Best of
Sociology

1970

Hard Times: An Oral History of the Great Depression


Studs Terkel - 1970
    Featuring a mosaic of memories from politicians, businessmen, artists, and writers, from those who were just kids to those who remember losing a fortune, Hard Times is not only a gold mine of information but a fascinating interplay of memory and fact, revealing how the Depression affected the lives of those who experienced it firsthand.

The Glass Teat


Harlan Ellison - 1970
    The Borealis Legends line is a tribute to the creators of the science fiction, fantasy and horror genres as we know them today.

Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses


Louis Althusser - 1970
    The text has influenced thinkers such as Judith Butler, Ernesto Laclau and Slavoj Žižek.The piece is, in fact, an extract from a much longer book, On the Reproduction of Capitalism, until now unavailable in English. Its publication makes possible a reappraisal of seminal Althusserian texts already available in English, their place in Althusser’s oeuvre and the relevance of his ideas for contemporary theory. On the Reproduction of Capitalism develops Althusser’s conception of historical materialism, outlining the conditions of reproduction in capitalist society and the revolutionary struggle for its overthrow.Written in the afterglow of May 1968, the text addresses a question that continues to haunt us today: in a society that proclaims its attachment to the ideals of liberty and equality, why do we witness the ever-renewed reproduction of relations of domination? Both a conceptually innovative text and a key theoretical tool for activists, On the Reproduction of Capitalism is an essential addition to the corpus of the twentieth-century Left.

The Consumer Society: Myths and Structures


Jean Baudrillard - 1970
    Originally published in 1970, the book was one of the first to focus on the processes and meaning of consumption in contemporary culture. At a time when others were fixated with the production process, Baudrillard could be found making the case that consumption is now the axis of culture. He demonstrates how consumption is related to the goal of economic growth and he maps out a social theory of consumption. Many of the themes that would later make Baudrillard famous are sketched out here for the first time. In particular, concepts of simulation and the simulacrum receive their earliest systematic treatment.Written at a time when Baudrillard was moving away from both Marxism and institutional sociology, the book is more systematic than his later works. He is still pursuing the task of locating consumption in culture and society. So the reader will find here his most organized discussion of mass media culture, the meaning of leisure and anomie in affluent society. There is also a fascinating chapter on the body which shows yet again Baudrillard's extraordinary prescience in flagging the importance of vital subjects in contemporary culture long before his colleagues.Baudrillard is widely acclaimed as a key thinker in sociology, communication and cultural studies. This book makes available to English-speaking readers one of his most important works. It will be devoured by the steadily expanding circle of Baudrillard scholars, and it will also be required reading for students of the sociology of culture, communication and cultural studies.This edition is published with a long, specially prepared introductory essay written by the noted cultural commentator and social theorist, George Ritzer, author of The McDonaldization of Society.

Exit, Voice, and Loyalty: Responses to Decline in Firms, Organizations, and States


Albert O. Hirschman - 1970
    Albert O. Hirschman makes a basic distinction between alternative ways of reacting to deterioration in business firms and, in general, to dissatisfaction with organizations: one, "exit," is for the member to quit the organization or for the customer to switch to the competing product, and the other, "voice," is for members or customers to agitate and exert influence for change "from within." The efficiency of the competitive mechanism, with its total reliance on exit, is questioned for certain important situations. As exit often undercuts voice while being unable to counteract decline, loyalty is seen in the function of retarding exit and of permitting voice to play its proper role. The interplay of the three concepts turns out to illuminate a wide range of economic, social, and political phenomena. As the author states in the preface, "having found my own unifying way of looking at issues as diverse as competition and the two-party system, divorce and the American character, black power and the failure of 'unhappy' top officials to resign over Vietnam, I decided to let myself go a little."

The Pentagon of Power (The Myth of the Machine, Vol 2)


Lewis Mumford - 1970
    Far from being an attack on science and technics, The Pentagon of Power seeks to establish a more organic social order based on technological resources. Index; photographs.

Schooling In Capitalist America: Educational Reform And The Contradictions Of Economic Life


Samuel Bowles - 1970
    . . establishes a persuasive new paradigm."Contemporary SociologyNo book since Schooling in Capitalist America has taken on the systemic forces hard at work undermining our education system. This classic reprint is an invaluable resource for radical educators.Samuel Bowles is research professor and director of the behavioral sciences program at the Santa Fe Institute, and professor emeritus of economics at the University of Massachusetts.Herbert Gintis is an external professor at the Santa Fe Institute and emeritus professor of economics at the University of Massachusetts.

The Education of a WASP


Lois Mark Stalvey - 1970
    First published in 1970 and highly acclaimed by reviewers, Lois Stalvey's account is as timely now as it was then. Nearly twenty years later, with ugly racial incidents occurring on college campuses, in neighborhoods, and in workplaces everywhere, her account of personal encounters with racism remains deeply disturbing. Educators and general readers interested in the subtleties of racism will find the story poignant, revealing, and profoundly moving.“Delightful and horrible, a singular book.” —Choice“An extraordinarily honest and revealing book that poses the issue: loyalty to one’s ethnic group or loyalty to conscience.” —Publishers Weekly

Reproduction in Education, Society and Culture (Theory, Culture & Society)


Pierre Bourdieu - 1970
    In this second edition of this classic text, which includes a new introduction by Pierre Bourdieu, the authors develop an analysis of education (in its broadest sense, encompassing more than the process of formal education). They show how education carries an essentially arbitrary cultural scheme which is actually, though not in appearance, based on power. More widely, the reproduction of culture through education is shown to play a key part in the reproduction of the whole social system. The analysis is carried through not only in theoretica

The Pursuit of Loneliness: American Culture at the Breaking Point


Philip Slater - 1970
    In a classic indictment of American individualism and isolationism, Philip Slater analyzes the great ills of modern society-violence, competitiveness, inequality, and the national 'addiction' to technology.

W.E.B. Du Bois: A Reader


W.E.B. Du Bois - 1970
    Features the writings of the late writer, educator, historian, and premier architect of the Civil Rights movement in the United States.

The Urban Revolution


Henri Lefebvre - 1970
    Although it is widely considered a foundational book in contemporary thinking about the city, The Urban Revolution has never been translated into English—until now. This first English edition, deftly translated by Robert Bononno, makes available to a broad audience Lefebvre’s sophisticated insights into the urban dimensions of modern life.Lefebvre begins with the premise that the total urbanization of society is an inevitable process that demands of its critics new interpretive and perceptual approaches that recognize the urban as a complex field of inquiry. Dismissive of cold, modernist visions of the city, particularly those embodied by rationalist architects and urban planners like Le Corbusier, Lefebvre instead articulates the lived experiences of individual inhabitants of the city. In contrast to the ideology of urbanism and its reliance on commodification and bureaucratization—the capitalist logic of market and state—Lefebvre conceives of an urban utopia characterized by self-determination, individual creativity, and authentic social relationships.A brilliantly conceived and theoretically rigorous investigation into the realities and possibilities of urban space, The Urban Revolution remains an essential analysis of and guide to the nature of the city.Henri Lefebvre (d. 1991) was one of the most significant European thinkers of the twentieth century. His many books include The Production of Space (1991), Everyday Life in the Modern World (1994), Introduction to Modernity (1995), and Writings on Cities (1995).Robert Bononno is a full-time translator who lives in New York. His recent translations include The Singular Objects of Architecture by Jean Baudrillard and Jean Nouvel (Minnesota, 2002) and Cyberculture by Pierre Lévy (Minnesota, 2001).

The Human Cycle, the Ideal of Human Unity, War and Self-Determination


Sri Aurobindo - 1970
    The essays collected here form the three smaller books titled THE HUMAN CYCLE, THE IDEAL OF HUMAN UNITY, and WAR AND SELF-DETERMINATION and are dated as far back as 1915.

Violence: Reflections from a Christian Perspective


Jacques Ellul - 1970
    

Ideology and Insanity: Essays on the Psychiatric Dehumanization of Man


Thomas Szasz - 1970
    This volume contains the earliest essays, going back more than 30 years, in which the author staked out his position on 'the nature, scope, methods & values of psychiatry.'PrefacePreface to the 1st EditionAcknowledgmentsThe myth of mental illnessThe mental health ethic The rhetoric of rejectionMental health as ideologyWhat psychiatry can & cannot doBootlegging humanistic values through psychiatryThe insanity plea & the insanity verdictInvoluntary mental hospitalization: a crime against humanityMental health services in the schoolPsychiatry, the state & the university: the problem of the professional identity of academic psychiatryPsychiatric classification as a strategy of personal constraintWhither psychiatry?Index

The Writing of Stones


Roger Caillois - 1970
    Caillois examines patterns that are revealed by polishing sections of minerals such as agate, jasper, and onyx. He considers the impact these configurations have had upon the human imagination throughout history and he reviews man's attempt to categorize and explain them.Marguerite Yourcenar [in her introduction] points out that "there had taken place in [his] intellect the equivalent of the Copernican revolution: man was no longer the center of the universe, except in the sense that the center is everywhere; man, like all the rest, was a cog in the whole system of turning wheels. Quite early on, having entered 'the forbidden laboratories,' Caillois applied himself to the study of diagonals which link the species, of the recurrent phenomena that act, so to speak as a matrix of forms." Caillois found the presence throughout the universe of a sensibility and a consciousness analogous to our own. One way which this consciousness expresses itself is in a "natural fantasy" that is evident in the pictures found in stones. Man's own aesthetic may then be no more than one of many manifestations of an all-pervasive aesthetic that reveals itself in the natural world.Caillois also studies the artist's collaboration with nature in the modification of these picture stones. By cutting and framing a picture found or by elaborating the pattern in the stone, the artist admits that nature, with or without an artist, can produce shapes and colors that are works of art. Caillois reminds us that "nature not only provided a stock of models but also directly created works worthy of admiration--works capable of competing on equal terms with human achievements without having to pass through the alchemy of human art."Where, then, do these speculations lead us? By turning on its head, as it were, the quintessential modern dilemma--whether expressed as a dualism of mind and body, as an antithesis of matter and soul, or as the separation of subject and object--Caillois carries the reader beyond the usual arguments about what is and what is not human.The Writing of Stones will interest all who wish to understand what can be learned about the world and its slow and patient formation. Archeologists, gemologists, sculptors, students of art, aesthetics, history, literature, and philosophy will confront questions that they have felt but have not possessed, so far, a way to study in new ways. Here Caillois offers many fresh approaches that we have yet to resolve.

Social Choice and Individual Values


Kenneth J. Arrow - 1970
    This new edition, including a new foreword by Nobel laureate Eric Maskin, reintroduces Arrow’s seminal book to a new generation of students and researchers."Far beyond a classic, this small book unleashed the ongoing explosion of interest in social choice and voting theory. A half-century later, the book remains full of profound insight: its central message, ‘Arrow’s Theorem,’ has changed the way we think.”—Donald G. Saari, author of Decisions and Elections: Explaining the Unexpected

The Movement Toward a New America: The Beginnings of a Long Revolution


Mitchell Goodman - 1970
    This is a compendium of photos, cartoons, articles & letters about the 60s movements: university politics, racial independence, native Americans, gays, hippies, yippies, revolution, Cuba, black power, police, Vietnam, prisons, military, technology, class, feminism, sexual revolution, the media, social change, cities, music, marijuana etc. Not just in the USA--movements around the world. The anthology begins with the Civil Rights struggle spurred on by students & radical movements. Articles from a wide range of papers, literary trades, universities etc. The book begins with a chronology starting in '56 when Rosa Parks refuses to go to the back of the bus in Montgomery & Martin Luther King leads blacks in a 381 day boycott, thru to '70: Nixon, Agnew & Mitchell declare war on bums, radicals & other criminal elements. Reagan calls for a "bloodbath" to settle the student "problem." Kent State, Jackson State & Cambodia. Nationwide student strikes. Murder of black students & other young blacks by state troopers in Georgia & Mississippi. Draft Resistance regenerates Union for Nat'l Draft Opposition organized at Princeton. White wraps drawing of Mitchell Goodman, price printed to upper right corner. Rear wrap back of sandwich sign to front with titles of various papers of the time: Leviathan, The Bird, Ramparts, Berkeley Tribe etc. Inside photo, 1956: "One Thing Leads to Another," Rosa Parks, "Rosa Parks refuses to go to the back of the bus in Montgomery." An excellent historical chronology of the times.

On Phenomenology and Social Relations


Alfred Schütz - 1970
    Schutz's basic contributions issue from a critical synthesis of Husserl's phenomenology and Weber's sociology of understanding. He proceeds on the basis of the irreducible souce of all human knowledge in the immediate experiences of the conscious, alert, and active individual. In this volume Helmut Wagner has selected and skillfully correlated various passages both from Schutz's book The Phenomenology of the Social World and from his scattered papers and essays.

Love and Hate: The Natural History of Behavior Patterns


Irenäus Eibl-Eibesfeldt - 1970
    Structures and behavioral patterns that evolved in the service of discrete functions sometimes allow for unforeseen new developments as a side effect. In retrospect, they have proven to be pre-adaptations, and serve as raw material for natural selection to work upon. Love and Hate was intended to complement Konrad Lorenz's book, On Aggression, by pointing out our motivations to provide nurturing, and thus to counteract and correct the widespread but one-sided opinion that biologists always present nature as bloody in tooth and claw and intra-specific aggression as the prime mover of evolution. This simplistic image is, nonetheless, still with us, all the more regrettably because it hampers discussion across scholarly disciplines. Eibl-Eibesfeldt argues that leaders in individualized groups are chosen for their pro-social abilities. Those who comfort group members in distress, who are able to intervene in quarrels and to protect group members who are attacked, those who share, those who, in brief, show abilities to nurture, are chosen by the others as leaders, rather than those who use their abilities in competitive ways. Of course, group leaders may need, beyond their pro-social competence, to be gifted as orators, war leaders, or healers. Issues of love and hate are social in origin and hence social in consequence. Life has emerged on this planet in a succession of new forms, from the simplest algae to man-man the one being who reflects upon this creation, who seeks to fashion it himself and who, in the process, may end by destroying it. It would indeed be grotesque if the question of the meaning of life were to be solved in this way. In language that is clear and accessible throughout, arguing forcefully for the innate and "preprogrammed" dispositions of behavior in higher vertebrates, including humans, Eibl-Eibesfeldt steers a middle course in discussing the development of cultural and ethical norms while insisting on their matrix of biological origins.

Social Change and History


Robert A. Nisbet - 1970
    Aspects of the Western Theory of Development

The Marijuana Smokers


Erich Goode - 1970
    We all know evil when we encounter it-in the villains of history like Hitler and Stalin, in the routine brutality that makes the nightly news, in the hateful violence of terrorists and sociopaths-but the phenomenon of evil has long resisted explanation. In this singular survey of this mysterious but all too often palpable force, veteran Time magazine essayist Lance Morrow offers a sustained look at the unmistakable ways evil manifests itself in history and in the human heart. This is a provocative meditation on the role evil plays in shaping human history, a timely analysis of how this primitive force can be understood in a modern society of high-tech, sensationalized brutality, and a daring exploration of why evil may be necessary in the world.

Women and the Family


Leon Trotsky - 1970
    How the October 1917 Russian revolution, the first victorious socialist revolution, opened the door to new possibilities in the fight for women's liberation.

New Reformation: Notes of a Neolithic Conservative


Paul Goodman - 1970
    The probing introduction speaks for a new generation of young scholars as it discusses the initial impact and continuing relevance of Goodman's problematic love affair with the radical youth of the 1960s. Timely and compelling, Goodman's narrative reassesses what he considered a moral and spiritual upheaval comparable to the Protestant Reformation—"the breakdown of belief, and the emergence of new belief, in sciences and professions, education, and civil legitimacy." With new analysis of 1960s activism, this survey shows that Goodman's prescient voice is as relevant today as it was four decades ago.

Strategic Interaction


Erving Goffman - 1970
    Goffman examines the strategy of words and deeds; he uses the term "strategic interaction" to describe gamelike events in which an individual's situation is fully dependent on the move of one's opponent and in which both players know this and have the wit to use this awareness for advantage. Goffman aims to show that strategic interaction can be isolated analytically from the general study of communication and face-to-face interaction.The first essay addresses expression games, in which a participant spars to discover the value of information given openly or unwittingly by another. The author uses vivid examples from espionage literature and high-level political intrigue to show how people mislead one another in the information game. Both observer and observed create evidence that is false and uncover evidence that is real.In "Strategic Interaction," the book's second essay, action is the central concern, and expression games are secondary. Goffman makes clear that often, when it seems that an opponent sets off a course of action through verbal communication, he really has a finger on your trigger, your chips on the table, or your check in his bank. Communication may reinforce conduct, but in the end, action speaks louder.Those who gamble with their wits, and those who study those who do, will find this analysis important and stimulating.

Nadars of Tamilnadu


Robert L. Hardgrave Jr. - 1970
    Their efforts to rise above their depressed condition assumed dramatic form in the series of escalating confrontations between the caste and its antagonists. From the breast-cloth controversy the sack of Sivakasi to the Nadar Mahajana Sangam, the Nadars rise, encapsulating the processes of social mobility in Indian sopciety, has given rich texture to the analysis of a community in change.

Pieces of the Action


Vannevar Bush - 1970
    

Sociologists, Economists, and Democracy


Brian M. Barry - 1970
    Brian Barry's short, provocative book played no small part in the debate that precipitated this shift. . . . Without reservation, Barry's treatise is the most lucid and most influential critique of two important, competing perspectives in political analysis: the 'sociological' school of Talcott Parsons, Gabriel Almond, and other so-called functionalists; and the 'economic' school of Anthony Downs and Mancur Olson, among others."—Dennis J. Encarnation, American Journal of Sociology

Systems Thinking


Fred E. Emery - 1970
    

The Social Order of the Slum: Ethnicity and Territory in the Inner City


Gerald D. Suttles - 1970
    He came to know it intimately and was welcomed by its residents, who are Italian, Mexican, Puerto Rican, and Negro. Suttles contends that the residents of a slum neighborhood have a set of standards for behavior that take precedence over the more widely held "moral standards" of "straight" society. These standards arise out of the specific experience of each locality, are peculiar to it, and largely determine how the neighborhood people act. One of the tasks of urban sociology, according to Suttles, is to explore why and how slum communities provide their inhabitants with these local norms. The Social Order of the Slum is the record of such an exploration, and it defines theoretical principles and concepts that will aid in subsequent research.

The Artist in American Society: The Formative Years


Neil Harris - 1970
    What was the place of the artist in a new society? How would he thrive where monarchy, aristocracy, and an established church—those traditional patrons of painting, sculpture, and architecture—were repudiated so vigorously? Neil Harris examines the relationships between American cultural values and American society during the formative years of American art and explores how conceptions of the artist's social role changed during those years.

Black Power and the American Myth


C.T. Vivian - 1970
    

A Curious Life for a Lady: The Story of Isabella Bird, Traveller Extraordinary


Pat Barr - 1970
    In 1872, at the age of forty, this rather earnest daughter of a country parson abandoned the rectory nest and began her pioneering journeys to some of the most inhospitable corners of the world. Undismayed by discomfort or danger she was to spend almost thirty years travelling - to the Rocky Mountains, the Sandwich Isles, to Japan, Malaya, Kashmir and Tibet, to Persia, Korea and China - where an indomitable spirit, an unassuming cordiality and, above all, a limitless capacity for being interested won her universal welcome. Her accounts of her experiences became best-selling books and established for Isabella Bird a reputation as one of the great travel writers of her day.'Miss Barr has her measure. She and Miss Bird are well suited. The style of both is fresh, energetic, visual, making an enchanting book.'"Evening Standard"""'Rich and riotous as her intrepid heroine moves at the speed of a silent movie through landscapes lusher than any technicolour.'"Times Literary Supplement"""'A rare book.'"Sunday Telegraph"

From Plantation to Ghetto


August Meier - 1970
    This pioneering work in African American history begins with the earliest experiences of blacks in the United States and offers an in-depth account of slavery, post-Civil War urban life, the place of religion in African American life, political activism, and the changing occupational and economic status of blacks.

The Best Nature Writing


Joseph Wood Krutch - 1970
    

Coming Crisis Western Sociol


Alvin Ward Gouldner - 1970
    Ironically, New Left students who are now becoming New Left Ph.D.’s in sociology have begun to rebel against what they consider the “conservatism” of some of their ex-professors. Alvin Gouldner’s book argues that all of this presages the emergence of a new “radical” sociology, and he tries to create a theoretical framework to serve as its guide.Essentially Gouldner’s book consists of five interrelated parts: an attack on “objective,” “value-free” social science; a sociology of the history of sociology; a critique of Talcott Parsons, together with an analysis of the sources of his thought; some comments on the state of Marxist sociology in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe; and, finally, a short statement of the author’s proposal for a new sociology.Gouldner’s critique of the cult of “scientism” in contemporary American social science makes some telling if obvious points. The overly abstract language used by sociologists (and political scientists) frequently conceals conceptual poverty. Today’s social scientists often lack historical perspective and their excessive concern with methodological purity can contribute little or nothing to understanding contemporary American society and its problems. Certainly many of those who emphasize their “objectivity” and the value-free character of social science produce studies which derive from only partially conscious assumptions about the nature of reality.What is Gouldner’s remedy? Part of it involves the recognition that social science can never achieve complete objectivity, and the demand that sociologists strive to understand the social and psychological sources of their own biases, or, as he labels them, “background” and “domain assumptions.” Social scientists must renounce the attempt to achieve complete detachment and strive to bring into existence the good, the true, and the beautiful. In evaluating their own work they should be primarily concerned with the social consequences of their findings. Their task, in short, is to produce studies and theories which contribute to the “liberation” rather than the continued repression of man. Thus the way is paved for a deeply self-aware, “reflexive” sociology.

The Destiny of Europe's Gypsies


Donald Kenrick - 1970
    

The Sociology of the Absurd (Touchstone)


Daniel J. Boorstin - 1970
    s/t: Or, The application of Professor X

The Journeying Self: A Study in Philosophy and Social Role


Maurice Alexander Natanson - 1970
    

Demonstrations And Communication: A Case Study


James D. Halloran - 1970
    The authors have analysed the way in which the news media determined the quality of the event and then were compelled to find incidents to fulfil their prophecies. This analysis is a study of the structure of our understanding of "news", of what counts as "news" and why the media are committed to reporting not what happens but what they think should happen.

The Origin of the Inequality of the Social Classes


Gunnar Landtman - 1970