCOTT 1951 The Social System. Glencoe, 111.: Free Press. PARSONS, TALCOTT; and BALES, ROBERT F. 1955 Family, Socialization and Interaction Process. Glencoe, 111.: Free Press. PITTS, JESSE R. 1961 Introduction [to Part Three]. Pages 685-716 in Talcott Parsons et al. (editors), Theories of Society: Foundations of Modern Sociological Theory. New York: Free Press. -» See especially pages 701-716. RIEFF, PHILIP 1959 Freud: The Mind of the Moralist. New York: Viking. RIEFF, PHILIP 1966 The Triumph of the Therapeutic: Uses of Faith After Freud. New York: Harper. Ross, EDWARD A. (1901)1928 Social Control: A Survey of the Foundations of Order. New York and London: Macmillan. SHILS, EDWARD; and YOUNG, MICHAEL 1953 The Meaning of the Coronation. Sociological Review 1:63-81. SUMNER, WILLIAM GRAHAM (1894) 1911 The Absurd Effort to Make the World Over. Pages 195-210 in William Graham Sumner, War and Other Essays. New Haven: Yale Univ. Press.
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SYKES, GRESHAM M. 1958 The Society of Captives: A Study of a Maximum Security Prison. Princeton Univ. Press. SYKES, GRESHAM M.; and MATZA, DAVID 1957 Techniques of Neutralization: A Theory of Delinquency. American Sociological Review 22:664-670. SZASZ, THOMAS S. 1963 Law, Liberty and Psychiatry: An Inquiry Into the Social Uses of Mental Health Practices. New York: Macmillan. THOMAS, W. I. (1923) 1964 The Unadjusted Girl: With Cases and Standpoint for Behavior Analysis. Boston: Little. THOMAS, W. I.; and ZNANIECKI, FLORIAN (1918-1920) 1958 The Polish Peasant in Europe and America. 2d ed. 2 vols. New York: Dover. WHEELER, STANTON 1961 Socialization in Correctional Communities. American Sociological Review 26:697712. II ORGANIZATIONAL ASPECTS
All social units control their members, but the problem of control in organizations is especially acute. Organizations are social units which serve specific purposes. They review their own performances and restructure themselves. In this way they differ from natural social units such as the family, ethnic groups, or the community. The artificial structure of organizations and their concern with performance, as well as their tendency to be larger than natural units, make informal control insufficient and primary identification inadequate. Hence, organizations tend to require formally institutionalized allocation of rewards and penalties to enhance compliance with their norms, regulations, and orders. As a rule, organizations cannot rely on most of their participants to carry out assignments voluntarily. The participants need to be controlled. For organizational means to fulfill their control function they have to be allocated differentially, so that performances desired by organizational norms will be rewarded while undesired performances will be punished. The allocation of means by the organization independently of performances, such as rewarding people for being white rather than Negro or male rather than female, does not directly enhance organizational control. Allocation according to such irrelevant criteria is more common in the less developed countries and is one of the reasons for the low effectiveness of organizational control in these countries. The means of control used by an organization can be exhaustively classified into three analytic categories: physical, material, and symbolic. The use of a whip or a lock is physical in the sense that it affects the body; the threat to use physical means is viewed as physical because the effect on the subject is similar to that of the actual use. The
application of physical means for control purposes is here referred to as coercive power. Material rewards consist of goods and services; the granting of symbols (for instance, money) that allow one to acquire goods and services is classified as material because the effect on the recipient is similar to that of material means. The use of material means for control purposes is here referred to as utilitarian power. Symbols the use of which does not constitute a physical threat or a claim on material rewards should be viewed as pure symbols. These include normative symbols such as those of prestige and esteem and normative social symbols such as those of love and acceptance. (When physical contact is used to symbolize love or material objects to symbolize prestige, such symbols are viewed as normative because their effect on the recipient is similar to that of pure symbols.) The use of symbols for control purposes is here referred to as normative or normative—social power. Normative power is exercised by those in higher ranks to control the lower ranks directly; normative-social power is more commonly used indirectly—for instance, when the higher in rank use an individual's peer group to control him, as a teacher might do in a classroom. The use of various classes of means for control purposes—power, in short—has different consequences in terms of the nature of the discipline elicited. All other things being equal, the use of coercive power, in most cultures at least, is more alienating to those subject to it than is the use of utilitarian power, and the use of utilitarian power is more alienating than the use of normative power. Or, to put it the other way around, normative power tends to generate more commitment than utilitarian power, and utilitarian power more commitment than coercive power. The application of symbolic means of control tends to persuade people, that of material means tends to build up their self-oriented interest in conforming, and that of physical means forces them to comply. Most organizations most of the time use more than one kind of power. The kinds of power used vary according to the ranks of the participants to be controlled. Organizations tend to apply the less alienating means of control to their higher participants. Coercive power is as a rule applied only to lower participants: inmates are locked up if they try to escape. Higher participants are more often rewarded materially in order to increase their performances. It is therefore essential, for sociological purposes, to compare participants of the same rank in different kinds of organizations or of different ranks within the same organization. Otherwise one
SOCIAL CONTROL: Organizational Aspects may not be able to tell if the findings differ because of differences in rank or in the nature of the organizations or both. Three types of organizational control Comparison of the controls applied to the lower ranks of different organizations yields a fruitful way of classifying organizations because differences in type of control on this level are associated with many other kinds of differences. Control may be predominantly coercive, utilitarian, or normative. Among organizations in which the same level of power predominates there are still differences in the degree to which this power is applied. Ordering organizations from high to low according to the degree to which coercion is predominant, we find that the most coercive are concentration camps, prisons, traditional correctional institutions, custodial mental hospitals, and prisoner-ofwar camps. Ordering organizations from high to low according to the degree to which utilitarian power is predominant, we find that the list is headed by blue-collar organizations such as factories, white-collar organizations such as insurance companies, banks, and the civil service, and military organizations, at any rate in peacetime. Normative power is predominant in the following kinds of organizations: religious and ideological-political organizations, colleges and universities, voluntary associations, schools, and therapeutic mental hospitals. Not all organizations are dominated by a single type of control. Labor unions, for instance, fall into each of the three analytic categories: there are labor unions (those bordering on "underworld" organizations) that rely heavily on coercive power to control the lower participants; there are business unions, in which control is largely built on the ability of the representatives to "deliver the goods" (that is, to secure wage increases and other material improvements); there are normative unions, in which control is based upon manipulation of ideological symbols, such as the slogans of socialist ideology; and there are normative-social unions, in which the community of workers is recruited to exercise informal pressures on members to follow the norms and orders of the organization. More complicated combinations need not be discussed here (for further discussion, see Etzioni 1961, chapter 3). Among the many factors that affect the kinds of power an organization uses to control its participants, the organizational environment looms large. To use coercion, an organization needs social license. The state is usually jealous of its own coercive power and reluctant to delegate it. Moreover,
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such license, when granted, usually sets a ceiling on the amount of coercion to be used (mental hospitals can lock patients up, but not whip them) and specifies the conditions under which coercion can be exercised (the prison cannot hang trouble makers). Utilitarian controls are affected by the market position of an organization and by the general state of the market. Thus, a factory in a weak economic position may find it more difficult to raise wages than one that is strong. Periods of economic depression and inflation also affect the ability of such an organization to use utilitarian power. The environmental conditions affecting an organization's normative power are less clear. The presence or absence of competitive organizations seems to be important here; thus, the normative power of a church is higher in countries in which it represents the sole authorized religion than in countries where it must compete with other religious organizations and with secular ideologies. The response of the participants to a particular use of power or combination of powers is only partially determined by the kind or kinds of powers used. Other factors affecting the participants' response include their social and cultural backgrounds and their personalities. For instance, a foreman slapping a worker—an exercise of coercive power—would elicit a more alienated response among lower middle-class persons than among persons of the very lowest class, in contemporary America rather than in the America of two generations ago, in Britain rather than in Ghana, and in an aggressive rather than a submissive person. However, when all these factors are held constant, the more normative the means of control used the less alienating is the exercise of power, and the more coercive the means of control the more alienating the use of power. Utilitarian power rarely elicits as alienating a response as coercive power, but it rarely generates as much commitment as normative power. To state it more concretely, people in a factory rarely feel as alienated as those in a prison or as committed as those in a church. A central finding of the comparative analysis of organizations is that organizations which differ in the kinds of power they apply and in the amount of alienation or commitment they generate differ also, in many significant respects, in their organizational structure. We turn now to illustrate these structural differences. Leadership and organizational control The means used by an organization to control performances derive either from allocation to specific positions (such as a department head) or
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from particular individuals (such as one with persuasive skills) or from a combination of both (such as a persuasive department head). An individual whose power is chiefly derived from his position is an official; if it is personal he is referred to as an informal leader. One who commands both positional and personal power is a formal leader [see LEADERSHIP]. A person who is a leader in one field is not necessarily a leader in another; the football captain is not necessarily the best student. Two main spheres of activity that an organization might wish to control are distinguished here: the instrumental and the expressive. Instrumental activities deal with the input of means into the organization and their distribution within it. Expressive activities affect social relations within the organization and the establishment of norms by organizational participants. Coercive organizations. In organizations that tend to use coercion extensively and whose lower participants tend therefore to be alienated (traditional prisons are an example), control over performances for and within the organization tends to be shared between the officials and the informal leaders. That is, the powers of the guards and the warden derive mainly from their positions and are largely independent of their ability to influence the inmates. On the other hand, much of the power to control the inmates is in the hands of influential inmate leaders who hold no organizational positions and are hence informal leaders. While wardens, and to some degree guards, have some personal influence over inmates, such influence as a rule is minor; in this sense there is no formal leadership in prisons. The ability of the organization to control the inmates depends largely on the amount of power the prison commands (for example, on how many guards there are) and on the relations between prison officials and informal inmate leaders. Expressive activities in a typical prison are controlled almost exclusively by inmate leaders, who set and reinforce the norms. These leaders determine, for instance, if and when it is proper to speak to a guard, and they rank crimes in order of relative prestige. Similarly, social relations are almost solely determined by the inmates and their leaders; "stool pigeons" and guards who do not accept the inmate norms tend to be isolated. Prison officials have little control over these norms and relations. This is one of the reasons why rehabilitation efforts and psychiatric work are so unsuccessful in typical prisons as long as the coercive structure is not changed. Instrumental activities in the prison, especially
the allocation of food and work, are more subject to control by the organization and its officials, but even in this realm inmate leaders have a great deal of power. Certain types of food and other scarce items (such as cigarettes) that are allocated by the prison, tend to be reallocated by the inmates so as to reward those high on the inmate normative scale and status structure and to penalize those who are low on these dimensions. The allocation of work in the prison is similarly affected by pressures exerted on the officials by the inmates, who want to be rewarded for their cooperation. Further, the inmates' control of instrumental activities extends to the production of illicit goods and to the planning and execution of escape attempts. The officials' main weapon of instrumental control, on the other hand, is primarily ecological: it involves keeping the inmates in the prison and assigning them to various sections and cells. Other organizations that rely heavily on coercive control have leadership structures similar to the prison's. However, the less coercion such an organization uses, the more control of the inmates it achieves and the greater the probability that some formal leadership will develop, at least in instrumental matters. Normative organizations. In organizations that rely predominantly on normative controls there tend to be few officials and few informal leaders; as a rule, formal leaders control organizational participants. To the degree that informal leaders arise (within a parish, for instance) the tendency is either to recruit them outright or to co-opt them by giving them part-time organizational positions. Or the informal leaders may break away to form their own organization. In any case, the tendency is for the informal leaders to lose their leadership positions within the given organization and for the balance of power to remain in the hands of the formal leaders. Control is dependent upon personal qualities much more in normative than in coercive organizations. Hence, through various selection and socialization processes (discussed below), efforts are made in normative organizations to staff the main organizational positions, from which control is directed, with individuals who combine positional normative power (for example, the status of priest) with the personal power to become formal leaders. Individuals lacking in personal power are often transferred to organizational positions, such as clerical or intellectual work, from which no control is exercised. Such an effort by normative organizations to provide formal leadership makes the evolution of informal leaders less likely. Formal leaders in normative organizations are
SOCIAL CONTROL: Organizational Aspects much more successful in exercising both instrumental and expressive control than they are in coercive organizations, although they are more concerned with controlling expressive activities. Some religious organizations provide offices for both kinds of leadership. Thus, expressive matters tend to be the main functions of the major line of priests and bishops and instrumental activities the main functions of secondary positions such as deacons or local church boards. In other religious organizations, control of instrumental activities is left largely to the laity while the formal leadership endeavors to maintain a monopoly of control over expressive matters, such as which prayers are to be recited at what time, how strict the priest is to be in demanding adherence to the norms advocated by his church, and so on. Complete separation of the control of both types of activities is impossible, since instrumental matters, such as financing, affect expressive ones, such as the quality of Sunday or parochial schools. Therefore, in those religious organizations in which instrumental activities are not controlled by officials or formal leaders, the tendency is for the organization to insist on the superiority of expressive matters and hence of expressive (organizational) leadership over instrumental (informal) leadership. Utilitarian organizations. The control structures of organizations that are less normative than those discussed above tend to approximate the utilitarian type. Control in utilitarian organizations is more evenly divided among organizational officials, formal leaders, and the informal leaders of lower participants. Moreover, the main concern of these organizations is with instrumental control over such matters as production and efficiency and not with the control of relations and norms established by the workers—at least so long as these relations and norms do not affect the instrumental activities. The particular leadership pattern that evolves depends largely on how relatively alienated or committed the workers are. In industries where the workers are more alienated, their informal leaders, whether "old hands" or union stewards, tend to control most of the expressive activities and a number of instrumental ones as well. In such factories the foreman and other higher-ranking officials are excluded, regardless of their own wishes, from social relations with the workers, and the workers set the norms that determine what is considered a proper day's work, if and when it is proper to speak to a foreman, and so on. However, the factory usually determines at least what work is to be done and some of the specifications as to how it is to be carried out. Thus, the workers informally provide the expressive leaders and some
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of the instrumental ones, but the factory exerts some formal leadership in instrumental matters. In factories where the workers are less alienated and in white-collar organizations the formal leadership exerts considerably more control, especially over instrumental activities. The type and amount of work carried out is largely determined by organizational representatives. Moreover, some of the expressive control (though rarely much of it) is acquired by those in organizational power positions, The norms followed by lower participants are much closer to those of the higher ranks. Social relations are not as sharply segregated. It is in factories like these and in other utilitarian organizations that organizational efforts to control expressive activities through such mechanisms as personnel departments, social workers, and the participation of lower ranks in decision making are effective. The same techniques are often less effective, from an organizational viewpoint, in organizations where the participants are more alienated. Control, selection, and socialization If organizations could recruit individuals who would automatically perform as required, or could educate their participants so that they would perform adequately without supervision, then there would be no need for organizational control. While this is never the case, there are large differences in the amount of control needed in organizations because of differences in the provisions they make for selection and socialization. The role of selection should be especially emphasized because the liberal-humanist tradition, which prevails in the social sciences, tends to underplay its importance and to stress that of socialization. Actually, various studies indicate that a small increase in the selectivity of an organization often results in a disproportionately large decrease in the investments required for control (Scudder 1954, pp. 80-82; Clark 1959, p. 1). One reason is that in most organizations a high percentage of the deviant acts are committed by a small percentage of the participants; hence, if these are screened out, control needs decline sharply. It is even more obvious that if those least able to perform were not admitted, the average performance score would increase markedly. The degree to which an organization selects its participants affects its control needs in terms of the amount of resources and effort that it must invest to maintain the level of control that it considers adequate. This relationship between selectivity and amount of control varies in the three types of organizations that have been distinguished here. Coercive organizations are the least selective,
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accepting practically everyone sent by such external agencies as the courts and the police. (Note, however, that when efforts are made to reduce coercion and to increase the use of other means of control, as when a rehabilitation program is tried in a prison or a therapy program is launched in a custodial mental hospital, one of the first steps taken is to reselect the lower participants and to increase the selectivity applied to prospective ones.) By contrast, utilitarian organizations are highly selective. They tend to employ formal mechanisms to make recruitment of participants as effective as possible. These include examinations, psychological tests, probation periods, and the like. All other things being equal, the higher the rank of the participant, the more carefully he is recruited and the less he is controlled once selected. Finally, normative organizations vary considerably in their degree of selectivity. Some are extremely selective—most religious sects, for instance. Other religious organizations are highly unselective— those that almost automatically accept the offspring of their members. The Communist party of the Soviet Union is highly selective; most democratic political parties in the West are highly unselective. Private schools are much more selective than public schools. Comparison of these normative organizations shows that the more selective ones are more effective in the area of control (Etzioni 1961, pp. 156-160). Selection helps to insure that those entering the organization possess some qualities and lack others; organizational socialization adapts these qualities in order to bring them closer to those required for effective performance of organizational roles. As Simon (1947) points out, the more effective the socialization, the less the need for control. On the other hand, socialization is itself affected by the means of control used, since some means create a type of relationship between higher and lower ranks that is more conducive to effective socialization than other types. The efforts of coercive organizations at socialization are usually frustrated, as can be seen from the limited success of therapeutic or rehabilitation programs for lower participants. Organizations that rely heavily on normative power are among the more successful in terms of socialization achievements. Modern schools are a prime example. Utilitarian organizations tend to delegate socialization to other organizations such as vocational schools and universities and to replace socialization by selection of carefully socialized persons. This brings up the important point that socialization and selection can partially substitute for each other: the same level of
control can be maintained by means of high selectivity and a low level of organizational socialization or by means of low selectivity and a high level of organizational socialization. The amount of control needed is, of course, lower when selectivity and socialization are both high. Control, pervasiveness, and scope Means of control are used in all organizations to enforce the norms that set the standards of performance. But organizations differ markedly in the pervasiveness of the norms they attempt to set and to enforce. Some organizations—prisons, for instance—have a limited pervasiveness: they attempt to control only some of the activities carried out in the organization. Actually, the prison is more pervaded than pervasive, since many of the norms affecting prison behavior have been set and are enforced by other social units, such as the communities from which the inmates come. Other organizations attempt to control most of the activities that take place within them but few of those carried on outside. Graduate schools are a case in point. Other organizations, particularly churches, attempt to set and enforce norms mainly for activities that are carried on when the participants are not on the premises of the organization and that are not directly visible to the organizations' enforcing agents. In general, the more pervasive an organization is, the greater the investment it needs to maintain a given level of control. Moreover, highly pervasive organizations almost inevitably have to rely mainly on normative control, since unless the participants internalize the norms that the organization wants enforced, they cannot be controlled by the organization. From the organization's point of view, such internalization is best achieved by normative means. However, norms with low pervasiveness can be enforced by any of the three kinds of means or by any combination thereof. A variable that is substantively related to but analytically distinct from pervasiveness is organizational scope, which is determined by the number of activities carried out jointly by the same set of organizational participants. In organizations with narrow scope, participants share only one or a few activities, for example, social activities. Organizations with broad scope are those in which participants share several activities, as labor unions, for example, carry out social and cultural activities in addition to collective bargaining. "Total organizations" are those in which maximum scope is attained, as it is in convents or kibbutzim (Goffman 1958). There is no one-to-one relationship between
SOCIAL CONTROL: Organizational Aspects scope and pervasiveness: an organization might set norms for more activities than are carried out jointly by participants, as a church does, or it might set norms for fewer activities than the joint ones, as a prison does. High scope enhances normative control, is a necessary condition of coercive control, and seems to affect utilitarian control negatively. High scope enhances normative control because it separates the participants from social groups other than the organization and thus tends to increase the participants' commitment to the organization. Comparison of commuter with residential colleges illustrates this point. In commuter colleges, some of the educational effects are not attained and others are countered, because the students' involvement in the college as a social unit is limited and because they have significant and active social ties with groups that support different norms. All other things being equal, residential colleges can achieve considerably greater educational effects than commuter colleges with the same investment in normative control. (Education is here considered in its broadest sense and therefore includes character development as well as communication of skills and information.) In the past, utilitarian organizations often attempted to maintain a broad scope, as in the classic type of company town. More recently, some organizations have made efforts to provide workers with educational, recreational, and residential facilities. Since the early 1950s, however, the tendency has been for corporations to reduce their scope in these areas without loss (and probably with some gain) in the effectiveness of their control structures (Scott & Lynton 1952, pp. 60, 77-78). This trend has reflected the situation of citizens in modern societies, who are socialized to shift constantly between various social units, such as the family, the community, and the work unit. The relatively high separation and low scope of all these units allow for the operation of the typically modern mode of tension management whereby tensions generated in one unit are released in another. This is achieved by changing one's role partners, thus "localizing" rather than "totalizing" interpersonal conflicts, and by continually exchanging one mode of interaction for another—for instance, a social unit in which rational, efficient behavior is demanded may be alternated with one in which nonrational behavior is the norm. High scope utilitarian organizations, which fuse work and nonwork units, prevent both the localization of conflict and the shift to units relatively free of rational considerations. Hence, from a utilitarian point of view, they are likely to
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be less effective [see ORGANIZATIONS, article on EFFECTIVENESS AND PLANNING OF CHANGE].
Coercive organizations, however, must maintain total scope because unless the participants carried out all their activities within the organization they would not voluntarily carry out those activities the organization wishes to control. Moreover, the depriving character of total scope, of separating the inmates from all nonorganizational units, is used as a major means of control, as when a prisoner who has violated the prison's rules loses the chance of being paroled. Attempts to reduce the use of coercion and to rely more on normative power, as when rehabilitation programs are introduced, are frequently associated with efforts to reduce scope by allowing more visits from outsiders, initiating programs of work outside the prison, and so on. Control and vertical communication Authorities in the field of organizational studies differ largely in the significance they attach to upward and downward communication in the rank structure of an organization and to participation by its lower ranks in decision making. The human relations school, represented by Elton Mayo, Kurt Lewin, William F. Whyte, E. W. Bakke, and Chris Argyris, has tended to stress the importance of communication and participation. For instance, a study of efforts to convince mothers to drink orange juice showed that group discussion and group decision were even more effective than public lecturing or individual consultation (Lewin 1947). Another study showed that permitting workers to participate in factory reorganization proved much more effective than ordering them to make adjustments without consulting them or explaining the reasons for the changes (Coch & French 1948). On the basis of these and similar findings, a whole philosophy of control supported by general humanist, liberal-democratic values has developed. However, several sociologists have questioned the moral and analytical validity of this approach (Bendix 1956; Kornhauser 1953). The human relations approach has been characterized as manipulative insofar as it teaches management how to be more effective in getting workers to accede to its desires. Further, democracy in private governments has been viewed as misplaced or unnecessary. Differences in the economic interests of workers and management, the role of the labor union, ideological factors, power considerations—all, it has been alleged, have been neglected by the human relations school. The tendency in the past few years has been to view the two approaches as complementary, not
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so much on the moral as on the sociological level. Clearly, communication and participation affect the process of interaction among and within ranks. Still, many factors, especially structural and cultural ones, must also be taken into account (Etzioni 1961). One can study the structural and cultural conditions under which communication and participation are effective, as well as the effects of communication and participation on structural factors. For instance, vertical communication seems to be more controlling in its effects in normative rather than in utilitarian organizations and in utilitarian rather than in coercive ones, although it enhances control in all three. There are many other variables that affect organizational control; those discussed have been the ones most frequently studied. Much additional research is required to explore the relationships among the kinds of control employed, the distribution of power between persons and positions and between formal and informal leaders, and the conditions under which the organization controls both instrumental and expressive activities or only one set or only part of one set. However, there seems to be little doubt that these variables are closely and systematically related. There are also two sets of factors which surely affect organizational control and about which there is little systematic information. One factor is differences in cultural and societal contexts. Most of the information available centers on organizations in Western societies. The need to study organizations in other cultures, especially in less developed and nondemocratic societies, remains one of the major tasks of social scientists. The second factor is that we know much more about control of lower-ranking participants than of higher-ranking ones, and clearly the control of the higher ranks is at least as important. AMITAI ETZIONI [Directly related are the entries INDUSTRIAL RELATIONS; LEADERSHIP; ORGANIZATIONS. Other relevant material may be found in CHARISMA; DEVIANT BEHAVIOR; LABOR UNIONS; MEDICAL PERSONNEL, article on PHYSICIANS;
MENTAL DISORDERS, TREATMENT
OF,
article on THE THERAPEUTIC COMMUNITY; MILITARY; PENOLOGY; RELIGIOUS ORGANIZATION; WORKERS.] BIBLIOGRAPHY BENDIX, REINHARD 1956 Work and Authority in Industry: Ideologies of Management in the Course of Industrialization. New York: Wiley. -» A paperback edition was published in 1963 by Harper. CLARK, BURTON R. 1959 The Influence of Organization Image on Student Selection. Paper presented to the Conference on Selection and Educational Differentiation, Berkeley, California. Unpublished manuscript.
COCH, LESTER; and FRENCH, JOHN R. P. JR. 1948 Overcoming Resistance to Change. Human Relations 1: 512-532. ETZIONI, AMITAI 1961 A Comparative Analysis of Complex Organizations: On Power, Involvement, and Their Correlates. New York: Free Press. GOFFMAN, ERVING 1958 The Characteristics of Total Institutions. Pages 43-84 in Symposium on Preventive and Social Psychiatry. Washington: Government Printing Office. -> Symposium held at the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research in 1957. KORNHAUSER, RUTH 1953 The Warner Approach to Social Stratification. Pages 224-255 in Reinhard Bendix and Seymour M, Lipset (editors), Class, Status and Power: A Reader in Social Stratification. Glencoe, 111.: Free Press. LEWIN, KURT (1947) 1958 Group Decision and Social Change. Pages 197-211 in Society for the Psychological Study of Social Issues, Readings in Social Psychology. 3d ed. New York: Holt. SCOTT, J. F.; and LYNTON, R. P. 1952 The Community Factor in Modern Technology. Paris: UNESCO. SCUDDER, KENYON J. 1954 The Open Institution. American Academy of Political and Social Science, Annals 293:80-87. SIMON, HERBERT A. (1947) 1961 Administrative Behavior: A Study of Decision-making Processes in Administrative Organization. 2d ed. New York: Macmillan. H> A paperback edition was published in 1965 by the Free Press.
SOCIAL DARWINISM Social Darwinism was a short-lived theory of social evolution, vigorously discussed in America, which rationalized and justified the harsh facts of social stratification in an attempt to reconcile them with the prevalent ideology of equalitarianism. The emergence of social Darwinism was perhaps the most visible effect on the social sciences of Charles Darwin's On the Origin of Species (1859). The influential social Darwinists of their age whose names are still to be reckoned with are Herbert Spencer, 1820-1903, and, later, Walter Bagehot, 1826-1877, in England and William Graham Sumner, 1840-1910, in America. Others (Benjamin Kidd, 1858-1916; Gustav Ratzenhofer, 1842-1904; Ludwig Gumplowicz, 18381909; Franklin H. Giddings, 1855-1931; and Thomas Nixon Carver, 1865-1961) are now little more than names, like social Darwinism itself. Spencer and Sumner, however, were not only ethical evolutionists but also major contributors to the development of social science theory. Spencer, the fierce supporter of individualism and the contract theory of social order, also developed a theory relating environmental adaptation to social order and individual morality. Sumner, the social Darwinist advocate of class stratification, is remembered not for his laissez-faire economics but for his
SOCIAL DARWINISM conception of mores and folkways. The positive contributions to the social sciences which stem from the conceptual clarity of these powerful intellects emerged, as it were, in spite of their ideological frame of reference. Social Darwinism, then, rested not only on a body of accepted scientific facts but equally on a corpus of values. Today these values are called conservative, but in the latter half of the nineteenth century and the early twentieth century they were called liberal, laissezfaire, or individualistic. Analytically, the facts to which the social Darwinists appealed can be isolated from their values. Social Darwinism will be understood here as the convergence of certain social scientific facts with a corpus of "conservative" values. Within the social sciences this convergence was tested and found faulty, but outside the social sciences it still exists as a belief, however vaguely articulated, that is used to justify some very widespread political and economic activities. Darwin and natural selection Darwin consciously limited his discussion to biological phenomena, in contrast to Herbert Spencer (1862), who included the stars as well as human society in his universal evolution. The Origin of Species contains four major arguments: that new species appear; that these new species have evolved from older species; that the evolution of species is the result of natural selection; and that natural selection depends upon variations and the maintenance of variation in spite of the tendency of natural selection to eliminate "unfit" variants. Darwin describes the process of natural selection as follows: As many more individuals of each species are born than can possibly survive; and as, consequently, there is a frequently recurring struggle for existence, it follows that any being, if it vary however slightly in any manner profitable to itself, under the complex and sometimes varying conditions of life, will have a better chance of surviving, and thus be naturally selected. From the strong principle of inheritance, any selected variety will tend to propagate its new and modified form. ([1859] 1964, p. 5) Darwin had several important predecessors, including Thomas Robert Malthus, Carolus Linnaeus, and Charles Lyell (for a review of the important influences on Darwin's thought, see Irvine 1955); and of course, Alfred Russel Wallace reached similar conclusions independently. However, in spite of the fact that Darwin's arguments were not new, the impact of his work was immense. The Origin of Species, carefully reasoned and ponderously de-
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tailed, found ready acceptance among many who, while not primarily interested in biology, were looking for principles of social order amid the turbulent social changes of their period. The arguments that new species do appear and that they have evolved from older species were essentially descriptive statements in terms of which it was possible to organize the existing data on the occurrence and geographical spread of morphologically related species. These arguments were therefore relatively uncontroversial. For social Darwinists the social analogue of these statements—that whole societies, as well as some of their parts, evolve—was also acceptable, mainly because it involved at most a theoretical commitment to orderly social change. The arguments concerning natural selection and variations, on the other hand, are primarily explanations. Both the meaning and the importance they gave to these explanations separated the social Darwinists not only from completely opposing schools of social thought but also from many who believed in some form of social evolution. Accordingly, Darwin's major assumptions in this area will be described in greater detail. Survival and inheritance. Behavior upon which natural selection depends is conceived by Darwin as a struggle among individuals for environmentally limited resources. Accordingly, any organism that obtains enough of these resources to survive and reproduce itself is of a superior order, since it could have survived only at the expense of other organisms that had failed in their struggle for a share of the same limited resources. In short, the natural relationship between organisms and groups of organisms is one of competition for survival. The favored organism will pass on to the next generation, by the "principle of inheritance," that quality which enabled it to survive. The process of inheritance is therefore crucial to the whole theory; without it, natural selection would have no developmental implications. But where does the new favorable quality which is to be inherited come from? Without Mendelian genetic theory (Mendel's first paper on plant hybridization was not published until 1865 and not appreciated until much later), Darwin did not see that breeding itself was the major source of variation. Rather, he suggested two possible sources. One was the direct action of the environment on the organism—for example, the sun producing a sun tan or better food producing a stronger body. In this explanation we see a rudimentary theory.. of the inheritance of acquired traits. His other explanation is that the conditions of life work "indefinitely" on the reproductive system to produce
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"endless slight peculiarities which distinguish the individuals of the same species, and which cannot be accounted for by inheritance" (Darwin 1859, p. 16 in Modern Library edition). In this explanation we see the germ of Mendelian theory. The critical points to be noticed are that inheritance and variety in both explanations are seen as antithetical and that the source of variety is the action of the environment. Derivation of social Darwinism If we take these explanations seriously and if we are interested in the development of superior human organisms, then the theory of social Darwinism emerges as follows. We can de-emphasize the problem of the source of variations by emphasizing natural selection; regardless of the source of variations, the less fit varieties will be eliminated or subordinated, and the more fit will be maintained. This presupposes natural inequalities among individuals, which result in a stratified social organization, which is also "natural." If moral attributes are biological facts and if the measure of morality is the control of property, then it is "natural" that propertied individuals should exist at the expense of the propertyless; further, the social structure must be stratified according to "natural" principles. Since inheritance does not involve variation, it follows that in a "natural" and, therefore, presumably good society, the system of social stratification should be perpetuated. This kind of reasoning leads to a curious notion of the evolutionary process. Once we accept certain qualities as being inherently more conducive to survival—that is, once we cease to take variations seriously—then we can conceive of evolution only as proceeding along predetermined lines: it is a closed system. The following quotation from Sumner is a classic example of this type of thinking. The men who have not done their duty in this world never can be equal to those who have done their duty. . . . They may, then, be classified in reference to these facts. Such classes always will exist; no other social distinctions can endure. . . . The class distinctions simply result from the different degrees of success with which men have availed themselves of the chances which were presented to them. Instead of endeavoring to redistribute the acquisitions which have been made between the existing classes, our aim should be to increase, multiply, and extend the chances. . . . Such expansion is no guarantee of equality. On the contrary, if there be liberty, some will profit by the chances eagerly and some will neglect them altogether. Therefore, the greater the chances the more unequal will be the fortune of these two sets of men. So it
ought to be, in all justice and right reason. . . . If we can expand the chances we can count on a general and steady growth of civilization and advancement of society by and through its best members. ([1883] 1952, pp. 144-145) In this chain of reasoning, biological evolutionary processes have become infused with "conservative" ideology. This ideology confuses freedom in general with the freedom to accumulate property and finds justice in the unequal distribution of wealth. As an intellectual strategy, it is intolerant of ambiguity and hostile to nonconformity; its theoretical structure is deductive, and its theories are not open to modification. Counteracting influences The social Darwinists found the idea of natural selection appealing because they were already conservative by persuasion; variation did not interest them except insofar as it resulted in the elimination or subordination of the less fit and so helped to bolster their notion of a "natural" system of social stratification. Other social evolutionists, such as Lester Ward (1883; 1885) and T. H. Huxley (1865; 1886-1894) found the social implications of natural selection more problematic. As men of science, they accepted the idea of natural inequalities; at the same time, they were social reformers. Their solution to this dilemma was that inequahv ties were to be tolerated for the time being but should be eliminated gradually by artificial selection. Society should take the responsibility of supporting its less fit members; at the same time, it should discourage the less fit from reproducing. In other words, they wished to modify the struggle for existence. Their ideological dilemma, which stems from the confusion of property rights with civil rights, had its counterpart in their scientific dilemma of how to reconcile natural selection with the existence of variations. By the beginning of the twentieth century, social Darwinism was ebbing as a movement within the social sciences. This was the result of several developments. First, on the ideological side, natural selection was no longer considered a legitimate justification for social action; the biological and the ethical spheres of human behavior were coming to be regarded as distinct. Moreover, a number of social philosophers and sociologists, among whom Emile Durkheim (1893) was outstanding, had begun to clarify the relation of the individual to society, replacing the theory of contract, with its emphasis on property values, by a theory of norms. The great questions of individual freedom and social responsibility had never been so much
SOCIAL DARWINISM alive; the old laissez-faire individualism began to lose its title to morality (Hofstadter 1944). Evolution, too, was under attack, as comparative ethnographic data showed that, even if social evolution was universal, it was not clear that all societies evolved in the same way or at the same rate. Henceforth, the unilineal version of evolutionary theory could be saved only if one argued, in every instance, that traits which did not fit the evolutionary scheme were either survivals of an earlier stage or prefigurations of a new one. This line of thought has now been largely abandoned; it should not be confused with the later, far more sophisticated position of the cultural evolutionists (see, for instance, White 1959), who refer the concept of evolution to the development of society in general. The failure of unilinear evolutionary schemes to fit ethnographic facts and the failure of social Darwinists to establish a universal evolution of morality as they understood it suggested either that their emphasis on natural selection to the exclusion of variations was wrong, that their conception of morality was too narrow, or both. In the biological realm, the relation between inheritance and variations was clarified with the rediscovery of Mendel's laws; the origin of varieties was seen precisely in that mechanism which was thought to perpetuate established inequalities. Further, learned or acquired characteristics were analytically distinguished from genetic potentialities (Conn 1914); thus, the supposedly factual basis of social Darwinism was further undermined, and it fell into scientific disrepute. Contemporary social evolutionism Social Darwinism in its classic form is now only of historical interest to social scientists, although it still has some popular appeal, especially in the United States. Evolutionary theory, however, has undergone a renewal since the early 1950s and has proved its scientific usefulness in the study of such topics as the emergence of new nations (Eisenstadt 1964) and the development of religions (Bellah 1964). There have also been attempts to formulate evolutionary universals for society in general (Sahlins & Service I960; Parsons 1964); such universals are used to formulate problems and organize data and are modified when the data become dissonant with the type. In short, social evolutionism has become a systematic approach to the study of social change; its interests are as much descriptive as explanatory, and it no longer seeks to account for all social change by means of a few principles.
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The work of V. Gordon Childe is an outstanding example of this method. In his Social Evolution (1951), he finds in history both sequence (savagery, barbarism, and civilization) and process (ecological adjustment through technology). Technological efficiency and the division of labor are the dimensions of progress and are marked in time by the stratigraphic record of archeology. But Childe's analogies to the biological theory of evolution are of the loosest sort; indeed, he explicitly states that he finds the biological model inadequate for describing the historical processes of convergence and assimilation (ibid., p. 163). Thus, even if biological Darwinism is no longer of direct relevance for the social sciences, its heritage includes some very basic concepts and methods. The concept of society as a functional unity is one; the emphasis on systematic cross-cultural comparison is another. And the ideological excesses of social Darwinism still have a kind of cautionary value. SOL TAX AND LARRY S. KRUCOFF [See also COOPERATION; EVOLUTION, article on SOCIAL EVOLUTION; GENETICS; and the biographies of BAGEHOT; CARVER; DARWIN; GIDDINGS; GUMPLOWICZ; RATZENHOFER; SPENCER; SUMNER.] BIBLIOGRAPHY BELLAH, ROBERT N. 1964 Religious Evolution. American Sociological Review 29:358-374. CHILDE, V. GORDON 1951 Social Evolution. New York: Schumann. CONN, HERBERT W. 1914 Social Heredity and Social Evolution: The Other Side of Eugenics. New York: Abingdon. DARWIN, CHARLES (1859) 1964 On the Origin of Species. Facsimile edition. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Univ. Press. DARWIN, CHARLES (1871) 1930 The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex. 2d ed., rev. & enl. New York: Appleton. DURKHEIM, EMILE (1893) 1960 The Division of Labor in Society. Glencoe, 111.: Free Press. -> First published as De la division du travail social. EISENSTADT, SHMUEL N. 1964 Social Change, Differentiation, and Evolution. American Sociological Review 29:375-386. HOFSTADTER, RICHARD (1944) 1959 Social Darwinism in American Thought. Rev. ed. New York: Braziller. HUXLEY, THOMAS H. (1865)1964 Emancipation: Black and White. Pages 64-71 in Thomas H. Huxley, Science and Education. New York: Philosophical Library. HUXLEY, THOMAS H. (1886-1894) 1929 Evolution and Ethics, and Other Essays. New York: Appleton. IRVINE, WILLIAM 1955 Apes, Angels, and Victorians: The Story of Darwin, Huxley, and Evolution. New York: McGraw-Hill. KIDD, BENJAMIN (1894) 1915 Social Evolution. Rev. ed. New York: Macmillan. PARSONS, TALCOTT 1964 Evolutionary Universals in Society. American Sociological Review 29:339—357.
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SAHLINS, MARSHALL D.; and SERVICE, ELMAN R. (editors) 1960 Evolution and Culture. Ann Arbor: Univ. of Michigan Press. SPENCER, HERBERT (1862) 1958 First Principles. New York: DeWitt Revolving Fund. SUMNER, WILLIAM GRAHAM (1883) 1952 What Social Classes Owe to Each Other. Caldwell, Ohio: Caxton. WARD, LESTER F. (1883) 1926 Dynamic Sociology: Or Applied Social Science, as Based Upon Statical Sociology and the Less Complex Sciences. 2d ed. 2 vols. New York: Appleton. WARD, LESTER 1885 Moral and Material Progress Contrasted. Anthropological Society of Washington, Transactions 3:121-136. WHITE, LESLIE A. 1959 The Evolution of Culture: The Development of Civilization to the Fall of Rome. New York: McGraw-Hill.
tality, and behavior of large portions of the human population; (c) through their power shape sociocultural life and the historical course of mankind. Study of these important groups provides insight into the elements of intergroup social differentiation and into some of the dynamic forces of social life and human history. The social systems constituted by these groups have been classified in several different ways (for which see Sorokin [1947] 1962, pp. 110 ff. and 159 ff.). Here I will neither review nor criticize these classifications but will merely enumerate, without presenting the reasons for my own classification, the groups that appear to me to be the most "important," in the above sense of the term.
SOCIAL DEMOCRACY See DEMOCRACY; SOCIALISM.
i Unibonded groups—that is, groups whose members are bound into a solidary system by one main value or interest: (a) Groups organized, semiorganized, or as if organized around biosocial values, namely (1) race; (2) sex; (3) age, (b) Groups organized, semiorganized, and as if organized around specified sociocultural values, namely (4) kinship groups; (5) groups, such as neighborhoods, based on territorial propinquity; (6) national and ethnic groups, based on community of language, culture, and history; (7) state (that is, governmental) groups; (8) occupational groups; (9) economic groups; (10) religious groups; (11) political parties; (12) ideological and cultural groups (science, philosophy, the fine arts, ethics, education, sport, and so on); (13) a nominal group consisting of the elite (individual men and women of genius, eminent leaders, and historical personages), ii Multibonded groups-—that is, groups formed by the coalescence of two or more unibonded values: (a) The main types of family formations (embracing all families of the same type); (b) clans and tribes; (c) nations; (d) castes; ( e ) social orders ("estates"); (f) social classes.
SOCIAL DIFFERENTIATION Intragroup and intergroup differentiation are two basic types of social differentiation. Intragroup differentiation represents a division of the group into subgroups that perform different functions in the group without being superior or inferior to each other. Division of a government into legislative, executive, and judicial branches, or of a university into various departments, exemplifies intragroup differentiation. Another example is the division of labor in a family between husband and wife. When such subgroups become ranked, factually or formally, as "superior" and "inferior," then intragroup differentiation becomes intragroup stratification. Intergroup differentiation, on the other hand, is represented by the millions of various organized, semiorganized, and "as if organized" groups, or social systems, into which the total human population is divided and structured (Sorokin [1947] 1962, chapters 4, 8, 9). In size and character these groups range all the way from small, local groups such as high school alumni associations up to empires and .world religious organizations. Study of all these groups, one by one, would require many generations and would, at best, yield only a catalogue that would obscure the basic group structures and the main lines of mankind's intergroup differentiation. Instead of following this fruitless procedure, we must, as is usual in science, employ reduction. This immense variety and number of groups must be scaled down to a limited number, that is, to groups that: (a) are repeated in time and space; (fr) are powerful and quite tangibly affect the vitality, men-
Speaking analogically, we can say that these groups, or social systems, are the main "organs" into which the "body" of the total human population has been differentiated. Each of these groups, in its organized, semiorganized, and as if organized forms, has materially conditioned the vital mental and behavioral characteristics of vast multitudes of human beings and thus has shaped the main forms of social antagonisms and solidarities and the course of human history itself. Zoological, or racial, constitution, together with sex and age, conditions body, mind, and behavior from within in many ways. The race-age-sex groups, built by sociocultural forces on such bio-
SOCIAL DIFFERENTIATION logical bases, reinforce enormously the influence of these bases and continuously affect personality and life from the cradle to the grave. The antagonisms and solidarities of these groups go on continually, now and then becoming "front-page events" in the annals of history. Occupational work takes many hours of most adult males' time and an enormous part of their energy. Daily performance of this work for months, years, and decades quite tangibly shapes in its own image bodily traits and physiological processes; mental, moral, and social characteristics; and overt behavior. This influence is again greatly reinforced by the organized, semiorganized, and as if organized occupational groups (guilds, labor unions, occupational associations and organizations) built for protection and promotion of the occupational interests or values of their members. The antagonisms and solidarities of different occupational groups continually occupy an important place among social antagonisms and alliances; once in a while they flare up into momentous events in the social life of vast populations. A native language, together with all the mores, folkways, and cultural values imbibed with it from the ethnic group in which its users were born and reared and whose historical and social life they have shared, quite tangibly molds sociocultural personality and conduct. The ethnic and nationality groups, organized for protecting and promoting the social, economic, political, and cultural interests, or values, of their members, notably increase the influence of these ethnic factors. When the membership of an ethnic or nationality group becomes very large and well-organized, the influence of such a group upon the social life of its members as well as on that of outsiders becomes quite considerable and sometimes even momentous in the life history of a large part of the human race. By its obligatory laws, enforced by a multitude of agents and a coercive power mechanism, the state prescribes and controls almost all the important lines of behavior and interpersonal relationships. The totalitarian states regiment in detail the life of their citizens; the liberal or democratic states do this in a more limited form; but both types of state effectively shape personality and control behavior. Since reaching their full development, states—their policies, alliances, and wars—have been for centuries the most salient events of human history. Their influence has grown to such an extent that many historians have reduced the whole mental, moral, cultural, and social history of mankind to a mere political history. Such reduc-
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tion is entirely unwarranted; nevertheless, it is an eloquent demonstration of the powerful influence of state groups upon the human population and its life history. A single family is not typically an influential kind of group, but large formations consisting of many families of the same type have certainly been most powerful in forming the personalities and determining the conduct of their millions of members. With proper modification the same can be said of the castes, religious groups, social classes, and other groups enumerated above. Each of them in its own way has been, during long periods, an effective factor in molding the personality, conduct, and historical destiny of large portions of the human population. Historical aspects of group influence Human beings, practically without exception, have always been members, whether voluntary or involuntary, of several of these basic groups. By their combined influence such groups have shaped and are shaping the total personality of every individual—his biological, mental, moral, and social characteristics. No less decisively, these groups determine the individual's total behavior, since this consists largely in performance of the activities, or "roles," demanded from him by his membership in these social systems [see ROLE, article on SOCIOLOGICAL ASPECTS]. Thus, these basic groups that mold all human beings decisively channel the course of the fundamental social processes and the historical destiny of Homo sapiens. In rudimentary or developed form, one variety or another of social differentiation into these groups has repeatedly occurred in many vast populations and societies. For this reason these lines of differentiation can be regarded as more or less general. This generality does not mean, however, that the influence of each of these groups upon the body, mind, and behavior of multitudes of human beings and upon the course of human history is constant. On the contrary, it fluctuates in time and space, in the sense that each of these groups, or systems, has a different kind and amount of influence in different populations and at different periods in the life history of the same population. In India, for instance, the differentiation of the population into caste groups has been for about two thousand years a most important form of intergroup differentiation and stratification. During this period the caste system has conditioned the personal, social, and cultural life of millions of Indians possibly more powerfully than any other system has conditioned them. In contrast to this, at the
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earliest period of Indian history caste existed only in rudimentary form as small groups devoid of real power and importance. The Indian caste system has also been losing its influence in recent times, while in many other populations it has not developed as a powerful group at all. With proper modification the same can be said about the other groups—both unibonded and multibonded—enumerated above. The state and the differentiation of human populations into state groups did not play an important role during the early periods of human history. But ever since its emergence and growth, the state has been one of the most powerful social groups. At the present time, however, its importance is declining, and it is increasingly being replaced by other powerful groups. If and when the existing states are superseded by one "world government," such a replacement will mean the end of differentiating the human population into different sovereign states, and the state, with all its patriotic values, will decline to the position of an unimportant group stripped of most of its power and glory. In the medieval period, Christian religious organizations conditioned the mentality, behavior, and sociocultural life of the Western populations much more effectively than they do at the present time. In contrast, scientific groups now play a much more important role than they did in the Middle Ages. Similar fluctuations in influence and importance have happened to groups based on kinship, ethnicity, territorial proximity, occupation, sex, race, and age. Some of these groups, like the caste, the clan, the tribe, and the medieval "estate," have already passed the zenith of their power, development, and historical role and exist at the present only as largely obsolescent remnants of previously powerful groups. Of other groups the opposite is true. "Social class," for instance, is a multibonded type of group whose members are bound together into a solidary unity by similarity of occupational, economic, and sociopolitical interests and activities. Moreover, social class is legally open but actually semiclosed, partly organized but mainly semiorganized, partly aware of its own unity and partly not. Now social class in this sense existed before the eighteenth century only in rudimentary form, and only since then has it grown into one of the most powerful social groups in the Western world. With its growth it has established social class differentiation as one of the deepest lines of intergroup differentiation and the class struggle as one of the most acute forms of intergroup conflict. At the present time, this multibonded group continues to be one of the
most important group factors in human history and social life. These examples show how the influence of each of the basic social groups is liable to fluctuate and how the basic group structures arid main lines of intergroup differentiation are continuously changing, whether rapidly or slowly. As the same bits of glass in a kaleidoscope present different patterns when they are rotated, so the same groups present different basic structural configurations and reflect different maps of the main lines of social differentiation at different periods of human history and in divers parts of the human universe. Despite this variability, the basic group structures and lines of social differentiation at any period of human history have been made up out of different combinations of the unibonded and multibonded groups mentioned above. Thus, at one time in a large part of the human population, a combination of groups based on caste, religion, occupation, language, race, old age, and being of male sex may be the most powerful group structure, dominating the life of this population, its antagonisms, and its solidarities. At another period in the same or a different population, the most powerful group structure may be a combination of groups based on the state, economic factors, occupation, social class, comparatively young age, and being a scientist. At other periods and in other populations, still different combinations of the groups I have mentioned may dominate the historical scene and determine the course of human history in that part of the human universe. It is to be regretted that comparative sociology and history have not as yet prepared a systematic theory of the main types of group structures and lines of differentiation dominant at various periods of human history and in divers parts of the human population. Such a theory would greatly increase our knowledge of the statics and dynamics of human group structures, and of intergroup social differentiation and stratification. PlTIRIM A. SOROKIN
[Directly related are the entries CONFLICT, article on SOCIAL ASPECTS; CULTURE; REFERENCE GROUPS; SOCIAL INSTITUTIONS; SOCIAL STRUCTURE; STATUS, SOCIAL; STRATIFICATION, SOCIAL. Other relevant material may be found in CASTE; COMMUNITY-SOCIETY CONTINUA; DEMOCRACY; ETHNIC GROUPS; FAMILY;
INTEGRATION, article on SOCIAL INTEGRATION; KINSHIP; OCCUPATIONS AND CAREERS; PARTIES, POLITICAL; RELIGIOUS ORGANIZATION; STATE; ToTALITARIANISM; and in the biographies of DURKHEIM;
LENIN; LOWIE; MALINOWSKI; Ross; SLMMEL; SOROKIN;
SPENCER; THOMAS; THURNWALD;
ZNANIECKL]
TONNIES;
SOCIAL INSTITUTIONS: The Concept BIBLIOGRAPHY
DURKHEIM, EMILE (1893) 1960 The Division of Labor in Society. Glencoe, 111.: Free Press. -» First published as De la division du travail social. DURKHEIM, EMILE; and MAUSS, MARCEL 1913 Civilisation et types de civilisation: Note sur la notion de civilisation. Annee sociologique 12:46-50. EUBANK, EARLE E. 1932 The Concepts of Sociology. New York: Heath. GERTH, HANS; and MILLS, C. WRIGHT 1953 Character and Social Structure: The Psychology of Social Institutions. New York: Harcourt. GURVITCH, GEORGES (1950) 1957 La vocation actuelle de la sociologie. 2d ed., rev. & enl. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France. GURVITCH, GEORGES 1958 Traite de sociologie. Volume 1: Vers la sociologie differentielle. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France. HERTZLER, JOYCE O. 1929 Social Institutions. New York: McGraw-Hill. HILLER, ERNEST T. 1947 Social Relations and Structures: A Study in Principles of Sociology. New York: Harper. LOWIE, ROBERT H. (1948) 1960 Social Organization. New York: Holt. MALINOWSKI, BRONISLAW 1944 A Scientific Theory of Culture, and Other Essays. Chapel Hill: Univ. of North Carolina Press. -> A paperback edition was published in 1960 by Oxford University Press. MERTON, ROBERT K. (1949) 1957 Social Theory and Social Structure. Rev. & enl. ed. Glencoe, 111.: Free Press. MORENO, JACOB L. (1934) 1953 Who Shall Survive? Foundations of Sociometry, Group Psychotherapy and Sociodrama. Rev. & enl. ed. Beacon, N.Y.: Beacon House. NORTH, CECIL C. 1926 Social Differentiation. Chapel Hill: Univ. of North Carolina Press. PANUNZIO, CONSTANTINE M. 1939 Major Social Institutions: An Introduction. New York: Macmillan. PARK, ROBERT E.; and BURGESS, ERNEST W. (1921) 1929 Introduction to the Science of Sociology. 2d ed. Univ. of Chicago Press. Ross, EDWARD A. (1897-1904) 1920 Foundations of Sociology. 5th ed. New York: Macmillan. SIMMEL, GEORG (1890) 1910 Uber soziale Differenzierung: Soziologische und psychologische Vntersuchungen. 3d ed. Leipzig: Duncker & Humblot. SOMLO, BODOG 1909 Zur Griindung einer beschreibenden Soziologie. Berlin: Rothschild. SOROKIN, PITIRIM A. (1947) 1962 Society, Culture, and Personality; Their Structure and Dynamics: A System of General Sociology. New York: Cooper. -=» Contains a substantial bibliography. SPENCER, HERBERT (1876-1896) 1925-1929 The Principles of Sociology. 3 vols. New York: Appleton. -» See especially volumes 2 and 3. STEINMETZ, S. RUDOLF 1898-1899 Classification des types sociaux et catalogue des peuples. Annee sociologique 3:43-147. THOMAS, W. I. 1937 Primitive Behavior: An Introduction to the Social Sciences. New York: McGraw-Hill. THURNWALD, RICHARD 1931-1935 Die menschliche Gesellschaft in ihren ethno-soziologischen Grundlagen. 5 vols. Berlin and Leipzig: Gruyter. -> See especially Volume 4.
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TIMASHEFF, NICHOLAS S.; FACEY, PAUL W.; and SCHLERETH, JOHN C. 1959 General Sociology. Milwaukee, Wis.: Bruce." TONNIES, FERDINAND (1887) 1957 Community and Society (Gemeinschaft und Gesellschaft). Translated and edited by Charles P. Loomis. East Lansing: Michigan State Univ. Press. -» First published in German. A paperback edition was published in 1963 by Harper. WILSON, LOGAN 1945 Sociography of Groups. Pages 139-171 in Georges Gurvitch and Wilbert E. Moore (editors), Twentieth Century Sociology. New York: Philosophical Library. YOUNG, KIMBALL (1942) 1949 Sociology: A Study of Society and Culture. American Sociology Series. 2d ed. New York: American Book Co. ZNANIECKI, FLORIAN 1945 Social Organization and Institutions. Pages 172-217 in Georges Gurvitch and Wilbert E. Moore (editors), Twentieth Century Sociology. New York: Philosophical Library.
SOCIAL DISCRIMINATION Set? DISCRIMINATION, ECONOMIC; PREJUDICE; RACE RELATIONS; SEGREGATION.
SOCIAL DISORGANIZATION See COMMUNITY, article on COMMUNITY DISORGANIZATION; CRIME; DEVIANT BEHAVIOR; DISASTERS. SOCIAL EXCHANGE See under INTERACTION. SOCIAL HISTORY See under HISTORY. SOCIAL INSTITUTIONS i. THE CONCEPT ii. COMPARATIVE STUDY
Shmuel N. Eisenstadt Shmuel N. Eisenstadt
THE CONCEPT
Social institutions are usually conceived of as the basic focuses of social organization, common to all societies and dealing with some of the basic universal problems of ordered social life. Three basic aspects of institutions are emphasized. First, the patterns of behavior which are regulated by institutions ("institutionalized") deal with some perennial, basic problems of any society. Second, institutions involve the regulation of behavior of individuals in society according to some definite, continuous, and organized patterns. Finally, these patterns involve a definite normative ordering and regulation; that is, regulation is upheld by norms and by sanctions which are legitimized by these norms.
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These elements of institutions have been emphasized, in varied fashion, by most of the existing definitions (see, for instance, Gouldner & Gouldner 1963). Therefore, it is tentatively suggested that institutions or patterns of institutionalization can be defined here as regulative principles which organize most of the activities of individuals in a society into definite organizational patterns from the point of view of some of the perennial, basic problems of any society or ordered social life. Major institutional spheres It is the basic "points of view" discussed above which have delineated the major institutional spheres or activities in all societies. Again, in the literature there seems to be a relatively high degree of consensus as to the nature of these spheres. There is the sphere of family and kinship, which focuses on the regulation of the procreative and biological relations between individuals in a society and on the initial socialization of the new members of each generation. The sphere of education extends from the family and kin relationships and deals with the socialization of the young into adults and the differential transmission of the cultural heritage of a society from generation to generation. The sphere of economics regulates the production, distribution, and consumption of goods and services within any society. The political sphere deals with the control of the use of force within a society and the maintenance of internal and external peace of the boundaries of the society, as well as control of the mobilization of resources for the implementation of various goals and the articulation and setting up of certain goals for the collectivity. The sphere of cultural institutions deals with the provision of conditions which facilitate the creation and conservation of cultural (religious, scientific, artistic) artifacts and with their differential distribution among the various groups of a society. Last, there is the sphere of stratification, which regulates the differential distribution of positions, rewards, and resources and the access to them by the various individuals and groups within a society. Institutional principles. Institutions are very close to, but not identical with, groups or roles that are organized around special societal goals or functions. Thus, not only are the principles of political regulation effective with regard to those groups whose major function is some kind of political activity—be it administration or mobilization of power—but they also regulate various aspects of groups whose predominant goal or function is economic, cultural, or educational. Similarly, princi-
ples of economic regulation also organize various aspects of groups or roles that are predominantly cultural or political. The same applies to any institutional sphere with regard to any other group or role within the society. Institutional units and resources. However, there exist in each society definite groups and roles which deal predominantly with one of the major institutional problem areas. These groups tend to have some structural "core" characteristics, which are explainable in terms of their major institutional function or placement. Thus, for instance, small kinship-structured domestic groups with reproductive, sex-regulating, and socialization functions (which are not necessarily any particular type of the nuclear family) seem to constitute the basic units of the familial institutional sphere (see Levy & Fallers 1959). Similarly, each such institutional sphere has its own specific resources, such as labor, commodities, or money in the economic sphere or support and identification in the political sphere (Parsons & Smelser 1956; Parsons 1964). It is thus one of the major concerns of the comparative study of institutions to analyze the extent to which different societal goals or functions are performed by the same or by different groups. [See SOCIAL INSTITUTIONS, article on COMPARATIVE STUDY.] Explanation of institutionalized behavior Although the basic institutions can be found in one form or another in every society, societies vary greatly in the concrete regulative principles upheld by any such institutions. They vary especially in the more specific "partial" institutional crystallizations, such as various ritual ceremonies or bodies of customs, on the one hand, and bodies of folkloristic traditions or styles of art, on the other. These concrete institutional principles and structures may vary in the extent of their universality; that is, the extent to which they can be found within a wide range of societies, the extent to which they are spread within any given society, and the extent to which they are institutionalized. The existence of institutions, both as regulative patterns and as basic institutional spheres (but not necessarily of any specific type of institutional principle or organization), has been considered as given in the very nature of society. Institutions constitute a part of the basic definition of society and are concomitant with the very existence of ordered social life (Parsons 1964). Thus, institutionalized behavior can be seen as the most general evolutionary universal in the history of human society. It constitutes one of the
SOCIAL INSTITUTIONS: The Concept basic emergent qualities of human, as distinct from prehuman, society. However, there are few adequate explanations of the ways in which these patterns of normatively regulated behavior first arose. Functionalist explanations. The emergence of institutions in the history of human society, the presumed universality of some structural forms (for example, the incest taboo) as well as variations in the different concrete institutional forms in various societies (for example, the development of a market economy as compared with a barter economy) have been explained in several ways. One rather common explanation is in terms of the needs of individuals and of societies ("societal needs") and of their interrelations. Thus, institutions (both institutions in general and varying concrete institutional patterns in particular) are explained as providing for such presumed needs and assuring the survival of the society and the adequate functioning of individuals within it. Thus, for instance, Claude Levi-Strauss (1949) explains the prevalence of cross-cousin marriage in terms of the "survival" or the "best adaptation" of society. Homans and Schneider (1955) criticize this explanation mainly in terms of the inadequacy of such a "final-cause theory" of social behavior; they argue for the preferability or necessity of explaining such marriage arrangements in terms of the "efficient causes" of certain types of individuals' needs, engendered by the specific social or kinship structure within which these individuals act. Other common explanations—especially of various concrete institutional patterns—have been couched in terms of needs of other institutions; of broad sociodemographic and technological trends, or what can be called "ecosystems," and conditions; or of some basic, universal psychological laws governing human behavior. A specific concrete institutional pattern (for example, political or economic) has been explained as being conditioned or necessitated by or congruent with the "needs" and prerequisites of the functioning of certain organized systems in other institutional spheres (cultural, familial, etc.) or as emerging from some broad ecological or demographic condition. Thus, for instance, Fortes and Evans-Pritchard (1940), in their introduction to African Political Systems, explained the difference between segmentary and centralized African political systems in terms of certain broad demographic trends, such as relative density of population, as well as in terms of the propinquity of certain kinship and family institutions to each of these types of political struc-
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tures. Similarly, the development of feudal or patrimonial political systems has often been explained either in terms of some basic economic-ecologic condition (such as barter or "natural" economy) or in terms of the "needs" of political or cultural institutions (Hintze 1929; Coulborn 1956). The institutional patterns of pastoral nomadism have often been explained in terms of the ecological pattern of the steppe (Lattimore 1940), and those of the "ports of trade" in terms of the total ecological-political constitution of their hinterland (Chapman 1957; Arnold 1957). An explanation of institutional patterns in terms of psychological tendencies or in terms of a combination of psychological tendencies and sociostructural laws can be found in George Murdock's analysis (1949) of kinship nomenclature and settlement, which combines various principles of psychoanalysis, learning theory, and some elementary postulates of structural anthropology. A similar attempt is Swanson's analysis of religious beliefs in terms of psychological responses to the exigencies or problems inherent in or derived from different patterns of social settlements (1960). Various partial institutions, that is, bodies of customs and folklore such as initiation rites or patterns of sorcery, have often been explained in terms of their gratification of various needs or their resolution of psychological conflicts which develop between the members of society; this approach is typical of the "culture and personality" school. The conflicts are seen as developing primarily from the encounter between the institutional setting of the society, especially as it is mediated through the process of socialization (Whiting 1954; Whiting et al. 1958), and the individual's basic needs or innate predispositions, or as conflicts between different societal norms and institutions. Shortcomings of functionalist approach. All these varied explanations, however fruitful they may be as starting points for an explanation of institutions in general or institutional patterns in particular, do not provide adequate explanations. Insofar as they attempt to deal with the general emergence of institutions, they usually do not go beyond the mere restatement of the basic emergent quality of institutions, which is intrinsic to the very nature of human society. Insofar as they attempt to explain institutional variations in terms of individual or societal needs, they tend to explain the particular by the more general. Insofar as any concrete institutional constellation is explained in terms of its relation to the "needs" of other institutional spheres, such explanations are usually ad hoc and not subsumed under more-general principles. Ex-
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planations in terms of ecological or demographic settings or "laws" are also usually couched in ad hoc terms. Attempts to formulate more-general " laws usually fall into the fallacy of the older, deterministic geographical schools and cannot account for the possibility of a great variety of institutional responses to similar ecological conditions (for a criticism of all these approaches that is still methodologically valid, see Sorokin 1928). In general, such explanations evince several weaknesses from the analytical and methodological points of view. The first weak point of such analysis has been the assumption of the uniformity or homogeneity of any given institution within a society. Moreover, the explanation of any given institutional form by reference to the needs of individuals and society necessitates the clear distinction between the needs of individuals and those of society; however, most of the existing analyses rarely specify either the ways through which various specific needs of different groups are articulated within a society or the ways by which presumably societal types of activities take their place in the social structure. Still less do they specify the ways and mechanisms through which the two types of needs become linked. In addition, these analyses tend to assume that such needs must be fulfilled. They fail to investigate the degree to which they are satisfied and the conditions that facilitate or impede satisfaction. Most of these explanations lack full explication of the different possibilities or alternative solutions to the problems or needs which are generated in a given society and of the conditions under which any single solution tends to develop. Finally, most of these analyses do not specify the ways in which both such needs and their relations to various structural arrangements may change. They usually assume that the same conditions which explain the initial development or crystallization of a given institutional pattern also necessarily explain its continuity. Hence, most of these analyses do not deal explicitly with the processes of change of institutions, especially the ways in which a given institutional arrangement may become defunct. Interaction and exchange Despite their deficiencies, all the varied explanations of institutions can serve as starting points for analyses of institutions, institutional variability, and processes of institutionalization. Perhaps the most important insight to be derived from these explanations is that the analysis of any concrete institutional pattern has to start from the existence
of institutional arrangements as inherent in the very nature of human society; any such concrete pattern is the result of the interactions between people placed in different structural positions and between the pressures of organizational and other environmental forces as they impinge on these activities. This indicates the possibility of viewing processes of institutionalization as processes of exchange between different persons, groups, organizations, and spheres within a society (for various analyses of institutions in such terms, see LeviStrauss 1949; 1958; Homans 1961; 1962; Eisenstadt 1965). Analyzing exchange processes. In order to attempt such analysis, it is necessary to specify, first, between whom such exchange takes place; second, the commodities exchanged; and last, the patterns and mechanisms and conditions of such an exchange or exchanges. The answer to the first question seems to be easy. Institutional interaction and exchange take place between different people or groups who find it useful, from the point of view of the implementation of their varied goals, to undertake processes of exchange with other people. But the individuals or groups who engage in such exchange are not randomly distributed in the society. Such exchange takes place between people placed in structurally different positions, that is, in different cultural, political, family or economic positions, which in themselves may be outcomes of former processes of institutional exchange. Their very aspirations and goals are greatly influenced by their differential structural placements and their prior organizational settings. Similarly, the resources which are at their disposal—such as manpower, money, political support or religious identification—are determined by these institutional positions and vary according to the specific characteristics of the different institutional spheres. These resources serve as means for the implementation of various individual goals, and they may in themselves become goals or objects of individual endeavors. But resources always evince some tendency to become organized in specific autonomous ways, according to the specific features of their different institutional spheres; this can be seen, for instance, in the fact that in any society the exchange of economic resources is organized in different ways than is the exchange of political or religious resources. Institutionalized commodities; Institutional resources differ in many ways from those types of commodities, such as attitudes and individual sentiments and activities, which are exchanged in purely interpersonal, "face-to-face" relations (con-
SOCIAL INSTITUTIONS: The Concept trast Romans 1961, chapter 18). Several differences are of special importance. One such difference is that institutionalized commodities have, even within a primitive society, in which the scope of their flow and exchange is relatively restricted and fixed, a much wider scope of generality (that is, applicability to wider sets of situations), and they are relatively interchangeable between different groups and in different situations in the society. Thus, for instance, bridewealth, whether in the form of cattle or right in land, is composed of commodities which can be used (that is, exchanged) in other situations by the recipients, in their relations with others; this does not hold true, on the same level of generality, for interpersonal sentiments. Second, most institutional exchange is indirect. This indirectness is of two types. One is what may be called a series of barter exchange between distant groups, as, for instance, the continuous barter of commodities between different kinship and territorial groups in certain primitive societies (Bohannan & Dalton 1962; Firth 1951). The other and perhaps more important type of indirect exchange is the more "impersonal" one which is effected through the flow of various media of exchange, such as money, or through more generalized political support or cultural or religious identification (Parsons & Smelser 1956; Parsons 1963a; 1963b; Smelser 1963). Use of generalized media of exchange is perhaps the most distinctive aspect of institutional exchange. True enough, such media of exchange become, from the psychological point of view, direct rewards, reinforcements for the persons concerned. But from the organizational point of view, they have an autonomy of their own (as evident, for instance, in the specific characteristics of the market for money or labor), and their becoming a primary reward only reinforces this autonomy. Third, and closely connected with the foregoing, is the fact that the flow of these media and of the respective commodities is regulated by sets of formalized norms, which regulate in a relatively continuous way the rates of exchange between different commodities and uphold the legitimacy of the generalized media of exchange. Last, the variety of the commodities which are exchanged within wider institutional settings, such as the economy or the polity, and between such settings is necessarily much greater than in interpersonal relations. Institutional entrepreneurs. The direct or indirect exchange of various institutional resources between individuals or groups which attempt to
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use these resources for the implementation of their goals constitutes, however, only one aspect of institutional exchange or of the crystallization of institutional patterns. Any institutional exchange also necessarily includes exchange between, on the one hand, those individuals or groups that are able to articulate varied collective goals and crystallize valid, acceptable norms and, on the other, those individuals, groups, or strata that are willing to "pay" something for the crystallization and upholding of such norms. Payment is made, not in the form of an equivalent "commodity," such as the setting up of other types of norms or goals, but by offering in return altogether different types of resources, such as money or political support. They are willing to provide such payments, presumably, because the articulation of goals and norms provides some sort of response to a felt need for some general stability and order or to various more specific needs that may arise in different situations. Hence, the capacity to create and crystallize such norms, articulate various goals, establish organizational frameworks, and mobilize the resources necessary for all these purposes (such as the readiness to invest in the appropriate activities) is a basic aspect or constituent of the flow of exchange in any society. Thus, for instance, it has been shown that the institutionalization of the political systems of the great empires of antiquity was dependent not only on the existence of certain broad sociodemographic conditions and various potential needs among broader groups and strata of the relevant societies but also on the emergence of political entrepreneurs (the future emperors and their entourages) who were able to articulate the new political goals, organize their framework, and mobilize the resources necessary for their functioning. Insofar as such entrepreneurs did not arise, the appropriate political systems did not become institutionalized (Eisenstadt 1963b). Similarly, the development and institutionalization of new types of political or economic organizations or enterprises is greatly dependent on the emergence of various entrepreneurs who are able to articulate new goals, set up new organizations, and mobilize the resources necessary for their continuous functioning (Gerschenkron 1962; Hoselitz I960; Eisenstadt 1963a). This capacity to set norms and organize various institutional frameworks is closely related to control over basic institutional positions and resources, such as power, wealth, or symbols. But the mere control of such resources is not sufficient to assure the effective institutionalization of such norms and
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the successful articulation of varied societal goals. Special capacity for such norm setting and for the articulation of goals is not always confined to the various hierarchically superior positions representing the given structural units of a society; indeed, this capacity may often be distributed, at least in part, without regard to hierarchy (Shils 1961). The activities of people in crucial positions, from which norms and organizations are set up, are not, of course, entirely random. They are regulated by the structural (that is, institutional) placement of their positions, by the limits set by needs and systematic properties of their own and of other institutional spheres, by the basic "structural core" of each institutional sphere or subsphere, and by the "coercive core" of the structure of the organizational forms from which they start. These limits are not, however, fully fixed at any concrete situation; and the process of institutionahzation is to a great extent a process of innovation of various appropriate institutional norms and organizational frameworks, as well as a process of setting up, beyond such structural cores and pre-existing organizational settings, new types of structural frameworks. It is presumably people in such positions or aspiring to them who are especially sensitive to what may be called societal needs, and who may be oriented to taking care of those activities and problems that may be necessary for the maintenance and continuity of given social organizations and institutions. But they are always interested in the maintenance and continuity not only or mainly of the society in general but of some specific type of organization which best suits their own orientation and goals. The concrete institutional framework which emerges in any given situation is the outcome not only of some general appropriateness of a given solution proposed by such people to the groups acting in this situation but also of the relative success of different competing groups of such leaders and entrepreneurs, who attempt to impose, through a mixture of coercive, manipulative, and persuasive techniques, their own particular solution on a given situation. But we need not assume that such people will always emerge when a need for their activities presumably develops within the society or parts thereof, and we have to recognize that in any given situation adequate institutional arrangements may fail to crystallize. Institutional exchange and human needs. Thus, attempts to analyze processes of institutionahzation in terms of the needs of individuals, groups, and social systems point out several basic characteristics of the exchange between and within these different spheres of social life. First, they point out
that any such needs are not "universal" and unchanging but, rather, become differentially structured in different societies or parts thereof. Moreover, such needs are not randomly or equally distributed among the members of a given society but are crystallized in different ways among people occupying different structural positions. Thus, it is especially necessary to specify those positions in which the occupants may develop special sensitivity to so-called societal needs. Second, most of the exchange which takes place in institutional settings is an indirect exchange, in which generalized media of exchange play a crucial role. The more direct interpersonal exchange, in which individual attitudes and sentiments constitute the most important commodities, is not necessarily homologous to the indirect and institutional type of exchange. However, these attitudes and sentiments may constitute very important conditions for crystallizing and maintaining frameworks of institutional exchange. Third, while in each institutional sphere there exist certain minimal prerequisites of its effective functioning, together with certain basic structural characteristics and types of commodities, yet the crystallization of any concrete institutional system —that is, of any concrete norms and frameworks of exchange—is set within broad limits by the above considerations. In other words, crystallization depends on the form taken by the position, power, and needs of the various groups and individuals in any given situation. Finally, the mere development within any society or parts thereof of certain needs does not in itself assure the crystallization of an institution and the maintenance of effective exchange between its varying component parts. In the crystallization of such frameworks, a crucial part is played by those people who evince a special capacity to set up norms and articulate goals. However, the availability of such people, or their concrete orientation and activities, is not always assured or determined by the development of the varying needs among different groups in a society. Institutionalization as a process Instead of speaking of institutions as given, constant, self-contained entities, it might be more profitable to talk about the process of institutionalization and to look on it as a process of continuous crystallization of different types of norms, organizations, and frameworks which regulate the processes of exchange of different commodities. Such institutionahzation is, of course, not random or purely accidental; but neither is it fixed or unchanging. Processes of institutionahzation always
SOCIAL INSTITUTIONS: The Concept take off from several fixed starting points (which are given in the nature of the major institutional spheres and their structural core characteristics) and from the concrete organizational structures in the preceding situation; thus, they create the conditions for their own change. Hence, the study of processes of institutionalization has to start with the analysis of these general potentialities, that is, the general types of resources of the major institutional and cultural spheres and the possibilities (as well as the limits) of their variability. The institutionalization of concrete forms and patterns includes the development of new types of major "institutional" commodities and the crystallization of varied norms and rates of exchange. Desiderata and norms of exchange. The crystallization of norms of exchange has, in any institutional system, several basic aspects. The first such aspect is the definition of the basic goals of human existence and endeavor, toward which the varied human activities in society may be oriented, and of those goals which are defined as nonexchangeable. In every society there develop certain types of symbolic expression which deal with the indication of the primordial attributes of human existence, the goals of that existence, and the designation of any society or part thereof as a proper place for the undertaking of human endeavor and interchange. These symbols define the basic precontractual norms of society and certain situations and commodities which are not exchangeable; they also reinforce the basic norms of reciprocity and exchange within it and define the norms which regulate such exchange. In addition, they point out some possible (realistic or imaginary) forms of escape from the outcomes of such norms and rules (Caillois 1958). These varied symbolic expressions are articulated both in fully institutionalized and formalized settings and, in a much more variegated and diffuse way (which has yet to be systematically investigated), in various myths and other "partial" institutions (Dorson 1962). The setting up and transmission of such symbols and orientations, on the normative and cognitive levels alike, constitute also a crucial part of the process of socialization and communication in any society (see, for instance, Piaget 1937). A very important and crucial element of this primary aspect of any exchange is, as has been indicated, the definition of certain goals and situations as nonexchangeable. The most important nonexchangeable commodities are the symbols and situations of basic cultural, societal, and personal identity, such as those of personal honor or of what it means to belong to any collectivity. In every society these constitute what may
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be called the basic, primordial core of personal relations and orientations to the broader social order; they are usually perceived both as existing prior to any concrete exchange and as being by nature nonexchangeable (Shils 1961). The second major aspect of institutional exchange is the setting up of initial bargaining positions for different individuals or groups within the society. Third is the setting up and organizing of different generalized media of exchange, such as money or generalized political support. These norms and media necessarily vary in the different institutional spheres. Each of the different institutional spheres or types of commodities usually involves a typical exchange order, such as market orders in the economic sphere or the interrelationship of power, support, and bargaining in the political sphere. Fourth is the setting up of various frameworks, organizations, and norms which serve as channels of exchange and which aim at assuring the relatively smooth functioning of the processes of exchange and at the upholding of the norms of exchange by those participating in it. Legal institutions, systems of communication, economic or political markets, and administrative organizations and frameworks serve as the best examples of such mechanisms. A final major aspect of institutional change is the triple process of legitimation: of the basic norms of exchange, of the media and channels of exchange, and of the concrete rates of exchange. Levels of exchange. The process of continuous institutionalization of norms and settings of exchange takes place, in every society, on several different planes or levels. One is the level of exchange between structurally equivalent units (whether equal or unequal, reciprocal or hierarchical) bound together by bonds of "mechanical" solidarity or of the exchange that takes place in those institutional spheres (such as kinship) where exchange between the basic units is mostly of identical commodities. On this level, too, belong those cases (such as marriage arrangements) which encompass universal categories of people the gratification of whose needs is closely interlinked with the very existence of the society (LeviStrauss 1958). On a second level is the type of exchange which is effected between individuals and groups in different structural positions yet bound by ties of "organic solidarity"; such interdependence grows out of the complex division of labor (Durkheim 1893; Parsons 1951). Cutting across these two types, a third type of exchange is effected between the holders of differential positions in terms of norm setting and artic-
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ulation of goals. Thus, exchange occurs between the various institutional entrepreneurs who attempt to articulate societal goals, set up new norms and new organizational frameworks, and mobilize the resources necessary for their continuous functioning and those individuals, strata, and groups that are ready to provide such resources and are willing to pay something for all these entrepreneurial activities. Finally, change is effected on the level of the setting up of the basic, often diffuse, primordial symbols of human existence, and the establishment of reciprocity and precontractual norms (Gouldner 1959). Each of these different levels of exchange tends to depend primarily (although probably not entirely) on distinct types of exchange and regulative mechanisms. Thus, the first type of exchange (between structurally equivalent units) seems to be characterized mainly by direct, barterlike exchanges between various individuals and groups; the relative lack of distinction between different institutional orders; the location of most of these regulative mechanisms in the structure of concrete groups; and the overlapping of membership between the major groups (Eisenstadt 1961). The second level of exchange (between those in different structural positions) depends more on various impersonal exchange mechanisms, like economic or "political" markets. The last two levels of institutional exchange are more dependent on the maintenance of special communicative and hierarchical situations, and on a close relation between the different orders of exchange and the basic, primordial symbols of human existence and social order. These varied mechanisms are perhaps most closely interwoven in so-called primitive societies, and it is no accident that many anthropological studies have not distinguished between them and have tended to assume that the first types of such mechanisms, together, perhaps, with the last, are the most prevalent mechanisms of social control. But it is doubtful whether this is the case, even in these societies. In more differentiated societies the complexity of the different levels and mechanisms of exchange is even more varied and should, of course, constitute an important focus of comparative research [see SOCIAL INSTITUTIONS, article on COMPARATIVE STUDY].
Variability of institutional solutions. The setting up of viable orders of exchange poses some of the basic problems and "challenges" of institutionalization: innovation and crystallization of norms, articulation of goals, and mobilization of resources. But it cannot be taken for granted that even if the
various potential needs for such crystallization of norm setting and goal articulation exist within a society, crystallization will indeed take place and people will be found who are able or willing to invest in the setting up of such norms and organizational frameworks. If such positions do not become crystallized or filled, there may easily develop a disintegration of any given social system or the institutionalization of a system at a very low level of efficiency. However, assuming the existence of some minimal availability of such positions and people, there exist in any specific situation several different (usually competing) possible elite groups, with different orientations and institutional solutions. The analysis of such variability constitutes the major key to the analysis of the crystallization of any concrete institutional setting. Interdependence of institutional spheres The preceding analysis indicates that the institutionalization of any social system (whether economic, political, family, cultural, or stratification) means the setting up of certain values, sanctions, and organizations that regulate access to different positions and establish certain norms of exchange. Furthermore, policies are implemented through which these norms can be upheld and applied to a relatively large and complex variety of social situations. These activities are undertaken by people who are placed or attempt to become placed in structurally strategic positions, who aspire to implement certain goals, and who succeed in competition with other such people or groups. Institutional norms regulate the provision of various resources from other parts of the society to these power positions, to the new organizations, to some of the relations among the different groups in the society, and to the obligations of the occupants of these positions toward various groups in the society. Thus, such institutionalization creates organizational and behavioral patterns directed to the upholding of certain goals. Within these organizations there develop systemic boundaries and mechanisms which attempt to regulate the flow of activities and resources. As we shall see later in greater detail, no such system is ever fully homogeneous, that is, upheld and found binding to the same degree in all areas of social life and by all groups in a society. It does, however, set up some broad limits within which its norms are operative, even if in varying degrees. Each such system crystallized within any major sphere (economic, cultural, etc.) is dependent on the systems functioning in other major institu-
SOCIAL INSTITUTIONS: The Concept tional spheres and is necessarily very closely, although not deterministically, related to and dependent on such systems in other institutional spheres. In general, each institutional sphere is dependent on others for various resources for its own effective functioning, that is, for the maintenance of its specific structural forms, activities, and rates and norms of exchange (Parsons 1951; Parsons & Smelser 1956). While the general types of such resources (or "inputs" and "outputs") are necessarily the same in all societies, the specific types of resources of any specific institutional spheres vary greatly, according to their specific characteristics and problems. Thus, for instance, although all political systems are necessarily influenced by external exigencies and pressure, the special sensitivity of the centralized bureaucratic empires to such exigencies and pressures, as well as to international economic fluctuations, has been shown to be rooted, first, in the great emphasis of their rulers on military and expansionist goals and, second, in the dependence of these rulers on various resources. The availability of the latter was, of course, dependent on such international economic situations. The dangers of excessive taxation and inflation in these political systems were also rooted in the high expense involved in the implementation of the rulers' goals and in the great importance of various flexible resources, not only for the implementation of these goals but also for the general political position of the imperial rulers (Eisenstadt 1963k). The autonomy of each institutional sphere in relation to others probably does vary with different institutions and in different situations. It is probable that the symbolic sphere will usually exhibit greater autonomy than the others; but all of these problems have yet to be investigated in detail. Role performance and institutional change Any institutional system regulates and organizes patterns of behavior of the individual members of a society or of its component groups; in turn it is, of course, greatly dependent on their activities, sentiments, and attitudes. It is not yet, however, at all clear in what exact ways various personal sentiments and activities, limited to different (even if similar) informal settings, become "exchanged" or crystallized into the more fully institutionalized commodities and norms. Studies of social determinants of behavior and attitudes have rarely attempted to analyze how these attitudes and behavior affect the process of setting up new norms and organizations (for one of the few exceptions, see Merei 1949). However,
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such studies certainly do not support the assumption of the existence of a direct relation between attitudes and sentiments, on the one hand, and the undertaking of jural injunctions or the crystallization of institutional norms, on the other. It is more likely that an individual's performance of various roles and tasks and his upholding of various norms vary greatly, according to his evaluation of their contribution to his own values and goals. Initial patterns of socialization and child rearing, while certainly not linked in a necessary way to any one concrete institutional form or organization, may predispose the members of a society to covet certain types of commodities, to define certain situations or goals as unchangeable, and to be ready to enter into exchange which is regulated by certain types of norms. The acquisition of such capabilities includes the development of certain basic orientations to the nature of the world of human existence and the social order and to the various rules of social exchange. But this does not necessarily assure the acceptance by individuals of the specific institutional goals or of the specific institutional orders existing within the social order. On the contrary, it may well first of all inculcate attitudes of critical evaluation toward certain types of societal order. It is the individual's evaluation of the institution's contribution to his own goals, together with his conceptions of social order, that seems to be of crucial importance in influencing his adherence to institutional norms and his performance of institutional tasks (Thibaut & Kelley 1959). True enough, such evaluation may be of different kinds and levels and may be based on different criteria. It may range from a realistic appraisal of the very limited choices offered by coercive frameworks, such as prisons or situations of conquest (and their evaluation as the ''least of evils" in a given situation) up to a fuller, more positive identification with the norms, values, or goals of any given group or leadership. In any given situation, we usually find, among different groups, various mixtures or combinations of such types or levels of evaluation. Different situations or collectivities can thus be compared in terms of the criteria of evaluation or identification prevalent in them [see SOCIAL INSTITUTIONS, article On COMPARATIVE STUDY]. Whatever the combination of attitudes may be, a relative lack of identification or satisfaction, on the part of individuals, with an institutional or organizational setting does not in itself necessarily result in the immediate disorganization of the setting or in the disappearance of the appropriate
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norms. The process tends, rather, to operate somewhat more indirectly: it may influence the accessibility of various resources which are available to some, as contrasted to other, groups; or it may greatly influence the predisposition to enter into some types of exchange rather than others and hence also influence the chances of competing leaders and norm setters. Socialization and role innovation. The processes through which individuals are sensitized to the symbols, norms, and goals of various groups in society and the ways in which they internalize and maintain various norms and criteria of evaluation may be of crucial importance for the interlinking of their attitudes and sentiments with the setting up and maintaining of institutional norms and frameworks. Within this context the study of several mechanisms may be of special interest. One such mechanism is the process by which institutional norms are transmitted to individuals through their manner of orienting themselves to "reference groups" (Merton 1949; Eisenstadt 1954). Another is the process of social mobility, study of which can show the relation between individual motivation and aspirations and the choice of different institutional positions and norms [see SOCIAL MOBILITY; see also Miller I960; Bendix & Lipset 1953; Eisenstadt 1964b]. Also of great importance in this context is the study of the crystallization of societal roles and especially of individual participation in such crystallization. Most studies in this field have dealt with the individual's adaptation to a given role and with his ability (or inability) to perform it. In fact, the picture found in or implied by much of the literature on this subject (see, for instance, Southall 1959) paints the individual as progressing through some basic age, sex, and other—economic, occupational, political, and religious—fundamental institutional roles. It seems, however, that such a conception is oversimplified. The individual's progress through different roles necessarily brings him into situations which are, or at least may be, organized in different ways, from the point of view of his ability to fulfill his own goals. The performance of roles by individuals should not be viewed as a somewhat static assumption (or nonassumption) of certain attributes or as a realization of certain types of fixed expectations and norms set by society. Role performance should, rather, be conceived of as a much more differentiated process, in which the individual's aspirations and perceptions interplay in a variety of situations, emphasizing in each of them different aspects of normatively regulated behavior. Indeed, it is this "encounter"
between individuals and the supposedly "given" roles that often creates the possibility of role innovation, that is, of change in the constellation of different components of a role and of different subroles (see Eisenstadt et al. 1963). It is these mechanisms which greatly influence the nature of individual behavior and choices within the respective institutional settings and the extent to which these choices conform to the existing institutional norm or tend to change it. In a way, any given institutional structure can be seen as a statistical outcome of such choices of individuals (Murdock 1949). However, these choices are not random. They occur within the given institutional settings, and are activated by people whose structural and organizational positions greatly influence the range and motive of their choices (Firth 1951; Fortes 1962). The outcomes of their activities and choices greatly influence the extent of stability, innovation, or change in any institutional system. Social change in institutional systems The possibility of innovation and change is not something external or accidental to any institutional system. It is given in the very nature of the process of institutionalization and in the workings of institutional systems (Eisenstadt 1964a). Whatever the success of the attempt of institutional entrepreneurs to establish and legitimize common norms in terms of common values and symbols, these norms are probably never fully accepted by the entire society. Most groups tend to exhibit some autonomy in terms of their attitudes toward these norms and in terms of their willingness or ability to provide the resources demanded by the given institutionalized system. For very long periods of time a great majority of the members of a given society or parts thereof may be identified to some degree with the values and norms of the given system and be willing to provide it with the resources it needs; however, other tendencies also develop. Some groups may be greatly opposed to the very premises of the institutionalization of a given system, may share its values only to a very small extent, and may accept these norms only as the least among evils and as binding on them only in a very limited sense. Others may share these values and accept the norms to a greater degree but may look on themselves as the more truthful repositories of these same values. They may oppose the concrete levels at which the norms are institutionalized by the elite in power and may attempt to interpret them in different ways; that is, they may attempt to establish different bargaining posi-
SOCIAL INSTITUTIONS: The Concept tions and different norms of exchange. Others may develop new interpretations of existing values and strive for a change in the very bases of the institutional order. Hence, any institutional system is never fully "homogeneous," in the sense of being fully accepted or accepted to the same degree by all those participating in it, and these different orientations all may become focuses of conflict and of potential institutional change. Sources of conflict. Even more important, from the point of view of our analysis, is that whatever the initial attitudes of any given group to the basic premises of the institutional system, these may change greatly after the initial institutionalization of the system. Any institutionalization necessarily entails efforts to maintain, through continuous attempts to mobilize resources from different groups and individuals, the boundaries of the system and to maintain the legitimacy of its values, symbols, and norms. But continuous implementation of these policies may affect the positions of various groups in the society and give rise to continuous shifts both in the balance of power among them and in their orientations to the existing institutional system. Moreover, the institutionalization of any system usually creates new collectivities and organizations. These organizations develop needs, interests, and orientations of their own, which may impinge on various other groups and institutional spheres, thus changing their attitudes toward the premises of the system. Similarly, changes in the balance of forces within the system also facilitate the development and maturation of certain inherent tendencies in the structure and orientation of key groups and elites. For example, some religious groups tend to develop and establish wider, more universalistic orientations and membership units, which may then develop beyond the basic premises of the given institutional system. These processes may be intensified by the systematic relations between any given institutional framework or sphere and other frameworks within the society. Whatever the degree of integration of the total society, some such relations between different institutional spheres—as, for example, the political and the economic or the political and the kinship systems—are inherent in any ongoing society (Parsons & Smelser 1956). However, the basic or predominant orientations and norms regulating the flow of exchange in each of these institutions tend to differ to some extent. Hence, the occupants of the major positions within these different institutional spheres may attempt to maintain their autonomy and may tend to make con-
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tradictory demands on different groups to provide them with the necessary resources. Each may look for support from different groups in the society, thus exacerbating potential conflicts between the various groups, changing their relative strengths, and possibly undermining the premises of any institutional system. These contradictions, conflicts, and shifts in the balance of power may lead to the depletion of the resources needed to maintain any given system or give rise to the crystallization of new focuses of resources and orientations, which may in turn create a new institutional system. These conflicts are also closely bound up with the relations between any given institutional system and its "external" environment. Each institutional system is especially sensitive, in terms of dependence on resources and maintenance of its own limits, to certain aspects of its relations to its environment. Thus, the very nature of the setting up of institutional systems creates the possibility that "antisystems" (both different institutional systems, such as religious and political, and different types of the same system) may vary, and while they may often remain latent for very long periods of time, they may also constitute important focuses of change, under propitious conditions. Some of these antisystems can be viewed as temporary "reversals," by various lower groups, of the dominant values of the given system and as attempts to uphold, at least on certain occasions, a different value scheme. Others may have wider and more-continuous organizational tendencies. Both can, under certain conditions, serve as starting points for processes of institutional change. The existence of such contradictions or conflicts among the different institutional spheres and among different groups does not, of course, preclude the possibility that the system will maintain its boundaries more or less continuously through a hierarchy of norms and achieve accommodation or partial insulation of different subsystems and that a definite order and stable relations among the system's parts will persist. But the possibility of conflict and potential change is always present, rooted in the very process of crystallization and maintenance of institutional systems, and the direction and occurrence of change depend heavily on the nature of this process. Just as the predilection for change is necessarily built into any institutional system, so the direction and scope of change are not random. Rather, they depend on the nature of the system generating the change; on its values, norms, and organizations;
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on the various internal forces operating within it; and on the external forces to which it is especially sensitive because of its systemic properties. These various forces naturally differ in different institutional spheres and in different societies, but the very sensitivity of these forces and the tendency to change are inherent in all of them. SHMUEL N. EISENSTADT BIBLIOGRAPHY
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The comparative approach, or "method," in sociology in a sense covers all sociology, for any sociological research necessarily "compares" some variables with others. But beyond this very general (and therefore rather meaningless) connotation the term "comparative" designates a rather special focus of sociological inquiry: the investigation of the distribution of social phenomena in different societies, or types of societies, or the comparison of such "total" societies or of major institutional spheres in terms of their development, persistence, or changeability. The classic studies. The comparative study of social institutions has been, together with the study of processes of change, among the most important focuses of classical sociological and anthropological thought and theory, although the
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relative emphasis on each of these aspects varied among the "founding fathers." The principal eighteenth-century figures—Montesquieu, Adam Ferguson, and the Scottish philosophers—were more interested in comparative studies than in the analysis of social change. In the nineteenth century Marx and, to some extent perhaps, Tocqueville were much more interested in analysis of processes of change in Western societies, although they (especially Marx) never entirely neglected the comparative aspect. The great figures of evolutionary thought, such as Comte, Spencer, and Hobhouse, tried to present a synthesis of these two aspects by showing, through a comparative analysis of customs and institutions, what seemed to them to be the universal trend of development of human society. This synthesis was not accepted, and its rejection also brought about the disavowal of the evolutionary perspective. Insofar as comparative studies of this period— especially those concerned with institutions—went beyond general evolutionary orientations, they were mostly based on what may be called the "correlational" method, best exemplified in the work of Hobhouse, Wheeler, and Ginsberg (1915). In this work, various types of institutions—kinship arrangements, ecological patterns, modes of subsistence, and types of political organization—were correlated with one another; the great wealth of material thus brought together has only very recently been taken up again in comparative studies. Such comparative studies subjected many of the more naive evolutionary assumptions to a critical analysis, while at the same time they confirmed the existence of a general trend of development in the direction of growing societal complexity. Some important comparative indications, which also contain an implicit evolutionary perspective, can be found in Durkheim's work, especially in his discussions of the rules of sociological method and of the construction of morphological types of societies, in his typology of the division of labor (Durkheim 1893; 1895; see also Bellah 1959), and in his disciple Marcel Mauss (1906; [1904-1938] 1960). But on the whole the French school did not develop these comparative indications beyond the studies of Davy and Moret on the development of "organic" political and juridical institutions (Davy 1922; Moret & Davy 1923). It was perhaps in some of the works of French historians influenced by the sociological approach, such as Marc Bloch and others grouped around the Annales sociologiques, that these comparative indications were to some degree developed (Bloch
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1939-1940). Similarly, in Germany it was largely the "institutional" economists, historians, and historians of law who upheld the comparative approach in the social sciences (for a general survey, see Sorokin 1928). Max Weber's comparative analyses. Among the great "postevolutionist" founding fathers of sociology, only Max Weber expressly addressed himself to a new, more complex, and sophisticated analysis of comparative structures and processes of change. Instead of postulating a general and universal trend of development for all societies and using comparative analysis to illustrate this general trend, he used it in order to illuminate a certain particular trend that predominated in one society or group of societies; by analyzing such a trend, he could then throw some light on similar or opposite trends that developed in other societies or under different conditions. For example, Weber used his famous analysis of the economic orientations of the great world religions as a background for the analysis of the specific religious constellations in Europe; according to him, the rise of the "Protestant ethic" was an important causal factor in the development of capitalism (1904-1905). Weber's work abounds in such comparative analyses, including, for example, his studies of types of charismatic authority, routinization of charisma, and the trend to bureaucratization in modern societies. His comparative studies were also based on the elucidation of basic categories of types of social action, thus indicating the importance of combining basic conceptual analysis with the comparative analysis of institutions (Weber 19201921; 1922). Revival of comparative studies. As a result of developments that took place in the social sciences in general and in sociology and anthropology in particular from the second to the fourth decade of this century, the interest in the broad comparative field and in change-oriented studies became rather peripheral. However, the methodological and theoretical developments constituted a very important background and stimulus for the renewal of interest in comparative studies and greatly added to the conceptual and methodological tools with which such analysis could be attempted. Thus, interest in the systematic study of comparative institutions and the conditions of their development and change has regained some of its centrality in the social sciences in the last two decades. The first important impetus to this new interest in systematic comparative analysis of institutions developed in social anthropology. In England a
major landmark was the publication of African Political Systems (Fortes & Evans-Pritchard 1940), which was followed by African Systems of Kinship and Marriage (Radcliffe-Brown & Forde 1950). In these works the comparative analysis consisted in the intensive analysis of several case studies in the light of some guiding hypotheses. In the United States the major turning points were the publication of Murdock's Social Structure (1949) and the upsurge of cross-cultural research, which was closely related to the "culture and personality" school of anthropology (see Whiting 1954; Spiro 1961). Here the more general and more fully formalized hypotheses were usually tested, through statistical methods, over a wide sample of societies. At the same time, a growing interest in this field developed within sociology proper. The emergence of a broader institutional approach in political science and history and the development of area studies have also contributed greatly to the renewal of interest in comparative studies. Areas of comparative research The major areas of sociology that are usually designated as belonging to the sphere of comparative research are the following: (1) Studies of similarities and differences in patterns of socially significant behavior (such as voting patterns or crime and delinquency) in different social settings or societies. (2) Studies of the development of different personality types or of motivational and attitudinal patterns in different societal and cultural settings. The most important are the various studies of "culture and personality" and "national character." (3) Studies of different types of organizations, for instance, bureaucratic organizations such as labor unions or political organizations in various societies (Stinchcombe 1959; Udy 1959). (4) Studies of major types of institutions in different societies. Such studies of comparative institutions could be subdivided into analyses of: universal institutional norms and settings (for example, studies of marriage, family, or kinship systems); types of cultural systems (such as religious beliefs); universal groupings within specific types of societies (for instance, age groups); social trends and processes of institutional development (such as urbanization or democratization); partial institutions such as specific customs (for example, rites of passage or folk tales). These partial institutions are, of course, very closely related to cultural systems. (5) Analysis of "total societies." Usually such
SOCIAL INSTITUTIONS: Comparative Study societies are compared according to the major types of predominant institutions or cultural orientations within them. Whatever the specific focus of each of these areas of research, some emphasis on the institutional or organizational aspects of social life can be found in all of them. This aspect may be the independent variable (as in "culture and personality" studies or in comparative studies of behavior in different settings), the dependent variable (as in many studies focusing on the "emergence of institutions"), or both the dependent and the independent variable (as in many of the broader organizational and especially institutional studies). Nature of the comparative approach. The preceding enumeration of the major fields of comparative studies indicates that the term "comparative approach" does not, as has sometimes been claimed, properly designate a specific method in social research, but rather a special focus on cross-societal, institutional, or macrosocietal aspects of societies and social analysis (Shils 1948; 1961). In principle, therefore, the methodological problems involved in these studies are not distinct from those of any other type of sociological (or behavioral) investigation. The choice of the topics for comparative study may, however, necessitate the recourse to some specific types of data, such as historical and ethnographic or special psychological data, which in turn may pose some specific methodological problems. Just as the comparative approach does not constitute a specific method, neither does it refer to a specific "theory" or special analytical tools. The state of comparative studies at any stage of sociological research tends to reflect the given level of theoretical or analytical insights and sophistication. However, the very nature of comparative studies, especially their macrosocietal perspective, may bring out some of the hidden assumptions of many of the more "provincial" studies, pointing out some of the weaknesses of their basic analytical assumptions and hence also necessitating their revision (Bendix 1963). The construction of typologies The central meeting point between analytical theory and methodology in comparative studies (especially studies dealing with organizational, institutional, or cultural-pattern variables) is the selection of "problems" for comparison and the consequent attempt to construct "types" of societies, institutions, organizations, or patterns of cultural orientations or artifacts. Although the selection of
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problems and the construction of types may sometimes seem to be opposed to one another—the first being more flexible and concrete, and the second more rigid and abstract—in fact they are very closely interconnected. The designation of any problem for comparative analysis—be it the conditions under which modern capitalism, "the feudal system," or specific types of behavior develop—either necessitates the construction of some "types" of the relevant institutional, organizational, or behavioral spheres, or at least always implies such a typology. This connection between problem setting and type construction can best be seen in Weber's work but also can be easily traced in the other works referred to above. The construction of types of course implies more general analytical orientations, although very often these may be hidden behind the very process of setting up typologies. Each type is constructed according to some variables that are assumed, explicitly or implicitly, to be the most important or significant from the point of view of the given analytical problem. Important variables. A great variety of types and typologies have been constructed in the history of social thought; they very often change according to the concrete interests of any given research. Yet some very general indications of the variables that seem to be of crucial importance in societal analysis can be discerned in the literature. One is the construction of types of institutions according to the levels of complexity of any given institutional setting. In more recent analytic terms, this approach can be reformulated according to the extent of differentiation and specialization of different institutional spheres. Thus, for instance, a comparative analysis of political institutions may start with the classification of different types of political systems according to the extent of development of a distinct political-institutional sphere; the extent of development of a specific political group or ruling class; and the degree of complexity of the political process and the scope of political activity in the society. By the complexity and scope of political activity we mean, first, the areas of social life and the variety of social groups that are affected by the activities of the central political organs and are dependent on those activities for the maintenance of their own solidarity and organization; and second, the extent of participation of these groups in political activities. Similar attempts at classification can, of course, be attempted with regard to all other institutional spheres (Eisenstadt 1963).
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The second basic approach to comparative typology takes off from the different types of major value orientations around which the different institutions tend to become focused or integrated. The third major focus of typology construction is related to the major regulative mechanisms and frameworks through which institutional and organizational settings are integrated and through which they function and change. These last two criteria or starting points for the construction of types tend to become fused, to various degrees, in many works. Thus, most of the "traditional" anthropological studies dealing with kinship attempt to specify the focal points of the jural and normative specifications of different kinship and descent organizations, whether they are matrilineal or patrilineal or organized in unilineal or bilineal descent groups. Similarly, Levi-Strauss' and Leach's approach to comparative structural analysis implies that different societies (whose concrete analysis has till now been mostly limited to primitive and caste societies) can be analyzed in terms of the combination of the various integrative or regulative principles that are inherent, according to their view, in the nature of the major institutional system, be it kinship, language, or political or economic sphere (Levi-Strauss 1955; 1958; Leach 1961). Weber's numerous comparative analyses have placed great emphasis on both the types of integrative orientations and the mechanisms that tend to develop in various institutional spheres during different stages of their development. Thus his analyses in the field of the sociology of religion have emphasized the major types of value orientations that may develop at any given stage of religious differentiation and that may serve as starting points for the organization of new religious orientations and organizations; his analysis of the major forms of legitimation has emphasized a similar aspect in the political field. In analyzing the economic and political spheres, Weber stressed more the various types of integrative mechanisms and organizations: bureaucracy, party organization, and various types of market systems, all of which may develop at any stage of economic or political development (Weber 1904-1905; 1920-1921; 1922). However, in most comparative studies there has been a greater emphasis on various integrative orientations and organizations than on a comparative analysis of different mechanisms of exchange and regulation. In more recent times, perhaps the most important example of the type of comparative approach that combines all three starting points can be found in Parsons' seminal paper (1953) on
the types of systems of stratification in modern societies. There he attempted to analyze the systems of stratification of various (especially modern) societies in terms of their respective value orientations and in terms of the institutional derivations of such orientations. Methodological problems The construction of types for purposes of comparative analysis poses several methodological problems. First is the problem of selecting the units of comparison in terms of which the variables can be meaningfully applied ("total societies," institutions, groups, or cultural tracts) and the question of the range of time over which such units can be viewed as homogeneous. Second is the problem of construction of indices through which the variables can be compared: indices of cultural orientations, societal complexity, or organizational structure. Third is the problem of comparability, both of the units of comparison and of the indices—that is, the extent to which these abstractions are still useful when they are taken out of their concrete cultural settings. A fourth basic problem common to most comparative studies, especially to those focusing on institutional or organizational variables, is the problem of sampling. The relatively small sample of units (societies) available for comparison raises the question of the extent to which it is feasible to construct special intensive comparisons of a quasiexperimental nature. Such analyses are usually conducted after the event. These varied methodological problems tend to differ according to the nature of the materials necessary for any comparative analysis. Thus, in research that necessitates the use of historical or ethnographic data the problem of small samples and that of the abstraction of general variables out of their specific cultural context are of special importance. Research that deals with different organizational settings or different patterns of behavior has to cope with the problems of indices and their comparability (Whiting 1954; Inkeles 1961). But whatever such different emphases, the most general and basic methodological problems here do not differ from those of other types of sociological, anthropological, or behavioral research. Theoretical and analytical problems The construction of types or problems for comparative analysis engenders not only methodological but also theoretical and analytical problems. Types are constructed, as indicated above, out of variables and covariations of variables, even if of-
SOCIAL INSTITUTIONS: Comparative Study ten only implicitly. Each such construction implies some assumptions about the relative importance of such different variables for the understanding of the working of a given society, institution, or organization or for the explanation of a given pattern of organization or behavior. Such analytical problems tend to become even more important in attempts to "explain" varied types of institutions, organizations, or patterns of behavior in terms of some broader conditions. In most comparative analysis such explanation aims (with different degrees of articulation and explication) to elucidate the conditions under which such varied societal types emerge and continue to exist and function, the extent of their variability within different cultural contexts, and the conditions under which they change. By "conditions" is usually meant either some other (institutional or organizational) types or some more general social and/or psychological laws or forces (Eisenstadt 1965). Thus, for instance, the major approaches to construction of types, as outlined above, are closely connected with some major analytical aspects of the processes of institutionalization. The criterion of differentiation or specialization indicates the extent and nature of the development of the "basic" characteristics of different institutional and cultural spheres, that is, the extent to which their respective positions become differentiated from one another and their resources released from mutual ascriptive bonds. The greater such differentiations, the more complex will be the various regulative and integrative problems and the greater the readiness of different groups or categories of people within the society to invest some of their resources in different types of exchange, that is, exchange among different types of major institutional resources or exchange of organizational and normsetting leadership. Evaluating the comparative approach. It is with regard to basic analytic assumptions involved in the choice of problems and the construction of types that some of the central problems of comparative research have arisen. The basic problem in comparative studies is not whether it is possible to construct such types according to any relevant criteria but whether it is at all worthwhile to do so. The major test of such worthwhileness is not only the extent to which such types with common characteristics can be discerned among various societies; this may be, to no small extent, a matter of definition. The more important test is, first, whether such common features actually delineate characteristics that are important for the understanding of the working of these "types" as special
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institutional or cultural systems with their own boundary-maintenance and systematic problems which differ from those of other systems. A second important question is the degree to which it is possible to specify both the societal conditions under which different types of institutional system develop and become crystallized and the conditions of their change and transformation. The various recent works dealing with the different aspects and focuses of comparative analysis seem to indicate that such analysis can provide some, even if as yet partial or tentative, explanations of the internal characteristics of these phenomena and the conditions of their development and continuity. However, the major analytical problem here is not only the degree to which such various explanations of discrete societal phenomena can be attempted but also the extent to which they can be subsumed under some more general laws or principles. Some skepticism has recently been voiced about the extent to which such comparison may be of any value beyond the range of societies that are culturally and geographically very similar (EvansPritchard 1951; 1963). Another recently voiced criticism is that most of the hitherto analyzed studies may give us only "empirical generalizations" and not general laws that would predict relations between such general concepts as "reciprocity," "solidarity," and the like (Needham 1962). In a way this question can be asked not only of comparative analysis but also of the general analytical approach to the social sciences. It is no pure chance that those, like Evans-Pritchard, who are skeptical about the uses of comparative method are also doubtful about the feasibility of such general analytical laws (Evans-Pritchard 1951; 1963). To be sure, one can distinguish between the two problems and question only the utility of the strategy of comparative research; but on the whole, the two seem to be closely related. General analytical principles. Although some of the criticisms of comparative analysis certainly contain important kernels of truth, it seems that some convergence of the different levels of comparative analysis can be found, in terms of certain general analytical principles or laws. This convergence is as yet very uneven at different levels and in various areas of such analysis, and several important and crucial links are still missing (Eisenstadt 1965). The most important attempts to explain institutional, organizational, and cultural variability have usually been made in terms of societal and individual needs and the interrelations between them.
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It has been pointed out that analyses undertaken in terms of such assumptions have several weaknesses. The attempt to explain any given institutional, cultural, or organizational form by reference to the "needs" of individuals and of society necessitates the clear distinction between the needs of individuals and those of society. But most of the existing analyses do not always specify the ways through which various specific needs of different groups are articulated within a society; the ways through which presumed societal needs are articulated in concrete activities (whether special types of activities or aspects of all activities of individuals in a special structural position); and especially the ways and mechanisms through which the two types of needs become linked. Moreover, most analyses tend to assume that such needs must be fulfilled, and they fail to investigate the degrees to which they are indeed satisfied. These are the weaknesses that can be most clearly discerned in different levels or types of comparative analysis (Eisenstadt 1965). Institutional systems In order to be able to evaluate both the stronger and the weaker points of comparative analyses, it might be worthwhile to analyze some of the explanations of the conditions of covariability of different institutional, organizational, and cultural patterns, starting with the broad institutional fields. Here the major problems are, first, the extent of independent variation of different institutional spheres when coalescing in the same society and, second, problems of the direction of institutional and societal change. Independent variation. On a concrete level, the major question is whether, for instance, any special type of economic institution always goes together with a particular type of political-religious institution, and vice versa, or whether there exists a great or perhaps limitless variability in the possibility of such correlations. Although no attempt at a full-scale comparison of such variability, even for any single broad type of society, has been attempted since the work of Hobhouse, Wheeler, and Ginsberg, the available evidence indicates that there is no clear determination between different institutional and symbolic systems, but only a certain mutual limitation. Thus, for instance, a relatively great variety of political systems can coexist with a certain type of kinship or economic organization. The unilineal descent groups can exist, it seems, together with a centralized primitive kingdom or with patrimonial and conquest societies. Similarly, an economic
system characterized by the prevalence of "barter," or nonmonetary markets, can be found in centralized primitive monarchies and in certain patrimonial, as well as feudal, political systems. On the other hand, this variety is not limitless. Thus it is very difficult to conceive of the coexistence of a unilineal descent group with a modern industrial setting or with a universalistic, centralized, bureaucratic political system. It is also difficult to envisage the coexistence of, let us say, a patrimonial political system with a high level of economic market order. How then can these variabilities and limitations be explained, and what are their implications for institutional analysis? The variability of each institutional system can be to some extent explained by its specific orientation as manifested in the activities of the occupants of its most important positions, in its specific structural "core" problems and exigencies. The mutual limitation of variability in the interrelationship between the different institutional spheres that can exist in any society is explainable by the fact that each institutional sphere is dependent on others for various resources for its own effective functioning, that is, for the maintenance of its specific structural forms, activities, and norms of exchange. While the general types of such resources (or "inputs" and "outputs") are necessarily the same in all societies, the specific types of resources of any specific institutional spheres vary greatly according to their specific characteristics and problems. Similarly, such resources can be provided by varied types of arrangements in other institutional spheres, but not by all such types. The extent of the relative autonomy of each institutional sphere in relation to the others probably varies between different institutions and between different situations. It is probable that the symbolic usually exhibits a larger extent of autonomy than others. But all these problems have yet to be investigated in greater detail. Processes of institutionalization. The most general difficulty in comparative analysis seems to be in the transition from explanation of general conditions of institutional covariability to that of more specific, concrete institutional constellations, which occur within tne multiplicity of such possibilities feasible within the range given by the limits of such covariability [see EVOLUTION, article on SOCIAL EVOLUTION]. Here there arises the problem of the constellation of different types of conditions that facilitate, within a given range of possibilities, the development of any specific institutional, organizational,
SOCIAL INSTITUTIONS: Comparative Study cultural, or behavioral type. For instance, if we take Weber's classical analysis of the development of bureaucratic administration (1922), it can be seen that he distinguishes between several different types of conditions. Some of these conditions—such as the development of social differentiation—indicate the ways in which certain types of needs develop and become structured among certain groups and strata within the society. The specification of these conditions postulates that, under certain societal conditions, needs may develop that cannot be satisfied through the existing (usually traditional) groups, organizations, and institutions and that, by inference, various groups or strata are willing and able to pay something for the satisfaction of these needs. Other conditions, such as the existence of mobile labor or of certain legal norms, specify types of resources and frameworks without which it would be impossible to maintain the types of organization that may help in the satisfaction of such varied needs. Finally, another type of condition can also be discerned, namely, the extent to which there exist "entrepreneurs" who are able and willing to invest some of their own resources (such as capital, time, and initiative in the establishment and maintenance of organizations) for the satisfaction of varied needs and wants of other people. "Culture and personality" studies A similar range of problems can be discerned in other types of comparative research. For example, the major assumptions underlying the "culture and personality" studies of varied institutions are that they provide solutions to specific constellations of needs, drives, or conflicts among needs, for the members of a society. These needs or drives are construed as either subconscious or relatively conscious. The exigencies of fulfillment of these needs and the possible conflicts—both among needs and between them and various basic sociocultural norms in the society—constitute the basic starting points of most "culture and personality" studies. These conflicts are mostly seen as developing from the encounter between some "basic" psychological needs of individuals and the institutional setting of the society, especially as it is mediated through the process of socialization (Whiting 1954; Spiro 1961). Here several problems arise. One is the lack of full explication of the alternative solutions to the problems or needs that are generated through a given process of socialization and of the conditions under which any single solution tends to develop. (Similarly, a given pattern of socialization or child
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rearing is very often assumed in these studies to be the "natural" outcome of certain environmental factors; and the possibility of different responses to such factors is not explored.) Second, there is inadequate recognition of the possibility of nonsolution of certain of these problems. Here—even more than in the case of "basic" institutions—the necessity of the gratification or "solution" of some such need becomes even more problematic and instead of being taken for granted has to be viewed as a problem of research. Third, we also encounter the problem of the identification and availability of certain societal positions, the occupants of which help to crystallize the various solutions to such needs or drives. Problems in studies of folklore. A similar range of problems can be discerned in some of the recent studies of folklore, which have developed distinct analytical orientations. Many of these studies start from the assumption of the existence of some universal cultural framework, data, or "store" of human culture, which can be found in all or most cultures. These data, images, or symbols are (at least implicitly) often assumed to correspond to some universal human or social needs, to some universal, basic, and almost unconscious categories of human thought, or to the basic data and problems of human existence, such as problems of life and death, good luck or misfortune. These data constitute the main starting points for the crystallization of different concrete folk tales, myths, and legends (Dorson 1963; Levi-Strauss I960; 1963; Caillois 1951; 1958). But as compared to the case of basic institutional frameworks, in which the limits of their structural variability are to some extent set by the "functional" needs of organization and by the interrelatedness of such different institutional fields, the case of cultural artifacts is more complicated. The general "store" of human culture and of perception of the vicissitudes of human existence is both less explicit and more variegated; and the potentialities for change and for crystallization of different concrete forms are much greater. Similarly, there exists a much greater variety of levels of crystallization, of normative sanctioning, and of diffusion of various cultural items among different groups in the society. There exists a great and constant fluidity in the crystallization of different types of images, symbols, and tales and in their adoption by various groups in the society (Dorson 1963; Opie & Opie 1959; Opie 1963). Here, perhaps even more than in some of the partial institutions studied by the "culture and personality" school, the identification of the social
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positions in which the occupants take the initiative in crystallizing and articulating these varied types of cultural symbols and creations becomes very complicated. Similarly, the nature of the exchange that tends to develop in such situations is not immediately visible, Nevertheless, the explication of the ways and mechanisms through which different solutions are taken up by different groups of people and become sanctioned in different degrees should not be taken for granted but should, rather, constitute a problem for research. It will be noted that rather similar problems appear in these different areas of comparative analysis. The very fact that these various difficulties stem to no small degree from a common approach indicates that there is a large body of research that can be called "comparative" and that it is capable of providing analytical tools of great importance. Within the limits set by methodological considerations, it can indeed contribute the framework of a common approach (even if not as yet a full-fledged theory) to the understanding of the variability of major types of societal phenomena. SHMUEL N. EISENSTADT [See also ANTHROPOLOGY; EVOLUTION; SOCIAL STRUCTURE; SOCIOLOGY, article on THE DEVELOPMENT OF SOCIOLOGICAL THOUGHT; TYPOLOGIES; and the biographies of DURKHEIM; HOBHOUSE; RADCLIFFEBROWN; WEBER, MAX.] BIBLIOGRAPHY BELLAH, ROBERT N. 1959 Durkheim and History. American Sociological Review 24:447-461. BENDIX, REINHARD 1963 Concepts and Generalizations in Comparative Sociological Studies. American Sociological Review 28:532-539. BLOCK, MARC (1939-1940) 1961 Feudal Society. Univ. of Chicago Press. -» First published as La societe feodale: La formation des liens de dependance, and La societe feodale: Les classes et le gouvernement des hommes. CAILLOIS, ROGER 1951 Quatre essais de sociologie contemporaine. Paris: Perrin. -» Contains four essays: "La representation de la mort"; "L'usage des richesses"; "Le pouvoir charismatique"; "Le vertige de la guerre." CAILLOIS, ROGER (1958) 1961 Man, Play, and Games. New York: Free Press. ~» First published as Les jeux et les hommes. DAVY, GEORGES 1922 La foi juree: Etude sociologique du probleme du contrat, la formation du lien contractuel. Paris: Alcan. DORSON, RICHARD M. 1963 Current Folklore Theories. Current Anthropology 4, no. 1:93-112. DURKHEIM, EMILE (1893) 1960 The Division of Labor in Society. 2d ed. Glencoe, 111.: Free Press. -> First published as De la division du travail social. DURKHEIM, EMILE (1895) 1958 The Rules of Sociological Method. 8th ed. Edited by George E. G. Catlin.
Glencoe, 111.: Free Press. -» First published as Les regies de la methode sociologique. EISENSTADT, SHMUEL N. 1963 The Political Systems of Empires. New York: Free Press. EISENSTADT, SHMUEL N. 1965 Essays on Comparative Institutions. New York: Wiley. EVANS-PRITCHARD, E. E. (1951) 1956 Social Anthropology. London: Cohen & West; Glencoe, 111.: Free Press. EVANS-PRITCHARD, E. E. 1963 The Comparative Method in Social Anthropology. London: Athlone. FORTES, MEYER; and EVANS-PRITCHARD, E. E. (editors) (1940) 1958 African Political Systems. Oxford Univ. Press. HOBHOUSE, LEONARD T.; WHEELER, GERALD C.; and GINSBERG, MORRIS (1915) 1930 The Material Culture and Social Institutions of the Simpler Peoples: An Essay in Correlation. London School of Economics and Political Science, Monographs on Sociology No. 3. London: Chapman. INKELES, ALEX 1961 National Character and Modern Political Systems. Pages 172-208 in Francis L. K. Hsu (editor), Psychological Anthropology: Approaches to Culture and Personality. Homewood, 111.: Dorsey. LEACH, EDMUND R. 1961 Rethinking Anthropology. London School of Economics and Political Science, Monographs on Social Anthropology No. 22. London: Athlone. LEVI-STRAUSS, CLAUDE 1955 The Structural Study of Myth. Journal of American Folklore 68:428-444. -» Also published in French, with modifications and additions, in Levi-Strauss 1958. LEVI-STRAUSS, CLAUDE (1958) 1963 Structural Anthropology. New York: Basic Books. -> First published in French. LEVI-STRAUSS, CLAUDE 1960 L'analyse morphologique des contes russes. International Journal of Slavic Linguistics and Poetics 3:122-149. LEVI-STRAUSS, CLAUDE 1963 Where Does Father Christmas Come From? New Society no. 64, Dec. 19:6-8. MAUSS, MARCEL (1904-1938)1960 Sociologie et anthropologie. 2d ed. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France. MAUSS, MARCEL 1906 Essai sur les variations saisonnieres des societes eskimos: Etude de morphologie sociale. Annee sociologique 9:39-132. MORET, ALEXANDRE; and DAVY, GEORGES (1923) 1926 From Tribe to Empire: Social Organization Among Primitives and in the Ancient East. London: Trubner; New York: Knopf. -> First published as Des clans aux empires: L'organisation sociale chez les primitifs et dans I'orient ancien. MURDOCK, GEORGE P. 1949 Social Structure. New York: Macmillan. NEEDHAM, RODNEY 1962 Structure and Sentiment: A Test Case in Social Anthropology. Univ. of Chicago Press. OPIE, IONA; and OPIE, PETER (1959) 1960 The Lore and Language of School Children. Oxford: Clarendon. OPIE, PETER 1963 The Tentacles of Tradition. New Society no. 50, September: 9—11. PARSONS, TALCOTT 1953 A Revised Analytical Approach to the Theory of Social Stratification. Pages 92-128 in Reinhard Bendix and Seymour M. Lipset (editors), Class, Status and Power: A Reader in Social Stratification. Glencoe, 111.: Free Press. RADCLIFFE-BROWN, A. R.; and FORDE, DARYLL (editors) 1950 African Systems of Kinship and Marriage. Published for the International African Institute. Oxford Univ. Press.
SOCIAL MOBILITY SHILS, EDWARD A. 1948 The Present State of American Sociology. Glencoe, 111.: Free Press. SHILS, EDWARD A. 1961 Centre and Periphery. Pages 117-130 in The Logic of Personal Knowledge: Essays Presented to Michael Polanyi. London: Routledge; New York: Free Press. SOROKIN, PITIRIM A. 1928 Contemporary Sociological Theories. New York: Harper. -> A paperback edition was published in 1964 as Contemporary Sociological Theories Through the First Quarter of the Twentieth Century. SPIRO, MELFORD E. 1961 An Overview and a Suggested Reorientation. Pages 459-492 in Francis L. K. Hsu (editor), Psychological Anthropology: Approaches to Culture and Personality. Homewood, 111.: Dorsey. STINCHCOMBE, ARTHUR L. 1959 Bureaucratic and Craft Administration of Production: A Comparative Study. Administrative Science Quarterly 4:168—187. UDY, STANLEY H. 1959 "Bureaucracy" and "Rationality" in Weber's Organization Theory: An Empirical Study. American Sociological Revieiv 24:791-795. WEBER, MAX (1904-1905) 1930 The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism. Translated by Talcott Parsons, with a foreword by R. H. Tawney. London: Allen & Unwin; New York: Scribner. WEBER, MAX 1920-1921 Gesammelte Aufsdtze zur Religions soziologie. 3 vols. Tubingen (Germany): Mohr. -> Volume 1: Die protestantische Ethik und der Geist der Kapitalismus. Die protestantischen Sekten und der Geist des Kapitalismus. Die Wirtschaftsethik der Weltreligion. Volume 2: Hinduismus und Buddhismus. Volume 3: Das antike Judentum. Volume 2 was published in 1958 by Free Press as The Religion of India: The Sociology of Hinduism and Buddhism. WEBER, MAX (1922) 1954 Max Weber on Law in Economy and Society. Edited, with an introduction and annotations, by Max Rheinstein. Cambridge, Mass. : Harvard Univ. Press. -> First published as Chapter 7 of Weber's Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft. WHITING, JOHN W. M. 1954 The Cross-cultural Method. Volume 1, pages 523-531 in Gardner Lindzey (editor), Handbook of Social Psychology. Cambridge, Mass.: Addison-Wesley.
SOCIAL INTEGRATION See under INTEGRATION.
SOCIAL MOBILITY Social mobility is the movement of individuals, families, and groups from one social position to another. The theory of social mobility attempts to account for the frequencies with which these movements occur. The study of social mobility relates a present to a past social position. It thus forms part of the more general study of social selection, i.e., of how people get distributed into different social positions. It is, however, hardly possible to study effectively the influence of past social position except in the context of other influences that determine the in-
429
dividual's present social status. In practice, it has become increasingly difficult to separate the fields of social mobility and social selection. No rigorous separation has been attempted in the following discussion. Studies of inter generational mobility compare the social positions of parent and offspring; studies of career mobility compare the social positions of the same individual at different times. Group mobility is concerned with changes in the social position of groups possessing a relatively homogeneous status (for example, castes, intellectuals, artisans). In the context of mobility studies, social position,, or social status, signifies a certain rank with re-\ spect to the possession of goods (values) esteemed l and desired by most members of a society. The changes in social position that interest the theory of social mobility are primarily variations in occu-v pation, prestige, income, wealth,'power,'and',social class, A high or low rank in one of these values is often associated with a roughly corresponding rank in most of the other values; consequently, position with respect to one of these values, and more especially a constellation of them, provides a measure of what in many societies is viewed as success in life. Studies in social mobility do not usually concern themselves with the possession of aesthetic, moral, and spiritual values. This is presumably due to the supposition, correct for most societies, that these goods do not measure "success in life." Nor does their possession seem to lead, except in a limited number of societies, to the attainment of those material goods whose pursuit is more evident in human behavior and whose possession tends to limit the amount possessed by others and to provide opportunities for—or at least the illusion of— control over one's own and others' destinies. Mobility and moral critiques of society Political and moral critiques of society have both inspired and been inspired by studies in social and, more particularly, intergenerational mobility. This is understandable in view of the concern of intergenerational studies to show the relation of an individual's life chances (income, occupation, prestige, etc.) to the social circumstances (parental status) in which he is brought up. Casual observation, historical studies, and quantitative inquiry have long made it evident that despite considerable intergenerational movement up and down the social ladder, many children of high-status and low-status parents retain, when adults, approximately the same status levels as their parents. Egalitarian sentiments are affronted by a social process that appears to condemn many children to the inferior life cir-
430
SOCIAL MOBILITY
cumstances of their families or to guarantee to other children, by virtue of the more favored position of their families, a high degree of fortune. Observation of these continuities in family social position has led to the characterization of societies as "open" or "closed" according to the degree to which the adult status of offspring is independent of (open society}, or dependent on (closed society}, the social status of the parents. Independence is sometimes interpreted, in this context, in its strictly statistical sense: societies are egalitarian (open, democratic) to the extent that children coming from very different family backgrounds have the same probability of achieving a specified status level. This criterion, however, could be met without any commonly accepted view of social justice being fulfilled. This distribution of social positions might equally well be achieved were children assigned to occupations or income levels by a state lottery or by a purely whimsical procedure of an absolute ruler. Societies are also sometimes viewed as being more or less open according to the frequency with which social mobility occurs. This criterion is not consistent with the criterion of statistical independence. The maximum frequency of social mobility occurs (for example, in a two-status system) when all the children of high-status parents fall to low status and all children of low-status parents achieve high status. This entails certain consequences of dubious accord with commonly accepted notions of social equity: offspring of low-status parents must resign themselves to seeing their children excluded from high status; and the future social position of children is as fully fixed by that of their parents as in the most rigid caste society. Evidently, moral and political critiques of society must rest not on distributions of children's status by parents' status (see Tables 1-4) but on the nature of the processes that produce these distributions. Late eighteenth-century and nineteenthcentury writers on these problems were concerned in their critiques of society with the institutional and personal factors involved in mobility; they aspired toward a society in which merit and talent were rewarded and opportunities for their development and exercise were freely available. Contemporary writers have by no means abandoned this theme; but with the increased availability of quantitative data they have been more disposed to substitute summary statistical indices of the frequency of mobility for critical analysis of the total process of social selection. This seems to assume either that certain frequencies are in themselves desirable without regard to the institutional and personal
factors involved in social selection or that the frequency of mobility in itself provides secure knowledge concerning the nature and moral legitimacy of the selection system. Neither of these assumptions appears justified. The mobility table A central feature of most quantitative studies of intergenerational mobility is the mobility table (see Tables 1-4). An understanding of the technical problems associated with it is essential to the interpretation of the large body of data such tables have made available. The mobility scale. If no additional assumptions are made, the social positions (e.g., occupations ) between which movement may occur remain a series of discrete, qualitatively different categories. The study of social mobility is, however, closely related to questions concerning social achievement and, more particularly, concerning the role of the parental social position in determining filial status. Interest attaches, then, to the amount of upward and downward mobility (or conversely, the amount of nonmovement, or inheritance'). The terms "upward" and "downward" imply an ordering of the categories along some quantitatively defined axis. When the social positions are defined in terms of (occupational) prestige or income level, an ordering is more readily made, although in the first case not without difficulty. Often, however, the social position categories represent occupational classes (professional, entrepreneurial, clerical, skilled, etc.) or social classes (upper, middle, lower) arrived at, not by one clear-cut criterion (e.g., income, education), but by a mixture of criteria that often leaves the meaning of ordering on a single axis, and hence the interpretation of the data, in doubt. The difficulty is not entirely resolved by reducing the multiple criteria to a single score, since a considerable measure of arbitrariness enters into the weight assigned to each criterion in the total score. Even if a satisfactory ordering is achieved, the categories may not mean—and in the empirical literature generally have not meant—that the social positions represent scale positions. It is, therefore, not always possible to say whether movement ("distance") from social position A to social position B is as great as, greater than, or less than, movement from B to C. Recourse is sometimes had to speaking of the number of "steps" (ordered classes) through which movement has occurred. Clearly, however, these steps do not necessarily have the same significance, and this creates difficulties in relating the probability of movement be-
SOCIAL MOBILITY tween two positions to the "distance" separating them. Mobility and number of social categories. A fundamental datum of the mobility table, the proportion of sons who manifest upward or downward mobility (or conversely, inheritance of the parental position), can be made larger or smaller by a simple change in the number of occupational or other classes representing the range of social positions. Thus, the amount of mobility (or inheritance) that a mobility table reveals is dependent on how fine (or broad) the social position categories are—a point that requires particular attention when intersociety comparisons are being made. The tendency toward arbitrariness in the number of occupational or other classes employed is increased both by the practical necessities of research (data availability, manageability) and by the use of multiple criteria in constructing the social-position classes. Mobility within the life-span. Social position often varies during the life-span of the individual. It would, therefore, be desirable to make comparisons of the social position of father and son at several time points during their careers. This would also throw light on career mobility and bring its investigation into closer relation to intergenerational studies. Practical difficulties, especially in the specification of the father's status at several time points, have generally discouraged the use of this procedure. If only a single time point in each career is used to fix the social position of the father and his son, a choice must be made appropriate to the objectives of the study. When the aim is simply to measure the frequency with which sons attain a higher, lower, or similar status to that of their fathers, it is reasonable to match their occupations at corresponding ages, preferably a fairly mature age, when the occupational career has become relatively stable. Other choices are to compare the highest status levels achieved in each generation and to compare the occupations pursued over the longest number of years. On the other hand, when analysis is directed toward understanding why the son attains the particular status that distinguishes his position, quite different considerations enter. The question is then which point in the parental occupational career best aids in the prediction of the filial status. Consequently, the investigator must choose a hypothesis to be tested; the question of comparability in the ages of father and son is not involved. Sampling problems of father—son studies. Intergenerational mobility tables are usually constructed by obtaining from a sample of subjects (sons)
431
their occupations and those of their fathers. But 7 the probability of major interest is the probability '> that a son will attain a certain status given that/ the parent has a certain status. From this standpoint, and some others, it would be preferable to select a sample of fathers and trace the occupations of all of their sons, since the desired probability (when calculated from a table based on a sample of sons) is subject to error. This procedure is generally avoided because of the considerable age the fathers would have had to attain in order to ensure that the sons have likewise attained a fairly mature age and stable occupation. In addition, the fathers who have survived to that age would be a biased sample of the fathers of the current generation. Adjusting for size of occupation. The mobility table provides an estimate of the relative frequency with which the sons of any particular class of fathers will be found in their fathers' occupation (inheritance) or in an occupation of higher or lower status (mobility). However, the entries in? the mobility table reflect not only the effect of the\ father's status on the son's occupational locus but also the effect of the size of each occupational/ group. The probability that the son of a cabinetmaker will also become a cabinetmaker is a function not only of the special advantages and motivations that may accrue to him from the nature of the paternal occupation (and family circumstances correlated with it) but also of the number of cabinetmakers that the society requires or supports. It is often desirable, then, to separate the component of mobility that is due to the current occupational distribution from the_comporigrit_diat,/ reflects the influence of the parental status/One way of effecting this separation is to relate the probability of movement from position E, to position Ek to the number of positions at Ek currently available in the society. The original entries, in percentage form, are the probability that a son will be in class Ek given that the father is in class E,, written \ _ sons, with fathers in E,, who enter Ek all sons with fathers in E}This expression is then divided by the proportion, P(Efe), of all sons who have entered occupation E fc , which gives P(E,,|Ej) M where Mjk, the mobility ratio, is the transformed entry that expresses the amount of movement (or in the diagonal cells, inheritance) from E,- to Efc relative to the number of "openings" at Efc in the society (see Tables 1 and 2).
432
SOCIAL MOBILITY Table I - Sons' occupation by fathers' occupation, Indianapolis, 1940, percentage distribution and mobility ratios FATHERS' OCCUPATION ProprieSemipro- tors,mana- Clerical fessional gers,etc.* and sales
SONS' OCCUPATION
Profess/ona/
Professional
28.3% (5.1)
1 5.8% (2.8)
6.3 (2.0)
19.3
Proprietors, managers, etc.*
7.6 (1.1)
Clerical and sales
Semiprofessional
Skilled
Semiskilled
Unskilled
Protective service
Persona/ service
Farming
%
N
3.3%
2.5%
2.4%
2.5%
4.9%
3.8%
5.5
548
7.7%
7.7%
(1.4)
(1.4)
(0.6)
(0.4)
(0.4)
(0.4)
(0.9)
(0.7)
3.4 (1.1)
5.2 (1.7)
2.9 (0.9)
2.1 (0.7)
1.5 (0.5)
0.8 (0.3)
4.3 (1.4)
1.7 (0.5)
3.1
307
3.5 (0.5)
17.6
7.6 (1.2)
4.3 (0.6)
4.1 (0.6)
2.8 (0.4)
6.6 (1.0)
5.5 (0.8)
5.9 (0.9)
6.6
656
27.9
17.5
30.6
19.1
17.3
13.1
22.8
17.1
15.2
(1.3)
(0.8)
(0.9)
(0.8)
(0.6)
(1.0)
(0.8)
(0.7)
18.4
15.4
17.0
(0.8)
(0.7)
(0.8)
(6.2)
(2.7)
42.2
(1.4)
(1.9)
14.3
15.1
(0.7)
(1.1)
(0.6)
(0.7)
9.5 (0.4)
12.3
19.8
16.4
(0.4)
(0.7)
(0.6)
(1.0)
(1.6)
2.5 (0.4)
2.6 (0.4)
2.5 (0.4)
2.4 (0.3)
5.6 (0.8)
5.3 (0.8)
28.6
Protective service
0.8 (0.4)
1.8 (0.8)
1.6 (0.7)
1.3 (0.6)
2.1 (0.9)
Personal service
1.5 (0.4)
3.5 (1.0)
2.1 (0.6)
1.9 (0.6)
0.2 (0.2)
0.0 (0.0)
0.5 (0.5)
0.2 (0.2)
100.0
100.0
100.1
474
114
1,203
Unskilled
Farming
To/a/
23.7
15.4
Semiskilled
N
Total
Skilled
32.3
(1.5) 26.9
43.2
22.6
23.1
(1.0)
22.1
2,188
21.9
2,163
(1.1)
29.9
27.1
2,678
30.0
31.5
(1.1)
(1.2)
(1.1)
(1.1)
8.7 (1.3)
3.7 (0.5)
8.9 (1.3)
6.9
684
(4.1)
2.2 (1.0)
2.4 (1.0)
8.3 (3.6)
1.8 (0.8)
3.6 (1.5)
2.3
229
3.0 (0.9)
4.3 (1.3)
3.6 (1.1)
1.2 (0.4)
10.4
5.1 (1.5)
3.4
334
(3.1)
0.6 (0.6)
0.6 (0.6)
0.3 (0.3)
0.4 (0.4)
0.0 (0.0)
4.2 (3.9)
1.1
105
100.0
100.1
100.0
100.1
99.8
100.2
100.3
1,092
2,729
1,520
720
241
164
1,635
28.8
100.0 9,892
* Includes officials. Source: Adapted from Rogoff 1953, fables 4 and 53, pp. 48, 118.
Table 2 — Sons' occupation by fathers' occupation, U.S. national sample, 1957, percentage distribution and mobility ratios FATHERS' OCCUPATION SONS' OCCUPATION Professional
Business
White collar
Business
White collar
Skilled manual
40.4% (4.8)
1 8.3% (2.2)
20.3%
8.5%
(2.4)
(1.0)
19.1
25.8
17.4
13.6
(1.4)
(2.0)
(1.3)
12.8
22.5
24.6
Unskilled
Farmer
%
N
2.5%
8.4
86
(0.3)
1 .5% (0.2)
6.3 (0.5)
6.1 (0.5)
11.2
(1.0) 15.6
17.2
10.6
(1.1)
(1.2)
(0.8)
8.4 (0.6)
2.3%
(0.3)
19.1
15.0
(0.7)
(0.6)
(0.8)
(1.6)
2.1 (0.1)
12.5
10.1
14.6
27.3
16.5
(0.7)
(0.6)
(0.8)
(1.9)
(1.6)
(1.0)
4.3 (0.5)
1.7 (0.2)
5.8 (0.6)
4.5 (0.5)
10.2
15.2
13.5
(1.1)
(1.7)
(1.5)
2.1 (0.2)
4.2 (0.4)
1.4 (0.1)
1.0 (0.1)
2.3 (0.2)
3.0 (0.3)
26.4
%
99.9
100.0
99.9
100.0
100.0
100.1
100.1
N
47
120
69
199
128
66
394
Unskilled
Farmer
20.3
42.2
28.9
(1.1) 32.8
36.4
(1.4)
13.2
135
14.0
143
26.5
271
17.3
177
(0.8)
(1.6)
Semiskilled
(1.8)
Total S emiskilled
(0.9) Skilled tnanual
Total
Professiona/
21.6
(0.8)
9.1
11.5
93 118
(2.3) 100.0 1,023
Source: Adapted from Jackson & Crockett 1964, p. 7.
SOCIAL MOBILITY Adjustment for occupational birth rate. The chances of movement into a particular occupation are also affected by differences in the birth rate of the various occupational classes. If, for instance, doctors had very few children, then, assuming a constant size of the medical profession, the medical replacements of the next generation will tend to come more largely from the children of other occupational groups. The effects on mobility of the occupationaLdistribution and of differential occupational birth rates are sometimes termed structural components of inter generational mobility. These are to be contrasted with the effect of parental status (and of factors correlated with it). Interpreting mobility ratios. The calculation of Mjk provides a standard in terms of which mobility may be viewed as high or low. If sons were distributed in occupations on a purely random (chance) basis, then the sons of any given parental class would enter the various occupations simply in proportion to the size of that occupation in the society. In this case Mik has the value of 1.0. A value of M /7 - greater (or less) than 1.0 signifies that sons from a particular class of fathers are entering an occupation more (or less) frequently than would be expected on a purely chance basis. Thus, deviations of M^ from 1.0 indicate the operation of factors associated with "father's status." Findings of intergenerational studies Tables 1-4 provide illustrative intergenerational mobility findings. In Tables 1 and 2 the upper entries in each cell are percentages, and the lower, parenthetic entries are the cell values for M// c (see above). These are summary tables and do not permit analysis in terms of particular age groups or
433
other demographic subdivisions. These and numerous other tables to be found in the literature suggest the following statements: (1) Mobility tables uniformly show deviation from random distribution, that is, they show that filial status is statistically (and positively) dependent on parental status in varying degrees (see Tables 3 and 4). Impressive as this relationship may appear to casual inspection, it is equally apparent that the sons of most classes of fathers are distributed in substantial numbers throughout most of the status classes. Evidently, then, the status of the father permits considerable variation in the status of the son. A more precise summary statement of the over-all relationship suggested by the available studies is that probably not more than one-quarter of the variance in filial status is accounted for by parental status; and this includes the effect of some factors correlated with, but not properly included in, parental status (e.g., race). (2) The sons are most heavily overrepresented (as compared with random expectation) in the diagonal cells, that is, in those cells representing inheritance or a continuity by the son of the parental status. This necessarily implies underrepresentation in some other cells. This underrepresentation is generally spread over a larger number of cells and is, therefore, less striking, except at times when the parental and filial statuses are in very marked contrast. It follows, then, that for those sons who enter an occupational class different from that of their fathers, which particular other occupational class will be entered is, generally, less dependent upon the paternal status. (3) The above findings lend themselves to two rather different emphases. On the one hand, it is probably correct to say that only one-quarter or
Table 3 — Sons' occupational status by fathers' occupational status, Great Britain, 1949, percentage distribution SONS' PRESENT STATUS CATEGORY
FATHERS' STATUS CATEGORY
(1)
(2)
38.8%
10.7%
(2) Managerial; executive
14.6
26.7
(3) Inspectional; supervisory; other nonmanual (higher grade)
20.2
22.7
(4) Inspectional; supervisory; other nonmanual (lower grade)
6.2
(5) Skilled manual; routine grades nonmanual
(1) Professional; high administrative
(6) Semiskilled manual (7) Unskilled manual Total
Total
N
(3)
(4)
(5)
(6)
(7)
3.5%
2.1%
0.9%
0.0%
0.0%
2.9
10.1
3.9
2.4
1.3
0.8
4.6
159
18.8
11.2
7.5
4.1
3.6
9.4
330
12.0
19.1
21.2
12.3
8.8
8.3
13.1
459
14.0 4.7 1.5
20.6 5.3 2.0
35.7 6.7 6.1
43.0 12.4 6.2
47.3 17.1 12.5
39.1 31.2 15.5
36.4 23.5 27.4
40.9
1,429
17.0
593
12.1
424
100.0 129
100.0 150
100.0 345
100.0 518
100.0 1,510
100.0 458
100.0 387
100.0
103
3,497
Source: Adapted from Glass 1954, p. 183.
434
SOCIAL MOBILITY
less of the over-all variance in filial status is accounted for by parental status and that consequently other factors, taken collectively, play a more important role in determining the status of the son than does parental status. At the same time, it is possible to select particular cells and quite correctly emphasize the large deviations from random expectation in these cases: for example, the considerable excess representation in professional occupations of sons of professional fathers; or the considerable deficiency among professional workers of sons of unskilled workers. (4) The probability that the sons of a particular class of fathers, E-,, will achieve a given status level, E fe , is inversely proportional to the status "distance" between social positions E; and E/,. Since the status "distance" is itself a function of several variables, such as education and income, this summary formulation cloaks a number of more specific relations of interest (see below). (5) Much discussion has been devoted in recent years to two questions: (a) whether the rate of mobility has changed during the last generation or two; and (£>) whether European societies show a lower rate of mobility (a greater continuity of family status from generation to generation) than the United States. Despite the number of mobility studies now available, numerous difficulties with respect to their design and comparability preclude confident answers to the foregoing questions. The following statements are therefore tentative. Studies of the United States and most Western industrial societies with increasing urban sectors and considerable provision for education show in the last two generations no substantial over-all change in the tendency of sons to inherit the father's occupational class, at least when these are rather broadly defined. The available data do not suffice unequivocally to detect smaller changes that may in fact have occurred. It is evident that the decline in agricultural employment and some
skilled crafts, and the emergence of new occupations, operate to reduce occupational inheritance. But such changes have not been confined to any one generation and therefore do not necessarily produce drastic alterations in the mobility pattern. This is particularly true when social position is defined in terms of occupational prestige. The new occupations may leave unaltered the relative frequency of different status levels in the society and the distribution of the labor force among them. The increased access to educational facilities and the growth of large-scale enterprises also suggest that the data should show a decreasing dependence of filial status on parental status; but it may well be that more limited access to education in earlier years was offset by the correspondingly weaker emphasis on formal educational requirements and a greater reliance on apprenticeship and learning "on the job." The United States has often been viewed as a society in which individual effort and merit are rewarded more substantially than in European societies and where family background counts for less than elsewhere in the distribution of status positions. Available studies, on the other hand, show no striking differences between the amount of mobility in the United States and western European societies (compare Tables 1 and 2 with Tables 3 and 4). However, most international comparisons have, in the search for comparability, reduced the data of individual studies to a least common denominator which denudes them of much of their value, and it is dubious whether, even so, comparability has been achieved. Nonetheless, there is one characteristic of U.S. society, absent in any similar degree from European societies, that may account for the difference between common assumptions and research findings; namely, a large Negro population subject to severe handicaps in the selection process. The position of the Negro in U.S. society adds to the correlation between pa-
Table 4 — Sons' social status at age 30 by fathers'
social status at age 30, Denmark, 1954
FATHERS' SOCIAL STATUS SONS' SOCIAL STATUS
(1) (Highest)
(1) (Highest)
(41.9%^
25.8 ' 16.1 12.9 x/ 3.2
(2) (3) {4) 7s; (Lowest)
Total
(3)
(4)
~^5J%
2.1%
[30.8 | 30.3 ' 23.9
JM^
.9% 3.9
'v36JD_.'
9.8
15.8
(2)
33.3
2 -°-7-V MSJL? ^29^
Total
(5) (Lowest) .6%
2.2
1
13.4 36 &^ '46,9 ']
%
99.9
99.9
100.0
100.0
100.0
N
31
234
531
675
499
N 2.3 9.4 24.1 36.9 27.4
45 185 474 726 540
100.1 1,970 Source: Adapted from Svalastoga 1959, p. 324.
SOCIAL MOBILITY rental and filial status in the lower strata of the status hierarchy. When the upward mobility rate of unskilled white workers is considered separately, it is appreciably higher than the upward mobility rate for the total unskilled group. The assumption that the United States has higher mobility rates than European countries may, then, rest in part on a disregard of a sizable sector of the society. Finally, if, as suggested above, parental status accounts at most for only one-quarter of the variance in the distribution of filial status, considerable differences could exist in the operation of different social-selection systems without necessitating correspondingly great differences in the specific effect of parental status. Determinants of social mobility Although the mobility table has been the principal product of many mobility studies, it leaves unanswered many questions central to the theory of social selection and social mobility. The "variable" parental occupation or status embraces, or rather conceals, a host of more specific influences. Research on social mobility is now increasingly directed toward untangling the roles of these more specific variables and shows a corresponding decrease of interest in simply adding new mobility tables to those already available. Further, with respect to the question of how people get sorted into different occupations or status levels, the mobility table can provide at best only a very partial answer, that is, an answer in terms of the statistical dependence of filial status on parental status. But/ there are clearly rr^iry^Qthej^actprs jhat_ determine \ occupatiQn.aLand status selection. Father's occupation. Parental occupation or status is related to the probability of filial entry into an occupation in two principal ways: (a) the father's occupational status may be correlated with a variety of filial attributes, such as education, intelligence, and race, that affect the son's occupational locus; (b) the parental occupational status may affect filial occupational locus more directly: the father's occupational experience may influence his son's occupational interests and may provide him with special knowledge, experience, incentives, and opportunities for access to it or other occupations. Educational level. A substantial portion—substantial, relative to other variables—of the variation in status is accounted for by variations in educational level. Educational level is, of course, in considerable measure dependent upon the status level of parents. This dependence is lessened by increases in the society's investment in educational
435
facilities and the degree to which these make educational opportunities available without respect to social origin. To the extent that this occurs, the relation of education to status achievement is freed from an intermediate dependence on parental status. Sons of similar parental status show variations in educational levels, and the effect of these variations on status certainly cannot be ascribed to parental status. However, the extension of educational opportunities may at the same time reduce the correlation between status achievement and education. The more widespread a certain level of education becomes (for example, primary or secondary education), the less will variations in status, especially in the lower reaches of the status hierarchy, depend on variations in educational level— provided, of course, that increased access to education does not change the status significance of the occupational groups. Intelligence and mobility. Part of the effect of education on status achievement is due to the correlation of education with intelligence. In the process of status selection, variations in intelligence operate to influence the achieved level of social status, both by leading to variations in educational level and (for persons of similar educational level) by facilitating the advancement of those of greater intelligence. Certain educational attainments have, however, become such decisive prerequisites for entry into many occupational positions that high intelligence without the added attainment of a corresponding education is unable to produce its full potential effect. Even were educational opportunities commensurate with intellectual capabilities, the correlation of intelligence with status achievement would be limited by the dependence of achievement on motivational and other personality characteristics. An equally important limitation is the fact that, except in a certain gross sense, intelligence is not an overriding criterion in occupational selection and advancement. Intelligence as customarily measured depends in part, in its turn, on environmental circumstances. But the present state of investigation also leads one to conclude that, even as currently measured, intelligence has a major genetic component. Consequently, part of the dependence of filial on parental status is due to two sources of correlation between parental and filial intelligence—social and genetic. Recent studies have been effective in demonstrating the existence of complex interactions between parental status, education, and intelligence and in establishing that each of these variables plays a significant role in determining filial status,
436
SOCIAL MOBILITY
both independently and by mediating the influence of the others. But tested models do not now exist that enable one to state quantitatively the probable change in status ensuing from an increment in one of the variables (occurring at a specified stage of an individual's life), given the values of the other variables. The introduction of a genetic component of intelligence complicates the task of building such a model but at the same time appears indispensable if such models are to be used to derive a picture of the evolution of the mobility or social-selection system over time. Discrimination. In some societies the existence of sizable racial or other groups subject to various modes of discrimination increases the dependence of filial status on parental status. The common obstacle shared by father and son tends to show up as a correlation between their status positions. Since status position as defined by mobility studies does not usually include the criterion of race, this necessarily inflates the degree of dependence of filial status on paternal status. Other social handicaps. Relatively little attention has been paid in mobility studies to the role of special deficits that are not severe enough to exclude persons from the labor force and yet act as powerful handicaps to occupational achievement. High-grade mental deficiency, physical disabilities, chronic disease, mental disorders, alcoholism, etc., taken together, have a sufficiently high incidence and a sufficiently decided effect on occupational achievement to influence mobility tables. It is possible that a substantial part of the cases of extreme downward mobility can be accounted for in this way. A neglected source of downward mobility. A further source of downward mobility may be viewed either as the result of a bias in the design of mobility studies or as an intrinsic feature of the parent-son status relationship. Mobility studies generally draw a sample of the gainfully occupied within the age range chosen for the investigation. The sample usually includes unmarried subjects and married subjects with and without children. The father sample, arrived at through the son sample, will, however, necessarily include only persons of the preceding generation who have at least one son and are therefore (in most cases) married. Since marriage and sometimes fertility are associated with greater occupational stability, mental and physical health, and general achievement, the fathers of the subjects will represent a special sample of their generation. If this is viewed as a bias in comparing the status of fathers and sons,
it could be overcome by choosing the subject (son) sample only from those in the labor force who are married and have at least one child. Since, however, all sons must come from the special (father) sample of the preceding generation, it is more useful to view the differential character of the father and son groups as one source of downward mobility. Given the biological and social significance of marriage and, perhaps, fertility, fathers are, other things being equal, superior as a group to an unselected sample of their sons. Consequently, one should expect that for this reason a number of the sons will arrive at status positions inferior to those of their fathers. How important is parental status? The variables cited above account for a large measure of the filial status distribution. Does this mean then that the emphasis on the derivation of filial status from parental status has been misplaced? In part, the answer is certainly, Yes. But there is, nonetheless, a danger that the reduction of parental status to a series of more specific and often independently operating factors may lead to a neglect of those sources of influence in the parental occupational situation that exercise a direct influence on the son's occupational destiny by giving him special knowledge, incentives, and opportunities with respect to particular occupations. In dealing with sons who are professionals (or even more so, who are white-collar workers) it is fairly easy to account for their occupational status without making an appeal to the specific occupational locus of their parents. But if we are required to predict, not which sons will become professional or white-collar, but rather which sons will become doctors or cabinetmakers, then whether the parent is or is not a doctor or a cabinetmaker is still of considerable importance. Behind the propensity of some classes of fathers to produce sons who follow in their occupational footsteps appear to lie certain relationships that, however, can be stated only very tentatively. Sons seem to be more likely to pursue their fathers' occupations under certain conditions: (1) if the fathers are self-employed; (2) if the self-employed fathers utilize a substantial capital in the pursuit of their self-employed occupations; (3) if entry into the father's occupation is regulated by licensing, examinations, union control, apprenticeship, or other obstacles that the parental status may aid the son to overcome; (4) if the parental occupation requires special training or education. Naturally, these relationships operate more effectively if the
SOCIAL MOBILITY occupation involved provides satisfactory rewards relative to alternatives open to the sons. There are numerous other individual and family attributes that affect the probability that a child will attain a given status position. The number of children in the family and the birth order of a child may in some institutional settings be particularly important. The motivations and aspirations of young people in different sectors of society obviously play an important role in determining the manner in which various individual and family assets and handicaps exercise their influence. Social mobility and social structure Finally, at least a brief word must be said about the relation of social selection and social mobility to the principal institutional structures of society. The research to which we owe the many mobility tables now available has been mostly pursued in Western industrialized societies with large urban sectors. This has made it easier to disregard the role of major institutional differences in the formation of social-selection systems. Current studies have tended to confine their attention more particularly to demographic and technological changes and to the role of educational institutions and the practices which affect access to them. Although there is a considerable literature on employment procedures, the study of social mobility has not adequately taken account of the fact'that thejoccupational distribution jprocess is a dual process, in which two sets of preferences and decisions, those of the employee and those of the employer or manager, confront each other, and that the distributive outcome is affected by the supply and demand of various qualities. There are other major institutional features that, because of their relative stability, best reveal their relation to social mobility when it is studied over quite long time spans. Even the most stable political, juridical, and economic institutions of a society are of capital importance for the mobility process. Thus, the occupational selection process in Western society is decisively influenced by the nature of the labor contract, by laws relating to freedom of movement, and, ultimately, by the distribution of political power, together with the political and social sentiments associated with this distribution. As increasingly complex models of the social-selection process are developed, it will become necessary to specify more explicitly and exactly the institutional environment to which the model has application. Perhaps, too, it will become possible to relate parameter values to changes in
437
the institutional environment and thus to unify the interests of quantitative research and comparative historical inquiry. HERBERT GOLDHAMER [See also STRATIFICATION, SOCIAL. Other relevant material may be found in CASTE; MARKOV CHAINS; OCCUPATIONS AND CAREERS.] BIRLIOGRAPHY
Bibliographical resources for the study of social mobility are excellent. For the earlier literature Sorokin 1927-1941 is still valuable. Lipset & Bendix 1959 provides an extensive listing of relevant literature in the course of a broad survey of occupational mobility, as well as a presentation of the authors' own research. Consult also Mack et al. 1957 and Miller 1960. These sources can be brought up to date by consulting Sociological Abstracts. For general surveys of social mobility, see Sorokin 1927-1941; Lipset & Bendix 1959; Barber 1957; Bendix & Lipset 1953. Studies of social mobility with national, regional, and special occupational samples are too numerous to list in detail. Representative studies for the United States are Taussig & Joslyn 1932; Warner & Abegglen 1955; Rogoff 1953; Jackson & Crockett 1964; Jaffe & Carleton 1954. For Great Britain, Ginsberg 1932; Glass 1954. For France, Bresard 1950; Desabie 1956. For the Scandinavian countries, Geiger 1951; Carlsson 1958; Svalastoga 1959. For Germany, Bavaria, Statistisches Landesamt 1930; Janowitz 1958; Bolte 1959. For Japan, Nishira 1957. For Italy, Chessa 1912; Livi 1950. For the USSR, Inkeles 1950. For other countries, and for additional material on the foregoing countries, consult World Congress of Sociology. On the relation of education and intelligence to social selection and social mobility, see, in addition to the major sources already cited, Anderson et al. 1952; Conway 1958; Halsey et al. 1961; Duncan & Hodge 1963. On the technical and methodological problems of studying social mobility, see especially Carlsson 1958; Svalastoga 1959; Duncan & Hodge 1963. A developing literature on mathematical models of the mobility process includes Prais 1955; Blumen et al. 1955; Beshers & Reiter 1963; White 1963. A number of topics in social mobility (career mobility, three-generational mobility, social mobility of women, etc.) receive scant or no attention in this article. However, the reader will have no difficulty in finding material on these topics if he consults the more general works in the literature cited here. ANDERSON, C. ARNOLD; BROWN, J. C.; and BOWMAN, M. J. 1952 Intelligence and Occupational Mobility. Journal of Political Economy 60:218-239. BARBER, BERNARD 1957 Social Stratification: A Comparative Analysis of Structure and Process. New York: Harcourt. BAVARIA, STATISTISCHES LANDESAMT 1930 Sozialer Aufund Abstieg im deutschen Volk. Beitrage zur Statistik Bayerns, Vol. 117. Munich: Lindauer. BENDIX, REINHARD; and LIPSET, SEYMOUR M. (editors) (1953) 1966 Class, Status, and Power: Social Stratification in Comparative Perspective. 2d ed. New York: Free Press. BESHERS, JAMES M.; and REITER, STANLEY 1963 Social Status and Social Change. Behavioral Science 8:1—13. BLUMEN, ISADORE; KOGAN, M.; and MCCARTHY, P. J. 1955 The Industrial Mobility of Labor as a Probability Process. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell Univ. Press. BOLTE, KARL M. 1959 Sozialer Aufstieg und Abstieg: Eine Untersuchung iiber Berufsprestige und Berufsmobilitdt. Stuttgart (Germany): Enke.
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SOCIAL MOVEMENTS: Types and Functions
Social Mobility and Chapter 5 from Volume 4 of BRESARD, MARCEL 1950 Mobilite sociale et dimension de Social and Cultural Dynamics. la famille. Population 5:533-566. SVALASTOGA, KAARE 1959 Prestige, Class, and Mobility. CARLSSON, GOSTA 1958 Social Mobility and Class StrucCopenhagen: Gyldendal. ture. Lund (Sweden): Gleerup. TAUSSIG, FRANK W.; and JOSLYN, CARL S. 1932 AmeriCHESSA, FEDERICO 1912 La trasmissione ereditaria delle can Business Leaders: A Study in Social Origins and professioni. Turin (Italy): Bocca. Social Stratification. New York: Macmillan. CONWAY, J. 1958 The Inheritance of Intelligence and WARNER, W. LLOYD; and ABEGGLEN, JAMES C. 1955 OcIts Social Implications. British Journal of Statistical cupational Mobility in American Business and IndusPsychology 11:171-190. try, 1928-1952. Minneapolis: Univ. of Minnesota DESABIE, J. 1956 La mobilite sociale en France. Bulletin Press. d'information 1:25-63. WHITE, HARRISON C. 1963 Cause and Effect in Social DUNCAN, OTIS D. ; and HODGE, R. W. 1963 Education Mobility Tables. Behavioral Science 8:14-27. and Occupational Mobility: A Regression Analysis. WILENSKY, HAROLD L. 1966 Measures and Effects of American Journal of Sociology 68:629-644. Social Mobility. Pages 98-140 in Neil J. Smelser and GEIGER, THEODOR 1951 Soziale Umschichtungen in einer Seymour M. Lipset (editors), Social Structure and ddnischen Mittelstadt. Copenhagen: Munksgaard. Mobility in Economic Development. Chicago: Aldine. GINSBERG, MORRIS 1932 Studies in Sociology. London: WORLD CONGRESS OF SOCIOLOGY Transactions. H> Published Methuen. -> See especially pages 160-174, "Intersince 1954. Transactions of the first congress, held change Between Social Classes." in 1950, were not published. GLASS, DAVID V. (editor) 1954 Social Mobility in Britain. London: Routledge. HALSEY, A. H.; FLOUD, JEAN; and ANDERSON, C. ARNOLD (editors) 1961 Education, Economy, and Society: SOCIAL MOVEMENTS A Reader in the Sociology of Education. New York: Free Press. The articles under this heading survey and INKELES, ALEX 1950 Social Stratification and Mobility in the Soviet Union: 1940—1950. American Sociologianalyze the general features of social movements cal Review 15:465-479. and describe various approaches to their study. JACKSON, ELTON F.; and CROCKETT, HARRY J. JR. 1964 Specific movements and types of movements are Occupational Mobility in the United States: A Point discussed in ANARCHISM; CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE; Estimate and Trend Comparison. American Sociological Review 29:5-15. -> Provides a table based on COMMUNISM, article on THE INTERNATIONAL a U.S. national sample, and reviews earlier national MOVEMENT; CONSERVATION; FALANGISM; FASsample studies. CISM; IMPERIALISM; LATIN AMERICAN POLITICAL JAFFE, ABRAM J.; and CARLETON, R. O. 1954 OccupaMOVEMENTS; MILITARISM; MlLLENARISM; NAtional Mobility in the United States: 1930-1960. New York: King's Crown Press. -> A cohort analysis of the TIONAL SOCIALISM; NATIONALISM; NATIVISM AND American working force, with projections of mobility REVIVALISM; PACIFISM; PAN MOVEMENTS; SOCIALtrends. ISM; SYNDICALISM; ZIONISM. Related modes of JANOWITZ, MORRIS 1958 Social Stratification and Mobilorganization are discussed in INTEREST GROUPS; ity in West Germany. American Journal of Sociology PARTIES, POLITICAL; SECTS AND CULTS; VOLUN64:6-24. LIPSET, SEYMOUR M.; and BENDIX, REINHARD 1959 SoTARY ASSOCIATIONS; and in many of the articles cial Mobility in Industrial Society. Berkeley: Univ. of listed in the guide under RELIGION. For the relaCalifornia Press. tionship of social movements to ideology, see IDELivi, LIVIO 1950 Sur la mesure de la mobilite sociale: OLOGY; INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS, article on Resultats d'un sondage effectue sur la population IDEOLOGICAL ASPECTS; RADICALISM; REVOLUTION; italienne. Population 5:65-76. MACK, RAYMOND W.; FREEMAN, L.; and YELLIN, S. 1957 UTOPIANISM. The impact of social movements on Social Mobility; Thirty Years of Research and Theory: the social structure is reviewed in COLLECTIVE An Annotated Bibliography. Syracuse Univ. Press. BEHAVIOR; MASS PHENOMENA; MASS SOCIETY; MILLER, S. M. 1960 Comparative Social Mobility: A ORGANIZATIONS, article on ORGANIZATIONAL GOALS; Trend Report and Bibliography. Current Sociology 9, no. 1:1-89. POLITICAL SOCIOLOGY. NISHIRA, SIGEKI 1957 Cross-national Comparative Study i. TYPES AND FUNCTIONS OF on Social Stratification and Social Mobility. Institute Rudolf Heberle SOCIAL MOVEMENTS of Statistical Mathematics, Tokyo, Annals 8:181-191. ii. THE STUDY OF SOCIAL PRAIS, S. J. 1955 Measuring Social Mobility. Journal of MOVEMENTS Joseph R. Gusfield the Royal Statistical Society Series A 118:56-66. ROGOFF, NATALIE 1953 Recent Trends in Occupational Mobility. Glencoe, 111.: Free Press. TYPES AND FUNCTIONS OF SOCIAL MOVEMENTS Sociological Abstracts. -» Published since 1952. Consult recent entries under "Social Stratification"; "Sociology The term "social movement" or its equivalent of Occupations and Professions"; and "Sociology of in other Western languages is being used to denote Education." ' a wide variety of collective attempts to bring about SOROKIN, PITIRIM A. (1927-1941)1959 Social and Cultural Mobility. Glencoe, 111.: Free Press. -> Reprints a change in certain social institutions or to create
SOCIAL MOVEMENTS: Types and Functions an entirely new order. Sometimes the term is used in distinction from religious or political movements and from movements among particular groups, for example, the women's movement or the youth movement. As all of these movements occur in society and tend to affect, directly or indirectly, the social order, it would be permissible to apply the term social movement to all of them. However, when the term first came into use, early in the nineteenth century, it had a more specific meaning: the social movement meant the movement of the new industrial working class, with its socialistic, communistic, and anarchistic tendencies. A German scholar, Lorenz von Stein, was one of the first to recognize that the real political significance of socialism and communism lay not in their value as forms of social thought but in the fact that they gave expression and direction to the strivings of the industrial proletariat toward a new social order which would abolish economic exploitation and give the workers a chance to achieve full personality development. On the continent of Europe, the identification of the social movement with the labor movement lasted until the second decade of this century. Today this narrow definition of the concept is no longer possible in view of peasants' and farmers' movements, of Fascism and National Socialism, and of the independence movements in colonial countries—to name only the most important instances. It is advisable, however, to distinguish between movements which, because of their limited goals, never attract more than small groups of people and those which, aiming at comprehensive and fundamental changes in the social order, become true mass movements of historical significance. The latter will be referred to as social movements in the strict or "classical" sense. .The former are sometimes referred to as "protest movements," but this term may also be used to designate mass movements which seek to redress grievances of certain groups (for example, the Negro movement) as well as movements opposing social (or political) change (for example, the Ku Klux Klan or the White Citizens' Councils in the southern United States). Although it is sometimes convenient to distinguish between social and political movements, it should be noted that all movements have political implications even if their members do not strive at political power. Social movements are a specific kind of concerted-action groups; they last longer and are more integrated than mobs, masses, and crowds and
439
yet are not organized like political clubs and other associations. A social movement may, however, be comprised of organized groups without having one over-all formal organization (for example, the labor movement, which comprises trade unions, political parties, consumer cooperatives, and many other organizations). Group consciousness, that is, a sense of belonging and of solidarity among the members of a group, is essential for a social movement, although empirically it occurs in various degrees. This consciousness is generated through active participation and may assume various sociopsychologica] characteristics. By this criterion social movements are distinguished from "social trends," which are often referred to as movements and are the result of similar but uncoordinated actions of many individuals (for example, the suburban movement, fads, and fashions). The classical concept of social movement implies the creation of an entirely new socioeconomic and political order, especially as concerns the institutions of property and the distribution of power. To justify these aims, all major social movements develop a more or less elaborate, more or less consistent set of ideas which its members must accept more or less uncritically, as members of a religious group would accept a creed. From these "ideologies," or "constitutive ideas," are derived "action programs" of a more changing nature. Social movements tend to spread beyond the boundaries of states or national societies and to extend over the entire area of a civilization, or even beyond, as far as the social order that is their target reaches. "Protest movements," as the term is used in this discussion, are, as a rule, limited in spatial expansion, being mostly of local, regional, or national character, for example, many "radical" farmers' and peasants' movements. A formally organized protest movement represents one kind of "pressure group." Transformation of a protest movement into a genuine social movement is possible; the early labor movement showed many traits of a protest movement, and labor unions often act as pressure groups. Neither protest movements nor pressure groups develop, as a rule, a comprehensive political action program or an elaborate ideology. While the relations between social movements and political parties will be discussed later, it should be pointed out that political parties are not necessarily differentiated by ideologies. In spite of their different and qften antagonistic aims and ideologies, certain social movements show similarities in structure, tactics, and other
440
SOCIAL MOVEMENTS: Types and Functions
formal aspects, while other movements, although similar in their ideologies, are significantly different in other respects. While the earlier studies of social movements have concentrated on the ideas, more recent sociological research has given equal attention to the structural and psychological aspects. Ideas Movements aiming consciously at a radically different social order, a "change from the roots," are possible only when the social order is seen not as a divine creation but as a work of man, subject to man's will. Movements of this kind are concomitant with the secularization of thought. This is why such movements have occurred in the West only since the eighteenth century and in the East quite recently as a consequence of cultural contact with the West. Earlier revolts and disturbances among the lower social strata typically aimed at improving their social position without attacking the social order in its foundations. Radical movements in the earlier periods tended to assume the character of millenarian religious or quasi-religious sects. Similar movements still occur in regions where the transition to modern society is lagging. These movements were, as a rule, defeated unless they adopted the organization, tactics, and ideology of modern movements. In the attempt to justify their aims, modern social movements typically resort to abstract principles concerning the nature of man, his destination, and his natural rights in combination with a critique of the existing economic, political, and cultural institutions. The ideas of liberty and equality are common to all major social movements, sometimes in combination with the idea of national unity and independence. The most typical forms which the philosophy of a movement assumes are either a detailed, rational plan for a new society—a Utopia—or, as in the case of Marxism, a theory of history which predicts the inevitable coming of the new society without revealing its form in detail. Characteristic of these thought systems is their inherent logical consistency, their reliance on monocausal explanations of major social problems, and their tendency to believe that changes in social institutions will bring final solutions to all human problems. The defenders of the existing order will create counterarguments, which become the constitutive ideas (or ideology in the narrow sense) of a countermovement. Typically, these countermovements incorporate some of the ideas of their adversaries but otherwise use any argument that may serve
in defense of their position, regardless of resulting logical contradictions. Some have made effective use of symbols (the Third Reich) in order to achieve solidarity among adherents. Either type of belief system may be regarded as an expression of the collective will of the social groups in which they are developed and accepted. While the methods of analyzing belief systems of social movements have been refined by the "sociology of knowledge," it is important to recognize the element of volition in the ideologies, since this is what makes them socially effective. The belief in a set of constitutive ideas binds the members of a movement together and gives them the elan needed for the persistent pursuit of the movement's aim. It some cases this belief can assume quasi-religious forms. If this happens, not only the ideas of antagonists but also any deviation from the orthodox ideology are branded as a heresy. [See IDEOLOGY.] Social-psychological characteristics The motivations of individuals in joining a social movement may range from rational belief in the movement's aim (value-rational orientation) to pure opportunism. Quite often the decision to join is more emotional than rational—for example, when a person is "converted" by some experience which arouses his sense of justice—and in certain types of movements the mass of supporters are attracted by the personal charm of a leader rather than oriented toward an elaborate belief system or a definite action program (emotional-affectual orientation). When a movement has existed for a long time, it may, in certain families or occupational groups or local communities, become traditional to belong, as in the case of traditional socialistic orientation in many European workingclass families. The example set by kinsmen, neighbors, or friends may give the incentive to join. [See PERSONALITY, POLITICAL.] One can distinguish the following sociopsychological types of movements according to the prevailing motivation of their members: (1) The value-rational "spiritual community" or "fellowship" of believers in the truth of the constitutive ideas and in the practical aims of a movement. (2) The emotional-affectual "following" of a charismatic leader. (3) The purposive-rational or utilitarian association for the pursuit of individual interests. Combinations of these types are frequent, and transitions from one type to another may occur during the life cycle of a movement. What started
SOCIAL MOVEMENTS: Types and Functions as a community of believers in a "cause" may develop into a "band wagon," attracting socially or politically ambitious opportunists. In some revolutionary movements the devotion to the cause becomes paramount to the degree that personal friendship and love among members and all personal, intimate relations with outsiders are discouraged—a paradox in movements which aim at the establishment of a more human, more fraternal order of society. Of course, reasons of security against police spies and traitors may contribute to these practices. On the other hand, there are cases where kinship and personal friendship contributed to the solidarity of members of a revolutionary movement. The nature of a movement may also change as a new generation grows into it. By political generation we mean those persons of approximately equal chronological age who experienced the same crucial social and political events during the formative period of their lives, that is, roughly in their late teens and early twenties. The implication is that these experiences, among other factors, contributed to the formation of their social and political outlook on life (Weltanschauung). Although this concept presents serious difficulties to "operational definition," it is a most useful tool in understanding the origin and development and internal tensions and changes of social movements. [See GENERATIONS.] Many attempts have been made to explain the origin and growth of social movements by relying only on psychic factors. These attempts have in many instances led to an overemphasis on nonrational motivations, even on pathological traits of founders and leaders as well as of followers, and have neglected the situational conditions out of which movements arise. While many early leaders of radical movements have been maladjusted personalities and while frustrated individuals are often attracted by such movements, mass adherence is gained by rational reaction to economic or other social conditions which are felt to be intolerable. Likewise, the popular notion that movements are generated by outside agitators has to be discarded; outsiders certainly accelerate the spread of a movement, but unless the local people are "ready," the agitator is likely to preach to deaf ears—or even be forced to leave. Organization and structure Although social movements are by definition not corporate bodies, as action groups they need some kind of organization that enables certain persons to act as authorized spokesmen and representa-
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tives. This can take the form of committees, clubs, labor unions, or political parties. The relationship to political parties is of special importance. It may be of various patterns: (a) the party may serve as the political spearhead of the movement; (£>) the movement may be represented in or exert influence through several parties; (c) a party may contain several movements—or parts of them; or (d) the movement rejects connection with any political party. Examples of (a) are the British Labour party in its earlier days and the National Socialist German Workers party (NSDAP) in relation to the broader Nazi movement; of (£>) the labor movement in West Germany represented in the Social Democratic party (SPD) and the Christian Democratic Union (CDU); of (c) the major American parties; of (d) the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) in the United States and anarchosyndicalism in general. Political party by definition presupposes the existence of at least one other party within the body politic. However, the ideological parties which developed out of the communist and fascist movements (and some independence movements) aim at a monopoly of power and do not recognize other parties as legitimate adversaries or competitors. Since they are selective in membership and demand absolute obedience from all members, they are properly referred to as "political orders" rather than parties. These totalitarian parties aim at controlling all phases of social life through numerous affiliated organizations. [See PARTIES, POLITICAL.] Affiliated organizations were, however, first devised by the social-democratic parties of continental Europe and later used by nearly all other parties. The primary purpose of creating women's, children's, and youth organizations together with educational, athletic, and a variety of other specialinterest associations was not total control, as in the totalitarian orders, but recruiting new members and winning elections. Yet before 1933 a German socialist's life "from the cradle to the grave" could be spent in party-affiliated organizations. This indicates that for its adherents the party was more than a political institution; it was part of the broader movement in which the masses of industrial workers had found a "home"—a community of mind and spirit. The establishment of paramilitary forces by the fascist and National Socialist movements induced their opponents to follow their example. The relations between the various organized groups constituting a movement are not always free of tension. For example, in some European countries the affiliation of trade unions with a po-
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litical party has at times aroused opposition among those workers who did not share the political (socialistic) orientation of their union. The growth of affiliated organizations together with universal franchise created problems of administration which could no longer be solved solely by reliance on part-time volunteer workers. Thus, large staffs of paid full-time workers developed in parties as well as in labor unions and other organizations within the major movements. While increasing the efficiency of the interior workings, the unwanted consequence of professionalization of the staff is often a decline in militancy. Persons who are responsible for a large organization on which people depend, will, in a critical situation, be reluctant to risk not only the lives of members but also the very existence of the organization and, eventually, its achievements. (This explains in part why the German socialist trade union leadership failed to resist Hitler in the spring of 1933.) The power structure of social movements varies from diffusion of power to concentration of authority at the top level. Supreme authority may be institutional, that is, derived from the office to which a person has been promoted by legal procedure, or it may be charismatic, that is, derived from the belief in the extraordinary, quasi-superhuman powers of a particular person who, in turn, is motivated by the belief in his singular gifts, his call to leadership, and his political "mission." The founders and early leaders of social movements often come close to this type. However, genuine charisma is not to be confused with popularity of a leader. In the fascist and Nazi movements, charismatic leadership was accepted as a principle and developed with all its characteristics and consequences, while Marxism-Leninism rejects the "cult of personality." This difference, obscured by labeling communist and fascist regimes as "dictatorships," is important for an adequate understanding of the structure of the two kinds of movements and of the resulting regimes. In particular, the problem of succession, which is critical in the case of charismatic leadership, is much less serious in the communist parties and regimes. [See CHARISMA; LEADERSHIP; TOTALITARIANISM.] Strategy and tactics In politics, the distinction between strategy and tactics cannot be so sharply drawn as in the theory of war, but it is nevertheless important. In societies where freedom of opinion is granted, it is usually over tactics rather than strategy that a social movement will get into conflict with the government, especially if members of the social
movement engage in "direct action" (for example, sabotage, general strike, boycott, "sit-in," terror and violence) or in serious preparations for a coup d'etat. Schisms in a social movement occur more frequently about tactics (for example, over the question of reform or revolution) than about strategy, although the more serious splits are usually those over long-range strategy (for example, the Stalinist-Trotskyite controversy). For the outsider, it is often difficult to decide whether a change in the policy of a movement is due to a change in final objectives or merely a tactical maneuver (this has been a major problem in dealing with communism ). Direct action, essentially undemocratic because it denies the opponent the chance to discuss the issue, is often resorted to when legitimate political action fails. In extreme situations the movement will culminate in a violent revolution. The tactics and strategy of a social movement are interdependent with its ideology and its form of organization; for example, a movement aiming at revolution needs a more authoritarian organization than a movement believing in gradual reform. The choice of tactics as well as of forms of organization is in part dependent on the political system within which the movement operates and in part on the size of the movement and its influence within the political system. Therefore, the tactics of a social movement may change as it grows— they may become less revolutionary as the movement gains in influence, or they may become more aggressive as the chances of success increase. Most social movements operate in public because publicity gives influence and increases adherence. However, secrecy is resorted to in situations where the rights of association, of assembly, and of freedom of opinion are denied or where members of a particular movement are subject to special prohibitive legislation and to persecution. The labor movement in its early phases was largely forced to secrecy. The consequence was—as it has been in similar cases—the splitting up of the larger movement into many more or less conspiratorial sectlike groups. In political as in military action and in business, success comes to the innovator. The rise to power and the foreign-policy achievements of the Fascists and Nazis were, in part, due to the fact that they did not play according to the rules, while their antagonists at home and abroad expected them to. The same may be said, with modifications, of the communist movement: frequent tactical changes tend to confuse the adversaries. Mao Tse-tung succeeded because he deviated from orthodox Leninist strategy and tactics.
SOCIAL MOVEMENTS: Types and Functions Radical revolutionary and counterrevolutionary movements are capable of violating the "rules of the game" because their members do not regard their opponents as part of the political community; they conceive of all politics in terms of friend-foe relations, where no holds are barred. This explains the use of terror before and after the seizure of power and the paradox that men who intend to create a better world for man are capable of sacrificing millions of human beings in the process. Class and ethnic movements Two kinds of social movements have been of historical importance in recent times: class movements and movements of ethnic groups. Examples of class movements are those of the middle class versus the nobility, peasants versus landlords, workers against employers, farmers against middlemen, petty bourgeoisie against big business, and, more vaguely speaking, the poor against the rich. The supporting classes are typically those which, while gaining in economic significance and general socioeconomic achievements, feel economically exploited and politically suppressed. Some movements, particularly countermovements and protest movements, originate among members of classes which are declining in socioeconomic significance. Thus, the European labor movement started among craftsmen who resented the loss of economic independence and among skilled industrial workers who represented the economic and intellectual elite of the proletariat. A distinction should be made between peasant movements and farmers' movements. The former occur in societies where land is the property of ruling classes, who are not necessarily engaged in agriculture but who draw rent or other income in cash, or in kind, or in services from the peasants. The typical peasant movement aims at abolition of these obligations and the return of the land to its alleged or real original owners. Where peasants and landlords belong to different ethnic groups, for example, in some Latin American and in many colonial countries, the conflict is particularly sharp. By way of contrast, modern farmers' movements occur typically among commercial farmers, especially in one-crop areas, where a high degree of economic insecurity exists. Unless there is a broad class of tenant farmers, the land question does not arise; the issues are mainly prices, interest rates, and taxes, and the main "targets" are the merchants, creditors, and the government. Farmers' movements as a rule do not develop elaborate ideologies but raise concrete demands;
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in this respect they come close to being mere protest movements. However, if their grievances are not alleviated, even modern farmers become susceptible to radical ideological movements (for example, German farmers during the rise of Nazism, French farmers and Poujadism). Peasant movements are likely to resort to violence. Their ideology, if one exists, may at the same time be traditionalistic and restorative. However, it is precisely in traditional areas of peasant unrest that contemporary communism has gained widespread support, especially in southern Europe and Latin America. To say that a movement is supported by a given class does not mean that every member of the movement belongs to that particular class or that every member of the class belongs to the movement. These correlations are never perfect. Some movements are recruited mainly from uprooted or alienated members of certain classes (for example, most of the early Nazis, including Hitler, were declasse lower-middle-class people). The founders, the leaders, and the framers of the belief system in class movements are often alienated members of another class. Of particular importance in this respect is the role of the intelligentsia in furnishing leaders of revolutionary movements. Having no firm roots in their society, these men and women are susceptible to ideological beliefs which promise them a society in which their kind would find a satisfactory status. The term "ethnic-group movement" is used to designate a variety of phenomena. The most important are (1) the movements for political independence of national minorities within the old empire states in Europe; (2) the independence movements of natives in colonial countries of Asia and Africa; (3) the movements for national unity—for example, in Germany and Italy in the nineteenth century and the Pan-Arabic movement in the twentieth century; (4) the movements of nationalities for civic and cultural equality within ethnically heterogeneous states (the Flemings in Belgium) and for superiority (the Finns in Finland). As a rule these movements are led and supported primarily by the cultural, economic, and, in some cases, military elites who have vital interests in the attainment of the objectives. The leaders of present-day independence movements in colonial countries are, with few exceptions, intellectuals and professional people, "marginal men" who have been subjected to Western culture and education. Their followers come by no "means only or even in the first place from the lower social strata but, on the contrary and to a
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large extent, from the recently developed classes of white-collar workers, civil servants, and military officers, as well as from the small and mediumsized businessmen, who find themselves handicapped by Western colonial rule and economic dominance. Additional support comes in many areas from miners, peasants, plantation laborers, and other categories of workers who have been in contact with Western systems of economy and government and who have been uprooted from the community of village or tribe. Even among primitive islanders in the south Pacific, movements have developed which are partly directed toward freedom from white dominance and are partly nourished by chiliastic expectations of enrichment through civilization, for example, the "cargo" cults [see NATIVISM AND REVIVALISM]. The Negro movement in the United States does not correspond to the typical pattern of ethnicgroup movements because most Negroes do not aspire to political independence or cultural autonomy but to integration into American society and culture. Since the American Negroes are neither a national minority nor a social class, their movement does not aim at fundamental changes in the social order but rather at the realization of constitutional rights. However, achievement of the Negroes' aims would change not only local and regional customs but also certain parts of the existing legal order. The movement, therefore, is regarded by friend and foe as a "revolution." In its aims and tactics the Negro movement resembles the women's (suffragettes') movement. Like the early labor movement, it has received significant aid and leadership from outsiders. In many instances one can observe that certain areas or regions of a country are the breeding places and strongholds of a variety of successive movements of a more or less radical character. This is true especially of rural areas where onecrop commercial farming in combination with other factors (for example, irregular rainfall) results in a high degree of economic insecurity among farmers or where a high degree of underemployment exists among agricultural workers. The depletion of forests and other secondary sources of farmers' income or their appropriation by outsiders also tends to create areas of social unrest (for example, northern Sweden and the cutover areas in the Great Lakes states and the Deep South of the United States). In some of these areas social movements tend to find support among all social strata because all are affected; in other instances the property owners will lean toward one, the propertyless classes toward another, "extreme"
movement. Persistent centers of unrest and rebellion also occur in certain sections of metropolitan cities. The study of these phenomena constitutes the "ecology" of social movements. The functions of social movements The great changes in the social order of the world which have occurred during the past two centuries are very largely the direct or indirect result of social movements. For even if a movement did not achieve all its goals, parts of its program were accepted and incorporated into the everchanging social order. This has been the main, or "manifest," function of these movements. As a movement grows, certain secondary, or "latent," functions may be observed: (1) the movement contributes to the formation of public opinion by providing for the discussion of social and political problems and through the eventual incorporation of some of the movement's ideas into dominant public opinion; and (2) it provides training of leaders who become part of the political elite and may eventually rise to the positions of leading statesmen. The socialist labor movements and the national independence movements have produced a large proportion of the present-day heads of government throughout the world. Labor leaders and leaders of other movements, even if they do not hold public office, also belong to the political elite in many countries, a fact which in some instances is recognized by heads of government, who may extend appropriate honors to such leaders or consult with them on political issues. When these two functions have reached the point where the movement, after having changed or modified the social order, becomes part of it, the life cycle of the movement comes to an end— it has become an institution. This is true in the first place when a revolutionary movement is victorious, as in the Soviet Union and mainland China, where communism can no longer be called a movement but has been transformed into a regime. It is true also of the socialist labor movement and some farmers' movements in the economically advanced countries of northern and western Europe and in the United States and the British Dominions, while the countries where urgent social and economic reforms have been delayed or prevented are the present-day seedbeds of revolutionary socialistic and communistic movements. RUDOLF HEBERLE BIBLIOGRAPHY
The bibliography for this article is combined with the bibliography of the article that follows.
SOCIAL MOVEMENTS: The Study ii THE STUDY OF SOCIAL MOVEMENTS
The analysis of social movements has constituted an amorphous and diffuse field of sociological research and theory that is sometimes conceived as part of the general field of collective behavior and sometimes as part of the study of voluntary associations. In this article, however, social movements are defined as socially shared demands for change in some aspect of the social order. This definition emphasizes the part played by social movements in the development of social change—an aspect that no student of them has been able to ignore. At various times and under various conditions the legitimacy of a society's customary institutions or values may come under attack from different parts of the society. New arrangements are advocated; but the demand for change meets with resistance, and old habits and arrangements are maintained. Thus it comes about that groups face each other in some form of conflict. A social movement, therefore, is not the unnoticed accretion of many unrecognized changes. Rather, it has the character of an explicit and conscious indictment of whole or part of the social order, together with a conscious demand for change. It also has an ideological component—that is, a set of ideas which specify discontents, prescribe solutions, and justify change. Directed and undirected movements There is a mixture of formal association and informal, diffuse behavior encompassed in the concept of a movement. A significant distinction can be made between "directed" and "undirected" movements or segments of a movement. This distinction is similar to that made by Herbert Blumer (1946) between "general" and "specific" movements. The directed segment of a movement is characterized by organized and structured groups with specific programs, a formal leadership structure, definitive ideology, and stated objectives. Its followers are members of an organization as well as partisans to a belief. The undirected phase of a movement is characterized by the reshaping of perspectives, norms, and values which occurs in the interaction of persons apart from a specific associational context. The followers are partisans but need not be members of any association which advocates the change being studied. For example, the directed segment of the feminist movement consisted of associations that sought to achieve goals of equal rights for women in various areas of American life; in its undirected
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phase, the movement consisted of a subtle and unreported redefinition of the rights of women (in which both men and women played a part). In Ibsen's A Doll's House, Nora was a partisan participant in such a movement, without any affiliation to a feminist organization. These two sides to the phenomenon of social movements often lead to diverse emphases among sociological studies. Those which focus on diffuse and undirected action are likely to emphasize those characteristics of movements which are akin to other phenomena of collective behavior and which are often such a striking feature of the early formation of movements and associations. Crowd and mob action, generalized unrest, and the structure of personal commitment loom large in many studies of the genesis of social movements (for example, see Cantril 1941). This type of study attempts to analyze the ways in which discontent is made specific in new definitions of rights and privileges, indictments of the existing order, and, 'finally, in programs for new institutional structures. For example, in George Rude's (1959) analysis of public opinion among working-class Parisians on the eve of the French Revolution, the origin of their discontent is traced to anger at rising bread prices; only through a series of riots, statements, and counteraction did the protests of the workers become defined in an ideology of revolution. Most studies of social movements have been researches into the career of an association, from stages of collective excitement to the activities of formally organized groups. In such studies the movement is identified with the goals and actions of organizations (see, for instance, Holtzman 1964; Lipset 1950; Webb & Webb 1894). Public policy and private persuasion Directed and undirected segments of social movements affect each other. As movements arise, grow, and become recognized, they tend to generate public controversy. Uncommitted portions of the society may be polarized into partisan support on the one hand and resistant opposition on the other. The Negro civil rights movement in the United States during the 1960s transformed a relatively quiescent white population into resisters and supporters of civil rights. Even where organizational membership is lacking, people take positions and adjust their behavior in response to new expectations. Issues emerge where consensus had existed (Hyman & Sheatsley 1964). Social movements may be distinguished according to whether they seek to achieve their goals
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through public policy or private persuasion. A movement may work toward the goal of effective change in the rules of government or other institutions. For example, the Townsend movement sought to gain legislation affecting the welfare of the aged (Holtzman 1964), and the early Methodist sects hoped to reform the Anglican church (Niebuhr 1929). Other movements have concentrated on persuading individuals to a line of action and have ignored the use of public institutions as agents of control. Religious movements are more likely to seek converts than new legislation. Even in the American temperance movement the early stages were marked by efforts to persuade individuals to abstain (Gusfield 1963, chapter 2). Belief and politicization. Although movements may, and often do, utilize both public policy and personal persuasion, it is important to recognize that they may shift their emphasis from one to the other. The ways in which movements become politicized is thus one of the important problems in the field. The religious expression of discontent may substitute for political expression (Lipset 1960, pp. 97-100). The contrary trend is also found; for instance, studies of millennial movements in Melanesia show that religious movements are capable of turning into nationalistic political rebellions (Worsley 1957). The concept of a "social movement" is thus suggestive of people who, on the one hand, are in process of rejecting existing social values and arrangements, while, on the other, they are both striving to make converts to their way of seeing things and dealing with the resistance that their activities inevitably call forth. But while the movement is often carried by associations, it is not wholly an associational phenomenon. It is in the system of generalized beliefs, and in partisan commitment to such beliefs, that we find the characterizing features of a social movement. The unity and coherence of a movement, in its various stages and forms, depend on the similarity of the adherents' beliefs about the legitimacy of a new way of behaving, of their rejection of what has been, and of their demand for adoption of the new. This is what distinguishes a social movement from other types of special interest associations and from those hostile outbreaks and expressive protests which do not develop into explicit demands for a changed society. Social change and the social base A major hypothesis in the field is that social movements are the products of social change. Circumstances arise in which long established relationships are no longer appropriate; the result of
this strain between old and new is discontent. One of the sociologist's tasks in analyzing a movement is to identify the particular social changes that have generated discontent and to specify their relation to the movement. For example, a movement toward establishing the language of Norwegian rural areas as the official Norwegian language was shown to be a product of the cultural chauvinism with which peasants responded to the influx of urban institutions and personnel in the provinces (Munch 1954). Social bases of movements. Just as change is seldom uniform throughout a society, so too a social movement usually appeals to some segments of a society but not to all. In other words, it has a location in the social structure. For example, the Indian independence movement had a special attraction for Indian professionals who were, as a class, blocked from full professional attainments, although they had been given a British education (Misra 1961); the Poujadist movement in France attracted small businessmen and farmers (Lipset 1960, pp. 154-165); Methodism in its early stages had a singular appeal to the British working class (Niebuhr 1929, chapter 2). A specific movement, of course, may appeal to more than one social or cultural segment. Analyses of movements often involve consideration of the problems posed by efforts to unite diverse social groups in one association. Thus, it has been shown that the American socialist movement was constantly troubled by the diversities arising from a rural, native American radicalism and the radicalism of urban, often immigrant, workers. Native American radicalism was both Populist and antiindustrial, whereas urban, working-class radicalism has sought to extend industrialization, provided that it is regulated (Bell 1952). Relative deprivation and social change. There is no simple unilinear relation between the hardships experienced by a group and the development of movements toward change. The principle of relative deprivation, however, goes some way toward explaining the relation between perceived deprivation (or threat of deprivation) and the expression and organization of discontent. Research has shown that the absolute situation of a group is not as instrumental in generating and focusing discontent as is the perception of what is just, expected, and possible. Revolutions may, and often have, occurred just after revolutionary segments of the population have improved their economic position. Because of a group's rising expectations, the new situation may be experienced as even more distressing than the previous one. In some cases, fear of the loss of new gains may instill and in-
SOCIAL MOVEMENTS: The Study crease unrest. Furthermore, the loss of past status may be influential in generating movements which aim at restoration. This was one factor in the development of British trade unionism; early industrialization threatened to erase the line between craft and unskilled labor and thus threatened the position of the skilled worker (Webb & Webb 1894, chapter 1). Structural aspects. Potential supporters of social movements must also be assessed from the standpoint of their skills and opportunities for the development of collective action. Social change may generate movements through structural changes, such as an increase in the capacities of groups for the tasks of communication, leadership, and organization. For example, colonial education acts as a training ground as well as a seedbed of discontent for anticolonial nationalist movements (McCully 1940). Ideological content. The beliefs of any social movement reflect the unique situation of the social segments that make up its base. Taken together, these beliefs amount to a paradigm of experience by which the ideology and program of the movement appear right, just, and proper only to a particular segment of society, because it alone has undergone the experiences which could make the ideology seem both relevant and valid. This is true even though the ideology may be set forth in quite general terms. For instance, the movement for an amendment to the United States constitution prohibiting discrimination on the basis of sex has been stated in the rhetoric of equal rights for all women. This amendment has been sponsored, however, by upper-class women who would benefit from equality with husbands in property rights and has been opposed by working-class women who achieve special protection and welfare benefits under laws which limit their hours of work (Green & Melnick 1950). In this case, the rhetoric of "equal rights" has a different meaning for working women than for upper-class women. Career of social movements In analyzing the relation of social movements to social changes, the sociologist, as we have seen, characteristically attempts to identify the social segments uniquely supportive and "open" to the movement, the social changes that produce both the discontent of these segments and their means for expressing it, and the relation between the ideological content of the movement and the specific social situations of the adherents and the partisans. Collective behavior to collective action. However, discontent alone is far from being a sufficient cause of either protest activity or of more explicit
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demands for change. "A movement has to be constructed and has to carve out a career in what is practically always an opposed, resistant, or at least indifferent world" (Blumer 1957, p. 147). The generalized unrest must become focused on specific parts of the social order. New beliefs must be created and adherents gained. People must be activated to champion a cause through the mobilization of their energies in a concerted manner. As this occurs, the movement often takes on new characteristics. Whether or not an initial discontent will become organized into a movement is itself problematic. Hobsbawm (1959) has studied a number of what he calls "archaic" movements, in which diffuse protest did not coalesce into organized demands for change. Thus, Sicilian social banditry of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries both expressed and was nourished by the diffuse protest of the Sicilian peasantry against the rich and the "outsider." However, such protest never achieved an ideological content or an organization through which to focus on a program of demands, tactics, and strategy. The appearance of agitation in the midst of unrest aids in the development of new perspectives toward the social order and gives meaning to the social changes producing discontent. The development of leadership, organized actions, and ideology mobilizes discontent into an organized movement and frequently generates new characteristics owing to an initial outburst of energy. Thus, initial outbreaks of violence may well go beyond the attack on a specific and defined part of the status quo. In the Hungarian revolt of 1956, the urban riots were not revolutionary in origin, but they took on a revolutionary character as the movement favoring a new regime took on a more organized and permanent structure (Gross 1958, pp. 319-321). Without the appearance of a more permanent structure, such outbreaks are likely to be isolated events, as were the Harlem riots of 1943. Contingencies. Events which are unanticipated and beyond the control or influence of the movement often change the constellation of resisting and supporting forces and thus strongly affect its career. For example, the inflation of the 1920s and early 1930s contributed heavily to the development of the Nazi party by increasing the economic discontent of lower-middle-class groups whose emotional ties to nationalism had already made them likely adherents of National Socialism (Fromm 1941; Lipset 1960, pp. 138-152). Structural conduciveness. The structure of society affects the origin and form of movements in a variety of ways. This phenomenon has been re-
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ferred to by Smelser (1962) as "structural conduciveness." Dissent may be condoned in one society but so prohibited in another that the movement must take the form of a secret society. For instance, according to the theory of Selig Perlman (1928), the unique features of the American labor movement were a product of the openness of the American class structure. In Europe, Perlman argued, workers could not find solutions to their economic discontent by moving out of the working class; by contrast, in the United States the workers' prospects for upward mobility were fairly good. It followed from this that American workers were less class-oriented and political in their union aims than European workers and more oriented to immediate issues of wages and conditions of work. The study of social movements The literature of sociological theory contains a plethora of typologies of movements. Such typologies are often developed in terms of concern for the development of a theory of movements. However, few research studies of specific social movements have been concerned with the development of a theoretical framework; most studies have been motivated by the researcher's interest in particular social issues and philosophies. The field of social movements can be profitably described in terms of the historical, political, and ideological concerns which have been the focus of research since the mid-1920s. The problem of commitment. The rise of communist parties in most Western nations as well as the development of German fascism has deeply affected students of political and social movements. Even the study of medieval and other millenarian religious movements has been actuated, in recent years, by a parallel interest in the mass political movements of the twentieth century (see MILLENARisM; see also Cohn 1957). Sociological and social psychological studies of extremist movements have attempted to identify the sources of the organizational and ideological loyalty of adherents and partisans. "'Fanaticism, enthusiasm, fervent hope, hatred and intolerance" often mark the advocate of revolutionary change (Hoffer 1951, p. xi). The fierceness with which the communists, fascists, and other "extremists" of left or right adhere to their positions of power is contrasted with the conditions of democratic politics. Rudolf Heberle (1951, chapter 15) has even drawn an analogy between totalitarian parties and religious disciplines by referring to the former as "political orders." Interpersonal relationships. A major hypothesis in the study of the commitment process is that
loyalty to a movement is fostered through the network of interpersonal relationships built up in the process of participation. The initiate to a movement develops personal ties which support and enforce doctrinal commitments. The socially alienated person finds in a movement a solution to his problems of "belonging." Studies of defection among British, French, and American communists reveal that their behavior was influenced by dual and conflicting interpersonal loyalties, such as that of family or work team on the one hand and the party on the other (Almond 1954; Crossman 1949). In some movements, totalistic commitment is fostered by a round of life so controlled by organizational activities as to preclude interpersonal relations outside of the movement; where this happens, defection is tantamount to a complete reorientation of one's life. In more pluralistic movements, adherence to the movement does not cut the member loose from other competing and even conflicting roles. Psychological studies. The discussion of the roots of "extremist" adherence to communism and fascism has also been approached from the standpoint of psychology. The research of T. W. Adorno and his associates (1950) into "authoritarian personality" has led to a widely held view that a constellation of masochistic and sadistic personality traits predispose some persons toward antidemocratic, intolerant, and authority-centered political positions and movements. In criticizing this thesis, Edward Shils (1954) has shown that right-wing, xenophobic, and nativist organizations in the United States have demonstrated a great inability to subordinate to united leadership and that diverse personality types are needed within the same organizational structure if a movement is to be effective. Similar psychological syndromes of intolerance for ambiguity among the partisans of both the extreme right and the extreme left in England and the United States have been discussed by Milton Rokeach (1960). Toch (1965) has developed a useful framework for analyzing the psychological motivations and consequences involved in membership commitment for a wide range of diverse movements. Bureaucratization of social movements The development of at least a semipermanent organizational structure is often essential to the realization of the goals of a movement. However, such organization often sets in motion influences which defeat the ideals that gave birth to it. This is the paradox: that which is a needed means to an end is often the means which frustrates attainment of the end.
SOCIAL MOVEMENTS: The Study Disillusionment with the possibility of achieving ideals through organized movements has provided the motivation for many studies of social movements in the twentieth century. A major source of concern for this "blurring of mission" has stemmed from religious ideology: How can the ideals enunciated in religious thought and prophetic criticism be translated into effective institutional structures? Ernst Troeltsch (1912) was the first to pose this problem with some degree of theoretical precision when he made a distinction between sect and church. He maintained that as a sect develops into a more regularized and coordinated church organization (with a definitive membership, a trained clergy, and specified dogma and ritual), the initial mission and emotional drive of sectarianism is diffused in the accommodative perspective and rational character of the church. There is some confirmation of this hypothesis in various studies of American and British religious movements; new sects develop among the "disinherited" poor who find that the established churches no longer meet their needs. Such "churches of the disinherited" in turn display tendencies to become more conservative or "churchlike" (Niebuhr 1929; Pope 1942; Harrison 1959). Routinization and commitment. Contemporary sociologists have often pointed out how the idealism and missionary zeal of spontaneous emotional commitment to a cause tends to be "corrupted" by the tendency of all organizations to become "endsin-themselves." Max Weber's doctrine (1922) of the routinization of charisma is the leading theoretical statement of this view. A number of studies of political and other movements have been inspired by similar concerns. Robert Michels' study (1911) of the German Social Democratic party in the early twentieth century has been the most influential work in this vein; his doctrine of the iron law of oligarchy emphasized the inevitability of a conservatizing leadership in organized movements. Several recent studies have also shown the tendency of movements to remain in existence beyond the realization of their original aims (Messinger 1955; Sills 1957). Implicit in this type of study is a "natural history" theory of organizations: they simply grow old like any natural organism. But more recent research suggests that the problem of institutionalization is far more complex. There would appear to be no inherent tendency either in organizations or in the sources of organizational commitment to move toward accommodation and compromise and thus to weaken the ardor of membership and the definiteness of the program. Not all unions lose their factional characteristics (Lipset et al. 1956);
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not all sects become churchlike as they become regularized and stable (Wilson 1961); not all organized movements become accommodative (Gusfield 1955). The fate of a movement is dependent upon many factors, among which are the contingencies which affect resistance, as well as those which change the character of the initial adherents. Mass movements and mass society The fact that highly industrialized societies seem to be especially likely to produce mass movements of various kinds has led scholars to inquire if there is not something in the very nature of mass society that encourages this tendency. Indeed, the conception of modern society as "mass society" has been one of the leading themes in the study of contemporary social movements. Exponents of this point of view hold that in contemporary industrial society traditional groups and institutions have lost control over the loyalties and behavior of the individual. The weakening of primary group attachments and the impersonal character of large-scale organization alienate men from the sources through which a democratic political process is mediated to citizens and achieves its legitimacy. Such alienated people are easily mobilized around charismatic leaders and symbolic goals. Thus, Hannah Arendt's study (1951) of European totalitarian movements traces their development to the destruction of a class structure in which group affiliation had governed behavior and attitude. From the standpoint of this type of theory, we would expect leaders and adherents of contemporary antidemocratic movements to be drawn from segments of the population that are not well integrated into social units. William Kornhauser (1959, chapters 9-12) has shown this to be the case for a wide range of European and American totalitarian movements: not only are marginal members of society less "open" to control by elites, organizations, and primary groups, but they are also most apt to be attracted by the camaraderie of association and by the antiestablishment ideology so often found in radical movements of the right or left. Other writers have introduced views and findings critical of mass-society theory. They maintain that organized and integrated groups are essential to effective movements and that new perspectives toward the social order are developed in the supportive context of primary and secondary group organization. According to this view, contemporary society has not shattered group structure, nor are the conditions of modern industrial society as "alienative" as the theorists of mass society have maintained. Socially alienated people, it is argued,
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lack the essential social organization within which shared meanings could emerge in the first place; contemporary social movements can be expected to arise, as have other movements, among discrete social bases. For instance, S. M. Lipset has shown that the preponderance of support for German fascism, French Poujadism, and American McCarthyism has come from the lower middle classes in response to the threats of industrial development; similarly, the preponderance of communist support in Europe has come from the working classes and not from marginal, socially alienated persons (Lipset 1960, chapter 5). The wake of colonialism Since the rise of various new nations in areas that were formerly European colonies, sociologists have recognized a need for the study of anticolonial nationalism and of the impact of social change on political and social movements in nonindustrialized societies. The study of nativism and revivalism under colonial domination has shown a tendency for such movements to be the precursors of movements for national independence. In general, analysis of nationalist movements has shown their relation to changes in traditional society which are caused by colonial policy (Van der Kroef 1955). The revolt of Negroes against white domination constitutes a special chapter in the history of social movements since World War n. While racial tensions have been part of nationalist movements in many African and Asian countries, such movements have been most striking in South Africa and the United States, where their goal has been greater equality rather than national separation. However, the general movement of developing nations toward independence has had an impact even in the United States, as indicated by the appearance of a Negro nationalist movement (Essien-Udom 1962). JOSEPH R. GUSFIELD [Directly related are the entries COLLECTIVE BEHAVIOR; MlLLENARISM; NATIVISM AND REVIVALISM; ORGANIZATIONS, article on ORGANIZATIONAL GOALS; SECTS AND CULTS. Other relevant material may be found in MASS SOCIETY; TOTALITARIANISM; VOLUNTARY ASSOCIATIONS; and in the biographies of MICHELS; PERLMAN; TROELTSCH.] BIBLIOGRAPHY Systematic treatments of social movements can be found in Blumer 1957; Heberle 1951; Smelser 1962. The interested reader should also consult the bibliography to COLLECTIVE BEHAVIOR for various attempts at the comprehensive treatment of social movements. Much additional material on individual movements will be found in the
bibliographies of the articles cited in the text, especially MlLLENARISM;
NATIVISM AND REVIVALISM.
For
religious
movements, see RELIGIOUS ORGANIZATION; SECTS AND CULTS. %
ADORNO, T. W. et al. 1950 The Authoritarian Personality. American Jewish Committee, Social Studies Series, No. 3. New York: Harper. ALLARDT, ERIC 1964 Social Sources of Finnish Communism: Traditional and Emerging Radicalism. International Journal of Comparative Sociology 5:49-72. ALMOND, GABRIEL A. 1954 The Appeals of Communism. Princeton Univ. Press. •ARENDT, HANNAH (1951) 1958 The Origins of Totalitarianism. 2d enl. ed. New York: Meridian. BELL. DANIEL 1952 The Background and Development of Marxian Socialism in the United States. Volume 1, pages 213-405 in Donald D. Egbert and Stow Persons (editors), Socialism and American Life. Princeton Univ. Press. BENDIX, REINHARD; and LIPSET, SEYMOUR M. 1957 Political Sociology: An Essay and Bibliography. Current Sociology 6:79-169. BLUMER, HERBERT (1946) 1951 Collective Behavior. Pages 167-222 in Alfred M. Lee (editor), New Outline of the Principles of Sociology. 2d ed., rev. New York: Barnes & Noble. BLUMER, HERBERT 1957 Collective Behavior. Pages 127158 in Joseph B. Gittler (editor), Review of Sociology: Analysis of a Decade. New York: Wiley. BORKENAU, FRANZ (1938) 1962 WorZd Communism: A History of the Communist International. Ann Arbor: Univ. of Michigan Press. -> First published as The Communist International. BOTCHER, HANS 1922 Zur revolutiondren Gewerhschaftsbewegung in Amerika, Deutschland und England. Jena (Germany): Fischer. BRINTON, CRANE (1938) 1952 The Anatomy of Revolution. Rev. ed. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall. -> A paperback edition was published in 1957 by Vintage. CANTRIL, HADLEY 1941 The Psychology of Social Movements. New York: Wiley. ' CANTRIL, HADLEY 1958. The Politics of Despair. New York: Basic Books. COHN, NORMAN (1957) 1961 The Pursuit of the Millennium: Revolutionary Messianism in Medieval and Reformation Europe and Its Bearing on Modern Totalitarian Movements. 2d ed. New York: Harper. GROSSMAN, RICHARD (editor) (1949) 1959 The God That Failed. New York: Harper. -> A paperback edition was published in 1963. EGBERT, DONALD D.; and PERSONS, STOW (editors) 1952 Socialism and American Life. 2 vols. Princeton Studies in American Civilization, No. 4. Princeton Univ. Press. EMERSON, RUPERT 1960 From Empire to Nation: The Rise to Self-assertion of Asian and African Peoples. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Univ. Press. -» A paperback edition was published in 1962 by Beacon. ESSIEN-UDOM, ESSIEN UoosEN 1962 Black Nationalism: A Search for an Identity in America. Univ. of Chicago Press. FROMM, ERICH (1941) 1960 Escape From Freedom. New York: Holt. GALENSON, WALTER (editor) 1952 Comparative Labor Movements. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall. •GREEN, ARNOLD; and MELNICK, ELEANOR 1950 What Has Happened to the Feminist Movement? Pages 277-
SOCIAL MOVEMENTS: The Study 302 in Alvin W. Gouldner (editor), Studies in Leadership. New York: Harper. GRIEWANK, KARL 1955 Der neuzeitliche Revolutionsbegriff: Entstehung und Entwicklung. Weimar (Germany): Bohlaus Nachfolger. GROSS, FELIKS (editor) 1948 European Ideologies: A Survey of 20th Century Political Ideas. New York: Philosophical Library. GROSS, FELIKS 1958 The Seizure of Political Power in a Century of Revolutions. New York: Philosophical Library. *GULICK, CHARLES A.; OCKERT, ROY A.; and WALLACE, R. J. 1955 History and Theories of Working-class Movements: A Select Bibliography. Berkeley: Univ. of California, Bureau of Business and Economic Research and Institute of Industrial Relations. GUSFIELD, JOSEPH R. 1955 Social Structure and Moral Reform: A Study of the Woman's Christian Temperance Union. American Journal of Sociology 61:221232. GUSFIELD, JOSEPH R. 1962 Mass Society and Extremist Politics. American Sociological Review 27:19-30. GUSFIELD, JOSEPH R. 1963 Symbolic Crusade: Status Politics and the American Temperance Movement. Urbana: Univ. of Illinois Press. HARRISON, PAUL M. 1959 Authority and Power in the Free Church Tradition: A Social Case Study of the American Baptist Convention. Princeton Univ. Press. «»HEBERLE, RUDOLF 1951 Social Movements: An Introduction to Political Sociology. New York: Appleton. -> Includes a comprehensive bibliography of earlier works. HEBERLE, RUDOLF 1963 Landbevolkerung und Nationalsozialismus: Eine soziologische Untersuchung der politischen Willensbildung in Schleswig-Holstein 1918 bis 1932. Schriftenreihe der Vierteljahrshefte fur Zeitgeschichte, No. 6. Stuttgart (Germany): Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt. HOB SB AWM, ERIC (1959)1963 Primitive Rebels: Studies in Archaic Forms of Social Movement in the 19th and 20th Centuries. 2d ed. New York: Praeger. ^HOFFER, ERIC 1951 The True Believer: Thoughts on the Nature of Mass Movements. New York: Harper. -> A paperback edition was published in 1958 by New American Library. HOFFMANN, STANLEY 1956 Le mouvement poujade. Paris: Colin. HOLTZMAN, ABRAHAM 1964 The Townsend Movement: A Political Study. New York: Bookman Associates. HYMAN, HERBERT H.; and SHEATSLEY, PAUL B. 1964 Attitudes Toward Desegregation. Scientific American 211, July: 16-23. . XORNHAUSER, WILLIAM 1959 The Politics of Mass Society. Glencoe, III.: Free Press. LANDAUER, CARL 1959 European Socialism: A History of Ideas and Movements From the Industrial Revolution to Hitler's Seizure of Power. 2 vols. Berkeley: Univ. of California Press. -* Volume 1: From the Industrial Revolution to the First World War and Its Aftermath. Volume 2: The Socialist Struggle Against Capitalism and Totalitarianism. LIPSET, SEYMOUR M. 1950 Agrarian Socialism; the Cooperative Commonwealth Federation in Saskatchewan: A Study in Political Sociology. Berkeley and Los Angeles: Univ. of California Press. LIPSET, SEYMOUR M. 1960 Political Man: The Social Bases of Politics. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday.
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LIPSET, SEYMOUR M.; TROW, MARTIN A.; and COLEMAN, JAMES S. 1956 Union Democracy: The Internal Politics of the International Typographical Union. Glencoe, 111.: Free Press. -» A paperback edition was published in 1962 by Doubleday. MCCULLY, BRUCE T. 1940 English Education and the Origins of Indian Nationalism. New York: Columbia Univ. Press. MANNHEIM, KARL (1929-1931) 1954 Ideology and Utopia: An Introduction to the Sociology of Knowledge. New York: Harcourt; London: Routledge. -> A paperback edition was published in 1955 by Harcourt. Part 1 was written for this volume. Parts 2-4 are a translation of Ideologie und Utopie (1929); Part 5 is a translation of the article "Wissenssoziologie" (1931). MESSINGER, SHELDON L. 1955 Organizational Transformation: A Case Study of a Declining Social Movement. American Sociological Review 20:3-10. *MICHELS, ROBERT (1911) 1959 Political Parties: A Sociological Study of the Oligarchical Tendencies of Modern Democracy. New York: Dover. H» First published as Zur Soziologie des Parteiwesens in der modernen Demokratie. A paperback edition was published in 1962 by Collier. MISRA, BANKEY B. 1961 The Indian Middle Classes: Their Growth in Modern Times. London and New York: Oxford Univ. Press. MUHLMANN, WILHELM E. (editor) (1961) 1964 Chiliasmus und Nativismus: Studien zur Psychologie, Soziologie und historischen Kasuistik der Umsturzbewegungen. 2d ed. Berlin: Reimer. ,-MUNCH, PETER A. 1954 The Peasant Movement in Norway: A Study in Class and Culture. British Journal of Sociology 5:63-77. NEUMANN, SIGMUND (1942) 1965 Permanent Revolution: Totalitarianism in the Age of International Civil War. 2d ed. New York: Praeger. -^ First published as Permanent Revolution: The Total State in a World at War. . NTEBUHR, H. RICHARD (1929) 1954 The Social Sources of Denominationalism. Hamden, Conn.: Shoe String Press. -» A paperback edition was published in 1957 by World. PERLMAN, SELIG (1928) 1949 A Theory of the Labor Movement. New York: Kelley. POPE, LISTON 1942 Millhands and Preachers: A Study of Gastonia. New Haven: Yale Univ. Press; New York: Oxford Univ. Press. ROKEACH, MILTON 1960 The Open and Closed Mind: Investigations Into the Nature of Belief Systems and Personality Systems. New York: Basic Books. RUDE, GEORGE (1959) 1960 The Crowd in the French Revolution. Rev. ed. Oxford: Clarendon. SHANNON, FRED A. 1957 American Farmers' Movements. Princeton, N.J.: Van Nostrand. •SHILS, EDWARD A. 1954 Authoritarianism: "Right" and "Left." Pages 24-49 in Richard Christie and Marie Jahoda (editors), Studies in the Scope and Method of The Authoritarian Personality. Glencoe, 111.: Free Press. SHILS, EDWARD 1960 The Intellectuals in the Political Development of the New States. World Politics 12: 329-368. SILLS, DAVID L. 1957 The Volunteers: Means and Ends in a National Organization. Glencoe, 111.: Free Press. SMELSER, NEIL J. (1962)1963 Theory of Collective Behavior. New York: Free Press.
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SOMBART, WERNER (1896)1919 Sozialismus und soziale Bewegung. 8th ed. Jena (Germany): Fischer. -> A translation of the 6th German edition was published in 1909 as Socialism and the Social Movement. STEIN, LORENZ VON (1850) 1964 The History of the Social Movement in France: 1789-1850. Introduced, edited, and translated by Kaethe Mengelberg. Totowa, N.J.: Bedminster Press. -> First published in German. TOCH, HANS 1965 The Social Psychology of Social Movements. Indianapolis, Ind.: Bobbs-Merrill. •••» TROELTSCH, ERNST (1912) 1931 The Social Teaching of the Christian Churches. 2 vols. New York: Macmillan. -> First published as Die Soziallehren der Christlichen Kirchen und G^uppen. A paperback edition was published in 1960 by Harper. First published as De I'education d'un homme sauvage . . . . JANIS, IRVING L.; and KING, BERT T. 1954 The Influence of Role Playing on Opinion Change. Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology 49:211-218. JONES, EDWARD E. 1964 Ingratiation: A Social Psychological Analysis. New York: Appleton. KELLEY, HAROLD H.; and SHAPIRO, MARTIN M. 1954 An Experiment on Conformity to Group Norms Where Conformity is Detrimental to Group Achievement. American Sociological Review 19:667-677. KELLEY, HAROLD H.; and WOODRUFF, CHRISTINE L. 1956 Members' Reaction to Apparent Group Approval of a Counternorm Communication. Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology 52:67-74. KELLEY, HAROLD H. et al. 1962 The Development of Cooperation in the "Minimal Social Situation." Psychological Monographs 76, no. 19. KRECH, DAVID; CRUTCHFIELD, RICHARD S.; and BELLACHEY, EGERTON L. (1948) 1962 Individual in Society: A Textbook of Social Psychology. New York: McGrawHill. -» First published as Theory and Problems of Social Psychology, by Krech and Crutchfield. LEVENTHAL, H.; and KAFES, P. N. 1963 The Effectiveness of Fear Arousing Movies in Motivating Preventive Health Measures. New York State Journal of Medicine 63:867-874. LEWIN, KURT (1947) 1958 Group Decision and Social Change. Pages 197-211 in Society for the Psychological Study of Social Issues, Readings in Social Psychology. 3d ed. New York: Holt. LINDZEY, GARDNER (editor) (1954) 1959 Handbook of Social Psychology. 2 vols. Cambridge, Mass.: AddisonWesley. -» Volume 1: Theory and Method. Volume 2: Special Fields and Applications. McGuiRE, WILLIAM J. 1964 Inducing Resistance to Persuasion: Some Contemporary Approaches. Volume 1, pages 191-229 in Advances in Experimental Social Psychology. Edited by Leonard Berkowitz. New York: Academic Press. MERTON, ROBERT K.; and KITT, ALICE S. 1950 Contributions to the Theory of Reference Group Behavior. Pages 40-105 in Robert K. Merton and Paul F. Lazarsfeld (editors), Continuities in Social Research: Studies in the Scope and Method of The American Soldier. Glencoe, 111.: Free Press. MILLER, NORMAN; and CAMPBELL, DONALD T. 1959 Recency and Primacy in Persuasion as a Function of the Timing of Speeches and Measurements. Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology 59:1-9. MILLS, JUDSON 1958 Changes in Moral Attitudes Following Temptation. Journal of Personality 26:517531. NEWCOMB, THEODORE M. (1943) 1957 Personality and Social Change: Attitude Formation in a Student Community. New York: Dryden.
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NEWCOMB, THEODORE M. 1963 Persistence and Regression of Changed Attitudes: Long-range Studies. Journal of Social Issues 19, no. 4:3-14. NEWCOMB, THEODORE M.; TURNER, RALPH H.; and CONVERSE, PHILIP E. 1965 Social Psychology: The Study of Human Interaction. New York: Holt. PROSHANSKY, HAROLD; and SEIDENBERG, BERNARD (editors) 1965 Basic Studies in Social Psychology. New York: Holt. RAZRAN, GREGORY 1940 Conditioned Response Changes in Rating and Appraising Sociopolitical Slogans. Psychological Bulletin 37:481 only. SAMELSON, FRANZ 1957 Conforming Behavior Under Two Conditions of Conflict in the Cognitive Field. Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology 55:181— 187. SCHACHTER, STANLEY 1951 Deviation, Rejection, and Communication. Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology 46:190-207. SCHACHTER, STANLEY 1959 The Psychology of Affiliation: Experimental Studies of the Sources of Gregariousness. Stanford Studies in Psychology, No. 1. Stanford Univ. Press. SECORD, PAUL F.; and BACKMAN, CARL W. 1964 Social Psychology. New York: McGraw-Hill. SHERIF, MUZAFER 1935 A Study of Some Social Factors in Perception. Archives of Psychology 27, no. 187. SIDOWSKI, JOSEPH B.; WYCKOFF, L. BENJAMIN; and TABORY, LEON 1956 The Influence of Reinforcement and Punishment in a Minimal Social Situation. Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology 52:115— 119. SMITH, M. BREWSTER; BRUNER, JEROME S.; and WHITE, R. W. 1956 Opinions and Personality. New York: Wiley. STAATS, ARTHUR W.; and STAATS, CAROLYN K. 1958 Attitudes Established by Classical Conditioning. Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology 57:37-40. STEINER, IVAN D.; and FISHBEIN, MARTIN (editors) 1965 Current Studies in Social Psychology. New York: Holt. WALSTER, ELAINE; and FESTINGER, LEON 1962 The Effectiveness of "Overheard" Persuasive Communications. Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology 65:395-402. WEISS, WALTER 1957 Opinion Congruence With a Negative Source on One Issue As a Factor Influencing Agreement on Another Issue. Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology 54:180-166.
SOCIAL ROLE See under ROLE.
SOCIAL SCIENCE FICTION The creation of imaginary worlds for the purpose of exploring the potential development of society represents one of the oldest traditions in literature. The classic list begins with Plato's Republic and includes Bacon's New Atlantis, More's Utopia, Campanella's City of the Sun, Swift's Gulliver's Travels, and Butler's Erewhon. Bellamy's Looking Backward (1888) ushers in the modern era. Subsequent examples are Zamiatin's We (1925),
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Huxley's Btave New World (1932), and Orwell's 1984 (1949), which have been described as "black Utopias," or "dystopias." A common characteristic of this literature is an emphasis on the social landscape rather than the individual protagonist, on the articulation of artificial models of society rather than interaction between fictional counterparts of people in real life, on projections from reality rather than variations of actual social situations. Articles elsewhere in this encyclopedia deal with other aspects of this genre. [See LITERATURE, article on POLITICAL FICTION; UTOPIANISM.] This article focuses on a more recent variant of the genre: the novels, novelettes, and short stories that have proliferated since World War ii and which can be grouped under the rubric "social science fiction." Scope The term "social science fiction" can usefully be employed to identify narratives that extrapolate from current social science concepts in order to predict or speculate about the future shape of society. This new genre of fiction stems from two literary traditions: the modern Utopias and dystopias mentioned above and classic science fiction, whose early practitioners were Jules Verne and H. G. Wells and which continues to proliferate. In fact, social science fiction is a contemporary development of classic science fiction: it involves the same imaginative leaps into the future, it uses some of the same stylized conventions (time travel, interplanetary explorations), props (spaceships, robots), and characters (aliens, androids), but only as incidental backdrops to a new category of concerns. It differs from classic science fiction in two important respects. First, whereas classic science fiction is concerned with predicting the shape of the physical world through imagining the favorable and adverse potentialities of the physical sciences, the organizing concept of social science fiction is speculation about the future of society through projecting potential innovations in the knowledge and techniques of the social sciences. Second, social science fiction takes the technological innovations of the future more or less for granted and focuses on their social consequences. Social science fiction is occasionally produced by known writers of more orthodox literature; the bulk of it, however, comes from the pens of immensely prolific writers who specialize in science fiction. The knowledge of the social sciences displayed by most of these writers is understandably naive and superficial since it is obviously gleaned secondhand from popularizations of the various disciplines.
Much of social science fiction is so inept in style and plot that it hardly merits consideration as literature, even according to the most tolerant critical standards. Much of it is published between the same lurid magazine and paperback covers as is classic science fiction and is announced in the same penny-dreadful blurbs. As a result, it has shared the same fate of being dismissed by literary critics as a minor, cultist offshoot of traditional literature, of interest only to an intellectually limited circle of aficionados. To the social scientist, however, the emergence of a vast body of literature on the periphery of his academic vision, which incorporates—however inaccurately—his specialized perspectives, is of more than casual interest. Significance Social science fiction is noteworthy on several levels: first, as a cultural phenomenon; second, as a medium of social commentary and criticism; and third (perhaps parenthetically) as a pleasant counterpoint to some of the more pedantic complacencies of the social scientists. As a cultural phenomenon, social science fiction provides evidence of the growing impact of the social sciences on popular culture, just as the older genre of classic science fiction documented popular interest in the successive stages of the technological revolution of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Between Jules Verne's 1870 submarine and the predictions of nuclear fission and space travel of the 1930s and 1940s, radical changes took place in the perspectives and expectations of the average man—changes that were in part wrought by innovations in the physical sciences. With the closing of the gap between imaginative pseudo science and almost prosaic reality, with the advent of atomic power plants, satellite traffic jams, and space walks, popular interest in the fictionalized potential of the physical sciences has become jaded. There is mounting evidence that it is being superseded by a fascination with the potential applications of the social sciences. The form this interest takes and the purposes to which writers of social science fiction bend—or distend—current knowledge in these fields constitute the subject matter of this article. That social science fiction is an instrument for social commentary and criticism, ranging in tone from earnest concern to outrageous parody, from macabre warnings to comic alarums, is inherent in its subject matter. Three major themes are discernible both in the plethora of wildly imaginative worlds of science fiction writers and in the works of more sober and orthodox writers. The first of these centers on the social aftermath of some
SOCIAL SCIENCE FICTION cosmic disaster. These "post-doomsday" stories begin with the collapse of civilization, the agent of destruction being a nuclear war or a natural catastrophe, such as a drastic change in the weather, an epidemic, or a massive ecological imbalance. The events of the cataclysm provide dramatic interest, but they are incidental to the main theme of the story, which deals with the disintegration of social institutions, the breakdown of mechanisms for social control, and the emergence of new leaders, a new social system, and a new culture. The second major theme consists of serious extrapolations from (or gleeful projections ad absurdum of) trends in contemporary society. These range from uncontrolled population growth or total depletion of crucial natural resources to such cultural aberrations as mass drug addiction or psychosis, the rampant development of fads, ultraconformism, or the total commercialization of society. The third major theme is the exploration of the effects upon individuals of life in unbalanced or truncated social systems. Novels in this category are concerned with what might be if one element in society (such as teen-agers) should seize control, or one particular technique of planning be allowed to dominate (as in the total planning for consumption), or one particular set of values (such as hedonism) becomes an enforced mode of behavior. The settings are skewed models of society built by writers with an experimental bent whose point of departure is the question "What if. . .?" and whose concern is with the processes and techniques of social manipulation. Social science fiction is essentially moralistic. The writers of post-doomsday stories ask what happens to ethical and cultural values in the midst of social disorganization and chaos. Writers with a satirical purpose fabricate unidimensional societies top-heavy with absurd exaggerations of today's mores or aspirations for the express purpose of watching them topple. The creators of Orwellian nightmares exalt the struggle for individual freedom against the enslavement of will and intellect and sound warnings of the stultifying effects of rigid one-class or multiclass stratification systems. Like the insistent hum of the diabolical machines of classic science fiction, there is in social science fiction an undercurrent of distrust of the potentialities of unbridled social scientism—of the potential menace of techniques of indoctrination, planned acculturation, population control, and the use of statistical averages as required behavioral norms. The "mad scientist" has been replaced by a species of more plausible villain: the smooth organization
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man, the amoral advertising tycoon, the cynical censor, the bland but dictatorial bureaucrat, the voracious practitioner of motivation research, the psychiatrist-in-power and his squad of ubiquitous "medicops," the amiable psychologist in charge of "preconditioning." The death ray has largely been superseded by the giant computer, and even the spying telescreen used by Big Brother in 1984 has been supplanted by the television wall, the controlled alternative to "real" social participation— "the family" as it is called in Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451 (1953). Much of this distrust of the role and the technology of the social sciences, it is well to remember, is simply the result of inadequate understanding, as well as a reflection of a fundamentally populist bias against all science. Types of social science fiction With this outline of the scope and significance of social science fiction in mind it is desirable to turn to some specific examples. Some represent "purer" specimens than others in the sense that they draw upon one discipline, or one topic in a discipline (such as learning theory), for the setting and action. Others, particularly the panoramic novels, chronicle the death and rebirth of civilization. The pseudo histories of the future—such as Walter M. Miller's A Canticle for Leibowitz (1959), which describes a feudal theocratic society that is the preserver of civilization between atomic holocausts—borrow concepts from all the social sciences. Nevertheless, for present purposes it is possible to group the examples selected according to one or another disciplinary label. Since many of the works of social science fiction described are concerned with the subject matter of political science, that is, with the nature and locus of power and authority in society, and since several examples of political science fiction are described elsewhere, political science is not included as a separate category [see LITERATURE, article on POLITICAL FICTION]. Anthropology. The popularization of anthropology and its subdisciplines has provided new insights and perspectives to an entire generation of writers of fiction. In particular, the concept of culture as a holistic approach to the varieties of human life has had an impact perhaps comparable to that of psychoanalysis. A reflection of this impact is found in those novels and short stories whose main preoccupation is with the components of culture; with the dynamics of culture change under stress; with the rise and development of new cultures on earth under primitive conditions following some trau-
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matic event which destroys contemporary civilization; or with the description of different cultures in other worlds in some distant future and the attendant problems of communication and contact between cultures. Earth Abides by George R. Stewart (1949) shows evidence of having been inspired by the concepts of cultural anthropology. Two themes permeate this story, which concerns a handful of survivors in a world that has been nearly depopulated by a mutated virus. First, the founder and leader of "The Tribe"—as the group is called—fails in his attempt to teach the children who are born into the group the values and customs of the old civilization. Each society must develop its own cultural symbols, Stewart seems to say, if it is to survive and grow. A miner's hammer owned by the leader, for example, becomes the focal symbol of his authority. Second, the emergence of the new culture illustrates the conflict between the individual and society. When a straggler appears on the scene and it is discovered that he has a venereal disease, the elders vote to hang him in order that The Tribe may survive. After the execution, the leader reflects on the meaning of what has been done: This was an end, and this was also a beginning. It was the end of those twenty-one years when they had lived, now he thought, . . . as it might have been in some old Garden of Eden. . . . In the past, there had been only a little group of people, scarcely more than an overgrown family. In the future, there would be the State. . . . And now the first act of the State, its originating function, had been to bring death. (1949, p. 247 in the Ace edition) Chad Oliver, an anthropologist, understandably provides the most knowledgeable and integral examples of fiction which incorporates and elaborates upon culture concepts. In the novel Shadows in the Sun (1954a), Oliver extrapolates both from the methodology of cultural anthropology and the concept of culture patterns. The narrative concerns the experiences of the hero (a cultural anthropologist) as he analyzes the data obtained from a community study of an American small town. The data do not produce the expected correlations; there seems to be something strange about the culture which was not detectable during the field work. Gradually the explanation emerges: the town is populated solely by aliens from another planet who have slowly bought up the property and settled there in order to have a base camp on earth. They have successfully posed as earthlings until culturepattern analysis unmasks them. Oliver's short story "Rite of Passage" (1954Z?)
also focuses on the concept of cultural configuration. Three surviviors of the crew of an interplanetary exploration expedition, one of them the official anthropologist, land on a planet of another solar system. They are welcomed by the inhabitants, whose culture is apparently primitive and pastoral. After a brief sojourn among the Nern, during which the anthropologist is taught the language by the village shaman, the other crew members are eager to introduce the basic elements of technology. The anthropologist, however, deduces correctly that the Nern have eschewed technology by deliberate option, by "editing" their culture "down to essentials," i.e., the goal of "survival with maximum integration, cohesiveness of function, individual fulfillment, constant challenge, and peace" ([1954fo] 1966, p. 282). They are "masters of the culture process," experts at introducing their own ideas in other cultures at a distance through psychology, hypnosis, and adroit appeals, at turning enemies into allies, and destroying them. Linguistics is also a favored theme in anthropological fiction, particularly those aspects that deal with the relationship of language to culture. What fascinates writers of social science fiction is the thesis that language can control behavior. Perhaps the best example is in 1984, a novel which is primarily political science fiction. Newspeak, the language devised by the totalitarian regime described by Orwell, is one of the state's major instruments of thought control. Its purpose, as Orwell describes it in the appendix to the novel, is "not only to provide a medium of expression for the world-view and mental habits proper to the devotees of Ingsoc [English socialism], but to make all other modes of thought impossible" (1949, p. 246 in the 1961 edition ). Jack Vance's The Languages of Pao (1957) is another example of linguistic fiction. The story, set far in the future, centers on the thesis that language creates cultural values and thus can be deliberately used to create new social systems. The ruler of an "acquiescent" society on the planet Pao obtains technical-assistance experts from another planet to help him defend Pao against its enemies. The visiting superscientists are anthropologists and linguists, and they transform Pao into an aggressive caste society by creating and inculcating three separate languages: one for the military, with a syllabary "rich in effort-producing gutturals and hard vowels"; one for the industrialists and technicians, with an extravagantly complicated but logical grammar and "elaborate rules of accordance"; and one for the traders, with "emphatic
SOCIAL SCIENCE FICTION number-parsing, elaborate honorifics . . . to facilitate ambiguity, a syntax of reflection, reinforcement and alternation to emphasize the analogous interchange of human affairs" ([1957] 1958, p. 57). Another subdiscipline of anthropology—archeology—has provided inspiration for writers of the science fiction school. The reconstruction through archeological techniques of vanished civilizations on distant planets has introduced a new twist to the so-called space operas of an earlier period. The examples are numerous and endlessly fanciful. In fact, the physicist—biochemist Leo Szilard wrote a parody that seems aimed both at archeologists and archeological fiction. Entitled "Grand Central Terminal" (1952), it solemnly describes the efforts of "alien" archeologists from space to reconstruct the image of earth culture from the ruins of the station and its public facilities. Sociology. The pervasive influence of the concepts and terminology of sociology is reflected in works of social science fiction that explore new forms of social stratification or new mechanisms of social control or which are imaginative projections of such present-day social pathologies as overpopulation, drug addiction, organized crime, juvenile delinquency, and the manipulation of behavior through the mass media. Although a popular form of sociological science fiction is the dystopia, in the tradition of 1984, both the character of the menace and the objectives of the protest are different from those described by Orwell. The contemporary sociological version of the dystopia is concerned not with the problem of oligarchy but with the ultimate triumph of a mindless mass mentality. Two novels, The Thirtyfirst Floor by the Swedish writer Peter Wahloo (1964) and Fahrenheit 451 by the American Ray Bradbury, are cases in point. Both novels describe static, egalitarian societies of the future that are dominated by a mass culture, in which independent thought is stifled and conformity to the bland average in behavior is enforced. The values of these societies are expressed and promulgated by the homogenized mass media. Reduced to the lowest common denominator of emotional and intellectual appeal, the press and television eschew all controversy, offend no one, and level all aspirations to a moronic hedonism. The institutional means of control is censorship. In Wahloo's world the censorship is unofficial, unobtrusive, but nonetheless pervasive. Private enterprise and government are intertwined and opinion is controlled by a democratic combine of the press, the trade unions, and the political parties. A vast publishing
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concern shields the individual's peace of mind and security ([1964] 1967, p. 37) from all information about discontent (suicide, deviance, drunkenness) or negative frightening realities (crime, pollution, overcrowding). It is "the majority of people . . . [who] act as censors" (ibid., p. 175); society protects itself. In Bradbury's dystopia, censorship is overt: the agents of control are the firemen, whose assigned duty is not to put out fires but to destroy books, which are outlawed as incendiary threats to the mass mentality (451° F. is the temperature at which book paper is said to burst into flame). As the Firechief explains to the fireman hero Montag, who has begun to read clandestinely the books he is supposed to burn: "It didn't come from the Government down. There was no dictum, no declaration, no censorship to start with, no! Technology, mass exploitation, and minority pressure carried the trick" (1953, p. 53). But the social process became an ideology: We must all be alike. Not everyone born free and equal, as the Constitution says, but everyone made equal. . . . then all are happy. . . . Don't give them any slippery stuff like philosophy or sociology to tie things up with. That way lies melancholy. Any man who can take a TV wall apart and put it back together again . . . is happier than any man who tries-to sliderule, measure, and equate the universe. . . . (ibid., pp. 53, 56) True to form, both Wahloo and Bradbury exalt the rebel against the rationalized society. In The Thirty-first Floor a dissident editor, tricked with other intellectuals into collaboration with the "concern," threatens to blow up its headquarters. In Fahrenheit 451 Montag joins the underground— people living in the hills and backwaters who also burn books but memorize them first. Each person in fact is a book ("I am Plato's Republic" is an introduction). In this way the oral traditions of man's preliterate past enable civilization to survive until a nuclear holocaust, beginning as the book ends, destroys the centers of anti-intellectualism. In The 1 Oth Victim, a humorous novel about the future by Robert Sheckley (1965), another social process is described. In the twenty-first century, a society sick of war has finally evolved a functional substitute for aggression: the legalization of murder through the institution of the Hunt. The Hunt is described as an international contest, in which participation is voluntary. In all the capitals of the civilized world, giant computers randomly select pairs of antagonists who are licensed as "hunter" and "victim." Prize money is awarded to the victors; the hunters and victims alternate roles until one of them reaches the limit of ten kills. Intended for
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the control of aggression, the Hunt is also exploited by television advertisers who stage killings in settings appropriate for advertising their products. Among the examples of sociological fiction which extrapolate from the pathological tendencies afflicting modern urban society is Only Lovers Left Alive by Dave Wallis (1964), which envisions a world taken over by teen-age gangs. Once society is free of restraints and adult norms, lawlessness and disorganization become rampant. But eventually, from the struggle for survival among the depleted stockpiles of abandoned cities, there emerges responsible leadership, the division of labor, and a clan organization as a rudimentary form of government. In Psychedelic-40 by Louis Charbonneau (1965), the themes of mass drug addiction and organized crime are explored. A ruthless elite of superintellects, "The Syndicate," uses mind-expanding drugs to increase its extrasensory perceptions and hypnotic powers and to control the apathetic masses addicted to and controlled by diluted derivatives of hallucinogens. In Tomorrow and Tomorrow, a wildly fanciful novel by Hunt Collins (1956), drug addiction is institutionalized. No longer a compulsion, it is a socially denned legitimate need; indeed, it is both a symbol of status and a way of life. The theme of race relations, invariably used as a means of expressing enlightened sentiments about the equality of all men, is common in social science fiction. On other planets, in the distant future on earth, all men are—or should be— brothers. White Lotus by John Hersey (1965) is another post-doomsday novel which presupposes an altered course of history. Although the narrative begins ostensibly at some unspecified time in the twentieth century, it is described by the author as "a history that might have been, a tale of an old shoe on a new foot." In short it is a speculative allegory on the theme of race. Hersey imagines a world in which the Western powers are defeated in the "Yellow War" and the tables of history are reversed, the white race becoming subordinate to the superior civilization of its conquerors. Through the eyes of its heroine, caught in the slave raids of the Chinese conquerors, Hersey explores the feelings, perceptions, conflicts, and problems of a despised minority struggling for its rights. A final example of the uses of sociological concepts in social science fiction deserves notice, if for no other reason than that it represents, in the form of a parody, a warning about the preposterous consequences of overconfidence in the application of social science knowledge. "The Mother of Neces-
sity" by Chad Oliver (1955) is a short story that makes a satirical thrust at the potential uses and misuses of social planning. The United States in the twenty-first century is being run by a new breed of technician, the "social gadgeteer." As a historian of the time describing the process of transformation points out, "As long ago as the middle of the last century, a man named Riesman was already pointing out that our culture was becoming oriented toward the consumers; he called it 'otherdirection,'. . . and . . . the increasing dominance of peer groups" ([1955] 1962, pp. 251-252). Bored with the self-defeating products of the physical sciences, Americans turn to "really fundamental gadgets": social systems, invented by social scientists who by now know "what made sociocultural systems tick." The result is "a series of flexible, delimited social groups—about the size of the old counties—with variant social systems competing for prestige," with "a national service culture—a government—. . . [which] had colonies in each area" (ibid., p. 252). Eventually, however, bored again with eternal change and surfeited with sociocultural packages, the people experience a grassroots reaction and choose "by write-in-vote" a universal model of a static arcadian society. Economics. Two satires in the tradition of Huxley's Brave New World represent exaggerated projections of today's economic realities. The first one, a comic admonition of the ultimate consequences of superabundance, is "The Midas Plague" by Frederik Pohl (1951). In the fully automated (robotized) society of the future, ruled by the requirements of the "National Ration Board," it is the prime duty of every citizen to consume, until "through diligent consuming . . . you were promoted to the next higher class, and were allowed to consume less frantically" ([1951] 1963, p. 43). The hero, a mere "Grade Four," is overwhelmed with material goods, food, luxuries, services, including 11 analysts for his group therapy sessions ("four Freudians, two Reichians, two Jungians, a Gestalter, a shock therapist and the elderly and rather quiet Sullivanite") (ibid., p. 19). In despair, he sets his robots to work consuming secretly, is promoted to Grade Five, but is eventually unmasked and brought quaking before the Ration Board. He emerges a hero for his contribution to the problem of distribution—adjusting the robots' circuits, so that they desire and consume the goods they produce. The laws of supply and demand are repealed and the Ration Board liquidates itself. The second satire, The Space Merchants by Frederik Pohl and C. M. Kornbluth (1953), posits a world in which government and private enter-
SOCIAL SCIENCE FICTION prise are indistinguishable (senators represent large corporations rather than states). The society is policed by "Business Espionage," and it is rent by feuds between rival companies. Society is rigidly stratified into three classes—producers, executives, and the lowly consumers. Overpopulated and depleted of resources, it is a world in which "Science is always a step ahead of the failure of natural resources. . . ." (When oil runs low, technology develops the pedicab.) Advertising agencies are no longer engaged merely in selling the products of industry but in creating them and in reshaping mores to fit the requirements of commerce. This includes motivating people to colonize Venus to reduce the pressures on a creaking economy. Travel, incidentally, is on the spaceships David Ricardo and Vilfredo Pareto. Psychology. Writers of fiction have been fascinated by the manipulative potential of applied psychology. Just as writers of imaginative fiction of earlier generations, in particular Bulwer-Lytton in The Coming Race (1871) and W. Olaf Stapledon in Last and First Man (1930), exploited the potentialities of biology in creating fictional superbeings, contemporary writers in the same tradition have been attracted by psychological research in intelligence and conditioning. One illustration of the former concern with the potentialities of altering intelligence in the psychological laboratory is John Hersey's seriocomic satire The Child Buyer (1960). In the name of so-called progress and rationality, a mysterious firm called United Lymphomilloid buys exceptional children for the purpose of turning them into dehumanized thinking machines. "Specimens" are altered by stages ranging from conditioning through brainwashing to surgery that ties off the five senses. In isolation, without sensations or desires, the final product has an IQ of more than 1,000 and is trained to solve problems of fantastic complexity for the deity U. Lympho. Closer to reality—an extrapolation of the brainwashing techniques reputedly employed to indoctrinate American prisoners in the Korean War—is Richard Condon's The Manchurian Candidate (1959), which tells of the transformation of an American prisoner through conditioning by Chinese psychologists into a triggered mechanism for political assassination. The same theme appears in a short story by Hayden Howard, "Our Man in Peking" (1967), set in a future era of Mao in. Implicit in these three examples of psychological science fiction is a warning of the dangerous potentialities of human conditioning. For an optimistic appraisal, one must turn to B. F. Skinner's Utopian
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novel Walden Two (1948 ), which expatiates on the virtues of "behavioral engineering" as a means of achieving the perfect society. Frazier, the master planner of an experimental community and the mouthpiece for Skinner's theories, guides his visitors through a pastoral cooperative society-inmicrocosm where creativity flourishes and children are educated according to the most benevolent potentialities of conditioning. Their ethical training is designed to nurture self-control rather than obedience to authoritarian norms, to encourage tolerance of annoyances and deprivations as a means of counteracting the destructive effect of the emotions of failure and frustration, and to equip the individual to exploit his potentialities with maximum efficiency. Education stresses independent thinking and inquiry rather than traditional subjects. In Skinner's society the individual fulfills himself while at the same time working, free of the pressures of venal competition, for the benefit of the community. "Labor credits" rather than money are the official tender. Psychiatry. It was inevitable that Freudian psychiatry, which has for so long provided novelists, playwrights, and television scriptwriters with the stock figure of the priest-father-scientist, should spawn its own brand of science fiction. Three examples which extrapolate from the present state of psychiatry are of interest here. The first two, a novelette and a short story, look toward a future in which the psychiatrists are in control: they are the policemen of the psyche, the overwatchful, ever-present, and impersonal bureaucrats who enforce conformity. In Wyman Guin's "Beyond Bedlam" (1951), schizophrenia has become a way of life in the twenty-first century. With the discovery of new drugs which control emotions and facilitate "ego-shiftability" without conflict, schizophrenia is no longer considered a disease manifested by a split personality but rather an overendowment of personality that requires two identities to express its many viewpoints and talents. The omnipresent Medicorps sees to it that everybody takes the prescribed dose, which allows the "hyperalter," or prime ego, and the "hypoalter," or alternate ego, to share the same body, in shifts, without mutual awareness. Married couples and their children must "shift" at the same time, everyone leads a tensionfree double life, and aggression is eliminated; but communication outside and across the assigned shifts—between hyperalters and hypoalters in the same marriage—is rigidly tabooed. Death is meted out by the Medicorps to the errant half of the personality through electronic erasure. In "Happiness Squad," a novelette by Charles W. Runyon (1967),
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incipient madness is also controlled by precipitating a climax. In this case it is the P.A.L., or "Psychiatric Agency-Local," who sends the Medicops to arrest the deviant and administers "environmental therapy," which restores him to a tranquilized state of euphoric illusion that shields him from ugly reality. In a turnabout, "The Insane Ones," a story by J. G. Ballard (1962), envisions a more immediate future in which the psychiatrist is the hunted outcast instead of the hunter. A popular reaction against the uncontrolled commercial utilization of the techniques of mass persuasion, against "subliminal living," turns into an anti-intellectual rejection of all the psychological sciences and their pervasive influence in other areas, including overpermissive courts of law, and pseudo-enlightened penal reformers. An ultraconservative world government enacts the Mental Freedom Laws, which outlaw all forms of psychic control—from the market survey to psychiatry. Not only Freudian psychiatry but brain physiology has provided grist for the mill of the science fiction writer. The stories of disembodied brains kept alive, an old staple of science fiction, have been supplanted by stories which depart from present knowledge of brain physiology into hypothetical avenues of development. One such story is "Discontinuity" by Raymond F. Jones (1950), which deals with experiments carried out by a future research institute in "rebuilding" the brains of trauma victims. By advanced techniques of electroencephalography and by imprinting coded knowledge and experiences on the unused portion of the brain, the neurologists of the future attempt, but seem to fail, to re-create the mind. When the doctor who originated the process undergoes it himself, he discovers it to be a horrible "success," since he finds himself equipped with a superior, infinitely well-ordered and efficient brain but totally cut off from communication by aphasia. Fleeing capture and commitment to a mental institution, he seeks out his former subjects and finds they have a common language incomprehensible to the outside world. With their help he finally succeeds in re-establishing communication with his colleagues. Thus far there has been no social scientific research on social science fiction, although there has been some attention paid to classic science fiction. One intent of the brief survey in this article is to suggest that the genre might warrant systematic analysis (such as content analysis or readership studies), not only because the substantive content of social science fiction is a reflection of the spread-
ing influence of the social sciences but also because of its growth as a medium of popular culture. The sociologist Walter Hirsch, in a study of classic science fiction, cited a rough estimate of six million as the 1954 readership. Readers are typically either students or college graduates in their early thirties, engaged in technical, professional, or managerial occupations ([1958] 1962, p. 261). It should be noted that social science fiction appears regularly in a number of science fiction magazines and that it has also begun to appear in magazines of more general circulation. The best stories are reprinted in a constant stream of anthologies which, in both hardcover and paperback editions, are sold in bookstores in the United States, Great Britain, and other countries. Writers such as Kingsley Amis and Robert Conquest (see Amis I960; Amis & Conquest 1962; 1963) and Isaac Asimov (1962a; 19621?) have directed attention to the metamorphosis of classic science fiction into social science fiction and to its spreading influence and acceptance. Several works have been produced for television and made into films. Without placing undue stress on the intrinsic importance of social science fiction, it would seem desirable to study the ways in which the concepts of social science are distorted or misrepresented by a genre of literature that reaches a sizable public and provides one more indication of popular perceptions of the role of the social scientist in society. Another reason for undertaking research into this field is that social science fiction provides at least a footnote to what Daniel Bell terms "the sociology of the future." If the cities of the future, as they are described in social science fiction, are not the gleaming optimistic visions of earlier generations sanguine about the promises of the physical sciences but, rather, are grim megalopolies afflicted with social maladies worse than our own, and if the societies projected for tomorrow are perverse and pessimistic versions of today's reality, does this in any sense provide valid clues to popular expectations of the efficacy of social planning? If, on the other hand, the optimism reflected in nineteenthcentury Utopian literature finds significant echoes in today's social science fiction, then the sources and the premises of this optimism—whether they are rooted in naivete or in overconfidence in the social scientific management of human affairs— should also be examined. Both attitudes are of interest to social scientists, since they would appear to be in some small measure reflections of the apprehensions and aspirations of a self-conscious society. YOLE G. SILLS
SOCIAL SCIENCES BIBLIOGRAPHY SCIENCE FICTION CITED IN THE TEXT
ASIMOV, ISAAC (editor) 1962a Soviet Science Fiction. New York: Collier. ASIMOV, ISAAC (editor) 19621? More Soviet Science Fiction. New York: Collier. BALLARD, J. G. (1962) 1963 The Insane Ones. Pages 203-214 in 8th Annual Edition of the Year's Best S-F. Edited and with story prefaces by Judith Merrill. New York: Dell. BELLAMY, EDWARD (1888) 1959 Looking Backward: 2000-1887. New York: Harper. BRADBURY, RAY 1953 Fahrenheit 451. New York: Ballantine. BULWER-LYTTON, EDWARD G. (1871) 1928 The Coming Race. Oxford Univ. Press. CHARBONNEAU, Louis 1965 Psychedelic-40. New York: Bantam. COLLINS, HUNT 1956 Tomorrow and Tomorrow. New York: Pyramid. CONDON, RICHARD 1959 The Manchurian Candidate. New York: McGraw-Hill. GUIN, WYMAN (1951) 1964 Beyond Bedlam. Pages 1568 in Kingsley Amis and Robert Conquest (editors), Spectrum II: A Science Fiction Anthology. New York: Berkley. HERSEY, JOHN 1960 The Child Buyer. New York: Knopf. -> A paperback edition was published in 1961 by Bantam. HERSEY, JOHN 1965 White Lotus. New York: Knopf. HOWARD, HAYDEN 1967 Our Man in Peking. Galaxy Magazine 25, no. 3:8-58. HUXLEY, ALDOUS (1932) 1956 Brave New World. With a special foreword by the author. New York: Modern Library. JONES, RAYMOND F. (1950) 1966 Discontinuity. Pages 112-157 in Seven Come Infinity. Edited and with an introduction by Groff Conklin. Greenwich, Conn.: Fawcett. MILLER, WALTER M. JR. 1959 A Canticle for Leibowitz. Philadelphia: Lippincott. -» A paperback edition was published in 1961 by Bantam. OLIVER, CHAD 1954a Shadows in the Sun. New York: Ballantine. OLIVER, CHAD (1954b) 1966 Rite of Passage. Pages 239-288 in Seven Come Infinity. Edited and with an introduction by Groff Conklin. Greenwich, Conn.: Fawcett. OLIVER, CHAD (1955) 1962 The Mother of Necessity. Pages 241-256 in Great Science Fiction by Scientists. Edited with an introduction and story prefaces by Groff Conklin. New York: Collier. ORWELL, GEORGE 1949 1984. New York: Harcourt. -> A paperback edition was published in 1961 by New American Library. POHL, FREDERIK (1951) 1963 The Midas Plague. Pages 11-60 in Kingsley Amis and Robert Conquest (editors), Spectrum: A Science Fiction Anthology. New York: Berkley. POHL, FREDERIK; and KORNBLUTH, CYRIL M. 1953 The Space Merchants. New York: Ballantine. RUNYON, CHARLES W. 1967 Happiness Squad. Fantastic 16, no. 4:4-34. SHECKLEY, ROBERT 1965 The 10th Victim. New York: Ballantine, SKINNER, B. F. 1948 Walden Two. New York: Macmillan. -> A paperback edition was published in 1962.
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STAPLEDON, W. OLAF (1930)1931 Last and First Man: A Story of the Near and Far Future. 2d ed. London: Methuen. STEWART, GEORGE R. 1949 Earth Abides. New York: Random House. -» Published as a paperback in the same year by Ace. SZILARD, LEO (1952) 1962 Grand Central Terminal. Pages 291-296 in Great Science Fiction by Scientists. Edited with an introduction and story prefaces by Groff Conklin. New York: Collier. VANCE, JACK (1957) 1958 The Languages of Pao. New York: Ace. WAHLOO, PETER (1964) 1967 The Thirty-first Floor. New York: Knopf. -» First published in Swedish. WALLIS, DAVE 1964 Only Lovers Left Alive. New York: Dutton. ZAMIATIN, EVGENII I. (1925) 1959 We. New York: Dutton. WORKS ABOUT SCIENCE FICTION
AMIS, KINGSLEY 1960 New Maps of Hell: A Survey of Science Fiction. New York: Harcourt. ->• A paperback edition was published in the same year by Ballantine. AMIS, KINGSLEY; and CONQUEST, ROBERT 1962 Introduction. In Kingsley Amis and Robert Conquest (editors), Spectrum 11: A Science Fiction Anthology. New York: Harcourt. -» A paperback edition was published in 1964 by Berkley. AMIS, KINGSLEY; and CONQUEST, ROBERT 1963 Introduction. In Kingsley Amis and Robert Conquest (editors), Spectrum III: A Third Science Fiction Anthology. New York: Harcourt. -» A paperback edition was published in 1965 by Berkley. BRETNOR, REGINALD (editor) 1953 Modern Science Fiction: Its Meaning and Its Future. New York: CowardMcCann. DAVENPORT, BASIL 1955 Inquiry Into Science Fiction. New York: Longmans. DECAMP, L. SPRAGUE 1953 Science-fiction: The Writing of Imaginative Fiction. New York: Hermitage. FINER, S. E. 1954 A Profile of Science Fiction. Sociological Review New Series 2:239-255. FROMM, ERICH 1961 Afterword. Pages 257-267 in George Orwell, 1984. New York: New American Library. FRYE, NORTHROP 1965 Varieties of Literary Utopias. Daedalus 94:323-347. HIRSCH, WALTER (1958) 1962 The Image of the Scientist in Science Fiction: A Content Analysis. Pages 259-268 in Bernard Barber and Walter Hirsch (editors), The Sociology of Science. New York: Free Press. -» First published in Volume 63 of the American Journal of Sociology. MANUEL, FRANK E. 1965 Toward a Psychological History of Utopias. Dsedalus 94:293-322. MOSKOWITZ, SAM 1961 Seekers of Tomorrow: Masters of Modern Science Fiction. Cleveland and New York: World. MOSKOWITZ, SAM 1963 Explorers of the Infinite: Shapers of Science Fiction. Cleveland and New York: World. WYLIE, PHILIP 1953 Science Fiction and Sanity in an Age of Crisis. Pages 221-241 in Reginald Bretnor (editor), Modern Science Fiction: Its Meaning and Its Future. New York: Coward-McCann.
SOCIAL SCIENCES Material on the nature and problems of the social sciences, and their relationship to each other,
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Claude Levi-Strauss in France. The usages of other writers may be considered as modifications of one or other of these relatively extreme positions. AlISSUES IN THE SOCIAL SCIENCES; INFORMATION though nationality is relevant here, it is not deSTORAGE AND RETRIEVAL, particularly the articles cisive; there are British anthropologists whose On REFERENCE MATERIALS AND BOOKS and BIBLIposition is close to that of Levi-Strauss just as OGRAPHIC ISSUES IN THE BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES; there are Americans whose postulates are very SCIENCE. Problems of financial support are resimilar to those of Radcliffe-Brown, but "structurviewed in FOUNDATIONS; RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT, article on FINANCING SOCIAL RESEARCH. alist anthropology" has a different connotation in Material on the utilization of the social sciences France and in Britain, and the two meanings and of social scientists will be found in POLICY should not be confused. SCIENCES; PROFESSIONS; SOCIAL PROBLEMS; TEACHEarly uses of the concept. Although the fashING; UNIVERSITIES. For an overview of the coverionable use of the term is a post-1945 phenomenon, age in this encyclopedia of specific fields of study, the concept of "social structure" has a long history, see ANTHROPOLOGY; ECONOMICS; GEOGRAPHY; HISwhich may be briefly reviewed. In its original EngTORY; LAW; POLITICAL SCIENCE; PSYCHIATRY; PSY- lish meaning the word "structure" referred to buildCHOLOGY; SOCIOLOGY; STATISTICS. ing construction, but by the sixteenth century it was also being used to refer to the interrelations between the component parts of any whole. It was SOCIAL SECURITY in fact widely used in this sense in anatomical See AGING, article on ECONOMIC ASPECTS; MEDstudies, which were in active development at that ICAL CARE, article on ECONOMIC ASPECTS; UNEMperiod. Its further extension from anatomy to soPLOYMENT INSURANCE. For coverage of other govciology, though delayed for several centuries, was ernmental and private assistance, see the articles listed under SOCIAL WELFARE. a logical corollary of the very general use of organic analogies by political philosophers. Hobbes does not actually use the expression "social structure" in SOCIAL STATISTICS his Leviathan, but his conception of the state as See CENSUS; GOVERNMENT STATISTICS; SAMPLE an artificial organism, in which the function of SURVEYS; STATISTICS; VlTAL STATISTICS. each component institution and office holder is carefully distinguished, is one to which the term SOCIAL STATUS might very well have been applied even in the See STATUS, SOCIAL. seventeenth century. The explicit idea that the study of social structure should be an objective for SOCIAL STRATIFICATION sociological enquiry seems to be due to Spencer See STRATIFICATION, SOCIAL. (1858), who refers to "the Inductions of Sociology —general facts, structural and functional as gathered from a survey of societies and their changes." SOCIAL STRUCTURE The fact that Spencer brought the terms "structure" and "function" into direct association shows i. THE HISTORY OF THE CONCEPT Edmund R. Leach ii. SOCIAL STRUCTURAL ANALYSIS Stanley H. Udy, Jr. that he had an anatomical image in mind. This image appears again in the work of Durkheim, who was the source of Radcliffe-Brown's ideas. As early THE HISTORY OF THE CONCEPT as 1910 the latter gave lectures on Durkheimian In academic work the evaluation of concepts desociology under the title "Social Structure." Propends as much upon fashion as upon utility. In the vided that we accept the organic analogy, there is decade following World War 11 the concept of no difficulty about understanding what these "social structure" became extremely fashionable authors mean. Society is treated as a kind of living among social anthropologists and at times attained creature, the parts of which can be dissected and such extreme generality that it could be applied to distinguished. The "social structure," then, is the almost any ordered arrangement of social phemesh of mutual positions and interrelations in nomena. No useful purpose can be served by purterms of which the interdependence of the composuing all these ramifications of usage. Instead, this nent parts may be described; the "function" of any article examines the versions of the concept adoptpart is the way it operates so as to maintain the ed by George Murdock in America, A. R. Radcliffetotal system "in good health." But as soon as we Brown and various of his followers in Britain, and ask such questions as Is society really an "organwill be found in AREA STUDIES; BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES; CONFERENCES; ETHICS, article on ETHICAL
SOCIAL STRUCTURE: The History of the Concept ism"? Where do we discern the boundary between one society and the next? How do we distinguish between a society that is in good health and one that is in a pathological condition?, the extreme artificiality of the model becomes apparent. A less clearly denned strand of thought, which is free of organic overtones, is to be discerned in early Marxist literature. This is relevant for anthropology because of the close dependence of Engels (1884) upon Morgan (1877). Marx (1859) had written of the relations of production as constituting "the economic structure (Struktur*), the real basis (Basis} on which is erected a juridical and political superstructure (Vberbau) and to which correspond the forms (Formen) of the determined social conscience." Marx's metaphor here is plainly that of a building, not of an organism, but the notion of structure is not sharply distinguished from a variety of other concepts. Elsewhere there are references to political, juridical, religious, and philosophical systems—in contexts where the word "system" is indistinguishable from the above uses of "structure," "superstructure," and "form" (Lefebvre 1962). More recently, sociologists have added such variants as "infrastructure," "macrostructure," "microstructure" on an apparently arbitrary basis. Engels (1884) specifically refers to Morgan's "Stage of Savagery" as one in which "the social structure is based on ties of consanguinity," but we need not suppose that he had any very clearly defined concept in mind; such expressions as "social order," "social system," or "social form" would have served just as well. On the other hand, if one were to seek a candidate for the first anthropological work which may be considered a "study of social structure" (in any of the three senses under discussion), the most obvious candidate is certainly Morgan's work (1871), where the title word is Systems. The terms "system" and "structure" are not always synonymous in anthropological writing, but they are often indistinguishable. Murdock. The meaning which Murdock attaches to the expression "social structure" may be gathered from the items listed below. His principal concerns are the ethnographic facts and the taxonomic classification of societies on the basis of manifest, readily discernible characteristics. The Human Relations Area Files, located at Yale, which were originated by Murdock and which have remained his principal research tool, are an attempt to compare societies systematically by analyzing written source materials (of very varied quality and origin) according to a strictly uniform procedure. It is presupposed that the tribal names which appear in anthropological monographs correspond
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to fixed, readily distinguishable social entities (societies, tribes, cultures), which are fully described by listing the sum of their attributes. Murdock has drawn up a list of such possible attributes (Yale University 1938), and the immediate purpose of the Area Files (HRAF) analysis is to determine whether each listed attribute does or does not occur in the particular "society" under investigation. The taxonomy established by Murdock (1949) depends primarily on varieties of kinship organization. Insofar as Murdock uses an organic analogy, it is that of a dissected model laid out in a showcase; there is no attempt to envisage society as a living entity capable of growth. The taxonomy is based upon statistical correlation rather than functional analysis. The similarity of society A to society B is a factor measured by the number of instances in which the two societies share the same attributes as measured by the HRAF scheme of analysis. The ultimate objective is historical. In botany, Linnaeus' taxonomy, based on classification by attributes, was later adapted into a scheme for tracing lines of evolution on a phylogenetic basis. Murdock claimed that his social taxonomy could likewise lead to evolutionary inferences (1949, chapter 8 and appendix). Critics reject the view that social aggregates are closely comparable to botanical species and argue that Murdock's view of cultural attributes is misleading. Concepts such as "patrilineal descent," "matrilocal residence," and so forth do not refer to characteristics which are present or absent in any clear-cut way in any particular case. Murdock's use of statistics shows that he considers each of his listed cultural attributes intrinsically independent of any other. This is completely at variance with the assumptions of the functionalist anthropologists, who presuppose an intrinsic interdependence between the parts of the whole. Despite his use of the term "social structure" in book titles, Murdock's attitude has been ambivalent. He denigrates the concept as "static" and "sterile" (1955). He argues that emphasis on "structure" should be replaced by an emphasis on "process"; "The Linnaean system," he remarks, "only became something living after Darwin had discovered the process of variation and natural selection." Vogt (1960) makes a similar distinction, contrasting the "static" notion of structure (which he sees as a characteristic preoccupation of British anthropologists) with the "dynamic" notion of process favored by American scholars. It is not clear to the present writer how "social process" in Vogt's sense can differ from "history," and it appears that all those who write in this manner are in some meas-
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ure historical determinists who believe that "laws" of social change can be discovered if we only look hard enough. The assumption that synchronic studies are necessarily "static" while diachronic studies are "dynamic" is not borne out by the facts, and the identification of this antithesis with a contrast between structure and process is meaningful only if structure is restricted to the formal and static taxonomic sense adopted by Murdock. For example, Fortes' "Time and Social Structure: An Ash and Case Study" (1949) and Goody's collection of essays (1958), which derive from it, are all based on synchronic studies; they are all studies of social structure (in the British but not in Murdock's sense), but none of them is concerned with static phenomena. Radcliffe-Brown and the British school. Murdock's use of the word "structure" implies either a building analogy ("society is an assemblage of independent bricks") or a dead organic model dissected for demonstration. In contrast, RadcliffeBrown presumes that society may be compared to a living organism or a working mechanism. For Radcliffe-Brown, a society has a life of its own: it is not an object so much as a creature, so that the study of structure—that is, the interdependence of the component parts of the system—is indissolubly linked with the study of function, or how the component parts of the system "work" in relation to each other and to the whole. Radcliffe-Brown's explicit formulation of this view and its application to anthropological studies are post-1931 developments. Radcliffe-Brown's A Natural Science of Society (1957) shows how he was thinking about these matters in 1937, when it was written. Bateson (1936) illuminates directly the parting of the ways between the cultural analyses of Malinowski and Benedict, on the one hand, and the structural view favored by Radcliffe-Brown, on the other. The structuralism of Radcliffe-Brown was developed as a reaction to the lack of precision shown by Malinowski in his handling of the concept of culture. Warner's A Black Civilization (1937), written under Radcliffe-Brown's tutelage, is the earliest monograph which is unambiguously structuralist in style in this sense. Although Radcliffe-Brown's views of social function depend upon a holistic view of social structure, his British followers have not, in general, concerned themselves with the analysis of total working systems. Radcliffe-Brown himself was engaged in comparative work and theoretical generalization, and he encouraged his followers to concentrate on those aspects of a social system which display clear-cut formal characteristics and which
reflect to a minimal degree the interplay of personal rivalries. A characteristic sample of such studies may be found in Radcliffe-Brown (19241949), Fortes and Evans-Pritchard (1940), Radcliffe-Brown and Forde (1950), Evans-Pritchard (1940), and Fortes (1945). The authors concern themselves with only one formal aspect of society at a time—political structure, kinship structure, ritual organization, as the case may be. They display this system as a set of rules (jural obligations); they discuss the mutual interdependence of the rules and the fit between the society and its environment (ecology). But there is a tendency to play down any discrepancy between rule and practice. As a consequence of this, these studies show a marked neglect of economic organization. Firth and other British structuralists. In contrast, other British writers such as Raymond Firth and A. I. Richards took over functionalist ideas (in a rather different form) from Malinowski but rejected Radcliffe-Brown's thesis that a system of jural regularities—a formal "structure"—may always be discerned behind the day-to-day operations of social life that an anthropologist observes in the field. It is notable that Firth and Richards pay much greater attention to economics than do the British structuralists and have consistently stressed the importance of the individual acting in his own interest as against the importance of RadcliffeBrown's "social person," whose actions are fully defined by the rules which pertain to his social situation. A terminological detail calls for attention here. For Radcliffe-Brown and his followers the expression "social organization" is, in most cases, a synonym for "social structure," but Firth has for many years used "social organization" as a polar concept by which he seeks to emphasize the discrepancy between what actually happens and what a formal study of the rules might lead us to expect (see Firth 1964). The two viewpoints are complementary, and the tendency during the last few years has been for British writers to move closer to Firth's position (e.g., compare Forde 1950 with Forde 1963; both papers discuss the same aspects of Yako social structure, but the former, written directly under Radcliffe-Brown's influence, lays far more stress on the formal aspects of the rules as distinct from their practical application). Weberian theory. Over the years, British structuralism has been considerably modified by the assimilation of ideas derived from the sociology of Max Weber into a theoretical framework which was originally derived from Durkheim. Linton (1936) seems to have been the first anthropological author to make explicit use of the Weberian con-
SOCIAL STRUCTURE: The History of the Concept cepts of status and role, although it seems possible that Linton himself was influenced by RadcliffeBrown (then teaching in Chicago). A full-scale development of Weberian role theory as a tool of anthropological analysis is to be found in Nadel's The Theory of Social Structure (1957). Other Weberian concepts which have been extensively utilized by British structuralists are given below. (1) There is the notion of "ideal types," which has sometimes been assumed to depend upon a discrimination similar to that by which Firth distinguished social structure from social organization. (2) There is the threefold typology of "traditional," "bureaucratic," and "charismatic" leadership. Weber's notion of the charismatic leader has proved particularly rewarding in the analysis of such phenomena as Melanesian cargo-cults, and an extensive literature discusses how far the structure of government in African states of the "traditional" type may be compared with or distinguished from "rational bureaucracy" of the western European type as understood by Weber (e.g., Fallers 1956). (3) Weber's concept of Verband was translated into English as "corporate group," thus suggesting an exact equivalence with the concept of "corporation," which has a sophisticated technical significance in English jurisprudence and which became assimilated into the language of British anthropology through its treatment by Maine (1861). In a penetrating summary of a large body of writing, Fortes (1953) pointed out that a crucial characteristic of the British structuralist studies of the interplay of political organization and kinship was that they treated unilineal descent groups (clans, lineages) as corporate groups in Weber's sense and that on this account a substantial body of Weberian theory became directly applicable to anthropological analysis. It is notable that anthropological structuralism in the British sense has achieved its most convincing results when applied to social systems in which a segmentary structure of unilineal descent groups provides the over-all framework within which political activity takes place. In societies which lack unilineal descent groups and where, consequently, the Weberian categories are harder to apply, structuralist analysis has proved markedly less successful. As a by-product of this failure of theory, some writers have tried to prove that societies which lack unilineal descent groups are really just the same as those which possess them (Davenport 1959), the apparent object of this exercise being to show that Weberian categories can be applied with success even to "nonunilineal" descent groups. In the present writer's opinion this is a fallacy.
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The ensuing debate has led to a clearer definition of various standpoints. The following summarizes what seems to be the present position of Fortes: Society is to be viewed as a system of corporations in Maine's sense. The corporations may be perpetual groups (corporations aggregate) or perpetual offices (corporations sole). Each such corporation has associated with it a set of jural rules which specify inter alia what the corporation possesses (its "estate"), who the members are ("the principle of recruitment"), how leadership within the corporation is exercised, what the formal rights and obligations of the corporation as a whole are vis-a-vis other like corporations, what the formal rights and obligations of the subunits of a corporation are vis-a-vis one another. The ultimate units of any such segmentary system are individual office holders, but it is important to distinguish the office from the individual who holds it. An office is, in principle, immortal; the holder is not. The individual in the course of his lifetime moves from office to office and always holds a variety of different "offices" simultaneously. The rights and duties of a particular office can be uniquely specified, but the rights and duties of a particular individual will depend on circumstance and will normally entail inconsistency. Thus an individual who holds office as head of a university department and is also the owner of a particular residential house and the father of a family will have rights and duties in respect to each of these statuses, but it may or may not be possible for him to fulfill all three roles with equal adequacy. A full description of the social structure would entail an analysis of all the rights and obligations which link all the offices and corporations in the system—a task which would be plainly impossible but which can be carried out piecemeal in a partial way. The anthropologist's focus of interest is not in this structure as such but in "the way it works" —that is, in the perception of the way in which living human beings, who are all the time being born, growing older, and dying, pass through an ordered system of offices. At a beginning level of analysis the system of offices is unchanged by the passage of individual office holders through the system, and it is at this level that Fortes has concentrated his own work (1949). At the next level of analysis "social change" results from the fact that individual office holders modify the rules pertaining to the offices which they occupy. In Fortes' view the sociological analysis of "change" in this sense is a matter for the future and may prove impossible. Other British writers have tried to evade this
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limitation, and recently there have been a number of attempts to bring the dimension of historical time within the scope of structural analysis while avoiding the pitfalls of historical determinism. Leach's Political Systems of Highland Burma (1954) was an attempt of this kind, which presents Kachin political ideology as a structure of persisting verbal categories and argues that historical change in the empirical society results from a reinterpretation of existing categories rather than from a change in the structure of ideas. Fortes' interest in the way individuals move into and out of social office links his work with that of Gennep (1909), and, despite the greater importance attached to ideas deriving from Weber, the influence of early twentieth-century French sociology on the work of British "structuralist" anthropology remains very strong. As a consequence, despite differences of terminology and orientation, French and British ideas about social structure cannot be fully distinguished. Levi-Strauss and the French school. The mathematical idea of "structure," which is also that employed in "structural linguistics," is somewhat different from that of either architecture or biology. The emphasis here is upon the transformability of a relational set rather than upon the quality of the relations as such. If a piece of music—originally in the form of a sheet of printed notes—is played on a piano, recorded on a phonograph record, transmitted over the radio, and finally played back to an auditor, the music passes through a whole series of transformations—it appears as printed notes, as a pattern of finger movements, as sound waves, as modulations of the grooves on a piece of bakelite, as electromagnetic vibrations, ,and so on. However, something is common to all these manifestations. That common something is their structure. This mathematical idea is abstract and very general; it includes the biologist's notion of structure as a special case. The analogous notion of "social structure," when derived from the mathematical concept, has likewise more general, more abstract uses than when it is based on an organic analogy. Levi-Strauss's view of structure has been taken over more or less directly from linguistics, and it is because of this that his arguments often appear highly abstract when compared to the relatively empirical analyses of British structural anthropologists, whose ideas ultimately derive from biology through the thinking of Radcliffe-Brown. Radcliffe-Brown conceived of the task of social anthropologists as that of establishing a kind of Linnaean taxonomy of functioning social systems. In such a taxonomy the difference between one
society and another would be one of structure, but this structure was a readily describable empirical characteristic of the system. In Levi-Strauss's analysis, on the other hand, interest in structure comes to the fore only when one system is contrasted with another. Levi-Strauss is interested in how far empirical systems correspond (or fail to correspond) with the theoretically possible transformations of a single (mathematical) structure; his structures thus start out as "models" rather than as empirically observed facts. For example, it is possible to imagine, as an ideal type, a society which has a strictly unilineal descent system and a strictly "unilocal" residence pattern. This gives us two binary variables—descent, which is patrilineal (P) or matrilineal (M), and residence, which is virilocal (V) or uxorilocal (17). With these limitations, we have four possibilities (or classes): P + V; M + U; P + U; M + V. Actual societies do not fit tidily into categories of this kind, yet a great many actual systems can be approximately sorted in this way. If this is done certain facts emerge. The distribution is not at all random. Societies of class 1 are common, of class 4 less common, of class 2 very rare, and of class 3 virtually nonexistent. We are then led to consider just why such distributions should be nonrandom, and this may lead us to fundamental insights into factors which affect all human societies and not just societies of a particular taxonomic type. In a Radcliffe-Brown analysis, "the structure which persists" is the structure of a particular society associated with a particular culture and a particular geographical locality; in a Levi-Strauss analysis, "the structure which persists" is an attribute of human social organization as such; we can come to recognize the nature of this structure only when we build up a generalized model from radically contrasted empirical examples. As a case in point, Levi-Strauss (1963) has compared the stereotype of Australian aboriginal society with the stereotype of Indian caste (see Table 1). Levi-Strauss's argument is that in the Australian context all the items in the left-hand column are structurally and functionally interdependent and in the Indian context all the items in the right-hand column are similarly interdependent, but since the items listed on the right are the mirror inversion of those listed on the left, the structure represented by the right-hand column is really the same structure as that represented by the left-hand column. The right-hand column is generated from the lefthand column by applying a single transformation rule—the structure "remains the same," in the same
, j j \ '
SOCIAL STRUCTURE: The History of the Concept Table 1 Australian
Indian
society
society
In Australia the social unit is a "horde," which is exogamous.
In India the social unit is a "subcaste" (/a//), which is endogamous.
Hordes are distinguished as totemic groups, totems being categories of nature (animals, plants).
Subcastes are distinguished as occupational groups, occupations being categories of culture (potters, ropemakers, drummers, etc.).
The activities of totemic groups are group activities sanctioned by myth and consist of the ritual creation of animals (things of nature).
The activities of caste groups are individual activities based on real knowledge and consist of the rational creation of artifacts (things of culture).
Magical totemic increase ceremonies rest on an ideology that totemic groups should supply each other with food just as they supply each other with women.
Ritual attitudes to pollution have the consequence that a subcaste is a commensal group as well as an endogamous group. The exchange of food across subcaste boundaries is prohibited.
In all other respects the division of labor depends only upon sex and age. Horde groups and totemic groups are not occupationally differentiated.
Since subcastes are differentiated by occupational specialism they are economically interdependent. «
Thus the larger society is united by intergroup transactions involving the interchange of objects of nature (women and food).
Thus the larger society is united by intergroup transactions involving the interchange of objects of culture (artifacts and occupational services).
Horde groups and totemic groups are of intrinsically equal status.
Subcastes are of intrinsically unequal status.
Source: Based on Levi-Strauss 1963.
sense as a square remains the same when we rotate it through 90 degrees or an algebraic equation remains the same when we change all plus signs into minus and minus signs into plus. Levi-Strauss's procedures for discriminating between relevant and irrelevant evidence are no doubt arbitrary, but so are those of his British colleagues, and his demonstration that patterns of "structure" of this kind exist in the ethnographic data poses problems of fundamental sociological significance. Assessment. I have outlined three different uses to which the concept of social structure has been put by leading contemporary anthropologists. The value which we place on these different usages will depend upon our objectives. The Murdock usage and the Radcliffe-Brown usage are clearly to be preferred if our prime interest is typological and taxonomic, while those who set themselves the ambitious objective of discovering human universals will be more attracted by the higher-level abstractions which Levi-Strauss has brought into
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the discussion. It deserves note, however, that none of these theorists has as yet dealt at all adequately with the time dimension in social affairs. Whichever way we approach the concept of structure, it entails the notion of persistence. In Fortes' treatment, the time of history and the time of the individual life cycle are distinguished. The structure of social units is conceived of as permanent relative to the life span of the individual members of society who pass through the system. Fortes would not claim that social structures in his sense are changeless but only that they are relatively changeless. For his purposes, change in structure is a phenomenon of history and as such lies outside sociological analysis. Levi-Strauss, on the other hand, has tried to integrate his scheme with a kind of Neo-Marxist-Hegelian dialectic. The emphasis on binary contrast, which permeates the "structuralism" of Levi-Strauss and his associates in a very radical way, is a direct borrowing from the structural linguistics of the Prague school and is closely linked with Jakobson's use of the notion of "distinctive features." It also seems to tie in with the contrast theory of meaning, which is one of the doctrines of the Oxford school of linguistic philosophy. The essence of the argument is, roughly, that "we can recognize a thing for what it is by seeing what it is not"; thus the structure of any set is that which is common both to the set and its inverse (cf. the horde/subcaste example above). This can be given a Hegelian twist by identifying the structure with the "synthesis" which derives from (but is already implicit in) any "thesis" when viewed in conjunction with the "antithesis" which it generates. It is not at all clear to the present writer just how Levi-Strauss relates this potentially historicist argument to his structural models. Sometimes he seems to be saying simply that contrasted empirical examples of social systems are best understood as different manifestations of a single model structure; at other times there is a suggestion that the different manifestations are viewed as a dialectical sequence, each empirical type serving to generate its own antithesis. By this argument societies which are contrasted manifestations of the same structure should be found distributed in adjacent territorial areas in a synchronic dimension and in the same territorial area in a diachronic dimension. Pareto's ideas about a "moving equilibrium" are not very different from this. Leach's Political Systems of Highland Burma (1954) can be considered as an attempt to test out this argument in terms of concrete ethnohistorical materials. Structuralism in linguistics has run into the same time-scale difficulties as structuralism in
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social anthropology, and it may be of interest to see what has happened in this neighboring field. It has lately come to be emphasized that a verbal utterance can never be a synchronic event. It starts at the beginning and progresses to the end. The form of the utterance is not, in general, completely predetermined by its beginning; it is "generated" as the utterance progresses as a response to grammatical rules which are applicable or not applicable depending upon the developing sequence. The grammatical rules are like the rules of a game: they do not determine what is said; they merely delimit what is a permissible choice at any particular point in the sequence. They specify what is possible and also what is not possible, but between these limits they allow freedom of choice. The work of the mathematical economists has been developing in a rather similar way: progressions of events through time are coming to be thought of as delimited by qualified rules (as in a game) rather than "determined" in an historicist sense. This kind of application of game theory and its derivatives disposes of the notion that structure is, of necessity, a static synchronic concept. A game of chess is a sequence in time, and no individual move in the sequence is predictable, yet it is plain that the sequence as a whole is "structured" in a quite formal and easily describable way. The rules of chess are specific and not generative, but we are familiar enough with types of games where the rules themselves change according to circumstance—e.g., a dice game which includes the rule "player who throws a six has two extra throws." Some British anthropologists are already disposed to make their descriptions of social structure in terms of sets of rules defining the interdependent rights and obligations attaching to sets of offices. To start thinking of such rules as being of the generative kind would not call for any very drastic modification of established conventions. Earth (1959; 1966) is one of the few anthropologists who has so far made some tentative exploration of this idea. In the view of the present writer it may prove a fruitful line of development. EDMUND R. LEACH BIBLIOGRAPHY
EARTH, FREDRIK 1959 Segmentary Opposition and the Theory of Games: A Study of Pathan Organization. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland 89:5-21. EARTH, FREDRIK 1966 Models of Social Organization. Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland, Occasional Papers, No. 23. London: The Institute.
BATESON, GREGORY (1936) 1958 Naven: A Survey of the Problems Suggested by a Composite Picture of the Culture of a New Guinea Tribe Drawn From Three Points of View. 2d ed. Stanford Univ. Press. DAVENPORT, WILLIAM 1959 Nonunilinear Descent and Descent Groups. American Anthropologist New Series 61:557-572. ENGELS, FRIEDRICH (1884) 1940 The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State. London: Lawrence & Wishart. EVANS-PRITCHARD, E. E. (1940) 1963 The Nuer: A Description of the Modes of Livelihood and Political Institutions of a Nilotic People. Oxford: Clarendon. FALLERS, LLOYD A. 1956 Bantu Bureaucracy: A Study of Integration and Conflict in the Political Institutions of an East African People. Cambridge: Heffer. FIRTH, RAYMOND 1964 Essays on Social Organization and Values. London School of Economics and Political Science, Monographs on Social Anthropology, No. 28. London: Athlone. FORDE, DARYLL 1950 Double Descent Among the Yako. Pages 285-332 in A. R. Radcliffe-Brown and Daryll Forde (editors), African Systems of Kinship and Marriage. Oxford Univ. Press. FORDE, DARYLL 1963 Unilineal Fact or Fiction: An Analysis of the Composition of Kin-groups Among the Yako. Pages 38-57 in Isaac Schapera (editor), Studies in Kinship and Marriage. London: Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland. FORTES, MEYER 1945 The Dynamics of Clanship Among the Tallensi. Oxford Univ. Press. FORTES, MEYER (1949) 1963 Time and Social Structure: An Ashanti Case Study. Pages 54-84 in Meyer Fortes (editor), Social Structure: Studies Presented to A. R. Radcliffe-Brown. New York: Russell. FORTES, MEYER 1953 The Structure of Unilineal Descent Groups. American Anthropologist New Series 55:17-41. FORTES, MEYER; and EVANS-PRITCHARD, E. E. (editors) (1940) 1958 African Political Systems. Oxford Univ. Press. GENNEP, ARNOLD VAN (1909) 1960 The Rites of Passage. Univ. of Chicago Press; London: Routledge. -> First published in French. GOODY, JACK R. (editor) 1958 The Developmental Cycle in Domestic Groups. Cambridge Papers in Social Anthropology, No. 1. Cambridge Univ. Press. LEACH, EDMUND R. 1954 Political Systems of Highland Burma: A Study of Kachin Social Structure. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Univ. Press; London School of Economics and Political Science. LEFEBVRE, H. 1962 Le concept de structure chez Marx. Pages 100-106 in Colloque sur le mot structure, Paris, 1959, Sens et usages du terme structure dans les sciences humaines et sociales. The Hague: Mouton. LEVI-STRAUSS, CLAUDE (1958) 1963 Structural Anthropology. New York: Basic Books. -» First published in French. LEVI-STRAUSS, CLAUDE 1963 The Bear and the Barber. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland 93:1-11. LINTON, RALPH 1936 The Study of Man: An Introduction. New York: Appleton. MAINE, HENRY J. S. (1861) 1960 Ancient Law: Its Connection With the Early History of Society, and Its Relations to Modern Ideas. Rev. ed. New York: Dut-
SOCIAL STRUCTURE: Social Structural Analysis ton; London and Toronto: Dent. -> A paperback edition was published in 1963 by Beacon. MARX, KARL (1859)1913 A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy. 2d ed. Chicago: Kerr. ->• See especially Marx's "Preface" in the 1913 edition. MORGAN, LEWIS H. 1871 Systems of Consanguinity and Affinity of the Human Family. Smithsonian Institution Contributions to Knowledge, Vol. 17; Publication No. 218. Washington: The Institution. MORGAN, LEWIS H. (1877) 1963 Ancient Society. 2d ed. New York: Meridian. MURDOCH, GEORGE P. 1949 Social Structure. New York: Macmillan. -» A paperback edition was published in 1965 by the Free Press. MURDOCK, GEORGE P. 1955 Changing Emphasis in Social Structure. Southwestern Journal of Anthropology 11:361-370. MURDOCK, GEORGE P. (editor) 1960 Social Structure in Southeast Asia. Viking Fund Publications in Anthropology, No. 29. Chicago: Quadrangle Books. NADEL, S. F. 1957 The Theory of Social Structure. London: Cohen & West; Glencoe, 111.: Free Press. RADCLIFFE-BROWN, A. R. (1924-1949) 1952 Structure and Function in Primitive Society: Essays and Addresses. London: Cohen & West; Glencoe, 111.: Free Press. RADCLIFFE-BROWN, A. R. 1957 A Natural Science of Society. Glencoe, 111.: Free Press. RADCLIFFE-BROWN, A. R.; and FORDE, DARYLL (editors) 1950 African Systems of Kinship and Marriage. Published for the International African Institute. Oxford Univ. Press. SPENCER, HERBERT (1858)1966 Prospectus of a System of Philosophy Issued by Herbert Spencer in 1858. Pages 297-303 in Jay Rumney, Herbert Spencer's Sociology: A Study in the History of Social Theory. New York: Atherton. VOGT, EVON Z. 1960 On the Concept of Structure and Process in Cultural Anthropology. American Anthropologist New Series 62:18-33. WARNER, W. LLOYD (1937) 1958 A Black Civilization: A Social Study of an Australian Tribe. Rev. ed. New York: Harper. YALE UNIVERSITY, INSTITUTE OF HUMAN RELATIONS (1938) 1961 Outline of Cultural Materials. 4th rev. ed. New Haven: Human Relations Area Files Press.
n SOCIAL STRUCTURAL ANALYSIS
The concept "social structure" is, paradoxically, so fundamental to social science as to render its uncontested definition virtually impossible. Basic concepts in particular seem likely to suffer from this difficulty, since their primordial character demands that they provide an effective link between the field of inquiry and the particular approach, or even the personal philosophy, of the individual scholar. Various controversies, both apparent and real, are thus especially likely to surround the use of such concepts. In the case of "social structure," some of these difficulties are purely terminological and are, hence, more easily resolved than may
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appear possible on the surface. Others derive more fundamentally from disagreement over the basic philosophical assumptions appropriate to social research. And still others reflect substantive theoretical problems, which seem likely to persist even when there is agreement over terminology and basic philosophy. Before one can proceed to analyze social structure in detail, one must confront certain basic issues arising from these three areas of controversy. Terminology. Despite some contention to the contrary, I would hold that terminological problems are relatively easy to solve, since there is more agreement among sociologists and other behavioral scientists about concepts than about what words should be used to designate them. Virtually every general approach to social behavior involves some or all of the following five conceptual distinctions as actual or potential distinct loci of variation: (1) An individual component, i.e., some conception of personality or aggregated characteristics of individual personalities. (2) A group component, i.e., a set of variables essentially referring to various aspects of the process of social interaction among people. (3) A morphological component, i.e., a set of variables pertaining to the spatial-temporal arrangement of individuals and the physical size of groups. (4) A systemic component which focuses on the properties of interrelationships among activities as such, independently of the people performing them, generally treating such activities as social roles. (5) A cultural component comprising ideas (norms, values, beliefs) which are learned and shared by people and are transmitted symbolically from person to person. As we shall see presently, different philosophical and theoretical viewpoints yield different orderings of relative emphasis on these five components and, indeed, sometimes result in wholly eliminating one or another of the components from effective consideration. From a purely definitional standpoint, the question of what one means by "social structure" thus reduces to the question of how many and which of these five conceptual components one wishes to denote by the term. Since we wish to compare, and to some degree synthesize, various points of view, we shall define "social structure" very broadly as the totality of patterns of collective human phenomena that cannot be explained solely on the basis of human heredity and/or the nonhuman environment (compare Levy 1952, pp. 817). This definition includes all five aspects, allows
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for interrelations among them, and thus provides a context for a comparative discussion of current approaches. Philosophical assumptions Certain basic philosophical questions raised principally by the "structuralist" cultural anthropologists bear on the question of the relationship of models to social structure (Levi-Strauss [1958] 1963, pp. 277-323). Everyone presumably agrees that the twentieth-century scientist, as opposed to his nineteenth-century counterpart, is no longer trying to "discover reality" but, rather, is seeking to understand observations by imposing different kinds of order on them in the form of various models, exploring the implications of each, and accepting one model as opposed to another on pragmatic grounds. The structuralist position in effect extends this argument by observing that ordinary people are subject to the same epistemological limitations as are scientists. According to this view, any discussion or thought of social structure by anyone implies that he is constructing and using models, which we shall term "folk models" to distinguish them from the analytic models constructed by the scientist (Anderson & Moore 1960). Folk models thus constitute an important cultural element of social structure; some examples would be forms of games and patterns of responses to questions, as well as language itself. The formal properties of folk models are, furthermore, susceptible to study and are capable of yielding important insights into social structure through such procedures as, for example, "componential analysis" (Goodenough 1956). Few social scientists would disagree with this position as stated so far. To be sure, it begs the question of the relative explanatory importance of folk models as opposed to other aspects of social structure under given circumstances, but such a question is presumably a fruitful one which can in principle be answered through empirical research. However, the argument usually does not stop at this point but frequently proceeds to combine with the foregoing an essentially phenomenological view of social reality. As a result, folk models emerge, not simply as one important component of social structure but as the totality of social structure itself. The study of social structure thus becomes no more and no less than the study of folk models (see Levi-Strauss [1958] 1963, p. 279). This perspective leaves us, however, with the problem of the relationship between folk models, on the one hand, and analytic models constructed by the scientific observer, on the other.
It must be said that some confusion occurs in the structuralist literature as a result of a frequent failure to make this distinction explicit. Once such a distinction is made, however, it becomes apparent that these two types of models are very likely to be quite different; indeed, if they were not, the value of social science itself would be highly questionable. And not only can the social scientist construct analytic models based on his analysis of folk models, but he can also construct analytic models of other social phenomena that are not necessarily reflected in the cultural system at all, such as certain morphological patterns. In order to maintain a consistently phenomenological viewpoint in the face of such possibilities, the structuralists are obliged at this point to assume that scientific models have latent cultural existence as "unconscious" folk models (ibid., p. 281). It is certainly possible, in principle, to proceed in this manner, but one may reasonably question the value of so doing. If one is concerned primarily with the analysis of the formal properties of symbolic systems per se—as are, in all fairness, most structuralists—the difficulties of this mode of procedure are not great. But where the analysis requires any investigation of latent behavioral or morphological characteristics, the attempt to maintain a consistently phenomenological viewpoint would seem to involve many unnecessary complications. Pragmatically, the same results could be obtained more easily by merely assuming such behavioral and morphological characteristics to be external to the cultural system and raising purely empirical questions regarding their relationships to it. Furthermore, divesting the structuralist approach of phenomenology does not result in stripping it of its genuinely valuable contributions: that it calls attention to the inevitability of model construction in the study of social structure and that it identifies folk models as an important component of cultural systems, in the process drawing particular attention to the relevance of linguistic analysis (Anderson & Moore I960; Dumazedier 1964; Jaeger & Selznick 1964; Osgood et al. 1957). Moreover, such divestiture reveals a very important question that otherwise remains confused or obscured—the question of the importance of folk models, relative to other patterns of social phenomena, as sources of theoretical explanation. The problem of the relationship, under various conditions, of folk models on the cultural level to other patterns manifest on the morphological, systemic, group, and individual levels of social structure is a matter for empirical investigation, the answer to which can hardly be assumed away or defined out
SOCIAL STRUCTURE: Social Structural Analysis of existence. Thus I would accept the epistemological observations of structuralism but would stop short of a phenomenological position. This position leads to substantive agreement with the structuralists that folk models, conceived as part of the cultural component of social structure, are indeed important; however, it also raises the question of the relative importance of such models under specified conditions as a matter for empirical determination. Theoretical problems We may now turn to a discussion of actual theoretical issues as they center on two major questions: first, the relative ordering of, and general relationships among, the five aspects of structure previously indicated; and, second, the nature of the mechanisms of interrelationship. Divergent views of social structure. As to the questions of ordering and general relationships, three basic viewpoints have been particularly important; I shall refer to them as the cultural, interactionist, and morphological positions, respectively. The cultural point of view emphasizes the explanatory primacy of culture as a system of ideas that are learned, shared, and transmitted by people who, in turn, are oriented to situations by virtue of the culture that they have learned. Situations thus evoke responses, culturally defined as role expectations, by virtue of which people find themselves interacting with one another, with the possibility of resultant morphological differentiation. The causal progression is from the cultural-individual aspects of the situation to the systemic aspects, to group characteristics, and, finally, to the morphological aspects of structure. The entire chain is not usually explicit; it is more common for this approach to stress the interrelationships of culture, personality, and social system, defining social structure as some combination of these elements, with group and morphological considerations viewed as somewhat ancillary. An essentially "theatrical" view of social structure emerges, wherein culturally defined systems of role expectations await the participation of people, and this participation either incidentally yields group and morphological characteristics or implies them as contextual constants. It is impossible to discuss here all of the divergences of detail exhibited by different versions of the cultural approach; major instances would include "culturological" social anthropology (e.g., Kluckhohn 1953; Kluckhohn & Strodtbeck 1961; Murdock 1949), the phenomenological structuralism previously discussed, and the voluntaristic
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theory of action applied to the analysis of social structure (Weber 1922; Parsons 1951; for a similar but somewhat different approach, see Nadel 1957; also see Kroeber & Parsons 1958). In some respects both the interactionist and the morphological positions represent the obverse of the cultural approach, in that both postures either imply cultural and individual characteristics as contextual constants or view them as emergent secondary properties. In the interactionist version of social structure, people with highly generalized expectations about one another's probable behavior are taken as given and are morphologically presumed to interact with one another. From the ensuing reciprocal process of role taking and role playing, increasingly stable systems of role expectations emerge which, in turn, become generalized into superordinate systems of cultural norms. The causal progression is thus from group phenomena to systemic aspects and, finally, to cultural patterns (Blau 1964; Homans 1961; Mead 1934). The morphological conception of social structure is essentially similar to the interactionist version, but it is more macroscopically conceived. It assumes a disposition on the part of people to engage in stable interaction relative to certain specified but highly generalized cultural expectations. Emergent systemic and cultural properties of the situation therefore depend on morphological structure, which, through variations in the numbers of people involved and their spatial and temporal relationships to one another, as well as to artifactual facilities, imposes limits on the possibilities of interaction capable of producing emergent characteristics (Cottrell 1955; Duncan & Schnore 1959; Durkheim 1893; Halbwachs 1938; Helm 1962; Schnore 1958). These divergent viewpoints have, in turn, yielded apparently opposing conceptions of social structure. From the cultural standpoint, social structure emerges as an object of orientation comprising cultural and systemic elements in terms of which the actions of individuals, groups, and morphological entities occur or are directed. On the other hand, from the interactionist and morphological viewpoints, social structure has, by and large, been thought of as the totality of group and morphological patterns, with individual elements contained in the group patterns and with or without systemic components, depending on the particular version of theory. Cultural elements are viewed as essentially external, in either a contextual or an emergent sense, or they are for some purposes deemed irrelevant. Two principal theoretical controversies have re-
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suited from this situation; one of these may be regarded as at least partially resolved, but the other is now only beginning to be fully explored. The first of these controversies is that of the cultural versus the interactionist versions of social structure. The key to the resolution of this problem lies in the development of the voluntaristic theory of action combined with the introduction of symbols into interaction theory. No adequate theory of social behavior now seems possible unless it explicitly recognizes some process of social learning. The symbolic interactionist position, in contrast with that at least implied by earlier "radical positivists," is that social interaction cannot be a purely physical process but, rather, involves reciprocal role taking and role playing with reference to a learned repertoire of relatively stable expectations (Mead 1934). Approaching the same problem from the opposite pole, the voluntaristic theory of action seeks to remove the metaphysical cobwebs from transcendental idealism by arguing that the "force" of ideas on the social order is actually felt in an entirely empirical manner—through socialization and subsequent action, with inevitable reference to learned normative orientations (Parsons 1937, esp. pp. 77-82). Both positions, therefore, not only insist upon the existence of cultural components in social structure but also identify essentially similar ones: relatively stable sets of learned (and "learnable") normative expectations. The result is a more comprehensive view of social structure than either the cultural or the interactionist position alone provides; it includes four of the five components we have identified, excluding only morphological structure. It is precisely this absence of morphological considerations that leads to the second major theoretical issue: the place of human ecology in current theories of social structure. The emphasis on elements capable of transmission through learning has at times led to stressing roles and norms to the exclusion of concrete people and things in physical space. The result can be a view of social action that is literally carried on by nobody anywhere. In this sense the achievement of a measure of integration between cultural and interactionist viewpoints has been something of a Pyrrhic victory; it has concomitantly involved—at least on the theoretical level—a gradual destruction of an earlier positivist unity of morphological and interactionist approaches (Durkheim 1893). Among the consequences of this situation has been a tendency either to view demography and human ecology as distinct disciplines entirely sep-
arate from sociology, or to view many current theoretical developments as essentially irrelevant to social reality. Furthermore, since social research must necessarily start by observing people and things, another consequence of this line of theoretical development has at times been a virtually enforced lack of relationship between research and theory. This situation has led unavoidably to the existence of entire bodies of analytical and statistical operations that have no clear correlates in current theoretical thought and, consequently, to the viewpoint—which, in light of the highly operationalistic emphasis of modern science, is surprisingly widely accepted in sociology—that there exists something called "methodology" which is generically different from something else called "theory." The unreality of this dichotomy has made increasingly apparent the fact that the cultural, interactionist, and morphological approaches do not actually represent differing "schools of thought" so much as they represent emphases on different aspects of social structure; thus, any reasonably complete theory of social structure must explicitly confront the question of interrelationships among these different aspects. Causal mechanisms. Curiously enough, the question of causal mechanisms in social structure has received relatively little explicit attention. Broadly speaking, two kinds of mechanisms seem to pervade the literature, more often implicitly than explicitly, deriving from the cultural and morphological approaches, respectively. The first type of mechanism, which we shall term psychological, assumes that individuals severally receive cues from the social environment which, when combined in their personalities with learned responses (culturally prescribed or not), result in actions that, when aggregated, constitute social-structural patterns. In contrast, the second type of mechanism, which we shall term ecological, seeks to explain behavior through a process of elimination by arguing that certain actions are impossible owing to limiting features of the situation; in other words, social action is patterned by virtue of the fact that it must occur within the confines of limiting conditions. To some extent it is true that cultural theories of social structure tend to rest on psychological explanatory mechanisms and morphological theories to rest on ecological mechanisms, whereas interactionist theories historically have exhibited a shift in emphasis from ecological to psychological mechanisms. But this statement is, at best, only a partial approximation. For example, ecological mechanisms need not be limited to those involving
SOCIAL STRUCTURE: Social Structural Analysis physical properties of a morphological nature; they can be extended to include cultural and systemic characteristics, as in "structural-functional requisite analysis" (Levy 1952) and in adaptive theories of social change. Wilson and Wilson, for instance, explicitly define "social structure" as "the systematic form of limitation by which eccentricities are checked and complementary diversities are preserved" ([1945] 1965, p. 49, italics added; also see Eisenstadt 1964). Actually, it is impossible to discuss one type of mechanism meaningfully without at least making some implicit assumptions about the way the other is operating in the situation. Thus the scope of any psychological mechanism is limited by what cues are in fact present in the situation and what past elements could have been learned, as well as by physical, including artifactual, possibilities. Similarly, all ecological mechanisms assume the presence of some given level and kind of motivational orientation on the part of the actors involved. Thus the main theoretical issue is not which mechanism is present in some absolute sense but, rather, at what point in the analysis it is pragmatically appropriate to explicate which type of mechanism while making what assumptions about the other type. This issue has often been obscured, perhaps partly because of a lack of synthetic effort, but surely because of the intellectual legacy of functionalism. For in its classical statement functionalism draws attention away from the question of causal mechanisms simply by assuming that social structures operate in such a way as to maintain themselves in some stable state (Merton [1949] 1957, pp. 19-84; Radcliffe-Brown 1952). Such an assumption permits one to make the type of ecological argument characteristic of "structuralfunctional requisite analysis": that the existence of such a state implies that certain activities contributing to its maintenance are perforce somehow being performed (Levy 1952, pp. 149-197). But such an argument invites questions about the status of psychological mechanisms in the situation (Brown 1963, pp. 109-132; Romans 1964; Inkeles 1959). Classical functionalism avoided such questions by assuming, in effect, a complete congruence of psychological mechanisms with ecological explanatory devices, thereby giving a teleological cast to social structure (Malinowski 1944) and inviting tautologous formulations. It is possible to drop this assumption and still maintain a nominally functionalist position. But the questions begged as a result of so doing transcend the original functionalist position to such a degree as to suggest the adoption of a different perspective al-
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together. The focus becomes one of discovering the nature of causal mechanisms that interconnect different aspects of social structure, rather than one of assuming the mechanisms and thereby inferring structures (Dore 1961). This position suggests a resolution, in principle, of another question in regard to causal mechanisms that has often plagued the analysis of social structure: the "statics versus dynamics" problem. Masking the theoretical issues is the immediate terminological question of whether the concept "social structure" should be restricted in its reference only to those elements of the social order which remain constant over time. Thus Firth (1951), for example, proposes to use the term "social organization" to denote patterns of change, in contrast with "social structure," which indicates patterns of stable elements. Analogous to this distinction is the familiar "process versus structure" dichotomy. But processes are inseparable from structure, in the sense that any social structure is held together by mechanisms relating its elements (see Vogt I960; see also Gurvitch [1950] 19571963, vol. 2, pp. 403-446). Operation of such mechanisms through time results in more or less change or stability in the values of the variables reflecting the social structure. Consequently it is misleading to treat patterns of stable interrelations as if they were basically different from patterns of change, inasmuch as both types of pattern result from the operation of social forces through causal mechanisms. It is not the case that change, simply because it is change, somehow involves "more mechanisms" than does stability. Toward an eclectic view The current path of what one might term "postfunctionalist revisionism" thus suggests that dynamic strain is always present on some levels of social structure (Moore 1963), and, while hardly Marxist in its orientation, suggests the fruitfulness of a reconsideration of some of the basic insights of Marx in this context. The five structural aspects which we have distinguished are interrelated by a complex of dialectical tensions which, in principle, can be concretely operationalized and explicated as a set of interrelated psychological ar d ecological causal chains cutting across the five aspects of social structure, with their operation resulting in more or less "stability" and "change." The immediate problem would seem to be, first, the allocation of proportional contributions of variance among the cultural, systemic, morphological, group, and individual aspects of social structure. One can then seek to explain the statistical results
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thus obtained by assuming various psychological and ecological causal mechanisms whose existence can subsequently be verified or disproved by detailed analysis of actual social situations. An as yet small, but perhaps significant, literature is beginning to arise utilizing essentially this perspective and centering—at least in its initial stages—on the analysis of "structural" or "compositional" effects. Thus far it has proved possible, in such analyses, to isolate individual from group effects and to separate both individual and group effects from a residue involving morphological, systemic, and cultural properties (Blau I960; Lazarsfeld & Menzel 1961; Davis et al. 1961). Some inferences of precise mechanisms have been made, mostly centering on socialization on the individual level; interpersonal strategies yielding "social approval" on the group level; and emergent consolidation of normative systems through adaptation between the group and systemic, and group and morphological, levels (Davis 1963; also see Heider 1958; Blau 1964). It is as yet too early to assess the probable ultimate fruitfulness of this approach. Various problems seem to arise, for example, in developing consistent operational ways of moving from the group to the systemic, morphological, and cultural levels of analysis. The main difficulty seems to lie in systematically relating interpersonal phenomena to ecological processes (in the traditional sense), value systems, and various (often vaguely conceived) macrostructural, dialectical "forces" (Boudon 1963; Selvin & Hagstrom 1963; Tannenbaum & Bachman 1964). However, with increasing recognition that many theoretical controversies regarding social structure either reduce to the use of different words to denote the same things or arise from an emphasis on different relatable aspects of the same phenomena, will perhaps come a fruitful synthesis, eventually more original than eclectic. STANLEY H. UDY, JR. [See also FUNCTIONAL ANALYSIS; INTERACTION, article on SOCIAL INTERACTION; PERCEPTION, article on SOCIAL PERCEPTION; SOCIAL INSTITUTIONS; SOCIOLOGY, article on THE DEVELOPMENT OF SOCIOLOGICAL THOUGHT.] BIBLIOGRAPHY
ANDERSON, ALLAN R.; and MOORE, OMAR K. 1960 Autotelic Folk-models. Sociological Quarterly 1:203-216. BLAU, PETER M. 1960 Structural Effects. American Sociological Review 25:178-193. BLAU, PETER M. 1964 Exchange and Power in Social Life. New York: Wiley. BOUDON, RAYMOND 1963 Propriety's individuelles et proprietes collectives: Un probleme d'analyse ecologique. Revue francaise de sociologie 4:275-299.
BROWN, ROBERT R. 1963 Explanation in Social Science. Chicago: Aldine. COTTRELL, WILLIAM F. 1955 Energy and Society. New York: McGraw-Hill. DAVIS, JAMES A. 1963 Structural Balance, Mechanical Solidarity, and Interpersonal Relations. American Journal of Sociology 68:444-462. DAVIS, JAMES A.; SPAETH, JOE L.; and HUSON, CAROLYN 1961 A Technique for Analyzing the Effects of Group Composition. American Sociological Review 26:215225. DORE, RONALD P. 1961 Function and Cause. American Sociological Review 26:843-853. DUMAZEDIER, JOFFRE 1964 Structures lexicales et significations complexes. Revue francaise de sociologie 5:12-26. DUNCAN, OTIS DUDLEY (1964) 1966 Social Organization and the Ecosystem. Pages 36-82 in Robert E. L. Faris (editor), Handbook of Modern Sociology. Chicago: Rand McNally. DUNCAN, OTIS DUDLEY; and SCHNORE, LEO F. 1959 Cultural, Behavioral, and Ecological Perspectives in the Study of Social Organization. American Journal of Sociology 65:132-146. -» A comment by Peter H. Ross and a rejoinder by Otis Dudley Duncan and Leo F. Schnore appear on pages 146-153. DURKHEIM, EMILE (1893) 1960 The Division of Labor in Society. Glencoe, 111.: Free Press. -> First published as De la division du travail social. EISENSTADT, S.HMUEL N. 1964 Social Change, Differentiation, and Evolution. American Sociological Review 29:375-386. FIRTH, RAYMOND W. 1951 Elements of Social Organization. London: Watts. -» A paperback edition was published in 1963 by Beacon. GOODENOUGH, WARD H. 1956 Componential Analysis and the Study of Meaning. Language 32:195-216. GURVITCH, GEORGES (1950) 1957-1963 La vocation actuelle de la sociologie. 2d ed. 2 vols. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France. -> Volume 1: Vers la sociologie differentielle. Volume 2: Antecedents et -perspectives. HALBWACHS, MAURICE (1938) 1960 Population and Society. Glencoe, 111.: Free Press. -> First published as Morphologic sociale. HEIDER, FRITZ 1958 The Psychology of Interpersonal Relations. New York: Wiley. HELM, JUNE 1962 The Ecological Approach in Anthropology. American Journal of Sociology 67:630-639. HOMANS, GEORGE C. 1961 Social Behavior: Its Elementary Forms. New York: Harcourt. HOMANS, GEORGE C. 1964 Bringing Men Back In. American Sociological Review 29:809-818. INKELES, ALEX 1959 Personality and Social Structure. Pages 249-276 in American Sociological Society, Sociology Today: Problems and Prospects. Edited by Robert K. Merton, Leonard Broom, and Leonard S. Cottrell, Jr. New York: Basic Books. JAEGER, GERTRUDE; and SELZNICK, PHILIP 1964 A Normative Theory of Culture. American Sociological Review 29:653-669. KLUCKHOHN, CLYDE (1953) 1961 Universal Categories of Culture. Pages 89-105 in Frank W. Moore (editor), Readings in Cross-cultural Methodology. New Haven: Human Relations Area Files Press. KLUCKHOHN, FLORENCE R.; and STRODTBECK, FRED L. 1961 Variations in Value Orientations. Evanston, 111.: Row, Peterson.
SOCIAL WORK KROEBER, A. L.; and PARSONS, TALCOTT 1958 The Concepts of Culture and of Social System. American Sociological Review 23:582-583. LAZARSFELD, PAUL F.; and MENZEL, HERBERT 1961 On the Relation Between Individual and Collective Properties. Pages 422-440 in Amitai Etzioni (editor), Complex Organizations: A Sociological Reader. New York: Holt. LEVI-STRAUSS, CLAUDE (1958) 1963 Structural Anthropology. New York: Basic Books. -> First published in French. LEVY, MARION J. JR. 1952 The Structure of Society. Princeton Univ. Press. MALINOWSKI, BRONISLAW 1944 A Scientific Theory of Culture and Other Essays. Chapel Hill: Univ. of North Carolina Press. MEAD, GEORGE H. (1934) 1963 Mind, Self and Society From the Standpoint of a Social Behaviorist. Edited by Charles W. Morris. Univ. of Chicago Press. -> Published posthumously. MERTON, ROBERT K. (1949) 1957 Social Theory and Social Structure. Rev. & enl. ed. Glencoe, 111.: Free Press. MOORE, WILBERT E. 1963 Social Change. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall. MURDOCK, GEORGE P. 1949 Social Structure. New York: Macmillan. -> A paperback edition was published in 1965 by the Free Press. NADEL, S. F. 1957 The Theory of Social Structure. London: Cohen & West; Glencoe, 111.: Free Press. -» Published posthumously. OSGOOD, CHARLES E.; Suci, G. J.; and TANNENBAUM, P. H. (1957) 1961 The Measurement of Meaning. Urbana: Univ. of Illinois Press. PARSONS, TALCOTT (1937)1949 The Structure of Social Action: A Study in Social Theory With Special Reference to a Group of Recent European Writers. Glencoe, 111.: Free Press. PARSONS, TALCOTT 1951 The Social System. Glencoe, 111.: Free Press. RADCLIFFE-BROWN, A. R. (1952) 1961 Structure and Function in Primitive Society: Essays and Addresses. London: Cohen & West; Glencoe, 111.: Free Press. SCHNORE, LEO F. 1958 Social Morphology and Human Ecology. American Journal of Sociology 63:620-634. SELVIN, HANAN C.; and HAGSTROM, WARREN O. 1963 The Empirical Classification of Formal Groups. American Sociological Review 28:399-411. TANNENBAUM, ARNOLD S.; and BACHMAN, JERALD G. 1964 Structural Versus Individual Effects. American Journal of Sociology 69:585-595. VOGT, EVON Z. 1960 On the Concept of Structure and Process in Cultural Anthropology. American Anthropologist New Series 62:18-33. WEBER, MAX (1922) 1957 The Theory of Social and Economic Organization. Edited by Talcott Parsons. Glencoe, 111.: Free Press. -» First published as Part 1 of Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft. WILSON, GODFREY; and WILSON, MONICA H. (1945) 1965 The Analysis of Social Change, Based on Observations in Central Africa. Cambridge Univ. Press.
SOCIAL SURVEYS See EVALUATION RESEARCH; PANEL STUDIES; SAMPLE SURVEYS; SURVEY ANALYSIS. SOCIAL SYSTEMS See under SYSTEMS ANALYSIS.
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SOCIAL WELFARE See PHILANTHROPY; PLANNING, SOCIAL, article On WELFARE PLANNING; SOCIAL PROBLEMS; SOCIAL
WORK; WELFARE STATE; and the articles listed under SOCIAL SECURITY.
SOCIAL WORK The objectives of social work are to help individuals, families, communities, and groups of persons who are socially disadvantaged and to contribute to the creation of conditions that will enhance social functioning and prevent breakdown. These objectives commit the social work profession both to helping persons adapt socially in keeping with their capacities and the norms and values of the society, and to modifying or reforming features of the social system. The term "social worker" refers to a special group among those employed in rendering social welfare services or conducting programs of agencies and institutions that make up the social welfare system. The professional social worker is expected, because of his specialized training and experience, to bring a high degree of skill to the process of helping, and modifying the social conditions of, individuals, groups of persons, and communities. The special competence of the professional social worker is exercised in such tasks as providing material assistance for the needy and dependent; assisting those of whatever means who have difficulties in adjusting to their economic and social environment because of poverty, illness, deprivation, conflict, or personal, family, or social disorganization; and participating in the formulation of social welfare policies and preventive programs. Emergence of the social work profession As a deliberate concern for helping the indigent and less privileged members of society, the roots of social work go back to religious and humanitarian impulses evident in the histories of most civilizations. As a formal organization of efforts by specialized personnel to help such persons, social work is an accompaniment of nineteenth- and twentiethcentury industrialization, with its associated problems of social dislocation from a more stabilized family and community system. The aspirations of positivist social science and the counterviewpoints to social Darwinism in the late nineteenth century contributed to the conviction that rational and scientific solutions to social problems could be found through social reform and individual guidance. The trend has been from personal and religious charity, to organized philanthropy, to public acceptance of
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responsibility for programs of professional services. [See SOCIAL DARWINISM.] As a profession, social work emerged during the twentieth century, when it became an acknowledged, full-time occupation, with established training schools, professional associations, and a high degree of self-consciousness about its status. Professionalization developed first in the United States and western Europe. Before 1910 independent schools for training social workers were founded first in the Netherlands and then in the United States, Great Britain, and Germany. Between World War i and World War n social work schools were widely established in Latin America and countries of the British Commonwealth. Since World War n, professional schools have opened in Asia, the Middle East, eastern Europe, and more recently in Africa. By 1950 a United Nations survey enumerated 373 schools of social work in 46 countries representing three-fifths of the 77 member nations. Since 1950 new schools have been founded in all regions, but especially in the new nations of Africa (United Nations 1950; 1965). Both national and international associations of social workers have been formed, professional journals and other publications issued, codes of ethical conduct promulgated, and official or legal recognition achieved to distinguish the professional social worker from other social welfare personnel. Programs of social services under private and public auspices have expanded, and the number of social welfare workers has increased. The number of professionally trained social workers has also grown, but they still constitute a minority of all those engaged in social welfare work. In the United States in 1960, approximately one-fifth of the 105,000 social welfare workers had sufficient education to qualify as professional by the profession's own standards (Salaries . . . 1961). The proportion of professional to nonprofessional social welfare workers appears to be smaller in other countries. The profession thus faces a persistent problem of trying to establish and maintain an independent identity., With the growth of educational facilities, the term "social worker" has increasingly come to refer to those specifically trained for social work, but the designation does not uniformly connote professional status in various countries. It sometimes refers to any sustained individual charitable efforts, and it usually includes employees, whether specifically trained or not, of public and private organizations serving the indigent or persons with problems of health, handicap, or deficiencies that may affect their social adequacy ("The Term . . ."
1961). There is evidence that professionalization of social work is proceeding in similar form and with similar problems in various parts of the world. This is, in part, a result of the pressing demand for trained personnel and the diffusion of patterns from the more developed countries. Leaders in social work in developing nations often have had some of their training in western Europe, Canada, or the United States (Interprofessional . . . 1963), or have participated in international conferences in which professionalization has been prominently discussed. Because most social workers are salaried employees who are characteristically dependent on bureaucratic organizations (generically called agencies), the development of a professional identity apart from the organization where they are employed has presented another persistent problem. The balance of influence over training schools has shifted gradually from agency to professional control. Moreover, there is a gradual tendency for professional associations to represent collective interests transcending those of social workers in particular agencies or fields of practice. Professional identification is also encouraged by frequent meetings and conferences of social workers on local, regional, national, and international levels. Demography of the social work profession A number of characteristics of the personnel of social work bear on the nature of the profession. Women predominate, although the proportion of men has been increasing. In the United States in 1960, 60 per cent of all social welfare workers, but 68 per cent of the members of the professional association, were women. The proportion of female welfare workers in the United States decreased by nearly 10 per cent between 1950 and 1960, and the more balanced sex ratio of students in professional schools probably reflects the trend toward equality of the sexes in American society as a whole. In other countries, the preponderance of women is probably even greater, despite the efforts of professional and governmental bodies to recruit men into welfare work. Men tend to gravitate to supervisory and executive positions, but women nevertheless hold a considerable proportion of these jobs. This introduces sex-role conflicts within social work and between social work and other professions. As a "female profession," social work shares the generally lower prestige of women in the occupational world; and this, in turn, contributes to the difficulty of raising salaries in comparison with professions dominated by men. Career patterns and job mobility also tend to be differen-
SOCIAL WORK tiated by sex. Thus, a changing sex ratio may be expected to have a significant effect on the profession. Although information on the social class of origin of social workers is limited, the profession appears to serve as a channel of upward mobility for both men and women (Pins 1963, chapter 3). Compared with other professions, social work has been relatively accessible to persons from minority groups and lower-class backgrounds. Social workers with professional schooling probably come from class positions that are higher than those of persons entering social work without special training but not as high as the level of persons entering professions such as medicine or law. Unlike these professions, social work clearly does not have the advantage of gaining prestige from the class background of its members. Rather, entrance into the profession often raises the class position of its members, and this probably affects both internal and interprofessional relations. Patterns of distribution and training. The character of the profession is affected by the location of professionals within the social welfare system. Programs of income maintenance, such as support for dependent children and the aged and ancillary services to social insurance beneficiaries, employ the largest share of all welfare workers but the smallest proportion of those professionally trained. In the United States approximately one-third of all social welfare workers, but only 5 per cent of professionally educated social workers, were employed in public assistance programs in 1960 (Salaries . . . 1961). On the other hand, medical and psychiatric social work programs together employed 9 per cent of all social welfare workers but 29 per cent of those professionally trained. Professional social workers are also disproportionately to be found in noninstitutional child welfare programs. The consequence of such a differential distribution is to focus professional attention on a narrower range than that embraced by the social welfare system and to provide an unbalanced degree of professionalization among the various welfare programs. Only 3 per cent of public assistance workers in the United States in 1960 were professionally trained, whereas over half of the workers in medical and psychiatric programs were trained. This imbalance tends to promote viewpoints in the profession that define certain places of employment as more "professional" and others as less so. Such viewpoints underlie attitudes about suitable locations for professional practice. Similar tendencies have been noted in other countries. The relative concentration of professionally
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trained social workers in private, as distinguished from governmental, agencies has also affected the conception of attractive locations for professional employment. Approximately two-thirds of all social welfare workers in the United States in 1960 were employed by federal, state, or local governments, whereas only about half of the professional social workers were so employed. In other countries, where the private sector tends to be smaller—and usually church-supported—the attraction of private agencies does not appear to have been so great, although the absence of a large private sector is sometimes cited as a limitation on professionalization. The disproportionate location of professional social workers in private agencies and in psychiatric, medical, and child welfare fields in the United States has historical explanations. The social workers most concerned about professional identity in the early decades of the century were those associated with fields in which clinical professions having greater prestige practiced, especially medicine and psychiatry. During the 1920s these social workers found psychoanalytic theories congenial as a basis for developing a distinctive mode of practice and supporting a claim to higher status among helping professions (Lubove 1965); the schools of social work largely accepted this viewpoint. When large-scale public assistance programs were developed as part of the social security system during the depression of the 1930s, they were primarily conceived as income maintenance programs to be administered by government employees rather than as programs requiring professional services. The charitably sponsored private agencies, now relieved of their traditional responsibility for economic aid, became especially receptive to the clinical orientation of trained workers who were also attracted to the clinical services associated with public programs in health, mental hygiene, and child welfare. The location of professional workers within the social welfare system has, in turn, affected recruitment and training, encouraging further emphasis on the clinical practices within social work. Nevertheless, professional social workers have often occupied supervisory and administrative positions in public welfare, and the profession has sought to influence public welfare policies through its associations and spokesmen. The training and distribution of professional social workers in the United States are being further shaped by new demands on social work in the 1960s. The 1962 amendments to the Social Security Act explicitly emphasized social services to recipients as an objective of public welfare, giving
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impetus to the upgrading of educational requirements for welfare workers. New programs involving broadly conceived community approaches to delinquency, poverty, mental health, and other social problems have encouraged recognition of functions for social workers other than direct services to clients; and the increasing integration of private agencies into such government-supported programs has reduced the distinction between private and public auspices. A greater proportion of students at social work schools has been attracted to group work and community organization. The literature on professional practice has reflected greater interest in the social sciences. Moreover, the problem of professional manpower has received increasing attention from the profession's leaders and government officials. In other countries, where the undersupply is even more acute and trained social workers have gravitated toward clinical locations, some comparable trends are evident. Especially in less developed countries, the practice of community development—proposing a comprehensive attempt to affect the complex of institutions of a total rural or urban community—has attracted professional social workers and has been emphasized in their training. [See COMMUNITY, article on COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT.]
The shortage of trained social workers is the manpower condition that underlies the patterns of distribution in developed as well as underdeveloped countries (Conference . . . 1965). It has given rise to active recruitment programs in most countries; and it has stimulated attempts to distinguish levels among professional responsibilities requiring varying amounts of training, as in Great Britain (Great Britain . . . 1959). In the United States the shortage has generated interest in the education of subprofessionals and in various patterns for their use in social agencies along with more highly trained workers, thus requiring new conceptions of the practice roles of professional social workers. There has been wide recognition that social workers cannot be trained in large enough,numbers under present conceptions of professional education to fill all social welfare positions, even when many positions are excluded as not requiring professional training. The manpower shortage also complicates the efforts of the profession to maintain or raise its entrance standards. Such standards are under pressure to broaden the definition of professional membership, acknowledge the alternatives to professional training for entrance to the profession, and adapt to such demands or face submergence within the large mass of non-
professional workers. The response of the profession to these pressures will determine the character of recruitment, training, and utilization of professional social workers (National . . . 1966). Professional training Who is a professional social worker and how one enters the profession are variously, and sometimes ambiguously, defined by different countries. Personal commitment and activity in professional affairs may serve to distinguish "professional" from other social welfare employees in some countries. Elsewhere (France, for instance), a state license designates the professional social worker. In general, however, formal professional education is increasingly the primary channel of entrance. Schools of social work. Schools of social work throughout the world may be roughly compared on the basis of their number and distribution, their sponsorship and location within the educational system, and the diversity of their financial support. Western Europe and North America have a great number of both private and public schools of social work; private schools typically receive subsidies from public funds through various governmental budgets. The location of social work training varies: in Great Britain it is usually part of the curriculum of social studies departments in universities and colleges; on the Continent there are separate technical institutes; and in the United States and Canada there are postgraduate divisions for social work education. In Latin America, Asia, the Middle East, and Africa schools of social work, though still few in number, have increased markedly since 1950; and private or church-sponsored schools are becoming integrated with those established within public educational systems. The Soviet Union is reported not to have specialized schools or an established profession of social work (Madison 1962), although correctional workers are specially trained educators. The relationships between professional schools and their sources of support may affect the type and character of training. Standards are set by law or government in a few countries, such as France and Brazil. In the United States, the agencies of government that furnish subsidies for many students and some faculty salaries are usually interested in obtaining personnel for the established programs they administer and, hence, tend to favor training for direct, clinical services. In countries where there are associations of schools of social work, these generally seek a large voice in the determination of their own standards.
SOCIAL WORK Schools may find it feasible to expand their capacities in those fields of practice already most professionalized, thus giving less emphasis to newer fields and broader social approaches. The problem of achieving balance has been recognized by both educators and governmental officials (Blackey 1964; Wittman 1965). Completion of secondary schooling is generally the minimum requirement for admission to social work schools. In the United States and Canada, and in some schools of several other countries, the student must hold a baccalaureate degree in order to be admitted. Age limits, both lower and upper, are sometimes specified. Restriction to female students was at one time common, particularly in Latin American schools, but sex limitations are disappearing. Professed humanitarian values and commitment to service are personal qualities usually sought in applicants, and previous academic performance is always taken into account. Throughout the world, most schools have relatively small enrollments, usually under one hundred. However, schools are expanding. In the United States in 1964 the largest school reported 409 full-time students, and 38 of the 59 schools reported full-time enrollments of one hundred or more, constituting approximately three-fifths of the 7,366 full-time students in all schools (Statistics . . . 1964, table 4). Social work schools also provide instruction, sometimes in separate courses, for many part-time students, only some of whom are enrolled for the professional degree; precise data are available only for the United States and Canada, where part-time students constituted approximately one-quarter of all students enrolled in the professional curriculum in 1964 (Statistics .. . 1964, table 2). Students at most schools fall into two groups: those entering as an immediate continuation of their schooling and those entering after some period of employment in social welfare. In the United States the latter are a decreasing proportion, but increased public funds for training employed personnel may retard this decrease. Such students are generally older; thus their proportion in American schools may be estimated from the fact that in 1964 students 31 years of age or older constituted 30 per cent of all full-time students working for the professional degree (Statistics . . . 1964, table 9). Prior work experience is accorded decreasing importance relative to recency of academic study, but the accommodation of students with different backgrounds presents a characteristic problem in curriculum planning. The content of academic prereq-
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uisites tends to be general—usually specifying only that courses in a number of social sciences be presented—and the academic backgrounds of students vary widely. Characteristics of training. Social work education includes both theoretical and practical training. Practical training may be provided (as in Great Britain and countries it has influenced) by full-time field placements of students intermittent with classroom lectures or after completion of theoretical courses; or it may be provided concurrently with classroom work (as in the United States and countries influenced by it). Laboratory agencies for practical training under control of the professional schools are provided for a small proportion of students, but most are trained in selected, available agencies in the community. Practical field work generally requires "supervision"—that is, instructional direction by a trained social worker in an agency setting. A continuing difficulty in accommodating larger enrollments is the finding of suitable "field placements" for additional students. This system sometimes limits the range of agencies within which training may be given, particularly in new fields of practice, where few professionally trained social workers are employed. The content of social work training tends to be organized around methods of social work practice, and field instruction is usually identified with one (but sometimes several) of the methods. The more theoretical portions of the curriculum provide knowledge of human behavior and social life deemed useful for competent practice. Courses on social welfare policies and the structure of welfare services of the country are usually required, and often some courses in social work research. Most students are trained in the casework method; in the United States in 1964 three-fourths of the fulltime students were so identified. Casework method stresses interpersonal skills (usually the casework interview) to help individual clients or families solve problems of personal or social stress. The development of casework method has drawn heavily on psychoanalytic theory and dynamic psychology; and their perspectives pervade this training, although there is a marked trend toward the inclusion of a wider range of knowledge from the behavioral sciences. Training in a second method, called social group work, seeks to develop skills in using interaction processes of specially constituted or selected groups to help clients. A third method, called community organization, involves training to work with groups and organizations within the community in the solution of social problems.
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Finally, a few students are given special training in social welfare administration or in social work research. Schools in developing countries have emphasized training in community development to a greater extent than have those in Europe and North America. However, community organization is currently being conceived more broadly in the United States, and it represents the most rapidly expanding part of the curriculum. Along with more academic and technical training, social work schools usually give deliberate attention to the socialization of the student into the profession. The professional practitioner is presented as a model in most classes, but especially in field placements. Faculty advice and supervision by field work instructors tend to be close and fairly continuous through the years of study, and frequent evaluations of progress in acquiring professional norms, values, and orientations are often shared with the student. Strong professional identifications seem to lead students to prefer subsequent employment in positions where other professional social workers are practicing. Some observers of social work education in the United States have expressed concern with the academic level of graduate study and the focus of training on therapeutic rather than preventive content (Kadushin 1965). However, there is evidence that the social work curriculum is changing in terms of greater emphasis on social science materials and broader conceptions of the roles for which social workers are to be trained. The number of years required for completion of social work training is related in part to the educational level attained by the students prior to enrollment in professional schools. If students are admitted directly from secondary schools, the length of study is usually three or four years. This generally corresponds in duration to the training given other technical professionals, such as teachers and nurses. The most significant exception to this widespread pattern is found in the United States and Canada, where the length of training is two years, but completion of four years of college is a prerequisite for admission. Faculty members for social work schools are recruited primarily from practitioners in social agencies. Academic work beyond the professional degree has not generally been considered necessary. In recent years, as social work schools have become more integrated with universities, faculty members with advanced degrees have been sought; in the United States, professionals with doctorates in social work or in a social science are increasingly
employed. Fifteen schools of social work offered doctorates for advanced study of social work in 1964. Faculty members with graduate degrees in other academic disciplines—especially sociology and psychology-—are often used, as are part-time instructors from other professional schools, especially from psychiatry, medicine, and law. While staffing patterns differ among countries, and a pattern of collaboration between practitioners and social scientists is fairly general, the point of view of the professional is usually dominant. There is widespread recognition of an acute shortage of personnel suitable for faculty membership. Professional practice As previously noted, the profession of social work is almost exclusively practiced within agencies. Private practice, particularly of casework, has grown in the United States (Levenstein 1964), but it is not common. Social agencies range from those in which social workers constitute the exclusive or predominant professional personnel-—such as family and children's service agencies, some community centers, and some social welfare planning councils—to institutions in which social workers occupy positions complementary or secondary to other professionals—such as hospitals, clinics, and public schools. Interaction between organizational and professional interests constitutes the continuing context for social work practice (Vinter 1959; 1963; Billingsley 1964). The type of client and the kind of service offered are initially fixed by the purpose of the agency. A characteristic part of social work practice is "intake"-—that is, determination of whether the client and the problem he presents can be properly accepted or should be referred to a different agency and, then, whether the client can be helped by the available professional treatment. In those instances in which clients are residents of correctional or medical institutions, pupils of schools, or cases before the courts, selection is further limited. The agency may also, by organizational decision as well as by the selective employment of social workers, determine the method of practice to be utilized. The introduction of different methods may be as much a decision of agency boards and executives as of professional practitioners. Although the executives are often social workers, practitioners are subject to evaluation in terms of agency criteria, such as productivity and conformity to routines, and these may not always be consonant with professional criteria of optimum service to clients. There is always at least latent strain between
SOCIAL WORK the requirements of professional autonomy and the constraints of the organization. Such strain is less evident where professional social workers occupy all levels in an agency. Where they are in a minority or subject to authority of" other professions, the differentiation of a distinctive function for the professional social worker may become blurred, and its determination may become a matter of concern. Where untrained workers constitute a large proportion—as in most public welfare agencies—professional social workers often occupy supervisory or administrative positions. In agencies that provide mental health services—such as child guidance clinics, clinical and outpatient services of mental hospitals, and some community health agencies—social caseworkers (and sometimes social group workers) are often parts of clinical teams consisting of psychiatrist, clinical psychologist, and social worker. Problems of establishing appropriate roles and working out interprofessional relations have been observed, particularly those centering on the higher status often accorded to, or assumed by, the psychiatrist (Michigan . . . 1957). The institution of "supervision" is characteristic of the organization of much social work practice. More experienced or more highly trained practitioners serve as "supervisors," not only in the administrative sense but as colleagues with whom practitioners are expected to discuss specific cases and problems of practice. This is viewed as a continuation of professional education for the social worker (usually on an individual, tutorial basis) and as a safeguard for standards of practice. Even trained social workers are supervised. This has been said to retard the achievement of professional independence, and it has recently come in for criticism and experimental modification (Burns 1965). No detailed empirical study of supervision in its organizational and professional context has yet been published, although it appears to be a common pattern for the organization of practice in most countries, it is often associated with the use of consultation about particular cases with other professionals, such as psychiatrists or other physicians, psychologists, and lawyers. Social workers tend to identify themselves along lines of practice methods as caseworkers, group workers, or community organization workers, and their agencies are often similarly identified. There is experimentation, in both training and practice, with multiple uses of these methods and with their modification in order to find the most appropriate patterns of service. Particularly noteworthy are ef-
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forts to devise new approaches to interpersonal helping processes, to the structuring of service and treatment organizations, and to the utilization of social action and other methods of community work. In the more clinical practices, such professional developments are strongest in the United States and western Europe, but new techniques in community organization are appearing most rapidly in other countries, where community development work in rural and urban areas is prominent. Professional—client relationships. The major part of social work practice takes the form of faceto-face interviews with individuals, families, or groups of clients at the agency. Compared with other helping professions, however, social work conceives its practice as involving more contact with clients in their homes and elsewhere in the community. For example, work "in the streets" with gangs of delinquents is carried on by a number of agencies, and extensive work with neighborhood groups, settlement houses, and voluntary associations in the community is characteristic of some community organization practice. In addition, community organization practiced in welfare planning or fund-raising agencies calls for other relationships. The clientele of social workers thus consists of a wide range of persons, groups, and community organizations. Clients of public agencies are usually from lower socioeconomic levels as compared with the clients of private agencies (Cloward 1963). The latter may charge fees to clients who can afford them, but the services of social workers are usually provided without cost to the clients. Among the helping professions, social work also tends to adopt a more comprehensive conception of the social context of the client's problem. Hence, professional service often entails contacts with family members, employers, associates, and agencies that affect the client. Even so, critics both outside and within the profession frequently urge a wider social perspective, and such criticism is partly responsible for recent programs dealing with problems of delinquency, dependency, and illness in terms of the social environment. The relationship between the professional social worker and his client is governed by strong norms of confidentiality and responsibility; it is seen as a privileged relationship delimited in function and content, calling for objective, emotionally neutral interest and impartiality in the rendering of service (Wilensky & Lebeaux 1958, pp. 298-303). Such norms are more explicitly recognized where professionalization is most advanced, but they are widely asserted in international literature as proper
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for the professional social worker. Recognition of the professional nature of social workers by their clients is not always equally evident. This appears to encourage self-consciousness as well as conscientiousness on the part of trained social workers, who seem seriously concerned about their professional image. The social worker views his practice as the use of his professional self to establish and maintain a helping relationship with his client, whether individual, family, or community group. The continuance of the relationship is often taken as an indication that help is being given, and clients who continue often express satisfaction with the help they receive. However, in the United States less than half of the clients of private family service agencies continue to a second interview or beyond; moreover, clients often discontinue contact on their own initiative, with the extent of benefit uncertain (Beck 1962). Evaluation of social work. Evaluation of social work practice has long been recognized by the profession as a counterpart of its claim to professional competence. However, objective evaluation of the effectiveness of social work has faced problems similar to those of other helping and therapeutic professions (Hyman et al. 1962). Some of the special difficulties of evaluating social work have been noted with respect to its clinical approaches by Blenkner (1950; 1962) and with respect to large-scale intervention programs by Freeman and Sherwood (1965). Systematic research utilizing judgments of practitioners to assess client changes during casework has been cumulative (Hunt & Kogan 1950; Ripple 1964), but there is growing recognition of the limitations of evaluation in this manner (National . . . 1959). Evaluation research with control-group designs is not yet common but is becoming more acceptable to the profession (Shyne 1963). Examples of such research are found in studies of agency services to convalescent mental patients (Meyer & Borgatta 1959), of alternative services provided for aged clients (Blenkner et al. 1964), of casework and group counseling for potentially deviant high school girls (Meyer et al. 1965), of a group work approach to malperforming high school boys (Vinter & Sarri 1965), and of several modes of casework service to clients with marital problems (Shyne 1965). Experimental studies have also been conducted to assess the effects of social work training on the selection of adoptive parents (Brieland 1959) and on the performance of public welfare workers (Thomas & McLeod 1960). In general, these studies have been able to demon-
strate only modest effectiveness of the therapeutically oriented approaches utilized. Such findings encourage social workers to examine the theoretical bases for their methods and have contributed to a growing emphasis on manipulation of the social and community context in which the problems of clients arise. Evaluation of the impact of community action programs presents complex problems that have only recently received systematic attention (see Freeman & Sherwood 1965). An attempt to affect delinquency rates by the use of street-gang workers has been evaluated by Miller (1962), who found that such workers had little effect. Comprehensive theories of delinquency control (e.g., Cloward & Ohlin 1960) or of community organization to enhance the position of the poor (e.g., Hagstrom 1964) generate programs of such complexity that their rigorous evaluation is unlikely to be achieved until the modes of intervention are made more explicit and the concepts and methods of evaluation are adapted to their scope. Some of the issues involved and some of the promising lines of approach to evaluating social action and social policy have been discussed by Wilkins (1964). [See also EVALUATION RESEARCH.] Career patterns. Although precise data are lacking, it can be observed that professional social workers engage in considerable mobility between agencies. In the tight labor market for trained social workers, this appears to be more a part of career choice than of necessity. Although there is a normal process of rising to higher positions of supervision and administration, horizontal mobility seems to be more characteristic. This is also encouraged by the fact that some female social workers return to the profession after having interrupted their careers for marriage and family life, and some find jobs when they accompany their husbands to new locations. Movement to new jobs normally results in higher salaries, but within a relatively narrow range, for practitioners. There are salary differentials between men and women professional social workers, which are partly a function of the disproportionate number of men in higher positions and in fields of practice, such as community organization, where salaries are higher (see Baker 1965, p. 537). There is no clear prestige hierarchy of positions or agencies through which an individual moves in his professional career. However, observers have noted that casework in psychiatric and medical agencies carries relatively high prestige, and private agencies are sometimes preferred to public
SOCIAL WORK ones. Employment in public assistance agencies, except in administrative positions, appears to carry the lowest prestige. Professional associations Many organizations to which social workers belong are formed by those in particular fields or with special areas of interest, such as public welfare, corrections, race relations, or mental health. Two types of strictly professional associations have emerged. One type organizes individual social workers in a membership association concerned with qualifications for admission to the profession, standards of professional practice, conditions of employment, professional ethics, and the status of social work among the professions. The other type is the association of schools of social work concerned with setting and enforcing educational requirements and standards, support for professional training, and expansion of educational facilities. The interests and activities of these two types of associations intersect, and they often share the same leadership cadre. Nevertheless, issues arise between them with respect to relative emphases in professional development on such matters as specialization, innovations in practice, and criteria of acceptable training. It appears that in countries where social work has developed more recently, associations of schools may give the chief stimulus to professionalization (United Nations 1965). In countries where professional membership associations are older and well established, the associations of schools play smaller but still significant roles. In the United States, both types of organizations emerged in their present forms at approximately the same time and maintain both formal and informal collaborative relations. National associations with inclusive professional membership were formed early in the history of social work in a number of countries. However, organizations along professional specializations, such as the medical or psychiatric social workers, appear to have emerged with more vigor. These special associations have subsequently sought to consolidate into single national organizations. The National Association of Social Workers (NASW), which was organized in 1955, presently constitutes the only national professional association for all social workers in the United States, with specializations recognized in nine councils. NASW requires graduation from a school of social work accredited by the Council on Social Work Education as a condition for membership. The Council on Social Work Education (CSWE), established in 1952, ac-
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cepts for accreditation only those schools which grant the master's degree after two years of graduate study; it also maintains a division for undergraduate departments that give social work instruction regarded as "preprofessional." The International Federation of Social Workers, founded in 1932 and reactivated in 1950 after the interruption of World War n, is composed of national associations of social workers. The International Association of Schools of Social Work has also been established. These organizations carry on informational and educational activities, meeting biennially along with the International Conference of Social Work, an organization with broad social welfare interests. Membership in NASW accords recognition of professional status in the United States and Canada. A degree from an accredited graduate school is an eligibility requirement for certain civil service positions of state and federal governments. NASW has sponsored legal certification restricting the use of the title "social worker" to those having specified qualifications, and in 1965 four states had laws protecting the title. In France and Puerto Rico, social workers are licensed, and several countries have established legal requirements for schools of social work. In 1960, NASW founded the Academy of Certified Social Workers (ACSW) to designate social workers who are members of NASW and have two years of successful social work experience under the supervision of a member of the academy. The effect of ACWS will be, after a transitional period, to establish a differential within the profession that is based on practice experience rather than education. Proposals to broaden the base of the profession by admitting social workers with college degrees and a certain number of years of experience to some form of membership in NASW were unsuccessful up to 1965. In the continuing debate over the issue, some members argue that present membership restrictions may generate competitive professional organizations with other qualifications for membership; a majority support the principle of a "professional" rather than an "occupational" association. The issue may be expected to persist, especially in the face of the shortage of trained social workers and the entrance of persons with qualifications other than social work schooling into occupations in social welfare under large public programs in such areas as mental health, poverty, delinquency, and community action. Associations of professional social workers in a number of countries have adopted or proposed
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codes of ethics, and in the United States NASW promulgated such a code in 1960. It pledges members to a series of obligations, including primary responsibility to the client, confidentiality, recognition of the limits of professional knowledge and competence, appropriate respect for colleagues, priority of professional over personal interests, and other standards of professional conduct. There has also been discussion of an international code of ethics by the International Federation of Social Workers. Future directions The character of the profession is being affected by several lines of development within social work. One of these is the increased emphasis on institutional and community change, in which the client is encouraged to participate. A number of governmental programs have adopted this approach, making the environment rather than the individual the major target of intervention. Social workers involved in these programs are turning to broader theories of social science in their training and practice and are enlarging the scope of community organization. Social workers who help the client to function better in his individual situation are also experimenting with additional techniques. There is renewed consideration of the whole family, and treatment methods more commonly include the use of group approaches. Moreover, social workers are increasingly turning to behavioral psychology as a guide for practice rather than to the psychoanalytic doctrines upon which the therapeutic methods of social work have largely depended. Manpower pressures are stimulating experimentation with new forms of practice and with the differentiation of tasks for which varied training is required. The increasing responsibility of social workers in the implementation of large public programs and greater security about their competence are encouraging both basic and evaluative research. Finally, achievement of more secure status and recognition is increasing the social work profession's ability to define the role it will play in the changing society. HENRY J. MEYER [Directly related are the entries PLANNING, SOCIAL, article on WELFARE PLANNING; WELFARE STATE. Other relevant material may be found in PHILANTHROPY; POVERTY.] BIBLIOGRAPHY The absence of extensive empirical studies limits analysis of the social work profession. Useful descriptive materials on social work education and other aspects of the
profession can be found in the four United Nations surveys published under the title Training for Social Work in 1950, 1955, 1958, and 1965. Current developments in various countries are reported in International Social Work, published bimonthly by the International Conference of Social Work. See Great Britain . . . 1959 for an extensive study of social work in Great Britain, focusing on manpower and training; Timms 1964 provides a history of British social work in mental health; and Rodgers & Dixon 1960 presents an intensive study of social workers in a British community. For the United States, the Encyclopedia of Social Work contains a wide range of information; it was published in 1965 by the National Association of Social Workers, replacing an earlier series, the Social Work Yearbook. Salaries and Working Conditions . . . 1961 includes some data on trends in the United States since 1950. The emergence of the profession in the United States is analyzed historically in Lubove 1965. The most complete sociological analysis of the profession is a perceptive study of social welfare, Wilensky & Lebeaux 1958; other general analyses of the profession include Pollack 1952; Greenwood 1957; Cohen 1958; Meyer 1959. For studies of the characteristics of social work students, see Pins 1963 and Berengarten 1964. Manpower issues are reviewed in National . . . 1966. The Council on Social Work Education's publications include the Journal of Education for Social Work, regular informational bulletins, and an annual series entitled Statistics on Social Work Education. The National Association of Social Workers also has a publications program that includes two quarterly journals, Social Work and Abstracts for Social Workers, as well as regular bulletins on personnel information and professional developments. Professional journals, especially Social Service Review, Social Casework, and Child Welfare, frequently include discussions of problems of professionalization. Developments in public xvelfare bearing on the profession may be found in the journal Public Welfare and in other publications of the American Public Welfare Association, as well as in occasional publications of the Welfare Administration, U.S. Department of Health, Education and Welfare. In addition, more technical papers about social work knowledge and practice often supply insights into trends in the profession. Abstracts for Social Workers. -> Published since 1965. BAKER, MARY R. 1965 Personnel in Social Work. Pages 532-540 in Encyclopedia of Social Work. New York: National Association of Social Workers. BECK, DOROTHY F. 1962 Patterns in Use of Family Agency Service. New York: Family Service Association of America. BERENGARTEN, SIDNEY 1964 Admissions Prediction and Student Performance in Social Work Education. New York: Council on Social Work Education. BILLINGSLEY, ANDREW 1964 Bureaucratic and Professional Orientation Patterns in Social Casework. Social Service Review 38, no. 4:400-407. BLACKEY, EILEEN 1964 Issues in Social Work Education: New and Changing Demands Made of the Profession. Pages 75-89 in Council on Social Work Education, Twelfth Annual Program Meeting, Proceedings. New York: The Council. BLENKNER, MARGARET 1950 Obstacles to Evaluative Research in Casework. Social Casework 31:54-60, 97105. BLENKNER, MARGARET 1962 Control Groups and the "Placebo Effect" in Evaluative Research. Social Work 7, no. 1:52-58. BLENKNER, MARGARET; JAHN, JULIUS; and WASSER, EDNA 1964 Serving the Aging: An Experiment in Social Work and Public Health Nursing. New York: Community Service Society.
SOCIAL WORK BRIELAND, DONALD 1959 An Experimental Study of the Selection of Adoptive Parents at Intake. New York: Child Welfare League of America. BURNS, MARY E. 1965 Supervision in Social Work. Pages 785-791 in Encyclopedia of Social Work. New York: National Association of Social Workers. Child Welfare. -» Published since 1922. CLOWARD, RICHARD A. 1963 Social Class and Private Social Agencies. Pages 123-137 in Council on Social Work Education, Eleventh Annual Program Meeting, Proceedings. New York: The Council. CLOWARD, RICHARD A.; and OHLIN, LLOYD E. (1960) 1961 Delinquency and Opportunity: A Theory of Delinquent Gangs. New York: Free Press. COHEN, NATHAN E. 1958 Social Work in the American Tradition: Field, Body of Knowledge, Process, Method and Point of View. New York: Dryden. CONFERENCE ON INTERNATIONAL SOCIAL WELFARE MANPOWER, WASHINGTON, D.C., DEC. 13-14, 1964 1965 Proceedings. Washington: U.S. Department of Health, Education and Welfare, Welfare Administration. Encyclopedia of Social Work. Edited by Harry L. Lurie. 1965 New York: National Association of Social Workers. FREEMAN, HOWARD E.; and SHERWOOD, CLARENCE C. 1965 Research in Large-scale Intervention Programs. Journal of Social Issues 21, no. 1:11-28. GREAT BRITAIN, WORKING PARTY ON SOCIAL WORKERS IN THE LOCAL AUTHORITY HEALTH AND WELFARE SERVICES 1959 Report. London: H.M. Stationery Office. GREENWOOD, ERNEST 1957 Attributes of a Profession. Social Work 2, no. 3:45-55. HAGSTROM, WARREN O. 1964 The Power of the Poor. Pages 205-223 in Frank Riessman et al. (editors), The Mental Health of the Poor. New York: Free Press. HUNT, JOSEPH McV.; and KOGAN, LEONARD S. 1950 Measuring Results in Social Casework: A Manual on Judging Movement. New York: Family Service Association of America. HYMAN, HERBERT H.; WRIGHT, CHARLES R.; and HOPKINS, TERENCE K. 1962 Applications of Methods of Evaluation: Four Studies of the Encampment for Citizenship. Berkeley: Univ. of California Press. International Social Work. -> Published quarterly by the International Conference of Social Work. INTERPROFESSIONAL CONFERENCE ON PROFESSIONAL TRAINING IN NORTH AMERICA FOR STUDENTS FROM OTHER COUNTRIES, OSGOOD HILL CONFERENCE CENTER, 1961 1963 The Professional Education of Students From Other Lands. Prepared by Irwin T. Sanders. New York: Council on Social Work Education. Journal of Education for Social Work. -> Published since 1965. KADUSHIN, ALFRED 1965 Two Problems of the Graduate Program: Level and Content. Journal of Education for Social Work 1, no. 1:33-46. LEVENSTEIN, SIDNEY 1964 Private Practice in Social Casework: A Profession's Changing Pattern. New York: Columbia Univ. Press. LUBOVE, ROY 1965 The Professional Altruist: The Emergence of Social Work as a Career, 1880-1930. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Univ. Press. MADISON, BERENICE 1962 Welfare Personnel in the Soviet Union. Social Work 7, no. 3:57-68. MEYER, HENRY J. 1959 Professionalization and Social Work. Pages 319-340 in Alfred J. Kahn (editor), Issues in American Social Work. New York: Columbia Univ. Press.
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MEYER, HENRY J.; and BORGATTA, EDGAR F. 1959 An Experiment in Mental Patient Rehabilitation: Evaluating a Social Agency Program. New York: Russell Sage Foundation. MEYER, HENRY J.; BORGATTA, EDGAR F.; and JONES, WYATT C. 1965 Girls at Vocational High: An Experiment in Social Work Intervention. New York: Russell Sage Foundation. MICHIGAN, UNIVERSITY OF, RESEARCH CENTER FOR GROUP DYNAMICS 1957 Role Relations in the Mental Health Professions, by Alvir Zander, Arthur R. Cohen, and Ezra Stotland. Ann Arbor: Univ. of Michigan, Institute of Social Research. MILLER, WALTER B. 1962 The Impact of a "Total-community" Delinquency Control Project. Social Problems 10:168-191. NATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF SOCIAL WORKERS, RESEARCH SECTION 1959 Use of Judgments as Data in Social Work Research. Edited by Ann W. Shyne. New York: The Association. NATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF SOCIAL WORKERS, RESEARCH SECTION 1966 Manpower in Social Welfare: Research Perspectives. Edited by Edward E. Schwartz. New York: The Association. PINS, ARNULF M. 1963 Who Chooses Social Work, When and Why? An Exploratory Study of Factors Influencing Career Choices in Social Work. New York: Council on Social Work Education. POLLACK, OTTO 1952 The Culture of Psychiatric Social Work. Journal of Psychiatric Social Work 21:160165. Public Welfare. -* Published since 1943. RIPPLE, LILLIAN 1964 Motivation, Capacity and Opportunity: Studies in Casework Theory and Practice. Univ. of Chicago, School of Social Service Administration. RODGERS, BARBARA N.; and DIXON, JULIA 1960 Portrait of Social Work: A Study of Social Services in a Northern Town. Oxford Univ. Press. Salaries and Working Conditions of Social Welfare Manpower in 1960. 1961 New York: National Social Welfare Assembly. SHYNE, ANN W. 1963 Evaluation of Results in Social Work. SociaZ Work 8, no. 4:26-33. SHYNE, ANN W. 1965 An Experimental Study of Casework Methods. Social Casework 46:535-541. Social Casework. -> Published since 1920. Social Service Review. H> Published since 1927. Social Work. -> Published since 1956. Social Work Yearbook. -» Published from 1929 to 1960. Statistics on Social Work Education. -> Published since 1952. The Term "Social Work" as Used Throughout the World. 1961 International Social Work 4, no. 1:5—9; no. 3:29-32; no. 4:9-11. THOMAS, EDWIN J.; and McLEoo, DONNA L. 1960 Inservice Training and Reduced Workloads: Experiments in a State Department of Welfare. New York: Russell Sage Foundation. TIMMS, NOEL 1964 Psychiatric Social Work in Great Britain: 1939-1962. London: Routledge; New York: Humanities. UNITED NATIONS Training for Social Work. -> Four international surveys published in 1950, 1955, 1958, and 1965. VINTER, ROBERT D. 1959 The Social Structure of Service. Pages 242-269 in Alfred J. Kahn (editor), Issues
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in American Social Work. New York: Columbia Univ. Press. VINTER, ROBERT D. 1963 Analysis of Treatment Organizations. Social Work 8, no. 3:3-15. VINTER, ROBERT D.; and SARRI, ROSEMARY C. 1965 Malperformance in the Public School: A Group Work Approach. Social Work 10, no. 1:3-13. WILENSKY, HAROLD L.; and LEBEAUX, CHARLES N. 1958 Industrial Society and Social Welfare: The Impact of Industrialization on the Supply and Organization of Social Welfare Services in the United States. New York: Russell Sage Foundation. -> A paperback edition was published in 1965 by the Free Press. WILKINS, LESLIE T. (1964) 1965 Social Deviance: Social Policy, Action, and Research. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall. WITTMAN, MILTON 1965 Information on Personnel Needs and Social Work Students: Implications for Manpower Planning and Research and for Programs of Recruitment and Education. Pages 15-25 in Ellen Winston et al., Social Work Education and Social Welfare Manpower: Present Realities and Future Imperatives. New York: Council on Social Work Education.
SOCIALISM The word begins in obscurity. Though various origins have been suggested, the first use in French has commonly been ascribed to the Globe of February 13, 1832, where the word socialistes was chosen to describe the followers of Saint-Simon. (However, a recondite reference to socialism a year earlier, in the religious journal Le semeur, has been uncovered.) Englishmen have claimed the honor of its coinage, since the word "socialist" did appear in the London Co-operative Magazine in 1826, although it was not until several years later that followers of Robert Owen began describing themselves as socialists. Clearly, however, the term was in the air, for it described a converging mood; and the first article on "socialism" as an idea in opposition to "individualism" was written by Pierre Leroux and appeared in 1835 in the Encyclopedie nouvelle, edited by Leroux and Reynaud. The word recurred thereafter in various writings by Leroux. By 1840 the term "socialism" was commonly used throughout Europe to connote the doctrine that the ownership and control of the means of production—capital, land, or property—should be held by the community as a whole and administered in the interests of all. Within 120 years after the term became known in Europe, the doctrine had spread so widely that one could find regimes in Sweden, Great Britain, the Soviet Union, China, eastern Europe, Cuba, Algeria, Egypt, Syria, Israel, Guinea, Kenya, Tanzania, India, Burma, and Ceylon calling themselves socialist, and the labels
Arab socialism, African socialism, and Asian socialism used to describe the grafting of indigenous traditions onto ideological doctrine. Rarely in the history of the world has an idea taken hold so deeply and dispersed so quickly. One would have to go back to the spread of Islam, in the century and a half following the death of Muhammad, to find a comparable phenomenon. And the analogy is not without relevance, for one finds in both instances the promise of a perfect community, the effort to create a solidarity larger than that of tribe or class, a reaction to the meaninglessness of existing religious beliefs, a militant proselytizing spirit, and leadership by new elites. In fact, the comparison with Islam is meant to suggest that the spread of socialism cannot be wholly accounted for in economic or class terms. The socialist movement has (or had) the character of a secular religion, and only from this view can one explain its development and internal vicissitudes. This article will discuss the formulation of early socialist doctrine, the differentiation of the socialist movement and the spread of socialism, the role of socialist parties, and varieties of socialist belief since Marx. [Marxist views and positions are elaborated in MARXISM and in the articles under COMMUNISM.] Growth of the doctrine Beginnings. The meaning of socialism, both logically and sociologically, can only be understood as a contrast to individualism. The Enlightenment, English political economy, the French Revolution, and the nascent industrialism had all combined to produce what in 1826 a disciple of Saint-Simon called individualism. In this doctrine, society existed to serve the individual and the pursuit of his own satisfactions; natural rights inhered in each individual, and government was not to regulate the economic life of society. Even the French Revolution, with all its passion for virtue and its defense of popular sovereignty, fostered the idea of economic individualism. The attack on individualism drew its strength from a Catholic and a socialist point of view. Bonald and de Maistre, both theocrats, were militantly against "political Protestantism" and asserted that man exists only for society. Particularly after the revolution of 1830, many French writers of a conservative bent—Lamartine, Balzac, SainteBeuve, Lammenais, and Tocqueville—expressed their alarm about I'odieux indwidualisme and held it responsible for the disintegration that they felt was occurring in their society. While the conservatives attacked the political
SOCIALISM philosophy which they linked to the French Revolution, the socialists were appalled by the economic doctrine of laissez-faire: this, Louis Blanc declared, was responsible for man's ruthless exploitation of man in modern industry. Under industrialization, the socialists alleged, the individual had been torn from old moorings and had no anchorage. Friedrich Engels, writing about London in The Condition of the Working Class in England, described "the brutal indifference, the unfeeling isolation of each in his private interest," which people experienced in the British capital, and stated that "the dissolution of mankind into monads of which each one has a separate principle, the world of atoms, is here carried out to its utmost extreme" ([1845] 1958, p. 24). Against the atomization and "egoism" of society, as Saint-Simon called it, the social critics proposed a new order based on association, harmony, altruism, and, finally, the word that superseded all of these—socialism. The idea of socialism has a long history in the Utopian tradition; one can trace its roots back to the dream of returning to a golden age of social harmony or to the radical theological creed—expressed most vividly by the Anabaptists of the sixteenth century and the Levellers and Diggers of the seventeenth—of the equality of all men. But equality alone is not the essence of socialism. The heart of socialism is to be found in the idea of community and in the doctrine that men can realize their full potential and achieve human emancipation in community. By this touchstone, the seeds of modern socialism are to be found in Rousseau [see the biography of ROUSSEAU]. The theme of community is also the central theme of Fourier, Owen, Saint-Simon, and Marx. The first three sought to achieve it through the a priori elaboration of the theoretical elements of community. Marx, on the other hand, sought to realize it through the sphere of philosophy and what he held to be its material embodiment, the proletariat. It is in the phrase "the realization of philosophy," the end point of a process of history, and not in any alleged distinction between Utopian and scientific descriptions of socialism, that the difference between Marx and the others lies. Both Owen and Fourier sketched socialist Utopias that were enormously attractive to individuals whose sensibility was repelled by the evils of industrialism. Each wanted to establish a small agrarian community that science could make practical—in effect, a withdrawal from society. Neither man had a sense of history or any realistic awareness of the politics of his time. [See the biographies of FOURIER and OWEN.]
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Saint-Simon ("the last gentleman and the first socialist" of France) was a very different sort, and the customary inclusion of him with Fourier and Owen as a "Utopian" is actually a disservice to a formidable intellectual, a disservice initially performed by Marx, who, although he derived many ideas from Saint-Simon, failed to see the implications of much of the French writer's thought. John Stuart Mill, however, clearly recognized SaintSimon's contribution, remarking, in Principles of Political Economy (1848), that in the few years of its public promulgation, Saint-Simon's thought had sowed the seeds of nearly all the socialist tendencies. Durkheim considered Saint-Simon to be the father of socialism, as well as of positivism, and devoted a book to his theories. Although in the Communist Manifesto Marx cavalierly dismissed Saint-Simon as a Utopian, Engels in his later years remarked that Saint-Simon's "breadth of view" and "genius" contained in embryo "all the ideas of later socialists which are not strictly economic." For what Saint-Simon presented is what we know today as the theory of industrial society, and his discussion of the nature of solidarity outlines the theory of occupational community which Durkheim later elaborated. [See the biography of SAINTSIMON.] It is not too much to say, following Markham (1952), that the Saint-Simonians were the most important single force behind the great economic expansion of the Second Empire, particularly in the development of banks and railways. Enfantin, the most bizarre of the Saint-Simonians, formed the society for planning the Suez Canal. The brothers Emile and Isaac Pereire, who promoted the first French railway from Paris to SaintGermain, also founded the Credit Mobilier, the first industrial investment bank in France, and the Compagnie Generale Transatlantique, whose first ships were named after Saint-Simon and his followers. In the hands of some of his more zealous followers, Saint-Simon's doctrines were made to seem ludicrous. Yet his own insight was considerable, and it was the Saint-Simonians' more diffuse (but no less intense) belief in Marxism which gave that doctrine its command over so large a part of the world. Marxism. The Communist Manifesto (Marx & Engels 1848) and the writing done in the thirty years following it make up the corpus of work that later socialists drew upon and associated with Marx [for a detailed discussion, see the biographies of ENGELS and MARX]. Relying on the political activities of Marx as well as on his judgments, the
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diverse socialist factions sought to justify their own policies. Thus Lenin and the Bolsheviks found in the address to the Communist League of March 1850, and in Marx's Critique of the Gotha Programme (Marx & Engels 1875-1891), the justification of their revolutionary and insurrectionary tactics. From Marx's activity in Cologne in the early part of 1849 and from his inaugural speech to the Grand Council of the International Workingmen's Association (the First International), democratic socialists have argued that peaceful electoral change is possible in the achievement of socialism. Marx envisaged a two-stage development in industrial countries that presaged the victory of socialism. The first was the democratic revolution; the second, the social revolution. By the "democratic revolution" Marx meant the victory of the middle classes over the remnants of the aristocracy and the clearing away of feudal remains to achieve the successful development of capitalist production and of political rights for all in the society. By the "social revolution" Marx meant the economic victory of the proletariat, who will take over the ownership of the means of production. From this point of view, England was the most advanced country and, therefore, presumably the one most ripe for socialism. Measured on the same yardstick, Germany, while developing industrially, was still lagging behind because the middle classes had failed to complete the democratic revolution; Russia was the least advanced, since the middle classes had failed to act at all, whereas the German middle classes had at least done something in 1848. In the socialist perspective, therefore, Russia was the country where a revolution was most imminent, since it had lagged so far behind and was only beginning to catch up economically. But before 1914 all orthodox Marxists expected this to be a bourgeois, rather than a socialist, revolution, since the working class in Russia was too small to sustain a socialist revolution and the economy was too "immature" for socialism. Against the populists and the, anarchists in Russia who argued that the country could skip a social stage and usher in a socialism based in part on the old village miry, or communal holdings, the early Russian Marxists— Axelrod, Plekhanov, and Lenin—argued that socialism in Russia would have to await the development of capitalism and the creation of a sizable working class. Only at the beginning of the twentieth century did the thought occur to some Russian Marxists, notably "Parvus" and Trotsky—and later Lenin himself, when he was converted to the idea—that they could use the impending Russian
revolution to wrest power from the bourgeoisie and thus spark revolution in the advanced industrial countries. Before 1917, no Marxists thought that socialism would be possible in preindustrial or underdeveloped countries. The West was expected to lead the way. What kind of socialism was supposed to emerge? What would society be like the day after the revolution? And what were Marxists supposed to do while waiting for the revolution? No political party can exist without a program that holds out the promise of immediate benefits. But as Schumpeter has pointed out, anything positive done or to be done in the vitiated atmosphere of capitalism was ipso facto tainted. Marx and Engels discouraged programs that involved constructive policy within the capitalist order because they smacked of bourgeois radicalism. However, when they faced the problem in 1847, they resolutely cut the Gordian knot. As Schumpeter put it: "The Communist Manifesto quite illogically lists a number of immediate objects of socialist policy, simply laying the socialist barge alongside the liberal liner" (1942, p. 317 in the 1962 edition). The problem was to recur constantly throughout the political history of most of the European socialist parties. Should one make immediate demands or not? This issue was fought out, for example, within the American Socialist party at the turn of the century; and it resulted in such factions as the Reformists, and the Impossibilists, who declared themselves against any such program on the ground that it would dilute the revolutionary ardor of the masses. More important, the problem of reforms, and of what kind of reforms, had to be confronted by the various socialist parties of Europe in the 1930s—such as the British Labour party, the German Social Democratic party, and the French Socialist party—when they entered the government and even took over sole responsibility for running it in a capitalist society. As we shall see, many of these governments and countries foundered when the socialist governments discovered, for example, that they had no solution for the problem of unemployment under capitalism. The slogan "Socialism or Capitalism" had left them unprepared for the exigencies of the intermediate period. This is always the dilemma of social movements that live in a world but are not of it. Gotha and Erfurt. Marx did, of course, distinguish between socialism and communism, in the sense that the first is a transitional period and the second the undefined realm of man's freedom. For this aspect of the idea of socialism, two documents are crucial—the Gotha Programme (see Marx &
SOCIALISM Engels 1875-1891) and the Erfurt Program (see Kautsky 1892), two doctrinal statements of the German Social Democratic party. In 1875, two German socialist parties, one dominated by followers of Ferdinand Lassalle, the other by Wilhelm Liebknecht and August Bebel, nominal followers of Marx, met in Gotha to create a unified socialist party. The program they adopted there was in the main a product of Lassallean doctrine, and in a private communication Marx wrote a searing critique of it. In 1891, the German Social Democratic party adopted the so-called Erfurt Program (named for the city where the party congress was held), which was written principally by Karl Kautsky, under the direct supervision of Engels; Engels then published the Critique for its historic interest, feeling that the Erfurt Program went beyond the criticism Marx had made of the Gotha document. But the Critique, in its tone and implications, was more revolutionary and radical than the Erfurt Program, and, predictably, the leftwingers in the socialist movement, beginning with Lenin, formulated their program from the Critique. It was in the Critique that Marx used the phrase "revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat," which after 1917 provoked far more recriminatory debates between communists and socialists than any other words he wrote. The communists took it as a justification of the suppression of all political parties other than the true proletarian party under Soviet rule. The socialists insisted that the phrase applied only to temporary and special situations until a truly democratic state could be organized, and was nugatory in those situations where a peaceful transition to socialism, through the electoral process, was possible. The inflammatory phrase does not appear in the Erfurt Program, nor does any statement of immediate aims or political demands. The program was intended as a full-fledged analysis of the tendencies of Capitalism, from a Marxian point of view, and as a general discussion of the "cooperative commonwealth" of the future. The program assumes the recurrent Marxist theme: "Few things are . . . more childish than to demand of the socialist that he draw a picture of the commonwealth which he strives for. . . . Never yet in the history of mankind has it happened that a revolutionary party was able to foresee, let alone determine, the forms of the new social order which it strove to usher in" (Kautsky [1892] 1910, pp. 122-123). On the forms of organization, the managerial problems of a socialist regime—how orders are to be given, who will give them, which industries are to be managed by workers directly, which by state
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enterprises; in short, the practical problems that the Soviet state faced after the communists had assumed power—the program is completely silent. Kautsky, who inherited Engels' mantle as the leading Marxist theoretician, was prompted only once to deal with the problem of the organization of production in a socialist society (but not with the structure of authority within an enterprise). In some lectures delivered and published in 1902 as The Social Revolution, he declared simply that the organization of production would follow the scope of the market. For example, gas lighting is clearly a municipal business. The development of electric lighting and the transformation of power in mountainous regions makes the nationalization of water power necessary. This operates also to transform illumination from a municipal to a national business. Again the business of the shoemaker was formerly confined to the local market. The shoe factory does not supply simply the community, but the whole nation, with its production, and is ripe not for communalization, but for nationalization. The same is true of sugar factories, breweries, etc. (1902, pp. 115-116) In fact, when Kautsky had finished with his itemization (transportation, railroads, steamships, mines, forests, iron foundries, machine manufactures), it was clear that almost all industries would be nationalized in the "proletarian regime." [See the biography of KAUTSKY.] If one goes beyond these pedestrian problems, however, it is interesting that the Erfurt Program ends, curiously enough, on a note reminiscent of the young Marx and of that strain in German romanticism which looked back to the glory of Greece. The blessed harmonious culture, which appeared only once in the history of mankind and was then the privilege of a small body of select aristocrats, will become the common property of all civilized nations. What slaves were to the ancient Athenians, machinery will be to modern man. Man will feel all the elevating influences that flow from freedom from productive toil, without being poisoned by the evil influences which, through chattel slavery, finally undermined the Athenian aristocracy. And as the modern means of science and art are vastly superior to those of two thousand years ago, and the civilization of today overshadows that of the little land of Greece, so will the socialist commonwealth in moral greatness and material well-being the most glorious society that history has thus far known. (Kautsky [1892] 1910, p. 158) Differentiation of the movement The period from 1870 onward in western Europe saw the swift growth of industrialization and urbanization, the two crucial elements of modern
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society. This expansion of industrial power and of economic growth and wealth, which was due largely to two technological innovations—the improvement of steel metallurgy and the application of electrical energy to factory, city, and home— seemed to confirm a number of Marx's predictions regarding the development of capitalism (see Marx 1867-1879, vol. 1, chapter 25, and vol. 3, chapter 23). Capitalism was undergoing remarkable changes. The expansion of the joint stock company (the prototype of the modern corporation) was forcing a separation of ownership and management, which in many areas resulted in the industrial manager's taking the place of the capitalist as the central person of the organization, and the large-scale enterprise began employing hundreds and even thousands of workers under a single roof. More important, the "amalgamation" movements of the 1880s and 1890s—the rise of trusts, cartels, and monopolies—and the consequent elimination of hundreds of smaller businesses seemed to bear out Marx's predictions about the centralization of capital and the socializing of the processes of production. Volume 1 of Capital was published in 1867, and the subsequent expansion of the volume, along with its rapid translation into many languages, gave Marx, hitherto a neglected and cantankerous emigre in London, an authority in the international socialist movement, particularly in its German branch, which he had never had before. With the assiduous publication and spread of Marx's works by the growing socialist movements, Marxism suddenly became a vogue as no other socialist doctrine had ever been; and with the proliferation of followers and propagandists who in newspapers, pamphlets, and street meetings proselytized the simplified works of Marx, the doctrine itself assumed a canonical status that was unprecedented in the history of secular writing. The Second International. In 1889 almost four hundred delegates from twenty different countries (three-fourths of them from Germany and France ) met in Paris to create a new International, the Second International of socialist parties. The so-called First International, the International Workingmen's Association, was a loose confederation of small political and trade union groups, rather than parties, that had been organized in 1864. Although Marx was not the initiator of the First International, he quickly became its dominant intellectual figure, supplanting Mazzini, who had been asked to write its first draft program. The International broke up in 1872, when Marx and the anarchist leader Bakunin quarreled; though the anarchists
were expelled, Marx had the International's center moved to New York, preferring to bury it rather than allow some other group to capture it. The First International was formally dissolved in Philadelphia in 1876. More than any other step, the founding of the Second International symbolized the swift rise of Marxist socialism in Europe. It was only 14 years earlier, in 1875, that the German Social Democratic party, the first socialist party in Europe, had been formed. In the next dozen years or so, socialist parties were organized in France, Austria, Belgium, Switzerland, Denmark, and Sweden. In Russia in 1883, the year of Marx's death, Georgii Plekhanov organized the first political group of Russian Marxists. About the same time, in England, M. H. Hyndman, the son of an aristocrat, organized the Social Democratic Federation, which, while calling itself Marxist, never acquired more than a small sectarian following; and a quixotic band of reformers organized the Fabian Society (the name alluded to the Roman general Fabius Cunctater—Fabius the Delayer—who was known for his patient, waiting tactics against Hannibal). In 1889, the year the Second International was founded, the historic Fabian Essays in Socialism was issued, with chapters by George Bernard Shaw, Sidney Webb, and Annie Besant. The book eventually sold two million copies, and laid the intellectual foundations of the British Labour party and of Labour governments for the next sixty years. Socialist parties. By 1914, socialism had become the single most important political force on the Continent. In the 1912 Reichstag elections, the German Social Democrats amassed 4.5 million votes (over 30 per cent of the total) and 110 seats in the parliament, making it the largest single party in Germany. In France one of the socialist groups, the SFIO, garnered 1.4 million votes and 103 seats in the Chamber of Deputies. In Italy the socialists held over seventy seats in the parliament, and efforts were made to invite the party, or at least its right wing, into the government. But the rise of the socialist parties was not only a simple matter of winning large numbers of votes, primarily among the working class. Within a new and growing system of universal political suffrage, it transformed the nature of the party system and the political structure of each country. The political party of the first half of the nineteenth century was usually a loose association of "notables," in Max Weber's terminology, invariably based on individual constituencies or districts, and often with little responsibility to an electorate.
SOCIALISM With the growing democratization of the franchise in England, associations were formed in each district; and the caucus system, developed in 1868, enabled the Liberals to begin building local machines with full-time election workers. Yet mass membership was infrequent, and the parties of England, as well as the United States, depended for their finances on wealthy contributors. What the socialists did, particularly in Germany, was to introduce the disciplined and centralized mass party, with formal machinery for enrollment, regular payment of dues, a system of subscription to party newspapers and magazines, and, often, specified requirements of party activity. At its prewar peak, the German Social Democratic party had a million members and an annual budget of nearly two million marks. But the socialist movement did more than build the first mass political party. It tried, in most of the European countries and to a lesser extent in England, to build a complete working-class culture, a social world of its own, independent of the official culture of the society. The German socialist movement, the model for all other socialist parties, built large consumer cooperatives (with a large wholesale organization and its own processing plants) as well as housing developments. By the 1890s there were national organizations of workers' athletic societies, workers' bicycling clubs, and workers' hiking clubs. In time, the workers' recreational and cultural movement extended into all fields from chess to the theater, where a strong Volksbiihne (people's stage) was created. A working-class child could begin life in a socialist creche, join a socialist youth movement, go to a socialist summer camp, hike with the socialist Wandervogel, sing in a workers' chorus, and be buried by a socialist burial society in a socialist cemetery. If the idea of proletarian mountain climbing or socialist chess playing invites ridicule, one must see, as Carl Landauer (1959) points out, that the workers had been "excluded" from almost all accepted society, and they responded by creating their own. Revisionism and reformism. The socialist movements at the turn of the century may have felt sure about inheriting the future, but there was considerable uncertainty as to when and how that inheritance would be realized. Marx, in all his writings, had never been specific about the road to power. After 1850 he felt that the day of the barricades was finished, not only for military reasons but also because bourgeois society would stabilize itself for a long time to come. Against this view, apocalyptic hopes occasionally flared up, as during
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the Paris Commune. Yet Marx never took a dogmatic view as to any single course which the socialist movement would necessarily have to follow. In several instances, he felt that socialism might be achieved peacefully in the Western countries, where democratic institutions were being established. But he never ruled out the possibility of, and even the need for, violence, should the occasion demand it. Marx and Engels, throughout their lifetimes, insisted simply on the necessity of a revolution, by which they, as well as Kautsky, who became the leading spokesman for orthodox Marxism after the 1890s, meant a complete overturn of society once the socialists were in power—the abolition of private property, the end of social privilege, the breaking of the political and police power of the old ruling classes. But the question whether this aim could be achieved by peaceful means was never settled. And this ambiguity was responsible for the major doctrinal conflicts that preoccupied the socialist movements from 1890 to 1914. The major issues had to do with the themes of revisionism and reformism. Although their belief in socialism was never shaken, some individuals were skeptical that capitalist society was actually heading in the direction Marx had predicted. The standard of living was evidently rising rather than falling, and though some of the old middle class was disappearing, an emerging class of white-collar workers was taking its place. In many countries this new class did not wholly identify itself with the manual workers (with whom socialism was identified) or with the socialist parties. Most of all, the socialists' increasing success in parliament posed practical problems, such as entering the cabinets in coalition with other parties (and trying to put through social legislation rather than just waiting for capitalism to fall) and making alliances with nonworking-class parties such as the Liberals in England, the Catholic Center in Germany, or the Radical party in France. As James Joll has neatly put it: "By the end of the nineteenth century, no Socialist party could escape the difficulties presented by its own existence as a mass party, forced, for the moment at least, to function within a political system which at the same time it was seeking to destroy" (1955, p. 77). Germany. The problem was especially great in Germany, whose Social Democratic party was the most theoretically intransigent, and it was first posed by Eduard Bernstein, who was the editor of the party journal and was chosen by Engels to be one of his literary executors. In 1899, Bernstein wrote Die Voraussetzungen des Sozialismus und
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die Aufgaben der Sozialdemokratie (The Presuppositions of Socialism and the Tasks of Social Democracy), which triggered the debate. He argued, in effect, that the party should recognize the new changes in industrial society and declare itself to be what it was actually becoming—a party principally concerned with social reform. [See the biography of BERNSTEIN.] Although Bernstein's arguments had some immediate political implications, the debate was conducted largely on a theoretical level. There were important doctrinal and historical reasons for this. The German movement had always set great store in theory as the guide to the future; and the discussion of theory—especially in a party isolated from the academic world—was in Germany a matter of status and prestige. But the debate on theory had important psychological roots as well. Although Marx had always tried to shape the course of the German socialist movement, his influence during most of his life was virtually nil. The first German Workers party was organized in 1863 by Lassalle, whose dandified manners and aristocratic pretensions infuriated Marx. The constitutional struggle between Bismarck and the liberal opposition dominated the political life of Prussia at the time; and to Marx and Engels, observing the situation from England, this struggle was an outward expression of the conflict between the historic forces of aristocratic feudalism and bourgeois capitalism. They therefore urged the new German Workers party "to drive the 'revolutionary' Liberals forward against the government, preparing at the same time to lead the proletariat in its turn against the victorious forces of the bourgeoisie once the feudal system had succumbed to their onslaught" (Morgan 1965, p. 8). But Lassalle and his followers were convinced that Prussian liberalism had no such revolutionary propensities and that the quickest way for the workers to increase their influence was to join Bismarck's campaign against his liberal opponents, hoping to win in return certain socialist demands—freedom of the press and association and, above all, manhood suffrage, which Lassalle and his followers felt was necessary to any further advance. Lassalle, under the influence of Louis Blanc, also hoped that the state would finance cooperative factories so that the workers could become their own employees and overcome the "iron law of wages" which kept them impoverished under capitalism. Lassalle, a Hegelian, believed that the state should rule society; and socialism, with state ownership of factories, was the embodiment of the ideal of the state. Against Lassalle (and his successor J. B. Schweitzer), the socialists
Liebknecht and Bebel organized a rival socialist party, known as the Eisenachers. Nominally Marxist, the Eisenachers were primarily an antiPrussian party, and though they adopted the program of the International Workingmen's Association, they did so largely for tactical reasons against the Lassalleans. In practice they operated as a broad "people's party." The war of 1870 and the subsequent unification of Germany dissolved most of the issues between the two factions. The debate remained on a theoretical plane for good practical reasons. Reformism—which assumed that effective parliamentary power could be obtained—was impossible in Germany; for while imperial Germany had a parliamentary system, decisive power was actually in the hands of the emperor. Any chancellor needed the Reichstag's approval for legislation and for the budget, but a chancellor could be replaced only if he lost the confidence of the emperor. The chancellor, in fact, was responsible not to the Reichstag but to the crown. The government, though constitutional in form, was in fact autocratic. And while social democracy was growing in parliamentary strength, there was no corresponding growth in the powers of parliament. Thus the political system barred the Social Democrats from any legitimate hopes of winning power through parliamentary means and reinforced the rhetoric of revolutionary intransigence. The "fatal mistake," as Schumpeter called it, was Bismarck's. In a Machiavellian stratagem, he introduced universal suffrage in the federal empire after 1871, in the hope of winning the peasant votes, and to some extent those of the workers, against the urban middle classes. When the socialist vote began to increase, Bismarck introduced restrictive legislation against the socialists as a party, while introducing a comprehensive set of social welfare measures in order to win the loyalty of the workers. The maneuver failed. When the antisocialist laws lapsed in 1890, the socialists emerged stronger than ever, and their experiences reinforced their antagonistic temper and revolutionary rhetoric. By the turn of the century, and thereafter, the party controlled large municipal administrations, was supported by a powerful trade union movement, and had a vast bureaucracy of its own. The party's ideology no longer corresponded to its sociological reality (Michels 1911), but, because the political system did not allow the party to discard its revolutionary rhetoric, the ideology remained intact. Thus, when Kautsky came to answer Bernstein, he couched his polemic in the language of Marxist
SOCIALISM scholasticism. In practical fact, the situation confronting the Social Democratic party of Germany —as well as the socialist parties of the AustroHungarian Empire and czarist Russia—was the failure of the bourgeoisie, as far back as 1848, to complete their middle-class political revolution and eliminate the structures of monarchy and aristocratic rule. But Kautsky offered no program to deal with this problem other than the rhetorical formula of revolution and the relentless march of history which would sharpen the crises of capitalism. When in 1918 all three empires—Germany, Austria-Hungary, and Russia—collapsed, the socialist parties in these and other countries all adopted widely varying courses. Although capitalism by the turn of the century had become the predominant economic form of Western society, political structures and cultural traditions varied widely from one country to another. Paradoxical as it seems in Marxist terms, the cultural elements, more than the economic conditions in each country, account for the varying forms the socialist movement took. As Schumpeter remarked, every country had its own socialism. England. In Germany a rigid class structure, reinforced by a militaristic code of honor, excluded the workers from society and led to a counter stiffness of doctrinal Marxist orthodoxy. In Great Britain, by contrast, the intelligence of an old gentry class, a deep tradition of liberty and of political rights, the lack of a militaristic tradition and even of a standing army, the long-established supremacy of Parliament over the monarchy, and the deep-rooted empirical conception of politics, which rendered ideological "all-or-none" terms distasteful—all made for a civil polity, one that accepted the existence of the socialist movement as a legitimate part of British society. The British Labour party came into being in order to realize the rights of the working class in the society. The exemplar of peaceful—and piecemeal—social change, it was never Marxist, though it was based on strong class feeling and class loyalty. The sources of this position are threefold: There was, first, the deep and persistent strain of nonconformist Christian evangelism, which saw equality as a moral imperative. (The writings of R. H. Tawney, principally his books Equality [1931] and The Acquisitive Society [1920], which helped to shape the English socialist outlook, reflect this evangelism.) There was, second, the influence of the Fabians, principally Sidney and Beatrice Webb, who, representing one aspect of the Benthamite tradition, were social engineers for whom socialism was a tidy answer to the waste
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and disorder of the capitalist world. And third, there was the large trade union movement, which saw in the Labour party a means of influencing the course of favorable legislation. Whereas the Continental socialist parties participated actively in the affairs of the Second International, the British Labour party, before World War i, remained insular and rarely tried to impose its influence, as the Germans did, on other socialist parties. Much of this was due to the general isolation of the British from Continental social thought (one rarely encounters a discussion of "the state" in English political theory), which in turn has to do with the British temperament. As G. D. H. Cole, who knew Webb well, wrote: Sidney Webb's first thought in dealing with any question he took up was to find an administratively workable solution; and apart from a very few essentially simple ideas—he did not trouble himself much about underlying philosophy. He was fully convinced that the trend of events in the modern world was towards Socialism, and that this trend would continue: so that he saw no need to put himself into revolutionary opposition to the main course of development. . . . He had what is sometimes called a "civil service" mind—that is, a habit of translating every idea into terms of the machinery needed to give it effect. . . . He was, however, impatient of dreamers, and uninterested in theories which he could not turn into practical schemes. (Cole 1953-1960, vol. 3, part 1, p. 210) H. G. Wells summed up still another side of British socialism when he left the Fabian Society after a personal falling-out with Shaw and the Webbs. He caricatured all of them savagely in his novel The New Machiavelli. "Her soul was bony," he wrote of the character named Altiora Bailey (Beatrice Webb). "If they [Altiora and her husband] had the universe in hand I know they would take down all the trees and put up stamped tin green shades and sunlight accumulators. Altiora thought trees hopelessly irregular and sea cliffs a great mistake." The root image of their world, Wells wrote, was "an organized state as confident and powerful as modern science. . . . Individualism meant muddle, meant a crowd of separate undisciplined little people all obstinately doing things jarringly each one in his own way. . . . The organized state would end muddle forever" (Wells [1910] 1927, p. 193). The Webbs spent most of their lives making detailed empirical inquiries into problems of social welfare and administration. While Marxism is usually associated with the idea of planning, Marx, as we have seen, never drew any specific blueprint of a planned society. Nor did the German Social Democrats, despite their large parliamentary rep-
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reservation, even study industrial organization and indicate what they might do if they came into power. The Webbs and the Fabians, however, issued several hundred tracts providing detailed expositions of Labour thinking on both the local and the national levels. One can appreciate the thoroughgoing detail of Fabian research from a series of studies (conducted between 1898 and 1901) about the municipalization of different services—alcohol traffic, milk supply, pawnshops, slaughterhouses, bakeries, hospitals, and fire insurance (see Cole 1953-1960, vol. 3, part 1, pp. 215-216). In 1909, the Webbs's minority report on the operation of the poor laws set out in comprehensive detail the conception and policy of the welfare state (Great Britain . . . 1909). Later studies dealt with the general problems of the organization and control of industry. [See the biography of WEBB, SIDNEY AND BEATRICE.] The Fabians operated primarily as an elite group and never sought a large membership. Their influence was felt through their published ideas, their research, and their propaganda. Before World War i, the Fabians were a constituent group in the Labour party; but in keeping with their avowed tactic of permeating all institutions of society that had the power to influence policy—the civil service, the professions, business groups, and local government—they drew upon all groups, nonsocialist as well as socialist, for help. After 1918, when the British Labour party adopted a new constitution and accepted as its basic program a Fabian policy statement drafted by Sidney Webb, relations between the Fabian Society and the Labour party became closer. The Labour party has been unique among socialist parties, not only because of its open emphasis on "gradualism" but also because of its structure. Unlike the Continental socialist parties, based on individual membership, the British Labour party originated as a federation of unions and constituent socialist societies, and its funds were raised principally through levies on the union members. Until 1918 individuals could not become members directly. They became affiliated with the Labour party either through membership in the Independent Labour party, the Fabian Society, or the trade unions, and policy was worked out in negotiations between these organizations. Candidates were nominated by agreement between the unions and affiliates, on a roughly proportional basis. The individuals elected to Parliament then formed the parliamentary Labour party. After 1918 the membership system was changed in order to organize local Labour parties directly
in each constituency, but the federated structure remained. The formulation of policy has therefore been a complicated affair. Since the trade unions have traditionally constituted the largest group in the party and vote en bloc in the Labour party conventions, the annual Trades Union Congress is an important arena for adopting resolutions. The annual Labour party conference of unions, affiliates (such as the consumer-cooperative movement), and local constituency parties sets policy. But this policy is only morally binding on the parliamentary Labour party. In office, the Labour party is responsible only to the parliamentary party, not to the Labour party as a whole. In this crucial respect, once again, the British Labour party is shaped by the structure of British politics and not by the conventional theories of socialist organization. France. In England, the transition to a modern industrial society was accomplished peacefully by the economic, and to some extent social, blending of the rising plutocratic groups with the gentry, while a set of political compromises brought all sections of the country, including the working class, into the society. In Germany, the older feudal elements, using the state, had created powerful industries and maintained a political hegemony over the subordinated middle class. The working class, excluded socially, had built its own institutions, but paradoxically these very institutions had facilitated the integration of the workers into the society. France lacked any such unifying features. Economically, it was a two-sector society with a large peasant and artisan class alongside a modern industrial economy. Politically the feudal structure had been broken, but the bourgeois parties were never able to establish their unambiguous control; the unstable balance of forces periodically opened the way to an adventurer attempting to seize power. The working class itself was split. In Germany and England, the trade unions were part of the organized socialist movement because they hoped to achieve most of their aims through political concessions by the government rather than through direct economic bargaining. But in France, the trade unions were completely independent of the socialist parties. One wing, the syndicalists, based their gospel on Proudhon's antiauthoritarian and antipolitical ideas, and their antiparliamentary bias on the betrayals of the 1848 revolution and the Commune. The French form of union organization, the Bourses de Travail, which stressed the local community of all trades rather than the nationwide organization of one industry or craft, expressed the tendency to create a new society of labor rather than to concentrate
SOCIALISM on wages and working conditions. The other wing was that of "political socialism," but here, too, many of the temperamental weaknesses of French politics—its tendentiousness, its hyperbolic rhetoric, and its instability—were apparent in the French socialist movement. In 1896, there were no fewer than six national socialist parties in France, each usually more interested in fighting the others than in fighting the opposition. By 1905, the six had been reduced to two national parties, one led by Jules Guesde, who was the spokesman for orthodox Marxism and whose following was chiefly in the industrial north, and the other by Jean Jaures, a former professor of philosophy and a renowned orator—a humanist repelled by the aridities of Marxist dogma—whose following was among teachers, skilled workers, and intellectuals attracted to the idea of ethical socialism. Under the pressure of the Socialist International, the two parties made an uneasy union, but the factions were still unable to agree on whether to enter coalition governments headed by bourgeois parties. The French parliamentary system, with its emphasis on multiparties, made it difficult for any single party to assume power. The art of government was the art of coalition. As socialist parliamentary strength rapidly increased, the socialists faced the problem of silently abstaining, thereby allowing rightist cabinets to govern, or entering center-left coalitions. Those who opposed coalitions argued that the assumption of governmental responsibility would weaken the militancy of the workers and would force the party to agree to nonsocialist programs. Those who favored coalition, originally named the Possibilists, argued that in government, socialists could more easily defend the republic against reactionary forces—and at the same time help pave the way to socialism. Syndicalism. If the British Labour party and Fabian gradualism together represent one end of the socialist continuum, revolutionary syndicalism, with its faith in direct action and the general strike, represents the other. The word "syndicalism" simply meant "unionism," but in the period preceding World War i it connoted an antiparliamentary, antireformist tendency deeply rooted in the Proudhon anarchist, antipolitical, antiauthoritarian tradition. Revolutionary syndicalism was primarily a phenomenon of the Latin countries—France, Italy, and Spain—though syndicalist elements made a strong showing in the British labor movement among the seamen and the transport workers, and in the United States among the western miners
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and loggers of the Industrial Workers of the World ("Wobblies"). Syndicalism never took hold in central Europe, the heartland of orthodox Marxism. Marx and Engels had taught their followers to regard syndicalist tendencies as an expression of backwardness and immaturity, as a passing phase in the development of industrialism which would disappear after the emergence of the large-scale factory system and a modern industrial proletariat. Whatever the validity of that appraisal, syndicalism as it emerged in France was not only a despairing rebellion against industrial capitalism but, in its vision of the future, a protest against the destruction of free trade unionism under an authoritarian state socialism. This aspect of syndicalism was formulated by Fernand Pelloutier, a journalist who had been active in the various Marxist movements in France. Disillusioned with the political parties, which were preoccupied with obtaining office and power, Pelloutier felt that the only protection workers could have against arbitrary managerial power— either in nationalized industries or in capitalist enterprises—would be workers' control of industry. Syndicalism was important less as a doctrine for reorganizing society than as an attitude. It was hostile to parliamentary methods—and in 1905 the French trade union movement, in the famous Charter of Amiens, laid down the principle of strict independence from all political party involvement. Its injunction has been so strong that, unlike every other European trade union official, no French union secretary was allowed to take a parliamentary seat. The charter proclaimed the general strike as the instrument of revolution, a single collective action whereby the entire working class, by laying down its tools, could halt the operations of industry and in that "transforming moment" take power. Further, the charter glorified spontaneity rather than organization; and it emphasized the role of a conscious minority, an elite of revolutionary proletarians whose task it would be to lead an aroused working class into revolutionary action. [See SYNDICALISM and the biography of SOREL.] Guild socialism. The syndicalist emphasis on workers' control has had recurrent appeal in working-class and radical movements. In Great Britain, where the "medievalist socialism" of William Morris and John Ruskin, firmly against industrialism and statism, caught on for a time, syndicalist ideas had a strange efflorescence before World War i in the "guild socialism" of A. R. Orage and G. D. H. Cole. [See the biography of COLE, G. D. H.] The guild socialists, reacting against the administrative socialism of the Fabians, blueprinted a
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decentralized socialist society in greater detail than any other socialist movement had. Politically, the guild state was to be a bicameral body—the one a geographical parliament based on local constituencies, the other a "functional" body made up of representatives of each trade or industry. The consumer, through Parliament, was to set the goals of production (e.g., the division between consumption and investment, the priorities of development); the Council of Guild Representatives, the producers, was to be responsible for the efficient management of industry. Each guild was to be a self-gcverning body, based on local councils, and was to set its own conditions of work. Each guild would receive money in proportion to its membership, but would pay wages in accordance with its own rules—either in equal shares or in differentials according to skill. Thus a national political and economic planning system was combined with the idea of cooperative workshops. Russian populism. The course of world politics since 1917 has been dominated by the long shadow and the doctrinal pronouncements of Vladimir Il'ich Ul'ianov. Before 1914, however, Lenin played only a small role in the affairs of international socialism. He was a member, after 1905, of the bureau (executive committee) of the Second International, one of 69 persons representing 23 member countries. He was known personally to the leading figures of the socialist movement, but his works, not yet translated, were little known; and as an exile representing one of several fiercely quarrelsome sects, he carried little weight in the International. Moreover, none of the prominent theoreticians of Marxism expected a socialist revolution in Russia: there was only a small industrial proletariat, and the country was still backward and feudal. In accordance with the theory of "necessary" stages of social development which Georgii Plekhanov (1883) had posited in founding the Marxist movement in Russia, this vast country still had to pass through the stage of capitalism, and the bourgeois middle-class democratic revolution was still to come. Once Russia could be led along the lines of Western social development, then political freedom, trade union freedom, and legal socialist activity would be achieved; after the democratic revolution, which was the role of the middle classes, would come the social revolution, in the more distant future. In effect, Russia was still "before 1848." Yet the revolution did occur and was shaped by certain peculiar features of Russian social history. Before socialism, the dominant radical tradition
in Russia had been populism, a doctrine associated in large measure with that remarkable exile Alexander Herzen. Herzen saw in the peasant communes the seeds of a future cooperative society that could bypass the harsh and disruptive effects of capitalism. From London, Herzen kept alive the liberal spirit of the Russian intelligentsia through his magazine Kolokol (The Bell), and in his home were to be found the major exiles from Russia. The populism preached by Herzen idealized the peasantry and asserted, in almost mystic fashion, that the peasant was the source of wisdom and virtue. In the summer of 1873, roused by the appeal of Mikhail Bakunin, hundreds of students went to the countryside to "go to the people" and rouse them to action. Students disguised as workmen wandered the countryside, preaching revolution, but the peasantry, suspicious of their wouldbe saviors, simply turned them over to the police. The episode was important in the history of populism, and its lesson was drawn most starkly by Peter Tkachev, one of the theorists of Russian populism. Insisting that the peasants as a mass— the people—were incapable of revolutionary creativeness and that only a "conscious minority"— the intelligentsia—could make the revolution, Tkachev sketched the kind of organization that would be necessary. It would have to be, he argued, a conspiratorial one, based on the principles of centralization of power and decentralization of functions. And it would have to be led by the intelligentsia. These two themes—the need for compact organization and the role of a revolutionary elite—were to bear fruit some twenty years later in the thinking of Lenin [see the biography of LENIN]. Socialism between the world wars The war that had begun in the summer of 1914 not only brought revolution to Russia; it signaled the collapse of international socialism. For several years the heat and lightning of war had flashed in Europe, and each time the international socialist movement had proclaimed its readiness to strike in order to prevent international conflagration. Its growing power seemed to assure a new foundation for the maintenance of peace. Yet in 1914, with very little dissent, the socialist parties of Germany, Austria, and France all voted to support their governments in the war. The German Social Democrats, the most powerful socialist party in the world, had in the past publicly dissociated themselves from the German state. And the Kaiser, in turn, had once called them "fellows without a country." Now, with only one dissenting vote, the
SOCIALISM parliamentary party gave full support to the budgetary war credits the government requested. There were tiresome quotations from Marx in support of the action: Marx had supported the principle of nationality; Marx had once proposed support of Germany in a war against Russia; and in 1891 Engels had said that in such a war Germany would be fighting for its national existence. Once scripture was being cited, the French party had its own rationalizations, heavily laden with quotations from Marx. So did the Austrians. The fact remained that when the crisis finally came, nationalism as an emotional idea proved to be stronger than class, and international solidarity proved to be a myth. The International was at an end. Polarization of belief. The period between the two world wars saw Europe torn apart by the conflicting ideologies of communism and fascism. In the process, democracy and the socialist movement were the losers. Italy, Germany, Austria, and Spain came under fascist or authoritarian leadership. Even earlier, right-wing dictatorships took over Portugal, Hungary, and Rumania. Belgium and France were threatened by strong fascist movements. Only Great Britain and the Scandinavian countries were relatively free of these storms, though a small fascist group arose in England. The sociological reasons for these variations in fortune will be discussed in this section. The October Revolution in Russia had brought before the European socialist movement the insurrectionary idea of the seizure of power. For more than forty years the idea had been an abstraction to the socialist movement. Lulled by the "inevitablism" preached by Engels and by the steady growth of electoral success, the socialist movements had assumed that at some distant time it might yet be necessary to seize, or at least to maintain, power that had been established legally; but no one took the idea seriously. Even inside Russia the idea, while fiercely debated, had an air of mimetic combat. Plekhanov had argued that men could act only insofar as social conditions allowed them to do so, i.e., only within the limits of the "laws" of history. But Lenin had apparently demonstrated the primacy of "will," at least within disorganized situations wherein a small group of determined men, acting skillfully and in disciplined fashion, could seize power. Within Marxian theory there were actually three successive versions of the theory of taking power. The first, later presented in Lenin's "What Is to Be Done?" (1902), conceived of the proletariat as directed by a small group of professional revolutionaries drawn from the middle-class intelligent-
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sia; the working class would support the middleclass revolution in the faith that there would be a second round wherein the proletariat—supported in Germany by a peasant revolt—could take over. But this conception passed with the end of the revolutionary wave of 1848-1850; and as industrialization and a new appraisal of the nature of factory life and the role of the proletariat emerged, a second version appeared. Now the emphasis was placed on the building of mass political parties led by workers who had achieved theoretical competence—typified in Germany by Bebel, who had been a carpenter, and in England by Keir Hardie, who was a miner. It was now felt that socialism need not come through insurrectionary tactics or coups led by small bands of professional revolutionaries, but peacefully, through parliamentary means or even simply in a show of strength. After 1905 a few socialist theorists had argued that a new stage was emerging. These included Rosa Luxemburg, a Polish-Jewish intellectual with doctorates in philosophy and jurisprudence; Herman Gorter; Anton Pannekoek. a Dutch astronomer; and A. L. Helfand, a Russian-born economist who wrote under the name Parvus. Each of these socialists was influenced by developments in the Western labor movements rather than by events in Russia. In her book The Accumulation of Capital (1913), Luxemburg tried to extend Marx's economic doctrines by arguing that after a phase of imperialism, in which capitalists would seek to export capital surpluses, the capitalist system must inevitably break down and create a crisis. [See the biography of LUXEMBURG.] Gorter and Pannekoek had been close to anarcho-syndicalism, and Rosa Luxemburg and Parvus (in his early years) had been active in the left wing of the German social democratic movement. In one way or another, they all insisted that with the growing education of the working class, there would develop, during a crisis, a revolutionary spontaneity in the masses, and that to insist on party hierarchy and professional leadership would only lead to a dictatorship by the leaders. The Third International. It was only after the Bolshevik victory in 1917, and the creation of the Third (Communist) International, that Lenin's earlier text was canonized in order to claim for the Bolsheviks a unique revolutionary knowledge and thus to enforce the hegemony of the Russian party over all other Communist parties. Lenin summoned the revolutionary workingclass groups to a conference, which met in Moscow on March 2, 1919, for the purpose of organizing the new International. Its main objectives
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were the immediate seizure of power by workingclass parties in Europe, the abandonment of false bourgeois democracy, and the establishment of a dictatorship of the working class for the systematic suppression and expropriation of the exploiting classes. There was an apocalyptic fervor in the air. World revolution seemed palpably near. Shortly after the first congress of the Communist International, a Soviet republic was proclaimed by Bela Kun in Hungary, and another in Bavaria by leftwing socialists. It seemed as if the only thing needed to carry out a successful revolution was steely revolutionary will. A second world congress of the Comintern (the shorthand name for Communist International) was convoked in Moscow in July 1920. It was no longer a small gathering; delegations came from parties in a dozen countries. The chief feature of the meeting, which gave organizational shape to the international communist movement, was the drafting of 21 points as conditions for membership in the Comintern. The purpose of these points was to create in each country a disciplined, conspiratorial party whose chief purpose would be to combat the old socialist leaderships and to assert the binding, from-the-top-down, authority of the Comintern over each national party. Throughout Europe and in the United States, such socialist leaders as Ramsay MacDonald in England, Kautsky and Rudolf Hilferding in Germany, Morris Hillquit in the United States, and Jean Longuet in France had opposed participation in the war and had taken a "middle" position against the reformists. But in the opinion of the new Comintern, these leaders had to be rejected and exposed as much as those of the right wing, and had to be fought just as bitterly. The 21 points commanded communists to split every socialist party and trade union in the world, to organize an underground machine in addition to the public activities of the party, to disorganize as much as possible the army of each country, and to reject any cooperation with "social patriots and middlegroup people." By 1923 the revolutionary tide had receded all over Europe. The communists had completely misread both the character of the labor movements of western Europe and the social structure of those societies. For a short period the communists engaged in adventurism and even in putschism: the Red Army marched into Poland to advance the revolution, only to be defeated by Pilsudski, once a nationalistic socialist, who a few years later set up an authoritarian regime; insurrections were
planned, in 1923, in Saxony and Thuringia; and an abortive uprising in Hamburg failed. But after 1923 it was clear that, for the time being at least, Europe had achieved some measure of political and economic stabilization. The Soviet Union itself turned, under Lenin, to the problem of what to do with power in a single country. The large Norwegian Labor party, as well as such syndicalist leaders as Jack Tanner in England and Alfred Rosmer and Pierre Monatte in France, withdrew from the Comintern because of the centralization of party structure. What was left in Europe was the wreckage of the socialist movement in half a dozen countries and the fear of revolution that drove the middle classes to support right-wing groups. Within the Comintern, the hegemony of the Russian party was complete, and within a short time the International itself became principally an arm of Soviet foreign policy, rather than an independent instrument of revolution. [See COMMUNISM, article on THE INTERNATIONAL MOVEMENT.] The sharp turn to the left in the Soviet Union in 1929, and Stalin's effort to consolidate his rule by turning on his erstwhile right-wing political allies, coincided with a world-wide economic depression and the rise of fascism in Germany and other countries. For the communists these events heralded the final crisis of capitalism, and they awaited a fresh wave of revolutionary activity. After an analysis of fascism in Italy, communist theorists argued that fascism was the last stage of monopoly capitalism; and since it could not solve the inherent contradictions of the capitalist crisis, inevitably the revolution was again at hand. From this analysis the communists concluded that the chief obstacle to their victory was not the capitalists but the socialists, who still "misled" the majority of the working class. In several instances, the communists even worked with the Nazis in order to diminish socialist influence. They voted with the Nazis in the Prussian Landtag to bring down the Social Democratic government. They cooperated with the Nazis in the Berlin street-car strike in 1932 in order to increase disorder in Germany. Socialists in government and opposition. The communists thus became the implacable enemies of the democratic regimes in central and western Europe; and the middle classes in many countries, principally Italy and Germany, out of fear of the left and because of economic crises, often voted for the extreme right. However, an important element contributing to the weakness of the democratic regimes was the inability of the socialists, owing to the contradictory attitude toward capital-
SOCIALISM ism and democracy inspired in them by Marxian dogmatics, to provide any effective leadership or support for democratic societies. In 1931 the reconstructed Socialist International consisted of parties with more than six million dues-paying members. The total parliamentary vote for socialist candidates was almost 26 million. More than 1,300 socialist deputies sat in the parliaments of their countries. Some 360 daily newspapers spoke for the labor movement. Yet, remarkably, this large force was almost completely paralyzed when the crises occurred. The root problem was an old one. The socialist movement, true to its Marxist heritage, did not believe that capitalist society could be reformed. When the socialists, particularly of the right wing, were thrust into office because of the failure or the unwillingness of any other party to rule, they followed the most orthodox of economic policies, because "the crisis has to run its course." Believing, from a Marxist point of view, that the reason for the depression was a disproportion in growth between the producer goods sector and consumer goods sector, they tried to use up the resultant "overproduction" so that a better proportion between producers' and consumers' purchasing power would emerge, leading to an upswing. As Adolf Sturmthal has pointed out in The Tragedy of European Labor (1943), the socialist movement, with all its strength, was basically a pressure group seeking social concessions from the state for the immediate benefit of the working class. But it had neither an economic program nor any clear idea of planning. State intervention arose out of unorthodox economic theories, such as John Maynard Keynes's in England and Gunnar Myrdal's in Sweden, or the unorthodox financial policies of Hjalmar Schacht, who had been made president of the Reichsbank by the German socialists when Hitler began the rearmament that revived the German economy. Nowhere except in Sweden, and later in the planning ideas of Hendrik de Man, did the socialists have any idea of what to do about the depression [see the biography of MAN]. Italy. The socialists, in a different way from the communists, also misread the nature of fascism. For example, fascism was barely mentioned in the major report of the 1928 International Socialist Congress on the political situation in Europe. It was seen as an idiosyncrasy of the Italians; and its ideology, emotional roots, and irrational quality were not understood. Yet Italy did foreshadow quite clearly the fate of the other nations in central Europe.
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Shortly after the war, Italy seemed on the verge of a proletarian revolution. In the general election of 1919 the socialists won two million out of a total of 5.5 million votes, and the leadership of the party had passed into the hands of the left wing, which openly asserted that the next step would be the "creation of a Socialist Republic and the establishment of a proletarian dictatorship." Workers had spontaneously begun to seize factories, and the peasants of Sicily and the south had appropriated the uncultivated holdings of absentee landlords. As Sturmthal put it: "Continuous unrest, strikes, factory occupations, expropriation of land—all this convinced the middle class that a revolution was impending and that the democratic middle-class state was powerless to stave off the danger. Public opinion became more and more convinced that a strong man was needed to establish law and order" ([1943] 1951, p. 182). The decisive, dramatic incident occurred in August 1920, when a wage dispute in the metal industries led to sudden "stay-in" strikes in which 500,000 workers occupied the factories, kept the machinery going, and assembled arms to resist evacuation. Workers in other industries called on their leaders to order the taking over of other factories. But the socialist leadership, divided and uncertain, hesitated; and finally a pact was reached with the industrialists whereby the employers agreed in principle to the union's demand for workers' control of production. This was the high point of the revolutionary tide, and then a new force appeared, the Fascisti. Organized by Benito Mussolini, a former leader of the left wing of the Italian Socialist party, the Fascisti preached anticapitalism, nationalism, and the necessity of violence. With his squadristi, Mussolini went into the streets to break up working-class meetings and to beat up working-class leaders. In 1921 an effort was made to form a socialist-liberal coalition government and save the country from the threatened civil war. The rightwing socialists made the proposal, but the idea was vetoed by the left wing. By 1922 a form of civil war had spread in Italy. In the large urban industrial centers of the north, strongholds of the socialist movement, the city administrations passed into the hands of Mussolini's squadristi through terror and intimidation. Bologna, Genoa, Livorno, Milan, and finally Naples were taken over by the fascists. A general strike called by the trade unions on August 31, 1922, failed ignominiously, despite the united support of the labor movement; and middleclass opinion swung even more strongly to the
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fascists. At the invitation of the king, and with the support of the army, bureaucracy, and big business, Mussolini was invited to become premier. For two years he ruled by parliamentary means, but after the assassination of Giacomo Matteotti in June 1924 and left-wing withdrawal from the Chamber of Deputies as a moral protest, Mussolini became more openly dictatorial: trade unions, political parties, and cultural organizations were either disbanded or placed under fascist control, and local autonomy was abolished. By 1926 parliamentary government had vanished. [See FASCISM.] Germany. In November 1918, the Germany of Wilhelm was no more. The Kaiser had abdicated, and Friedrich Ebert, a former saddlemaker who was now the head of the Social Democratic party, installed himself as head of the new republic. But the socialists themselves were split into three factions. The "majority socialists" represented the right wing of the party. The "independent socialists," led by Kautsky and Bernstein (together for the first time in twenty years), had opposed the war and now favored a radical program of economic reform. The extreme left, led by Luxemburg and Liebknecht, knew that the German republic was going to be a middle-class state and wanted to organize a proletarian party prepared for an eventual revolutionary opportunity. But younger socialists took over the left wing en masse, overruled Luxemburg and Liebknecht, and began to prepare the "Spartacus group," as the left wing called itself, for immediate revolution. In this situation the attitude of the majority socialists was decisive. The Workmen's and Soldiers' Councils, which had sprung up spontaneously on the Soviet model, elected the majority socialists to the leadership of the new Council of People's Commissars. But the majority socialists feared a repetition of the Russian chaos and sought first to achieve stability with the cooperation of some of the military. When the Spartacus group initiated a rebellion in early 1919, it was put down by Gustav Noske— the majority socialist appointed as commander-irichief of the army—with the help of the Free Corps, created and led by former imperial officers. After the uprising was quashed, Free Corps officers cold-bloodedly murdered Liebknecht and Luxemburg, who had loyally supported their comrades despite their opposition to the venture. When, in the spring of 1919, left-wing socialists—and later the communists—took over the newly proclaimed Bavarian republic, the Free Corps was used to take Munich and to murder hundreds of the insurgents,
thus seriously reducing the authority and prestige of the socialists. In March 1920, Reichswehr troops led by a little-known nationalist named Wolfgang Kapp mutinied and marched into Berlin. The republican government could not muster enough loyal troops to defend the capital, and fled to Stuttgart. A powerful general strike, joined by all the factions, defeated the putsch in four days. When Kapp was routed from Berlin, communistled workers in the Ruhr tried to continue the general strike. The newly formed Weimar coalition— majority socialists, the Catholic Center, and Conservative Democrats—sent the Reichswehr into the Ruhr to crush the revolt. In the end the majority socialists, as well as the republic, were the losers. In the general elections of June 1920, the majority socialists and the middle-class parties of the Weimar coalition lost heavily, and the nationalist parties gained. A new cabinet consisting of the Catholic Center and the right-wing German People's party took office. It was clear that on the right as well as on the left the republic itself had only shaky support among the German people. The socialists were given one more chance. In May 1928 the German Socialist party, now reunited because the independents refused to accept the Diktat of the Comintern, emerged as the strongest party in the Reichstag. Although they lacked an absolute majority, the socialists took office, with Herman Miiller as chancellor and Hilferding, the famed socialist theoretician, as minister of finance. But a year later Germany, along with the rest of the Western world, was plunged into the depression, and the socialists had no economic policy to meet the crisis. Hilferding, mindful of the ruinous inflation of the early 1920s, followed an orthodox deflationary policy which reduced purchasing power and increased unemployment. The strength of the labor movement defeated the employers' efforts to reduce wages and salaries; the fault, however, lay not with the employers, who had to reduce production costs or get out of business, but with the state, which had failed to work out any active policy. Instead of tapping idle capital funds, the government worked above all to balance the budget, or at least to reduce budget deficits, even if this meant reducing unemployment insurance benefits. Several German socialist economists favored devaluation or the abandonment of the gold standard, a monetary policy later associated with Keynes. But they were opposed, on the ground that this would lead to economic and political nationalism. In all essentials the socialists followed
SOCIALISM a policy of laissez-faire: the depression had to "run its natural course." After all, as any Marxist knew, capitalism could not be reformed. England. A similar dilemma confronted the British Labour party. In 1918 it had adopted a socialist program for the first time; the new social system was described as a thing that would emerge gradually out of capitalism, by a series of piecemeal changes. The Labour party was then still weak, third in size after the Conservatives and the Liberals. Five years later, following a prolonged period of unemployment which the Conservatives had been unable to cope with, the Labour party emerged as the strongest English party and, supported by the Liberals, in January 1924 formed the first Labour government in British history. The government carried out some modest social reforms, but its tenure was short. When the British Foreign Office published the so-called Zinoviev letter, a set of instructions from the head of the Comintern to British communists on antimilitarist tactics—a letter now conceded to be a forgery—the electorate voted strongly Tory, and the Labour government was ousted. The trade unions, disappointed by their failure in politics, turned to more militant economic action. The coal miners, always the most militant, had a genuine grievance-—their wages had recently been cut. (The problem was one of government monetary policy; in 1925 England returned to the gold standard at the prewar pound-dollar exchange rate, and the prices of British exports were above the world market level.) The miners, refusing to accept the wage cut and demanding the nationalization of industry, went on strike in May 1926. With the support of the entire trade union movement, this strike soon widened into a general strike, the first in English history. Railwaymen, local transport workers, builders, printers, iron and steel workers, all walked out, almost completely paralyzing London and other parts of Great Britain. The strike had had no revolutionary aim— its only purpose had been to support the miners— but when the government stood firm, the unions, uncertain of their next step, retreated. After nine days the general strike was called off, and its main result was that the left wing lost influence and the right wing gained complete control of the labor movement. In June 1929 the British Labour party had its second chance. In the general election of that year, the party won 287 of the 615 seats in the House of Commons and, with the support of the Liberals, formed the second Labour government, with Ram-
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say MacDonald as prime minister. But the problem that soon confronted the German socialists was already bedeviling England. Though other countries at the time were still enjoying prosperity, England, because it could not compete in world markets, had a great deal of unemployment. The Labour government was pledged to make farreaching social reforms; the business community demanded reduced taxes and a retrenchment in social policy. A collision was inevitable. One way out would have been devaluation or strict exchange controls to keep gold from leaving England. Either course would have been an acknowledgment of the end of Britain's domination of the international economy—which she had maintained for almost a hundred years—and a new policy of economic nationalism. This the Labour government refused to do. When the depression hit England full force, the Labour government had its back to the wall. The flight of capital from London had become a flood, and the Bank of England warned that unless the budget was balanced, the pound would fall. In orthodox fashion, the Labour government was committed to free trade and to defense of the gold parity of the pound. MacDonald proposed, as an economy measure, to cut unemployment benefits; and when the trade union elements in the party rejected such a cut, or any reduction in social services, MacDonald split the Labour government and, taking 14 colleagues with him, formed a national coalition with the Conservatives and the Liberals. The national government itself failed to stem the tide, and in September 1931 Britain went off the gold standard, introduced protectionism and a tariff, and began, under a Tory government, to set up economic dikes in an effort to save itself from the floods of world-wide depression. The Labour party, though it still retained some strength among the electorate, suffered a great loss of parliamentary strength—from 287 to 52. For nine years it sat in opposition until it joined the Churchill government of national unity in 1940. In 1945, for the first time in its history, the Labour party won a clear electoral majority. Austria. In February 1934, after four days of bloody fighting, the reactionary regime of Engelbert Dollfuss destroyed the Austrian social democracy. This was a blow that struck the international socialist movement especially hard, for Austrian social democracy had been the model for all proud socialists. It was a disciplined party and had the support of almost all of the working class. Its leaders and theoreticians, particularly Friedrich Adler and
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Otto Bauer, had been respected for their courage and their contributions to socialist thought. The party, while revolutionary in its aims, maintained a sanity and realism in political affairs which had prevented it from imitating the adventurism of the Hungarian communists in 1919 or the feckless policy of the German Social Democrats. In 1927, at the peak of its strength, the Austrian Socialist party polled 42 per cent of the total electoral vote, and in Vienna the socialists won a majority of almost two-thirds. Half a million of Vienna's two million inhabitants were dues-paying party members, and the city was a showcase of municipal achievement. In 1919 the socialists had joined with the Christian Social party in a coalition that gave the country stability and permitted sections of the old Austro-Hungarian Empire to achieve their independence. The first president of the Austrian republic, Karl Seitz, was a socialist, as was its first chancellor, the noted legal scholar Karl Reriner. The problem of the Austrian socialists was twofold: their strength was entirely in the urban areas, while the surrounding countryside and the middle classes supported the Christian Social party; and Austria was under direct and steady pressure from Italy to crush the socialist movement and establish a fascist regime. When the Nazi vote began to increase in Austria, as a result of Hitler's prestige and his direct aid to the new Nazi party of Austria, Dollfuss, a Catholic, was faced with the choice of coming to terms either with the Nazis or with the socialists. With the support of Mussolini (who wanted an independent Austria as a buffer against Germany), Dollfuss suppressed both the Nazis and the socialists. But the defeat of the socialists meant that the Austrian government had lost its main hope of independence. Four years later Kurt von Schuschnigg, who succeeded Dollfuss when the latter was assassinated by the Nazis, invited the underground socialists and the trade unions to support him against the Nazis. However, while negotiations were going on, Nazi troops invaded Austria and the country was annexed by Germany. France. Only in France, among the major countries of western Europe, was a fascist threat —that of Colonel de la Rocque and the Cagoulards, the right-wing group supported by the army— beaten back. In June 1936, a socialist government headed by Leon Blum took office. It was the first time that the party officially entered a coalition government, but it did so—also for the first time —with the support of the communists, who had abandoned their cry of "social fascism" and now proclaimed the need for a popular front to resist
fascism. Within a year a French New Deal had been inaugurated. The trade unions, never before recognized by French employers, now were granted collective bargaining rights. A social insurance system was established for the first time. Through public works and wage increases, Blum tried to increase the purchasing power of the workers and, thus, to restore prosperity. But, curiously, Blum resisted the idea of economic planning, fearing that it was essentially "statist" and fascist in character. Caught between the rejection of capital exchange controls by its political allies, the Radicals, and the communist opposition to devaluing the franc, the first Popular Front government fell. Sweden. Only in Sweden did the socialists have any real success, and they achieved it by abandoning the orthodox economic policies that the German Social Democratic and British Labour governments had followed. In 1932 a Swedish labor government was formed for the first time. It decided that balancing the budget on a year-toyear basis made little sense and that the government itself had to intervene in the economy. The government embarked on a set of extensive public works and financed these endeavors not by taxes, which simply would have shifted the existing purchasing power, but by borrowing money from idle capital funds. Public investment during a depression had to be expanded to compensate for reduced private spending. By following a steady policy of economic expansion, the Swedish government managed to eliminate unemployment by 1938. Five years earlier it had been as high as 164,000. These "Swedish stepping stones to full employment," as A. P. Lerner described the process (1944), wholly unorthodox at the time, have become commonplace economic practice in almost all Western countries. The rest of the melancholy story of European socialism before 1939—the Spanish Civil War, the Soviet purge trials and the Hitler-Stalin pact— while crucial to the history of Europe, is less relevant to the discussion of socialist theory and doctrine. Socialism since World War n Revisionism and peasant revolution. In the theory and practice of socialism after 1945 there were two completely unexpected developments. One was the rise of "revisionism" in the communist countries and movements of Europe. That is, the highly centralized command economies were modified by the trend toward a market and profit system, dogmatic ideology was eroded and tended to be replaced by pragmatic and instrumental pol-
SOCIALISM icies, and force and violence were discouraged as a means of fostering revolutionary change in noncommunist countries. In fact, with the extension of planning and public control in the noncommunist countries of Europe as a parallel to the growing decentralization of planning in communist countries, some theorists have argued that a "convergence" was taking place between the communist social systems and those of the West. The second development was the rise of the peasantry as a revolutionary force—or at least as a presumed revolutionary force—in colonial countries, bolstered by a new theory that the revolutions in the last third of the twentieth century would be made not by the proletariat, which had lost its elan through embourgeoisement, but by the peasantry. For the peasants were now, in the words of the "Internationale," the wretched of the earth. Marx, in many of his writings, had scorned the peasantry as intrinsically reactionary and small-minded because of its preoccupation with private property; he used the phrase "rural idiocy" more than once. But modern methods of communication and a network of trained political cadres have since the 1920s been able to weld the peasantry into an active political force. The Chinese Communist party under Mao Tse-tung, following the destruction of its urban base of support when Chiang Kai-shek smashed the Shanghai commune in 1927, had reorganized itself as a peasant party and had won power by enlisting peasant support. Fidel Castro, though a middleclass intellectual, made his revolutionary appeal through the peasantry, while the Cuban working class, including the communist-dominated trade unions, "coexisted" tacitly with the dictator Batista. In Algeria, in South America, in Vietnam, the peasantry, not the urban working class, became the focus of revolutionary appeal. The spread of socialism as word and doctrine, especially in the years after World War n, presented itself as a paradox, particularly in terms of the original intention and predictions of Marx. It was assumed by Marxists that the triumph of socialism would occur first in the industrialized countries, as a result of the contradictions and crises of the capitalist economic system; but this triumph has taken place primarily in backward countries and in agrarian societies. Marxism was an ideology of protest against the course of industrialization, but it has become, instead, the ideology of industrialization; not a creed of social justice, welfare, and the equitable distribution of products, but a rationale for centralized controls, postponement of consumption, and rapid economic growth.
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Since the Soviet Union embodied these developments, it became an important model for many of the new states that were seeking to embark on the difficult road of industrialization. The Stalinist regime had apparently succeeded in transforming Russia from an agrarian country into an industrial one. Despite enormous waste during collectivization, it had achieved high rates of economic growth, and its successes were most dramatically symbolized by the technological achievement of being the first nation successfully to launch manmade vehicles into outer space. Socialism in western Europe. In the West, the socialist movement saw the complete triumph of what, in classical doctrine, would be called reformism. During the wai against fascism, almost all the socialist parties had joined the governments of national unity, either at home or in exile. The sense of the nation and democracy took priority over the ideas of class and capitalism. In the Western countries, the labor and socialist parties had become completely of their societies, as well as in them. One can identify five features, common to almost all the socialist parties of western Europe, which marked this new practice and doctrine: (1) The complete abandonment of the idea of revolutionary methods and violence as a means to power; the complete acceptance of parliamentary means; and the complete readiness to participate in nonsocialist coalition governments. The anguished theoretical debates which had earlier split the French, Belgian, Austrian, and other parties on the question of entering "bourgeois governments" had vanished. (2) The transformation of the socialist and labor parties from class parties, speaking only for working-class interests, to people's parties seeking a more inclusive concept of general welfare. In some instances, as in Germany, there was the realization that as a working-class party the Social Democrats would be consigned to being a permanent minority; in other instances, as in England, there was the recognition that the changing class structure of society, particularly the rise of a technical and salaried middle class, made it imperative for the Labour party to speak for these social groups as well as for the working class. (3) The recognition that the definition of socialism as a social and economic ideal was inseparable from the idea of democracy, both as a means and as an end. The Marxist concept that lingered through the 1930s—that democracy was a "bourgeois" concept and only a mask for class rule— was rejected. By democracy as a means, the socialist parties meant the full guarantee of the rights
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of free speech and free assembly, and the maintenance of political rights for the opposition. As an end, democracy was defined as the free consent of the governed. (4) The surrender of the idea of nationalization or state ownership of the means of production as a "first principle" of socialism, and the substitution of public control of enterprise and planning as the means of achieving economic growth and equitable incomes. The sectarian orthodoxy that within a capitalist state one could not plan for social ends was replaced by the theory that governmental powers could be used for the gradual transformation of the economy and that a "mixed economy" of public and private enterprise was the most desirable solution. (5) A complete opposition to totalitarianism. While the socialist movements had long been in ideological opposition to communism, what the new attitude meant, in practice, was support of the military and political aspects of the Atlantic Alliance against the Soviet bloc and an identification with the national interests of each Western country, through NATO, against Russian expansionism. Nothing, perhaps, more strongly revealed the degree of change than the choice of Paul-Henri Spaak, once the firebrand leader of the Belgian left, as secretary-general of NATO. Germany's Social Democrats. Most of the transformed socialist attitudes were expressed at the Frankfurt Congress of 1951, which symbolized the revival of the Socialist International. Although no longer the powerful voice of a confident movement or the platform for thunderous international pronouncements, the Socialist International still provided some doctrinal identification for those who still called themselves socialists. Its Declaration of Principles, unanimously adopted, stated the new common conceptions of socialism almost a hundred years after the initial statements of the First International, as formulated in Marx's inaugural address of 1864. "Socialism," the declaration reads, "aims to liberate the people from dependence on a minority which owns or controls the means of production. . . . It aims to put economic power in the hands of the people as a whole and to create a community in which free men work together as equals" (Lowenthal 1951, p. 113). Private versus public control remains the decisive contrast, but private control is not identified with private ownership, nor public control with state ownership; and the phrase "exploited classes" has been superseded by "the people." Democratic planning becomes the basic means for the creation
of socialism, and public ownership is regarded as only one of a number of different means, to be used where necessary. "Democratic socialism," says the statement, "therefore stands in sharp contradiction both to capitalist planning and to every form of totalitarian planning; these exclude public control of production and a fair distribution of its results" Democracy, in this revised credo, is not only a means to the achievement of socialism—a "favorable battleground for the class struggle," as the older view had it—but an integral aspect of socialism itself. "Accordingly," as Richard Lowenthal put it, "the conflict between democratic socialism and communism no longer appears as a disagreement about means to a common end, but as a conflict of fundamental ends between the adherents of a democratically controlled economy and the defenders of the despotism of a managerial bureaucracy" (ibid.}. Nowhere is the change more striking than in the new program of principles adopted in 1959 by the German Social Democratic party in Bad Godesberg. The German SPD had long been a reformist party, but its very adherence to outworn dogmas, as we have seen in its attitude toward the possibility of reforming capitalism in the 1920s and 1930s, crippled its ability to act realistically in economic and political affairs. But the Bad Godesberg program rejects the very idea of Marxism. The name of Karl Marx and the concept of Marxism are missing from the declaration of principles, and terms like "class" and "class struggle" are carefully avoided. In modern political analysis, party programs are rarely taken seriously. Usually they are formal documents, paying lip service to expected pieties that historically made the parties' activities legitimate. But, as F. R. Allemann points out: The German social-democracy is a "programme party" of the first water: in its history of nearly a hundred years it has always attached the greatest importance to basing its policy on a solid system of principles laid down in a fixed programme rather than merely on the urgent issues of the moment. In this respect at least it has remained true to its Marxist tradition: in its view any political action that is intended to influence and transform society must be based on an analysis of that society. (1960, p. 67) This was the view that guided the formulation of the Erfurt Program in 1891; it is the view behind the Bad Godesberg declaration of 1959. The overriding idea in the Bad Godesberg program is that a modern industrial society cannot be ordered by a single uniform principle. Common ownership is recognized as a legitimate form of
SOCIALISM public control, but the analysis centers not on property but on economic power, which must be subject to public control. For the first time a socialist party states explicitly that private ownership of the means of production is entitled to "protection and promotion" so long as it does not hinder the construction of an equitable social order. The idea of subjecting the entire economy to central planning is rejected, and the party accepts the free market, wherever there is real competition. The basic formula is "as much competition as possible—as much planning as necessary," and the SPD not only describes free consumer choice and the free choice of place of employment as "all-important foundations" of freedom, but lauds free competition and entrepreneurial initiative as important elements of Social Democratic economic policy. The economic pattern envisaged is that of a "mixed economy" in which the private profit motive has a place and in which the control of great economic power is the central task of a libertarian economic policy. In line with the lessons of the previous twenty years, particularly those of the Soviet experience, the party declared that the problem of economic power cannot be settled simply by transferring power from private hands into that of the state. Being dependent on an uncontrolled state bureaucracy is not necessarily better than being subject to private capitalist power. The conclusions, however, are rather vague: common ownership is to be "organized according to the principles of selfgovernment and decentralization," and in the managerial structures "the interests of the workers and employees must be represented just as much as the public interest and that of the consumers" (ibid.). The aim of the new socialist program is a plural society, and this idea extends not only into economics but into the cultural sphere as well. Thus the party refrains from proclaiming any "ultimate truths" and states that neither a state nor a political party should have any power in religious and philosophical spheres. As Allemann says, "Marxism set out both to 'interpret' and to 'change' the world." The German Social Democrats, having rejected the myths behind the ideology of socialism, no longer "claim to provide a universally valid philosophy nor do they believe any longer that their policy is in accord with the irrevocable laws of social dynamics" (ibid.'). Britain's Labour party. The British Labour party never had German socialism's attachment to world philosophy, and its sense of crisis was less severe. The wellsprings of evangelical feeling, ex-
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pressed in a strong commitment to equality and social justice, still provide the emotional justification of socialism for the English Labourites; but a different problem has confronted the leadership. Socialism, as it was accepted in the West, had been a singularly distributivist doctrine. It presumed that capitalism had solved all the problems of production and that its failures had to do with social injustice and inequality. But the problem of economic growth was found to persist in all social systems. How does one step up the rate of output and increase production without overt controls and coercion, and without inflation? In 1945 the British Labour party, for the first time in its history, won a majority in Parliament and assumed sole charge of the government. For six years it ruled, and during that time it laid down the permanent foundations of a welfare state in England. Social services were extended, and for the first time a comprehensive system of medical care was established. A number of basic industries, principally coal, railways, transport, and steel, were nationalized; but, to the dismay of the government, nationalization did not provide any automatic answers to the problem of growth. Coal and railways had been sick industries, but the Labour policies, although they helped maintain full employment, did not materially increase the productivity of these industries. In 1951 Labour was voted out of office and replaced by a Tory government. Its defeat caused the British Labour party to ponder its program. In office it had exhausted the "intellectual capital" inherited from the early Fabians. What would it do if it was voted into power again? The major task of intellectual renovation was attempted by C. A. R. Crosland in his book The Future of Socialism (1956), which became the working text for Hugh Gaitskell, the new leader of the party. Crosland's main argument was that the Labour party must give up the shibboleth of nationalization and, in economic matters, promote the modernization of industry in whatever social form it could best be done, whether private or public. The main content of socialism, Crosland said, is not economic but social: to seek an equitable division of wealth by reducing the role of inherited property as the means of achieving a privileged place in the society; and to erase social class distinctions, by a major reform of the educational system. Only by releasing talents which remain unfulfilled, because of the social class system, could Britain eventually find new vigor in its industry and its culture. For the traditionalists in the party, both left and right, the Crosland-Gaitskell vision smacked of
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heresy. An effort on Gaitskell's part to eliminate clause four—which pledges the party to nationalization of industry as a major doctrinal tenet—from the British Labour party constitution, was rebuffed. Gaitskell died before the British Labour party was again voted into power in 1965, but the revisionism he espoused had clearly taken hold in the party. Italy's Socialist party. The one socialist party in the West which maintained a traditional leftwing line was the Italian. Forged in exile and deeply conscious of the intense class heritage of Italian workers, the Italian Socialist party, led by Pietro Nenni, maintained an electoral alliance with the communists for more than ten years, and still vaguely preached the class struggle. A small group of moderate Socialists, led by Giuseppe Saragat, split away from the Italian Socialist party in 1947 to join the coalition government led by the Christian Democrats. The Khrushchev disclosures in 1956 of Stalin's misdeeds, the Soviet intervention in Hungary in the same year, the general disillusionment with communism, and the growing feeling in Italy that no effective role could be played without entering a coalition government eventually led Nenni, in 1963, to join a center-left coalition and finally, in 1966, the two wings of Italian socialism were reunited. Whatever the socialists in Italy, or in any of the Western countries, could offer, it was no longer the old certitudes of doctrinaire Marxism. Few of the parties had any sure answers about how to build a new social order. All that remained was a lingering vision—and hope. Socialism in the "third world." To speak of the tiers monde as a sociological entity is to group together geographical areas that are vastly different in their historical and class structures and similar only in their poverty, their instability, and, in most cases, their quest for modernization. The area encompassed by north Africa and the Middle East, from Morocco to Egypt and Syria, was the cradle of ancient civilizations, an area ceaselessly marauded by invading armies for thousands of years. Its populations have absorbed a great jumble of genetic strains, and in the last several hundred years the mixture of Arab, Turkish, and European (French, English, and Italian) cultures has blended into a cosmopolitan melange. It is a world with a small, westernized, intellectual elite, a strong, traditional religious structure, and a vast mass of poor peasants. Southeast Asia has an array of old societies and ancient empires which, in most instances, were held together after the departure
of the former colonial rulers by a thin administrative class, trained by these rulers, while the political parties or military regimes learned how to govern. Africa south of the Sahara is a motley collection of tribal societies grouped in political areas that were carved out by the old imperial powers. These areas were almost never formed on a basis of indigenous unity, and there has been no educated or technical class available for the many complex tasks of government and economic development. The social structures of these areas are vastly different from those of Europe, and it is difficult to see where Marxist categories could be applied. In south and southeast Asia, primordial relations of blood, religion, language, or tribe are expressed as communal attachments; and nations have been split by ancient ethnic, tribal, caste, regional, and religious differences. India has Muslim-Hindu divisions, caste lines, secularist-traditionalist splits, and ten major linguistic divisions. Burma, since gaining its independence, has been plagued by insurrections of the Shan, Karen, and Kachin peoples, split by linguistic, religious, tribal, and regional differences. Ceylon's Sinhalese and Tamil communities differ in language, race, caste, and religion. Indonesia has the classic division between the central island, Java, and the outer islands, as well as a secularist-Islamic controversy. The Malay states are split between the Chinese and the Malays, and the disunity is compounded by indigenous tribal groups in Sarawak and Sabah. In Africa, within the predominant tribal societies, there has been little class differentiation, since most of the land has been held collectively and life has been led communally. But between tribes there has been grisly hostility, and the rectification of borders between the new nations provides grist for conflict that will go on for generations. In the Islamic world, in countries as divergent as Morocco and Pakistan, theocratic structures are fused with the political and administrative apparatus, and this fusion in turn shapes a distinctive social structure. The major tasks which most of these countries have set for themselves are modernization and industrialization. How far modernization necessarily must upset the traditional and religious values of a society is a question that divides sociologists. But it is clear that in many of these countries the new elites are seeking to upset or supplant the traditional values, often because the source of their own authority or of their routes to power rests on different criteria. In these countries socialism is often seen as the means of creating new, modern-
SOCIALISM ized states. Since the end of World War n, Arab socialism, African socialism, and Asian socialism have emerged as new ideological flags and new socioeconomic forms. The socialism of these new elites is vastly different from the traditional visions of the nineteenth-century socialist prophets, intellectuals whose ideologies were universalistic and humanistic. The new ideologies are parochial, instrumental, and largely the creation of political leaders. While the driving forces of the old ideologies were social equality and political freedom, economic development and national power inspire the new ideologies. Socialism appeals to the new elites in a number of ways: as a doctrine, it identifies them with a historical-progressive movement; as an ideology, it seeks to create an identity that can transcend tribal and communal boundaries; and as a social system, it concentrates power in the hands of the elites, providing for the nationalization of the basic industries of the countries and their direction under some minsterial control. Although the socialism of the West has come to favor decentralization and a mixed economy, the socialism of the new states focuses on central planning, state ownership and direction of enterprises, and one-party regimes. Socialism, in effect, serves as a means of mobilizing the society for industrial and social transformation. [See MODERNIZATION.] The Middle East. No socialist movement of the Middle East calls itself, as the Western movements did, the representative of the working class. These movements, not only in fact but often in theory, are based on an alliance of the new middle class (largely salaried state employees), the peasants, and the workers, with the middle class openly taking the lead. To the extent that a theory of representation exists, it is based on an undifferentiated general will. In practice, the effort is being made to give nationalism a social content. This is clearly the case with the socialism of Gamal Abdel Nasser, in the United Arab Republic. Before he came to power in 1952, there had been no large-scale socialist movement in Egypt. (The Egyptian Socialist party was in fact fascist.) Nor had Nasser and the army group he represented ever espoused socialist ideas. But once he was in power, his proclaimed "Six Objectives of the Revolution," plus his opposition to foreign business, led him increasingly to speak of his socialist faith. In 1954 he declared: "We consider that the state has tutelage over both private and public property and the responsibility for the protection of the individual against all economic and social exploi-
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tation" (Halpern 1963, p. 244). In 1956, after the abortive Anglo-French-Israeli invasion of Egypt, Nasser appropriated the Suez Canal and foreign banks, insurance companies, and export firms. By 1962 he had nationalized all large Egyptian enterprises, expanded land reform, and placed all important sectors of the economy under the control of socialist planners. Democracy, the Egyptians were told, would come only gradually. Egyptian socialism is not based on any mass or cadre party. Rather, it is being installed from the top down, through the initiative of a small technocratic elite whose support is largely military. Whether it can survive its first, charismatic leader is a moot point, because, lacking a social base, Egyptian socialism has not been able to institutionalize its reforms. The other major socialist movement in the Middle East is the Arab Socialist Resurrectionist party, commonly called the Ba'ath party. Organized in Syria in 1953 as a merger of two smaller parties, it declares itself "a national, populist, revolutionary movement fighting for Arab unity, freedom and socialism." Its nationalism is not restricted to any particular Arab state, but to the Arab people as a whole, and it is against "all other denominational, factional, parochial, tribal or regional loyalties." Its socialism, in the words of its programmatic statement, seeks the "guarantee [of] the continuous growth of the nation in its spiritual and material development; and it will guarantee close brotherliness among its individual members" (ibid., p. 240). Full of rhetoric about revolution and struggle, the Ba'ath party has said little about the concrete steps it would take to achieve socialism. Like many such movements, it is seeking to develop a new faith to supplant the traditional creeds. Islam is never mentioned by name; the implication, as Halpern points out, is that it belongs to an earlier era. In practice, the Ba'ath party, caught in the nationalist rivalries between Egypt, Syria, and Iraq, has split accordingly. North Africa. In north Africa the socialist creed has been fashioned largely by French-educated native intellectuals, and it assumed a revolutionary coloration, particularly in the late 1950s, through the vigorous movements for independence from France. In Algeria, where the struggle was most bitter, the FLN (National Liberation Front) was composed mainly of Algerian trade unionists (most of whom worked in France and contributed money to the struggle), middle-class elements, and Berber nomads. After Algeria became independent, Ahmed Ben Bella, surrounded by various Marxist and Trotskyite advisers, sought to introduce
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workers' self-management in industry and to collectivize Algerian farms. But as a result of the flight of French technicians and agronomists, Algeria was soon in severe economic trouble; and Ben Bella's efforts to solidify his personal power led to a coup by his ally, Colonel Houari Boumedienne, who controlled the army. Boumedienne pledged to continue "Algerian socialism," but his program was the typical drab mixture of statist enterprises and private landholdings characteristic of so many other new states. For the French left, ironically, Algeria had in the meantime become the emotional symbol of a "new awakening" of the underdeveloped world. Frantz Fanon, a Negro psychiatrist born in the French West Indies and educated in France, renounced his French citizenship during the Algerian civil war and wrote a new Communist manifesto, The Wretched of the Earth (1961), which preached the necessity of violence as purification. Fanon also praised the noble qualities of the peasantry, still uncorrupted by bourgeois values—unlike the European working class [see the biography of FANON]. For Jean-Paul Sartre and other leftist intellectuals, the Algerian war was a crisis of conscience in which they declared their civil disobedience against the French state. Yet the revolution ended in tawdry factionalism and a gray, repressive regime. A quieter path to socialism was taken in Tunisia in the 1960s by the Neo-Destour party, later renamed the Socialist-Destour party. Led by Habib Bourguiba, a French-educated lawyer, Tunisia became independent in 1956, without the fierce violence of Algeria. A one-party regime was installed, and it proceeded to nationalize the major enterprises of Tunisia and to develop a planned economy. The Socialist-Destour movement is actually a middle-class party, and the trade unions are firmly subordinated to the state. Bourguiba, as the charismatic leader, has imposed a vigorous cult of personality on Tunisian society—numerous streets, monuments, enterprises, and other public activities are named for him. It is still a "firstgeneration" country, and it remains to be seen whether it can institutionalize its new reforms and maintain a stable political structure without undue group conflict when Bourguiba is succeeded. Sub-Saharan Africa. The 1960s have seen the mushrooming of a new doctrine, largely unknown even five years earlier, which African leaders call African socialism. The meaning of the phrase, however, is very difficult to pin down (Friedland & Rosberg 1964). Few African socialists have any idea what they mean concretely by socialism. President Leopold-Sedar Senghor of Senegal, for ex-
ample, who has tried to provide a framework in his book African Socialism (1959), sees socialist humanism as a combination of Marx and Engels with Teilhard de Chardin, in which the Jesuit paleontologist-philosopher's ideas of "corpusculization" and "complexity" (the effects of outer and inner gravity in creating an increasing complexity of matter) are joined with the dialectic to create "the general law of complexity-consciousness." Whether it is the quasi mysticism of Senghor, trying to create a new definition of man, or the tough-sounding Marxism-Leninism of President Sekou Toure of Guinea, seeking to join the idea of a cadre party with the "communaucratic" values of precolonial African society, the idea of African socialism is one of pure rhetoric—a language to impress, to inspire, to intimidate—rather than a set of guidelines for specific action. Its usefulness is hortatory rather than instrumental. What "African socialism" means to these countries is the effort to be distinctive and modern, to assume some special character in the contemporary world, and, in a more prosaic way, to deal with the problems of social identity, economic development, and new class formations in the emerging societies. The problem facing most of the new states in Africa—31 black African nations gained their independence in the decade between 1955 and 1965 —is to find some unifying symbols beyond parochial and local identities in order to instill a sense of pride and action in their people. If many citizens of these new states have little feeling of nationality, they have nonetheless found some kinship through the idea of being African. African socialism has been a new myth, something to take the place of the anticolonial passions that fueled many of the independence movements. Seeking a specific content for African socialism, its ideologists have stressed the indigenous character of the communal ownership of land, the egalitarian character of the society, and the extensive network of social obligations which ties clans together. Thus, it is argued, capitalism and private property are "unnatural" to Africa. But though the indigenous elements of traditional society have been present in Africa, there still remains the crucial question whether such institutions can carry over into the complex, modern industrial society that these countries want to build. By and large, most African countries committed to the idea of socialism see the government as exercising the primary responsibility for accumulating capital, directing investment, and building an infrastructure for the society. The im-
SOCIALISM mediate practical difficulty is that Africa has had no large entrepreneurial class of its own from which modern talent can be drawn. The only large nonEuropean commercial and manufacturing class, particularly in east Africa, has consisted of Indians; and because of their clannishness and their ties to the mother country, they are regarded as unassimilable or as aliens. Nor do most African countries, except perhaps Nigeria and a few others that were under British rule, have a sufficiently large number of administrators, engineers, or managers. Another dilemma is that the capital accumulation for most African countries is dependent on earnings from agricultural and other primary products, and these are subject to sharp fluctuations on the world market or are dependent on the good will of the advanced industrial countries; and good will is a notoriously frail foundation on which to build an economic policy. Many countries seek a way out by industrialization. But rapid industrialization, if at all possible, involves a large-scale transformation of the farming class (which in most African countries is between 80 and 90 per cent of the population), new class distinctions, and new social group tensions, either between different interest groups or between populations that have become urban and cosmopolitan and those that have remained local and parochial. Senghor, when he turns to practical matters, says that Senegal must proceed slowly. As he wrote in African Socialism: "We have rejected prefabricated models . . . we have observed that formulas like 'priority for heavy industry,' or 'agrarian reform' have no magic power within themselves; applied dogmatically, they have produced partial failures. That is why we established priorities as follows: Infrastructure, rural economy, processing industry, heavy industry,' in line with reasonable requirements and our realities" (1959, p. 157). In keeping with this ordering principle, Senegal has earmarked a substantial part of its budget for "social development," by which it means health and hygiene, municipal administration and housing, and education. The economy as a whole is not socialist, but mixed: communal in agriculture, a public-private combination in utilities, and private in banks, commerce, and industry. Under Kwame Nkrumah, Ghana set out vigorously to create a socialist organization of the economy. While private capital was invited, particularly for the construction of the Volta Dam, state enterprises predominated in banking, manufacturing, construction, fishing, forestry, and electric power. But the ambitious schemes ran far ahead of the
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reality. The trade unions protested the squeeze on wages. Capital reserves and foreign exchange were squandered. Grandiose and costly projects—presidential residences and palaces, as well as the largescale Pan-African political headquarters—were built at enormous expense. One-party rule became more and more authoritarian: opponents were jailed or murdered, the courts were reorganized to stifle their independence, and the freedom of the university was abridged, while Nkrumah's decrees became increasingly personal. In 1966, while Nkrumah was traveling abroad, a revolt by the army ended his regime. Most African countries have found that their major problems are primarily political: to maintain that fundamental stability which will allow any planning, economic or otherwise, to proceed. The initial glittering promises made by the first generation of political leaders have not been realized. Within the first decade of independence, military coups racked half of the new nations, and in the others rigged elections and strict bans on opposition have kept the initial regimes in power. For these countries the tensions of social change, and the need to create institutional mechanisms to deal with them, constitute the major problem confronting the societies. A Kenya White Paper of 1965 on African socialism and its application to planning in Kenya, said soberly that socialism, even the socialism of a welfare state, would be a long time in coming. The immediate need was to transform the economy from a subsistence to a market economy; to develop land and to introduce modern agricultural methods. Nationalization, since it does not always lead to additional resources for the economy as a whole, would be used only when other means of control were ineffective. The commitment is to socialism as an ideal, not as an ideology (Harris 1965). South and southeast Asia. In January 1953, representatives of a dozen Asian socialist parties met in Rangoon for the first Asian Socialist Conference. The principal Asian figures—Jayaprakash Narayan and Asoka Mehta of India, Ba Swe and Kyaw Men of Burma, Sutan Sjahrir of Indonesia —were internationally renowned. Leading Western figures came as fraternal delegates: Clement Attlee, the former Labour prime minister of England, headed the delegation from the Socialist International, and Milovan Djilas the one from Yugoslavia. At this time, the governments of half a dozen countries—India, Burma, Ceylon, Indonesia, Cambodia, and Singapore—described themselves as socialist, for socialism was the predominant ideology of the area. It seemed that socialism in Asia
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was making a triumphal entrance on the world historical scene. Some dozen years later, Narayan had joined the voluntary bhoodan movement of the Gandhian Vinoba Bhave, and Asoka Mehta had left the Socialist party; Ba Swe and Kyaw Nien were in jail; and Sjahrir, having spent six years in prison, died shortly after his release in 1967. The Asian Socialist Conference itself was no more. Of the socialist governments, India had increasing economic and political trouble; Burma had come under a military dictatorship; Ceylon had swung back to a nonsocialist government; Indonesia was racked by an abortive Communist-inspired revolution in 1966, and by a military-led counterrevolution which massacred several hundred thousand communists and finally stripped Sukarno, the first president of the regime, of all his powers; Cambodia was perched precariously between East and West, struggling to maintain its independence during the Vietnam war; Singapore, after first joining Malaya to form the new state of Malaysia, broke away and remained a small independent enclave still proclaiming itself socialist. What had happened to these Asian socialist parties, and what had happened to the socialist governments? One anomaly was that in these countries, which proclaimed themselves officially socialist, the Socialist parties were rarely in full control of the governments. In Burma, the Burmese Socialist party was for many years part of the ruling coalition of the Anti-Fascist People's Freedom League, and Ba Swe had at one time been premier of his country. In Indonesia, Sjahrir had been its first prime minister, in 1945, heading a coalition government. But the Burmese Socialist party was abolished in 1962, when General Ne Win seized power and proclaimed Burma a socialist state; and the Indonesian Socialist party, wiped out at the polls in 1955, was abolished by presidential decree in 1960, when Sukarno proclaimed Resopim (Revolution, Indonesian Socialism, and National Guidance) as the official ideology. Except for the period of the independence movements and the struggle against the colonial powers, and for a few short years after each country won its independence, the socialist parties of Asia have not played a major role in their nations, despite the official adherence of the governments to a socialist ideology. The regimes called themselves "socialist" but were not based on the socialist parties. Unlike the socialist movements of the Middle East and Africa, which scarcely existed before World War n, the socialist parties of Asia had a long history of involvement with the international
socialist movement and socialist thought. Jayaprakash Narayan, who became a revolutionary Marxist at the University of Wisconsin in the late 1920s, founded the Bihar Socialist party in 1931, was acting general secretary of the Congress party during the civil disobedience movement in 1932, and founded the Congress Socialist party in 1933, first as a wing of the Congress party and after 1939 as an independent party. The party organ in the early 1930s, the Congress Socialist., was edited by Asoka Mehta. Like the socialist parties of Europe, the Congress Socialist party had its difficulties with the communists, who stigmatized it as being "social fascist" and a "left maneuver of the bourgeoisie." Its experiences with the communists led the Indian Socialist party in later years to take a strong anti-Soviet, antitotalitarian position. Sjahrir had been a leader of the Perihimpoenan Indonesia (PI), the student association of Indonesians studying in Holland in the 1920s, and on his return to Indonesia in 1932, he was interned by the Dutch and kept in prison for ten years; upon his release, he organized and directed underground resistance against the Japanese. The Asian socialist and student movements had long had "tutelary" relations with the European socialist parties, particularly since most of the countries were under imperial rule; and freedom for the colonies had been an important plank in the programs of the British Labour party, the Dutch Labor party, and others. Thus the leaders of the Asian socialist parties had gone through the doctrinal viscissitudes of the European socialist movements, and in most instances had themselves adopted democratic socialist positions. The weakness of these parties, particularly the Indonesian, was that they were primarily parties of intellectuals, with some following among the workers but no influence or base among the peasantry in societies that were overwhelmingly agrarian. Their orientation was largely urban, and as Marxists they regarded the industrialization of their countries as the normal path of development. Moreover, as parties of intellectuals, with only a small hold on the trade unions, they were peculiarly subject to the factionalism and divisiveness of intellectual groups who lack an anchorage. Individual socialists, such as Jayaprakash Narayan, Asoka Mehta, or Sutan Sjahrir, were at times enormously influential in their countries—but only as individuals and because of their individual talents, not as party leaders. Most south Asian countries called themselves socialist even when the leading parties, such as the Congress in India or the Nationalist in Indo-
SOCIALISM nesia, had no doctrinal faith, simply because they assumed that state direction of the economy and state planning were necessary for economic growth. And the difficulty for most of these countries was that, lacking any experience in planning, lacking the vital managerial talents, and, in many cases, lacking the needed resources, they wasted available resources and made mistakes that could not be absorbed by the economies. Many of the Asian countries, mesmerized by the idea of industrialization, assumed, in the early 1950s, that, following the Russian model, this meant a priority for heavy industry. Burma, for example, decided to build a steel mill, even though its main "natural resource" was the huge amount of gun scrap left behind by the invading Japanese and the defending British troops after World War n. Other expensive showcases were also built, and precious capital and foreign exchange were wasted on large airports and other "visible" features put up to impress foreigners with the progress and modernity of the new country. It would be a simplification, of course, to attribute the failures and setbacks primarily to defects in economic planning. As was indicated earlier, southeast Asia, more than almost any part of the world, is plagued by communal conflicts, so that the regimes have been torn by internal conflicts and by threatened and actual insurrection. Also, these countries have been caught in the crossfire of Great Power rivalries, particularly the demand of the United States for participation in SEATO (the Southeast Asia Treaty Organization) and the diplomatic and military pressure of the Chinese, who seek to extend their influence in southeast Asia. But apart from the real political and sociological problems, a crucial fact was that each of these countries plunged ahead on a course called socialist which not only was failing in practice but also was increasingly contradictory to the historic socialist ideals. The latter problem was foremost in the thinking of Jayaprakash Narayan, perhaps the outstanding figure of Asian socialism in the mid-twentieth century. Speaking at the second— and last—conference of the Asian socialist parties, in 1956, Narayan declared: All our countries, except Japan, are backward economically and many are desperately poor. Naturally, therefore, our attention goes first of all to the problem of economic growth. There is nothing wrong in that, but the mischief starts when we begin measuring "socialist achievements" in terms of tons of steel and kilowatts of electricity. Economic growth, even rapid economic growth, is known to have occurred both under Capitalism and Fascism. Mere economic development is not a measure of socialism. I do not wish
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to suggest that it is not the business of Socialists to see that more wealth is produced. What I wish to emphasize is the danger of equating socialism with economic development, and of sacrificing the values of socialism at the altar of that development. . . . The main, if not the whole, emphasis is still being placed on the control and use of the power of the State. Everywhere socialists are organized in political parties which are attempting to seize power and hoping thereafter to build a new society. . . . But as I have said before the ideals of socialism remain far in the distance. The reason seems to me to be a wrong approach to these ideals. All of us agree that socialism is a way of life, an attitude of mind, a certain ethical behaviour. What is not so universally recognized is that such a way of life, attitude and behaviour cannot be imposed from above by dictates of the Government or by merely nationalizing industry and abolishing capitalism. Construction of a socialist society is fundamentally construction of a new type of human being . . . if human reconstruction is the key to socialist reconstruction, and if that is beyond the scope of the State, the emphasis in the socialist movement must change from political action to such work of reconstruction. (Quoted in Rose 1959, pp. 258-259) Contemporary sociology and mature Marxism share a bias against Utopian thought. What the Marxists called objective conditions, sociologists call structural constraints. The idea is the same: that the range of alternatives open to any society is limited by the starting point, the kind of resources, the degree of differentiation, and the like. Certain chosen paths impose certain imperatives: industrialization requires the creation of a technical class and a new kind of educational system; the increasing structural differentiation of a complex society requires a kind of social coordination different from a simple, top-down command system. Necessarily, such a perspective tends after a while to bring out the more limited choices of means of action, and in the process the ends are often forgotten or become ritualized. Socialism as a belief has been both a system of means and a system of ends; and throughout its history the means have invariably tended to diminish the ends. In his youthful writings, Marx was most vividly concerned with the ends of human action. In the Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844, a halfway house in the development of his thought, Marx speculated on what the phase immediately following the socialist revolution might be. The negation of private property, he said, is not the aim of socialism, for what it does is to usher in a period of what he called raw or crude communism. Crude communism does not transcend private property but universalizes it; it does not overcome greed but generalizes it; it does not
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abolish labor but extends it to all men. The aim of socialism, as a fully developed naturalism, as humanism, is to go beyond communism, beyond necessity, and therefore beyond history—which itself is a form of determinism—to a world which resolves the "strife between existence and essence, between objectification and self-confirmation . . . and between the individual and the species." It is a world in which a human being no longer feels "divided" or alienated from what he believes his essence as a social being, as a person free to make his own future, can be (Marx 1844, pp. 104-114 in the 1919 edition). This is the permanent Utopian—and even religious—component of socialism, a quest, as ancient as man's fall from grace, to unify himself with an ultimate and to find a world of freedom. It remains a world beyond. DANIEL BELL [See also COMMUNISM; ECONOMIC THOUGHT, article on SOCIALIST THOUGHT; MARXISM; MARXIST SOCIOLOGY.
Related doctrines and ideas are discussed in ANARCHISM; CAPITALISM; NATIONALISM; PLURALISM; SYNDICALISM; UTOPIANISM. Other relevant material may be found in IDEOLOGY; PLANNING, ECONOMIC; PLANNING, SOCIAL; SOCIAL MOVEMENTS; STRATIFICATION, SOCIAL; WELFARE STATE.] BIBLIOGRAPHY ABLER, MAX (1910) 1923 Der Sozialismus und die Intellektuellen. 4th ed., rev. Vienna: Wiener Volksbuchhandlung. ALLEMANN, F. R. 1960 Farewell to Marx. Encounter 14, no. 3:67-69. BEBEL, AUGUST (1883) 1910 Women and Socialism. New York: Socialist Literature. ->• First published in German. BERNSTEIN, EDUARD (1899) 1909 Evolutionary Socialism: A Criticism and Affirmation. London: Independent Labour Party. -> First published as Die Voraussetzungen des Sozialismus und die Aufgaben der Sozialdemokratie. A paperback edition was published in 1963 by Schocken. BORKENAU, FRANZ (1938) 1962 World Communism: A History of the Communist International. Ann Arbor: Univ. of Michigan Press. -» First published as The Communist International. BRAUNTHAL, JULIUS 1961-1963 Geschichte der Internationale. 2 vols. Hanover (Germany): Dietz. BUBER, MARTIN 1947 (1950) Paths in Utopia. New York: Macmillan. -» First published in Hebrew. CHALMERS, DOUGLAS A. 1964 The Social Democratic Party of Germany: From Working Class Movement to Modern Political Party. Yale Studies in Political Science, No. 10. New Haven: Yale Univ. Press. COLE, G. D. H. 1953-1960 A History of Socialist Thought. 5 vols. New York: St. Martins; London: Macmillan. -» Volume 1: Socialist Thought: The Forerunners, 1789-1850, 1953. Volume 2: Marxism and Anarchism, 1850-1890, 1954. Volume 3: The Second Inter-
national, 1889-1914, 2 parts, 1956. Volume 4: Communism and Social Democracy, 1914-1931, 2 parts, 1958. Volume 5: Socialism and Fascism, 1931-1939, 1960. CROSLAND, C. A. R. (1956) 1957 The Future of Socialism. New York: Macmillan. DOLLEANS, EDOUARD; and CROZIER, MICHEL (editors) 1950-1959 Mouvements ouvriers et socialistes: Chronologie et bibliographic. 5 vols. Paris: Editions Ouvrieres. -> The most recent general bibliography of socialist publications and works about socialism; promises to become the standard guide. DURBIN, EVAN F. M. (1940) 1965 The Politics of Democratic Socialism: An Essay on Social Policy. London: Routledge. DURKHEIM, EMILE (1928) 1958 Socialism and SaintSimon (Le Socialisme). Yellow Springs, Ohio: Antioch. -> First published in French. A paperback edition was published in 1962 by Collier. ENGELS, FRIEDRICH (1845) 1958 The Condition of the Working Class in England. Oxford: Blackwell. -» First published in German. ENGELS, FRIEDRICH (1878) 1959 Anti-Diihring: Herr Eugen Diihring's Revolution in Science. Moscow: Foreign Languages Publishing House. -» First published as "Herrn Eugen Diihrings Umwalzung der Wissenschaft" in a series of articles in Vorwarts (Leipzig). ENGELS, FRIEDRICH (1880) 1935 Socialism: Utopian and Scientific. New York: International Publishers. H» First published in French. Fabian Essays. 6th ed. (1889) 1962 London: Allen & Unwin. -> First published as Fabian Essays in Socialism; contributors include George Bernard Shaw and Sidney Webb. FANON, FRANTZ (1961) 1965 The Wretched of the Earth. Preface by Jean-Paul Sartre. New York: Grove. -> First published in French. FRIEDLAND, WILLIAM H.; and ROSBERG, CARL G. JR. (editors) 1964 African Socialism. Stanford Univ. Press. GAY, PETER 1952 The Dilemma of Democratic Socialism: Eduard Bernstein's Challenge to Marx. New York: Columbia1 Univ. Press. -> A paperback edition was published in 1962 by Collier. GEIGER, THEODOR (1948) 1949 Die Klassengesellschaft im Schmelztiegel. Cologne (Germany): Kiepenheuer. -> First published in Danish. GRAY, ALEXANDER 1946 The Socialist Tradition: Moses to Lenin. London: Longmans. GREAT BRITAIN, ROYAL COMMISSION ON POOR LAWS AND RELIEF OF DISTRESS 1909 The Minority Report of the Poor Law Commission. Edited by Sidney and Beatrice Webb. 2 vols. London: National Committee to Promote the Break-up of the Poor Law. -* Part 1: The Break-up of the Poor Law. Part 2: The Public Organisation of the Labour Market. HALEVY, ELIE (1938) 1965 The Era of Tyrannies: Essays on Socialism and War. Translated by R. K. Webb. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday. -» First published in French. HALEVY, ELIE 1948 Histoire du socialisme europeen. Paris: Gallimard. -> Published posthumously. HALPERN, MANFRED 1963 The Politics of Social Change in the Middle East and North Africa. Princeton Univ. Press. HARDIE, J. KEIR 1907 From Serfdom to Socialism. London: Allen.
SOCIALISM HARRIS, BELLE 1965 Growth and the Good Relationship: Kenya's White Paper on African Socialism. New African 4:142-144. HULSE, JAMES W. 1964 The Forming of the Communist International. Stanford Univ. Press. JABAR, KAMEL 1966 The Arab Ba'ath Socialist Party. Syracuse Univ. Press. JAURES, JEAN L. (1894-1914) 1964 L'esprit du socialisme: Six etudes et discours. Paris: Gonthier Editions. JAURES, JEAN L. (1906) 1908 Studies in Socialism. 2d ed. London: Independent Labour Party. -> First published in French. JOLL, JAMES 1955 The Second International, 18891914. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson. H> A paperback edition was published in 1966 by Harper. KAUTSKY, KARL (1892)1910 The Class Struggle (Erfurt Program). Chicago: Kerr. -» First published in German. KAUTSKY, KARL (1902) 1916 The Social Revolution. Chicago: Kerr. -> First published in German. LANDAUER, CARL 1959 European Socialism: A History of Ideas and Movements From the Industrial Revolution to Hitler's Seizure of Power. 2 vols. Berkeley: Univ. of California Press. -> Volume 1: From the Industrial Revolution to the First World War and Its Aftermath. Volume 2: The Socialist Struggle Against Capitalism and Totalitarianism. LE BON, GUSTAVE (1898) 1965 Psychology of Socialism. New York: Fraser. -» First published in French. LENIN, VLADIMIR I. (1902) 1961 What Is to Be Done? Volume 5, pages 347-529 in Vladimir I. Lenin, Collected Works. 4th ed. Moscow: Foreign Languages Publishing House. -» First published in Russian. LENIN, VLADIMIR I. (1916)1964 Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism: A Popular Outline. Volume 22, pages 185-304 in Vladimir I. Lenin, Collected Works. 4th ed. Moscow: Progress. -> First published in Russian. LENIN, VLADIMIR I. (1917)1964 The State and Revolution: The Marxist Theory of the State and the Tasks of the Proletariat in the Revolution. Volume 25, pages 381-492 in Vladimir I. Lenin, Collected Works. 4th ed. Moscow: Progress. -» First published in Russian. LERNER, ABBA P. 1944 The Economics of Control: Principles of Welfare Economics. New York: Macmillan. [LEVI, PAUL] (1936) 1950 Histoire du socialisme en France, by Paul Louis [pseud.]. 5th ed. Paris: Riviere. LICHTHEIM, GEORGE 1966 Marxism in Modern France. New York: Columbia Univ. Press. LOWENTHAL, RICHARD 1951 The Principles of Western Socialism. Twentieth Century 150:112-119. LUXEMBURG, ROSA (1904-1922)1961 The Russian Revolution: Leninism or Marxism? With an introduction by Bertram D. Wolfe. Ann Arbor: Univ. of Michigan Press. ->• First published in German. LUXEMBURG, ROSA (1913) 1964 The Accumulation of Capital. New York: Monthly Review. -> First published in German. MCKENZIE, ROBERT T. (1955) 1963 British Political Parties: The Distribution of Power Within the Conservative and Labour Parties. 2d ed. New York: St. Martins. MAN, HENDRIK DE (1926) 1928 Psychology of Socialism. London: Allen & Unwin. -» First published in German. MANUEL, FRANK E. 1956 The New World of SaintSimon. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Univ. Press. MANUEL, FRANK E. 1962 The Prophets of Paris. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Univ. Press.
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MARKHAM, FELIX 1952 Introduction. In Saint-Simon, Selected Writings. Edited and translated by Felix Markham. Oxford: Blackwell. -> A paperback edition was published in 1964 by Harper. MARTOV, IULII O. 1938 The State and the Socialist Revolution. New York: International Review. MARX, KARL (1844) 1964 Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844. New York: International Publishers; London: Lawrence & Wishart. -> First published posthumously in German in 1932. Sometimes referred to as the "Paris Manuscripts of 1844." MARX, KARL (1844-1850)1926 Selected Essays. Translated by H. J. Stenning. London: Parsons. MARX, KARL (1867-1879) 1925-1926 Capital: A Critique of Political Economy. 3 vols. Chicago: Kerr. -» Volume 1: The Process of Capitalist Production. Volume 2: The Process of Circulation of Capital. Volume 3: The Process of Capitalist Production as a Whole. Volume 1 was published in 1867. The manuscripts of volumes 2 and 3 were written between 1867 and 1879. They were first published posthumously in German in 1885 and 1894. MARX, KARL; and ENGELS, FRIEDRICH (1845-1846) 1939 The German Ideology. Parts 1 and 3. With an introduction by R. Pascal. New York: International Publishers. -» Written in 1845-1846, the full text was first published in 1932 as Die deutsche Ideologic and was republished by Dietz in 1953. A paperback edition was published in 1965 by International Publishers. MARX, KARL; and ENGELS, FRIEDRICH (1848) 1963 The Communist Manifesto. New York: Russell. MARX, KARL; and ENGELS, FRIEDRICH (1848-1898) 1962 Selected Works. 2 vols. Moscow: Foreign Languages Publishing House. -» Includes works published posthumously. MARX, KARL; and ENGELS, FRIEDRICH (1875-1891) 1938 Critique of the Gotha Programme. New York: International Publishers. -> Written by Marx in 1875 as "Randglossen zum Programm der deutschen Arbeiterpartei," First published with notes by Engels in 1891. MEHTA, ASOKA 1959 Studies in Asian Socialism. Bombay: Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan. MICHELS, ROBERT (1911) 1959 Political Parties: A Sociological Study of the Oligarchical Tendencies of Modern Democracy. New York: Dover. -> First published as Zur Soziologie des Parteiwesens in der modernen Demokratie. A paperback edition was published in 1966 by Collier. MILL, JOHN STUART (1848) 1961 Principles of Political Economy, With Some of Their Applications to Social Philosophy. 7th ed. Edited by W. J. Ashley. New York: Kelley. MORGAN, ROGER P. 1965 The German Social Democrats and the First International 1864—1872. Cambridge Univ. Press. FELLING, HENRY 1954 The Origins of the Labour Party 1880-1900. New York: St. Martins; London: Macmillan. FELLING, HENRY 1961 A Short History of the Labour Party. New York: St. Martins; London: Macmillan. PLEKHANOV, GEORGII V. (1883) 1959 Sotsializm i politicheskaia bor'ba (Socialism and the Political Struggle). Moscow: Gospolizdat. RIZZI, BRUNO 1939 La bureaucratisation du monde; Le collectivisme bureaucratique: Quo vadis America? Paris: Privately published. ROSE, SAUL 1959 Socialism in Southern Asia. Oxford Univ. Press.
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ROSENBERG, ARTHUR (1932) 1939 A History of Bolshevism: From Marx to the First Five Years' Plan. London and New York: Oxford Univ. Press. ROSENBERG, ARTHUR (1938) 1939 Democracy and Socialism: A Contribution to the Political History of the Past 150 Years. New York: Knopf. ROTH, GUENTHER 1963 The Social Democrats in Imperial Germany: A Study in Working-class Isolation and National Integration. Totowa, N.J.: Bedminster Press. SAINT-SIMON Selected Writings. Edited and translated with an introduction by Felix Markham. Oxford: Blackwell, 1952. -» A paperback edition was published in 1964 by Harper. SCHORSKE, CARL E. 1955 German Social Democracy, 1905-1917: The Development of the Great Schism. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Univ. Press. SCHUMPETER, JOSEPH A. (1942) 1950 Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy. 3d ed. New York: Harper; London: Allen & Unwin. -» A paperback edition was published in 1962 by Harper. SENGHOR, LEOPOLD-SEDAR 1959 African Socialism: A Report to the Constitutive Congress of the Party of African Federation. New York: American Society of African Culture. SENGHOR, LEOPOLD-SEDAR 1964 On African Socialism. New York: Praeger. SOMBART, WERNER (1896) 1909 Socialism and the Social Movement. London: Dent; New York: Button. -» First published as Sozialismus und soziale Bewegung im 19. Jahrhundert. The title was later changed to Sozialismus und soziale Bewegung. The 10th edition was published in 1924 as Der proletarische Socialismus ("Marxismus"). STURMTHAL, ADOLF (1943) 1951 The Tragedy of European Labor: 1918-1939. New York: Columbia Univ. Press. TALMON, JACOB L. (1960) 1961 Political Messianism: The Romantic Phase. New York: Praeger. TAWNEY, R. H. 1920 The Acquisitive Society. New York: Harcourt. -» A paperback edition was published in 1948. TAWNEY, R. H. (1931)1965 Equality. 4th ed., rev. New York: Barnes & Noble. VON MISES, LUDWIG (1922) 1959 Socialism: An Economic and Sociological Analysis. New ed., enl. New Haven: Yale Univ. Press. -> First published as Die Gemeinwirtschaft. WELLS, H. G. (1910) 1927 The New Machiavelli. New York: Duffield. -» A paperback edition was published in 1946 by Penguin.
SOCIALIST ECONOMIC THOUGHT See under ECONOMIC THOUGHT. SOCIALIZATION i. ii. in. iv.
PSYCHOLOGICAL ASPECTS ANTHROPOLOGICAL ASPECTS POLITICAL SOCIALIZATION ADULT SOCIALIZATION
Roger V. Burton John W. M. Whiting Fred I. Greenstein Orville G. Brim, Jr.
PSYCHOLOGICAL ASPECTS
This discussion of the psychological aspects of socialization will focus on the developmental as-
pects of individual behavior which occur in or directly involve interaction with one or more persons, i.e., in a social context. Any interest in the differential effects of early experiences of the infant, of child-rearing practices, of peer group influences, in sum, of any of the factors which may shape the configuration of behaviors that is considered to be personality, directs us to the subject area of social development. Interest in this area is probably as old as almost any other human concern and is portrayed throughout written history. It is documented in Biblical accounts, the works of philosophers, autobiographies, and treatises on child-rearing practices. These accounts have been written mainly on the basis of very limited evidence, usually little more than the author's own experiences. With the development of scientific methods for studying human behavior, investigators have increasingly turned their attention to exploring all aspects of social behavior and how it develops. Approaches. Methods employed to study social development are to a great extent determined by the questions the investigator asks and include almost all the techniques which have ever been used in psychological research. The approaches range from experimental to correlational, longitudinal to cross-sectional, and comprise case studies, normative and descriptive studies, small sample comparisons within a limited social group, cross-cultural analyses of many primitive societies, interviews and questionnaires, direct observations, etc. An excellent discussion of the many different approaches is provided by John Anderson (1946). Currently, an increasing interest in methods and techniques per se parallels an increasing sophistication among investigators regarding the strengths and weaknesses of these methods and the modifications required when employing them with groups differing in important respects, such as age, social background, and race. In 1960 this interest in method was manifested when the Committee on Child Development of the National Academy of Sciences-National Research Council sponsored the publication of a collection of papers presenting what was considered the wisdom of expert investigators, gained over years of using these methods (Mussen 1960). This awareness of the need for careful assessment of the appropriateness of a technique to be applied to the questions, subjects, and inferences under investigation is a healthy sign. Publication of books and papers which focus on critical and frequent foibles in the use of certain approaches and methods stimulates concern with and creative use of old and new techniques.
SOCIALIZATION: Psychological Aspects Historical perspective Geneticism and environmentalism. One of the earliest controversies about the different? factors involved in development was concerned with the relative impact on behavior of genetic endowment and environmental influences. This controversy led to heated arguments between most early researchers of social behavior. In the work of Binet (Binet & Simon 1905) on measuring intelligence, we see how taking a position on the environmentheredity issue can become associated with the goals and purposes of research without being a necessary assumption for it. As the attempts to develop a measure of intellectual abilities which would be comparable for different ages, would be stable for individuals over time, and would predict performance in school became increasingly successful, it was difficult not to acknowledge that what was measured was something mainly genetically endowed. And the relatively successful accomplishment of this goal led many to emphasize inherited characteristics over environmental influences. This position was clearly expressed by McDougall (1908), who, despite devoting much energy to the study of social development and being one of the first to use the phrase "social psychology," incorporated into his theory a long list of instincts. This preformationist position accorded little importance to the contribution of external factors to the development of many social behaviors, such as aggression, gregariousness, and even techniques of child rearing. Gesell (1946) was another important contributor to the genetic position, with his model of reciprocal interweaving of the processes of behavioral differentiation and integration. Although some recognition of the contribution of environmental influences was made in his discussions of learning, these external factors were clearly less important than the teleological processes determining individual development. This emphasis on inherited developmental tendencies is also seen in the writings of Piaget (1923). Piaget's schemata portray definite stages, or levels, of orderly progression, each stage occurring at a particular age, supporting the position of a genetically determined sequence in the developmental process. [See DEVELOPMENTAL PSYCHOLOGY, article on A THEORY OF DEVELOPMENT; GENETICS, article OH GENETICS AND BEHAVIOR; INTELLIGENCE AND INTELLIGENCE
TESTING; and the biographies of BINET and GESELL.] A similar position, but with important differences, was earlier proposed by Baldwin (1897) to account for both the mental and social develop-
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ment of children. He posited that children have an inclination, apparently innate, to imitate and that imitation occurs in specific stages. This position was further developed by G. H. Mead (1934), in his description of the process whereby one learns to assume the role of another person. Although Baldwin and Mead seemed to assume an innate tendency to imitate, their presentations make external events crucial in determining much of social behavior, since the child cannot imitate a model unless it is there to copy. [See IMITATION; and the biographies of BALDWIN and MEAD.] Psychoanalysis. Interest in social development was further stimulated by Freud and the psychoanalytic theorists, whose position regarding the relative importance of innate and environmental influences is a mixed one. Although the basic driving forces of behavior are assumed to be inherited, many of the manifest forms of action are acquired through associations during interpersonal situations. The importance of these external events in the development of social behavior was especially recognized by Freud, who maintained that early familial influences could determine later personality characteristics. Freud was primarily interested in dynamic, complex motivations and how these dynamically interrelated forces account for the manifest social behavior of an individual. But in his early writing (1900) he addressed himself explicitly to the question of the basic mechanism accounting for these later complex associations. The key to this system, he proposed, is the reflex arc. Basic responses of personality are conditioned by early experiences. Clearly, then, the early experiences of each individual will be paramount in shaping his social development, according to this theory. Behaviorism and learning. Although it was Pavlov (1927) who investigated and established the important variables involved in the acquisition of conditioned reflexes, he did not directly study social development. It was with Watson that conditioning became all-important in accounting for social behavior, as well as for almost all other behavior. Watson (1919) proposed that a person's actions are—aside from a limited number of innate reflexes—completely the product of conditioning experiences. With this theory the pendulum had swung to the far extreme, completely away from any instinctivistic assumptions. Watson demanded that only external events and directly observable behavior be considered in building a psychological theory. With his research on children and their neurotic fears, Watson seemed very interested in demonstrating to parents the practical applications
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of his theory. Although the theory's influence on the field of social development declined after a decade, the attitude toward scientific investigations of behavior through experimental methods, based on operational definitions and measurements, has been lasting. In addition, the battle between the environmentalists and nativists no longer seemed to be of such importance. Future theorists would have to acknowledge the role of environmental events, no matter what assumptions or positions they took regarding genetic contributions to behavior. [See LEARNING, article on CLASSICAL CONDITIONING; the biographies of PAVLOV and WATSON.] Much of the work by learning theorists, such as Thorndike, Guthrie, Tolman, and Hull, was very relevant to social development; but it was especially at Yale University's Institute of Human Relations that direct attention was devoted to research in this area. Hull (1943) provided the beginning of a systematic, mathematical account of the principles of learning, and this general theoretical approach was applied to the study of social development by Miller and Bollard (1941) and Mowrer (1950). Their work greatly stimulated research in this area, especially in the use of experimental methods. The creative use of this theoretical orientation for explanation was demonstrated by Whiting (1941) in his interpretation of the socialization processes involved in the development of a child in a primitive culture. Studies by Sears (Sears et al. 1953) of antecedent-consequent relations in parent-child behavior have given great impetus to the study of the impact of child-rearing practices on personality development. [See the biographies of GUTHRIE ; HULL; THORNDIKE; TOLMAN.] Field theory. Kurt Lewin stimulated others to direct their attention to social development, especially where such behavior occurred in different environmental settings. Although his own work dealing with the development of social behavior was not extensive, the work of those influenced by his teaching and writing has been. (See, for example, Barker et al. 1943.) The conceptual scheme which he proposed, called field theory, emphasized the gestalt principle of considering the total situation, that is, all the factors in the environment which might affect behavior, as well as the personality characteristics of the individual. This orientation has stimulated interest in the ecological approach of studying the persisting conditions in the environment which significantly affect social development. [See FIELD THEORY; GESTALT THEORY; and the biography of LEWIN.] Operant conditioning. One impetus for a recent surge in experimental orientation comes from the
work on operant conditioning by Skinner. Although his own research dealt mainly with animals, he has discussed the application of his approach to the development of complex human behavior (1953) and even the establishment of a Utopian culture (1948). His methodological prescriptions for an experimental analysis of behavior have stimulated the application of a different approach to many areas of social development previously studied mainly by indirect routes involving circuitous interpretations. [See LEARNING, articles on INSTRUMENTAL LEARNING and REINFORCEMENT; UTOPIANISM, article on THE DESIGN OF EXPERIMENTAL COMMUNITIES.]
Although investigators differ in their theoretical orientations, their use of this experimental, behavioral approach, which to some degree involves a consensus about terms to use in describing research, has brought many diverse questions of social behavior under similar methodological inquiry. Areas of research Characteristics of the child. Until the 1960s most research assessed the influence of external events on the infant as if it were a one-way process. Research in the 1960s, however, shows that neonates have different sensitivities and reactions to stimulation. Some of these differences have been related to constitutional characteristics of the infant and to the conditions of birth, such as amount of anesthesia and difficulties of delivery. Research now being conducted on infant-mother relations considers the interaction between the child and mother—both the degree to which the child influences the mother's behavior and the degree to which the mother influences the child. For example, the findings that children difficult to toilet train are insensitive to unpleasant odors and that children very sensitive to being wet are easy to night-train indicate the potential interaction between important socialization processes and the child's reactivity to relevant stimuli. Sex. Studies of social development must consider the sex of the child, since the varied components of appropriate sex-role identity may be differentially influenced by many factors from the first days of life. There is evidence that some differences in early behavior are related to constitutional sex differences (Bell 1960). Among infant monkeys, for example, males actively engage in aggressive play, whereas the females tend to stay on the fringe of such activity (Harlow & Harlow 1962). In cross-cultural studies such sex differences in aggressive play also have been found to
SOCIALIZATION: Psychological Aspects hold for children. These sex-related behavioral proclivities are probably reinforced by society, since they conform to sex-role expectations. Parents may, even without awareness, encourage certain behaviors in their sons and other behaviors in their daughters from birth. If this speculation is justified, current and future studies of early parental treatment, where very subtle aspects of rearing practices are measured, should show differential handling for the sexes, beginning with the neonate. [See INDIVIDUAL DIFFERENCES, article on SEX DIFFERENCES.] Ordinal position. Ordinal position has been related to important social behavior, such as the development of affiliative motivation. Studies (e.g., Schachter 1959) indicate that under certain kinds of stress first-borns tend to want to be with others more than do persons who were born in a later ordinal position. It is possible that the amount of attention paid to the children changes, with less attention given to individual children as the family increases. It seems likely, too, that the parents' behavior changes, because of their own differential experiences with children: as subsequent children arrive, the parents have more confidence in themselves and less anxiety about things that happen to the child. The greatest difference in treatment would most likely be between the first child and the others, but probably there are differences in handling each child. The consistency of differential treatment across families needs to be studied to determine the conditions that give rise to the effects associated with ordinal position. [See INDIVIDUAL PSYCHOLOGY; the biography of ADLER.] Age and maturation. The age and maturational level of a child determine whether the occurrence of a particular event will have any salient effect on him and how permanent such an effect might be. The importance of age in relation to certain environmental conditions or learning situations will be evident throughout the following discussion. Early environment. Studies of the effects of institutions on children indicate that the quality of stimulation provided by the environment may have critical consequences for the child. Research in maternal deprivation suggests that there are many important differences in the extent and quality of mother-child separation. Some immediate, measurable effects of maternal separation on the child's behavior have been demonstrated, but there is little evidence of any long-term consequences if the separation is not followed by conditions that frequently compound the event. When separation is followed by institutionalization, however, the evidence suggests that serious personality
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impairment may result: deficits in motor, language, and social development. Such undesirable effects are not necessarily the result of being placed in the institution per se. Differences in the amount of stimulation given children in different institutions are associated with differential degrees of deleterious effects. Unfortunately, many of these institutions provide rather impoverished environments for infants and young children. Therefore, the immediate conditions experienced in the institution should be considered the major cause of deficits, rather than institutionalization itself. It may then be discovered that these conditions and experiences have the same effect on children never separated from their parents. The institution may tend to impose on the child a schedule which does not permit him to learn important social responses or perceive and react to caretakers and other persons in the way most children do. Researchers (e.g., Lovaas et al. 1965) are investigating ways of stimulating autistic and socially unresponsive children who have been markedly affected by such conditions to react to other persorts as important stimuli in their environment. This work will attempt to modify social apathy and indiscriminate response to caretakers among these children and increase their tendency to imitate others. Work with animals that is analogous to therapeutic procedures (Schoenfeld 1950) suggests that even though the retarded or deviant behavior may be desirably modified, the person may still have a tendency to react to any future experiences of a similar nature in a dramatic fashion, responding abnormally under certain stressful conditions. [See INFANCY, article on THE EFFECTS OF EARLY EXPERIENCE.] Critical periods. The question whether there is a "critical period" for institutional deprivation experiences is unsettled. There is some suggestion that the age at which institutionalization occurs has different effects.- retardation is associated with early commitment, whereas children eventually diagnosed as schizophrenic tend to have been institutionalized at a later age. There is some evidence that children who have a tonsillectomy when they are between three months and three years of age are more affected than children whose tonsillectomies occur when they are either younger or older. Even within this period, the effects are lessened by preparing the child before the operation and by having a familiar adult, usually his mother, with him as much as possible during his stay in the hospital. Since some individuals who experienced severe early childhood traumata due to separation from parents are not notably disturbed in
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later years, it would seem that the deprivation must be of a certain kind or quality or extend over a certain period to have any lasting effect. Father models and initiations. Most of the research on separation and early deprivation focuses on the mother-child relationship and does not deal as much with the role of the father. This tendency to ignore the father's influence on the child has been true of much of the research in child development. There is support, from cross-cultural and experimental studies, for the hypothesis that a child will imitate and identify with a person who controls his important resources. This theory suggests that the relationships between parents and other persons in the child's awareness and their differential control of resources are important variables in his social development. Not only should child-rearing techniques be investigated, but research ought to consider by whom and under what conditions they are exercised. There is evidence that 'a weak or absent father distorts a boy's sex identity so that he tends to be effeminate or compensatorily overmasculine. Crosscultural studies indicate that the custom of the initiation ceremony serves to fix masculine identity in boys in societies where the father is not in the household during the first two years of the child's life (Burton & Whiting 1961). Similar conditions appear to exist in the lower-class subculture of the United States, especially in areas with delinquent gangs. Initiation rites into these gangs have characteristics similar to those of the initiation ceremonies of primitive societies, except that the rules for the boys in the primitive societies are socially desirable whereas the rules for the lower-class gang are often socially unacceptable to the society at large. Research is now needed to test whether or not any of the important elements of the initiation rites of primitive societies might function in a desirable manner for boys in our culture with the early experience of father absence or the presence of a poor father model. Furthermore, one should not look just at the undesirable side of these conditions; one also ought to consider what socially desirable behaviors—such as artistic, literary, or athletic pursuits—might result from early deprivation experiences. In the area of parental deprivation, the relationship between the absence of a male model in the home and the development of girls and the differential effects on boys and girls of maternal separation also need investigation (L. Yarrow's 1961 review contains a fuller discussion of many of these issues and studies). Deprivation and stimulation. A program of comparative research stemming from the effects of
"gentling" animals to be used for experimental work shows that permanent behavioral and physiological effects are caused by different experiences during infancy. These effects are directly related to social development; animals (mainly rats) so handled tend to be less emotional, can solve certain types of problems better, are less timid, and are constitutionally more robust and socially more dominant than nongentled animals. Not as much research has been done in assessing effects of extra stimulation on children. Some early work has indicated that the later performance of children given special training for certain tasks is not very different from the performance of children who were not trained until they were more mature and could learn the tasks with a small amount of effort. Recent work does show that differential handling of infants affects their physical development: certain types of handling are associated with earlier sitting up and walking. There are also data suggesting that gentling affects human infants as well as animals, i.e., extra holding, rocking, and cuddling produces more placid and more contented babies, compared with those stimulated only for essential caretaking. The research with animals also shows that early stimulation directly affects the growth of their endocrine system. One cross-cultural study (Landauer & Whiting 1964) shows that infancy stimulation in humans has an effect on height similar to that of infancy stimulation in animals. In societies with early stressful handling (baths in water of extreme temperature, massaging, piercing of skin) the average male height is greater than in societies without such customs, even when many factors known to affect growth—such as diet, sunshine, genetics, and geographical region—are controlled. These findings should stimulate additional research into the potentially beneficial effects of certain types of infancy stress in humans. The position that any stressful stimulation during infancy should be avoided would be challenged by this research. [See STRESS.] One sees from the research on infancy that too little stimulation is deleterious and that an extra amount of regular or "normal" stimulation promotes desirable behavior; now there is even the possibility that stressful stimulation may cause some desired consequences. Child-rearing practices. Much of the research on child-rearing practices has been based on interviews and questionnaires. Most of this information has been organized along two or three conceptual dimensions: love-hostility, control-autonomy, and, possibly, calm detachment—anxious emotional in-
SOCIALIZATION: Psychological Aspects volvement (Becker 1964). While this is considered a useful conceptual framework for organizing research material, such two-dimensional or threedimensional models are not meant to be any "truer" representation of the way parents interact with their children than are other models. Furthermore, these dimensions must be combined in just the right amounts, to describe what an actual parent is like. It is revealing that these data, coming from measures of verbal behavior, have a factor structure which seems very similar to the structure consistently found in studies of the underlying meaning in language: evaluation (good-bad), potency (strong-weak), and activity (fast-slow). The order or strength of the factors also is the same: good-bad or love-hostility tends to be the first factor; strong-weak or control-autonomy, the second factor; and fast-slow or high involvement-calm detachment, the third. Disciplinary procedures. For general discussion, disciplinary techniques can be placed along a positive-negative continuum which appears to reflect an attitude shared by most middle-class American parents (and by research scientists). The positive techniques include rewarding, praising, and reasoning—practices considered to be psychological and love oriented and which in some ways reflect a child-centered attitude on the part of the parent. The negative methods, such as physical punishment, yelling and scolding, derogating, and threatening, reflect a more egocentric parent, in that they appear to express more of the parent's frustration over the child's behavior. Since studies in which data are obtained in interviews or questionnaires also indicate that positive disciplinary techniques are used by parents who are positive in other ways, such as providing a warm home environment and being interested in the happiness of their children and in developing their potential talents, it is difficult to winnow out just what important factors are involved in these research findings. In general, however, the positive methods of child-rearing are related to the following characteristics in the child: low aggression, low undesirable dependency, high sociability, and a high level of conscience development and of moral judgment, as reflected in a feeling of responsibility for his actions, the experiencing of guilt for deviations from prescribed standards, and the confessing of such deviations. Negative techniques are associated with the undesirable aspects of these behaviors (Becker 1964 provides a general review of this research). These findings are frequently complicated, in that the relationships may hold only for boys or only for girls. For example, high maternal warmth
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and nurturance has been associated with high conscience and leadership in boys but with low conscience and dependency in girls. Possibly, since any technique would be used in a much broader context of shaping the child in the appropriate sex role, with all the concomitant aspects of this complex concept, such as aggiession, dependency, independency, differential physical and cognitive skills, demonstration of affection and other emotions, etc., the same child-rearing technique could produce quite different behavior in boys and girls. Still, it is difficult to accept, without further investigation, the idea that the same child-rearing practice by the same parent should produce opposite effects in a son and in a daughter. The evidence must be considered in light of the differential perceptions usually found for children and parents. Boys are seen as more aggressive, independent, and difficult to train than girls. Mother and father perceptions also conform to sex-role stereotypes. Mothers, as compared with fathers, are seen as more nurturant and loving and as less strict, using less physical punishment but more psychological types of discipline, and are less fear-arousing than the father. Since the same-sex parent is seen as more restrictive and frustrating than the opposite-sex parent, there are interactions in these perceptions. In addition, the father's use of physical punishment is especially frequent with boys, and the mother's use of psychological control is rated as being more appropriate for girls than for boys. These differential perceptions may account for some of the differences in the consequences of the same parent-child relationship. Many of these relationships probably reveal more about beliefs or values of the respondent (mother, father, teacher, or child) than they reflect the actual methods or personal characteristics considered important in child rearing. The contaminated research design (all data from the same respondent) used in most of these studies raises questions about the validity of the measures and the relationships between them. Expectations of investigators and types of bias within respondents have been shown to effect just such findings as those in the child-rearing research. Investigations of the degree of correspondence between measures obtained at the time child-rearing events occurred and retrospective accounts of these same events show little correlation (M. Yarrow et al. 1964). The number of significant correlations between measures of rearing techniques obtained through direct observations of parent-child interactions and measures of these same techniques obtained through interview ratings or questionnaires is no greater than chance (Zunich 1962;
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Brody 1965). These data give us pause when we consider interpretations of findings in child-rearing studies. There is a trend, in this research, for investigators to cross-verify results based on indirect methods with the results of more direct measures, a trend which seems necessary to clarify some of the theoretically conflicting interpretations proposed by different researchers. There are serious difficulties in demonstrating the relationships of child-rearing practices with later behavior, because of the many intervening events which may lessen the evidence of some direct effect. On the other hand, behavior learned by a small child may not manifest itself until a much later time, when it is appropriate. Certain questions, therefore, can be answered only through longitudinal studies, even though they are difficult and costly to execute. Psychoanalytic propositions. Psychoanalytic theory stimulated interest in the effects of early socialization processes on social and personality development. Weaning and oral behaviors. Freud termed the first period of development the oral stage and attributed many enduring consequences to events surrounding oral stimulation and frustration, especially the feeding process. In spite of a great deal of research dealing with types of nursing (breast or bottle, demand or scheduled) and weaning practices, there is little consistent evidence of permanent personality characteristics related to these feeding experiences. There seem to be no differential personality consequences between breast and bottle feeding; the important variable appears to be how the mother feels about it. The amount of upset associated with weaning has been shown to increase with the length of time the child nurses, up to about 12 months, at which time it begins to decrease; in other words, there is a curvilinear relationship between amount of upset and length of nursing. Cross-cultural research suggests that the amount of upset is related to adult oral anxiety, measured by the extent of attributing illness to something one has eaten. Perhaps of greater interest to parents in our society is the fact that thumbsucking has also been related to upset over weaning. Nonnutritive sucking, however, is not necessarily an index of anxiety. Research indicates that it may just as well be associated with a strongly reinforced habit as with the amount of disturbance and frustration involved in feeding and weaning. These data suggest that if only a positive experience has been associated with sucking, the response is modifiable by making some incom-
patible response more rewarding. However, thumbsucking seems to be self-rewarding, so it will not just stop by itself—at least not for a very long time. Punishing it appears to make it more resistant to elimination. For the present, one recommendation to parents who wish to stop their child from thumbsucking is to give him a pacifier. This seems to be quickly forgotten by the child when it is too much trouble for him to find or when something interesting engages his attention. The response is then broken up in the natural course of events and disappears. Toilet training. The many studies of toilet training have also tended to yield generally inconsistent and insignificant results. The traits considered characteristic of the "anal" personality, i.e., parsimony, obstinacy, orderliness, have been found to occur together in people, but the indications are that these behaviors are more likely due to direct training than to the indirect effects of toilet training. This suggests that the learning conditions established by the mother and her attitudes about her child, which may determine her toilet-training regimen, have lasting effects on social development. Aggression and dependency. Two of the most thoroughly investigated areas of social development are aggression and dependency. These domains have been studied using many different methods and with both humans and animals as subjects. In general, physical punishment by parents is related to physical aggression in the child. There is evidence of limiting conditions for the overt expression of aggression, especially for girls. When fantasy and direct observations are used as measures, covert aggression is directly related to the extent of parental use of physical punishment, but overt aggression is curvilinearly related (Sears et al. 1953). Where there is no physical punishment, the child shows little aggression. As parental use of physical punishment increases, so does the child's aggressive behavior—up to a certain point. It seems that at some level of punishment overt aggressive behavior is inhibited, but covert aggression—as expressed in fantasy—is not. This information indicates that the more aggressive the parents are toward the child, the more aggression will be produced in the child's motivational system, even though overt aggression may be discouraged when the punishment is severe enough. The implication is that there might be some conditions under which this repressed hostility would become overt. Direct support for this conclusion comes from experimental studies which show that a child will imitate the aggressive behavior of a model
SOCIALIZATION: Psychological Aspects when the opportunity presents itself and the context indicates that no punishment for such aggression will occur (Bandura & Walters 1963). Such findings are supported by cross-cultural research which shows that societies rated high on use of painful child-rearing customs (rough handling and physical punishment) tend to have aggressive rather than benevolent gods. Other studies demonstrate that aggression can be produced in children through permissiveness toward and direct rewarding of aggressive behavior. For dependency, the evidence again is that it may be produced through direct reinforcement. In addition, the combination of rewarding dependency when the child is young and then frustrating or punishing such behavior after it becomes part of his behavior pattern seems to produce dependency of a more rigid and persistent nature. If no punishment is associated with dependency behavior, it seems that not reinforcing it any longer will extinguish it. In light of the findings of investigations of both aggression and dependency, a reasonable hypothesis appears to be that behavior which is rewarded and encouraged in the early years and then punished when the child is older will be difficult to control and stop. Current evidence suggests that an effective procedure would be to stop rewarding the behavior the parent wants to eliminate and reward some incompatible behavior instead. Modifying behavior. Research in nursery school settings has revealed that social dominance, timidity, aggression, socially desirable interactions with peers, and somewhat aberrant idiosyncratic behavior, such as crawling or walking on hands and feet rather than upright, can be modified through applying social-learning paradigms, mostly some adaptation of operant conditioning in the natural setting (Scott et al. 1967). The basic design of these experiments is to have a teacher or other adult give affectionate attention immediately following the desired behavior and not respond in any way to the undesired acts. Such studies usually demonstrate that the less-desired behavior was being maintained through the teacher's paying attention to the child (often by scolding) only when he was doing what she did not want him to do. By contrast, the teacher tends to ignore him when he behaves well. Rarely have these studies investigated the combination of positive and negative reinforcement for desired and undesired behavior, respectively. Since there is evidence from learning experiments that when the two responses are mutually exclusive such differential rewarding and punishing is the most efficient teaching paradigm,
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it will be important to know how such contingencies work in a natural, everyday teaching situation. The hypothesis stated above for aggression and dependency implies that once behavior has become part of the child's repertory of responding, the introduction of punishment, while it may inhibit the behavior temporarily, will actually make it more resistant to modification. However, if there is a mutually exclusive type of behavior readily available for the parents to reward, a combination of disapproval of the undesired activity and approval of the acceptable behavior may be more effective than trying to modify the behavior through approval alone. [See LEARNING, especially the articles On INSTRUMENTAL LEARNING and REINFORCEMENT.] Labeling. There is experimental evidence that clear labeling of behavior helps a child discriminate in one situation and then transfer his learning to a new situation. This finding suggests that parents and teachers will be more successful in developing certain desired social behavior in their children by clearly labeling the behavior they are rewarding and punishing. This interpretation implies that the more they provide the child with cognitive support for their approval and disapproval, the more the child will understand how he should act in a quite different place but where the abstract aspect of the situation is the same. Consistency. The desirability of consistency in child rearing is often stated. However, there are many kinds of consistency possible, ranging from the evaluation of certain behavior as always good or always bad to the unvarying use of certain techniques for rewarding or punishing. Most research on consistency has addressed itself to consistency of the former type. Inconsistent or capricious discipline is associated with socially undesirable behavior, as is apparent from studies of delinquents and their parents. There is evidence which suggests that some ways of being inconsistent would produce desired results. First, if the parents always use the same kind of reward (or punishment), the child might become satiated with it (or adapt to it) and its power to reinforce would be attenuated. This suggests that to maintain effectiveness, rewards and punishments for the same type of behavior should be varied. Studies also show that once behavior is well established, making rewards or punishments unpredictable for the child will maintain the behavior in the absence of the parent better than if the parent is consistent in rewarding every time the child acts well or in punishing every time he is bad. The important distinction here is
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that a type of behavior, when it is reinforced, is either always rewarded or always punished, in contrast to the undesirable kind of inconsistency, where the same behavior is sometimes rewarded and sometimes punished. Peer-group influences. The first peer group for many children consists of their siblings. The sex of these siblings is important to the child's social development since older sibs may have much influence over him, both directly, through rewarding and punishing his behavior, and more indirectly, through providing a model. These experiences would be expected to affect his later social relations (Koch 1960). There is evidence that a later preference for same-sex or opposite-sex playmates is related to whether the child has had opposite-sex sibs or not, relatively greater preference for opposite-sex playmates being associated with having opposite-sex sibs (Koch 1957). Studies have assessed the effects of nursery school and kindergarten attendance on social development, based on the assumption that such effects stem from the child's association with other children his age. The results are inconsistent: some show positive associations with desirable social development, and others show no relationship or even show some indication, in the investigator's opinion, that the child in nursery school may be habituated in his behavior too early. To a great extent the variability of results seems due to differences in the kinds of measures and behaviors employed in these studies. At this time there seems to be little that can clearly be stated about empirical results or that would lead us to even a tentative conclusion about the differential effect of preschool attendance per se on a child's social development. Differences between various nursery school settings do have differential effects on the child's social behavior, but investigations to determine the important variables distinguishing the settings still need to be made. Some studies clearly show that social behavior of individual children, as well as group differences, are modified by certain -training regimes and specific procedures. Ascendance and submission, social participation, leadership, and positive and negative social interaction have been the behaviors modified in the direction considered desirable. Peer influences on social behavior have been shown to affect aggression, honesty, expressed values, leadership, participation in diverse extracurricular activities, friendship choices, and identity with a group and its activities. These differences in behavior have been related to whether the
child was a member of a particular clique, club, classroom, school, or social class. For some of these associations it is difficult to determine how much to attribute to peer influences and how much to more basic factors, such as family influences, which would determine the child's assignment to these different social units. However, it seems clear that the peer group does influence the social behavior of the child, even if such influence is only to reinforce behavior which was already a part of the child's repertory. Interesting demonstrations of peer influences on social development come from studies of the kibbutzim and of Soviet methods of character training. Analyses of these peer settings indicate that the peer group does act as a powerful socializing agent in rewarding and censuring and successfully shaping behavior of its members in conformity with the group's standards. The evidence available for the Soviet methods of education comes mainly from analyses of their written works, with some support coming from interviews with teachers and a limited amount of direct observation in the schools (Bronfenbrenner 1962). More extended research of socialization has been possible in the kibbutzim of Israel. Direct observations in the nursery indicate that the peer group is important in developing socially desirable habits of eating, toileting, sex, independence, and aggression (Faigin 1958). The sex and age of the child are important attributes in determining what peer grouping he becomes a member of and how the peer group acts toward him. Cross-cultural studies indicate that from the earliest years the sexes are treated differently by their parents. Other studies indicate that the teaching of behaviors appropriate to the different sex roles, which is begun in the home, is reinforced by the peer groups. Sex seems to be the major determinant in early peer grouping, where the members engage with a vengeance in sex-typed play and eschew behavior considered to be characteristic of the opposite sex. With increasing age, individual friendships become stronger, the role of the individual in the group becomes more distinctive, organized social activity increases, and the individual's identity with the group and the degree to which he is controlled by the group's sanctions increases. Even for groups formed for just a short time, there is evidence that reputations and expectations of an individual's behavior are quickly formed and are quite stable. Such social perceptions by the peer group appear to be strong determinants in shaping the member's behavior to conform to his reputation and the expectations the
SOCIALIZATION: Anthropological Aspects others have for him (Campbell's 1964 review provides fuller coverage of this topic). Other influences. Since the average American child spends much time watching television and motion pictures, the importance of these media for teaching values and different kinds of behavior is obvious. A program of research in social learning by Bandura and Walters (1963) shows that children will imitate an aggressive model in a motion picture. Watching aggression in a movie also elicits preference for and participation in aggressive play. For adults there is some evidence that, when an individual is already aggressively aroused, watching an aggressive movie acts as a catharsis. For children, however, far from acting as a fantasy reduction of aggressive impulses, the viewing acts to arouse aggression in them. These studies indicate that aggression is more easily aroused and elicited in children than are other forms of behavior. There is some indication that adolescents who watch television programs depicting many stresses and strains of adult life are likely to be more anxious and dependent on their families than are children who do not watch such programs. Television viewing has been associated with a tendency to stereotype nationalities and at the same time with a tendency not to ascribe value judgments to minorities. The evidence suggests that the mass media may have both very desirable and undesirable influences on social development. The effects of viewing appear to be found mainly when the behavior learned is reinforced in the home or is not dissonant with the home values. Still, the implication is that parents would do well to exert some supervision over the viewing choices of their children. Reading material. Little evidence of the effects of reading material on behavior is available. Studies have shown that the reading of an inordinate number of comic books, especially those with highly aggressive content, may be a symptom of emotional problems in a child and is more characteristic of delinquent children than nondelinquents. But the causal relationship is not clear, since the disturbed child may turn to the fantasy material because of his anxieties. Content analyses of recommended children's literature indicate rather consistent portrayal of certain roles having certain behavioral traits. This probably reinforces what the child is learning in the home, school, and peer groups about these roles. What the child reads may, nevertheless, teach him certain attitudes, values, and behaviors, which may later be manifested as overt behavior in appropriate situations. But at this time
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there seems to. be no clear evidence in support of this hypothesis. Trends Several main currents in the flow of research in social development may be noted. One of these, which has a well-established tradition and has always been an integral part of this area of investigation, is the application of learning principles from the experimental laboratory to the more complex areas of human behavior. This paradigm has been especially prominent in recent research investigating some of the important parameters involved in the development of social behavior. The way of thinking about stimuli, responses, reinforcements, and the many other factors found important in experimental studies has been employed both in the design and in the conceptualization of studies of social behavior in nonexperimental settings, and this trend is increasing. This stamp has been felt in no small way in the tightening up of definitions of the behavior and other variables under study. The influence seems to be most apparent in the following kinds of research: (1) observational studies, where data are obtained in a sequential manner in order to ascertain the potential effects of immediate events on behavior; (2 ) applied uses in therapy and in the modification of behavior of institutionalized persons; and (3) the creative use of experimental designs in natural settings, where the changes in behavior produced by the experimenter's control of the environment are investigated. Another dominant trend is in the self-conscious awareness of methods and measuring techniques. There are signs of uneasiness about the labels that have been applied to certain measures which have not been carefully tied to actual behavior. There is increasing use of research designs to assess the correspondence between indirect and direct measures of attitudes and beliefs and their overt behavioral manifestations. The indications are that information from all these levels will provide a fuller understanding of the processes involved in behavior and its development. New techniques are being devised to record and analyze sequential events, in order to assess the effects of different environmental contingencies in determining actions. Obtaining such data in turn demands the development of new kinds of multivariate analytical models, especially for analyzing interaction sequences in a setting such as the home or school. Another important trend stems from studies of the newborn. These studies have forced researchers
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to consider possible genetic factors involved in social development. Emphasis is placed on studying the mother-infant relationship as a truly dyadic one, where the infant is shaping the mother's behavior as well as being affected by her. The concept of "critical periods" has been given special consideration in this area of research. The question of whether an experience has differential effects depending on the maturational age of the child is now being extended from studies of the infancy period to studies involving later ages. [See IMPRINTING.] ROGER V. BURTON [Directly related are the entries ADOLESCENCE; DEVELOPMENTAL PSYCHOLOGY; INFANCY; PERSONALITY,
article on PERSONALITY DEVELOPMENT. Other relevant material may he found in AGGRESSION; IMITATION; LEARNING, especially the article on LEARNING IN CHILDREN; PSYCHOANALYSIS.] BIBLIOGRAPHY
ANDERSON, JOHN (1946) 1954 Methods of Child Psychology. Pages 1-59 in Leonard Carmichael (editor), Manual of Child Psychology. 2d ed. New York: Wiley. BALDWIN, JAMES M. (1897) 1906 Social and Ethical Interpretations in Mental Development: A Study in Social Psychology. 4th ed., rev. & enl. New York: Macmillan. BANDURA, ALBERT; and WALTERS, R. H. 1963 Social Learning and Personality Development. New York: Holt. BARKER, ROGER G.; KOUNIN, J.; and WRIGHT, H. F. (editors) 1943 Child Behavior and Development. New York: McGraw-Hill. BECKER, WESLEY C. 1964 Consequences of Different Kinds of Parental Discipline. Volume 1, pages 169208 in Martin L. Hoffman and Lois W. Hoffman (editors), Review of Child Development Research. New York: Russell Sage Foundation. BELL, RICHARD Q. 1960 Relations Between Behavior Manifestations in the Human Neonate. Child Development 31:463-477. BINET, ALFRED; and SIMON, TH. 1905 Methodes nouvelles pour le diagnostic du niveau intellectuel des anormaux. Annee psychologique 11:191-244. BRODY, GRACE F. 1965 Relationship Between Maternal Attitudes and Behavior. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 2:317-323. BRONFENBRENNER, URIE 1962 Soviet Methods of Character Education: Some Implications for Research. American Psychologist 17:550-564. BURTON, ROGER V.; and WHITING, J. W. M. 1961 The Absent Father and Cross-sex Identity. Merrill-Palmer Quarterly of Behavior and Development 7:85-95. CAMPBELL, JOHN D. 1964 Peer Relations in Childhood. Volume 1, pages 289-322 in Martin L. Hoffman and Lois W. Hoffman (editors), Review of Child Development Research. New York: Russell Sage Foundation. FAIGIN, HELEN 1958 Social Behavior of Young Children in the Kibbutz. Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology 56:117-129. FREUD, SIGMUND (1900) 1953 The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud.
Volumes 4 and 5: The Interpretation of Dreams. London: Hogarth; New York: Macmillan. GESELL, ARNOLD (1946) 1954 The Ontogenesis of Infant Behavior. Pages 335-373 in Leonard Carmichael (editor), Manual of Child Psychology. 2d ed. New York: Wiley. HARLOW, HARRY F.; and HARLOW, MARGARET K. 1962 Social Deprivation in Monkeys. Scientific American 207, Nov.: 136-146. HULL, CLARK L. 1943 Principles of Behavior: An Introduction to Behavior Theory. New York: Appleton. KOCH, HELEN L. 1957 The Relation in Young Children Between Characteristics of Their Playmates and Certain Attributes of Their Siblings. Child Development 28:175-202. KOCH, HELEN L. 1960 The Relation of Certain Formal Attributes of Siblings to Attitudes Held Toward Each Other and Toward Their Parents. Society for Research in Child Development, Monographs 25, no. 4. LANDAUER, THOMAS K.; and WHITING, J. W. M. 1964 Infantile Stimulation and Adult Stature of Human Males. American Anthropologist New Series 66:1007— 1028. LOVAAS, O. IVAR et al. 1965 Experimental Studies in Childhood Schizophrenia: Analysis of Self-destructive Behavior. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology 2:67-84. McDoucALL, WILLIAM (1908) 1950 An Introduction to Social Psychology. 30th ed. London: Methuen. ->• A paperback edition was published in 1960 by Barnes and Noble. MEAD, GEORGE H. (1934) 1963 Mind, Self and Society From the Standpoint of a Social Behaviorist. Edited by Charles W. Morris. Univ. of Chicago Press. -> Published posthumously. MILLER, NEAL E.; and DOLLARD, JOHN 1941 SociaZ Learning and Imitation. New Haven: Yale Univ. Press; Oxford Univ. Press. MOWRER, O. HOBART 1950 Learning Theory and Personality Dynamics. New York: Ronald. MUSSEN, PAUL H. (editor) 1960 Handbook of Research Methods in Child Development. New York: Wiley. PAVLOV, IVAN P. (1927) 1960 Conditioned Reflexes: An Investigation of the Physiological Activity of the Cerebral Cortex. New York: Dover. -> First published as Lektsii o rabote bol'shikh polusharii golovnogo mozga. PIAGET, JEAN (1923) 1959 The Language and Thought of the Child. 3d ed., rev. New York: Humanities Press. -> First published as Le langage et la pensee chez I'enfant. SCHACHTER, STANLEY 1959 The Psychology of Affiliation: Experimental Studies of the Sources of Gregariousness. Stanford Studies in Psychology, No. 1. Stanford Univ. Press. SCHOENFELD, WILLIAM N. 1950 An Experimental Approach to Anxiety, Escape and Avoidance Behavior. Pages 70-99 in Paul H. Hoch and Joseph Zubin (editors), Anxiety. New York: Grune. SCOTT, PHYLLIS M.; BURTON, R. V.; and YARROW, M. R. 1967 Social Reinforcement Under Natural Conditions. Child Development 38, no. 1. SEARS, R. R. et al. 1953 Some Child Rearing Antecedents of Aggression and Dependency in Young Children. Genetic Psychology Monographs 47:135-236. SKINNER, B. F. 1948 Walden Two. New York: Macmillan. SKINNER, B. F. 1953 Science and Human Behavior. New York: Macmillan.
SOCIALIZATION: Anthropological Aspects WATSON, JOHN B. (1919) 1929 Psychology From the Standpoint of a Behaviorist. 3d ed., rev. Philadelphia and London: Lippincott. WHITING, J. W. M. (1941) 1942 Becoming a Kwoma: Teaching and Learning in a New Guinea Tribe. New Haven: Yale Univ. Press. YARROW, LEON J. 1961 Maternal Deprivation: Toward an Empirical and Conceptual Reevaluation. Psychological Bulletin 58:459-490. YARROW, MARIAN R.; CAMPBELL, J. D.; and BURTON, R. V. 1964 Reliability of Maternal Retrospection: A Preliminary Report. Family Process 3:207-218. ZUNICH, MICHAEL 1962 Relationship Between Maternal Behavior and Attitudes Toward Children. Journal of Genetic Psychology 100:155-165. II ANTHROPOLOGICAL ASPECTS
"Socialization" gained currency in the 1930s as a term denoting the process by which culture is transmitted from one generation to the next. Dollard described the process as "an account of how a new person is added to the group and becomes an adult capable of meeting the traditional expectations of his society for a person of his sex and age" (1935, chapter 1). Although a review article by Irvin Child entitled "Socialization" (1954) signaled its formal acceptance, persons doing research on this process have never been too happy with the term—in part because of its ambiguous connotations and in part because it suggests that the concept is limited to the learning of social roles. This implied exclusion of the transmission of beliefs, values, and other cognitive aspects of culture led Kluckhohn (1939) to suggest "culturalization" and Herskovits (1948) to propose "enculturation" as alternative terms. Although these terms, especially the latter, have much to recommend them, they have not been widely used. Nor has "socialization" been universally accepted. "Child rearing" seems to be gaining some favor as an alternative (Sears et al. 1957; B. Whiting 1963), but it also fails to suggest cultural transmission. Psychoanalytic and cultural approaches The writings of Freud turned the attention of anthropologists to the study of socialization. Although culture is by definition (Tylor 1871) learned anew by each generation, the study of this process was almost entirely neglected by anthropologists until after 1925. Up to this time, American anthropologists were primarily concerned with the history of cultures and with describing how traits were diffused or borrowed. For example, in their ethnographies a description of a cradle board detailed sufficiently so that it could be identified as either a "Plains type" or a "Plateau type" was often
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the only material bearing in any way on infancy or childhood. In Europe and England, where evolutionary theories were in vogue, there was even less concern with this topic. The early writings of Freud were little noticed by anthropologists, but when Totem and Taboo appeared in 1913, this invasion of the ethnological domain could not be ignored by them. For the most part, the initial response of anthropologists was negative. Kroeber (1920) wrote a critical review of the work in the American Anthropologist, and Malinowski (1927), in an attack upon Freudian theory, argued that the Oedipus complex did not occur in the Trobriand Islands. It was Edward Sapir who anticipated the view of psychoanalytic theory that was to be taken by many anthropologists : Those who are profoundly convinced of the epochmaking importance of the psychological mechanisms revealed by Freud and, even more, of the extraordinary suggestiveness of numerous lines of inquiry opened up by psychoanalysis, without, at the same time, being blind to criticisms that need to be made of certain psychoanalytic theory, can only hope and pray that this not altogether healthy overpopularity of the subject prove no hindrance to the study of the perplexing problems with which the Freudian psychology bristles. ([1917] 1949, p. 522) Margaret Mead, setting sail for Samoa in 1925, was the first anthropologist to engage in field work with the avowed intention of studying an aspect of socialization. In this first study, she was not strongly influenced by psychoanalytic theory. In her report on the life of adolescent girls (1928) she did not talk of Oedipal complexes or oral fixations but rather about the everyday life of these girls, paying particular attention to the ways in which their lives contrasted with those of American girls of the same age. Her description of growing up in New Guinea (1930) was also more anthropological than psychoanalytic in its conception, but her later study of three contrasting cultures in New Guinea (1935) clearly showed Freudian influence. During this early period two psychoanalysts, Geza Roheim and Erik Erikson, did field work in non-Western societies; the former worked mainly in Australia and Melanesia (Normanby Island), and the latter studied the American Indians (Sioux and Yurok). Both of them reported child-rearing practices and interpreted some of the rituals, values, and customs as the consequence of unconscious conflicts engendered by these practices. Roheim was so arbitrary and dogmatic in his interpretations that he antagonized many anthropologists and gave the study of socialization a bad
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name among the more conservative members of the profession. Erikson's interpretations were, by contrast, sensitive, illuminating, and nondogmatic— a fact which did much to counteract the influence of Roheim (see Erikson 1950). In 1932-1933 Edward Sapir and John Bollard gave a joint seminar on culture and personality at Yale University. Bollard, a sociologist, had just returned from Germany, where he had received psychoanalytic training. The combination of the cultural and psychoanalytic approaches for the study of personality development was clearly expressed by Bollard soon after this in his Criteria for the Life History (1935). Partly as a consequence of this seminar, a number of life histories of preliterate men and women were published (see Byk 1938; Ford 1941; Talayesva 1942). A few years later Abram Kardiner, a psychoanalyst, and Ralph Linton, an anthropologist, instituted another seminar on personality development, held this time at Columbia University, which resulted in the publication of two important volumes: The Individual and His Society (Kardiner 1939) and The Psychological Frontiers of Society (Kardiner 1945). These consisted of case studies of a number of societies whose projective systems were interpreted in the light of their "basic disciplines," for example, weaning, toilet training, and the control of sex, dependence, and aggression. The cultural material was supplied by an anthropologist with a firsthand knowledge of the case; in most instances the field work had been done prior to the seminar. Cora BuBois' work on the Alorese, reported both in the second volume and in a separate monograph (1944), was a landmark in the study of socialization from the combined viewpoints of psychoanalysis and cultural anthropology. The influence of psychoanalytic thinking upon anthropologists that occurred mainly in the decade 1925-1935 resulted in a dramatic change in ethnographic research. Most general ethnographies written after 1930 included descriptions of infancy and childhood. Furthermore, field studies explicitly focusing on the socialization process were undertaken. Child-rearing practices were even used to interpret the "national character" of modern nations [see NATIONAL CHARACTER]. Learning theory and socialization studies In the mid-1930s, learning theory was added as a third component in the study of socialization. This came about as a consequence of a seminar at the Institute of Human Relations at Yale University. Among the participants in this group were John Bollard and Earl Zinn, representing the psy-
choanalytic viewpoint; C. S. Ford, B. Malinowski, G. P. Murdock, and John W. M. Whiting, representing anthropology; and Leonard Boob, Carl Hovland, Clark Hull, O. Hobart Mowrer, Neal Miller, and Robert Sears, representing learning and behavior theory. Since both the psychoanalytic and the cultural approaches imply learning, the early studies of socialization had an implicit and usually commonsense theory of learning which seemed to serve the purpose well enough at the ethnographic level. Thus Mead described an aspect of Samoan education as follows: From birth until the age of four or five a child's education is exceedingly simple. They must be housebroken, a matter made more difficult by an habitual indifference to the activities of very small children. They must learn to sit or crawl within the house and never to stand upright unless it is absolutely necessary; never to address an adult in a standing position; to stay out of the sun; not to tangle the strands of the weaver; not to scatter the cut-up cocoanut which is spread out to dry; to keep their scant loin cloths at least nominally fastened to their persons; to treat fire and knives with proper caution; not to touch the kava bowl, or the kava cup, and, if their father is a chief, not to crawl on his bed-place when he is by. These are really simply a series of avoidances, enforced by occasional cuffings and a deal of exasperated shouting and ineffectual conversation. (1928, pp. 22-23) The attempt by John W. M. Whiting (1941) to apply a more formal version of learning theory to the socialization process of the Kwoma of New Guinea was, as Gladwin comments, "so literal that it was almost a tour de force. The exercise has therefore not been repeated" (1961, p. 153). Certainly the Kwoma data were in no sense the test of a theory, but they did provide a vehicle for presenting a view of certain aspects of the socialization process. In this study the role of the socializing agent was stressed, as indicated by the following quotation: A Kwoma child learns but a small part of his cultural habits by free trial and error, that is, without some member of his society guiding and directing him. Were he to do so, he would learn those habits which were most rewarding to him and to him alone. This, however, is not what actually happens. He is forced to learn, not the habits which might be most rewarding to him alone, but the habits which are specified in the culture as being best. . . . Thus an essential set of conditions for social learning is the behavior of the socializing agents. . . . Before the analysis of teaching techniques is undertaken, several terms which are to be used should be defined. The terms "teacher" and "pupil" will be employed in a special sense, the former to mean anyone who attempts to change the habit structure of another
SOCIALIZATION: Anthropological Aspects person, the latter, any person whose habit structure is being so changed. Although Kwoma parents most frequently play the role of teacher, with their children as pupils, the teacher-pupil relation is not by any means restricted to them. Co-mothers, siblings, paternal uncles, and aunts, and other relatives frequently play the role of teacher as well. . . . Unless the essentials for learning are already supplied by the interaction of the environment and the pupil, they must be supplied by the teacher. In other words, when such conditions are not already present, the teacher, in order to change the habit structure of the pupil in the desired manner, must provide motivation, guidance, and reward. Each of the various teaching techniques employed at Kwoma may be classed under one or another of these three categories. The following table presents this classification: 1. Providing motivation a. punishing b. scolding c. threatening d. warning e. inciting 2. Providing guidance a. leading b. instructing c. demonstrating 3. Providing reward a. giving b. helping c. praising (J. Whiting 1941, pp. 177-178; 180)
An analysis of the method by which supernatural beliefs were transmitted in Kwoma society was also presented. This analysis was intended as an antidote both to some of the more exaggerated Freudian interpretations, which seemed to imply that the so-called protective systems of a culture were reinvented each generation from the neurotic fantasies of its members, and to the bizarre "racial unconscious" hypothesis, which held that religious beliefs were genetically transmitted. Since learning theory was not especially useful as an interpretive device, the Kwoma example was not followed. However, as one of the bases for developing the so-called complex mechanisms of social learning, it was invaluable. Another and more profound influence of learning theory was methodological rather than substantive. Learning and behavior theory was developed in the laboratory rather than on the "couch" or in the "field," and therefore the method used was experimental rather than descriptive and interpretive. The stating of hypotheses so that they can be tested or jeopardized is crucial to a laboratory science. Although the procedures of the controlled experiment are inappropriate for the study of socialization, correlational studies both within and across
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cultures are quite feasible. The effect of work by the experimental-learning theorists was to introduce hypothesis testing, case counting, and the use of statistics to the study of socialization. John W. M. Whiting and Irvin Child expressed this development in their cross-cultural study of socialization : Most previous work in culture and personality has been oriented primarily toward seeking concrete understanding of specific cases. Our work in contrast is oriented toward testing generalized hypotheses applicable to any case. The difference is not between interest and lack of interest in general hypotheses. The student who is primarily oriented toward full interpretation of the individual case inevitably makes use of general hypotheses as an interpretive device. But he is inclined to take their validity for granted and use them simply as tools which contribute to the understanding of the concrete case. We are not willing to take the validity of any hypothesis for granted until we see adequate evidence to support it, and we are willing to leave to the future the task of applying validated hypotheses to the interpretation of specific cases. (1953, p. 5)
The comparative study of socialization Socialization as cause and as effect. The Whiting and Child study used data from 75 mostly preliterate societies for which sufficient descriptive data on the socialization process were available. The hypotheses tested were derived from Freudian theory but modified by learning theory and adapted to the categories of cultural anthropology in such a way that they were testable. In this study Whiting and Child made a distinction between the maintenance systems and the projective systems of a culture. The former include "the economic, political, and social organization of a society—the basic customs surrounding nourishment, sheltering, and the protection of its members" (Whiting & Child 1953, p. 310); the projection systems (Kardiner 1945) include magic, art, and religion. In any culture, socialization was assumed to be an effect of the maintenance systems and a cause of the projective systems. Thus, this model assumes that insofar as socialization affects the habit structure or personality of the members of a society, it becomes one of the mechanisms by which culture is integrated. Following this study by Whiting and Child, a fairly large number of cross-cultural studies were undertaken to test hypotheses concerning either the effect of the maintenance systems upon socialization or the effect of socialization upon magical beliefs and rituals (these are reviewed in J. Whiting 1961).
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Findings relating socialization to the projective systems include the following: the treatment of infants in a society is predictive of beliefs about the nature of the gods (Spiro & D'Andrade 1958; Lambert et al. 1959; J. Whiting 1959a); the severity of socialization leads to complexity in decorative art (Barry 1957); achievement imagery in folk tales is predictable from the age and severity of independence training (McClelland & Friedman 1952; however, in a replication of this study by Child et al. 1958, this relationship was not supported by the data); last, that an exclusive relationship between mother and son during infancy is associated with male initiation rites at puberty (J. Whiting et al. 1958; Burton & Whiting 1961). Studies purporting to show that socialization is an effect of maintenance-system variables have found the following associations: the amount of indulgence during infancy is predictable from the number of adult females in the household—large extended family households being the most indulgent and households consisting of a mother and child alone being the least indulgent (J. Whiting 1961); extended family households are also the most severe in controlling the aggressions of their children (J. Whiting 1959b); the type of subsistence economy is predictive of the strength of socialization pressure to train the child toward being compliant rather than assertive, the strongest pressure being found among pastoral societies and the weakest among the hunters and gatherers (Barry etal. 1959). Comparative case studies. Paralleling the type of cross-cultural studies reported above was a series of comparative case studies using the so-called method of controlled comparison. Margaret Mead's investigation of three societies in New Guinea—the Arapesh, the Mundugumor, and the Tchambuli— was the first of these (1935). In this study she concluded that the personalities of the two sexes are socially produced and may vary to the extent that the biological stereotype may actually be reversed. A few years later the first large interdisciplinary project was undertaken. This was the Indian Education Research Project jointly undertaken by the Committee on Human Development of the University of Chicago and the United States Bureau of Indian Affairs. A long list of notables from the fields of anthropology, psychology, and education constituted the advisory committee. This ambitious project undertook the study of socialization and its effects upon personality in each of five societies: the Hopi, Navajo, Papago, Sioux, and Zuni. Standard tests such as the Rorschach, the Thematic Apperception Test, Stewart's Emotional Response
Test, Goodenough's Draw-a-Man Test, the Arthur Point Scale of Performance, and Bavelas' Moral Ideology Test were given to children, and the societies were compared on the basis of the test results. The major results of the project, however, were a series of descriptive monographs (Leighton & Kluckhohn 1947; Thompson & Joseph 1944; Macgregor 1946; Joseph et al. 1949). Although each of these was written by a different person, they provided far more comparable data than those which are usually available for the large sample cross-cultural studies. In the above studies the society is the basic unit of comparison. Although in the Indian Education Project tests were given to individual children, the only intra-cultural comparison made was between subgroups judged to be more or less traditional. Another project in which several societies were simultaneously studied—the Coordinated Investigation of Micronesian Anthropology—was undertaken shortly after the end of World War n. Although this project was not specifically addressed to studies of child rearing or personality development, several excellent studies on these topics resulted, notably one on Ifaluk (Burrows & Spiro 1953) and one on Truk (Gladwin & Sarason 1953). The advantage of these projects, as compared with the cross-cultural studies based on large samples, was that they provided case studies in greater depth and with greater comparability; however, they suffered from providing too few cases to enable a confident interpretation of observed differences. Replication studies. The next step in researchdesign efficiency was taken by Pro thro (1961), who went further than using standard instruments for comparative purposes. He set himself the task of replicating, in Lebanon, a study of child-rearing practices that had been carried out in a suburb of Boston by Sears, Maccoby, and Levin (1957). The same interview was used as a basic research instrument. Some of Prothro's findings confirmed the Boston study, and some did not: If we compare the children who did have feeding difficulty with those who did not, we find that the first conclusion of the American study is confirmed by our data. Feeding problems for Arab and Armenian children were not linked to infant weaning problems or to age at weaning. The feeding problems of the five-yearold—New Englander or Middle Easterner—are not linked to problems of feeding and weaning in infancy. The relationship of maternal warmth to feeding problems is, however, the opposite of that found in America. The warmer mothers were more likely to report feeding problems. Of those mothers whose children had feeding problems, 47 per cent were high in warmth and 37 per cent were low in warmth. Of mothers not
SOCIALIZATION: Anthropological Aspects reporting any feeding problems, 35 per cent were high in warmth and 45 per cent were low in warmth. This distribution . . . could not have occurred only by chance. Maternal warmth was associated with more feeding problems. . . . It is not difficult to adduce post hoc explanations for the difference between our findings and those in America. American mothers generally try to see that their children eat enough, and eat a "proper" diet. Warm and cold mothers alike would concern themselves with what the child ate, and the warmth or coldness would express itself in the way in which they tried to achieve this goal. In Lebanon, however, there is less attention given to the diet of the toddler, so that greater warmth might express itself in greater concern for diet, more efforts to insure the eating of "healthful" foods, and more awareness of any balky or "finicky" habits that did exist. Thus greater warmth might produce pressures comparable to those found in America. Whether this explanation is correct or not, we can be certain of one fact—the [negative] correlation found in the United States between maternal warmth and feeding problems does not obtain in Lebanon. Warmer mothers reported more such problems. (1961, pp. 83-84)
As can be seen from the above quotation, the replication strategy is powerful when the results of various studies confirm one another, but when they do not, further replications are required. Large-scale comparative studies with carefully controlled methods of data collection and replication and a large enough sample of societies to adequately jeopardize a hypothesis have yet to be undertaken. Subsystem replication. An alternative strategy that Roberts and Sutton-Smith have called subsystem replication has much merit. This design requires that any hypothesis to be tested be put in double jeopardy, that is, tested on the basis of cultural differences among an adequate sample of societies and also on either subgroup or individual differences within one or more of these societies. Studies involving socialization variables and using this strategy have been done by John W. M. Whiting (1954; Whiting et al. 1966a) and Roberts and Sutton-Smith (1962). The most elaborate attempt so far to use the subsystem-replication strategy was the so-called Six Culture Project, which was directed by Irvin Child, William Lambert, and John W. M. Whiting. For this study teams of investigators underwent training in standard methods of interviewing and observing children for a year before going into the field. At the end of this training period the senior investigators and the field teams prepared a document, Field Guide for the Study of Socialization (Whiting et al. 1966fo), for the purpose of maximizing the uniformity of their data collection. In
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addition, Beatrice Whiting acted as a clearinghouse during the period of field work and attempted to solve unanticipated field-work problems in a way that would maximize uniformity. The design of this study called for collection of cultural data on each of the six societies, using standard ethnographic techniques for comparison at the societal level. For subsystem replication, a sample of 24 children from the ages of three to ten, balanced by sex and age, was chosen at random from the census of all children in the community selected for study. These children together with their parents were chosen for intensive study. (See B. Whiting 1963 for a description of the cultures and the child-rearing practices and Minturn & Lambert 1964 for a factor analysis of standard interviews with each of the sample mothers.) Although the effort to insure comparability of data collection represented by this study is a step forward in the comparative study of socialization, there is still a long way to go before satisfactory standards are achieved. Perhaps the next step will be the collection of a limited amount of data relevant to the testing of a specific hypothesis, carried out by a single person or team, on an appropriate sample of societies. Anthropologists, stimulated by the work of Freud, have in increasing numbers turned their attention to the problem of cultural transmission. Ethnographies detailing this process, almost wholly absent in 1920, are now a commonplace. This has added what might be termed a "third dimension" to the description of a culture. More importantly, it has introduced an appreciation that the "natural man" assumption is inadequate for a complete understanding of cultural integration. The evidence from comparative studies of socialization indicates that man as a bearer of culture is not just a primate who thinks logically or prelogically and whose feelings are based upon primary needs such as hunger, thirst, sex, fear, and the like; in addition, as a consequence of the child-rearing methods of his society, man has blind spots and distortions in his cognitive processes and specific anxieties which may form the emotional underpinning and raison d'etre for elaborate rituals and magico-religious beliefs. JOHN W. M. WHITING [See also CULTURE AND PERSONALITY.] BIBLIOGRAPHY
BARRY, HERBERT 1957 Relationships Between Child Training and the Pictorial Arts. Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology 54:380-383.
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BARRY, HERBERT; CHILD, IRVIN L.; and BACON, MARGARET K. 1959 Relation of Child Training to Subsistence Economy. American Anthropologist New Series 61:51-63. BURROWS, EDWIN G.; and SPIRO, MELFORD (1953) 1957 An Atoll Culture: Ethnography of Ifaluk in the Central Carolines. 2d ed. New Haven: Human Relations Area Files. BURTON, ROGER V.; and WHITING, JOHN W. M. 1961 The Absent Father and Cross-sex Identity. MerrillPalmer Quarterly of Behavior and Development 7:85— 95. CHILD, IRVIN L. 1954 Socialization. Volume 2, pages 655-692 in Gardner Lindzey (editor), Handbook of Social Psychology. Cambridge, Mass.: Addison-Wesley. CHILD, IRVIN L.; STORM, THOMAS; and VEROFF, JOSEPH 1958 Achievement Themes in Folk Tales Related to Socialization Practice. Pages 479-492 in John W. Atkinson (editor), Motives in Fantasy, Action, and Society: A Method of Assessment and Study. Princeton, N.J.: Van Nostrand. BOLLARD, JOHN (1935) 1949 Criteria for the Life History: With Analyses of Six Notable Documents. Gloucester, Mass.: Smith. -> See especially Chapter 1. DuBois, CORA A. (1944) 1960 The People of Alor: A Social-psychological Study of an East-Indian Island. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Univ. Press. -> A twovolume paperback edition was published in 1961 by Harper. DYK, WALTER 1938 Son of Old Man Hat: A Navaho Autobiography. New York: Harcourt. ERIKSON, ERIK H. (1950) 1964 Childhood and Society. 2d ed., rev. & enl. New York: Norton. FORD, CLELLAN 1941 Smoke From Their Fires: The Life of a Kwakiutl Chief. New Haven: Yale Univ. Press. FREUD, SIGMUND (1913) 1959 Totem and Taboo. Volume 13, pages ix-162 in Sigmund Freud, The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud. London: Hogarth; New York: Macmillan. GLADWIN, THOMAS 1961 Oceania. Pages 135-171 in Francis L. K. Hsu (editor), Psychological Anthropology: Approaches to Culture and Personality. Homewood, 111..- Dorsey. GLADWTN, THOMAS; and SARASON, SEYMOUR B. 1953 Truk: Man in Paradise. Viking Fund Publications in Anthropology, No. 20. New York: Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research. HERSKOVITS, MELVILLE J. 1948 Man and His Works: The Science of Cultural Anthropology. New York: Knopf. JOSEPH, ALICE; SPICER, ROSAMUND B.; and CHESKY, JANE 1949 The Desert People: A Study of the Papago Indians. Univ. of Chicago Press. KARDINER, ABRAM (1939) 1955 The Individual and His Society: The Psychodynamics of Primitive Social Organization. New York: Columbia Univ. Press. KARDINER, ABRAM 1945 The Psychological Frontiers of Society. New York: Columbia Univ. Press, -> A paperback edition was published in 1963. KLUCKHOHN, CLYDE 1939 Theoretical Bases for an Empirical Method of Studying the Acquisition of Culture by Individuals. Man 39:98-105. KROEBER, ALFRED L. 1920 Totem and Taboo: An Ethnologic Psychoanalysis. American Anthropologist New Series 22:48-55. LAMBERT, WILLIAM W.; TRIANDIS, LEIGH M.; and WOLF, MARGERY 1959 Some Correlates of Beliefs in the
Malevolence and Benevolence of Supernatural Beings: A Cross Societal Study. Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology 58:162-169. LANDY, DAVID 1959 Tropical Childhood: Cultural Transmission and Learning in a Rural Puerto Rican Village. Chapel Hill: Univ. of North Carolina Press. LEIGHTON, DOROTHEA (CROSS); and KLUCKHOHN, CLYDE 1947 Children of the People: The Navaho Individual and His Development. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Univ. Press. MCCLELLAND, DAVID C.; and FRIEDMAN, G. A. 1952 A Cross-cultural Study of the Relationship Between Child-training Practices and Achievement Motivation Appearing in Folk Tales. Pages 243-249 in Society for the Psychological Study of Social Issues, Readings in Social Psychology. 2d ed. New York: Holt. MACGREGOR, GORDON 1946 Warriors Without Weapons: Study of the Society and Personality Development of the Pine Ridge Sioux. Univ. of Chicago Press. MALINOWSKI, BRONISLAW (1927)1953 Sex and Repression in Savage Society. London: Routledge; New York: Harcourt. -> A paperback edition was published in 1955 by Meridian. MEAD, MARGARET (1928) 1961 Coming of Age in Samoa: A Psychological Study of Primitive Youth for Western Civilization. New York: Morrow. MEAD, MARGARET (1930) 1953 Growing Up in New Guinea. New York: New American Library. MEAD, MARGARET (1935) 1950 Sex and Temperament in Three Primitive Societies. New York: Mentor. MEAD, MARGARET 1949 Male and Female: A Study of the Sexes in a Changing World. London: Gollancz; New York: Morrow. ->• A paperback edition was published in 1955 by New American Library. MINTURN, LEIGH; and LAMBERT, WILLIAM W. 1964 Mothers of Six Cultures: Antecedents of Child Rearing. New York: Wiley. PROTHRO, EDWIN T. 1961 Child Rearing in the Lebanon. Harvard University Middle Eastern Monograph No. 8. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Univ. Press. -> Copyright 1961 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College. Extracts from this book are reprinted by the permission of the publishers. ROBERTS, J. M.; and SUTTON-SMITH, B. 1962 Child Training and Game Involvement. Ethnology 1:166— 185. SAPIR, EDWARD (1917) 1949 Excerpt From a [Book] Review of Oskar Pfister, The Psychoanalytic Method. Pages 522-525 in Edward Sapir, Selected Writings of Edward Sapir in Language, Culture and Personality. Berkeley and Los Angeles: Univ. of California Press. SEARS, ROBERT R.; MACCOBY, E. E.; and LEVIN, H. 1957 Patterns of Child Rearing. Evanston, 111.: Row, Peterson. SPIRO, MELFORD E.; and D'ANDRADE, ROY G. 1958 A Cross-cultural Study of Some Supernatural Beliefs. American Anthropologist New Series 60:456-466. TALAYESVA, DON C. 1942 Sun Chief: The Autobiography of a Hopi Indian. Edited by Leo Simmons. New Haven: Yale Univ. Press. THOMPSON, LAURA; and JOSEPH, ALICE (1944) 1947 The Hopi Way. Univ. of Chicago Press. TYLOR, EDWARD B. (1871) 1958 Primitive Culture: Researches Into the Development of Mythology, Philosophy, Religion, Art and Custom. Volume 1: Origins of Culture. Gloucester, Mass.: Smith.
SOCIALIZATION: Political Socialization WHITING, BEATRICE B. (editor) 1963 Six Cultures: Studies of Child Rearing. New York: Wiley. WHITING, JOHN W. M. 1941 Becoming a Kwoma: Teaching and Learning in a New Guinea Tribe. New Haven: Yale Univ. Press. WHITING, JOHN W. M. 1954 The Cross-cultural Method. Volume 1, pages 523-531 in Gardner Lindzey (editor), Handbook of Social Psychology. Cambridge, Mass.: Addison-Wesley. WHITING, JOHN W. M. 1959a Sorcery, Sin, and the Superego: A Cross-cultural Study of Some Mechanisms of Social Control. Volume 7, pages 174-195 in Marshall R. Jones (editor), Nebraska Symposium on Motivation. Lincoln: Univ. of Nebraska Press. WHITING, JOHN W. M. 1959b Cultural and Sociological Influences on Development. Pages 5-9 in Maryland Child Growth and Development Institute, Baltimore, 1959, Maryland Child Growth and Development Institute, June 1-5, 1959. Baltimore: Maryland State Department of Health. WHITING, JOHN W. M. 1961 Socialization Process and Personality. Pages 355-380 in Francis L. K. Hsu (editor), Psychological Anthropology: Approaches to Culture and Personality. Homewood, 111.: Dorsey. WHITING, JOHN W. M.; and CHILD, IRVIN L. 1953 Child Training and Personality: A Cross-cultural Study. New Haven: Yale Univ. Press. -> A paperback edition was published in 1962. WHITING, JOHN W. M.; KLUCKHOHN, RICHARD; and ANTHONY, ALBERT 1958 The Function of Male Initiation Ceremonies at Puberty. Pages 359-371 in Society for the Psychological Study of Social Issues, Readings in Social Psychology. 3d ed. New York: Holt. WHITING, JOHN W. M. et al. 1966a The Learning of Values. Pages 83-125 in Evon Z. Vogt and Ethel M. Albert (editors), People of Rimrock: A Study of Values in Five Cultures. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Univ. Press. WHITING, JOHN W. M. et al. 1966b Field Guide for the Study of Socialization. New York: Wiley. Ill
POLITICAL SOCIALIZATION
Narrowly conceived, political socialization is the deliberate inculcation of political information, values, and practices by instructional agents who have been formally charged with this responsibility. A broader conception would encompass all political learning, formal and informal, deliberate and unplanned, at every stage of the life cycle, including not only explicitly political learning but also nominally nonpolitical learning that affects political behavior, such as the learning of politically relevant social attitudes and the acquisition of politically relevant personality characteristics. For the present purposes we shall think of political socialization in the second, more comprehensive, sense. The importance of political socialization Political actions are determined both by the "objective" situations in which political actors find themselves (for example, the constraints and re-
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wards imposed by the environment, including the structure of political institutions) and by the predispositions that citizens and their leaders have acquired through prior experience—inter alia, their political goals, expectations about the rules of the game of politics, conceptions of the legitimacy of men and institutions, group loyalties, assumptions about "human nature," and orientations toward authority. The nature of these predispositions and the processes through which they are acquired are matters of crucial political importance. For example, the political socialization process of a society may contribute to stability or instability, to continuity or change, to high or low levels of public political participation. Socialization is an economical tool of government. To the degree that government relies upon the habituated responses of citizens, the necessity cf environmental constraints is lessened. Authority is more stable when obeyed automatically than when sanctions must be threatened or employed. Yet it is not necessarily the stable, secure government that attends consciously and explicitly to political socialization. Rather, civic training becomes a deliberate policy when elements of potential instability are perceived in a political system—for instance, when an attempt is being made to weld together diverse and antagonistic populations into a single nation. Extensive formal political education also occurs where, as is the case under totalitarianism, the state carries on many of the functions ordinarily performed by other institutions, such as the family. In the United States considerable explicit discussion of the importance of civic training can be found in the educational literature of the turn of the century, at which time sizable immigrant populations were being assimilated. Civic education is still considered a key function of the schools. Although detailed research has not been carried out, it seems likely that preoccupation with formal civic education and the inculcation of patriotism in the United States is greater than in Britain, but less than in an unstable democracy such as France, and certainly far less than in the Soviet Union, where "character training" and child-raising practices, as well as specifically political education, are officially discussed in terms of the requirements of the state (Bronfenbrenner 1962). The study of political socialization Scholarly interest in political socialization is coeval with the beginnings of political theory. It is difficult to think of a political theorist who exceeds Plato in his concern with the training of citizens.
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Countless insights into the nature and significance of political socialization may be found in traditional political thought—for example, in Aristotle's discussion of "the type of character appropriate to a constitution" or in Bodin's assertion that "children who stand in little awe of their parents, and have even less fear of the wrath of God, readily set at defiance the authority of the magistrates." Nevertheless, neither classical nor contemporary scholarship has produced a generally agreed-upon framework for analyzing political socialization, much less a codified body of knowledge. Three strands of twentieth-century writing may be noted: (1) In the late 1920s and early 1930s there was concerted discussion of political education by social scientists. The formal aspects of civic training were examined in a number of studies sponsored by the American Historical Association (e.g., Merriam 1934; Pierce 1933), and "the making of citizens" was the subject of a series edited by Charles E. Merriam (summarized in Merriam 1931). (2) During World War n and the postwar decade, there was a great deal of interest in personality and politics and national character. Attempts were made to describe politically significant variations in personality within and between societies and to indicate their developmental origins (Inkeles & Levinson 1954). (3) Finally, the late 1950s and early 1960s saw the beginning of direct research on the development of political behavior, especially studies of the political development of children and adolescents. During this period the label "political socialization" came to be applied to such research (Hyman 1959). The process of political socialization Although there is no generally accepted approach to the study of political socialization, much of what is known and much of what ought to be known can be summed up in the following paraphrase of Lasswell's formulation of the general process of communication: (a) Who (b) learns what (c) from whom (d) under what circumstances (e~) with what effects? In what follows, each element of this formulation will be elaborated upon, with illustrations from the rather scanty body of existing knowedge. Who learns. Political learning varies in terms of the social and psychological characteristics of the individuals educated. These characteristics affect the socializing influences an individual will receive and his receptivity to them. Sex and social class are two of the many social-psychological characteristics affecting political learning. Among adults, men are more likely than
women to participate in politics; members of the upper social strata are more politically active than members of the lower strata. Research on children's political awareness, showing that these differences have already begun to be established by nine years of age, sheds partial light on the source of the adult variation. Sex differences in political activity, for example, seem to be encouraged by the entire process of psychological sex-typing. Beginning with preschool play activity, male children learn to orient themselves to aspects of the environment beyond their primary circle and eventually to politics; girls are subtly or directly encouraged to develop domestic concerns. This predisposes them to ignore politics. Class differences in political involvement result from the circularly reinforcing tendency of generations of lower-class and upperclass parents to furnish their children with models of the adult role that either include or fail to include civic involvement. Lower-class families, in addition to failing to serve as political exemplars for their children, provide fewer of the skills and resources that facilitate political participation (Greenstein 1965, chapters 5, 6). The variation in political learning between cultures is probably greater than the variations within cultures. In France, for example, there is evidently much less political communication between parents and children than in the United States. Over 80 per cent of American adults, but less than 30 per cent of French adults, are able to report what their parents' party preferences were when they were growing up. The failure of French families to foster party attachment apparently contributes to the high proportion of uncommitted voters in the French electorate; this, in turn, provides more leeway in France than in the United States for the rise and fall of new mass political movements (Converse & Dupeux 1962). What is learned. When discussing the content of political education, it is important to distinguish politically relevant aspects of personality development from specifically political learning. The former include basic dispositions, beliefs, and attitudes that affect political behavior. The latter involves : (1) learning connected with the citizen role (partisan attachment, ideology, motivation to participate); (2) learning connected with the subject role (national loyalty, orientations toward authority, conceptions of the legitimacy of institutions); and (3) learning connected with recruitment to and performance of specialized roles, such as bureaucrat, party functionary, and legislator [see POLITICAL RECRUITMENT AND CAREERS]. The following discussion will focus on one
SOCIALIZATION: Political Socialization aspect of personality development and the learning of orientations connected with the citizen and subject roles. The most influential formulation connecting personality and personality development with political behavior is the construct summed up by the phrase "authoritarian personality" (Adorno et al. 1950). In brief, it is hypothesized that certain developmental experiences predispose people to acquire complementary needs: to comply with what they perceive to be superior authorities and to dominate subordinates. Such individuals are unable to acknowledge their hostility toward authority figures, their doubts about their strength, and their sexual and aggressive impulses. The need to repress these inner needs, it is argued, results from unbendingly stern treatment received in childhood from parents who both generated strong antagonisms toward themselves and forbade expression of these antagonisms. These "nonpolitical" aspects of child training lead by reaction formation to the crystallization of a character type that is tough out of an underlying sense of weakness, deferring to authority and deflecting unconscious hostility toward authority into punitive behavior toward the weak and unauthoritative. Apart from questions about the empirical validity of the authoritarian personality construct, a general question may be raised about the relationship between deep personality needs and political behavior. LeVine (1960) has convincingly shown a one-to-one relationship between personality patterns resulting from child-training practices and political behavior in two preliterate African tribal groups. Among the Gusii, children are thoroughly subordinated to adults. The Nuer are much more egalitarian; for example, children talk back to their parents freely. And the former have been much more compliant to British colonial authority than the latter. In complex, industrial societies, however, much intervenes between child-training practices and adult behavior. Schools, mass media, and adult work experience expose people to values other than those acquired in the home; behavior may be determined by conventional cultural orientations, such as party identifications; political roles are institutionalized and may be so clearly denned as to leave little room for the effects of personal idiosyncrasies. Under these circumstances, the effects of personality on political behavior may often be marginal rather than central, circuitous rather than direct. In contrast to personality development, specific learning about politics is generally thought to be an outgrowth of late childhood and the adolescent
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years. Actually, many political orientations are learned much earlier. In the preschool years, children commonly acquire conceptions of the police and the military, of symbols such as the flag, and (especially during periods of widespread attention to politics, such as election campaigns) of certain public officials and some of the more superficial aspects of partisan politics. In the United States, the president seems most often to be the first public official of whom children become aware. Very young children have little in the way of specific understanding of the presidential role and duties; nevertheless, they have clear conceptions of the importance of the presidential role. The child's first conception of the president, and indeed of politics in general, tends to be quite positive, if not idealized. Political cynicism, although prevalent in the adult population, does not seem to emerge until adolescence or thereafter. The positive tone of early political learning, it has been argued, helps to account for the widespread acceptance of the legitimacy of American political institutions (Easton &Hess 1962). American children become familiar with the president much earlier than with Congress or individual congressmen. At the state and local levels also, it is executives who are understood before legislators. The simplicity of perceiving and explaining a single figure rather than an assembly and the greater attention in the mass media to executives probably account for this sequence of learning. Simplicity of perception probably also accounts for the early age at which party loyalties are acquired in the United States, since the two major parties are highly visible. There is evidence that by nine years of age children are about as likely to have attachments to one or the other of the major political parties as are young adults of voting age. Ideological orientations are formed much later than party attachments; preadolescent children show little awareness of political issues (Greenstein 1965, chapters 3, 4). The agents of political socialization. We may conveniently take the United States, since it falls somewhere between the extremes of complete reliance upon informal socialization and massive inculcation of political orientations, as a case study for examining the agents of political education. Civic-training practices in American schools are quite heterogeneous; curriculum is a matter of state and local policy. The study of government generally does not begin until late in elementary school. Instruction tends to be formalistic, stressing the structure rather than the dynamics of government. By and large, the classroom is not an
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agency for advancement of viewpoints related to party politics, but the schools are exposed to the general societal process of political and politically relevant communication and persuasion. Interest groups—industries, professions, liberal and conservative associations, patriotic societies, ethnic groups, agencies of government—vie for a hearing in the classroom. Groups provide teachers with instructional materials, send speakers to schools, and take an interest in the content of textbooks. (These groups also, of course, have direct programs designed to convey their views to children and adults.) From the earliest grades, schools purvey the symbols of nationalism through observance of holidays, teaching about national heroes, and patriotic ceremonies. If the schools transmit communications from the entire range of societal institutions, so also do the mass media. The latter are extraordinarily important agents of political socialization. In the early 1960s the average American grade school child spent approximately twenty hours weekly viewing television and additional hours being exposed to other media (Witty et al. 1963). Many of the communications thus received are without specific political content, but some contact with political information is unavoidable. And children deliberately seek information about certain dramatic political events. The long-run effect of media attention is probably to build up, gradually and inadvertently, an awareness of basic elements in the political system. There is much research suggesting that face-toface communication in a primary group setting (family, peer group, neighborhood) is more persuasive than communication through the mass media. The study of political socialization supports this view strongly. In particular, the family is a vital source of socialization, especially in the acquisition of beliefs and loyalties. We have seen the apparent significance for French politics of the failure of families to serve as agencies of political communication. In the United States there is a high correlation between the political beliefs, especially the party preferences, of parents and those of their children: children acquire either partisan loyalties or the tendency not to have partisan loyalties from their parents (Hyman 1959; Greenstein 1965, chapter 4). Parents also have a powerful effect upon their children's motivation to participate in politics. Circumstances of political socialization. All of the principles governing the effectiveness of educational practices and, more generally, of communication and persuasion, apply to assessing the effects of the various circumstances under which
political socialization takes place. A circumstance of political socialization alluded to above is the age at which learning takes place, including the sequence of learning. That early learning is of decisive importance is suggested by many contemporary psychological theories and by traditional folklore. But the effects of the early formation of politically relevant personality structures may be attenuated or obliterated by later experience. Almond and Verba (1963) find a stronger correlation between disposition to participate in politics and feelings that one is free to participate at his work place than with feelings that earlier in life one was free to participate in the classroom or the home. In the case of specifically political learning (in contrast to politically relevant personality development), there is evidence for the considerable importance of early experience. Political orientations learned during the initial school years or the late preschool years often have a greater impact on the individual's adult political behavior than do orientations that are learned later in life. For example, party identification is formed early in life; ideological orientations come much later. In the United States at least, the voter's party preference has a stronger effect on his electoral decision making than do his views about political issues. Children learn earlier about political executives than about legislative bodies. Among adult citizens there is more awareness of the former than of the latter and probably a tendency to attribute greater importance to executives such as the president, governor and mayor than to their legislative counterparts. One aspect of this is the learning sequence. The concepts, information, and feelings that are first acquired serve as "filters" through which later perceptions must pass. Thus, the child who "knows" that he is a Democrat, without attributing any substantive meaning to his party preference, will learn to orient himself toward the utterances of Democratic politicians and to acquire issue commitments consistent with his initial loyalty. The child who first becomes aware of a political executive and later learns of the existence of a coordinate legislative body may tacitly assume that the legislature is in some way ancillary or subordinate to the executive. Apart from its sequential effects, early learning may be important in and of itself because it takes place at a plastic, formative stage of development, when critical capacities are limited. Adult orientations that have their roots in early learning and that have, therefore, been adopted without conscious consideration of alternatives, are likely to have an unquestioned character that
SOCIALIZATION: Adult Socialization makes them both influential for behavior and resistant to change. The effects of political socialization. Political learning has effects on the later political behavior of the individual exposed to socializing influences and, by extension, upon the political system. Most commonly, socialization seems to have conservative consequences for existing political arrangements. We have seen, for example, that class and sex differences in political participation tend to be transmitted from generation to generation. The conservative effects of socialization are not necessarily in the direction of encouraging political stability: political socialization in both stable and unstable societies is likely to maintain existing patterns. Nevertheless, socialization is a potential source of change. It is always possible that the link will be broken in the attempt to transmit one generation's predispositions to the next. And since the training of the young is in part future-oriented, one generation may deliberately inculcate the next with values that differ from its own (Inkeles 1955). More generally, wherever different generations are exposed to different experiences, the seeds of change are present.
FRED I. GREENSTEIN [Directly related are the entries ACCESS TO POLITICS; CONSENSUS, article on THE STUDY OF CONSENSUS; GENERATIONS, article on POLITICAL GENERATIONS; IDENTIFICATION, POLITICAL; LOYALTY; POLITICAL EFFICACY; POLITICAL RECRUITMENT AND CAREERS. Other relevant material may be found in PERSONALITY, POLITICAL; POLITICAL CULTURE; POLITICAL PARTICIPATION; POLITICAL SOCIOLOGY.] BIBLIOGRAPHY
ADORNO, T. W. et al. 1950 The Authoritarian Personality. American Jewish Committee. Social Studies Series, No. 3. New York: Harper. ALMOND, GABRIEL A.; and VERBA, SIDNEY 1963 The Civic Culture: Political Attitudes and Democracy in Five Nations. Princeton Univ. Press. AMERICAN ACADEMY OF POLITICAL AND SOCIAL SCIENCE 1965 Political Socialization: Its Role in the Political Process. Edited by Roberta Sigel. Annals, Vol. 361. Philadelphia: The Academy. BRONFENBEENNER, URIE 1962 Soviet Methods of Character Education: Some Implications for Research. American Psychologist 17:550-564. COLEMAN, JAMES S. (editor) 1965 Education and Political Development. Princeton Univ. Press. CONVERSE, PHILIP E.; and DUPEUX, GEORGES 1962 Politicization of the Electorate in France and the United States. Public Opinion Quarterly 26:1-23. EASTON, DAVID; and HESS, ROBERT D. 1962 The Child's Political World. Midwest Journal of Political Science 6:229-246. GREENSTEIN, FRED I. 1965 Children and Politics. Yale Studies in Political Science, Vol. 12. New Haven: Yale Univ. Press.
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HYMAN, HERBERT H. 1959 Political Socialization: A Study in the Psychology of Political Behavior. Glencoe, 111.: Free Press. INKELES, ALEX 1955 Social Change and Social Character: The Role of Parental Mediation. Journal of Social Issues 11, no. 2:12-23. INKELES, ALEX; and LEVINSON, DANIEL J. 1954 National Character: The Study of Modal Personality and Sociocultural Systems. Volume 2, pages 977-1020 in Gardner Lindzey (editor), Handbook of Social Psychology. Cambridge, Mass.: Addison-Wesley. LsViNE, ROBERT A. 1960 The Internalization of Political Values in Stateless Societies. Human Organization 19:51-58. MERRIAM, CHARLES E. 1931 The Making of Citizens: A Comparative Study of Methods of Civic Training. Univ. of Chicago Press. MERRIAM, CHARLES E. 1934 Civic Education in the United States. Report of the Commission on the Social Studies, American Historical Association, Part 6. New York: Scribner. PIERCE, BESSIE L. 1933 Citizens' Organizations and the Civic Training of Youth. Report of the Commission on the Social Studies, American Historical Association, Part 3. New York: Scribner. WITTY, PAUL A. et al. 1963 A Summary of Yearly Studies of Televiewing: 1949-1963. Elementary English 40:590-597. IV ADULT SOCIALIZATION
Every society is faced with the task of socializing its children into the basic culture and, to varying degrees, of providing further socialization of these persons as they move into different statuses at different stages in the life cycle. In the simplest terms, one can say that through socialization the individual acquires the culture of his group or groups. This includes two main divisions of culture: the traditional positions, or statuses, in the society and the role behaviors associated with them. The socialization that an individual receives in childhood cannot be fully adequate preparation for the tasks demanded of him in later years. As an individual matures, he moves through a sequence of statuses corresponding to different stages in the life cycle. In addition, his interpersonal environment may change because of geographic or social mobility, with consequent demands for new kinds of behavior. Even though some of the expectations of society are relatively stable through the life cycle, many others change from one position to the next. It would seem desirable from society's point of view to be able to socialize an individual in childhood so that he could successfully handle all of the roles he would confront in the future. Perhaps this is possible in a relatively unchanging society with little mobility, where one could have foresight about an individual's path through the whole life cycle. But this orderly state of affairs usually can-
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not be achieved; it can only be approximated to varying degrees, from one society to the next. Society can do no more than lay the groundwork for the necessary learning in later life, when the child will be confronted with the as yet only dimly seen adult roles. There are, to be sure, other reasons why childhood socialization may be ineffective in later years. One major cause is that the demands for behavior at different stages of the life cycle may conflict (Benedict 1938). There are many other causes. In any given case, the individual himself may be unable to learn the necessary skills. Again, there may be agents missing, as in the absence of a parent or key institutions or agencies. The process can also fail because subgroups with deviant values exist in every society, and they do not prepare the child for the performance of the roles expected of him by the larger society at a later date. Finally, the specific socializing agent, such as a parent, to whom socialization is entrusted by society, may be inadequate to carry out the task because he himself is not interested or because he is ignorant or emotionally disturbed. Adult socialization. For analytic purposes, a typology of adult socialization can be constructed in such a way as to display the origins of the need for each type. Consider first the individual who is confronted with a new role and knows virtually nothing about what he should do. In such a case society will require new socialization, two types of which can be distinguished. The first of these is socialization which is legitimate, in the sense that it is recognized as needed by society and the individual is not expected to have learned the role earlier. This is true of individuals moving through a sequence of student roles, and of job training of certain kinds. The second type can be referred to as illegitimate, in the sense that the individual should have learned the role earlier. Examples here come with greatest frequency from the marital and parental roles: deficiencies which may have been caused by inattention to the person's socialization for this role on the part of his parents, or by a variety of other influences on the individual's early development. Where the need for new socialization is recognized as legitimate, one usually finds formal institutional mechanisms in society to provide it. These include schools, vocational training programs, and similar devices. Where the need is not legitimate, retraining institutions do not usually exist, although the fact that they do exist in some areas, such as family counseling programs, reflects a growing recognition that the individual is not always to be blamed for ignorance of this kind of role.
The other major class of adult socialization is concerned with re socialization. Here the individual knows something about the role in question, but what he knows is wrong. For purposes of symmetry one can divide resocialization into two types along the dimension used above: the legitimacy or illegitimacy of the need for the resocialization. This time let us mention the illegitimate case first, since it is the more familiar one. Resocialization here includes rehabilitation of the criminal, handling the young delinquent through environmental manipulation, and therapeutic work with middleclass neurotics; in all three cases, resocialization is designed to make up for earlier socialization of an unsanctioned kind. The legitimate type of resocialization—where the individual was socialized, but in the wrong way, so that the resocialization is viewed as legitimate and hence is sanctioned by society—is a less familiar instance. This is seen in the change from an ideal conception of a role to a more realistic conception, as illustrated in the relation of professional training to later professional practice (Becker et al. 1961) and, more generally, with respect to childhood myths about how adults behave, which clearly are functional in maintaining stability in the early years but need to be dispelled in later years, when the child actually takes on the role of adult. Studies of socialization Most work in the study of personality development has told us little about how an individual develops his reciprocal, socially regulated interactions with other human beings or how he comes to understand role .prescriptions and to distinguish between the important statuses in his society. There are historical reasons for this. Most work on socialization has come from the field of child development. But the emphasis from the beginning, in the child welfare stations established after 1920, has been more on maturation than socialization, more on development than learning; most of the output has consisted of studies of mental and physical development, and only to a much lesser extent of studies of the social and emotional aspects of development. The stimulus to much of the current work on socialization came from a different source: the work of Freud and related theories of personality. The effect of early life experiences on the development of personality traits that were believed to be fundamental and enduring characteristics of the individual was the initial focus of study. It was later, around 1930, that concepts emerging from cultural anthropology, especially cultural relativity and the plasticity of human nature, extended the
SOCIALIZATION: Adult Socialization scope of studies of personality and led to a convergence of the interests mentioned above. The traditional work on child development, combined with concepts stemming from clinical theories of personality and enhanced by cross-cultural perspectives, resulted in some notable studies of socialization by Sears and his colleagues (1957), Whiting (1963), Levy (1943), and others. This work, for all of its contributions to our knowledge, still did not deal with role learning as the content of socialization. It is probably for this reason that it did not lead to a consideration of personality change in later life. Analyses of the socialization of children in the family are numerous. Variations in child-care practices have been catalogued and analyzed by hundreds of investigators. Reviews in this area include those by Hoffman and Lippitt (1960), Clausen and Williams (1963), Bronfenbrenner (1958), Brim (1957), and several chapters in Hoffman and Hoffman (1964). The attempts to find important basic dimensions for the classification of such socialization practices have shown fairly consistently for more than a generation that practices can be efficiently described by two fundamental dimensions: positive affectivity as opposed to negative affectivity, and dominance as contrasted with permissiveness. One can note that analyses of socialization of children are less concerned now with actual training methods, such as education regarding cleanliness or home duties, than with the qualities of the interpersonal relationships. The supposition is that characteristics of relationships— for example, the two dimensions described above —are more important for socialization effectiveness than are the specific educational techniques. Traditional work within school systems on the socialization process has involved studies of the teaching process. A recent comprehensive report is by Ryans (1960). The great number of such studies vmakes it impossible even to comment on them here. Over the past several years Lippitt and his colleagues (Lippitt & Van Egmond 1962) have reconceptualized the study of classroom socialization and have opened up new and promising areas of research that parallel areas of study in the family and other nonschool socialization settings. Compared with the amount of information available about earlier age periods, we have little knowledge about the older age groups. There is a paucity of research on the techniques of socialization for the marital and parental roles. The few analyses of techniques used in occupations include the work of Howard S. Becker and his colleagues (Becker et al. 1961). The work on formal education of adults that has been most valuable has been in
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family-life education. Most of the studies of familylife education are highly valuable analyses of how one deals with adult socialization, and the observations made in these studies regarding methods used and the causes of change in adult personality are applicable to other adult socialization processes. These studies show the need to use group interaction as the context for learning and group interchange as the most effective method. This follows from the facts that the adult is not a tabula rasa and that the educational problem is one of change, of erasing what exists and substituting something new. A detailed analysis of these adult education methods has been made specifically for parent education (Brim 1959). One can say, in general, that the value of our knowledge of socialization techniques lies in what it shows to be undesirable—in the information it gives us about procedures that produce resistance, repression, resentment, escape, withdrawal, and habitual behavioral conformity. But we still are far from knowing which methods are more effective than others in achieving the goals of socialization. We may know more about techniques of instruction in the educational field than in other socialization contexts; but here, since the main requirement of the student is that he acquire information rather than that he learn attitudes and motives, the problem may be simpler. In regard to the family, we seem only now to be learning some of the ways in which socialization procedures bring about a greater internalization of parental values. At the adult level the number of good evaluation studies are few in number and come mostly from the field of family-life education and mental health counseling (see Brim 1959). Our understanding of the differential effectiveness of techniques is still cloudy; effectiveness seems to depend on the nature of the content being transmitted, the characteristics of the persons being socialized, the persons' relationship to the socializing agent, and similar factors. Studies would make a valuable contribution if they related techniques and their consequences to more general theories of socialization and of personality, and thus led to a general understanding of socialization, rather than remaining just narrow studies of the "effectiveness" of educational techniques. Limits of later-life socialization The limits of socialization in later life are set, on the one hand, by the biological capacities of an individual and, on the other hand, by the burden of earlier learning. The effectiveness of later-life socialization is a consequence of the interaction of
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these two limits, with the added limit of the types of socialization methods available to society. These methods depend, in turn, primarily on the knowledge available about human behavior and, to a lesser extent, on technological developments. Biological limits. By and large, a society's demands upon adults are tailored to the capacities of the average man; individuals who, for biological reasons, fall substantially below this average are usually debarred from natural progression through the life cycle and, hence, do not often become liable to later-life socialization. There are, however, two ways in which biological restrictions lead to inabilities and thus to limitations on later-life socialization. The first of these occurs primarily in an open-class society with a high level of achievement motivation. Upward mobility into ever more demanding roles may lead an individual to positions whose demands he is unable to meet because of limited intelligence or strength, or other biological attributes. The second occurs when war and other disasters destroy society's protection of the individual from the direct impact of nature, and the culture is no longer fitted to the average man. Thus individuals who are biologically adequate for the roles they will meet in the course of their normal life cycles may suddenly find themselves unable to live under the new and primitive conditions. Limits of earlier learning. There are several reasons why the effects of early experience place important limits on later socialization. In the first place, attitudes learned in childhood are especially durable because they are continually being taught and just as continually reinforced (Brim 1960). Second, there is good reason to believe that during early socialization the bulk of the unconscious material of the personality is accumulated. The continuity of the individual personality (and probably its characteristic modes of defense as well) is therefore maintained by the inertia, so to speak, of unconscious forces relatively inaccessible to change by later socialization. Finally, it has been suggested (Caldwell 1962) that the human life cycle, like that of subhuman species, may contain critical periods at which human beings must learn certain things if they are to develop further. Failure to learn these things during the appropriate period may make it impossible for subsequent learning to take place. Whatever the usefulness of these or other theories, both biological and learning limitations on later-life socialization certainly exist, although their exact nature is not yet understood. Nevertheless, the powerful arguments for the potent effects of early life experiences should not deter the study
of large and important changes that may take place in later life. The fact is that actual evidence on the effects of early life experience has, up to now, been mostly of a case history nature, coming from clinical practice. Too little attention has been given to the study of those important changes which may occur after childhood as a result of socialization experiences. A few important studies have begun to appear (Hathaway & Monachesi 1961; Kagan & Moss 1962; Reichard et al. 1962; Neugarten et al. 1964); it is to be hoped that many more will follow. Relationship to the socializing agent. The fact that childhood socialization is usually so much more effective than adult socialization can be explained partly in terms of the different types of relationships that typically obtain between the individual and the socializing agent or agency at different stages in the life cycle. The relationship between child and parent is a highly affective one; by contrast, the adult socialization context is likely to be far less charged with emotion—in Parsons' phrase (1951, pp. 59-61), it is characterized by "affective neutrality." Moreover, the parent socializing the child is likely to make a far more open and continual use of power, so that the child can hardly avoid realizing that it is the weaker party in the situation. Agents of adult socialization, on the other hand, typically appeal more to the reason and self-interest of the person being socialized, and use power only as a last resort. There is at least one major consequence of this difference for the results of socialization: adult socialization limits itself, on the whole, to a concern with behavior rather than with motivation and values. In fact, it is less able to teach basic values and probably requires a relationship paralleling that of childhood to bring about equivalent basic value changes. This may indeed occur—an example is adult religious conversion, in which the submissive relationship and high affective interchange with the religious figure underlie the radical shift in the adult's value system (Frank 1961). Another example is the extreme one of prisoner-of-war camps. Work on "brainwashing" and the breakdown of resistance to enemy values shows the context to be one in which the captors use their extreme power in a deliberate manipulation of the whole range of affect, from rejection and hate, on the one hand, to support and positive sympathy on the other, thus bringing the prisoner into a position similar to that of a child with his parent. [See BRAINWASHING; INTERNMENT AND CUSTODY.] It follows that if society is to undertake basic resocialization of adults in respect to motives and
SOCIALIZATION: Adult Socialization values, it has to institutionalize in some form the high power and affectivity relationship characteristic of childhood learning. Changes in socialization content The substantive content of socialization differs, of course, in important ways at different stages of the life cycle and in different major social institutions. Since both the needs for and the limits to socialization vary by life-cycle stages, it is probable that the types of content vary accordingly. I propose that we distinguish five major types of change in socialization content, as follows. Perhaps the most important change is the shift in content from a concern with values and motives to a concern with overt behavior. Society assumes that the adult knows the values to be pursued in different roles, that he wants to pursue them with the socially appropriate means, and that all that might remain to be done is to teach him what to do. Thus society is willing to spend much less time in retraining adult motivation and values than in training children; it is understood that teaching basic values and motivations is a necessary task of the institutions serving children, especially the family, and they are organized to carry out this task. Why should this difference exist? Probably it stems directly from the limitations on later-life learning that make it impractical to attempt a thorough resocialization. It may be that the costs are too high and that it simply is not efficient, from society's point of view, to spend too much time on teaching an old dog new tricks. Perhaps only in the case where the need for a certain kind of manpower is very great and the question of efficiency becomes secondary to the need for personnel can an intensive and costly resocialization effort be made for adults. Society has at least two major solutions to this problem of resocialization. One is anticipatory, with attention being given to the selection of candidates for an adult organization, in order to screen out those who do not have appropriate motives and values for the anticipated roles. This helps to assure that those who enter the organization will not present difficult problems to the socialization program. In this way adults probably do get sorted out, more or less, and placed in social situations where they fit best in terms of the values and motives learned in their early life socialization (Hobbs 1963). A second solution is that society may accept conforming behavior alone as evidence of satisfactory socialization and may forgo any concern with value systems. This entails risk, for if the social
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system undergoes stress, then the conformity, since it is superficial anyway, may break down rapidly. The second of the changes in socialization content might be described as a change from the acquisition of new material to a synthesis of old material. As a person moves through the life cycle, he accumulates an extensive repertoire of responses, both affective and behavioral. These are organized in terms of roles and, at a more specific level, in terms of episodes within a role. These responses can be detached from the contexts in which they have been learned and used, and joined with others in new combinations suitable as social behavior responsive to the new demands of adulthood. One can say, therefore, that the content acquired in adult socialization is not so much new material as it is the aggregation and synthesis of elements from a storehouse of already learned responses, with perhaps the addition of several fragments that are newly learned when they are necessary to complete the complex social act demanded in a given situation. Socialization in the later-life stages seems to emphasize the practice of new combinations of skills already acquired, rather than teaching wholly new complexes of responses. The third change in the content of socialization is the transformation of idealism into realism. As the individual matures, the society demands that he become more realistic and lay aside his childish idealism. The change in the content of expectations involves distinctions between statuses. Early learning encompasses the formal status structure; later learning takes into account the actual status structure, which may often be informal and unavowed. One designates as cynical a person who doubts that the actual and the formal are divergent; on the other hand, we think of a person as naive if he does not make this distinction. In socialization the young child is not taught much about the informal system; thus, in early years he may believe that the actual and the formal are nearly identical. This serves to maintain and legitimize the formal status differentiations and to protect them from change. However, as the child matures, the realistic aspects of status differentiation also must be taught if the system is to work effectively. Closely related is learning to distinguish between ideal role prescriptions and that which is actually expected of one in a role. Here, as in the case of status differentiations, the inculcation of ideal-role prescriptions results in a desirable idealism that strengthens and perpetuates the ideals of the society. As the child matures, he learns to take his part in society in terms of the realistic expecta-
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tions of others rather than in terms of conformity to ideal norms. The fourth type of change in socialization content is to a greater concern with teaching the individual to mediate conflicting demands. As one moves through the life cycle, he is forced to develop methods of choosing between conflicting role prescriptions. The possible conflicts between the expectations of reference set members can be classified into two main types. First, there is intrarole conflict, in which the expectations for performance of two or more individuals, or of one individual with respect to different aspects of the role, are in conflict. In the first instance, a man's wife and his employer may differ in their expectations of his performance on the job; in the second, the wife may expect her husband to be both companion and taskmaster to his son. Second, there is interrole conflict, which can also be classified into two subtypes: where the conflict is between two or more individuals with respect to two separate roles, as when the employer's demands for job performance conflict with the wife's demands for familial performance; and where the conflict is between the expectations of one individual for performance in two different roles, as when the wife has conflicting expectations for her husband's behavior at home and on the job. The need to learn how to handle such conflicts occurs to a greater extent in later life for at least two reasons. First, if the cultural norm is that children should be protected from seeing life's conflicts, then it follows that nothing will be taught about ways of mediating them. Second, in later life there are more roles, as well as more complexity within roles, so that there is a much greater possibility of role conflict. Thus, as one ages, he learns the ways of conflict resolution, which Ralph Linton (1945) once described so well: avoiding the situation, withdrawing acceptably from conflict, and scheduling conflicting demands in temporal sequence, so that the conflict disappears. In addition, one learns another very important method of conflict resolution, which I think has been overlooked. The fact is that in every society there are recognized prescriptions for solving certain kinds of conflicts that arise from the competing demands of reference set members. These prescriptions, which have been called "metaprescriptions" (Brim & Wheeler 1966), govern the resolution of conflict between demands on one's time and loyalties, and they usually, although not always, pertain to interrole rather than intrarole conflict. Examples of metaprescriptions are "Do what your employer asks of you, even if it means
that you have little time for your children," or "Side with your wife when she disciplines the children, even if you think she is wrong." It seems to me that a noticeable change in the content of socialization in later-life periods is the attention given to ways of resolving conflict through such metaprescriptions. The fifth characteristic of change in socialization content is in the dimension of generality—specificity. In the context of the current discussion, this means that what is taught in socialization may apply either to many social situations or to just a few. The dimension of generality versus specificity can be applied to both components of role prescriptions, that is, to both values and means. As a child, the individual is trained, both deliberately and unwittingly, by socializing agents in the goals and behavior appropriate for his sex. There are male and female styles of doing many different things, and these are learned early. Society tries to motivate the child to perform the behavior and to pursue the values expected of him, and it trains him in the necessary skills. These characteristics are general, in the sense that they are required in a variety of situations he will confront in society, either as major components or as necessary coloring of other aspects of his behavior. The case is similar for cultural differences in basic values, such as those related to achievement, to other persons, to nature and the family, and indeed to all of those general value orientations, to use Florence Kluckhohn's phrase (1948), that help to distinguish between major cultural groups. They are acquired early (and, in contrast with sex roles, with perhaps less deliberate instruction), and they give shape and tone to the performance of many roles in society. The individual is socialized for his socioeconomic position, or the style of life of a certain status level. In other words, he acquires general skills and values, appropriate to carrying out in a certain manner a number of specific role demands for behavior. The values and behavior characteristic of a subcultural group are usually acquired in childhood (C. Kluckhohn & Murray 1948; Miller & Swanson I960; F. Kluckhohn & Strodtbeck 1961), and, as with sex roles and basic cultural values, some part of what is learned is gained outside of any deliberate formal training program. Socialization into a new social level or style of life occurs in later life also; for example, one function of certain college organizations, such as fraternities, is to carry on this kind of socialization into a social class level higher than that of the individual's family or origin. The existence of socializing agencies with
SOCIALIZATION: Adult Socialization this function can be seen as a response to the legitimate need for resocialization that results from the upward social mobility in American life. [See REFERENCE GROUPS.] Deviance and social control Deviance can be defined as failure to conform to the expectations of other persons. Since there are always groups with different viewpoints in society, what is regarded as deviant from one person's frame of reference might be considered conformity by another. Thus, whether an individual's behavior or values are deviant always must be determined by reference to the viewpoint of some particular person or group. Deviance has its cause in an individual's ignorance, or his lack of ability, or his lack of motivation; and it may occur in behavior, or values, or both. We can recognize two major underlying causes of ignorance, inability, and lack of motivation (excluding biological limitations to effective socialization, such as low intelligence). One major cause is ineffective socialization of the individual for the performance of the roles expected of him, even though the social systems in which he lives have been relatively unchanging. The second major cause is a shift in what is expected of an individual resulting from social change and leaving the individual in a situation where his prior socialization, although quite adequate for performance with reference to the old role prescriptions, no longer serves him well. The modes of attempted control over deviance reflect a society's predominant theories and assumptions about the causes of deviance and are rooted in basic ideas about human nature: for example, whether man is inherently a stupid animal, whether he is possessed by demons or controlled by other supernatural forces, whether he is innately depraved and burdened with original sin, and so on. In our own society it is deviance in motivation and values that is viewed as most serious. The concept of motivation plays an important role in our theories of why human beings act as they do, and deviance in motivation is viewed as a serious threat to the social order. Thus there is a tendency to examine instances of deviance for possible motivational components in order to appraise how serious the deviance is. In return, the deviant person, challenged as he is to account for his behavior and faced with punishments for motivational deviance, which are customarily greater than for deviance of other types, will plead ignorance or lack of ability as cause of his actions. The result is that considerable time is spent, in both the courts of
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law and the systems of informal social control, searching for possible motivational deviance behind the fagade of ignorance or lack of ability. As an answer to the difficult problem of identifying the motivational component in deviance, we often seem to begin with the assumption that the cause is in fact motivational. Perhaps another reason for this a priori assumption is that it places the "blame" on the individual for his behavior, rather than upon society. The burden of proof thus is placed upon the actor to show that his motives are pure. The demand that he do so is legitimate from society's viewpoint, since it is difficult to distinguish the actual existence of ignorance or lack of ability from hypocritical claims that one did not know what the rules were or that he was unable to live up to them. However, there is a price for using this approach to the resocialization of deviant persons. The treatment of deviance would be more effective if it made use of techniques that accord with the causes of the behavior: education, where ignorance is the cause; improved training, where lack of ability is the reason; and, where motivation is the problem, a planned and deliberately executed program of manipulation of rewards and punishments that would reorient the individual to the appropriate goals and behavior. If deviance comes from ignorance or lack of ability, and yet punishment is given in the mistaken idea that motivation is the cause, then a frequent result is the individual's rejection of the values of society that he formerly accepted. The concern with motivation and the burden of proof for motivational purity is less in the early stages of the life span. Once again, this is true both of the informal family systems and, at least in American society, of the courts of law. Probably the reason is that time remains to train the child, and the socializing agencies remain in firm control of adequate rewards and punishments to influence the course of a child's interests. With each advancing year, however, instances of deviant motivation are viewed with more seriousness, and the child's responsibility for motivational conformity increases in accord with the age-graded developmental schemes that are accepted in his culture, until the full-scale responsibility of adulthood is demanded of him. ORVILLE G. BRIM, JR. [See also DEVIANT BEHAVIOR; ROLE; SOCIAL CONTROL; STATUS, SOCIAL.] BIBLIOGRAPHY BECKER, HOWARD S. et al. 1961 Boys in White: Student Culture in Medical School. Univ. of Chicago Press.
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BECKER, WESLEY C. 1964 Consequences of Different Kinds of Parental Discipline. Pages 169-208 in Martin L. Hoffman and Lois W. Hoffman (editors), Review of Child Development Research. New York: Russell Sage Foundation. BENEDICT, RUTH (1938) 1949 Continuities and Discontinuities in Cultural Conditioning. Pages 297-308 in Patrick Mullahy (editor), A Study of Interpersonal Relations. New York: Heritage. -> First published in Volume 1 of Psychiatry. BRIM, ORVILLE G. JR. 1957 The Parent-Child Relation as a Social System: I. Parent and Child Roles. Child Development 28:345-364. BRIM, ORVILLE G. JR. 1958 Family Structure and Sex Role Learning by Children: A Further Analysis of Helen Koch's Data. Sociometry 21:1-16. BRIM, ORVILLE G. JR. 1959 Education for Child Rearing. New York: Russell Sage Foundation. BRIM, ORVILLE G. JR. 1960 Personality Development as Role-learning. Pages 127—159 in Ira Iscoe and Harold Stevenson (editors), Personality Development in Children. Austin: Univ. of Texas Press. BRIM, ORVILLE G. JR.; and WHEELER, STANTON 1966 Socialization After Childhood: Two Essays. New York: Wiley. BRIM, ORVILLE G. JR. et al. 1962 Personality and Decision Processes: Studies in the Social Psychology of Thinking. Stanford Univ. Press. BRONFENBRENNER, URIE 1958 Socialization and Social Class Through Time and Space. Pages 400-425 in Society for the Psychological Study of Social Issues, Readings in Social Psychology. 3d ed. New York: Holt. CALDWELL, BETTYE M. 1962 The Usefulness of the Critical Period Hypothesis in the Study of Filiative Behavior. Merrill-Palmer Quarterly of Behavior and Development 8:229-242. CLAUSEN, JOHN A.; and WILLIAMS, JUDITH R. 1963 Sociological Correlates of Child Behavior. Part 1, pages 62-107 in National Society for the Study of Education, Child Psychology. Univ. of Chicago Press. DOLLARD, JOHN; and MILLER, NEAL E. 1950 Personality and Psychotherapy: An Analysis in Terms of Learning, Thinking, and Culture. New York: McGraw-Hill. -» A paperback edition was published in 1965. FRANK, JEROME D. 1961 Persuasion and Healing: A Comparative Study of Psychotherapy. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press. CLICK, PAUL C. 1957 American Families. New York: Wiley. HATHAWAY, STARKE R.; and MONACHESI, ELIO D. 1961 An Atlas of Juvenile MMPI Profiles. Minneapolis: Univ. of Minnesota Press. HOBBS, NICHOLAS 1963 A Psychologist in the Peace Corps. American Psychologist 18:47-55. HOFFMAN, Lois W.; and LIPPITT, RONALD 1960 The Measurement of Family Life Variables. Pages 9451013 in Paul Mussen (editor), Handbook of Research Methods in Child Development. New York: Wiley. HOFFMAN, MARTIN L.; and HOFFMAN, Lois W. (editors) 1964 Review of Child Development Research. Vol. 1. New York: Russell Sage Foundation. KAGAN, JEROME; and Moss, HOWARD A. 1962 Birth to Maturity: A Study in Psychological Development. New York: Wiley. KLUCKHOHN, CLYDE; and MURRAY, HENRY A. (editors) (1948) 1953 Personality in Nature, Society, and Culture. 2d ed., rev. & enl. New York: Knopf.
KLUCKHOHN, FLORENCE R. (1948) 1953 Dominant and Variant Value Orientation. Pages 342-357 in Clyde Kluckhohn and Henry A. Murray (editors), Personality in Nature, Society, and Culture. New York: Knopf. KLUCKHOHN, FLORENCE R.; and STRODTBECK, FRED L. 1961 Variations in Value Orientations. Evanston, 111.: Row, Peterson. LEVY, DAVID M. 1943 Maternal Overprotection. New York: Columbia Univ. Press. LINTON, RALPH 1945 The Cultural Background of Personality. New York: Appleton. LIPPITT, RONALD; and VAN EGMOND, ELMER (editors) 1962 Inventory of Classroom Study Tools for Understanding and Improving Classroom Learning Processes. Ann Arbor: Univ. of Michigan, Institute for Social Research. MILLER, DANIEL R.; and SWANSON, GUY E. 1960 Inner Conflict and Defense. New York: Holt. NEUGARTEN, BERNICE L. et al. 1964 Personality in Middle and Late Life. New York: Atherton. PARSONS, TALCOTT 1951 The Social System. Glencoe, 111.: Free Press. PARSONS, TALCOTT 1955 Family Structure and the Socialization of the Child. Pages 35-131 in Talcott Parsons and Robert F. Bales (editors), Family, Socialization and Interaction Process. Glencoe, 111.: Free Press. REICHARD, SUZANNE K.; PETERSEN, PAUL G.; and LIVSON, FLORINE 1962 Aging and Personality: A Study of Eighty-seven Older Men. New York: Wiley. RYANS, DAVID G. 1960 Characteristics of Teachers: Their Description, Comparison, and Appraisal. Washington: American Council on Education. SEARS, ROBERT R.; MACCOBY, E. E.; and LEVIN, H. 1957 Patterns of Child Rearing. Evanston, 111.: Row, Peterson. WHEELER, STANTON 1961 Socialization in Correctional Communities. American Sociological Review 26:697712. WHITING, BEATRICE 1963 Six Cultures: Studies of Child Rearing. New York: Wiley. WRONG, DENNIS H. 1961 The Over socialized Conception of Man in Modern Sociology. American Sociological Review 26:183-193.
SOCIETAL ANALYSIS The social sciences consist of methods, concepts, theories, and findings whose ultimate point of reference is human society in general. While most of their ideas and data have thus far been produced by students of Western societies, social scientists aspire to use these ideas and data as means of analyzing or illustrating more general phenomena. Since aspiration often outruns achievement, especially in man's attempts to understand himself, unwarranted generalization from Western experience is still common; but it is now generally recognized in principle—and both the increasing numbers of non-Western social scientists and the increasing concern with data drawn from non-Western socie-
SOCIETAL ANALYSIS ties illustrate this—that the enterprise is a common, panhuman one. The inclusion in this encyclopedia of a series of articles on the societies of many (but not all) regions of the modern world represents a recognition of both the universality to which the social sciences aspire and the difficulty they experience in achieving it. If universality were easily achieved, such separate treatment would be unnecessary. The article on area studies recounts the recent efforts by universities, governments, and foundations to achieve a less parochial perspective [see AREA STUDIES]. The present article explores the nature of the difficulty to which these efforts are directed and describes the continuing role of the analysis of particular societies in social scientific inquiry. Universality and relativity The universalistic, generalizing element in the social sciences is the legacy of the Enlightenment view of mankind as essentially unitary, a view which, significantly enough, had as one of its products an encyclopedia. From this perspective, what is characteristically human is what all men have in common: their capacity to shape their own futures through action guided by self-conscious thought, or, in the Enlightenment idiom, "reason." The social sciences themselves become the scientific disciplining of this self-direction in the pursuit of a converging future for all men. However, running alongside this universalistic, rationalistic view in postmedieval social thought, and often intertwined with it, is another vigorous and venerable standpoint which locates the distinctively human in the amazing variety of sociocultural worlds which human communities have created for themselves. If man is rational, he also lives within historically given sociocultural complexes which condition and direct his rationality. It thus becomes the task of social science to analyze the diverse particular societies and cultures within which human self-direction must operate. These two views confronted each other most starkly in the great political debates which preceded and followed the French Revolution: for the Encyclopedists, particular societies and cultures were the creatures of oppressive governments and obscurantist churches which "natural" reason should seek to strip away in the interest of common "natural" rights; for Edmund Burke and other writers of the conservative reaction, rights and reason could find expression and meaning only within the "natural" framework of historically given religious and political institutions (Parkin 1956).
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Political debates aside, the paradox is still with us in the form of the continuing tension in the social sciences between the notion of cultural relativity and that of the "psychic unity of mankind." While the paradox has not been resolved—indeed, perhaps, cannot be resolved, since it is inherent in the subject matter of the social sciences—it is now somewhat better understood. Studies of man's biology have demonstrated a common human ancestry and a common capacity to create culture— or at any rate have found it impossible to demonstrate the reverse (Dobzhansky 1962; Washburn 1963). Studies of language have demonstrated the common capacity of all known linguistic systems to mediate culture and to intertranslate (Hymes 1961). At the same time, our contemporary understanding of man's emergence from his primate ancestry suggests that the very freedom, relatively speaking, from genetically encoded patterning of behavior which makes possible his self-conscious self-direction renders him particularly dependent for behavioral patterning upon systems of shared public symbols—"cultures"—which are highly variable and are characterized by complex internal organization (Geertz 1962; 1965). Furthermore, since the social sciences themselves are systems of shared public symbols produced by men in society, the social scientific enterprise cannot entirely escape the cultural-historical relativity which conditions human social life in general (Mannheim 1929-1931). Both human social life and our attempts to understand it are thus products of a continuous interaction between man's captivity within distinctive cultural worlds and his capacity to manipulate, and in part transcend, such worlds. The aspiration and capacity to transcend, both in social life and in our analyses of it, are particularly prominent today. While the many distinctive cultural traditions were far from mutually isolated in the past (McNeill 1963), today, it is generally agreed, their interaction has reached a level unique in human history. The major "civilized" traditions, and even most of the nonliterate "tribal" ones, are now in intimate and continuous contact through movements of persons (including social scientists) and through new means of longdistance communication. First, in the context of Western imperial and quasi-imperial domination, and more recently in that of a world system of formally sovereign but mutually dependent nationstates, a potentially common pool of technology, ideas, and organizational forms has come into existence. Whatever dangers and opportunities this may present to mankind as a whole, it confronts social scientists with the paradox of relativity and
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universality in new and more poignant forms: How can the social sciences, still deeply conditioned by a preoccupation with Western societies and their historical experience, understand both the continuing cultural diversity and the seemingly convergent processes of change exhibited by a world community of societies that are increasingly interconnected ecologically? In particular, how are we to view the contemporary development of those societies outside the north Atlantic homeland of the social sciences, whose behavior and fate at present so engage the attention of both social scientists and men of affairs? How far are concepts that have been lifted out of Western folk sociology and put into the technical vocabulary of the social sciences—concepts such as family, political party, feudalism, and law—adequate for a truly comparative social science? What is the most promising strategy for developing more adequate ones? One example may serve to illustrate the difficulty. The studies of occupational prestige conducted by the National Opinion Research Center in the United States have been repeated in many other countries, both Western and non-Western, with results which appear to be strikingly similar in the sense that the same occupations appear to have very similar relative prestige in all industrial and industrializing societies (Inkeles & Rossi 1956). However, there is much debate concerning the meaning of these findings. Do they mean that there is a system of social stratification characteristic of all industrial societies and that this structure has an internal logic of its own which operates independently of particular cultural settings? Or does the selection of occupation as the focus of prestige build into these studies an essentially Western stratification configuration, thus masking the differences in meaning which different cultures may give to similar organizational forms (Lipset & Bendix 1959, chapter 10; Fallers 1964, pp. 117121)? No doubt the answer lies somewhere in between, but this is hardly an adequate conclusion, for the territory "in between" is vast. As Western social scientific techniques and concepts are increasingly extended to other societies, such problems may be expected to proliferate. Comparative macrosociological perspective One strategy for meeting some of the difficulties just described is the comparative macrosociological one. This approach is "holistic" in the sense that it takes seriously the interrelatedness of elements within sociocultural wholes. It need not involve assuming the impossible task of dealing exhaustively with all aspects of a sociocultural whole, nor
need it imply the view that the human social world is divisible into functionally discrete, self-sufficient systems (see Levy 1952, chapter 3). It does, however, require an attention to the larger sociocultural context of the particular elements under study and an attempt to conceptualize such contexts. The logic of such an analysis is more clinical than generalizing; instead of using the data of diverse particular societies to test a broad generalization, it brings together diverse general ideas in the attempt to understand particular societies. In the context of the social sciences as a whole, of course, it contributes to generalization because the application of general ideas to particular societies is a means of testing their adequacy. Even though its central subject matter may be one society, an analysis in this genre is always either implicitly or explicitly comparative because*the general ideas of which it makes use have their origins in earlier attempts to understand other societies, or even the same society at an earlier period. On purely scientific grounds, such an approach is supported by our appreciation of the consequences for particular institutions and collectivities of involvement in larger-scale units (Steward 1950). Apart from this, however, the organization of the contemporary world into populistic nationstates and clusters of states confronts men everywhere with the practical necessity to think analytically about such large-scale social units. Africans and Europeans, Russians and Americans are urged by their governments to support policies toward one another as units—policies informed by understandings which, however adequate or inadequate, are inevitably macrosociological. Of course, different styles of comparative macrosociological analysis are possible. One—the bolder —is represented by the various recent attempts by social scientists to leap out of history and to construct, in a burst of creative imagination, a universally applicable conceptual scheme for the comparative analysis of all societies (Parsons 1951; Levy 1952) or particular aspects of all societies, such as the political (Easton 1953). Another, less ambitious, style involves the comparison of particular societies or aspects of societies, case by case, in the effort to test more limited propositions (e.g., Bendix 1956). [These and other differences in comparative studies are discussed in ANTHROPOLOGY, article on THE COMPARATIVE METHOD IN ANTHROPOLOGY; POLITICS, COMPARATIVE; SOCIAL
INSTITUTIONS, article on COMPARATIVE STUDY.] Both of these styles have contributed substantially to the development of a more adequate comparative perspective for the social sciences; which
SOCIETAL ANALYSIS of them one pursues depends upon how seriously one takes the relativity side of our paradox—how impressed one is by the cultural-historical distinctness and "given-ness" of particular societies and, hence, by the difficulty of arriving at universal categories. The regional articles in this encyclopedia, by their very nature, contribute to the less ambitious style in comparative macrosociology. These articles differ rather widely in focus and in analytical explicitness; but they all represent attempts to deal in a social scientific way with largescale units, and they all employ intersocietal comparisons in an effort to increase our understanding of the societies under study. Often, either implicitly or explicitly, they employ concepts taken from Western thought about Western societies, and they thus raise the question of the explanatory power of such concepts in different cultural-historical settings. It may be suggested that explicitness in these matters is a virtue and that a selfconscious reference to the Western roots of our ideas and methods can contribute to the success of the comparative enterprise. Before discussing some of the propositions which emerge from the regional articles, therefore, it is appropriate to recall the historical context in which the macrosociological perspective emerged in Western thought. The emergence of the perspective. The preoccupation with sociocultural differences is as old as the social sciences themselves, as Aristotle's comparative studies of constitutions and Herodotus' accounts of the institutions of non-Greek peoples show. One can, however, trace the immediate intellectual ancestry of contemporary comparative macrosociological concerns to more recent origins in the reflections of Western intellectuals upon their own past as they entered the postmedieval world of accelerating social change. There are, to be sure, gems of Western—non-Western comparison to be found in the literature of the Renaissance and the Enlightenment, such as Machiavelli's perceptive analysis of the French and Ottoman polities ([1532] 1941, pp. 104-105). For the most part, however, early modern intellectuals' interests were so seized by the revolutionary transformations occurring in their own societies that they used the data of non-Western societies (especially the nonliterate societies of which they were being made aware by the voyages of discovery) more for the purpose of allegorical speculation upon the roots of their own institutions than for serious comparative analysis. It was the increasing awareness of change within Western societies and the growing knowledge of their ancient and medieval pasts produced by new historical scholarship that proved
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most fruitful for comparative macrosociology until almost the end of the nineteenth century. The comparative perspective which emerged was one concerned with developmental stages in time rather than with differences and similarities among contemporary societies. However, as the Western societies achieved world dominance, especially in the nineteenth century, and as Western intellectuals became more conscious of their societies' preeminence, the comparative mode of thought was extended to the non-Western world, which was often seen as representing stages through which the West had passed. The Western experience came to be viewed as the end of history—a paradigm for understanding the experience of nonWestern societies. The classics of early comparative macrosociological thought were centrally concerned with characterizing and analyzing the new institutional complexes which set the societies of their day apart from those from which they had emerged. To mention only a few of the landmarks: Hobbes and Bodin sought to understand the nature of the new sovereign, secular state; Adam Smith analyzed the conditions for the politically autonomous market economy; Tocqueville considered the significance of increasing popular participation in politics; Marx traced the consequences of the separation of labor, under the system of industrial production, from the personalistic ties of kinship and feudal patronage; Weber considered the causes and consequences of the pervasive development of bureaucratic organization. From these studies emerged a set of conceptual models of the characteristic institutions of modern societies. Other writers in this vein sought, through broad developmental typologies ("custom" and "reason," "status" and "contract," Gemeinschaft and Gesellschaft, "mechanical" and "organic"), to grasp intellectually the changing nature of whole societies. While there were occasional doubts among writers of this genre about the universal applicability of their developmental schemes—Marx, for example, considered the possibility of a distinctive "Asiatic mode of production" as an alternative to feudalism in precapitalist societies—on the whole, the question was either ignored or handled by assimilating non-Western forms as earlier stages. Nineteenthcentury anthropology, while it contributed some classics of ethnographic description, was generally cast in a similar intellectual mold. For some other Western intellectuals, the experience of radical social transformation stimulated thoughts of quite a different kind, both in relation to their own societies and, later, in relation to the
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world at large. Beginning in the eighteenth century and then, increasingly, in the nineteenth, especially in the wake of the French Revolution, with its attempt to unify Europe under a new, uniform sociopolitical order, there developed a new consciousness of the distinct identity of the various European peoples and their cultural traditions. Herder's philosophy of history, Burke's theoretical formulation of political conservatism, the Grimm brothers' linguistic and folkloristic studies, Burckhardt's holistic sociocultural histories, and Hegel's assertion of German national identity as a historical imperative may be taken as representative. Their work suggested that if the European societies were experiencing a common institutional transformation, it was a transformation in which the new institutional forms had to adapt to distinct sociocultural settings. Perhaps the most striking manifestation of this perspective was the interpretation given by its proponents to economic systems, the aspect of social life often considered most amenable to universalistic analysis. The modern capitalist economy, which to Adam Smith was the natural outgrowth of a universal ". . . propensity in human nature to truck, barter and exchange one thing for another," became, in the hands of the German "historical" economists, the expression of a distinctively modern, Anglo-Saxon cultural complex, or Geist: "Manchestertum" (Parsons 1937, chapter 13). The nineteenth century also saw the development of disciplined Orientalist scholarship, in part the offshoot of linguistic studies, whose products made it increasingly difficult to view the various contemporary non-European civilizations as simply analogous to earlier Western phases. By the end of the nineteenth century a new anthropology, resting upon firsthand field observation of contemporary peoples and upon archeological and historical-linguistic documentation of their pasts, was demonstrating the inadequacy of the universal typologies for understanding the nonliterate societies; it was increasingly appreciated that even the latter possessed highly differentiated sociocultural systems whose histories could not easily be reduced to a series of type stages. Concerned in large part with what could plausibly be viewed as functionally self-contained little societies, the new anthropology also contributed a strong impetus toward holism. This highly schematic outline of course violates intellectual history, classifying the ancestors of the contemporary social sciences into categories more distinct than a full appreciation of the thought of any one of them would warrant. Tocqueville and
Marx were on both sides of the fence, and so, as we shall see, was Weber. However, our purpose here is not to do justice to the total work of particular writers but, rather, to trace the emergence of the logic of inquiry characteristic of comparative macrosociology—a logic to which both the universalizing, typologizing and the cultural-historical, relativizing streams of thought have contributed. The former, as it emerged from reflections upon the Western transformation, was necessarily ethnocentric, both because its producers were basically concerned with their own affairs and because they lacked adequate data on other societies. Historical and ethnographic data were gradually becoming available, but the data that, given the context of their thought, would be most crucial—the data of a modern but ncn-Western society—did not exist because there were as yet no such societies. It is hardly surprising that the paradigm of the modern society and its characteristic institutions which we inherit from early comparative macrosociological thought is essentially Western. At the same time, the relativism which in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries could challenge this paradigm remained, on the whole, rather unsystematic and even antiscientific, for the writers responsible for it were generally humanistic or ideological in orientation. The bald assertion that each cultural tradition possesses its own unique genius may be an effective rallying cry, but it is not, in that form, easily assimilated into systematic inquiry. Such assimilation awaited a frame of reference in which cultural tradition might be related systematically to the social organizational forms with which the universal-typological mode of thought dealt. Max Weber, writing at the beginning of the twentieth century, achieved a provisional synthesis which has been extraordinarily productive for comparative macrosociology (Weber 1906-1924; 1922; Parsons 1937, chapters 13-17). Fundamentally concerned, as were his predecessors, with understanding the development of Western institutions, he also made himself conversant with the best historical scholarship of his time, both Western and Orientalist. For him Western dominance, especially the remarkably productive modern Western form of economic organization, became an object of explicit inquiry within a comparative frame of reference, rather than a simple fact to be assumed. The Western institutional paradigm became a tool for comparative study—a set of concepts to be tested against other data. Thus, his "ideal type" concepts were tested against an extraordinarily wide range of Western and non-Western material and were re-
SOCIETAL ANALYSIS shaped to make them more adequate for comparative purposes. Perhaps the most important example is his concept of the Stand, or "status group." In the European context, the term (and its French and English counterparts, etat and "estate") referred to the "estates of the realm" into which premodern European societies were divided—aristocracy, clergy, and bourgeoisie. As such, its meaning was bound up with all the organizational and cultural particularities of European feudalism. Weber generalized it to mean a social group bound together by common interests and common conceptions of honor, duty, and destiny—a culture-bearing and culturecreating collectivity. But the status group was also part of a larger whole; Weber saw societies as made up of competing status groups, each developing and defending its own variant of the common culture (Bendix I960; Dahrendorf 1957). With this concept, he was able to isolate and examine similarities and differences among European aristocrats, Chinese literati, and Indian Brahmins and, in what is perhaps the focal point of his work, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (1904-1905), to analyze the interrelated development of a new dominant status group and a new ethical emphasis within the Western tradition. Weber's types of authority provide further examples of his effort to develop concepts more adequate for comparative analysis. In each case, an element of the Western institutional paradigm is tried out on the data of other societies; reformulated in terms of a more general type, of which it then becomes a variant; and systematically related to the elements in the cultural tradition of which it is the institutional embodiment. The contemporary situation Comparative macrosociology was born out of the attempt to understand the modern transformation of Western societies and the position of dominance these societies had achieved in the nineteenth century. Today, while formal political dominance by the West has receded, the transformations of other societies begun under Western control or Western stimulus have continued and have even accelerated. Relatively modern but non-Western societies, whose emergence even in Weber's time seemed problematical, are now a reality and a challenge to social science understanding. The remaining "little societies," descendants of the nonliterate communities of the nineteenth century, have mostly been incorporated into larger ones. At the same time, the Western societies themselves have continued to evolve; in important respects the paradigm of
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the modern institutional system built up by the pioneers is now out of date even in its homeland. To the task of analyzing these continuing transformations, comparative macrosociology brings a characteristic logic of inquiry. While there remain important differences in emphasis, it is generally accepted today that both the universal-typological and the relativistic views have a degree of validity. That the interconnectedness of the modern world produces a certain convergence on a common modernity is beyond all doubt; but we have also learned that this process, as it develops in the various societies of the world, represents neither a simple recapitulation of Western history nor a simple borrowing of Western sociocultural forms. The characteristically modern institutional complexes—the sovereign nation-state, populistic politics, industrial organization, bureaucratic structures, and the like—Interact with local cultural traditions and their institutional embodiments in complex ways to produce societies whose shape we find it difficult to predict but possible, through careful comparative analysis, to understand. Such analysis must make use of models, but we recognize that these models have their origins in historical societies and that comparative inquiry involves "liberating" them from their origins by recognizing these origins and explicitly testing them against the data of other societies with other histories. The liberation process will never, of course, be complete, for history does not end. There is a continuing dialectic between comparative conceptualization and historical experience. However, as new historical experience emerges and as our perception of it grows, we are able to draw our "universal" models for conceptualizing and analyzing societies from an ever-widening range of data. The present preoccupations of comparative macrosociological studies are illustrated by the regional articles in this encyclopedia. Most of their writers, characteristically, feel it necessary to introduce their analyses of present-day societies with accounts of their histories and premodern cultures; all face the problem of conceptualizing societies in which distinct tradition and its institutions interact with modernity. Among them, the article on Japan takes up most explicitly the general theme we have been pursuing here, for Japanese society presents the clearest challenge to the Western paradigm [see JAPANESE SOCIETY]. Highly modern in an economic sense, Japan nevertheless continues to exhibit both a vigorous cultural continuity and numerous traditional social organizational forms. Premodern kinship and quasi-kinship institutions, while not unaffected by change, continue to play a
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prominent role in both political and economic life. The author of the article on Japanese society concludes, contra Veblen (who in this instance represents the earlier view that the modernization of the West is paradigmatic), that this combination may be a relatively stable one and that it may be necessary to recognize a distinctively Japanese "modernism." China is less fully modern in the economic sense, but the recent revolutionary transformation of Chinese society under an ideology drawn from one stream of Western experience poses an equal challenge to comparative understanding. As the article on Chinese society shows, a persistent problem for students of the Chinese revolution has been the question of whether the revolution is "essentially Marxist" or "essentially Chinese," i.e., whether it represents a basic change in society and culture along Marxist lines or a nationalist reassertion of traditional Chinese identity [see CHINESE SOCIETY]. The author acknowledges important elements of continuity but argues, in Weberian terms, that the emergence of a new dominant culture-bearing collectivity (the party) suggests a fundamental transformation. Incidentally, his discussion of the older dominant group, the "gentry," raises the question of the adequacy of this term, taken from English history, for understanding the premodern Chinese situation. The article on southeast Asia raises similar questions concerning the appropriate models for conceptualizing the structure of premodern societies in that area [see ASIAN SOCIETY, article on SOUTHEAST ASIA].
Several of the regional articles raise the question of the nature of the state in areas in which state and nation are in radical discontinuity. The model of the state assumed by the modern Western institutional paradigm is one in which a culturally and linguistically united people—a nation—is governed by a political institution possessing a monopoly of ultimate power within its boundaries and autonomy vis-a-vis other states (Kohn 1944; Jouvenel 1955). Although modern Western experience contains numerous exceptions to this model (Belgium and Switzerland have contrived to maintain states comprising culturally diverse groups, while as imperial powers several European states have exercised varying degrees of sovereignty over dependent polities, both within and without Europe), still the model has been felt to be paradigmatic in the sense that there is a strain toward sovereignty (decolonization) and, especially as populistic polities develop, toward a coincidence between political and cultural boundaries (nationalism). Today this conception is being tested in the ex-
perience of the new states and in social scientists' analyses of this experience. On the one hand, as the article on sub-Saharan Africa shows, the new states of that region—the new "global societies"— typically contain many formerly autonomous societies whose present political and cultural unity is mostly the result of European colonial rule [see AFRICAN SOCIETY, article on SUB-SAHARAN AFRICA]. On the other hand, the Arabs, whose present-day societies are analyzed in the article on north Africa and in one on the Near East, find their sense of linguistic, cultural, and religious unity violated by political fragmentation [see AFRICAN SOCIETY, article On NORTH AFRICA; NEAR EASTERN SOCIETY, article on THE ISLAMIC COUNTRIES]. Once united with non-Arab coreligionists within the mosaic empire of the Ottomans, they have achieved political independence but not political community. However "artificial" and "unstable" they may be, modern state boundaries in Africa and the Near East have proved highly resistant to change in response to ideological stirrings, suggesting that organizational forms may take on a life of their own that is independent, to some degree, of cultural forces. Yet another pattern of state formation is illustrated (perhaps "constituted" would be the better term, in view of the uniqueness of the case) by Israel, a society formed through the recolonization of their homeland by a religious community dispersed for two thousand years throughout Europe and the Islamic world. Culturally and linguistically differentiated by the Diaspora, the Jews nevertheless retained sufficient sense of community, first to form a cohesive organizational structure across existing political boundaries and then, around this structure, to establish and defend a territorial base. [See NEAR EASTERN SOCIETY, article on ISRAEL.] While the regional articles are far from supporting the notion that the present-day development of the non-Western world may be understood as simply a process of "Westernization," Western imperial influence has nevertheless been an important factor in the history of most societies outside Europe, and these articles therefore provide much material for the comparative study of imperialism. For the Old World non-European societies, imperialism represents an interlude—often far-reaching in its consequences but an interlude nevertheless— in histories in which the elements of continuity are indigenous. For the societies of the New World, however, the imperial imprint has been much more decisive. Even in Middle America and South America, where there were some large-scale indigenous societies with highly complex cultures, European
SOCIETAL ANALYSIS immigration was so massive and its cultural impact so profound that the resulting contemporary societies are more accurately viewed as American variants of Iberian society than as modernized or Westernized native American ones [see MIDDLE AMERICAN SOCIETY; SOUTH AMERICAN SOCIETY]. In the societies of the Caribbean, continuity from the indigenous past is still more tenuous. Populated largely by persons of African slave descent, these societies remain variously Spanish, English, and French in dominant language and culture and "colonial" in socioecoriomic structure [see CARIBBEAN SOCIETY]. In the article on Anglo-American society we have a thoroughgoing comparative analysis of a. European imperial society and its daughter societies overseas. Utilizing Parsons' scheme of pattern variables, the author analyzes the variations upon common sociocultural themes which arose in Great Britain, Canada, Australia, and the United States and concludes that today these differences are declining in response to common developmental trends. [See ANGLO-AMERICAN SOCIETY.] Continental Europe, whose intellectuals have played such a central role in the development of the social sciences and whose societies have provided so much of their data, occupies a special place in comparative macrosociological studies. From one perspective—the one stressed here—its common sociocultural features have provided a paradigm for the comparative study of other societies. But while these common features are real enough, so that one might speak of the region as a "culture area" in the anthropological sense, it is (like other regions) internally differentiated in ways that invite comparative study on a more detailed level. This perspective is represented in this encyclopedia by the articles on various sociocultural complexes that are historically characteristic of Europe, such as democracy, socialism, communism, capitalism, Christianity, bureaucracy, political parties, and labor unions, all of which are analyzed comparatively. Indeed, much of the content of this encyclopedia, both substantive and conceptual-theoretical, is at least implicitly concerned with in tra-Western comparative analysis. [See BUREAUCRACY; CAPITALISM; CHRISTIANITY; COMMUNISM; DEMOCRACY; LABOR UNIONS; PARTIES, POLITICAL; SOCIALISM.] Of all the regional articles, the one on south Asian society gives least attention to the problem of cultural continuity and discontinuity [see ASIAN SOCIETY, article on SOUTH ASIA]. Acknowledging that Indie and Islamic cultures continue to inform the societies of the area, the author argues pro-
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vocatively for an austerely social structural analysis in terms of levels of complexity. This analysis of south Asian society also reminds us that models for comparative investigation are today drawn from diverse areas. While the author implicitly draws upon Western models for the analysis of the more complex levels of south Asian society, his frame of reference for analyzing village and tribal communities, he says, is derived from social anthropological studies of Africa. The study of south Asian society, in turn, has provided at least one model whose applicability to other societies social scientists have found it enlightening to explore. The article on the concept of caste, the area's most distinctive sociocultural complex, examines the south Asian phenomenon, compares it with others and, in a manner which well exemplifies the logic of comparative macrosociological analysis, reformulates it so as to elucidate intersocietal similarities and differences [see CASTE, article on THE CONCEPT OF CASTE]. The native societies of North America [see INDIANS, NORTH AMERICAN] and of Australia [see OCEANIAN SOCIETY] have been so displaced by European immigration that the article on AngloAmerican society, which gives an account of the modern societies of these areas, can completely ignore them. The island societies, still under colonial rule, are perhaps destined for some sort of independence, a situation which, if it develops, will test some of the hypotheses suggested in the article on "small societies" [see SOCIETIES, SMALL]. While of little immediate relevance to the comparative study of contemporary national societies, research on these societies has been extremely productive of ideas which have influenced comparative macrosociological thought, for it was in relation to them that Malinowski, Boas, and Radcliffe-Brown developed the new anthropology, which emphasized holism. As the articles mentioned above show, continued anthropological research on these societies has produced a rich literature of comparative analysis, both synchronic and diachronic. The future The scholarship which underlies the regional articles is the fruit of the great post-World War 11 expansion of the social sciences' concern with the non-Western, or "developing," world. Much of this activity has been carried out in the context of "area studies" programs, interdisciplinary programs of research and training organized around regions of the world characterized by common cultural traditions. In terms of the dialectical pattern of development in comparative macrosociological studies outlined above, the emphasis during this period has
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been on the relativizing side: in an effort to make their social scientific concepts and theories more relevant to the task of understanding non-Western societies, many social scientists have become Indologists, Africanists, or China specialists as well as, or even in some cases instead of, social scientists. Recent developments suggest that today at least a partial reversal in emphasis may be in progress. As the results of specialized regional studies become more readily available to the social scientific community at large through secondary works of synthesis, somewhat more ambitious styles of comparative analysis again become profitable. In the vanguard of this movement have been the students of economic development—the economists and economic historians, who have all along reached for generalization more persistently than other social scientists have. Few economists have become "area specialists." The reason for this is, of course, quite simple. From the time of Adam Smith to the present, the criterion of economic growth in monetary terms has provided economists with a relatively unambiguous standard about which to organize data for intersocietal comparison. Thus, while some, like Gerschenkron (1962), Hirschman (1963), and Rosovsky (1961), have become deeply engaged with the data of particular societies, their work has articulated directly with that of such generalizers as Bauer and Yamey (1957), Lewis (1955), and Schultz (1964). For other social scientists, at any rate insofar as they have not been centrally concerned with the sociocultural prerequisites or concomitants of economic growth, there exists no such universal standard. Although a number of writers have attempted to conceptualize a "modernity" toward which all contemporary societies aspire or are tending (Shils 1959-1960; Kerr 1960), it is widely recognized that tradition remains a crucial element in all societies and that consequently there are likely to be many paths toward the future. Thus, for example, the analytic scheme proposed by Levy (1966), perhaps the most elaborate and rigorous in the recent literature of comparative macrosociology, is much more differentiated and open-ended than those of most nineteenth-century writers. The Western paradigm has been thoroughly relativized. Levy's work is directed toward the comparative analysis of whole societies; much more common are comparative studies of particular aspects or institutions, such as Janowitz' study of the military (1964), Apter's volume on politics (1965), and Lenskfs work on social stratification (1966). Given the rising standards of regional scholarship, much
comparative work is, of necessity, collaborative. The volumes produced by the Committee on Comparative Politics of the Social Science Research Council (Almond & Coleman I960; Conference on Communication . . . 1963; LaPalombara 1963; Conference on Political Modernization . . . 1964), the Committee for the Comparative Study of New Nations of the University of Chicago (Chicago . . . 1963; Johnson 1967), and the Congress for Cultural Freedom (Democracy . . . 1959; Bellah 1965) exemplify recent efforts to achieve comparative perspective through seminars and workshops of regional specialists. Finally, as non-Western studies have matured, there has developed a discernible tendency toward completing the circle of comparative analysis by bringing their results to bear upon the history of the West. Lipset (1963) has re-examined the United States as "the first new nation," Moore (1966) has compared the historical role of agrarian organization in Europe and Asia, and Palmer (1959-1964), in his monumental study of the Western revolutions of the late eighteenth century, has felt it appropriate to comment upon the relationship between the events with which he is concerned and those of the twentieth century in the non-Western world. Bendix (1964) has compared the development of authority and citizenship in western Europe, Russia, India, and Japan, Eisenstadt (1966) has analyzed comparatively movements of protest and processes of change in the West and in the "third world." This article may therefore end with the observation with which it began: the road toward a more universal perspective for the social sciences leads through the study of diverse particular societies, considered comparatively. LLOYD A. FALLERS BIBLIOGRAPHY
ALMOND, GABRIEL A.; and COLEMAN, JAMES S. (editors) 1960 The Politics of the Developing Areas. Princeton Univ. Press. AFTER, DAVID E. 1965 The Politics of Modernization. Univ. of Chicago Press. BAUER, PETER T.; and YAMEY, BASIL S. 1957 The Economics of Underdeveloped Countries. Univ. of Chicago Press. BELLAH, ROBERT (editor) 1965 Religion and Progress in Modern Asia. New York: Free Press. BENDIX, REINHARD 1956 Work and Authority in Industry: Ideologies of Management in the Course of Industrialization. New York: Wiley. -» A paperback edition was published in 1963 by Harper. BENDIX, REINHARD (1960) 1962 Max Weber: An Intellectual Portrait. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday. BENDIX, REINHARD 1964 Nation-building and Citizenship: Studies of Our Changing Social Order. New York: Wiley.
SOCIETAL ANALYSIS CHICAGO, UNIVERSITY OF, COMMITTEE FOR THE COMPARATIVE STUDY OF THE NEW NATIONS 1963 Old Societies and New States: The Quest for Modernity in Asia and Africa. Edited by Clifford Geertz. New York: Free Press. CONFERENCE ON COMMUNICATION AND POLITICAL DEVELOPMENT, DOBBS FERRY, N.Y., 1961 1963 Communications and Political Development. Edited by Lucian W. Pye. Princeton Univ. Press. CONFERENCE ON POLITICAL MODERNIZATION IN JAPAN AND TURKEY, GOULD HOUSE, 1962 1964 Political Modernization in Japan and Turkey. Edited by Robert E. Ward and Dankwart A. Rustow. Princeton Univ. Press. DAHRENDORF, RALF (1957) 1959 Class and Class Conflict in Industrial Society. Rev. & enl. ed. Stanford Univ. Press. -> First published as Soziale Klassen und Klassenkonftikt in der industriellen Gesellschaft. Democracy in the New States: Rhodes Seminar Papers. 1959 New Delhi: Congress for Cultural Freedom, Office for Asian Affairs. DOBZHANSKY, THEODosius 1962 Mankind Evolving: The Evolution of the Human Species. New Haven: Yale Univ. Press. EASTON, DAVID 1953 The Political System: An Inquiry Into the State of Political Science. New York: Knopf. EISENSTADT, SHMUEL N. 1966 Modernization: Protest and Change. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall. FALLERS, LLOYD A. (editor) 1964 The King's Men: Leadership and Status in Buganda on the Eve of Independence. Oxford Univ. Press. GEERTZ, CLIFFORD 1962 The Growth of Culture and the Evolution of Mind. Pages 713-740 in Jordan M. Scher (editor), Theories of the Mind. New York: Free Press. GEERTZ, CLIFFORD 1965 The Impact of the Concept of Culture on the Concept of Man. Pages 93-118 in John R. Platt (editor), New Views of the Nature of Man. Univ. of Chicago Press. GERSCHENKRON, ALEXANDER A. 1962 Economic Backwardness in Historical Perspective: A Book of Essays. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Univ. Press. HIRSCHMAN, ALBERT O. 1963 Journeys Toward Progress: Studies of Economic Policy-making in Latin America. New York: Twentieth Century Fund. HUBERT, RENE 1931 Encyclopedistes. Volume 5, pages 527-531 in Encyclopaedia of the Social Sciences. New York: Macmillan. HYMES, DELL 1961 Functions of Speech: An Evolutionary Approach. Pages 55-83 in Frederick C. Gruber (editor), Anthropology and Education. Philadelphia: Univ. of Pennsylvania Press. INKELES, ALEX; and Rossi, PETER H. 1956 National Comparisons of Occupational Prestige. American Journal of Sociology 61:329-339. JANOWITZ, MORRIS 1964 The Military in the Political Development of New Nations: An Essay in Comparative Analysis. Univ. of Chicago Press. JOHNSON, HARRY G. (editor) 1967 Economic Nationalism in Old and New States. Univ. of Chicago Press. JOUVENEL, BERTRAND DE (1955) 1957 Sovereignty: An Inquiry Into the Political Good. Univ. of Chicago Press. -» First published as De la souverainete: A la recherche du bien politique. KERR, CLARK 1960 Changing Social Structures. Pages 348-359 in Wilbert E. Moore and Arnold S. Feldman (editors), Labor Commitment and Social Change in Developing Areas. New York: Social Science Research Council.
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KOHN, HANS 1944 The Idea of Nationalism: A Study of Its Origins and Background. New York: Macmillan. H> A paperback edition was published in 1961. LAPALOMBARA, JOSEPH G. (editor) 1963 Bureaucracy and Political Development. Studies in Political Development, No. 2. Princeton Univ. Press. LENSKI, GERHARD 1966 Power and Privilege: A Theory of Social Stratification. New York: McGraw-Hill. LEVY, MARION J. JR. 1952 The Structure of Society. Princeton Univ. Press. LEVY, MARION J. JR. 1966 Modernization and the Structure of Society: A Setting for International Affairs. 2 vols. Princeton Univ. Press. LEWIS, W. ARTHUR 1955 The Theory of Economic Growth. Homewood, 111.: Irwin; London: Allen & Unwin. LIPSET, SEYMOUR M. 1963 The First New Nation: The United States in Historical and Comparative Perspective. New York: Basic Books. LIPSET, SEYMOUR M.; and BENDIX, REINHARD 1959 Social Mobility in Industrial Society. Berkeley: Univ. of California Press. MACHIAVELLI, NICCOLO (1532) 1941 The Prince, and Other Works. With an introduction and notes by Allen H. Gilbert. Chicago: Packard. MCNEILL, WILLIAM H. 1963 The Rise of the West: A History of the Human Community. Univ. of Chicago Press. MANNHEIM, KARL (1929-1931) 1954 Ideology and Utopia: An Introduction to the Sociology of Knowledge. New York: Harcourt; London: Routledge. -» A paperback edition was published in 1955 by Harcourt. Part 1 is an introductory essay; Parts 2-4 are a translation of Ideologie und Utopie (1929); Part 5 is a translation of the article "Wissenssoziologie" (1931). MOORE, BARRINGTON JR. 1966 Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy: Lord and Peasant in the Making of the Modern World. Boston: Beacon. PALMER, ROBERT R. 1959-1964 The Age of the Democratic Revolution: A Political History of Europe and America, 1760-1800. 2 vols. Princeton Univ. Press. PARKIN, CHARLES 1956 The Moral Basis of Burke's Political Thought. Cambridge Univ. Press. PARSONS, TALCOTT (1937)1949 The Structure of Social Action: A Study in Social Theory With Special Reference to a Group of Recent European Writers. Glencoe, 111.: Free Press. PARSONS, TALCOTT 1951 The Social System. Glencoe, 111.: Free Press. ROSOVSKY, HENRY 1961 Capital Formation in Japan, 1868-1940. New York: Free Press. SCHULTZ, THEODORE W. 1964 Transforming Traditional Agriculture. New Haven: Yale Univ. Press. SHILS, EDWARD (1959-1960) 1962 Political Development in the New States. The Hague: Mouton. -» First published in Volume 2 of Comparative Studies in Society and History. STEWARD, JULIAN H. 1950 Area Research: Theory and Practice. Bulletin No. 63. New York: Social Science Research Council. WASHBURN, S. L. 1963 The Study of Race. American Anthropologist New Series 65:521-531. WEBER, MAX (1904-1905) 1930 The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism. Translated by Talcott Parsons, with a foreword by R. H. Tawney. London: Allen & Unwin; New York: Scribner. -> First published in German. The 1930 edition has been reprinted
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frequently. A paperback edition was published in 1958 by Scribner. WEBER, MAX (1906-1924) 1946 From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology. Translated and edited by Hans H. Gerth and C. Wright Mills. New York: Oxford Univ. Press. -» First published in German. WEBER, MAX (1922) 1957 The Theory of Social and Economic Organization. Edited by Talcott Parsons. Glencoe, 111.: Free Press. -» First published as Part 1 of Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft.
SOCIETIES, SMALL "Small" is obviously a relative term. When applied to societies it usually refers to area, population, or both; for purposes of sociological analysis a distinction must be drawn between a small-scale society and a small territory. It is possible to have a small-scale society in a very large territory (e.g., the Eskimo or the Bedouin). It is also possible to have part of a large-scale society in a very small territory (e.g., Luxembourg or Monaco). The criteria of size for territories are area and population; the criteria of scale for a society are the number and quality of role relationships. In a small-scale society the individual interacts over and over with the same individuals in virtually all social situations. In a large-scale society the individual has many impersonal or part-relationships. As Mair puts it. "Every member of the large-scale society is party to a great number of relationships, some ephemeral, some lasting, which do not overlap" (1963, p. 13). Sociologists and social anthropologists have treated "smallness" in terms of the small groups found within a society. Usually this has been termed the "primary group" or the "face-to-face" group. Sometimes the general characteristics of such groups have been the focus of interest (e.g., Plomans 1950); sometimes it has been the study of particular types of groups, such as the family (e.g., Bell & Vogel 1960), the gang (e.g., Whyte 1943), or some other form of association. Such face-to-face groups exist in all societies and are not a particular characteristic of small territories. The study of "small-scale" societies has been the particular concern of social anthropologists. Indeed, smallness in scale has been cited as a distinguishing feature of the subject matter of social anthropology (Firth 1951, p. 17) and as a denning characteristic of "primitive" (Evans-Pritchard 195la, p. 8). One should distinguish between two major types of small-scale societies. Both are composed chiefly of primary groups, but in one the total social field is small and in the other it is composed of a series of interlocking similar small groups which
extend through a considerable population. Island societies such as those on Tikopia (Firth 1936) or Dobu (Fortune 1932) are examples of the former type. The latter is exemplified by the segmentary societies such as the Nuer (Evans-Pritchard 1940; 1956), the Tiv (Bohannan 1957), and the Tallensi (Fortes 1945; 1949). Nadel has constructed the model for this type of society: Think, for example, of a tribe divided into a number of sub-tribes or extended families; these all duplicate each other, both in their structure and their modes of action; each is relatively self-contained, and such relations as obtain between them (intermarriage, economic cooperation, and so forth) do not follow from their constitution (their "statutes"), but are contingent upon circumstances and outside interests. Though such segments may in fact "combine" to form the society at large, they could exist without each other and in any number; one could add to or subtract from it without affecting the working either of each segment or of the embracing group. (1951, p. 178) Societies of this type are characterized by what Durkheim (1893) called "mechanical solidarity." Thus it is that the Tiv of Nigeria, who number perhaps a million, can still be described as a smallscale society. The question arises as to whether such peoples as the Tiv are a "society" at all. This depends on the criteria we use to define society. There are a large number of possible criteria, such as common language, descent, origin, religion, political allegiance, and so forth. Most anthropologists would accept the criterion of the widest effective political group, i.e., the group that could employ force against outsiders and that effectively prevents or limits the use of force within the group (see Nadel 1951, p. 183-188; Mair 1962, part 1; Schapera 1956, chapter 1). One other type of small group frequently studied by anthropologists and sociologists is the village community. Redfield has stressed the following as characteristics of the small community: distinctiveness both from the observer's and the inhabitant's point of view, smallness, homogeneity, and "all providing self-sufficiency" (1955, p. 4). Yet it is obvious that a village community is only what Kroeber ([1923] 1948, p. 284) called a "partsociety." It is less self-sufficient than either the island society or the segmentary society, although, of course, there are considerable variations in this respect. [See VILLAGE.] Scale and roles. The number of roles to be played in any society is to some extent dependent on its size, but size alone in terms of population does not mean that there are large numbers of dif-
SOCIETIES, SMALL ferent roles to be played. This is demonstrated in the populous segmentary societies. There must also be what Durkheim termed a condensation of society, multiplying social relations among more individuals and leading to a greater division of labor (1893). While the division of labor need not take place in a large population with a simple economy (as in the segmentary societies), it is more difficult for it to occur in very small-scale societies. Such societies may have a considerable proliferation of roles in the politico—ritual sphere, but they have very little specialization of economic and technical roles. Thus it is not only in the numbers of roles but also in the kinds of roles that small-scale societies differ from those of larger scale. In their discussion of scale, the Wilsons state: "A Bushman, we maintain, is as dependent on his fellows as an Englishman, but the Englishman depends upon many more people than does the Bushman" (1945, p. 25). Yet it is obvious that there is a difference in quality in the dependence of the Bushman and of the Englishman on his fellows. The Wilsons describe this as a difference of intensity of relations, the intensity of the Englishman's relations being "more spread out." The word "intensity" is by no means clear. The Wilsons imply that there is some total store of intensity which is invariable for all societies, but that it has various distributions in different societies. As the range of interrelations increases, the intensity of relations with near neighbors, etc., decreases. This is very difficult to prove, because we are not sure how intensity is to be measured. One could argue that the intensity of relations between spouses in London was greater (Bott 1957) than in a society in which, as in that of the Bushmen, there was greater dependence on neighbors and kinsmen. We can carry the analysis further than this by looking more closely at the nature of the roles themselves. Not only are there fewer roles in a small-scale society but also, because of the smallness of the total social field, many roles are played by relatively few individuals. It is a commonplace in anthropological studies of small communities that economic, political, religious, and kinship systems are very often congruent or nearly so. The same individuals are brought into contact over and over again in various activities. "Different types of primary groups tend to coincide or overlap in large measure" (Firth 1951, p. 47). Relationships are what Gluckman calls "multiplex," in that "nearly every social relationship serves many interests" (1955, pp. 18-19). Parsons (1939; 1951) has characterized such role relationships, which he terms "particularistic," as being affec-
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tively charged. There are strong positive or negative attitudes between individuals involved in them. They also extend over a considerable time span. Such roles are usually ascriptive. The standards of judgment in the role depend on who the individual is rather than what he does. They are characterized by personal relations. Particularistic relationships can be contrasted with impersonal relations. Parsons calls these "universalistic" because they are based on more or less fixed standards and criteria. The incumbent of a universalistic role treats all others with whom he comes in contact in terms of universal categories. A shopkeeper should treat all his customers alike, and a doctor all his patients. The roles are functionally specific in definition. The relationship, at least ideally in terms of a model, is affectively neutral. It also has a very limited time span, even though it may be repeated at intervals. The standards of judgment are based on criteria of achievement—what an individual does rather than who he is. Performance and efficiency, not ascribed hereditary qualities, are relevant. These are polar models, and it is obvious that both sets of features are characteristic of most role relationships which could be placed along a continuum. Role relationships change over time. As the same individuals continue to interact in the same roles, the relationship moves from the impersonal toward the personal pole. In a small-scale society where the total social field is small, relationships tend to be personal. Who a man is matters very much more than what he does. For example, in business, professions, and government, family connections and friendships determine positive or negative attitudes; these are not based on role performances as shop assistants, doctors, and clerks. Occupational roles become diffuse when they have to be looked at in terms of kinship connections and influence in other spheres of activity. [See ROLE.] Values and alternatives. An actor playing a role based on impersonal criteria is using one set of values, e.g., whether a customer owes one money; whereas the same actor acting in a personal frame uses another set of values, e.g., whether one's kinsman needs the money one loaned him. In a smallscale society one's customer is likely to be one's kinsman. There is another sense in which the general values of a society may be related to its scale. Where kinship, economic, political, religious, and other systems tend to be coincident or nearly so, there may be a greater consistency of values than in a large-scale society, where there may be differ-
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ent values for individuals acting in different situations or even for whole sets of individuals engaged in very different sorts of life (Redfield 1941). In a small-scale society anonymity is impossible. In a large-scale society, particularly in an urban setting, it is possible by moving, by changing one's job, name, or style of life. As there are more kinds of jobs and ways of life in a large-scale society, so there are more alternatives for the individual. In a small-scale society choice is limited, alternatives are few, and the choice of an individual may have considerable effects throughout the social structure. Degrees of social cohesiveness will vary from society to society even when we are only dealing with small territories. A society like that of Mauritius (Benedict 1961), with its different ethnic elements, each having its own religion and style of life, is less cohesive than the kingdom of Tonga. Yet both societies are rapidly affected by any major decisions or changes. A strike at an industrial plant in the United States has little immediate effect on most Americans; a strike at a sugar mill in Mauritius has very serious effects throughout the island, not only economically but also politically. Nearly everyone would be affected. Decisions in the economic, political, and legal fields have a pervasiveness in small-scale societies which they lack in societies of larger scale. Again, this is because people are connected with each other in so many different ways in a small-scale society. Similarly, natural disasters are more devastating in small-scale societies because their effects are so pervasive, not just on the physical environment but throughout the social fabric as well (Spillius 1957). Magico-religious practices. The worship of local saints, deities, or ancestors is a characteristic of many small-scale societies and has been shown by anthropologists to be intimately bound up with personal relations within the community. This form of worship carries personal role relationships to a supernatural plane. Ancestors are an extension in time of the kin group and are intimately concerned with its welfare. Neglect of ancestors can bring misfortune in a way analogous to neglect of living relatives. Social anthropologists following Durkheim (1912) have shown how such beliefs reflect and symbolize the solidarity of local groups, kin groups, or the whole society itself. Yet such beliefs may only symbolize the cohesion of small groups within a society of any size. Ancestor worship is found in China as well as in small-scale societies. The notion of a high god is found in both large-scale and small-scale societies. Magico-religious practices may be an index of
the homogeneity of a society but not necessarily of its scale. It may be that very small-scale simple societies are more likely to be characterized by a single set of religious beliefs, but many small-scale societies (e.g., Guyana, Fiji, Mauritius) are remarkable for the diversity of religious beliefs found within them. It is often assumed that secularization accompanies the growth of impersonal relationships (e.g., Redfield 1941; Wilson & Wilson 1945), but it is by no means clear how beliefs in witchcraft, sorcery, ancestors, or local deities are related to the scale of a society or whether and in what manner they inhibit the development of impersonal role relationships. The expectations that such beliefs would rapidly disappear with the spread of education and scientific knowledge have been frequently disappointed. [See MAGIC; RELIGION.] Jural relations. Maine's distinction between status and contract and his famous dictum that societies have progressively moved from the former to the latter have relevance in any discussion of the sociological aspects of smalmess (1861). Status in Maine's sense refers to personal role relationships. These depend chiefly on birth and who a man is. A number of anthropologists have pointed out (e.g., Bohannan 1957) that procedure in native courts is often devoted to finding out who the litigants are in terms of descent and affiliation rather than in finding out what occurred, for it is believed that an individual's behavior cannot be judged apart from who he is. The important thing is to restore good social relationships among all parties concerned (including the judges), not to conform to an impersonal law. Because of the multiple connections between litigants, lawyers, and judges in small-scale societies, there are often difficulties in applying impersonal law. Contractual relations pose similar problems. In a contractual relation involving the payment of money, the only relevant question is whether or not the money is owed. It does not matter whether the creditor needs the money or whether the debtor can afford to pay. Where one is doing business with one's relatives, friends, and neighbors, it is difficult to apply impersonal standards. Questions of need and ability to pay may take precedence over the strict terms of the contract (see Parsons 1939). A shopkeeper havng close personal ties with his clientele will find it very difficult to be an impersonal creditor, and this may well lead him into bankruptcy. It is common in many small communities for the shopkeeper, who is the principal manipulator of creditor-debtor relationships, to be an outsider, of a different ethnic or religious origin
SOCIETIES, SMALL from his clients. Thus he is not so closely connected to them by kinship and friendship ties, which enables him to be a more impersonal creditor and hence a more successful businessman (Benedict 1964, p. 344). Political structure. Apart from external political factors, there are sociological factors affecting the political structure of small-scale societies. Foremost is the ubiquitousness of government. In a small-scale society one cannot progress very far up any occupational or prestige ladder without running into government. Government is an active party to nearly every sizable enterprise, not only officially but also because of the multistranded personal networks connecting the members of a small society to each other. In many technologically underdeveloped societies there are small elites marked off from the rest of the population by either ethnic criteria or class barriers. They often have control of the wealth and technical skill (including education) of the society. They usually have a large number of dependents or clients attached to them and are very often able to control the internal political machinery of the society. In small-scale societies the elite must necessarily be small. Opportunities for upward mobility are limited and more easily controlled by those in power—again because the social field is smaller. Obviously the homogeneity or heterogeneity of a society is important in this respect. Where factions form they are not apt to be simply on the basis of political issues, but extend to numerous social relationships. Where there are ethnic, religious, or linguistic differences, social cleavages may become even wider and more irreconcilable (e.g., Mayer 1963, chapter 12). Whereas in a large-scale society political relationships are only partial relationships, in a small-scale society they are much more inclusive. Closely knit family organization, personal ties within the community, traditional bonds of clientage or servitude, color bars, and so forth all militate against social mobility, whether in the political or the economic sphere. The form of government as related to scale also deserves attention. A small governing elite is, after all, not a peculiarity of small countries. Literal democracy in the sense that everyone has a direct say in government can exist only in very small communities where everyone can meet and discuss a problem until agreement is reached (Mair 1961, p. 2). But even in small territories, with the exception of some of the very smallest islands, this is impossible. Representative government takes the place of democracy in its pure form. Theoretically, a small society with an informed electorate should
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operate a representative democracy very well; but the multiplex ties connecting leaders to their followers mean that cliques or factions form which are based not on issues of policy but on ties of kinship and patronage. It is at least questionable whether very small-scale societies can successfully operate a party system. The small elites with multiplex relationships among their members may make it difficult for an opposition to develop. In a largescale society politicians out of power can take leading roles in industry, local government, or the professions, but in small-scale societies there are relatively few such roles, and those that exist tend to be integrated with the governing elite. For similar reasons small-scale societies often experience difficulties in developing an impersonal civil service. Civil servants form part of the governing elite. Their actions are apt to be seen as either supporting or opposing certain politicians. The network of multiplex personal relations makes it exceedingly difficult for an individual to play the role of a neutral civil servant. He is apt to be forced into partisanship (see Singham's article in Benedict 1967). Economic organization. Large-scale or eVen medium-scale economic operations require functionally specific roles. If such enterprises are to be efficient and competitive they must be based on impersonal criteria of performance and achievement and not on an individual's personal ties with other individuals in the enterprise (United Nations 1955, p. 20). The affective component must be as neutral as possible or rational choices in terms of the efficiency of the enterprise become very difficult. Nevertheless, studies in industrial sociology have shown that where attempts are made to treat individuals as instruments rather than as individuals loss of efficiency often occurs and personal elements may have to be reintroduced (e.g., Roethlisberger & Dickson 1939). In large-scale societies there are always possibilities of bringing in outsiders. The social field is large enough to permit this. In small-scale societies outsiders must be imported from another society. Are there societies which are too small for impersonal criteria to prevail, and just how small is too small? Unfortunately, there do not seem to be any very clear-cut answers to these questions, although research could be designed which would give a more precise definition of the problem than we have now. For instance, a valuable question might be: What is the effect of the scale of a society on the specialization of roles within it? Firth has mentioned (1951, p. 47) that there is less room for specialization of roles in a small-
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scale society. This is particularly noticeable in occupational roles. Even should specialist techniques be acquired, there is simply not enough work for an individual to earn his living by his specialization alone. This situation has serious implications for economic development, for it means that a specialist must be trained and paid for performing only a very few services each year, or the society must import him at considerable expense and loss of time and at competitive prices when he is needed. Alternatively, the specialist must be a jack of all trades with the possibility that he may be master of none. There remain questions about the type of economic enterprise and its relation to personalimpersonal pattern variables. The economies of small territories present few alternatives. They are almost invariably limited to producing a very few commodities which are exported to a limited number of markets. The domestic market is small, and local enterprise can rarely compete with cheap imports from mass producers elsewhere. Isolation from markets often aggravates the inefficiencies of personal role relationships. As the Wilsons have pointed out (1945, p. 25), there is a sense in which the scale of a society increases the more it is in contact with other societies. We need only compare Luxembourg with Mauritius, wliich is more than twice as populous, to see the cogency of this point. Unquestionably, the factor of development is significant. The underdeveloped countries, even the large ones, are socially characterized by personal role relationships. Their small elites reach into all facets of social existence. It can only be predicted that they have a larger potential social field for developing impersonal role relationships than the small isolated territories. Industrialization appears to be most dependent on impersonal role relationships, while cottage industries, agriculture, and commerce seem to be less so. But some types of enterprise may thrive on a personal basis. Family businesses may succeed in risky enterprises simply because family members are not tied to the enterprise merely on the basis of a wage that they draw, but also by multiplex personal obligations, which may tide them over a period of economic difficulties. Whether a whole territory, even a small one, can succeed on such a basis is doubtful. A strong network of personal relationships or great social cohesion does not mean social harmony or common goals. The affectivity of such roles can be negative as well as positive. The intense factionalism of small communities has been observed repeatedly (Firth et al. 1957). Such
communities are no more cohesive and harmonious than groups found in large-scale societies. What relation exists between small-scale societies defined in term of role relationships and small territories defined in terms of area and population? It is clear that small territories tend to be characterized by small-scale societies simply because of their relatively small populations. It is also clear that there are other factors involved, such as geographical isolation and economic and technological development. Luxembourg is a small territory, yet economically it exhibits large-scale characteristics as a result of its integration with its neighbors in the Common Market. Politically, however, it retains many characteristics of a small-scale society. Where there is greater physical isolation, as in the island societies of the Caribbean, the Pacific, or the Indian Ocean, the features of the small-scale society are even more marked. This is surely one of the sociological reasons attending the difficulties of federation in such areas as Indonesia, Malaysia, and the West Indies. BURTON BENEDICT [See also ETHNIC GROUPS; SOCIAL STRUCTURE; SOCIETAL ANALYSIS.] BIBLIOGRAPHY
BELL, NORMAN W.; and VOGEL, EZRA F. (editors) 1960 A Modern Introduction to the Family. London: Routledge; Glencoe, 111.: Free Press. BENEDICT, BURTON 1961 Indians in a Plural Society: A Report on Mauritius. Great Britain, Colonial Office, Colonial Research Studies, No. 34. London: H.M. Stationery Office. BENEDICT, BURTON 1964 Capital, Saving and Credit Among Mauritian Indians. Pages 330-346 in R. W. Firth and B. S. Yamey (editors), Capital Saving and Credit in Peasant Societies. London: Allen & Unwin; Chicago: Aldine. BENEDICT, BURTON (editor) 1967 Problems of Small Territories. London: Athlone. ->• See especially the article by A. W. Singham, "Legislative-Executive Relations in Small Territories." BOHANNAN, PAUL 1957 Justice and Judgment Among the Tiv. Published for the International African Institute. Oxford Univ. Press. BOTT, ELIZABETH 1957 Family and Social Network: Roles, Norms, and External Relationships in Ordinary Urban Families. London: Tavistock. DURKHEIM, EMILE (1893) 1960 The Division of Labor in Society. Glencoe, 111.: Free Press. -> First published as De la division du travail social. DURKHEIM, EMILE (1912) 1954 The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life. London: Allen & Unwin; New York: Macmillan. -» First published in French. A paperback edition was published in 1961 by Collier. EVANS-PRITCHARD, E. E. (1940) 1963 The Nuer: A Description of the Modes of Livelihood and Political Institutions of a Nilotic People. Oxford: Clarendon.
SOCIETY EVANS-PRITCHARD, E. E. (1951a) 1956 Social Anthropology. London: Cohen & West; Glencoe, 111.: Free Press. EVANS-PRITCHARD, E. E. 1951& Kinship and Marriage Among the Nuer. Oxford Univ. Press. EVANS-PRITCHARD, E. E. (1956) 1962 Nuer Religion. Oxford: Clarendon. FIRTH, RAYMOND (1936) 1957 We, the Tikopia: A Sociological Study of Kinship in Polynesia. 2d ed. London: Allen & Unwin. -> A paperback edition was published in 1963 by Beacon. FIRTH, RAYMOND 1951 Elements of Social Organization. London: Watts. -> A paperback edition was published in 1963 by Beacon. FIRTH, RAYMOND 1959 Social Change in Tikopia: Restudy of a Polynesian Community After a Generation. New York: Macmillan; London: Allen & Unwin. FIRTH, RAYMOND et al. 1957 Factions in Indian and Overseas Indian Societies. British Journal of Sociology 8:291-342. FORTES, MEYER 1945 The Dynamics of Clanship Among the Tallensi. Published for the International African Institute. Oxford Univ. Press. FORTES, MEYER 1949 The Web of Kinship Among the Tallensi: The Second Part of an Analysis of the Social Structure of a Trans-Volta Tribe. Oxford Univ. Press. FORTUNE, REO F. (1932) 1963 Sorcerers of Dobu: The Social Anthropology of the Dobu Islanders of the Western Pacific. Rev, ed. London: Routledge. GLUCKMAN, MAX 1955 The Judicial Process Among the Barotse of Northern Rhodesia. Manchester Univ. Press; Glencoe, 111.: Free Press. ROMANS, GEORGE C. 1950 The Human Group. New York: Harcourt. KROEBER, A. L. (1923) 1948 Anthropology: Race, Language, Culture, Psychology, Prehistory. New rev. ed. New York: Harcourt. MAINE, HENRY J. S. (1861) 1960 Ancient Law: Its Connection With the Early History of Society, and Its Relations to Modern Ideas. Rev. ed. New York: Dutton; London and Toronto: Dent. -» A paperback edition was published in 1963 by Beacon. MAIR, LUCY P. 1961 Safeguards for Democracy. Oxford Univ. Press. MAIR, LUCY P. 1962 Primitive Government. Baltimore: Penguin. MAIR, LUCY P. 1963 New Nations. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson; Univ. of Chicago Press. MAYER, ADRIAN C. 1963 Indians in Fiji. Oxford Univ. Press. NADEL, S. F. 1951 The Foundations of Social Anthropology. London: Cohen & West; Glencoe, 111.: Free Press. PARSONS, TALCOTT (1939) 1958 The Professions and Social Structure. Pages 34-49 in Talcott Parsons, Essays in Sociological Theory, Pure and Applied. 2d ed., rev. Glencoe, 111.: Free Press. -» First published in Social Forces. PARSONS, TALCOTT 1951 The Social System. Glencoe, 111.: Free Press. PARSONS, TALCOTT; and SHILS, EDWARD (editors) 1951 Toward a General Theory of Action. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Univ. Press. REDFIELD, ROBERT 1941 The Folk Culture of Yucatan. Univ. of Chicago Press.
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REDFIELD, ROBERT 1955 The Little Community: Viewpoints for the Study of a Human Whole. Univ. of Chicago Press. ROETHLISBERGER,
FRITZ
J.;
and
DlCKSON,
WlLLIAM
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1939 Management and the Worker: An Account of a Research Program Conducted by the Western Electric Company, Hawthorne Works, Chicago. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Univ. Press. SCHAPERA, ISAAC 1956 Government and Politics in Tribal Societies. London: Watts. SPILLIUS, JAMES 1957 Natural Disaster and Political Crisis in a Polynesian Society: An Exploration of Operational Research. Human Relations 10:3-27; 113-125. UNITED NATIONS, DEPARTMENT OF ECONOMIC AND SOCIAL AFFAIRS 1955 Processes and Problems of Industrialization in Under-developed Countries. U. N. Doc. E/2670, ST/ECA/291. New York: United Nations. WHYTE, WILLIAM F. (1943) 1961 Street Corner Society: The Social Structure of an Italian Slum. 2d ed., enl. Univ. of Chicago Press. WILSON, GODFREY; and WILSON, MONICA H. 1945 The Analysis of Social Change, Based on Observations in Central Africa. Cambridge Univ. Press; New York: Macmillan.
SOCIETY The concept of society has been formulated in various ways in sociological thought. At a general level there is some agreement as to the referent of the concept, but to abstract this common meaning from the welter of different and competing meanings of the term, we must first eliminate from consideration those usages which merely adopt the term as a shorthand label for the fabric of social phenomena in general. As the historical section of this article will show, the word is often used in this all-embracing sense. Indeed, "society" is frequently used merely to refer to an encompassing network of social relationships that enclose some more specific phenomenon which is the primary object of analysis. Thus, a student of race relations may insist that interracial behavior can be understood only as a part of the organization of the larger society in which it occurs and yet may fail to provide any analytical conception of the nature of this larger whole. It is only when analysts begin to isolate the attributes of the larger whole which we term "a society" that analytical treatments of the concept begin to emerge. Definitions of society. Analytical definitions usually treat a society as a relatively independent or self-sufficient population characterized by internal organization, territoriality, cultural distinctiveness, and sexual recruitment. Specific definitions vary considerably in regard to which of these elements is emphasized. For example, some stress
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internal organization so strongly that they define the society as consisting in the organization and not in the population. Definitions also vary in the specific meaning given to such concepts as "selfsufficiency," "organization," and "culture." Careful formulations must develop precise apparatus for specifying the units and boundaries of societies, for describing the nature of the links between units, and for establishing the mechanisms by which these links influence social processes within society. Nevertheless, the basic concept of the inclusive, self-sufficient group remains a constant element in most concepts of society. When the concept of society is formulated in definitive detail, it is capable of entering into sociological thought in significant ways. Various conceptions of society define the essential problems of sociological analysis and thus shape conceptions of the subject matter of sociology. The well-known functional conception of society put forth by Aberle and his colleagues will serve to illustrate a detailed concept of society and the way it enters into a system of sociological thought. According to these analysts, "A society is a group of human beings sharing a self-sufficient system of action which is capable of existing longer than the life-span of an individual., the group being recruited at least in part by the sexual reproduction of the members" (Aberle et al. 1950, p. 101). The authors proceed to specify four conditions that would terminate the existence of a society: biological extinction or dispersion of the members, apathy of the members, the war of all against all, and the absorption of the society into another society. These conditions enable the authors to specify the functional requisites of a society by enumerating the mechanisms that permit a society to exist, thus specifying the meaning of the core concept of a "self-sufficient system of action." If the conditions terminating the existence of a society are to be avoided, mechanisms must develop to insure provision for sexual recruitment, provision for adequate relationship to the environment, role differentiation and the assignment of members to roles, communication, shared definitions of the world and of the goals of the society, normative regulation of means and of emotional expression, socialization, and the control of disruptive behavior. Thus, the authors have proceeded directly and logically from a definition of society to a conception of the essential concerns of societal analysis, even developing along the way some relatively specific hypotheses. For example, it is proposed that extremely rapid social change, such as revolution, tends to be accompanied by increases in the
conditions terminating the existence of a society— mortality, morbidity, apathy, force, and fraud. It is not surprising that definitions of society are so closely articulated with conceptions of the nature and functions of sociological thought, for from the very beginning of the analytical development of the concept, social theorists have found in "society" a convenient foundation for relating their specific problems to a larger context. Thus the student interested in elucidating the nature of bureaucracy may insist that it is embedded in a larger network of organization which determines, or at least influences, the emergence of bureaucracy and the forms which it assumes and which constrains purposive attempts to shape bureaucratic development. If society is conceived as a set of external and constraining social forces, it is natural that the concept should be put to ideological use. He who would assert that some social institution ought to change or ought to be protected from change may point to the external and constraining forces of the larger society that encompass the institution, finding in those forces both an evaluative standard and an empirical justification for that standard. The emergence of analytical concepts of society has been inextricably bound up with the development of political ideology of this type. History of the concept In the Western world the concept of society as an entity distinct from the state emerged rather late. The age of reason, when philosophers began to search for secular foundations for critical analysis of existing political institutions, was one of the earliest periods when Western thinkers came to view society as something clearly prior to and outside of the state. The vehicle used to establish this differentiation was the social contract doctrine. The utilitarian conception of society. In some of its forms the contract concept failed to distinguish between state and society. Thus Hobbes, wishing to insist that there is no middle ground between an organized state and the war of all against all, treated the social contract, the law of nature, and civil society as virtually identical. But the liberal thinkers of the Enlightenment wished to justify secular rational criticism of the state. In developing a critical doctrine, such thinkers as Locke began to distinguish the law of nature from the social contract that had formed the state. For Locke there is a layer of natural order guaranteed by man's interdependence and his sense of the natural rights of all. It exists prior to and outside of positive political institutions; the state is a utili-
SOCIETY tarian device for insuring a more efficient, less cumbersome social order by developing specialized machinery for enforcing natural law. Such a theory squarely establishes the state as a dependent sector of a larger social order. By a similar logic the critical philosophers sought to establish analytical distinctions between society and church and to separate church and state. The church was defined by reference to its utilitarian functions for the larger society, and these functions were distinguished from the functions of the state. Thus, through the use of the concepts "civil society" and "religious society," church and state were defined as analytical functional aspects of a larger society. Despite the incipient emergence of the conception of society as a set of interdependent organized functions, the idea of society developed during the Enlightenment was not entirely satisfactory, for the ultimate premises of argument continued to be the same premises from which Hobbes had derived the war of all against all. Enlightenment thought was founded on the concept of reason. The method of reason is analytical reduction; complex wholes must be reduced to their fundamental particles and the whole reassembled by a process of deduction from the laws governing particles. For society, the particle is the individual, and the law governing particles derives from the most essential quality of individuals, their natural reason. Each man uses his reason to rationally pursue his chosen ends. Parsons (1937) has termed this conception of society "utilitarian" and has shown that the attempt to derive social coherence and order from the faculty of reason in the individual was unsuccessful. The utilitarians could protect their Achilles heel, that is, the problem of conflicting ends, only by arbitrarily postulating such metaphysical concepts as the "natural identity of interests," "natural rights," and "the spirit of sociability." [See UTILITARIANISM, article on SOCIOLOGICAL THOUGHT.] The more perceptive figures of the Enlightenment—Hume, for example—recognized the inner weakness of the utilitarian conception. However, only a sweeping new movement of thought placed the concept of society on a less atomistic foundation. Romanticism and organismic conceptions. In the latter part of the eighteenth century, and especially in the period after the French Revolution, many social theorists became disillusioned with individual reason and the reductive methods of the analytical philosophers. As the philosophy of romanticism became more influential, a conservative theory of society developed which stressed the
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unity of the integrated whole. Society came to be viewed as an organic growth, embodying the practical and profound wisdom of convention and tradition. Being a cumulative organic product, society has an organic unity. Abstract analytical segments cannot be separated from the whole and arbitrarily changed; to do so is to destroy the complex interdependence of the web of social life. Again we have a concept of society as a larger whole, containing within it the standards by which particular phenomena are to be evaluated, but in this formulation the concept was put to conservative use. By assuming that the totality has an integrated character, one can effectively refute demands for arbitrary and rapid change in the parts. The organismic conception sharpened the concept of society as a set of interdependent functions (which was already implicit in the philosophy of the Enlightenment) and drew attention to a new element, cultural tradition, as a functionally necessary part of a society. The idea of a cultural order as a constituent element of a society was developed further by August Comte in the early nineteenth century. Comte sought to synthesize Enlightened and Romantic modes of thought. Accordingly, he incorporated into his sociological system elements of classic liberal thought, such as the idea of a level of order arising from man's natural economic interdependence, and the concept of a larger society from which government derives its legitimacy. At the same time he refused to derive the larger society from individual reason and the concurrence of interests. Drawing on organismic conservatism, he found in cultural tradition the specifically collective factor in society. For Comte, the formation of any society presupposed a system of common opinions about nature and man. The Enlightenment philosophers, by destroying the normative order of the religiously based society, had loosed anarchy upon the world. Comte argued that the reformation of society required the creation of a new, scientifically based moral order. Again we see an example of the ideological use of the concept of society. Society remains a set of external and constraining forces by which we are to judge the acceptability of political ideology. The concept enters into sociological thought as a set of fundamental premises from which we are to derive the social constraints on political action. Comte's plans for the reconstitution of society revolved about ideas for the reconstruction of religious, familial, educational, and political institutions. Embedded in his program is a contribution to the conceptual elaboraton of the idea of society. Comte did not believe that a bare consensus is a
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sufficient condition for organized collective life. The consensus must be organized in an institutional order that symbolizes, teaches, enforces, and implements moral ideas and rules. The belief that society is an institutional order which embodies a fundamental set of cultural ideas was prominent in another branch of romantic thought which might be termed "idealism." Idealism, which was especially prominent in nineteenthcentury German thought, stresses the cultural distinctiveness of each society. A society reflects a peculiar Geist or spirit that is embodied in its distinctive traditions and institutions. The spirit of a society progressively unfolds in history. Once again the ideological implications are clear: proposals for change are to be evaluated according to whether they are consonant with the cultural distinctiveness of the larger society. [See the biographies of BOSANQUET and HEGEL.] The economic conception of society. Marx was an heir to the idealistic tradition, and the concept of society entered into his thought in a similar way. For Marx, as for the idealists, the elements of a society are closely intertwined into a complex and distinctive whole. For Marx, as for his idealistic predecessor Hegel, society is undergoing continuous transformation according to a logic of immanent development. The ideological implication is that social action is to be judged in relation to its correspondence to the immanent forces of change within society. At this point the similarity to idealism ceases, since for Marx the notion of a spirit or Geist is as metaphysical an explanation for the collective as the utilitarian postulate of natural order. According to Marx, society exists in the concrete relations between social groups and not in the concepts used by philosophers to summarize these relations. The Geist is a mere analytical construct of the observer. The real foundations of society and the real springs of social development lie in the economic relations between men. The idea that the society outside of state and church is largely economic in character did not originate with Marx. The original utilitarian conception of society had stressed man's natural economic interdependence as the source of order which is logically prior to the state. However, Marx developed the idea of society as an economy in rich detail. The economic conception of society starts with the assumption that man's most fundamental problem is to provide for his material needs. To do so, man must cooperate with other men by entering into relations of production. Stable relations of production constitute economic structures. Economic
structures are variable, but they generally involve two crucial phenomena: the division of men into classes and the exploitation of one class by another. Stratification and exploitation make the continuing stability of economic structures precarious, and for this reason whole complexes of compulsive apparatus develop to support the economic order. The state, law, religion, and ideology function to bring temporary stability into inherently unstable situations. Since economic structure is more basic, it can be termed the "substructure" of society; and the supporting institutions may be termed the "superstructure," since they are derivative in the sense that they are responses to the problems of economic relations. In the theory of substructure and superstructure, we see one of the first and most comprehensive theories of society as an institutional order. [See ECONOMY AND SOCIETY.] Conflict theory. The Marxian conception of society is one of a larger set of conceptions that can be combined under the heading of "conflict theory" (Martindale 1960). The premise of conflict theory is that men are organisms, and as such they must compete for access to the resources of life. The struggle for existence does not occur between isolated individuals but between groups. In various versions of conflict theory the competing units may be families, bands, classes, nations, or races, depending on the special interests of the analyst or the stage of social development under analysis. As the conflict between groups becomes stabilized or organized or regulated, we may speak of the emergence of a structured society. Society is viewed as an organizational device for relating populations of organisms to an environment, and in this sense conflict theory may be said to adopt an ecological perspective. In conflict theory the concept of society enters into sociological thought as a means of relating social life to natural forces. In this way social scientists were able to develop a less metaphysical, more naturalistic account of society than had been produced by either Enlightened or Romantic philosophers. [See CONFLICT.] To see society as a device for regulating the struggle for existence and for relating man to his environment is not necessarily to renounce interest in cultural and normative phenomena. Sumner's classic account (1906) views society as a product of antagonistic cooperation between competing organisms and groups; but the phenomenon that emerges to stabilize, organize, and regulate cooperation is a complex of customs, mores, conventions, laws, and institutions. The theory remains naturalistic in insisting that normative complexes develop gradually and naturally as a response to environ-
SOCIETY mental problems. They do not emanate from cultural spirits, nor are they created de novo from a social contract. Conflict theory is too general a rubric to imply any particular ideological purpose. It is apparent that some forms of conflict theory are susceptible to use in support of racial or nationalistic ideologies. It is less often remarked that conflict theory was often used in the development of liberal doctrines. The perspective of conflict theory dominated sociological thought in the latter half of the nineteenth century. Its acceptance is closely associated with the impact of the Darwinian revolution in biology and the popularity of evolutionary modes of thought. It was in connection with the use of conflict theory as an evolutionary doctrine that sociological thinkers were able to place classic liberal ideas on a naturalistic foundation. Emergence of the "utilitarian society." Nineteenth-century evolutionary theory was manifold, and its devotees worked out developmental sequences for every institutional sphere of society. Insofar as the evolutionary school had any common theory of the development of total societies, it was the idea of movement toward the development of larger and more inclusive wholes. By processes of consolidation, conquest, incorporation, and differentiation, societies come to increase in scale and complexity. As this occurs, unregulated conflict between small fractionated groups becomes less important, and the regulation of internal process becomes more important. Further, as the relations with the environment and other societies become more stabilized and the larger society becomes more consolidated, new forms of social organization become possible. Social organization can be built upon processes of free discussion, free exchange, and the pursuit of individual interests. The inflexibility of the "cake of custom" and rigid military organization becomes nonadaptive; only a looser framework of organization can improve the adaptation of society to the environment by unleashing the forces of creativity and innovation. In this brand of evolutionary theory we see the re-emergence of the concept of the "utilitarian society." However, in nineteenth-century thought the concept was no longer used as an analytical definition of the nature of any society, but as an increasingly accurate description of a historically emergent form of society. Not all of the social analysts writing at the end of the nineteenth century viewed the emergence of the utilitarian society with equanimity. According to some analysts, the breakdown of old forms of
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organization meant the loss of what had once provided society with integration, coherence, and meaning. The utilitarian society, founded upon the industrial revolution, the capitalist system, and the market mentality, fails to provide for an ethical standard outside of the individual or a viable source of social cohesion. In 1887 Tonnies incorporated this type of perspective into his famous dichotomy between Gemeinschaft and Gesellschaft. In the Gemeinschaft (usually translated as "community") men are held together by communal feeling and organic ties. In the Gesellschaft (usually translated as "society") organic ties are replaced by artificial ties of calculating self-interest. [See COMMUNITY-SOCIETY CONTINUA.]
Thus, from varied ethical perspectives and varied ultimate premises, social theorists came to conceptualize modern society as a mere collection of individuals united only through ties of selfinterest. Spencer, working in the naturalistic tradition of conflict theory, and Tonnies, drawing on a more philosophical tradition, saw modern society as a collection of wills. The independent reality of society. In 1893 Durkheim severely attacked both Spencer and Tonnies and reaffirmed the reality of society as an entity. Durkheim retained an evolutionary perspective; he accepted the notion of a developmental drift from a society based on very direct ties and commonalities to a society based upon more indirect interdependencies. However, he insisted that a modern society, founded on the extensive division of labor, cannot be conceptualized as a mere collection of the wills of isolated individuals. It is not a collection of contracts based upon self-interest; it is no less organic than earlier forms of society. It remains an entity sui generis (Durkheim 1893). Durkheim wrote at a time when the young discipline of sociology was struggling for establishment in an academic setting. The problem for the sociologist was to establish the independence of his field from economics, political science, and psychology. Thus, it was essential to establish society as a set of external and constraining forces, more inclusive than the economic order, outside of the state, and independent of the sum of its individual members. Durkheim adopted the strategy of stressing the independent reality of such social facts as vital rates, currents of opinion, and established conventions. Social facts require explanation at their own level. It follows that society is an entity which cannot be reduced to a set of members or a set of economic contracts between members. It exists in the complex relations and interdependencies which
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unite its members into an organic whole and which in turn are reflected in a collective consciousness and a collective moral order. Persons who are drawn together in a web of interdependency interact as moral beings and create a body of collective representations of reality and regulative rules. The resulting complex regulates the utilitarian economic order and the actions of persons and is external to them. Other analysts of the era developed similar techniques for identifying the reality of the social. Simmel found a social level in the mutual influence that interacting persons have upon each other. Mutual influence comes to have coherent forms, and thus, as people interact, they create society ([1902-1917] 1950, part 1). Weber, although he insisted on relatively nominalistic definitions of collective entities, developed a perspective of the social order that gave a somewhat independent reality to social processes. As persons orient themselves toward each other, social relationships form; complexes of social relationships constitute a social order. Drawing upon Tonnies, Weber suggested that when actors take a rational orientation to each other, they create a Gesellschaft, whereas when they adopt communal solidary attitudes, they form a Gemeinschaft. But in either case the resulting social order is not a mere collection of wills or economic interests, since it is given stability by administrative organization, shared orientations to systems of status, and shared beliefs in the legitimacy of the order (Weber [1922] 1957, p a r t i ) . The social-psychological approach. In the United States a social-psychological school emerged which found in the concept of symbolic interaction the key to the integrated treatment of society and the social person. Cooley, Mead, and others explored the development of personality and society as they emerge through interaction. Their analysis permitted a novel conceptualization of human society as a symbolically regulated process. Mead, for example, traced the process of becoming a social person. The human being comes to acquire a social personality as he learns to communicate symbolically. As he learns to adopt the perspectives of others toward himself, he is also learning to regulate his own activity symbolically by denning his self and his acts in appropriate ways. It is through participation in that complex of differentiated and interrelated roles called "society" that we develop our distinctly human capacities and identities. It is through adopting, playing, and imaginatively construing social roles that we develop social personality. Thus, self and society are intimately con-
nected through the concept of role. Further, the analyst may make the transition in either direction; he may stress either socialization, that is, the process by which the individual organism is socially formed, or he may stress the proces*s by which interacting persons create and transform society. The human capacity for symbolic control over action and sympathetic understanding of the action of others makes it possible for men to innovate, to appreciate innovation, and to incorporate innovations into complex networks of symbolically regulated activity (Mead 1934). Society as process. The developments of the decades when sociology emerged as a discipline can be summarized by reaffirming that the most sophisticated analysts converged on the idea that society is ultimately an organized process. If society is more than the sum of its individual participants, its reality must lie in the organized relations that emerge as men interact. The units of these relations are not people but activities. Even Durkheim, with his insistence on the independent reality of the social, recognized that the coherence of society rests on the interdependence of activities and the moral regulation created by interaction. The new emphasis on process did not eliminate the ideological component of the concept of society. To a greater or lesser extent, all of the thinkers of the formative period saw in society a standard for evaluating the acts and programs of individuals and other social units. In some instances the ideological functions of sociological method are quite plain, as in the case of the sociological jurisprudence of Ehrlich (1913). Ehrlich saw external and constraining social reality as existing in the "living law." A spontaneous moral order develops in the associations and groups of society as men live and work cooperatively. It is this inner order of society that is the yardstick for measuring the value of the positive law of the state. Sociological jurisprudence is conceived as a corrective to conceptual jurisprudence. The latter, in its reliance on concepts and logic, is likely to become out of step with the real moral order of society and thus fail to respond to pressing social interests and problems. [See LAW, article on THE LEGAL SYSTEM.] In other cases the ideological affinities of the concept of society as process are more subtle. For example, the popularity of the social-psychological approach in the United States cannot be separated from its capacity to provide a sociological foundation for modern liberalism. Classic laissez-faire liberalism had been founded on the utilitarian conception of society as a collection of wills. Sociologistic conceptions are more suited to the defense
SOCIETY of either conservatism or radicalism, depending on whether social reality is conceived as an irreducible obstacle or an inexorable transformative force. The problem for modern liberalism was to justify individual freedom in the context of social regulation. The concept of society as an emergent regulative process, founded on the responsible actions of social persons, is consistent with the program of modern liberalism. Some contemporary approaches Despite the developments of the formative period of sociology, relatively little progress was made in defining the concept of a society. "Society" remained a term for designating an emergent and constraining level of reality. Until recent decades, the main purpose of analysis was to examine the nature of social reality and its modes of constraint, not to define the units and boundaries of concrete societies as entities. Society as a social system. The major technical device used in recent years to attack the problem of defining a society has been the concept of a social system. A social system is an organized set of interdependent social persons, activities, or forces. It is called a system because its organization includes mechanisms for maintaining an equilibrium or some other constancy in the relations between the units. From another perspective such mechanisms can be seen as boundary-maintaining mechanisms, for systems can be isolated as separate entities only if they maintain some constancies in the face of environmental change, that is, if they maintain some boundaries vis-a-vis the environment. If every event within a system were a direct consequence of some event outside the system, it would be impossible to draw a boundary for the system; it would be, in effect, a mere unit in a larger complex. The concept of a social system seems ideally suited for use in defining a society analytically, for it contains within it the crucial concepts of "unit" and "boundary"; to define society as a special sort of social system automatically prepares the way for identification of its units and boundaries. The idea of a social system was used by earlier thinkers, notably Spencer and Pareto, but it has been formulated in greater detail and applied to the present problem by the modern school of structural-functionalism. The paper by Aberle and his colleagues cited earlier in this article is an example of the functional mode of attack on the problem. The approach of that paper has been more fully elaborated by Levy (1952; 1966) and is similar to a definition proposed by Parsons: "A social sys-
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tem . . . which meets all the essential functional prerequisites of long term persistence from within its own resources will be called a society" (1951, p. 19). The key concept in these definitions is "selfsufficiency." All systems are self-sufficient to some degree; the definition of the term requires some mechanisms of self-maintenance. The isolation of total societies involves the search for global complexes with the highest degree of self-maintenance and the least reliance on other social systems for their requisite resources. Local communities, administrative units, institutional spheres, and bureaucratic organizations are all relatively dependent segments of a larger whole. Total societies are dependent only on ether types of systems: personalities, cultural traditions, and a physical environment. [See SYSTEMS ANALYSIS.] Overlapping process systems. The search for the self-sufficient society may be futile. In fact, the concept of a society with exclusive boundaries may be obsolete. This is not to say that it is not valid to do comparative study over very large aggregates. Indeed, one of the achievements of twentiethcentury empirical social science is the thorough demonstration that society is real in the sense that social variables relate to each other differently in "societies" with different characteristics. In this sense the concept of society no longer rests on conjecture. However, at the theoretical level the search for a universally valid definition of the nature and boundaries of a society as a self-contained unit may obscure the complexity of social life. Many of the historic and contemporary problems in the conceptual analysis of society may be clarified by viewing society as a complex of overlapping process systems. We may abstract from the concrete interaction of concrete social persons a number of types of interaction systems. Economic, religious, political, educational, and other types of activity come to cohere into partially independent systems with units, boundaries, and mechanisms of their own. These systems overlap; and when a relatively broad range of such systems cohere around a common population, we may speak of a society. There is no reason to suppose, however, that this society will be self-contained, that it will not overlap with other societies, or that its boundaries will be uniform across its constituent systems. It would be a mistake to regard the notion of a self-sufficient society as intrinsically absurd. One might be tempted to argue that any society engages in at least some trade and cultural exchange with at least one other society, and that therefore there are no self-sufficient societies. This argument, how-
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ever, misconstrues the concept of self-sufficiency. To call a society self-sufficient implies not that it is isolated but that its social system contains within itself cultural materials and role opportunities sufficient for carrying on controlled relations with an environment (Parsons 1966). The truth or falsehood of alternative conceptions of society is not at issue here. Rather, we are contrasting alternative ways of approaching the problems of societal analysis. Thus, an approach based on the concept of social system can be criticized for failing to make several important phenomena immediately problematic. But this is very far from saying that it causes logical difficulties so severe as to prevent analysis of these phenomena altogether. The alternative to the social system approach is to start with the concept of population. This involves making problematic not only the degree to which the activities of a population are organized into systems, but also the units and boundaries of these systems and their forms of interdependence. Thus the emergence of a bounded, unified social system is no longer assumed but becomes an object of inquiry. The boundaries of a society are usually drawn at the outer limits of the interdependencies and commonalities that give it coherence. Special criteria are often used to define particular types of society. Thus, in the case of the nation-state the limits of political jurisdiction are taken to define the limits of the political system and, thus, of the society. In fact, if societies are viewed as complexes of overlapping process systems, it becomes natural to accept the fact that societal boundaries are irregular. From this, one is led to consider the sources and consequences of variation in the scope of systemic boundaries (for instance, by examining the consequences of the involvement of national states in international colonial development). Another single-criterion approach to defining the boundaries of the societal population is to adopt the social system's own normatively denned concept of membership (Parsons 1966). To this it may be objected that the members of a societal population may be involved in well-organized social systems that crosscut membership boundaries. The common solution to this problem is to treat the basic unit of society as the "person-in-role," and then to allege that behavior in boundary-crossing roles is external to the society. One then attempts to identify the mechanisms for segregating roles and regulating members who cross societal boundaries. Again, the focus is on how such regulation is accomplished, not on the conditions under which it will emerge or the consequences of its absence.
To define society as a set of overlapping process systems also permits flexibility in the analysis of the units of society. The utilitarian conception of society was based on the notion of the isolated individual. As early as Comte, the wisdom of this approach was called into question. Comte saw the utility of beginning with more socially relevant units; for him, the unit of society was the family. Other analysts continued this tradition in their treatment of the communal aspects of society. Later, with the development of processual concepts, segments of the actions of social persons came to be used as units of analysis. Thus, Parsons has spoken of the units of social systems as actors in roles (1951, pp. 24-26). If society is viewed as a complex of overlapping process systems, it would appear that the ultimate social unit is the act. However, it does not follow that the intermediate units of different process systems will be the same. Society does not have a single type of unit, but many: its constituent systems have units of different types, and these differences can be of considerable analytical importance. For example, many of the strains in modern societies derive from the fact that, although families are the molecular units of modern status systems, rational market and bureaucratic systems are predicated on the evaluation of specific performances in roles. In consequence, competing bases of evaluation are present in society. The links between units may also vary from system to system. Theories of society have postulated six major types of links between units: emotional attraction, orientations of actors to each other, shared cognitive and evaluative perspectives, mutual influence or coercion, economic or functional interdependence, and common participation in an environment. There is no reason to assume that any of these types of links constitutes the one true mechanism of social coherence. On the other hand, one or another of them may be dominant in particular process systems. This possibility is itself a source of important sociological problems: we are led to ask such questions as "What is the consequence of the expansion of systems of economic interdependence beyond the boundaries of systems based upon emotional attachments?" The notion of a set of overlapping process systems is not by itself a satisfactory model of society. It leaves open the question of the relation between a society and other social groupings. How, for instance, is a society to be distinguished from a community? The term community has been used in a variety of ways. For some, communities are locally based units of a larger society; for others, "com-
SOCIETY munity" refers to some aspect of society, such as its solidarity (that is, communal) or spatial components. Others, particularly in the German sociological tradition, distinguish communities as relatively solidary types of societies [see COMMUNITY-SOCIETY CONTINUA]. It is legitimate to use the term "community" to refer to both locally based units and some aspect of the larger society. The former usage is well established in English speech. The latter usage is sometimes said to be justified by the need to establish a distinction between societies and other social entities. Institutions and special-purpose associations are said not to be societies because they have no communal components. The concept of population can be used in a similar way to distinguish societies from other sets of systems of social processes, since the latter may have sets of members without having populations in the bio tic sense. A society is sustained by a population. To establish the boundaries of a societal population we may adopt a definition of population quite similar to the one employed by bioecologists: A population consists of the selfperpetuating inhabitants of a territorial area. In this context the term "self-perpetuation" implies mating, and the term "inhabitant" implies relatively permanent residence. Thus, the boundaries of a population that sustains a society are established by the limits of the largest territorial area within which mating is common and residence is relatively permanent. These criteria establish a model that, while it does not completely correspond to any empirical population, does provide a means of clearly excluding types of groups that are not societies. Many groups do not qualify as societies because membership in them is not conferred by birth. Further, members of local communities quite often cross community boundaries for the purpose of mating and establishing new residences, while members of societies do not often cross societal boundaries for these purposes—indeed, that is why they form what I have called a population. To start with the concept of a population is not to define a society as consisting in its population. The society is not the population but the complex systems of action in which the units of the population participate. The next problem for the analyst is to establish the boundaries of these systems of action. In a highly organized society, which closely controls the relations between the units of its population and members of other populations, it may be useful to treat only relations within the societal population as internal to the society. On the other hand, when
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societal systems become very permeable to social influences that transcend population boundaries, it is more realistic to consider the society to have irregular boundaries and to overlap other societies. Historically, conceptions of society have had ideological implications and overtones. Perhaps this conception of society as a set of overlapping process systems is not an exception, for it seeks to call attention to the problems of the emergence of larger and more inclusive networks of social organization. As man has expanded his ecological niche there has been a continuous growth of national organization that transcends the less inclusive traditional solidarities. At the same time, cosmopolitan and international organization has outrun national boundaries. The modern world is regularly upset by shock waves reverberating from local traditional cleavages through national political systems; sometimes these shock waves reach the international arena. If sociological analysis is adequately to represent the constraints imposed by this emergent global level of social reality, its analytical conceptions must not be inflexibly tied to the concept of the national boundary. LEON H. MAYHEW [See also COOPERATION; CULTURE; EVOLUTION; INTEGRATION; INTERNATIONAL INTEGRATION; NATURAL LAW; POLITICAL SOCIOLOGY; SOCIAL CONTRACT; SOCIAL DARWINISM; SOCIOLOGY, article on THE DEVELOPMENT OF SOCIOLOGICAL THOUGHT; and the biographies of COMTE; COOLEY; DURKHEIM; HoBBES; LOCKE; MARX; MEAD; MILL; SIMMEL; SPENCER; SUMNER; T6NNIES; WEBER, MAX.] BIBLIOGRAPHY ABERLE, DAVID F. et al. 1950 The Functional Prerequisites of a Society. Ethics 60:100-111. DURKHEIM, EMILE (1893) 1960 The Division of Labor in Society. Glencoe, 111.: Free Press. -» First published as De la division du travail social. EHRLICH, EUGEN (1913) 1936 Fundamental Principles of the Sociology of Law. Translated by Walter L. Moll with an introduction by Roscoe Pound. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Univ. Press. -» First published as Grundlegung der Soziologie des Rechts. LEVY, MARION J. JR. 1952 The Structure of Society. Princeton Univ. Press. LEVY, MARION J. JR. 1966 Modernization and the Structure of Society: A Setting for International Affairs. 2 vols. Princeton Univ. Press. MARTINDALE, DON 1960 The Nature and Types of Sociological Theory. Boston: Houghton Mifflin. MEAD, GEORGE H. (1934) 1963 Mind, Self and Society From the Standpoint of a Social Behaviorist. Edited by Charles W. Morris. Univ. of Chicago Press. -> Published posthumously. PARSONS, TALCOTT (1937) 1949 The Structure of Social Action: A Study in Social Theory With Special Reference to a Group of Recent European Writers. Glencoe, 111.: Free Press.
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PARSONS, TALCOTT 1951 The Social System. Glencoe, 111.: Free Press. PARSONS, TALCOTT 1966 Societies: Evolutionary and Comparative Perspectives. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall. SIMMEL, GEORG (1902-1917) 1950 The Sociology of Georg Simmel. Edited and translated by Kurt H. Wolff. Glencoe, 111.: Free Press. -> First published in German. SUMNER, WILLIAM GRAHAM (1906) 1959 Folkways: A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals. New York: Dover.
-» A paperback edition was published in 1960 by New American Library. TONNIES, FERDINAND (1887) 1957 Community and Society (Gemeinschaft und Gesellschaft). Translated and edited by Charles P. Loomis. East Lansing: Michigan State Univ. Press. -» First published in German. A paperback edition was published in 1963 by Harper. WEBER, MAX (1922) 1957 The Theory of Social and Economic Organization. Edited by Talcott Parsons. Glencoe, 111.: Free Press. -> First published as Part 1 of Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft.