Edgar T. Thompson

Sociology and Sociological Research in the South

rial change and improvement, and, on the other hand an opportunity to observe the effects upon the folk of the slowly increasing adoption of scientific research by industrialists and farmers who are interested in the money benefits they expect from it. Attitudes toward the purposes of educational institutions and toward freedom of thought and inquiry are involved here, and the natural scientist is affected by these almost as much as the social scientist. This approach to a study of society through inquiry into one of the most important institutional complexes of modern society offers a rich field both for the student of social life and for the person who is interested in the improvement of the conditions of life, particularly when the area involved is one where need for improvement is great and failure to appreciate and use research seems to be related to the need.

Mines and Plantations and the Movements of Peoples

Owing to the permanent location of mineral resources, the high cost of their production, and mans desire for them, the mine is a fixed point in the structure of the community, population movements being made with reference to its location. The mine functions as a more or less fixed division of labor. The plantation depends more closely for its location upon environmental conditions. Within the limits of these conditions plant life, unlike mineral resources, can be distributed by human agencies to suit the convenience of consuming populations. The plantation, therefore, affords more opportunity for competition. While the plantation is characterized by specialization, its division of labor is not as determined as that of the mine. Under conditions of necessity it may diversify its products.

Comparative Education in Colonial Areas, with Special Reference to Plantation and Mission Frontiers

On the basis of Wisslers analysis of Amrican culture in terms of mechanical invention, universal suffrage, and mass education the historic culture of the South has not been American. The amount and character of education in the South, as well as the nature of the sections educational problems, must be understood in the context of its own special culture. At the basis of whatever cultural uniqueness the South has is the institution of the plantation. From the point of view of the educational process, plantation societies may be compared with agricultural mission societies. The plantation and the agricultural mission have different histories and conflicting ideologies, but they developed in similar environments; and in adjusting to the permanent elements in the environment, like geography and climate, they eventually become very similar institutions. The educational process in each goes about as far as,and not much further than, the needs of the situation require. And the needs are, or have been, about the same. The comparison suggest that education is fundamentally a process of biological adaptation and survival. But an education which has sufficied for relatively simple world in which both the plantation and the mission developed will not suffice for competition in the more complex and uncertain order into which the world is moving.