Gerald M. Platt

Ideological Language and Social Movement Mobilization: A Sociolinguistic Analysis of Segregationists' Ideologies*

The current “cultural turn” in the study of social movements has produced a number of concepts formulating the cultural-symbolic dimension of collective actions. This proliferation, however, has resulted in some confusion about which cultural-symbolic concept is best applied to understanding cultural processes involved in social movements. We articulate a new definition of ideology that makes it an empirically useful concept to the study of social-movement mobilization. It is also formulated as autonomous of concepts such as culture and hegemony and of other cultural-symbolic concepts presently used in the movement literature to explain participant mobilization. We demonstrate the usefulness of our ideology concept by analyzing letters written to Martin Luther King, Jr. from segregationists opposed to the integration of American society. The analysis indicates that the letter writers particularized segregationist culture, creating ideologies that fit their structural, cultural, and immediate circumstances, and that the ideologies they constructed thereby acted to mobilize their countermovement participation. The particularizing resulted in four differentiated ideological versions of segregationist culture. The empirically acquired variety of ideological versions is inconsistent with the role attributed to cultural-symbolic concepts in the social-movement literature and requires theoretical clarification. We conclude with a discussion of the theoretical implications for social-movement theory of the variety of segregationist ideologies.

Considerations on the American academic system

The American academic system of the twentieth century is unique by virtue of its large size, the wide variety of its substantive activities and the quality of their performance, as well as for the dispersion of authority throughout the system as a whole. In the following paper, we touch upon the unity of this highly differentiated system and show how, despite the dispersion of authority, the various sectors of the system maintain effective contact with each other. We shall attempt to explain why a society often charged by critics with being concerned primarily with material things supports such a costly system of higher learning. In the numbers of persons of the relevant age classes who participate in the American system, it exceeds at present, and has for a long time, any other country in the world.1 In the numbers of units classed as institutions of higher education, it is likewise unique, as well as in the numbers of teachers and research workers. It contains many of the largest universities in the world. In quality it contains some of the very greatest in the history of universities, and in the range of dispersion of quality of what is taught and discovered, it is likewise exceptional. Few countries possess universities which are the equal of its greatest, while in those countries whose universities are as poor as many of the poorer American institutions of higher education, e.g., India, the Philippines or the Latin American countries, there is none which remotely approximates the peaks reached by the most eminent American universities. Few countries have such a dispersed system of authority in their higher educational system. Japan and the Philippines each has a larger proportion of independent private universities but the number in America

Faculty Teaching Goals, 1968-1973

The findings reported in this paper are taken from two national surveys of faculty conducted in 1968 and 1973. A comparison of these findings indicates that there has been no change in degree of emphasis upon and content of teaching among faculty during this period despite pressures upon them to change their attitudes toward undergraduate teaching. This lack of change is explained in terms of a dominant teaching orientation which is an outgrowth of a compromise between professional value commitments and institutional work obligations.

Sociology and the graduate program at the university of massachusetts-amherst

The Department of Sociology at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst offers a unique graduate program. The program is demanding but collegial, with faculty and students working together to produce mutually authored articles, monographs, and books. Many students concentrate their doctoral dissertations on applied topics, that is, social policy and evaluation research. These students are trained in theory and methods of sociology; their graduate training is the same as all other students in the program. Graduates have been well placed in the academy and in other occupational sectors.