John W. Riley

The Lives of Older People and Changing Social Roles

This article addresses the central dilemma of the mismatch between the strengths and capacities of the increasing numbers of older people in the United States, on the one hand, and the inadequate social-role opportunities to utilize, reward, and sustain these strengths, on the other. In order to enhance the quality of aging, interventions are needed, both in the ways individuals grow older and in the environing matrix of families, work organizations, political institutions, health care systems, and all the other social structures in which peoples lives are embedded. Examples of interventions in both lives and role structures demonstrate the potential for improvement. Looking toward the future, these interventions are seen to affect people of all ages and call for ultimate gradual redesign of the life course from birth to death. An analytical framework of the relationship between aging and broad changes in society is presented as a guide in designing small-scale interventions that can accumulate to benefit—rather than to impair—the well-being of older people now and in the future.

Some Observations on the Social Effects of Television

DURING the summer of 1948, the Columbia although this result may be misleading since Broadcasting System and Rutgers University the impact is not uniform for various segentered into a joint continuing project to ments of the audience; to young children study and document the social consequences television is not a substitute activity but of television ownership in a middle-sized something over and above the regular activity Eastern city. This paper reports some of the patterns. Finally, there is evidence that telefindings from the first phase of the project. vision is responsible for new family interests The most recent additions to the TV audience and widened circles of friends. are being contributed by the lower socioThe authors are members of the Departeconomic levels; TV is exerting an apparent ment of Sociology at Rutgers, Chairman and over-all effect on other leisure time activities, Research Associates, respectively.

Sociological research on age: legacy and challenge

The hallmark of sociology is its emphases on first, people, secondly, structures and, thirdly, their interrelationships. Similarly, we see sociological research on age as concerned with (1) people over their life course; (2) age-related structures and institutions; and (3) the dynamic interplay between people and structures as each influences the other. Guided by our ‘aging and society paradigm’, we review the research legacy as it has focused more on (1) than on (2), and is only now concerned with understanding the interplay between them (3). Hence our challenge to future researchers is to devise strategies for understanding and analysing this interplay and its possible contributions to the ever-accumulating research legacy.

Flight from Communism: A Report on Korean Refugees

IN November, I950, the Human Resources Rethrows light on both North and South Korean search Institute, Air University, under the direactions to communism, the group collected rection of Dr. Raymond V. Bowers, organized other systematic data on the Sovietization of and sent several teams of social scientists to Korea. the Far East to study certain human factor John W. Riley is Professor of Sociology at problems in connection with the war in KoRutgers University; Wilbur Schramm is Dean rea. The psychological warfare team was corof the Division of Communications at the Uniposed of the authors of the present article, versity of Illinois; and Frederick W. Williams Dr. John C. Pelzel of Harvard University, and is Chief, Psychological Warfare Division, HuMajor C. N. Weems. man Resources Research Institute; respectively. In addition to the following report, which