Leo F. Schnore

Cultural, Behavioral, and Ecological Perspectives in the Study of Social Organization

The three perspectives-cultural, behavioral, and ecological-differ in respect to their frames of reference, analytical units, and questions they raise about the nature of social organization. In the light of recent development and its manifest potentialities the ecological approach has advantages over the alternatives for explaining variation and change in such patterns of organization as bureaucracy and statification. The variety of cross-disciplinary interests represented in human ecology should challenge the student of social organization ot investigate the heuristic utility of an ecological viewpoint.

Social Morphology and Human Ecology

This essay re-examines Durkheims Division of Labor from the standpoint of contemporary ecological theory. Durkheims analysis of differentiation is reconstructed, and a series of criticisms of the work are reviewed. A number of striking parallels are found between Durkheims morphological thinking and the structural concepts and analytical apparatus in use within human ecology throughout its development. The paper ends with a plea for greater attention to the construction of structural taxonomies and to the examination of other morphological problems.

THE SOCIO-ECONOMIC STATUS OF CITIES AND SUBURBS

Suburbs are commonly supposed to contain populations ranking higher in socio-economic status than the cities they surround. An analysis of the 1960 Census materials for 200 urbanized areas in the United States reveals that this is trite of the larger and older areas, but that smaller and newer cities tend to rank higher in income, education, and occupation than their suburbs. A multiple regression analysis indicates that age is the best predictor of citysuburban status differentials. The findings suggest that American cities have evolved in a predictable direction with respect to the residential distribution of broad social classes, in accordance with the Burgess model.

Forms of Government and Socioeconomic Characteristics of Suburbs

In this study, 300 American suburbs are classified according to the three major forms of government: commission (considered to be most decentralized), mayor-council, and council-manager (most centralized). Various social and economic characteristics are then examined. The commission city is the least likely, and the council-manager city is the most likely, to be newer and to have a young, mobile, white, middleclass population that is growing rapidly. It is suggested that the socioeconomic character of a city may partly determine its political structure. Leo F. Schnore is professor of sociology and Robert R. Alford is assistant professor of sociology, University of Wisconsin.

Metropolitan Growth and Decentralization

The current literature on decentralization in the United States suffers from a lack of historical perspective; as a consequence, testable hypotheses phrased in dynamic terms are exceedingly rare. Historically, decentralizations was a response to technological innovations, particularly to new facilities for the movement of persons, commodities, and information. Urban centers are assuming a new pattern of spatial relations, but full undestanding of the process requires further research designed to test dynamic hypotheses. The greatest deficiencies are to be found in the inadequate empirical study of transportation and communication.

Urban structure and suburban selectivity

ResumenSe informa respecto a los resultados de dos estudios sobre “selectividad suburbana.” El primero es un estudio longitudinal en su orientacón y examina la medida en que las grandes ciudades y sus suburbios estaban tendiendo a “polarizarse” alrededor de líneas de clase entre los años 1940 y 1960. Nueve de las diez áreas metropolitanas mayores exhibían una característica común: las ciudades centrales mostraban crecimiento en la parte inferior de la estructura socio-económica en tanto que los suburbios mostraban crecimiento en la parte superior. La ciudad de Los Angeles, sin embargo, aparentemente registró aumentos en los dos extremos.El segundo estudio, con diseño de sección transversal, sugiere que la tipología de Los Angeles no es exclusiva. En realidad, de un total de 200 áreas urbanizadas en 1960, 70 muestran una repreeentación excesiva de los extremos en sus ciudades centrales. Además, otras 24 áreas muestran que las clases altas estan excesivamente representadas en la ciudad central y que las clases mas bajas estan excesivamente represeniadas en los suburbios, lo que es exactamente contrario a la característica que uno esperaría con base en las discusiones más recientes sobre selectividad suburbana.Las áreas más pequeñas, más nuevas y de crecimiento más rápido tienden a mostrar más a menudo estas características de selectividad suburbana. Las excepcionee al patrón anticipado son tambien más frecuentes en áreas cuyas ciudades centrales han estado anexando en forma activa el territorio contiguo durante la última década intercensal. Se observó que la composición racial no altera estos resultados, ya que la población blanca aisladamente revela las mismas características generales. p ]Estos resultados conducen a dos conclusiones preliminares: (1) la imagen común de las tendencias y diferencias entre la ciudad y sus suburbios es engañosa teniendo por base la experiencia de sólamente un tipo de estructura urbana; (2) las variaciones en la estructura urbana producen variaciones predecibles en la selectividad suburbana. La tarea del futuro es determinar si la ciudad de los Estados Unidos y sus suburbios han estado experimentando un tipo especifico de evolución.

Satellites and Suburbs

Finally, the data lend indirect support to the efforts of some students who seek to explain how factors peculiar to the United States militate against the formation of class-conscious aggregates. Rosenberg13 has suggested hypotheses relating features of our group life to class-awareness; others have focussed on the shifting base of the contemporary status system and extensive morbility.14 The present findings do not constitute any kind of test of these ideas; but they do support the claim that there is in fact a relative lack of social class awareness in the current stratification system.

Segregation in Southern Cities

The existing literature on southern cities suggests that the older ones are less segregated residentially than the newer ones. This generalizations, however, has been mainly on case studies of individual cities and upon impressionistic observations. This study examines current (1960) levels of residential segregation by color in seventy-six southern cities and finds that the popular generalization tends to be true. The historical pattern of backyard residence, which emerged in the ante bellum Sout under slavery, has apparently survived into the present, dispite the passage of a hundred years. Even when other relevant variables are controlled, there continues to be a negative association between age of the city and current level of segregation.

The Growth of Metropolitan Suburbs

ence of a pair of these estimates valid confidence intervals (and tests of hypotheses) can also be constructed. Beyond these, however, mathematical formulas are lacking for the analytical treatment of data arising from complex samples. For the research scientist who wants to apply analytical treatment this article presents seven procedures for arriving at an approximate answer. These procedures are offered as preferable alternatives to the present common practice of relying on standard formulas based on the s.r.s. (independence) assumption. Of these alternatives three amount to evasions of the worst problems by designing simpler samples. The other four attempt approximations of analytical statistics for complex samples.

The Functions of Metropolitan Suburbs

A study of selected characteristics of the larger suburbs located within the metropolitan areas of the United States in 1950 reveals a number of differences between industrial and residential suburbs. The characterictics reviewed include (1) regional location, (2) size of population of the central city, (3) size of population of the suburb itself, (4) age of the suburb, (5) position of the suburb within the metropolitan area, (6) distance between the suburb and the central city, and (7) level of rents in the suburb.