Bo Anderson

Sociological Theories In Progress: New Formulations.

Part 1: theoretical structures and the micro-macro problem, Joseph Berger et al. Part 2 Identity, status and social interaction: further developments in identity theory - singularity versus multiplicity of self, Sheldon Stryker status characteristics, standards and attributions, Martha Foschi fuzzy sets and double standards - modeling the process of ability inference, Margaret Foddy and Michael Smithson the evolution of status expectations - a theoretical extension, Joseph Berger et al understanding legitimation in informal status orders, Cecilia Ridgeway group structure and information exchange - introduction to a theory, Bernard Cohen and Steven Silver. Part 3 Differentiations, inequalities and organizations: a general theory of macrostructural dynamics, Jonathan Turner a biased net theory of social structures and the problem of integration, Thomas Fararo and John Skvoretz processes of allocation to open and closed positions in social structure, Aage Sorensen expectations, shared awareness and power, Yitzhak Samuel and Morris Zelditch Jr power structures - derivations and applications of elementary theory, David Willer and Barry Markovsky distributive-justice force in human affairs - analyzing the three central questions, Guillermina Jasso competitive and institutional processes in organizational ecology - a model, Michael Hannan.

Self-evaluation and Rejection in Groups

2. offer his own contribution to a social-psychological theory of the behaviour of human beings in small groups; 3. on the basis of experiments examine the fruitfulness of a number of hypotheses in this theory. Israel proposes to study the theories or fragments of theories that have guided the group round Leon Festinger and the Research Center for Group Dynamics. All these scientists seem to have received decisive impulses from Kurt Lewin’s teaching or theoretical works. There exists, however, no uniform &dquo;group-dynamical&dquo; theory uniting them; to a certain extent they have a common terminology, and they share certain experimental methods. They have contributed some fragments of social-psychological theories dealing with some very important aspects of human behaviour in small groups. Thus eon estinger has synthesized a number of hypotheses into synopses of what he calls &dquo;pressures toward uniformity&dquo; and &dquo;social comparison processes&dquo; (2, 3). Morton Deutsch has submitted a theoretical statement

Control and Cooptation in Mexican Politics

T HIS paper represents an attempt to describe and account for some basic features of the Mexican political system. The analysis is structural rather than historical. That is, we have not tried to narrate how the Mexican system came into being, but have rather attempted to set forth a somewhat abstract formulation, which we believe can account for certain broad tendencies in Mexican politics in the sense that many concrete policies and changes in policies and political events are more or less direct manifestations of the principles our formulation contains. The formulation consists of (1) a description of what we believe is the basic and enduring goal-structure of the Mexican political system, and (2) a set of structural principles which seem to determine, broadly speaking, how the elements in the goal-structure are implemented, and what the relations between different groups in the system will be like. Hence, we believe that some basic tendencies of the Mexican polity can be made meaningful by our formulation. However, we do not attempt to analyze the question why in Mexico there gradually developed a polity having these properties; nor do we try to answer the somewhat more fundamental and general question about what the conditions are for a political system to develop these properties. (We do believe that these questions are important, however; if we knew the answer we would know more about the problem of how to combine basic democracy with rapid economic growth, starting from a state of rather extreme underdevelopment, than we now know.) We do not claim to have isolated all the major principles which determine the structure of Mexican politics. We also regard our present formulation as a first tentative statement, although we believe it to be essentially correct. Also our formulation is intended to apply only to modern Mexican national politics. Economically and culturally Mexico is a very heterogeneous society.

Reactions to Inequity III Inequity and Social Influence

Two experiments were designed and performed to test an explanatory conjecture stated in an earlier paper. The conjecture says that dissonance (or cognitive imbalance) will occur among overrewarded participants in groups if, and only if, the overrewarded person is receiving or expects to receive indications of disapproval concerning how rewards are distributed in the group from an authority figure or an equitably rewarded group member. The experiments reported here used a modified Berger situation. The results tend to disconfirm the conjecture as stated. Various explana tions of the negative results arc discussed. Some further theoretical arguments concerning the nature and conse quences of inequity are presented. In spite of much experimental and other research, we do not possess much more trustworthy (replicable) information about equity processes than Homans did when he wrote Social Behavior: Its Elementary Forms. Some reasons for the empirical impasse are discussed.

Some Problems of Change in the Swedish Electorate

voting behavior primarily designed to analyze American data to the Swedish multi-party system we have raised some descriptive questions which at least partly can be answered on the basis of some recent survey work in Sweden.’) The first topic concerns the relationship between social mobility and political preference. To begin with, we should point out that the Social Democratic Party has based its strength primarily on working class support, whereas the Liberal and Conservative Parties have got the bulk of the middle class and upper class vote. The Center Party has traditionally had its strongest support among the farmers and other rural voters (it was called the Farmers’ Party until a few years ago), bul has lately made some inroads among urban voters. Now there is in Sweden, as in other industrial nations, a fair amount of intergenerational mobility. The white collar class has been growing fast during the last decades and can be expected to grow further. Many members of the new middle class come from homes where the father was a worker. These upwardly mobile people have a Socialist heritage but now belong to a class where the norm is rather anti-Socialistic.

A Note on Selective Perception in Organizations

on experiments designed to test the validity of ideas in the functional approach to perception. Some attempts have been made to state systematic theoretical formulations which try to account for the empirical findings.1) We know that motivational factors, personality variables, and social factors do enter into the perceptual process, although the exact nature of the relationships between these factors and perception is largely unknown.

Some Notes on Operationism and the Concept of Validity

a pronounced attempt at organizing the fairly large amount of disparate data on the basis of theories or models. As a consequence of this preoccupation with the formation of theory we meet in sociological texts a discussion of the part played by the theories in scientific work, and a discussion of the requirements to be satisfied by a theory if it is to be accepted or at least taken seriously. Concurrently with the growing interest in methodology that is noticeable in the behavioral sciences, scientific philosophers have begun studying the logical structure of scientific theories. This part of philosophy, the Philosophy of Science (Wissenschaftslogik), has old traditions. There where several pioneers in the preceding century, for instance the American Charles Sanders Peirce and the Frenchman Henri Poincare. The

Comments on Dahiström's Article

In his article Dahlstrom examines some methodological theories as to what is meant by &dquo;causal explanation&dquo; in sociology and social psychology. He discusses some theories concerning the implication of causal explanation as propounded by sociologists, and examines some of the methods used in sociological research in performing causal analyses. What demands can reasonably be made on analyses of causal problems in the methodological debate within sociology? Such a discussion ought to lead up to some sort of a definition or delimitation of the relations or classes of relations which we are prepared to term causal. What type of definition do we want?