Samuel Z. Klausner

Social order and energy consumption in matrifocal households

The positive association between energy used and social complexity proposed by Leslie White and his students is examined at the microsociological level of the household. The hypothesis is tested within matrifocal households supported either by welfare or by the mothers earnings. Whites macrosociological proposition is found to be conditional on other cultural, social organizational factors. Household energy consumption rises to the extent that the family establishes ties with outside social organizations, with an increase in the tempo of household activity, and, pari passu,with the expressiveness of the personality of the female household head. Energy consumption is a way of coping with the effects of reduced social organizational and personality order. These social factors interact with demographic and technological factors in determining a social organizations level of energy consumption. By considering the institutional, organizational, and motivational measures suggested in this paper, the unreliability of energy use predictions may be reduced.

Is Religion Universal? Problems of Definition

THE role of religion ih society seems to have been rather cohasistently over or underestimated. The social science tradition in the early twentieth century was often influenced by Marxism ahd other alati-religious doctrines, which were interpreted as regarding religion as but a superficial expression of deeper-lying economic and social forces, an epiphenomenon to be dealt with rather lightly. Others within social science-most notably perhaps Max Weber-reacted against this estimate and were interpreted by later writers with the result that most people in our disciplines now regard religion as a very fundamental and universal phetiomenohl in human society. Proceeding on the latter assumption, it is most disconcerting to meet people from the East who dispute this point of view. Some years ago, when I had just taken as a revealing new insight the doctrine that religion is a most poteht tool for the understanding of any society, I queried a Chinese colleague on the religion of China. She insisted that the Chinese have no religion except for the few Christian converts. I put this conversation out of my mind as soon as possible, lingering only over a melancholy reflection that the Chinese, even when presumably scholarly and engaged in college teaching, have a difficult time ih understanding the English language. Several years later I had the occasion to teach a course in the sociology of religion. When I began with the usual formula concernihg the universality of religiohi, one of the students of Eastern origin again insisted that his country has no religion. It was at this stage that the importance of a definition of religion dawned upon me, a pursuit which has now convinced me that the conventional claim for a universality of religion is based on an ethnocentric misundersta

Methods of Data Collection in Studies of Religion

And they returned from searching of the land after forty days ... and shewed them the fruit of the land ... and said, We came unto the land whither thou sentest us, and surely it floweth with milk and honey.... Nevertheless the people be strong that dwell in the land ... we saw the children of Anak there .... And Caleb ... said, Let us go up at once, and possess it; for we are well able to overcome it. But the men that went up with him said, We are not able to go up against the people; for they are stronger than we. (Numbers 13:25-31)

Thinking Social-Scientifically about Environmental Quality

Technological intervention to improve the qual ity of the environment is an immediate need. The current environmental crisis is rooted in the character of the society which develops and uses technology. The relation of society to its physical environment is governed by the societys defini tions of its resources and the rules evolved for regulating social relations with respect to the environment. Fundamen tal solutions to environmental problems must, therefore, in clude social solutions. To stem deterioration of the quality of the environment will require an examination of those rules regulating the relation between individuals and the collective.

A Professor's-Eye View of the Egyptian Academy.

Almost 60 years old and nearing retirement, the dean of the College of Arts at Al-Mansoura University had achieved the power and physique of an old-time Egyptian pasha. I watched him sweep away organizational obstructions with a telephone call, expediting matters he wanted to expedite and neglecting those he wanted to neglect. His faculty was awed by his administrative daring. Signature-seekers fluttered like moths around his light, flapping their papers. Matters of salary, faculty appointments, leaves, and teaching assignments were controlled by the dean. His concentrated authority made him one of the few busy men on campus. The emotional energy of the faculty hung on the deans mood. I saw a mature scholar, one with a Harvard Ph.D., languish in depression, persuaded that the dean no longer favored him. The evidence: a request had remained unanswered for several days-besides, in a chance campus passing, the deans greeting seemed unenthusiastic. The dean had earned his own doctorate in education, at Columbias Teachers College during the mid-fifties. I first glimpsed his Arabic text on Society and Education, the seventh reprinting, on a policemans desk, a scholarly weight for official report forms. On the deans own massive desk, by contrast, a Koran perched in an inlaid motherof-pearl box, where an American might display photographs of his wife and children. I first saw it during my initial talk with the dean,

Life-Span Environmental Psychology: Methodological Issues

ABSTRACT Life-span environmental psychology faces the problem of constructing propositions linking a variable in a physical with a variable in a social science frame of reference. Relations among social science variables may be studied while treating variables in the physical system as conditional, holding them constant. Appropriate transformation concepts define the social significance of the physical variable. When social or psychological facts are circumscribed for study in terms of their orientation to an object, including orientation to age, an entity is posited in the initial existence statement. The concept of development is bound to the idea of such an entity. The criteria establishing the boundary of the entity may not be expressive of the nature of the elements within it. As one consequence, the entity may consist of relatively functionally independent subsystems. Consequently, correlations between elements in distinct subsystems may be low. Development is structural differentiation. New elements emerge with the passage of time. This may account for some of the low correlations between elements at successive stages of development. Disciplinary theory, on the other hand, tends to circumscribe relevant facts, within the frame of reference, by establishing empirical associations among them. The result is an object-free theoretical net of general propositions. These propositions may interpret relations among the elements in the orientationally posited entity. The boundaries of such a net are a function of the relations among the elements included. Values of such analytic variables may be said to change, but only entities, orientationally established, may be said to develop. These methodological issues are illustrated through fragmentary life-span environmental psychological analyses of action oriented to space, to noise, and to natural outdoor settings.

E. Digby Baltzell: Moral Rhetoric and Research Methodology*

The ways in which values are assimilated to social research differ according to the theoretical frame of reference informing the research. An example from the writings of E. Digby Baltzell illustrates how a moral commitment shaped his assumptions about the nature of the social matrix and his research strategies. A Western moral rhetoric fares well if the researcher chooses a methodologically individualist framework. The framework assists a moral rhetoric by providing it with concrete rather than abstract social actors and with a basis for explanation in terms of motive rather than situational forces. Along the way moral statements can appear in the form of empirical generalizations and historical laws. Should sociologists deem ethically neutral social research desirable, this study suggests that concentration on scientific method, without exploring the value bases for selecting a frame of reference, is not a promising approach. A value analysis, especially around Webers “value relevance,” may function propaedeuticly.

Social Knowledge for Social Policy

Lazarsfeld, as President of the American Sociological Association in 1962, called for annual convention papers on “The Uses of Sociology.” Lazarsfeld asked whether “the rapidly mounting stream of empirical studies and the increasing number of publications on social theory have contributed to anything the educated citizen would find worthwhile.” Among other things he asked specifically about unavoidable gaps between research findings and advice for action. After the convention he and the co-editors of the proceedings, Sewell and Wilensky wrote, “However far knowledge goes, there will always remain a gap which wiU have to be filled by additional assumptions and most of all by creative imagination which thinks of devices — institutional, technical and symbolic — to turn factual knowledge into operational procedures” [Lazarsfeld/Sewell/Wilensky, Introduction].

Energy and the Structuring of Society

Society organizes itself around physical things, as well as around social relations and cultural symbols. Social relations enacted with respect to things define a meaning of those things for society. A society’s character may be known from the way it draws the physical into its activity.

How to think about mass religious conversion: Toward an explanation of the conversion of American jews to christianity

Mass religious conversion refers to the conversion of a society and of its institutions. Individual religious conversions follow from this social contextual change. This article is an exercise in developing social science concepts for the analysis of mass religious conversion. It draws on comparative historical, social survey and autobiographical materials. The conversion of the Copts of Egypt to Islam following the Arab conquests and the Christianization of Europe from medieval times illustrate the roles of social shock, the breakdown of communal authority and how a hegemonic religious system is adopted to restore social order to a subordinate community. The centrality of missions in the Christian case is illustrated. Data from the National Jewish Population Survey of 1990 permit an examination of the contribution of change in economic, social organizational and kinship institutions to change in religious institutions. Autobiographies of converts from Judaism to Christianity reveal some psychological mechanisms for dealing with societal and institutional religious changes. The article closes with a short exercise applying concepts developed here to understanding the conversion of American Jewry to Christianity.