Robert M. MacIver

Some Reflections on Sociology During a Crisis

W HEN a storm shakes the house, we grow concerned for the foundations. When a crisis challenges our routines, we are forced to think back to the values on which they rest. We may cling to these values more tenaciously or we may break loose from them. In any event, we must revaluate. This holds for our intellectual values no less than for the rest. Our scholarship, our learning, our research, how do they look against the background of a time when small and great states crumble, when across the seas the skies are filled with death, when profound uncertainties divide today from tomorrow, when the destinies of peoples everywhere are in the balance? These mighty issues besiege us on every side. What then of the issues to which we devote our workday lives, we scholars who have the peculiar freedom of deciding for ourselves our own intellectual tasks? It is because we have this freedom that we are troubled. I have heard some scholars say that in these days their work seems insignificant and futile, that they have no longer the heart to pursue it. Perhaps we might impertinently ask the further question: what is it worth at any other time if it loses its worth in times like these? The question becomes now permissible when the grip of routine is loosened, so that we dare to look at the value of the things we do. Nothing is any longer justified by by the sacred habit of doing it. What then are the values served by our science? How are we pursuing, how far are we achieving them? There is the knowledge that is illumination, enabling us to understand things; and there is the knowledge that is skill, enabling us to do things. Learning may not provide either illumination or skill, at least to any degree that counts. There are refinements of learning that pursue minutiae of past lores or chart the course of chimaeras bombinating in the

On Community, Society and Power.

et al. (Monograph #1, Region IX Rehabilitation Research Institute). Presents a concise but comprehensive critical review of major forms of family therapy in the U.S.A. today. An invaluable reference tool for therapists, counselors and students. Available September 1, 1970. For copies write: Administrative Dean, School of Social Work, University of Washington, Seattle, Washington 98105. Price: |2.00, (paperback), includes postage and handling.

Integrity and Compromise: Problems of Public and Private Conscience.@@@Aspects of Human Equality.

Find the secret to improve the quality of life by reading this integrity and compromise problems of public and private conscience. This is a kind of book that you need now. Besides, it can be your favorite book to read after having this book. Do you ask why? Well, this is a book that has different characteristic with others. You may not need to know who the author is, how well-known the work is. As wise word, never judge the words from who speaks, but make the words as your good value to your life.

Ideology and Utopia: An Introduction to the Sociology of Knowledge. By Karl Mannheim, The London School of Economics and Political Science. With a Preface by Louis Wirth. Translated from the German by Louis Wirth and Edward Shils. (New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company. 1936. Pp. xxxi, 318.

Thank you very much for downloading ideology and utopia an introduction to the sociology of knowledge. As you may know, people have search hundreds times for their favorite readings like this ideology and utopia an introduction to the sociology of knowledge, but end up in infectious downloads. Rather than reading a good book with a cup of tea in the afternoon, instead they juggled with some malicious bugs inside their laptop.

4.00.)

Nothing manifests the strengths and weaknesses of the contemporary institutions more than the modern national state. Because in this country it reflects the demands of all the people and at the same time affects them and all their other institutions, it is the prime example of institutional growth. It is not an exaggeration to say that all other institutions serve but partial ends, no matter how total they may try to be in their relations with their members. Designed to be small, it has become huge. Once limited to action which was mainly negative, it has become more and more positive. Conceived in amateur terms, it has become a professional bureaucracy. Viewed as decentralized, it has become highly centralized. Seen as doing but little, it has expanded until there is scarcely any area of life which is unaffected by it. [excerpt]